CHAPTER 2
“Do you have a name?” He leaned forward a little too eagerly. Or was that her imagination?
A name. She knew it but gifting her name to him seemed reckless.
Still, she said it. “Raffaela, and what is yours?”
“I am known as Wolfgang. It’s German, though my parents are not from there and neither am I.”
He didn’t smile, he merely kept watching her as if she were the most curious thing, ever.
Which she was to him, of course. When she was human, she’d read stories about sirens and mermaids and had been told of drawings too, though none of the sailors she’d spoken to had seen one.
He was studying her kind and had lain in wait for her. Had she been spotted at her coral reef? She must be more cautious.
“How did you know where to find me?”
“The news stories. Sailors tell tales about men drawn to women frolicking in the ocean. Around here, those go back to early last century. How many of those stories would be about you?”
Her?
She felt her hair lift and drop in the waves washing by. “I don’t know.” One hand sank into the wet sand on the bottom. The cool, shifting feel of it under her fingers reassured her.
“You are famous, or your kind are.”
The instinct to not reveal herself was strong and she’d never broken this law that seemed embedded in her cells. Not until now. Only those she lured saw her up close.
What harm could it do?
He held up a small rectangular object and it flashed bright light at her. Raffaela shielded her eyes.
“What is that?” She had seen them carried about.
“A cell phone. We use it to talk to each other.”
Which made no sense. She was talking to him now, without one of those. With only her eyes showing, she blew some bubbles and thought to herself. Such nonsense.
“Will you stay and talk to me for a while, Raffaela?”
An invitation. A question. How long was a while? An eternity seemed to have passed since she’d truly conversed with a man. Loneliness had whittled away at her soul. If she talked to him before she died, it would not negate the true repentance she felt for what she’d done to Merrick.
As long as she did not consume this one.
She shrank into the waves a small distance, eyeing him and the chain leading to his leg.
“Where are you going? Are you okay? Did I say something wrong?”
If she told him she could kill him when the Ravening took hold of her, he would run away. She meant to deny the hunger but if she were this close, would she be strong enough? How many days did she have? Ten? Fourteen? It was not that exact.
“I can stay and talk to you, this night.”
“This night? Tonight? Good. Very good.” For the first time, he smiled. “I want to learn about you and your kind. Your habits, your desires, your society… Everything you wish to tell me.”
Raffaela nodded, slowly. There was something about this smile of his that was strange. As if he already hungered for her, as if she had already sung to him.
She must be careful. One night only.
“Tell me about how you call to men and pull them into the sea.”
A shocking request.
The moon was behind him, placing his face in shadow and making his eyes seem black and mysterious.
She stared. He knew more than she’d thought he did. He knew she killed and had unerringly gone straight to the core of what she did not want to tell him.
“It’s okay. Did I surprise you?”
She hesitated and shifted her hold on the dinghy rope. The tide was coming in, creeping up the beach and closer to him.
“See this?” He held up the leg chain. “What sirens do is a part of legend. I knew already. This is my precaution.”
“Oh. I see.”
He hoped that would stop her from taking him? Would it work?
It was something she’d never considered. He might chew off his leg to get to her.
“Jason and the Argonauts.”
She switched her gaze to his face. “I remember that story.”
“Yes. He was tied to the mast, and his men had their ears plugged with wax, so they would not be lured by the sirens.” Wolfgang dropped the chain. “I should probably get my answer from the horse’s… from the mermaid’s mouth. Will my solution work? I said mermaid, didn’t I?” He rubbed at his lightly bearded chin.
“You did, and I could be either. As for the chain…”
She remained silent as she thought. Could she know without trialing it during the Ravening? Would it stop her killing him?
This was an important point, because if it worked, might she not have someone to talk to?
As in forever?
Or until he died. She imagined herself returning week after week. He would die before she would, but it raised possibilities. And hope.
Then her fantasy was dashed by cold logic.
She had to kill men to live.
Eyes fixed on his, she decided that even if he wanted to talk to her, forever, she would be torn by guilt. She was weary of killing. Remembering what she had done to Merrick added a final stamp to her decision.
But first, his question?
Never had she considered the possibility of killing a human on land. Imagining it made her stomach churn. Blood spilled on the sand and soaking into it. The grit sticking to her. Their legs tangling as they made love. The sticky residues of human lovemaking – she recalled that too. The dirt.
So much dirt.
The sea was clean.
Raffaela lifted her head, and she looked up at the star-strewn sky.
“If it stops you coming to me, it will work. I find the idea of going to you, there, on land, horrid.” She shuddered then ducked her head beneath the water to wash herself clean of the horrible thoughts.
“Okay.” Wolfgang laughed. “I know the chain will hold. The shackle can only be undone with a cutting tool that I left in my car. I twist in a steel rod to fasten it and must use a hacksaw to get free.” He gestured casually at the vehicle. “My car. You know of those?”
“Yes.” She knew of these inventions. “I’ve seen them in villages and have also seen them driven over bridges that span small parts of the sea.”
