Deep Betrayal

chapter 35

ACCIDENT



I drifted in and out of consciousness. Men were talking in mix-and-matched sentence fragments and non sequiturs. Some of the combinations made me laugh out loud, but laughing made me sound hysterical, and hysterics only increased the din of their concern.

“Explain this,” said the angriest voice.

“I didn’t do it,” said the saddest. “I didn’t do anything. I would never do this to her.”

“You weren’t trying to be a hero?”

“She didn’t need one. She was still alive.”

“Then what the hell is this supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never understood her.”

I arched my back and opened my eyes to a cloudless sky, patchy and blue through the tree branches. Skin pulled tight across my rib cage. I levitated. No, wait, someone was lifting me from a car. Gravel crunched under their feet as they carried me down a road.

“Careful, Lily. Be still. We’ve got you. You’re home.”

“Dad?” I croaked. “Where did you come from?”

“I’ve always been here. Now don’t talk.”

“Where’s Sophie?” My throat constricted, and the words came out like a rasp.

“I’m not speaking to you,” she said.

“Put me down. You don’t have to carry me.” I struggled in a net of arms, but Dad and Calder tightened their grip.

“Get in the house, Sophie. Tell your mom we’re coming,” Dad said.

My muscles seized, arching and twisting me in their arms. Pinwheels of light spun in my field of vision, and I squeezed my eyes so tight I feared they’d turn inside out. Blood filtered over my tongue as my teeth pierced my bottom lip.

“Let me go!” I cried, trying to break free of Dad’s grip, but I couldn’t feel my legs. For the first time, I was truly afraid. Did the chain break my neck? Am I paralyzed? Is this why they are carrying me? Me and Mom both in wheelchairs? It was too much to comprehend. “No!” I cried.

“Easy, baby,” Dad said. “Everything’s okay.”

But I could hear the lie. Tentatively, I reached down, afraid of what I’d feel. Afraid of feeling nothing. My fists refused to unclench, but slowly I willed my hands to open, letting my fingers stretch to their full length. The first thing I found were the remains of my shorts, hanging in fringed tatters from the waistband. I combed the strips of cotton through my fingers and took a deep breath. If only I could feel my fingers against my legs, I knew I’d be okay. No one would ever hear me complain if it was just a broken leg. I laid my hands flat against my thighs, relieved to feel my palms hot against my skin, but gasping at the sensation, because beneath my fingertips was the familiar texture of smooth scales over compact muscle. In a panic, I replayed my slip off the rock, the sinking, the air burning up in my lungs. I remembered the flash of light.

“You changed me?” My voice was a coarse grating—like the bottom of a boat against the sand.

“He says he didn’t,” said Dad, whom I’d now located at my shoulders.

“I didn’t!” Calder said, from my feet, or fin.… I didn’t want to look, but peeked through my lashes. All I could see was a twitching blur of pink that caught the sun and flashed light in my eyes.

Calder and Dad carried me up the porch steps, and Mom called through the screen door. “Jason! Jason! Oh, thank God you’re home! What are you—? What’s wrong with her? Lily!”

Sophie held the porch door open, and Dad and Calder carried me in. The pain was unbearable now—like waves of broken glass pulsing through my bone marrow. I writhed and twisted as my skin pulled and joints strained in their sockets. Somewhere in my head, Mom was screaming.

“Blankets!” Dad yelled, and Sophie pulled quilts off beds and the afghan off the couch. My tail knocked over a floor lamp as I thrashed and seized uncontrollably.

Mom whimpered nearby while Calder cocooned my body with the blankets and placed couch cushions around my head to stop me from slamming it into the wood floor. Already, a goose egg rose up at the back of my skull.

“Shhh. Shhh,” he said. “Just breathe. Deep breaths.”

I screamed in agony against the ripping. Could they hear me tearing in two? It was so loud in my ears. Tears burned like acid behind my eyelids. “I don’t understand!” I cried.

“You shouldn’t have butted in,” Sophie said.

“Not now, Sophie,” Dad said. “Why is it taking so long for her to change back?”

“I don’t know,” Calder said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Should I call the doctor?” Mom asked. “Maybe Father Hoole?”

“No!” sounded four voices in unison.

“No, of course, not,” Mom said. “What was I thinking? I don’t know what to do. Give me something to do.”

“Take me to the lake!” I howled. “Get me back. I can’t stand it!”

“How long has it been?” Calder asked.

“I don’t know,” Dad said. “Ten minutes? Fifteen?”

When I opened my eyes, Calder was my mirror. When I flinched, he did as well. Every movement I made, every grimace played out for me on his face. To both feel and see the pain doubled its intensity, and I gripped his arm with such force, he sucked air through his teeth.

“Please,” I begged, digging my fingernails into his flesh. “Get me back to the lake.”

Dad apologized. He didn’t want to backtrack the process. Perhaps I’d made some progress that they just couldn’t see; perhaps just another minute longer and I’d be back to normal, whatever that was.

