Unwritten Books 2 - Fathom Five (12 page)
“I told you that we were not human, Peter,” Fiona cut in. “We are built differently, as is our world. Our lives are long and full, but we pass quickly.”
Peter mulled over this answer until he was satisfied with it. He nodded. Now for his other big question. “Why did you leave me … over there?”
Fiona touched his shoulder. Her mother took a deep breath, but couldn’t answer.
“Because there are so few of us,” said Ariel. “There are only one hundred and fifty-seven people in this village.”
“A hundred and fifty-seven?” said Peter. “What about the other villages?”
“There are no other villages,” said Ariel.
Eleanna took Peter’s hand. “Let me be honest, Peter. Our people are dying. Rather than doom the few who remain to a dwindling life, we give our children to humanity … when we can. They live their whole lives as human, and take what joy they can.”
“Then why am I back here?”
“Because of Ariel,” said Eleanna.
“Those of us sent to live with humans are solitary, lonely people,” said Fiona. “Because you were orphaned, your suffering was much worse. And your sister was here, the only siren child, lonely too. We decided that we had to bring you two together.”
Peter caught Ariel looking at him from behind a screen of curls. He smiled at her. A big-brother smile. It felt good.
“You see,” said Eleanna, as if reading his mind. “It is right that you are together, now.”
***
Peter felt better after dinner. The food was tasty and filling, and it took all of his resistance to keep Fiona’s mother from stuffing him with third and fourth helpings. In the end, he sat at the table, nursing a steaming mug of tea and smiling as Ariel amused herself with a porcelain doll, and Fiona and Eleanna discussed village politics.
Then Ariel began to yawn. She caught Peter looking, smiled sheepishly, and returned to playing, but her eyes drooped. Chuckling, Peter nudged Fiona, and nodded to Ariel.
Eleanna stood up. “Perhaps it is time, Peter, to put Ariel to bed.”
Peter picked Ariel up and carried her as she sagged onto his shoulder. He followed Fiona through the halls, past a room scattered with toys including a metal jack-in-the-box and a clockwork train, past a bathroom with a large basin cut into stone with a bucket of water waiting for a bath, to a closed door, solid oak, with shiny brass fittings. Fiona opened it onto a neat bedroom, with pink stone walls and a small wooden-frame bed draped with lace covers.
Ariel was asleep in Peter’s arms. He juggled her carefully, pulled down the covers, and set her on the mattress, prying her arms from around his neck. She settled into her pillows, her breathing deep and regular, smiling. Peter stood up and stared at Ariel in awe.
This is too good to be true, he thought.
Fiona touched his shoulder warmly, then led him to the door. Peter left, looking back.
Then the door swung closed between them, making no sound.
Peter blinked. The warmth inside him cooled. He looked at the walls and the doors with a new intensity. Something wasn’t right. Questions bubbled at the back of his mind. Where was he? How did he get here?
“Peter?”
He started, and looked behind him. Fiona had opened another door and was beckoning him in. It was a small and cozy bedroom, with a window, a tall dark wooden closet with straight sides, and, beside that, a chest of light wooden drawers, full of curves. In the middle of the room, a canoe extended from the wall, its wooden struts removed and its insides filled with feature cushions draped over with a blanket. Peter wondered if it rocked like a cradle.
He couldn’t help laughing. “What a house. I haven’t seen a mix of styles like this outside of Rosemary’s ...”
Fiona sucked her lips against her teeth.
He shuddered. Rosemary! How could he have forgotten …
Fiona touched his shoulder, and the thought vanished from his mind. The emptiness echoed like a void.
He touched his forehead, and looked at her. Another memory slipped into his mind, silent like the closing door. “How did you find me?”
Her brow furrowed. She cocked her head.
The memory repeated. Sliding doors opening; a gurney pushed through. A doctor’s voice echoed in his mind’s eye. “Peter?”
“Peter?” Fiona’s voice barged into his thoughts.
“Why … why did it take so long?”
“What?”
“Six years.” Peter shook his head. “What were you do—”
Fiona grabbed him by the back of his neck and pulled him into his room. She planted a firm kiss on his lips, and caught him as his knees gave way.
“It did take time to find you,” she said, pulling him further into the room. “I almost gave up more than once. But one thing kept me going.”
“W-what?”
Fiona kicked the door closed. It clicked shut behind them, isolating them from the rest of the house as effectively as a moat. The gleam in her eye filled Peter’s consciousness. “You.”
He struggled to think, but he couldn’t look away. “W-what are you doing?” He caught the scent of her and had to breathe her in. She was like a breeze off the ocean. His heart beat like a Taiko drum.
She smiled. “What I know you’ve wanted from the very beginning.”
He swooned, but she held him up. Then she kissed him, and all sense of time vanished. He pressed against her desperately.
She pulled away, smiling at the vacant look in his eyes. “Welcome home.”
R
osemary looked at her watch. It was still broken. She tore it from her wrist, grunting as she threw it at the waves.
The glass had smashed on her journey to this world. She didn’t know if it was the fall, the wave, or any of her stumbles on the stony beach. Her legs were crisscrossed with cuts and bruises. Her bandaged arm jabbed her with pain every time she moved it, and once again she’d been soaked. She shivered on a rock by the roaring fire, wrapped in a blanket, her drying clothes spread out around her.
It could be worse, she told herself. My glasses could have been smashed instead of my watch. Then it wouldn’t matter how foggy it was. And one thing: something about her encounter with the sea creatures had blasted a bolt of clarity through her brain. The fog and the memories they contained seemed to be holding back warily. She could see far out to the lake, and even caught glimpses of the navy blue sky. She tested the dampness of her bra.
