by James Bow
“If you had thought of a better method, I would have used it,” Merius shot back.
“Why does this sack smell of fish?”
“Quiet!”
“Merius!” cried a youthful, joyful voice, tenor to Merius’s bass. “Good catch?”
Rosemary’s groan cut off abruptly as Merius jounced the sack.
“Yes,” he coughed. “The water has been good to me.”
“I look forward to the feast,” said the man, passing.
“I promise a few surprises,” Merius called back. Then he resumed his stride.
“Do you have to bounce so much while you walk?” Rosemary muttered.
“Hush. This is a public street.”
“Merius!” a woman called. “Have you heard?
Fionarra has returned with a boy!”
“Yes,” said Merius. “I was there when she brought him home.”
“You were?” Surprise clouded the woman’s voice.
Then she said, “Ah! I see Eleanna sent you for food for the Homecoming feast. You work fast! Fare thee well!”
“Fare thee well.” Merius strode on and Rosemary heard the voices and footfalls withdraw as he turned off the thoroughfare and into a narrower walkway.
“Are we there yet?”
“Hush,” said Merius. “Almost. But until I have you in my home, you must remain silent.”
Rosemary huffed.
Then she heard a voice, muffled through an open window, that made her freeze.
“... mentioned that yesterday,” said Peter. “What is the ‘Homecoming’?”
Another voice. “It is a ritual. It is performed when one of our number returns to us. It will reintroduce you to your people — emotionally, socially, and physically.”
Then the voices faded as Merius walked on. Rosemary noted the location and kept track of how long Merius walked and whether he walked straight, or turned left or right.
Finally, he entered a silent room, and swung the sack off his shoulder, plunking it on the floor.
“Ow!” Rosemary struggled out of the sack.
“Sorry.” Merius closed his door. “You are heavier than the fish I usually carry. That was my fish sack we were using.”
“So I guessed.” Rosemary sniffed her arms and groaned at the fish smell.
Merius evidently lived inside a shell. The room was a sweeping arch, warm with a sourceless light. There was a mishmash of furniture, too, looking as if it were floating in the pinkness: bookcase, rocking chair, a hurricane lamp on a spindly plant stand. Merius hung the fishy sack on a spiny patch of wall.
“Okay, here I am, all smuggled,” said Rosemary. “What do we do now?”
“We wait.”
“Wait?!” Rosemary threw up her hands. “You can’t be serious!”
“Deadly serious!” Merius snapped. “We cannot confront the council blindly. You shall wait here while I find out exactly what Fionarra has done. Only after that can we plan.”
Rosemary stomped her foot, but Merius silenced her with a glare. “Wait here,” he repeated, and strode out of sight around a spiral turn of the room. She heard his footsteps, then nothing but the blood in her ears, like the ocean inside a shell. Evidently, there was no door to slam.
“Wait?” she muttered. “Like hell.”
CHAPTER NINE
FURY AND PASSION
This time Peter sat in a canoe. A life jacket hugged his shoulders. His parents dipped their paddles into the waters of Georgian Bay.
His mother looked back at him and smiled. Peter beamed at her, then his brow furrowed. He couldn’t see her face clearly. Its edges were blurred. He blinked to clear his vision, but the fog grew.
It was all around them. The blue sky turned grey. The horizon vanished.
“Where are we?” said his mother. “Where’s the shore?”
“Ahead of us,” said his father, his voice firmly reassuring.
“How do you know?”
“It was on our starboard when the fog rolled in,” he said. “I turned our boat that way.”
“Are you sure?”
“Keep paddling. We’ll see the shore soon.”
His mother twisted in her seat, worry clear in her voice. “Wait!” She pointed behind them. “Isn’t that the lighthouse?”
“Can’t be.”
“It is! You turned us around!”
Peter turned, struggling against his hugging life jacket. A pinprick of light flashed at them.
The foghorn moaned across the distance, shuddering in Peter’s chest.
The vague shape that was his father stared in blank astonishment as the pinprick of light flashed again. “Oh, my God,” he breathed.
