Everything fell away. Someone shouted out his name, and that was the last thing he heard over the roar of waves and wind, like gods having a shouting match.
Then he was in the dark, dark water, choking, flailing, as if he could fight the waves, and in the darkness there were pearls. Mermaids’ faces, Elliot thought, and felt their strong cold hands fasten onto him. Till human voices wake us, Elliot remembered, and we drown . . .
“Elliot?” Luke asked, and Elliot found himself not drowning with two very worried faces hovering over him.
“Speak to us!” Serene commanded.
Elliot coughed and said: “I told you so.”
Luke laughed a little wildly and looked up into the black sky, hands spread palms up, as if asking the stormclouds why they had visited this horror upon him.
Elliot lay on the deck and said: “I told you that mermaid liked me.”
Meeting mermaids was the one thing about a magical land, in three years, that had finally gone right. Elliot had hoped meeting a mermaid would feel like the end of the story, feel like he could close the book.
Instead, he found himself laughing along with Luke, and wishing he could meet harpies.
Almost as soon as they were back from seeing the mermaids, Luke and Serene were sent off to war with the bandits. Only the best war-training students were chosen, which was always going to mean Luke and Serene.
Elliot thought about that: about being left behind all his life. He knew he should be. He knew he’d be useless in a battle, but he hated sitting here and thinking about it. And he knew that even if this war was won, another war would start between the humans and the elves. Maybe not this year, not with the treaty in place, but in five years, or ten years.
Life was not like this in the other world, he thought. And he had seen mermaids now.
“Hey,” said Dale, passing by. “Want to go for a swim in the lake?”
Elliot had not been to the lake since he was fourteen, with Serene, but Serene wasn’t here any more. “Why not?”
He was right to do it, he thought as he plunged into the clear spring water. He felt it envelop him, a shivering delightful rush over his bare chest and through his hair. He opened his eyes and the world was pale and shining, and he walked out of the water grinning and met a kiss.
Dale’s body was lithe and slippery against his, his kiss cool and sweet, and Elliot cupped Dale’s face in his hands and pressed him up against a tree. Then a flash of memory and horror burned through Elliot and he jumped back as if Dale was the one burning.
“I should not have done that! I am the worst person in the world!”
“Um,” Dale said. “Why?”
“Because of Luke!”
“What?” Dale asked. “Oh my God. You are the worst person in the world! When did you guys get together?”
“What—no. He likes you,” said Elliot, and ran his fingers through his wet hair. “And now I’ve officially told everybody.”
He’d told, and he’d kissed Dale, and he’d let Luke down, and he was letting Luke down again because the sneaking thought crept in: if Dale really did like Elliot better . . .
Elliot lifted his head, but Dale was glowing.
“Wow,” he said. “Luke Sunborn.” He caught himself, politely. “I mean, I think you’re great, and I like all the flirting—”
“I have not—” Elliot began furiously, and stopped to consider all of his own previous actions in light of Dale’s remark. “Actually, I see why you might think that.”
“But wow. Luke Sunborn. You know?”
The question was unexpected as a blow that came when Elliot was absorbed by reading, and hurt in the same way. He remembered Luke with his arms around a little kid, Luke pulling off his shirt on the Trigon pitch, Luke in the corridor after the school play. It was, perhaps, time to admit Elliot did know.
“I guess,” Elliot conceded ungraciously. “I mostly sublimate it.”
He swallowed after this admission and looked away from Dale’s face, so surprised to hear Luke liked him and so happy to hear it.
Elliot might have thought: Wow, Luke Sunborn, occasionally, but most of the time he knew he did not want his heart crushed by his other best friend, and even if Luke had some sort of break with reality and wanted it, Elliot did not want a partner who thought everything Elliot cared about was unimportant.
Dale apparently had no doubts.
“Oh,” said Dale. “But he likes me, so I don’t have to sublinear it.”
Elliot opened his mouth and then shut it, in mercy.
“Just play it cool. He’s going to ask you out eventually. And don’t worry about this. I think water might be my lucky element.” Elliot grinned. “The last person I kissed was a mermaid.”
“Really?” Dale’s face screwed up. “Gross.”
Elliot drew in a deep breath to yell at him, then let it out. Dale and Luke were going to be together, and Elliot wanted to remain on good terms. He put it down to yet another reason why Elliot and Dale would not work together, including “sublinear.”
Then the sound of an elvish horn sang through the trees.
Elliot froze. “Get back to camp, I’ll stall them,” he said, and ran for the road that wound through the trees and into a melee of horses.
Apparently tired warhorses reacted badly to people stumbling into their midst and flailing wildly.
“Nice horsie,” Elliot called, and when the horse reared: “Well, that’s not very nice.”
Luke jumped off the rearing horse with his usual attention to gravity and calmed it with a pat to its straining neck. More equine favoritism.
“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” said Elliot, giving Serene a quick wave. “I just wanted—um, a word with you?”
“You can speak when we get back to camp,” Commander Woodsinger said from high atop a glossy, sidling beast.
“Can’t we have one now? Please,” said Luke, and the commander shrugged, still looking loftily down.
“Congratulate us, Cadet,” said Commander Woodsinger. “War’s over.”
Elliot frowned. “For now.”
“If it starts again, I know that you will be certain you can talk your way out of it,” the commander told him.
“He will not be the only one confident in his abilities,” said Serene, and Elliot beamed at her, even as the commander motioned the troop forward and home.
“So what did you want to ask me about?” Luke said.
Elliot stared. “Um . . . I forget.”
“You’re impossible,” said Luke, storming off with his horse in tow.
For once, Elliot was glad Luke was angry with him. He deserved it. But Elliot could not help thinking of how many secrets he was keeping from Luke right now, in an attempt to make things easier between them. It was not working. Everything between them had just become more difficult, and more distant, and it was not like anything between them had ever been easy.
They were all in Elliot’s cabin for the ten thousandth time talking about their love lives. Serene and Luke were, that was. Elliot was reading a book.