She told herself again that it could be worse as she shrugged on her cardigan and zipped up her windbreaker, but then she gave up. It was impossible to tell time in this perpetual twilight. She’d stopped to eat once, so she must have been here for hours. Progress made on finding Peter? Zilch.
She had food enough for six meals; two days, assuming she dared sleep. This shipwreck had provided her with firewood but nothing else. Going back for more food and Sterno meant braving the salamander piranhas. Going forward meant God-knew-what.
There was still the gully. That way led to defeat, but where else could she turn?
Exhausted, out of options, she leaned on a boulder, too tired to cry.
A splash brought her out of her daze.
She tensed against the stones, peering around. She caught sight of ripples on the water, far out into the lake, but closing in on the shore. As they approached, the ripples grew in clarity. The air above the water blew the fog forward like a shockwave.
She groped behind her and pulled a plank from the bonfire. The end of it burned in the breeze. She planted her feet and took a deep breath.
Then a man rose from the water.
Rosemary stumbled back.
He was the vision of Neptune, almost seven feet tall, with sea-glass skin, shoulder-length hair, and a thick, red beard. His eyes glowed glossy-black and there were hints of fins along the crest of his calves and forearms. He even carried a trident that sparkled and gleamed without sunlight.
He stopped at the sight of Rosemary, holding her plank like a firebrand.
She stared back.
In a lightning gesture, he flicked up his trident.
“Explain yourself!” His voice was deep.
Rosemary turned and ran.
The merman dropped his trident. “Wait! Come back!”
Rosemary didn’t listen. The stones clattered and splashed as she charged over the rises and through tide pools. She ran full tilt, not stopping until the water erupted before her.
She caught sight of a translucent creature with the head, torso, and arms of a woman. Below its stomach, the features bled together until it merged with the surface of the water. Its blue teeth were pointed and its wild hair blinded Rosemary with spray. Its hands ended in fearsome claws.
Rosemary swung her flaming plank. It passed through harmlessly, the flames vanishing with a hiss. The water-woman roared, and clamped a hand over Rosemary’s face. Rosemary’s scream sucked water into her lungs.
Then the creature blew a wind like cold fire in Rosemary’s face. The girl blinked crystals from her eyes.
The creature pulled back, its hand breaking off. A new one grew in its place immediately. Rosemary stumbled back, trying to breathe and wondering why her lungs weren’t working. She couldn’t open her mouth. She felt her face, and her fingers slipped across something cold, wet, and hard.
Her eyes widened in horror. Her heart raced. Ice encased the lower half of her face. Her lungs begged for air.
Rosemary toppled onto the wet stones, floundering. The creature raised its claws for the kill.
The bearded man leapt before her, spearing the creature with his trident. The metal glowed red, and the creature screamed, vanishing in a puff of steam.
Rosemary kicked and punched as the man hauled her into the air, but her struggles were feeble. The world grew blurry and slipped into black.
She blinked tears out of her eyes and found herself standing next to Peter on a ledge overlooking a deep ravine. The wind plucked at the fringes of her dress. She watched as the falling zeppelins cracked against the railway bridge and crumbled. Their burning metal skeletons rained on the valley floor.
Puck was in there. He’d killed himself to save them.
He …
She slumped to the ground.
Peter caught her. “We’ve got to keep going.”
She slapped at him. “Leave me alone!”
“We have to keep going,” he said, his voice level, firm. “Because he said so. Puck ....” He stumbled, and took a deep breath. “You’re the hero. He … he did what he did so that you could go on.”
“You go, then,” she said, shoving him away. “Just leave me alone!”
“No!” he shouted. “Not here, not now, not ever!
Being alone is the worst thing in the world and I’m not doing that to you. We’re in this together, and we’ve got to work together if we want to get out! I’m not leaving this spot until you get that!”
She blinked the tears from her eyes, then shook her head. Fresh air, like a breeze off a lake, filled her senses. “You’re wrong. I mean, you’re right, but … this isn’t real.”
Peter blinked at her, but said nothing. She slipped her wrists from his grip and stepped back. “I’ve got to keep going. Maybe I got dragged here, but I would have come anyway. You followed me into a crazy place to save me. Now it’s my turn!”
Movement made her look up. A flaming piece of fabric, skin from the zeppelin, fluttered down at her. She planted her feet, took a deep breath, and struck at it as it came close. “No! Wake up! I will wake up!”
The flames dodged her fists and fluttered before her eyes. Suddenly she saw that the fire was the bonfire reflected in the eyes of the merman who held her. She still couldn’t breathe. She swung a punch at his nose. She clawed at the ice encasing her face.
The man leaned close and breathed hard. A hot wind enveloped her. The ice over her mouth and nose melted. She choked and coughed up water.
He set her on the beach beside the bonfire, where she lay like a baby, coughing and gasping at the same time.
When she had regained her breath, the man spoke. “Have you recovered, child?”
Rosemary coughed the last droplets from her lungs. Then, still clutching her chest, she rolled onto her back and looked at him. “I’m sorry,” she wheezed.
The man raised his bushy red eyebrows. “That’s not what a rescuer expects to hear. Wherefore are you sorry, lass?”
“Because I thought you were going to kill me, just like everything else in this world. Instead, you saved me. Thank you.” Another coughing spell overtook her and she fell back.
The man chuckled and helped her sit up. “This is a dangerous place to those who don’t know where the dangers lie.”
Rosemary let out a sardonic laugh. “Yeah, I got that.”
The man patted her on the back. “I like your temperament, lass. You are made of stern stuff. What be your name?”
“Rosemary. Rosemary Watson.”
The man clasped her hand in his. His fingers extended past her wrist. “Welcome, Rosemary Watson.
