SIX
The sun slid toward the sea. Pink and purple clouds fled across the sky, herded like sheep by the wind. The tide rolled in, long, flat breakers edged with dirty lace.
Morwenna sat in the prow as Jack rowed the heavy wooden boat back to the mainland.
She loved.
And was loved.
The knowledge was a warm glow in her chest, radiating outward to her fingers and toes like the rays of the afternoon sun.
Jack hauled on the oars, his lean brown face open and relaxed despite the restive sea. She had done that for him, she thought smugly. She had erased the lines from his face and put that lazy, satisfied glint in his eyes.
She smiled.
“Wind’s picking up,” he remarked.
She could feel a shimmer of vapor in the air, a powerful current flowing from the west. “It must rain sometime,” she said apologetically.
“We’ll be home before then,” he assured her.
Home. Such a round, firm, settled word. The warmth inside her grew.
“I want to go to Arden,” she said.
He nodded. “I told Cook to prepare a special dinner for us.”
She was touched by his thoughtfulness; amused by his appetite. “After that lunch?”
The empty picnic basket rested between the seats. She nudged it with her foot out of the water that had collected in the bottom of the boat.
“We should celebrate. I have something to give you,” Jack said.
She looked at him, instantly diverted from the puddle at her feet. “What?”
“My mother’s ring. A cabochon sapphire.” He cleared his throat. “Of course you might prefer a different stone. Or a larger one.”
She did not care about the size or the stone. The look in his eyes meant everything. “I would love to wear your mother’s ring.”
Pleasure shone in his dark eyes, but he only said, “Wait until you see it.”
“Tonight.”
“Actually, I have it in my pocket. I still haven’t proposed to you properly.”
She arched her eyebrows. “There is a proper way to propose?”
“Generally the man goes down upon one knee.”
“I think I might quite like you on your knees. Just think of all you could do . . . down there. But the way you proposed was better.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Without ceremony?”
“Naked,” she explained. “And inside me.”
His gaze kindled. “Most improper. But since it persuaded you to say yes . . .”
A pop.
A lurch.
A rush.
Morwenna stared, bewildered, as a black rag washed between the seats. The bow dipped suddenly beneath Jack’s weight. “What . . . ?”
Water gurgled in the bottom of the boat. The picnic basket listed on its side in a rapidly growing pool of water.
“Jack?”
A wave washed over the side. Her seat slanted under her.
“We’ve sprung a leak.” His voice was calm and sharp. “Stay with the boat.”
The water gushed to his boots. There was a hole, she realized. Under his seat. She was not frightened, only bewildered and annoyed.
“Hold on to the boat,” Jack ordered. “The hull will float if—”
Another wave rushed the boat. He dropped the oars and grabbed for her.
She reached for his hands as the world went suddenly, wildly awry. The boat pitched, the bow plunged. The sudden weight of the water flipped the solid hull, throwing her into the cold salt sea. Brine filled her mouth, blurred her eyes . . . She heard a splash, a thunk, as her head bobbed under the surface. Sputtering, she raised her face, raking streamers of wet hair from her eyes. Her skirts mushroomed, billowing around her. And Jack . . .
Her heart clenched like a fist.
“Jack!”
He floated a few yards away, arms thrashing feebly. His eyes were open. Dazed. A great bloody gash streaked his forehead.
He was hurt. In danger. Something—the hard wooden edge of the hull as it flipped or the end of an oar—must have struck him when they capsized.
She kicked toward him, hampered by her skirts. Her legs were tangled, heavy, her half boots full of water.
He groaned. “Morwenna.”
“I’m here,” she called frantically. “It’s all right. I am—”
Terrified.
His eyes rolled back in his skull. His head dropped forward.
He slid beneath the water.
“No!”
She lunged for him, reaching, reaching . . . Her fingers brushed something. His hair. His sleeve. She gripped tight and tugged, hauling him to the surface, turning his face to the sky. Was he breathing? His face was pale, his lips slack.