Then water lapped at Peter’s feet. He cried out. “Mommy! We’re sinking!”
The foghorn wailed again. The lighthouse flashed once, and then again.
The water in their boat was three inches deep.
“Do something!” his mother shouted.
“We can fix this,” his father yelled. He stumbled forward, reaching for a pail. “We got to bale. You need to —”
The boat tipped. Peter screamed and grabbed the sides.
“No!” his mother gasped. “Don’t rock the boat! Don’t —”
There was a splash. The water was shockingly cold.
The life jacket pulled Peter to the surface where he whacked his head on a paddle. The jacket pinioned his arms and pointed his face to the sky. His legs dangled beneath him. He was too shocked and too small to fight against the buoyancy enough to look around.
He could hear his parents screaming and splashing, calling his name. Eventually, the splashing stopped.
“Mommy?” Silence. “Daddy?”
The fog closed in around him. Lights appeared, on the horizon and beneath his freezing feet, gathering like fireflies.
He slipped beneath the water …
… and woke with a gasp. “Mom!” He scrambled out of a coffin-like enclosure and landed on the floor with a bump.
“Peter?”
Peter started, then looked up. Ariel stood at his feet, staring at him.
“You screamed,” she said.
“Uh,” he said, his cheeks flushing. He resisted the urge to hug the life jacket to his chest. “I think I was dreaming. I’m sorry. I’m okay.”
He was clinging to the side of a capsized canoe. Or rather, a bed made from a canoe, in tangled waves of blankets. He tried to piece together how he’d gotten in that bed. You ought to remember climbing into a canoe, right? But … Fiona had kissed him. After that, he just remembered fog.
Ariel was still standing in front of him, biting at her little lip.
“Really, I’m okay,” he said, and tried to straighten the coverlets around him.
“You were shouting for our mom.”
“I’m sorry.” He opened his arms for a hug, and Ariel climbed on him and gave his neck a squeeze. There was a lumpy something wedged between them. “What’s this?” he asked, trying to comfort her. “Am I squishing breakfast in bed?”
Ariel shook her head and held up a bundle of cloth. “I brought you your Homecoming robes.”
Peter unrolled a bolt of cloth. He could stare through it: it was transparent as a veil of water. “It’s sort of ...,” he started, and for some reason he remembered Fiona kissing him and blushed furiously.
Ariel giggled. “You wear it over your own clothes, silly!” Ariel went over to the steamer trunk and opened it, revealing bolts of green cloth and leather belts. She pulled out a green tunic.
Peter held the tunic out. “What about my pants?”
Ariel stared at him.
He shrugged and slipped the tunic over his t-shirt. “Thanks.” He shifted uneasily on his feet, but Ariel didn’t leave.
“Aren’t you going to put the robes on?” she asked.
“What, now?”
“Eleanna wants to be sure they fit. The ceremony’s today.”
“Well, I ....” Peter went over to the freckled mirror and wrapped the cloth around himself. H
e frowned irritably when Ariel laughed. “What’s wrong?”
“Not that way!” she said. “Here, let me.”
Peter sighed and tried to stand like a mannequin as Ariel tied one end of the bolt around his belt and began wrapping it around his body, twisting once for every turn.
As the cloth draped over him, he couldn’t help but chuckle. Rosemary would split her sides if she saw him.
He stopped. Rosemary.
There was a knock at his door. Peter jumped. Before he could say anything, the knob turned and Fiona entered, bearing a tray of fishcakes and sliced fruit.
Ariel gave him a quick squeeze. “I’ll come back.” She darted around Fiona and bolted down the hall. Fiona smiled to see Peter’s robes. “You look wonderful!”
He chuckled. “If you say so. Is this breakfast?”
“Yes.” She set the tray on a table by the window and proffered a mug. “We brewed you some coffee.”
Peter pulled off the swaths of cloth, still feeling selfconscious in his tunic. He took the mug and sniffed it. “By the way you say that, you’re not normally coffee drinkers, are you?”
