by Brooke Moss
I heard the shuffling again and pulled my covers up around my shoulders. We’d had wild animals around our house before. It was one of the end results of living in the woods. My mother had spotted a bear the previous summer while she was jogging, and my father had trapped many a raccoon around our garbage cans. But that shadow was way too big for a masked rodent. It was either a bear who’d woken up from hibernation early or…a really pissed off mermaid with greenish skin. A shiver of fear glided its way across my body, so I scooted back on the mattress until my back was flush against the wall.
Just as I opened my mouth to yell for my father, I heard a muffled voice. “Luna? Are you awake?”
My open mouth changed directions and pulled into a smile. I would have known that deep, melodic voice anywhere.
Saxon.
Scooting to the end of my bed, I pulled back my curtains and suppressed an ecstatic giggle. While I tried to smooth down my bedhead and swiped underneath my eyes for any leftover mascara, he gestured for me to unlock the window.
As soon as the lock clicked, he shoved open the window and leaned in to press a kiss on my lips. When we pulled apart, I realized he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and that hundreds of droplets of water all over his chest and arms reflected the light from the full moon overhead.
I laughed and wiped off my face. “You’re soaked.”
“Sorry.” His skin looked almost blue in the moonlight. “I missed you.”
My chest tingled. As much as I didn’t want to behave like a lovesick teen, that was exactly what I was turning into. “Me too.” My eyes flicked down to the edge of the windowsill. “Are you, um, wearing anything?”
He nodded, spattering icy water on my arms. “Yes, silly girl. I’m wearing the jeans from the boathouse.”
He took my hand and folded his fingers between mine. It was so cold, it bit into my blanket-warmed skin, and I sucked in a sharp breath. When I started to tremble, he brought my hands to his mouth and blew on them. His breath was startlingly warm, despite the fact his body was covered in water and he stood outside, half-naked, in the middle of an early April night.
My fingers warmed. “Thank you.” I watched the shadows from the pine trees paint dark pictures across his chest.
He drew his mouth upward in the corners. “Do you want to go swimming with me?”
I pressed my lips together. First off, if I went into the lake, I would wind up hypothermic within minutes. Second, I’d just gotten done having a nightmare about being drowned by a psychopathic mermaid. Talk about a mood killer.
“I don’t know…”
He knit his eyebrows together, casting a shadow down his face. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I squeezed his fingers, trying to reassure him. I hated being afraid. I didn’t want to let anything keep me from my lake.
Understanding softened his features. “Isolde?”
Nodding, I glanced down at the discarded pillows all over my floor. “I’m not letting that cow chase me away. But, you know, there’s also scientific fact. If I go into the lake now, I’ll freeze to death.”
He crouched down in front of the window so that we were eye to eye. “If you don’t want to swim with me, I understand. But if you do want to, I will not let you freeze to death. I can keep you warm and safe. I promise.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “How?”
“It’s too difficult to explain. You’ll just have to trust me.” When he smiled, the moonlight caught in his eye, and my stomach leapt into my throat.
I wouldn’t have been able to explain it to someone if they’d asked, but the feeling I got when Saxon comforted me was complete and utter safety. There was something so reassuring about his presence. Like a lifejacket, kneepads, airbags, and insurance all rolled into one. Besides, I’d survived a near-fatal car accident. Why start fearing everything now?
“OK.” I pulled my hands out of his grip and slid myself as close to the edge of the bed as I could get without falling. I’d put a pair of black leggings and an old concert tee shirt on after my shower earlier. Not exactly the cutest outfit I’d ever worn on a date, but considering the fact that Saxon was wearing my father’s hand-me-downs, I didn’t think he’d mind.
He enveloped my body with his arms. The moment he brought me through the open window and secured me against his chest, warmth radiated through me. It started in my core, then rolled from the inside out like smoke filling every corner of a box. Except this wasn’t smoke. It was a cloud of glowing, ardent heat that toasted me.
I looked up at his face, my mouth ajar with shock, and he offered me a humble shrug. When he spoke, his voice rebounded inside of my head. I told you it was difficult to explain.
I pressed my face against his neck and laughed softly. The whiskers that trailed around the edge of his chin tickled my forehead, and the heat inside of my chest doubled. “Does it hurt to talk out loud?”
No. It doesn’t hurt. He stepped carefully onto the boardwalk. But it’s taxing. It uses up my energy quicker. I have to think each word out and figure out how to articulate it. When I talk to you this way, it just comes naturally.