A wave smacked into the hull and broke over them. They both went under. Morwenna kicked her sodden skirts, struggled to support Jack’s head. Her breath burst from her lips in an absurd staccato rhythm like a song or a prayer: Please, please, please.
Water was her element. But she was trapped by her clothes. Trapped in this body. Jack was easily twice her size and weighted by his boots. The gash on his forehead was red, wet, and open like a mouth. Her heart drummed in panic. She could call the seals. She did not have the strength to save him.
Or time to wait.
“Jack.” She spoke sharply, urgently, into his ear, willing him to respond. “Hold me.”
His lids lifted. His bleary eyes slid over her.
“Do you hear me?” She shook him. “Hold on. Hold on to me.”
“No,” he slurred. “Drag you . . . down.”
“You won’t.”
Not if she Changed. Now. Quickly.
“You must hold on,” she said fiercely.
His gaze found hers. “Love . . . you. Save . . . yourself.”
He sagged.
Sank.
With a little cry, she seized his hand and pressed it to her shoulder. Please. His fingers fumbled. Squeezed. Her relief rose like a sob.
She had never attempted to Change like this, with clothes plastered to her body and shoes on her feet. With urgency beating in her blood and panic squeezing her heart. No plunge, no dive, no wild surge of spirit becoming one with the sea. She gritted her teeth, wrenching power from her uncooperative flesh, forcing magic along constricted veins and sinews.
It hurt.
Pain lanced through her, unexpected, shocking. She spasmed, writhing like a fish out of water. Jack drifted beside her—breathing?—his touch a brand, an anchor on her flesh. Quickly. Now.
Her blood drummed in her ears as she Changed, as her muscles rippled and popped and her bones erupted and dissolved. Seams popped. Fabric tore.
Jack.
She nudged against him, glided under him, felt his hands slide and grip, felt his weight shift and roll.
Hold on, she said or thought or sang and carried him safely to shore.
He could not breathe. He was drowning. Dreaming. Delirious.
His head was on fire and his chest burned and his limbs were cold, at once heavy and weightless. His blood rushed in his ears.
Hold on, someone said, as they’d said in the surgeons’ tent when they’d placed the pad between his teeth and probed his wounds for bits of bone and shrapnel. The world whirled as it had then, and the pain shot through his head.
They were taking him somewhere, carrying him swiftly, away from the battlefield.
Hold on.
So he did, clinging grimly to life. There was something he had to do, someone he had to see, some . . .
Morwenna.
The sea gushed and bubbled around him. The world fractured in a blaze of light, a blast of sound, a burst of agony. Air knifed his lungs. He gasped and choked. On blood? Or brine?
He felt a nudge, a shove, as he lay like a felled log in the surf, cold, hard sand under his cheek, water running through his fingers.
Morwenna. He turned his head to find her, struggled to push to his knees.
She was there—and not there—in the shallow water.
He closed his eyes. Opened them again. There was a dolphin. He saw it, the sleek barrel shape, the distinctive fin.
And there was Morwenna, shining like the mist, insubstantial as the foam, her wet hair around her shoulders . . .
A wave rattled in and drained away, taking the last vestige of the dolphin with it.
But the double image, Morwenna’s face superimposed on the fin, the tail, seared the back of his eyes.
Better if he had not seen her at all.
She rose from the water and ran to him, her dress clinging to her in rags.
His heart pounded. She was safe. He was relieved. He was . . . He opened his mouth, but no sound emerged.
He tried again. “I didn’t see you out there. In the water. I thought you were dead.”
“Are you all right?”
“Hallucinating,” he explained.
She kneeled beside him, her face inhuman in its perfection, beautiful in its concern.
He could not breathe. He could not think. His brain was on fire. “Are you . . .”
“I am fine.”
“Morwenna?”
“Yes. Let me help you to the cart.” She reached for him and he saw—he saw—the faint iridescent webbing between her fingers. Even as he watched, it faded, it melted away.
Turning his head, he threw up onto the sand.
He lay there a long time, his face pressed to the ground, listening to nothing but the rasp of his breathing and the water running over the rocks.