“We are becoming so,” said Fiona.
Peter gulped the coffee gratefully. Then he saw Fiona standing, doing nothing but waiting. He cleared his throat. “Would you like to join me?” He indicated the table with its tray.
Fiona’s smile widened. She sat down, taking her own plate from the tray. The two ate in silence with their fingers, Peter casting glances at Fiona and trying, but failing, to find something to say.
At last, when they had cleaned their plates, Fiona gave him a patient smile. “You have more questions. Say them, Peter.”
Peter hesitated. “About last night” was not the way he wanted to start his next sentence. After some thought, he said, “I can’t remember what happened last night after you ...,” he coughed, “... kissed me.”
Fiona blinked at him. “You got tired and fell asleep. I tucked you into bed. Should anything else have happened?”
Peter flushed pink. Fiona laughed lightly. “You know how I feel about you, Peter. However, there are many rituals and ceremonies we would have to go through before anything else would be allowed to happen. Even before that, you must pass through the Homecoming.”
“Yes, somebody mentioned that yesterday,” said Peter. “What is the ‘Homecoming’?”
“It is a ritual. It is performed when one of our number returns to us. It will reintroduce you to your people — emotionally, socially, and physically.”
“Physically?”
“You will become like us.”
“Aren’t I already like you?”
“I told you that you were not human, Peter. But you have lived with them for most of your life. You were changed for this. That’s why they call such children ‘changelings.’”
“I thought they were called ‘changelings’ because the baby was changed with the duplicate.”
“That is the human definition,” said Fiona quickly. “My point is, you may not notice the differences between us at first, but they are there. Perhaps you notice how your mind is so often fogged. At the ceremony, this will end. We will change you back.”
“That won’t be too difficult, will it? You don’t have to cut things off, or rearrange organs, or anything like that?”
“I promise you, the ceremony is quite painless.”
There was another knock on the door and Ariel entered. She stepped up to Fiona and beckoned her down. “Your mother calls for you. There is news you should attend to.” A look passed between them, and Fiona stood up.
“Excuse me, Peter,” she said.
“Anything serious?”
“No. Enjoy your coffee.” She followed Ariel from the room. Peter watched her go until the door cut off his vision like wood blocking a magnet.
He sat blinking for a moment, rubbing his forehead. Then, taking his coffee, he slid his chair back. He stepped to the window and peered through the glass.
He found himself staring across the village park. He saw the stone amphitheatre and the thin houses on the other side. The cliff face shimmered in the distance, and as Peter watched, the shimmering grew. The lines of the houses blurred. Peter winced and clutched his eyes. He turned from the window.
“Peter!”
Peter perked up. He wasn’t dreaming. He looked around the room, and his stare settled upon a face peering in through the window. He hadn’t heard it open.
“Peter!” Rosemary hissed. Her hair fluttered in the breeze. “Pete— whoop!” Something gave way beneath her and she vanished from the frame. Her fingers whitened on the sill and she hauled herself back into view. “Peter!”
Peter set down his mug and ran over. “Rosemary, what are you doing there?”
“Wishing I was taller! Give me a hand!”
Peter grabbed Rosemary’s arms and pulled. When Rosemary was almost through, she snagged her foot on the sill and tumbled, knocking them both into a sprawling heap on the bedroom floor.
Peter jumped up and helped her to her feet. Taking a second to see that it was really her, he embraced her, pressing his face into her hair.
“Peter?” Rosemary’s voice was muffled by his tunic. “What on Earth are you wearing?”
He pushed her back, holding her by the shoulders, staring at her in disbelief. “How did you get here?”
“Same as you!” She frowned at his blank expression. “Don’t you remember falling off the cliff?”
Her scream echoed in his head. How could he have forgotten? “My God, Rosemary, are you okay?”
“Never mind that!” She took his hand. “We’re getting out of here.”
His heart leapt as he approached the window. He stared at it as if it were a cliff he had to climb. “No.”
“Come on, Peter!” She tugged him. “We’ve got to go home!”
