Merou on the bunk bed, sleepily caressing himself.Maybe atthis very moment doing what Priddy was doing, and thinking of himin return.Maybe Merou was the wave and Priddy the undertow,meshing and scalloping the surface of the sea.Why not?Merou hadsat with him impossibly in this room before, read his memories andgone to settle the balance with Vigo.Maybe Merou could share skinwith him, join with him, breath to breath and nerve to acceleratingheartbeat.Priddy threw his head back.The grip on his cock was allhis own, but he felt as if someone was holding his hand.He thrusthard, crying out as the first peak hit without releasing him.“Ican’t do it,” he rasped, and a reassuring arm seemed to go aroundhis waist, a hot mouth brushing the junction of his neck andshoulder.Yes, you can.Yes, youcan.
He pulled his cock against his belly, planing and squeezingfrom base to tip.Again and again, and on the ninthstroke—a ninth one, gathering half thedeep, and all the wave was in a flame—letgo and came like sweet death in an avalanche.Semen jetted fromhim, spilling over his fist, pooling onto the window ledge as hejerked the wild joy of it out of him, riding his body’s convulsionsto the last exhausted surge.
A tideof relief hit him, casting even Baz Dingwall’s finest crack intopoverty and shade.He folded to one knee, grabbing at the ledge tokeep upright.“Thank you,” he croaked, resting his brow on thesill.“Thank you God, Goddess, Merou, whatever the fuck you are.Fucking hell.”He could breathe again, right down into the pit ofhis lungs.The structure and grain of the granite he was staring atwas supernaturally clear, as if his vision had been washed, hisperceptions rebooted, restored to factory settings.
Kit would be so pleased.Priddy half-wondered if he shouldtell him, take the world’s most debauched selfie right now, withhis pants still undone and his come still gleaming on the windowsill like opals in the moonlight.See,mate, nothing to worry about.All systems go.After another long minute, when his head had stopped spinningand his heart rate had slowed, he hauled back onto his feet.He ranwater into the sink and squeezed out a flannel.He’d forgotten toswitch on the boiler today, but the chill on his belly and worn-outshaft wasn’t unpleasant as he washed himself off.He rinsed theflannel, took it to the window and mopped up there too.What wasvaguely poetic in the moonlight just now wouldn’t be at all nice inthe morning for whoever came in here first to pee and clean histeeth.
The moonhad almost set.He paused to trace her lifeline from the horizon tothe breakers of Hell’s Teeth.The night was still clear, but a fretmust be lingering far out at sea, fanning her light into bronze andpurple feathers.Priddy offered her an uncertain salute.He wasn’tas cut off from all nature’s glories as he’d feared.The lifelinecould be an umbilical, tethering him gently to a larger world thanhis own.
Lifelines, umbilicals, navels.Absently Priddy zipped hisjeans and pushed his feet back into his shoes, idea following idealike beads on a string.He’d been standing by Merou’s bunk.Fevershad been rising in his brain, and he’d seen things without notingthem.That strange, flattened-out, fern-pattern hair, marking aline down Merou’s midsection...Kit was furry there as well, thoughfar from so picturesque, just a nice hairy Cornishman whose pubescame halfway up his belly then narrowed to a meridian.Yes,measuring down from Merou’s chest or up from Kit’s cock, thatcentral line should part to accommodate a navel.Kit’s certainlyhad, a belly button deep enough to accumulate fluff and the odd bitof seaweed in summer.
Meroudidn’t have one.Simple as that, and Priddy would’ve staked hislife on it.His stomach swept smoothly down to his abs with nointerruption at all.
This was a new development.Priddy was certain.He’d seenMerou undressed from skull to toes, and if he hadn’t specificallynoticed his belly button, he’d have picked up on the lack of it.Words came back to him from the night when he’d hauled Merou out ofthe sea, when he’d been there in time to see the webbing betweenhis fingers and the silver film on his eyes.You won’t believe it yourself in the morning, when I’m alldried off and finished and just like you...A change, then, a transformation.A creature from the sea whohad to reconstruct himself to match a landsman’s expectations,and...
Andtonight had forgotten one detail.Priddy splashed water into hisface, feeling the old mammalian reflex in his throat to close offand keep his lungs clear.He’d read somewhere a theory that humanshad gone through an aquatic stage in their evolution.But humans,aquatic or not, floated prior to birth in a different ocean, andcame into the world with the mark of their maker-goddess upon them,her thumbprint pressed into their flesh.What happened to Merouwhen the time came to go back?In what order did the signs of hisassumed humanity disappear?
A shriekripped through the silence.Priddy froze, staring at his blank facein the mirror.He’d never heard a sound like that in his life.Thereverb from it set the thick, deep-embedded window glass rattlingin its frame.If the cry came again, the glass would break.Themirror would shatter and Priddy would have a nosebleed, weep blood,die on the spot from a haemorrhage.He ran for the door andwrenched it open.“Merou!”
Chapter Eight
“Priddy, for God’s sake help me!”
Not aShe-Creature scream, not whale song.Just a man in unbearable pain.Priddy shot up the stairs.He burst into the upper room.Merou wassitting bolt upright in the bunk, clutching his knees to his chest.“Help me,” he repeated, holding out a trembling hand.“Don’t let ithappen to me here.Please help.”
Priddyput a foot up on the lower bunk so he could see.“Don’t push meaway, you idiot.What’s going on?”
“I shouldn’t’ve smoked that weed.I forgot about full moon.Oh,hell, it’s starting...Priddy!”
Hehoisted himself up beside Merou, put his arms around him in theconfined space of the bunk and held on.Merou stiffened for amoment then surrendered, laying his head to Priddy’s shoulder andreleasing cry after piteous cry.“It’s all right,” Priddy told him,clutching him tight and rocking.“I’ll get help for you, okay?Butyou have to tell me what’s going on.”
“I can’t.I can’t let a topsider see.”
“Oh, give over with this topside crap.You’re burningup.”
“I need the sea.”
“Well, short of chucking you out the window...Can youwalk?”
Merougave a pain-racked shout of laughter, then bit off a howl.“That’sjust the...fucking problem.”
“Something to do with your legs, then?”Still propping him,Priddy pushed the bedclothes aside, avoiding his dive to get themback.“Have you got cramp?I get that sometimes, and it’s bloodyagony.Look, your tendons are all ridged up.Open up your knees abit, and I’ll...”
Merou recoiled.He pressed himself against the granite wall.“I told you,” he hissed.“Itoldyou.”
MaybePriddy had passive-smoked enough of the weed to explain what he wasseeing.He knelt on the bunk, one hand on each of Merou’s knees,frozen in the act of trying to ease them apart.He’d been rightabout the lack of belly button, but that was a detail, anoversight.Merou didn’t have two separate knees anymore.A kind ofskin had formed between them, glimmering in the light from theanglepoise lamp screwed to the bedframe.It looked like livingclingfilm, shot through with blood vessels and golden filamentsthat crackled and sparked as he watched, like neural pathwaysfiring signals through the brain.Merou was encased in it from thewaist down, his cock and limbs and feet disappearing behind itsincreasing thickness.“Merou, what...what the hell isthat?”
“The beginning of my change.I have to stop it before thejoints begin to fuse.”
“Shit.All right—how do we do that?”
“I’ve got to tear it apart.”
“What?No.It’s alive.There’s blood flowing through it,and—”
“You think I don’t know?Jesus, Priddy—if you can’t help me,fuck off and let me see to it myself.”
“I’ll call a doctor for you.Trewin will come out from HawkeLake.”