He raised his head, bile bitter in his mouth. “What are you?” he asked hoarsely.
Morwenna flinched. He was afraid. Disgusted. Disbelieving.
Or perhaps he had simply swallowed too much seawater after a bump on the head.
But the wary, searching look in his eyes, the memory of Morgan’s words, quickly disabused her of that hope. Humans fear what they do not understand. And what they fear, they hate.
She sat back on her heels and folded her hands, no longer trying to touch him. “What do you think I am?”
He shook his head. Winced as the movement jarred his wound. “You don’t want to know.”
His rejection jabbed like a sea urchin’s barb. He was hurt, she reminded herself, the gash on his forehead still bleeding. Hurt and confused. “Let me help you,” she said again gently.
“You helped me . . .” His eyes focused as he struggled to remember. “That was you in the water, carrying me.”
She sighed. “Yes. Come now.” She slid an arm around him, urged him to his feet. “We need to get you home.”
He weighed on her, his arm heavy and damp around her shoulders, his body shaking as if with fever. “You’re a mermaid.”
She arched her eyebrows, injecting what she hoped was the right amount of amusement in her voice. “Half woman, half fish? There is no such thing.”
She coaxed him a few steps toward the cart, water squelching from his boots.
He staggered and recovered. “But I saw . . . And your toes . . .”
He stopped.
She could not put him off forever, she realized with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She would not apologize for who she was or for what she had done. She had saved him.
Besides, he clearly wasn’t budging until he had an answer.
“I am finfolk,” she said clearly. “An elemental of the water.”
He swayed. “I need to sit down.”
Wonderful. Her eyes burned. Her throat ached. First she made him throw up and now he had to sit down. “We are almost at the cart,” she said. “Lean on me.”
They shambled toward the cart and the patient pony. Jack managed somehow to pull himself into the rig before collapsing onto the seat. Beneath his tan, his face was lined and bloodless.
“What is . . . An elemental, you said?”
She swallowed past the constriction of her throat. She did not want to quarrel with him. Not when he was injured, half drowned, and in shock. “We are the children of the sea, formed when God brought the waters of the world into being, the first fruits of His creation.”
“Not . . . human?”
“We can take human form. The finfolk can take any form under the sea.”
He was silent, staring at the horse’s ears.
Her heart hammered. “Do you believe me?”
Jack stirred and looked at her, his eyes dull. “I don’t know what to believe. You lied to me.”
She untied the hitch with jerky motions. Of course he would see it that way. He was a man of rigid honor. He saw the whole world in black and white.
But she was not of his world. “I did not lie. Not really.”
He frowned. “Misled me, then.”
She raised her chin, driven on the defensive by hurt and guilt. She was responsible for her evasions. But he bore some responsibility, too. “You were eager enough to be misled. You did not want to see anything that did not accord with your notions of who I should be. The clues were there. You did not want to know.”
His face was closed. Stubborn. “A man doesn’t imagine the woman he’s in love with is a mermaid.”
“Finfolk.”
He ignored her distinction, focused on his own human logic. “You should have trusted me.”
“You said you accepted me. You said you loved me. Would my telling you have made any difference?”
“Of course it makes a difference. I wanted to marry you.”
Ah. Pain pierced her heart. Wanted, not want.
She was a fool.
I am a plain man, he had told her when he proposed. With ordinary needs.
And now he did not need her. Did not want her. Could not accept her.
It was as simple, as devastating, as that.
She drew her ragged dress, her shredded pride around her, a shield to protect her broken heart. She was an elemental, one of the First Creation. She would not stoop to beg for his love.
“How fortunate for us both, then,” she said, “that you never proposed properly.”
She slapped the pony’s reins across its broad back. The cart jolted as she turned swiftly away.
“Morwenna!”
Her vision blurred. She did not stop to hear. There was a roaring in her head like the sound of the waves and the bitter taste of salt on her lips.
Her brother was right. Love did not last. Nothing lasted forever but the sea.
She crossed the beach, shedding her clothes, and plunged into the ocean.