To my surprise, he chuckled and then grinned. “Believe me—it’s better that way.” He looked down at the ground broodingly.
“So, that’s it?” My voice was filled with frustration. “You just want me to leave and never come back?”
He looked up at me and said smartly, “You got it.”
I shrugged my shoulders in anger. I felt at that moment that I’d rather die alone in my cell than spend another moment with someone like him. Who does he think he is—God’s gift to the world?
“Whatever!” I said, feeling foolish about my choice of expression. I just wanted to get away from him and straighten out my thoughts. I turned and crawled through the hole in the wall. When I got to the other side, before I had a chance to put the stones back, Shaul looked through the hole at me.
“Wait,” he said. “I mean it, Cordellia. Don’t come back.”
I didn’t know what to say. My mind raced with too many thoughts, so I just put the stones back into the hole and slid my back down the wall as I fell to the floor in astonishment.
16
The next couple of months were a monotonous blur. Most of the time, I found myself thinking about Shaul which really frustrated me. I couldn’t figure out how he got that ball of light into his cell or how he got it to levitate in mid air. And why was he surrounded in red light when he got angry at me? That was really odd too. I had so many questions I wanted to ask him, but at the same time I hated him.
At other times, I fanaticized about kissing Shaul and lying in his arms. I thought about the way his eyes bored into mine and found myself enraptured in lust. This was a new feeling to me, something I had never genuinely felt toward any other boy. I just wished I had feelings like that for anyone else other than Shaul Hainsworth.
Many nights, I found myself leaning against the wall that separated us imagining what he was doing on the other side. Sometimes I could swear he was leaning on his side in the exact same spot with only the stones separating us.
I felt him in my thoughts and oddly, it was such a loving exchange that usually brought me to tears. At other times, I heard him cry out in his sleep, speaking in a cryptic language that sounded so esoteric that I couldn’t even fathom what he was talking about. I got the feeling that he was suffering immensely. I never heard the animal sounds again. And the female voice was gone. Sometimes he just cried and cried in his sleep. Even though I hated him, when he cried like that, my heart bled.
I wondered how I was able to cause an earthquake from my crying. That was even stranger than the magical things Shaul did. I would have tried to cause another one, but for some stupid reason I was too embarrassed to let Shaul hear me cry.
In my despair, I figured it was only a matter of time before I got over my obsession with him, and then, when I stopped caring what he thought, I would try to make another earthquake. Maybe I could cry loud enough to collapse the building and escape.
But even more so, the fear of being sent to the torture box kept me from trying. What if I made all that noise and nothing happened? Surely, the guards would punish me severely.
I went to sleep dreading tomorrow. It would be my sixteenth birthday, the day puberty started, whatever that meant, and I would be spending it alone in this hell hole.
17
When I woke up in the morning, Shaul was making a lot of noise. It sounded like he was pacing back and forth in his cell, grunting and moaning the way a stallion acts when a mare in another coral is in heat. He sounded out of control. And then the music sped up in my head. The melody was tantalizing. I felt like he was luring me back into his cell. But, I knew there was no way that was so.
It was my sixteenth birthday and, to my surprise, I felt remarkably different. I felt oddly more sensual and powerful.
The images in my mind were much more vibrant and clear. I saw bright scenes like watching a cinema of alluring landscapes and other captivating novelties. That splendorous golden tree by the forbidden lake below the cliff drifted into my mind. It was blossoming in elegant sashes, lace, and dangling jewels. I saw the sparkle of the lake glistening in the sunlight. Many petalled lilies bloomed by the shore. Shaul and I stepped into the water hand in hand. We swam around playfully splashing each other. The water tasted like the balsam of pure cherries. He held me in his arms. I teased him seductively and swam away tauntingly. He swam after me. Teardrops fell as red sparks into the bottomless lake. Life was limitless. We would live forever.