“No!”
Rosemary’s gaze hit him like a punch in the stomach, but he didn’t falter. “I can’t. I won’t. I belong here.”
“What?” There was a dangerous edge to Rosemary’s voice. Her eyes were wide with rejection and anger.
“What do you mean, you belong here?”
“These are my people. They came to take me back.”
“Your people? What are you talking about? These people kidnap you, and you want to stay?”
“It’s not like that —”
“And what about me?” she cut in. “After all I went through finding you —”
“I didn’t ask you to follow me!”
“Damn it, Peter, I deserve an explanation, at least!” She jerked up her bandaged arm. “I went through a swarm of piranhas to find you! I almost froze to death!”
Peter stared at her bandage, its spot of blood the size of a quarter.
“You’re hurt!” he yelled, grabbing her wrist, letting it go when she gasped with pain. “W-what happened?”
Rosemary stared at him. “Peter?”
He stumbled. His knees wobbled. His mind was whirling, screaming at itself.
Rosemary has come to take me home.
This is home. There’s nothing for you in Clarksbury.
But there was Rosemary, and here she is. She’s come to take me home!
His knees buckled.
Then he heard footsteps in the hall, and the effect disappeared. “Peter?” Fiona’s voice.
He looked around frantically. “Quick! Hide!”
Rosemary stared at him. She didn’t move. “What are you talking about?”
“They can’t find you here!” Fear for Rosemary clutched his throat, though he couldn’t figure out why.
“Hide in the closet! In the closet!” He grabbed her by the waist and hauled her across the room.
“Let go of me!” Rosemary punched him so hard he was still retching when the door burst open.
Fiona stood in the doorway, trident in her hand, her mother and Ariel behind her. She took in the sight of Peter on his knees, and Rosemary standing, fists raised, in the middle of the room. She
focussed on Rosemary, and her gaze grew dark. “You!”
“She’s my friend, Fiona,” Peter gasped.
Fiona hoisted her trident at Rosemary. The shaft gleamed. “I’m warning you, don’t interfere!”
“Fiona!” Peter wheezed.
“Some welcoming party, Peter,” said Rosemary, backing away.
“Fiona, what are you doing?” Peter scrambled to his feet and grabbed Fiona’s trident. There was a sizzling sound and he cried out. The shaft left a red mark across both palms.
“Peter!” both women cried. Fiona dropped her trident and rushed for the shocked boy, arriving a split second after Rosemary. She pushed Rosemary aside, but Rosemary resisted.
Peter looked up from his hands, and shook his head blearily. Fiona wavered in front of him. Her skin flickered green and he saw the ghost of fins on her arms. “What?” he mumbled, as though waking from a dream. “Who … Ariel?”
Fiona’s image solidified. Rosemary pulled hard at Fiona’s hair. Fiona had her hand around Rosemary’s throat.
“Stop fighting,” he gasped. Then he shouldered between them. “Fiona, stop it!” he yelled. “Rosemary is my friend; stop fighting!”
Both women glared at each other. Then Fiona relented. “I am sorry, Peter. I was taken by surprise. Do your hands hurt?” She reached for him … but for his eyes, not his hands.
“Hey!” Rosemary shouted.
Fiona touched Peter’s brow. He fell to his knees.
Dimly, he could hear Rosemary screaming. “What did you do to him?”
“Take her away! We can decide what to do with her next council meeting!” Did Fiona say this?
More people were rushing into his room.
“Intruder!” Eleanna shouted. “She attacked Peter!”
“No, I didn’t!” Rosemary yelled.
Fiona lowered him to the bed. Yes, sleep seemed just the thing for him, now.
“Peter!” Rosemary cried. “Peter!”
He felt that he should care. He felt it strange that he could not.
“Peter!”
He slipped into a deep sleep, and Fiona dominated his dreams.
CHAPTER TEN
SWEET AIR
Peter struggled awake and rolled out of his canoe-bed. “I mustn’t sleep,” he gasped. “Mustn’t sleep!”