I shrieked again as a tremor ran the length of my spine. If I didn’t know better, my vertebrae were trading places. Calder scooped me up and slung me over his shoulder like a bag of laundry. Dad protested, but Calder wasn’t listening. He ran for the lake.

I lifted my head off Calder’s back just enough to see Mom and Dad through the kitchen window, Dad’s arm around her back, supporting her as she stood, watching, her hand covering her mouth. She turned into him and buried her face. Through the window, I could hear her say, “Don’t leave,” and Dad’s shaky voice say, “I never left.” My face fell limply between Calder’s shoulder blades. At least Dad was home. He and Mom would be all right. If I was dying, at least I could die happily, knowing they had each other.

I clenched my teeth to hold in another scream as my body stiffened. Calder adjusted me in his arms and slid me, ever so gently, out of the blanket and into the lake. I slipped in smoothly and all my muscles relaxed, my shoulders dropped. The pain dissolved like sugar into the waves, the water finding no resistance against my body.

Calder knelt at the edge of the dock with his face inches from mine. “If I leave you, you’re not going to go anywhere, are you?”

“What do you mean, ‘if I leave you’?” I asked.

“Just for a second. I’ll bring the blanket back to the house, check in on your parents. I worked too hard with your dad to make this reunion happen. We hadn’t counted on your little … accident. I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”

His hand brushed across my back, raking his fingers through what was left of my tattered shorts. “I’ve never seen a mermaid in a Hendrix T-shirt before. Or with a tattoo. I wondered if that would stay.”

“You’ve been wondering if this would happen?”

“Worrying is probably closer to the truth. Now stay here.”

I watched him run back to the house, his arms pumping and his muscles flexing, his skin smooth and glistening in the sun. The front door slammed, and I was alone.

It was peaceful. Right now, the trials of the landlocked world were as foreign to me as life on the moon. I ran my fingers over my tail. It was dark raspberry with iridescent pink, possibly the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, next to Calder’s.

I swam away from the dock. Just a little. While I waited for Calder, I turned in circles, flipping over and around, trying out new muscles, wondering, wondering. I swam out deeper and dove down to skim along the bottom. I held my breath—too afraid to see how imperfect the transformation had been. How embarrassing would it be to try to breathe underwater only to come up choking and sputtering?

Out of the corner of my eye, I sensed a movement. The floodlights were off, and a cloud blocked out the moon. The water was a black, matte canvas. Still, there was something there. In the distance. A dark shape. At first I thought it was a submerged log, but it was moving fast. And then I knew. My thoughts must have been too loud for Maris not to notice me.

“Well, well, well, Lily Hancock. Aren’t you just full of surprises.” My instincts were to retreat, but she did not hold the same threat she once had. Maris was visibly weak, while my muscles twitched with pent-up energy. “Calder will be back soon,” I said.

“Doesn’t that sound lovely,” she said, drawing close. I tried not to show my surprise at her appearance. I could count every one of her ribs. Her eyes bulged in sunken sockets. Her pale, milky hair floated sparsely around her face.

“What do you want?” I asked. “Where’s Pavati?”

“She’s already left,” Maris said. “She couldn’t stay a minute longer now that …”

“So she did love Jack after all.”

Maris rolled her eyes. “She chose him, yes. But she had no choice but to end him once she heard his confession. His mind was too addled. I’d warned her about that when we left last fall, but she never listens. There would be no reasoning with him, and we can’t afford for him to continue to interfere with our hunting schedule. Humans have a way of ruining the best laid plans.”

I didn’t know exactly whom she was referring to, there were so many options at this point. My name was probably at the top of her list. Although, was I still human? How did that work?

“Where did Pavati go?” I asked.

“She’s hoping to pick up with that blue-eyed boy.”

“Daniel Catron?”

“Is that his name? He’s her Plan B.”

“I’m sure he’ll take it,” I said, although I couldn’t help thinking, Poor boy. I was pretty sure I knew what Pavati’s intentions were in regard to Daniel, but it was still impossible to imagine him fathering Pavati’s child, let alone parenting it for its first year. Daniel was just a kid. But, then again, it wasn’t like he was going in blind.

Maris laughed condescendingly. “Of course he’ll ‘take it.’ Pavati’s completely intoxicated on what she absorbed from that Pettit boy. She’ll stagger into Cornucopia, and that blue-eyed boy will scoop her up so fast.… After the deed is done, she’ll head to New Orleans. I’m meeting her there in a few weeks.”

“So you’re leaving, too?”

“Maybe no one believed what Jack Pettit was saying, but the results of his actions have put people on edge around here.” She pulled her arms through the dark water, drawing herself closer to me. “There’s no good hunting these days. Tomorrow’s the Fourth of July. There will be a lot of party boats on the St. Croix River. I’ve got a favorite spot just north of the Stillwater lift bridge. Lots to choose from. That should sustain me until I get to the Gulf.”

“Uh-huh.” I shuddered, trying to picture it. Clouds shifted and let the moonlight shine through, dappling the space between us. For a second, it made Maris almost pretty. Like she used to be.