As I walked to the bathtub to fill it with water, my legs felt much stronger. When I looked down at them, they were more shapely and feminine. And my breasts, I noticed, were much fuller, perfect in shape and size. Puberty is so odd. I laughed. The ugly duckling was turning beautiful.
I eased my way into the refreshing water of the now full tub as I do nearly every morning. The music was a heavenly welcome in my mind. I slid under the surface. New mesmerizing images of vibrancy danced in full, spellbinding color like poetry come to life.
But, then, terror struck me.
When I lifted my head out of the water and laid my neck back on the edge of the tub, I felt different. Something seemed wildly wrong.
I sat up with a start and looked at my legs beneath the water. They had fused together into the shape of a red fish tail! I let out a wailing scream. The walls shook. In my puberty, I had transformed into a mermaid!
I tried to climb out of the bathtub, but I couldn’t get out of the douse without my legs. I propped myself up with my arms and got into a sitting position, but my tail flapped in the wash trying to pull the rest of my body under.
After a struggle, I eventually had no choice but to give in. I slid completely beneath the water. And then, after a few minutes of trying to gather my senses and now in desperate need of air, I struggled to surface.
But, I couldn’t get my new tail positioned right and every time I tried to sit up, it flopped wildly, keeping me submerged. Shortly thereafter, I started choking. My eyes bulged in terror. I couldn’t believe my surreal fate. I was a fish drowning in a bathtub. But, after a minute of gagging and thrashing, the pain so great that I thought my lungs were going to explode, I began to breathe on my own underwater!
I didn’t know what to do, so I just laid there at the bottom of the tub and tried to get a grip on what had just happened to me. I guess this is what my mother meant when she said that changes might come upon me when I turned sixteen.
How did she know I was a mermaid? Mermaids aren’t even real! Then I started to wonder if she was a mermaid too. But, my mother’s legs never turned into a tail in the water. That answered my question. She was not a mermaid.
But, then, how did she know I was? I knew nothing of my father. My mother always changed the subject when I asked about him. Maybe he was a merman. Oh, it all just seemed so crazy. If this all didn’t seem so real, I would swear I was hallucinating.
I decided not to struggle again to get out of the water. Maybe I could sort of trick my tail and just pull the plug to let the water drain. I did that. Once the water emptied, to my dismay, my tail remained. I had hoped that it would turn back to legs once out of the water.
Now, I didn’t know what to do. The music in my mind got louder and more varied. It was really irritating me. Was I going to be stuck in this bathtub forever?
I must have laid there for hours, struggling to get a comfortable position and feeling devastatingly hopeless. It might have been fun to be a mermaid in a big lake or in an ocean, but a mermaid in a bathtub was a sick joke on me. As if it wasn’t bad enough being locked away in a dungeon! Could my life get any worse?
Then the hump on my back started to really hurt. Usually, it only hurt if someone pressed down on it. But, now it was hurting for no reason at all. It felt like I was laying on a tree stump and the stump was growing beneath me.
Was this the biggest nightmare in the world or what? I couldn’t get my arms wrapped around my back far enough to touch the growing stump because my new big breasts kept getting in the way. I felt hopeless and li
ke a real freak.
The stump kept growing and I started getting really scared. Then it began to fan out. I didn’t know what was happening.
Now I could touch the growing abomination sprouting from my back because it was spreading out to the sides of my body. It had a sheer, gauzy quality with a thin bone frame around the edges and throughout like a skeleton. I’m not kidding—I was beginning to think I was growing wings out of my back.
The thickness of the frame propped me up and after a moment the darn things started fluttering. From my peripheral vision, I could see that they were red like my tail. I had no idea how to control them, but with a lot of concentration, I was able to get them flapping. They were wings!
After several minutes they were fluttering so fast that my body started lifting out of the tub. There I was like some sort of fairy tale monster, fluttering above the bathtub with a big fish tail dangling in the air. That’s when Shaul burst through the hole in the wall right into my cell.
