Unwritten Books 2 - Fathom Five (20 page)
“Peter!” she shouted. She snapped her fingers in front of his face, slapped him. “No, no, no! Peter, you’ve got to wake up! Wake up!”
She lunged to kiss him again, but Merius grabbed her from behind and threw her off the stage. She landed heavily in the arms of two other sirens, who shoved her to the ground and held her there.
Rosemary looked up. Peter stared glassily ahead. The little siren girl was sitting on the stage, bewildered. Fionarra was frantically gathering up the pitcher and chalice. Rosemary struggled to sit up, but the sirens — it was the two from the beach, Loria and Darius — pushed her down.
“You have failed,” said Eleanna, looming over her like a standing stone. “You will leave now, Rosemary Watson, or be killed.”
“No!” Rosemary shouted. “You didn’t give him a chance! I’m not leaving him here!”
“Then you choose death,” said Eleanna.
Rosemary struggled, shouting every obscenity she knew. She broke free and clawed her way along the ground towards the stage. She looked up and saw Peter staring back, stiff as a mannequin. “Peter!” she screamed. “Wake up!”
Then the sirens grabbed her, rolled her on her back, pinned her against the stage. Merius strode forward, his trident raised to strike.
And then Rosemary just screamed.
Then she heard a voice scream, “Stop!”
Peter stumbled into her view, a trident in his hands. He stood over her, waving the weapon wildly. “Stop it! Stop it!”
Silence fell. Everyone stood tense. The only sound through the crowd of sirens was Rosemary and Peter’s ragged breathing.
“Peter,” Eleanna intoned. “This is our business. Don’t interfere.”
“No,” said Peter, shaking his head as he fought to clear it. “No, this is wrong. You keep trying to hurt Rosemary! My family would never do that!”
Fionarra raised her hands. “Peter, please —”
He brought up a hand to shield his eyes. “Just stop! You did something to me! I can’t think straight whenever I look at you. None of this feels right!” The air shimmered to his words.
Fionarra swallowed. “P-peter —”
“Shut up, Fiona, wait! You said … you said you had to search for me when you heard my parents died,” said Peter. “But … you were there! You were at the hospital, but you wouldn’t speak to me. Either you
could
have rescued me then and didn’t, or that wasn’t you!”
“Peter, please,” said Eleanna. “Let us explain.”
“No!” Peter yelled, swinging the trident around as Merius got too close. “You lied to bring me here! I don’t belong here! Stop telling me lies!”
His voice echoed. The air shimmered like a tuning fork. People vanished or merged together. Walls and ceilings turned to dust and the wind whistled through the desolation. Where one hundred and fifty-seven sirens once stood, only thirteen remained.
Peter stared, the trident loose in his hands. The remaining sirens stood about, arms at their sides, looking embarrassed, as though they suddenly found themselves naked.
“You don’t even look like me,” Peter breathed.
Then Fionarra swooped past, knocking Peter off his feet. His trident went flying. She pinned him down and snarled, her triangular teeth inches from his face. Peter’s eyes were wide.
“Peter!” Rosemary reached for him, struggled to get up, but Merius shoved her back.
“You have reduced us to the real, songbreaker,” he said. “You have nothing left to threaten us with.”
Rosemary could only watch as Fionarra raised a clawed hand to strike.
“That’s enough!” Ariel grabbed Fionarra’s arm. The little girl pulled back, hard, and Rosemary heard a crack. Fionarra’s arm bent in a direction it wasn’t supposed to go and she rocked back, gasping.
But more than the arm had broken. The air around Fionarra’s arm had cracked too, and the cracks were spreading, onto the stage, through the ground beneath Rosemary, throughout the square, into other sirens. They webbed the sky like glass. Sirens shouted, turned to run, but were caught.
The world shattered and came raining down. The stage disappeared, sending Rosemary sprawling. Particles pattered around her, vanishing in puffs of smoke. The ruined walls crumbled, as did the trees and the ground, until nothing was left. Rosemary found herself on her back, looking up into fog.