I wondered when the emotional cravings would start for me, or if they would at all. I couldn’t imagine being miserable as long as Calder was with me. So far I felt nothing but awe and amazement.

“Calder says he didn’t change me. Was it you?”

Maris smirked and said, “No. You changed by yourself. Strange, that. I would have thought if it was going to happen, it wouldn’t have taken so long. But Calder was ridiculously slow when he started out.… Still, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mermaid whose transformation skills were so delayed. Must be your diluted genetics. Hmmm. No ring,” she said, touching my throat. “I didn’t want to go before I knew my family was all right.”

“All right?” I sounded like an idiot, but I hoped her assessment meant I wasn’t so delayed to be stuck like this.

Reading my thoughts, she smiled apologetically. “All I ever wanted was for my family to be together. That’s what’s most important. Our family looks different today than it did a few months ago, but I can be flexible. No one can replace Tallulah, but Mother would want us to be together. You, your sister, your … dad.” The concept was obviously still difficult for her to grasp. “Calder, too. Oh, speak of the devil, here he comes.”

Calder’s dark hair streamed behind him as he swam a torpedo’s course toward my side. My anxiety subsided at the sight of him—transformed—his silver-sequined tail bending the water.

“Calder, it’s all right,” I said, repeating Maris’s assessment. “She’s just leaving.”

“I’m sure you’re not sorry to see me go,” Maris said, but he did not react to her goading. “Oh, that’s right. Lily, you’ll have to translate for us.”

“Ask her why you can’t change back,” Calder said as he pulled me to his side.

Maris appraised us with mocking eyes. “You two were made for each other. Slow and sentimental.”

“What did she say?” Calder asked.

“She says I’ll get faster with practice.” My blood cooled at the thought of having to practice that torture. Couldn’t I just stay in the lake forever?

“If you want,” Maris said, reading even the thoughts I didn’t intend for her to hear. “You’re welcome to join me.”

“Join you?”

“No,” Calder said in response to my question, and with a flash of his silver tail, he took a defensive position between me and Maris. “I won’t allow it.”

Maris shrugged and looked past Calder to me. “I can see you’re curious about the possibilities, Lily Hancock. I’ll be back in the spring. We can see how things are then.”

“What is she saying?” Calder asked.

I wished it were daylight so I could better read her expression. I said, “Maris misses her family.”

“I don’t know what she’s playing at,” Calder said, “but tell her she doesn’t fool me.”

“Calder misses you, too,” I said.

Both Calder and Maris twitched, and she leapt into the night air, bending into a back dive. We surfaced just in time for her black tail to slap the water and send a stinging spray into our faces. We watched the telltale signs of her path—the dark shadow, the disturbed current—until she was gone.

There was a moment of silence before I asked, “So what happens next?”

Calder didn’t answer, and I knew he was wondering the same thing. Would I ever regain my legs? Could I avoid the need to hunt? But when I turned to face him, he was taking in every detail of my new body. He smiled a closed-lip smile and said, “Just when I thought you couldn’t get any more beautiful …”

He pulled me against his body and took me under the waves, our tails entwining, feathery flukes undulating under us. His kisses were deeper, sweeter than ever before. His thoughts resonated in my mind. At first they were a mere vibration, a D string, a sonnet, and then they were a ballad, and the chorus was “I love you.”


MY SCRIBBLINGS

A Mermaid’s Love Song

She is fast, but he is faster

A million bubbles flying past her

as they stream through archipelago

moonlight sets the water’s edge aglow

Down they dive their arms entwined

like a fruitful, ample vine

To their castle, pale and green,

chasing their forbidden dreams.

—Lily Hancock, “Mermaid”


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing a novel can make you feel a little crazy sometimes. While I was writing Deep Betrayal, Lily kept waking me up at night and telling me how things were supposed to go down. I’d say, “Really? Are you sure? Wouldn’t you rather …” This is where I get to thank all those people who told me to shut up and keep out of Lily’s way.

So here’s to you: Nina Badzin, Heather Anastasiu, Kristen Simmons, Deede Smith, Beth Djalali, the Minneapolis Writers Workshop, and Dave Meier for telling me that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.

Thanks to Jacqueline Flynn, Joëlle Delbourgo, Françoise Bui, Paul Samuelson, Sonia Nash, Random Buzzers, Kathleen Eddy, Holly Weinkauf, Amy Oelkers, Pamela Klinger-Horn, and Rachel Bongart and to YA book reviewers, bookstores, librarians, book clubs, and readers everywhere who love Calder and Lily as much as I do and who forgive them their mistakes.

Thanks to the Apocalypsies for all your support, guidance, Thursday-night chats, and crude jokes.

Special shout-outs to the kids in my life who have provided inspiration along the way, especially: Sammy, Matt, Sophie, Zach, Marie, Kelly, Andreas, and Sam.

Finally, my gratitude to Greg, without whose love I wouldn’t know what to write.