It’s a wonderful scene—if you’re part of it. I sit in the changing area, lean my head against the wall, and look at my phone for several long minutes. With a deep breath, I dial, not sure if it’s going to help.
Calder picks up on the second buzz.
“Cousin!”
“Hi, Calder.”
“Janet, it’s Mercer!”
Janet. His human wife.
“Hi, Mercer!” she calls from a distance.
“Excuse her for not coming over. She’s got the babies in the pool.”
Babies. My nephews(technically little cousins, but I’m pleased to accept the honorific of uncle), little hybrid kraken-humans who (according to the onslaught of photos I receive every week) have tentaclesandlegs, breathe oxygen through lungs or gills interchangeably, and are utterly adorable. They’re baby miracles in delicate shades of grayish blue like their dad, with their mother’s warm brown eyes.
“That’s fine,” I finally say, realizing my thoughts obstructed my mouth again. They do that quite often, especially since I’ve had years with relatively little conversation in the open ocean.
“Are you okay? How do you like Harmony Glen? How are you settling in?”
“It’s lovely. It’s peaceful. I’m settling in nicely, as well as I can in two weeks, anyway. The people are incredibly accepting.” I turn my head when I hear a low, enraptured moan, and I catch a glimpse of a wolf-like creature rustling the bushes at the edge of the beach, disappearing into the darkness with his human mate. “A little too accepting,” I mutter, mostly to myself.
“You sound like you’ve got the blues. No pun intended.”
I roll my eyes and push one teal blue hand back through my dark locks. “Humans are so difficult,” I hiss.
“But worth it. And let’s face it, we’re no picnic. We need a pool or some body of water every day, we’re hell to fit for pants, and holding down a nine-to-five in most offices would just be murder.”
“Ha. Ha. No, I understand that a human and a kraken would have to work hard to make a life together. I’m just having a hard time remembering why I allowed you to talk me into leaving the ocean for a landlubber civilization.”
“It’s because you said you were almost forty and still hadn’t found a mate, and you were bragging about our particular clan—you know, how we’re the best kind of krakens, able to adjust to salt or fresh water, able to withstand a wide range oftemperatures, able to live on land for the most part, or able to live entirely in the water.”
“Calder—”
My cousin continues, flippancy in his voice. “You were basically saying that in terms of kraken males, you were a totally baddie. A whole snack.”
“I never said I was bad. I’m not bad. I’m striving to save lives!”
“It means you’re a desirable mate and you were moaning like a bitch because you hadn’t met a female that wanted you in the whole damn Atlantic, Arctic, or even the Gulf of Mexico!” Janet hollers back. “You were considering swimming around Gibraltar to check out the chicks in the Pacific, remember?”
“She didn’t have to call me a bitch,” I mumble. I also don’t point out that in the last two decades, I’ve been in literally every ocean—and still no luck. “What about the babies? Should they hear such profanity?”
“They’re only eight months old, Mercer. They won’t repeat it, and Janet’s doing good for someone with chronic pain and an army background. We only made one mortgage payment with the swear jar this year. Last year, we paid for the entire nursery.”
“You two... Are awesome.” They are. They are truly what I wish I could have. I want someone I can love in spite of all of her flaws, and someone who would love me in spite of all of mine. I never boasted that I was perfect, no matter what Calder hints. I was only saying I would be compatible with so many different types of krakens, because there are so many slight variations among us over the centuries. But Calder and I can live in oceans or lakes, we understand most human customs and can live among them, and yet we are still capable of living in the ocean and surviving with hunting and our wits...
I could fit with almost any female kraken, in almost any clan the world over.
But that hasn’t helped me find a mate.
“Look, man, what I said still goes. If she’s not in the water—maybe she’s on land. And you can’t find a better, more open place than Harmony Glen to spend time with humans and see if you’d like living with them. If you’d like living with one humanin particular.”
I can practically hear Calder’s eyebrows waggling with suggestiveness.
“Anyway, if it doesn’t work, what’s one summer?”
“Nothing much, I suppose.” I drop my voice, secretly worried Janet will overhear. “Is it something about me? I know a lot of krakens these days stay with clans, or come into the human cities, and I just kept to myself after Mom died—”