She sat up. Peter, sprawled beside her, lifted his head. They were back in their old clothes, on a stony beach beside a big rock. The cliff rose behind them and the water lapped at their feet. Waves rumbled in the distance and the wind whistled, but beyond a ten-foot radius, fog shrouded everything like the end of the world.
Their eyes fell on the only siren left standing.
Ariel buried her face in her hands.
Rosemary shook her head. “Was
any
of it real?”
Ariel looked up, then turned away. “Memories are real. This place echoes its memories: the shipwrecks, the nightmares of drowned children, the survivors. I remembered the people of my village. In the end, it was all I had left.”
Peter and Rosemary helped each other to their feet. The waves crashed. The silence stretched.
“So ...,” said Peter slowly. “When Fiona came to me, told me about this place … that was you?”
“A part of me,” Ariel whispered. “I made Fionarra for your benefit, Peter, so I could tempt you here and give you other reasons to stay.”
“How?” Peter stammered. “How did you know —”
“I looked into your mind,” said Ariel. “I saw the moment that made you so like me. I took the one element from that memory that I could use to talk to you.”
“Fiona,” breathed Peter. “Because she was the only one alive.”
Rosemary bit her lip.
“I altered my world to make Fionarra fit,” said Ariel. “It wasn’t always comfortable. She came into conflict with my memory of Merius, but it worked. Fionarra was for your benefit, but the rest … the rest was for me. Even Eleanna, who taught me how to use glamour. All were as I remembered them.”
Peter goggled. “Why did you do this?”
“Because I’m alone.” Ariel cleared her nose with a sniff. “I had parents long ago, and friends, before the sirens took me in. With their help, I learnt to make my own family, who took care of me, loved me, argued with me, and have been everything to me. Through it all I knew that I’d lost so much that was real. I had to find someone to share my loneliness with. Someone who understood.”
Rosemary opened her mouth, but Ariel spoke first. “Yes, I was human, once. My parents drowned. I had a life jacket. And that was how the sirens found me and brought me here, a Lost Child.”
“What happened to everyone?” asked Rosemary.
“They grew old and died, grew sick and died, or just disappeared,” said Ariel. “After me, the Lost Ones stopped coming. The villagers didn’t see their doom until it was too late. They had been building sandcastles for so long, they did not notice the tide had come in.”
Rosemary stepped to Ariel’s side, turned her around, and crouched low. “I-I’m … so sorry.”
Ariel drew herself up. “No.
I
am sorry. I took something that did not belong to me. Promise me you’ll never forget how lucky you are that you have each other.”
Rosemary gave her a small smile. “I promise. What will you do now?”
“Rebuild my world. Perhaps someone else will come along and I can share it.”
“No, wait a minute, wait a minute!” Peter strode forward. “I know I don’t belong here, but what about you? You’re human!”
Ariel shook her head. “Only in memory.”
“That’s not true!” He grabbed her wrist. “Come with us! We can look for your relatives. We can put you among your own people. You can find friends, rebuild your life, we —”
“Peter, you don’t understand.” She shook herself free and displayed her arm, showing sea-glass skin and a fin growing on the back of it. “I’ve been through the Homecoming Ceremony. I’m not human anymore … and I’m older than you think. This world may be dead, but my world died a long time ago.”
Peter shook his head. “No. There has to be a way —”
“There is no way!” Ariel yelled. She continued more softly. “Your world is your true home, and this world is mine. Goodbye.” She hugged Peter, hard, and then stepped back. The wind picked up, plucking at her hair and tattered robes. She faded into streamers of mist, until empty air remained.
Peter turned away.
Rosemary stumbled forward. “Wait! What about us? How do we get out of here?”
Ariel’s voice echoed over the waves. “You have broken most of this world’s glamour, songbreaker, but one piece remains. It holds you here now. Break it, and you can return home, and we can start to rebuild. You already know how.”
Then the only sound was the wind and the waves.