What if she could make him go to it and get this tool?
Hah. She shrugged. The Ravening was not sophisticated. It was a furious desire that washed her mind of most thoughts. When human, she had been able to read some letters. She didn’t think any letters would make sense while the Ravening had her.
“You will be safe. As long as that does not cut straight through your leg.”
Frowning, he touched his leg. “You appear eager to talk to me.”
“Yes. I am. This is… new.”
“And so I can trust that you have not lied to me?” His gaze was keen, predatory even – she’d seen sharks look at her like that. She eyed him back, confused. A man was not a shark. Then his mouth twitched up at one corner. “Sorry, but I had to ask.”
“Oh!” Raffela giggled, something she’d definitely not done since she had died and been reborn a mermaid. “No. I do not lie.” She wriggled higher up the beach, though keeping herself in the water. “You are safe now anyway. The Ravening is not upon me.”
“The Ravening?” He fetched something from behind him – a squarish device like a slate, and his fingers danced upon it. “Tell me about this.”
Should she?
What harm could it do? None.
“Also, you said you know of cars from seeing them on bridges? We’ve had them a long time. A very long time.”
He waited then, and she guessed that was meant as a question.
Telling him she was centuries old seemed a key to something. Perhaps she should be frugal and not tell him everything?
She raised her right hand from the water and waved it, vaguely, scattering droplets. “I forget how old I am.”
“I see. But this Ravening?”
“That is when…” She swallowed. This seemed even more terrible when she contemplated telling him. “It’s when I have a need I cannot deny.”
He nodded, encouraging her.
“I take men into the sea.” Her words were muffled in her ears, as if another said them. “I make love to them.” She’d been a whore by trade. Saying that was the least of this. “I take them far down. Fathoms down.” Deep breath. “Then I drown them.” And she bit them. Smelled and consumed them, bathed and breathed in their blood.
He peered at her keenly for several seconds then looked at his rectangular slate and danced his fingers. “Why? Why drown them?”
“It feeds me.”
The waves sloshed back and forth several times. She wondered what he thought. That she was an abomination, perhaps. It was true. So true. And she waited for him to get angry or insult her, or to stand up and walk away.
“I see. And… how do you make love when you have a tail? If that’s too intimate a question, we can skip it for the moment.” A terse smile was directed her way. More finger tapping occurred.
Mouth agape, she blinked. “I change. I have no say in the change. I have legs again.”
“Ahhh. Interesting! Again, though? As in… you used to have legs? What are you saying?”
“Once, I was human. I changed.”
That seemed to disturb him, and he remained silent awhile.
“Will you tell me how it happened?”
The suggestion flashed her back into the hurricane, into being thrown overboard. “No.” She shook her head. It was long ago and too painful a memory. “I cannot.”
“I see.”
He kept asking questions, and most of the time he ignored what she did and kept tapping. But he also stopped and let her ask him some questions. She told him about her place where she went, to sit on the coral, to think. About the pretty fish there, the dreadful sharks, and many other things.
This was a conversation, for sure, and she relaxed into it, rested her elbows in the sand, and found herself smiling back at him.
She was talking. To a man.
Her excitement must have showed, for he chuckled at her exuberance more than once.
Dawn approached. She eyed the paling horizon. “I must go.” And she half-turned, tail swishing, alarmed at having spent so much time with him that she’d forgotten others might see her if she were here in daylight.
“Wait! Wait. Will you come back? Please?”
She looked to him, and the pleading in his voice did something inside her… put a crack in her heart, maybe. Oh dear. He wanted to see her again? He wanted her to return. That alone was momentous, wonderful.
She noted how he’d grasped at the sand, to one side of him, like she had done. How taut were the muscles of his arm. Fine, manly muscles. Perhaps he too found comfort in the feel of sand, though the slide of fingers into wet sand and the squish of it inside her fist would be far nicer.
For a second, she imagined how his arm would feel under her hand. How he might taste.
How his blood—
She shook away that thought.
“I suppose, I could?”
“Tomorrow night?”
Her eyes stayed wide. For the first time she realized she could see his face properly – his dark wavy hair that sprang up in random curls and fell across his forehead. Large sinewy hands, which she always loved on a man. Remember though. He could never be hers. Never. It would mean his death.
She gnawed her lip gently, wary of the points.
Not hers.
She must think. “In three nights then.”
“Three? Done. I will be here. You promise?”
“I said so.”
“Uh-huh. You did.” Slowly, he withdrew his hand from the sand, brushed it off on his pants. “Your Ravening won’t come yet?”
“No.” She let her teeth show, and he looked curious. “Not for a week or more.”
Then she dove into the sea and did not turn back, did not look over her shoulder until she was down among the seaweed and bottom dwelling creatures, the crabs, the mollusks, and the stalking, antenna-waving lobsters. A niggling and horrid feeling arrived, a feeling familiar to her from when she was a human and mistakes had been made.
What had she done? Had she said too much? Her mouth had said too many words. She’d let him see her in her true form for hours.
That had been lovely. Talking, listening, and learning.