18
Extending from his ankle, Shaul dragged the chain behind him with a block of the stone wall attached. He must have pulled the chain right out of the wall and then rushed through the hole into my cell.
He looked up at me and had a big grin on his face. He was trying to hold back laughter, but wasn’t very successful at it.
I scowled at him from mid air. How could he think this was funny? Why wasn’t he shocked out of his mind like I was? There I was bare breasted with a long mermaid tail and wings fluttering from my back like a retarded faerie.
“Here, take my hand.” He sounded amused as he offered his hand up to me. “I’ll catch you.”
“You can’t hold my weight,” I called down. “What if you drop me?”
“Oh, please,” he smirked.
I was exhausted, my long hair was getting tangled in the wings, and I didn’t know how much longer I could hold myself up in the air, so I thought, the heck with it, and let myself drop from suspension.
Thank God, he actually caught me. And there I was—a sideshow freak in the most gorgeous boy in the world’s arms. He had a wry smile on his face that made my mind swoon.
“You can’t really set me down because I don’t have legs.” I covered my breasts with my hands.
He laughed again. “Look,” he said. “Just command your legs to take over.”
I wrinkled my eyebrows. “What?!”
“Command your legs.” He still looked amused, like he was thoroughly enjoying my predicament.
“Abra Cadabra,” I said sarcastically as I looked at him feeling completely flabbergasted.
“Come on…” He was still smiling at my expense.
I didn’t know what else to do, so I concentrated for a moment, trying to put my full intention forth and said,“Legs take over.”
“Very good.” His eyes widened in surprise as he spoke.
And to my shock, sure enough, my tail transformed back into legs.
He kept holding me and this red light flashed in his silver eyes. His stare became intense, maybe even wicked and he sat me down.
I realized then that I was entirely naked. With everything that had happened I hadn’t even noticed. I was so happy to just have my legs back.
He walked over to the wall and a ball of light shot out of his hand, apparently unintentionally. At once, he grabbed it out of the air, nodded his head, and it disappeared.
I would have thought it was entirely shocking and weird, but after my puberty experiences today, nothing seemed impossible. I quickly grabbed my robe that I had washed and was hanging to dry. I put it on; the wings poked out from beneath and left a big bulge under the damp fabric. “Why are you here?” I asked suddenly. “I thought you wanted to stay away from me.”
“I do,” he responded darkly, not looking at me.
“Then, why’d you barge into my cell?” His features really were perfect. “I’m dressed now,” I added.
He turned to me. “It’s better if you don’t ask questions.” He seemed distracted.
I rolled my eyes. “Ok,” my voice was sarcastic.
“Happy birthday,” he said in a lighter mood.
“What? How’d you know it’s my birthday?”
He raised an eyebrow. “I just know things.” He seemed entertained with his thoughts.
“Then, can you tell me what’s happening to me?”
He looked at the stone floor and then glanced back up at me through his thick black lashes. “You’re a josephine,” he chuckled.
I shook my head lightly and closed my eyes. “What’s a josephine?”
He was still smiling. “You have the powers and the characteristics of both the mermaid and the faerie. That combination is called a josephine.”
“And how come you’re not surprised?”
“I have to go back.” He nodded toward his cell. “You can hide your wings through a command—the same way you did with your legs.”
“So, you never answered me. Why did you come here? You want to be friends now or something?” I looked down for a moment feeling embarrassed.
“Friends?” he tightened his lips like he was trying to suppress his amusement. “I can’t stay away from you anymore. I’ve given up for now. But, I’m not a good friend for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You should stay away from me.” His gaze was hopeful, almost childlike.
“You’re not a bad person.”
“Is that what you think?” He laughed and walked back over to the hole in the wall. When he turned back to me, his eyes smoldered as he gazed at me.
“What?” I said more as a statement than as a question.
He shook his head side to side as if he was waking from a dream. Then he smiled at me with a charming crooked grin that made me tingly all over and crawled away through the wall.