Rosemary turned to Peter. He stood looking at the spot where Ariel had stood, as though at a gravestone. The wind blew the minutes away. Finally, she touched his shoulder.
He turned to her. His cheeks were wet.
She opened her mouth to say something, then hesitated. Reaching up, she wiped his tears away. Then she clasped his shoulder.
“It ends with a kiss,” she said.
He frowned a moment before he understood. He cleared his nose with a sniff, then he straightened up. He put a hand on her side, and smiled nervously. They edged closer. They wrapped their arms around each other. Rosemary looked into Peter’s eyes and leaned into him. After a brief hesitation, they pressed their lips together.
The world shuddered around them and water splashed over them. They were submerged. They slipped apart in shock.
Lungs burning, Rosemary struck out, kicking for where instinct told her the surface was. She rose through foot after foot of murky water, fighting to hold her breath as the light brightened.
She burst into the air with a hacking gasp.
“Peter!” she screamed. “Pete—”
She struggled to look for the shore, but she was almost blind. A wave rolled over her. She flailed like a drowning man.
Peter grabbed her from behind and held her head above water. “I’ve got you!”
The foghorn of Cape Croker’s lighthouse moaned. The fog rolled back. Sunlight touched the water’s surface. The shoreline pulled closer. Two figures ran up the beach towards them.
Then they felt stones beneath their feet and Peter and Rosemary stood up, dripping. The wind broke against their backs. Benson ran into the water while Veronica stood, hands over her mouth, white as a sheet.
“Are you guys okay?” Benson grabbed their arms and pulled them ashore. “What happened?”
Shivering and gasping, Peter and Rosemary looked at each other. Their jeans were black with water. Rosemary’s cardigan was as matted as a soaked sheep. Their hair clung to their cheeks. Rosemary’s glasses were gone, but a look passed between them. She smiled. “It wasn’t a dream.” Despite the cold, Peter found himself smiling back.
“What are you grinning about?” said Benson. “You almost died!”
Veronica was shaking worse than they were. “You’re okay,” she sobbed. “It’s a miracle!”
“Come on,” said Benson. “If we don’t get you into dry clothes, you’ll freeze. C’mon, you two, let’s go home, okay?”
“Home,” said Peter. Rosemary took his hand and squeezed it. “Yeah. I’m home.”
Clutching each other, they stumbled up the stony beach towards Clarksbury.
P
eter trudged up the country road towards Rosemary’s house, his feet crunching on the gravel shoulder. He hesitated at her mailbox, staring up at her cozy home with its battered white siding. A light was on in her bedroom and he smiled at the thought of her there.
He pushed up the front walk, past a guttering jack-o-lantern and a bedsheet billowing from the branch of a tree. He pulled the doorknocker.
He was wearing dark pants and a sports jacket over a dark blue shirt. He cocked his fedora, then took it off and held it in both hands as the door opened. He stared in amazement.
Rosemary was wearing a low-cut green dress, with the sleeves pushed down her shoulders, and a long, flowing skirt. A green scarf was wrapped over her neck and arms while white scarves were draped over her shoulders in an attempt to duplicate the dress she’d worn at the Homecoming Ceremony. The attempt worked, despite the woolly fringes on the green scarf. A hint of green makeup shadowed her eyes. The sequins glittered in the twilight.
“Hi!” she said, smiling.
“Wow ....” He cut himself off. “I mean … hi! Hi, Rosemary! You look … great!”
Rosemary snickered. “I’m glad you like it. Everybody else will think I’m going as a green vampire, but who cares? What are you supposed to be?”
“A journalist, see?” He held out his hat, showing her an index card he’d placed on the brim with the word “PRESS” written on it in felt-tip pen.
Rosemary raised her eyebrows.
He grinned sheepishly. “All I had was my uncle’s wardrobe. It was either this or a stockbroker.”
The front door opened and Mr. Watson poked his head out. “Ah, hello Peter! You’re ready to go, I see. I’ll drive you two over as soon as I finish setting up the display.”