Three nights. She was returning in three nights. She must ask him more questions. She must find out who he was.
Three nights later, when she surfaced a little earlier in the night than the last time, he was there waiting, settled into a low chair with the leg chain leading up the beach. As she swam to the edge where she could stay submerged yet keep her head out of the water to talk, he sat forward.
“Hi! You came, Raffaela. Thank you!”
The thanking brought a warmth to her chest, right in the middle.
“Hello, Wolfgang.” She blew a little spurt of sea water, feeling playful. His scent was stronger. He was a male human, of fine reproductive age. The need to touch him had strengthened.
The Ravening neared, but then it always did. Its cycle was inevitable.
“I wish to question you, Wolfgang.”
“Of course. Of course.” He hitched a pair of black-rimmed spectacles higher on his face. They were new. She wondered if he could see her well without those. “Your prerogative, though I hope you’ll answer some of mine also.”
“Tell me.” Rocking up and down on the waves, she rested her chin on her upturned hands, her elbows in the sand, as before. “What are you apart from a seeker of mermaids?”
“Ha! A seeker of mermaids? I suppose you could call me that. My job?” The moon was up earlier too, and his frown lines were obvious.
“Yes. Your job.” The words were rolling off her tongue ever more smoothly, the centuries of disuse falling away. “What do you do to make money?”
“I’m a marine biologist. I study everything that lives in the sea. Such as you.” His mouth widened in another of his inscrutable smiles.
“Me? Hmmm. I knew that. You learn from books?”
“Do I learn from books? Yes. Sometimes. And from examining specimens in the laboratory, and live ones when at sea in boats. And from the internet.”
An odd word. Internet. In his gaze, she recognized that curiosity as to what she knew and what she did not.
“I don’t know what that is. A type of net?”
“Of course you don’t. The internet helps us humans to send things around the world, without actually going there.”
“Such as? Furniture? People?”
He barked a laugh. “No. Sorry. I shouldn’t laugh.” Wolfgang rubbed at his chin and leaned back into his chair. His slate was already on his lap. “We send words. Books, in a way. Pictures, drawings. Paintings. Moving paintings. And they get to their destination very quickly. In seconds, unless the net is crapping out.”
She made an O with her mouth, not quite understanding. “That sounds like magic?”
“In a way, it is. But then… you are magic to me. You don’t exist according to science. There are stories, myths, and legends like the Argonauts that mention sirens and mermaids, but it’s considered fantasy.”
Raffaela blinked at him, listening to the shush of the waves against the shore – the rolling shift of water, sand, small stones, and seashells.
What could she say to that? She whispered, “I wish…”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
She wished she were a fantasy, that none of this had happened to her, that she’d reached Ireland and found a husband, a good man, like this Wolfgang seemed to be. She’d had a life ahead of her, back then. It was all merely wishes, and maybe she would have died of the pox in a back alley, but she’d had hope.
Sadness swelled through her, making her want to weep. She held it in.
“So. Anyway. That is how I make money. I study. I
had enough of it – the money – from my work and an inheritance, to buy a house on the shore only a few kilometers away. It’s further down the peninsula.” He pointed to his left.
She followed where he pointed, wondering if she could find his house. Wondering if he ever strolled the shore at night, unshackled.
The Ravening was speaking to her, hinting, insinuating.
She stared at Wolfgang. He’d been kind to her. He would never be hers. Even if, then she shut her eyes for desire was rising. Where her legs might be when she transformed, there, in the middle of her, she felt the stir of lust.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.” She smiled at him. “I can’t talk for as long this time.”
“A pity.”
“The Ravening is starting to speak to me. I will get dangerous to you soon, in a few more days. In a week, definitely.”
There, she’d been honest. Raffaela grimaced. Now he would leave and never talk to her again.
“But now you’re okay? I’m shackled. I am safe.” He nodded firmly. “We can talk some more.”
They did talk. They chatted, to her immense delight. They laughed at each other’s stories – though hers she kept to ones about the ocean, or people she’d listened to from under a jetty. Things that sailors had done that she’d heard them speak of. She was cautious and did not tell him of her human past.
Something about Wolfgang nudged at her, sometimes. As if she missed some nuance, which was likely. She’d been poor as dirt and had never been a poncey sort for balls and carriages and la-de-dah. Never had enough food, most days. Learning about the changes in the way people spoke from overheard jetty conversations hadn’t teached her much else. Taught her much else. Even thinking about her past made her speak funny.
Before the moon traversed much of the night sky, she decided to leave.
She had listened to him talk about his adventures in life and had reciprocated with her shipwreck and storm stories, and hints of what she’d found at the very bottom of the ocean. Treasures, he thought. Corpses were also a part of life down there.
“Time to leave,” she said, huskily. She had worn out her throat.
“Oh.” He reached behind his chair and pulled up a palm-sized, drawstring bag. “If you’re leaving, I have a gift for you. A present.” He raised his eyebrows. “Will you accept it?”
Sacrificed to the Sea: mermaids .. monsters .. men Page 2