19
After several tries, I managed to get my wings to fold up into my back with a command like Shaul taught me. My mind was racing now with so many thoughts.
I had numerous questions unanswered—questions about how in the world I became a josephine and even more questions regarding Shaul and his strange behaviors. Nothing made sense and I couldn’t stop thinking about the mysterious boy on the other side of the wall who seemed unfazed by the fact that I had turned into some sort of mythical creature, so I decided to count the stones on the walls. That was the most boring thing I could do and I hoped it would help me relax.
It was no good though. I lost track after about one hundred and fifty, so I gave up on that. It just depressed me anyway, reminding me that I was eternally locked away in a dungeon.
In my agitation, I leaned against the wall separating my cell from Shaul’s. It was strange—once I positioned myself against the stones, I could swear I felt Shaul’s heart beating right into mine. The sound and rhythm of his blood pumping filled my essence. It aroused me and made me yearn to press my body up against his. To distract myself from the intense desires that were rising up in me, I moved away from the wall and lay on my back upon the cold floor.
The unanswered questions flooded back into my mind. I had to figure out how Shaul was able to produce balls of light and shoot them out of his hand. Why was he surrounded in red light that night when he commanded me to leave him? How come whenever I cried loudly, I heard noise in his cell first before the earthquakes started? Was he making the dungeon wave and rumble or was I? Or were both of us producing it together?
As far as I knew, human beings could not do supernatural things like he had. Was Shaul not human? If that was the case, what was he? Was he a josephine like me? For some reason that made me laugh.
And then I wondered about the music I so often heard in my head. Shaul was connected to the songs also somehow. We made beautiful symphonies together in my mind before I knew he was the singer on the other side of the wall. But, the tunes also were connected to the forbidden lake. The melodies constantly beckoned me to its waters. Why did the music draw me to Shaul and why did it draw me to the lake? What was th
e connection and what was the reason? I had so many questions and I desperately wanted the answers.
I sat on the hard stone floor examining my new shapely legs and thought some more about it all. Why did Shaul say I should stay away from him? It seemed like he wanted to be near me, but he felt compelled to warn me that he wasn’t good for me. But why?
I thought about taking another bath to calm myself, but the thought of growing that red mermaid tail frightened me. At least, now I knew how to get rid of it when I wanted to. Maybe tomorrow I’d try again and accustom myself to my new fate, but today another attempt was out of the question.
The wings were also a little scary to me, but I decided to experiment with them a little since I didn’t have anything else to do. I always wished I could fly and actually the more I thought about it, the more pleased I became with my new promising ability.
I really wished I had one of those pretty girlie faerie costumes with the back cut out for the wings to push through. Instead, the only clothing I had was this brown cotton robe. I opted to put it on backwards and leave it open in the back, buttoning it from the waist down. That left room for the wings and still kept my body covered.
Standing in the center of my cell, I called out, “Grow wings grow.” Nothing happened, but I heard Shaul snickering on the other side of the wall. I guessed he heard me. I was pretty loud. It felt kind of good to have some sort interaction with someone else even if a wall was separating us.
But, I wasn’t going to keep yelling just to get attention and give him more reasons to tease me. So, I tried the command again, but this time quietly and with more feeling behind it.
Sure enough, it worked. The wings sprouted out of my back like a blossoming flower unfolding at a rather fast pace. I wished I had a mirror to see what they looked like, but no luck there. This cell was way too sparse and bland for luxuries like that.
They were pretty large actually. Bigger than the butterfly wings I’d seen on fairies on the screens at the dome cinemas, but smaller than angel wings. The edges that I could see protruding outward were sheer and red. I hoped that sometime I would be able to ask Shaul what they looked like. I touched them with my hands and from what I got a hold of, the gauzy texture felt elegant against my fingers.
Girl Possessed (Book 1 of The Girl Trilogy) Page 8