I tightened my grip around his neck as we started our descent toward the lake. It was a good thing my parents’ bedroom faced the driveway and not the water.
“Are you taught how to shift?” I asked. “Or is it instinctual?”
We’re told from the time we are born that someday we will shift. We see our parents do it and the elders of the clan. So we are prepared for what will happen to our bodies. But nothing could have prepared me for the first time.”
I touched the damp hair at the back of his head. “What happened?”
I was near the place in the lake that your people call Bottle Bay.
I pictured the marina where my parents used to rent jet skis every Labor Day, then shuddered at the thought of what a jet ski probably sounded like—and left behind—from a Mer’s perspective.
His smile dropped away. My family was nearby, but out of sight. My father had gone to investigate an area where the water was black and cloudy. It was an oil leak in a massive vessel, and it’d made dozens of our people sick.
My stomach squeezed. “I’m sorry.”
I was about fifty feet from the surface when I felt the shift coming on. At first I thought I was getting sick because I was lurching and gagging. My stomach knotted. But then a searing pain cut through my body that was so fierce I couldn’t even cry for help. It was as if someone were taking a knife and dragging it down the center of my spine, from the back of my neck, clear down to the end of my tail.
My breath caught in my throat. That searing pain in the spine thing hit a little too close to home for me. Saxon stepped onto the dock, and it rocked underneath our weight. After lowering himself to his knees, he sat me down on the wood. Then he settled down next to me, and wrapped his arms around his knees.
I felt the end of my spine splitting and my bones fusing into two separate extremities. My skin and scales tore open, and flapped around my new legs in the water. The open flesh stung like a thousand bee stings, and blood darkened the water around me. And then my gills sealed up.
“Holy crap.” I drew in a deep breath of air and then let it out slowly.
He fingered the marks on one side of his neck before lifting his arm to show me another set just below his armpit. His gills looked like lines drawn by a marker in the dim light of the moon. I thought I was going to die, so I started pedaling for the surface. My body wasn’t shaped like it had been. Learning to use two legs, instead of one tail with extremely strong fins, was terrible. I flailed around for what felt like forever, and it occurred to me that I might actually drown before I could reach air.
I wrapped my arms around myself and leaned against his side. He lifted his arm and pulled me tighter against his body.
Somehow I started moving and making progress. Slowly. Thirty feet. Twenty feet. Then ten. My lungs were burning, and it felt like my eyes were going to fall out of my head. The pain in my legs wa
s excruciating, but I kept kicking. More and more, just trying to get to the top. When I finally broke the surface, I screamed and howled so loudly, that a group of people from the boat docks rushed to see who was hurt.
By that time, I’d figured out what had happened to my body, and I’d managed to hide in some weeds at the side of the lake. I was naked and terrified and alone, but I remembered enough from my father’s stories that I wouldn’t stay in human form for long. He offered me a one-shouldered shrug. So I just laid in the weeds until I shifted again and rolled back into the water.
“Was that as painful as shifting into a human?” I touched his leg. Through the leg of his jeans, it felt absolutely normal. Skin, muscle, hair, bones. It was hard to believe that his legs could be anything but just that.
He traced lines up and down my bare arm. Yes. Imagine the process when someone breaks their bone, and the doctor puts a cast on it while the bone heals back together. Now imagine it happening over a matter of seconds. Then compound that sensation with gills splitting open on your skin and air suddenly suffocating you. The only thing that relieves the agony is to get into the water as quickly as possible. Both processes are arduous, but I’ve learned to shift quickly, so it’s more tolerable.
“That sounds horrible.” I pulled myself as close to him as I could and wrapped my arms around his middle. “I can’t even imagine what it must be like.”
He used a finger to swipe my bangs back from my face. I can’t imagine what it must be like for you either.
“Well then, I guess we have a mutual admiration.” I looked up at him and bit my lip. “Can I ask you to do something for me?”
He leaned close to me so that our foreheads were touching. “Anything.”
“Will you shift for me?” I asked him, enjoying the way it felt when the tip of his nose brushed against mine. It made my pulse dance. “I want to see it.”
“I don’t know, Luna, I—”
I used my hands to anchor his face and made him look at me. “Sax, listen. This time you have to trust me.”
I guess I’ve already broken so many laws. I may as well add shifting in front of a human to my repertoire. He smiled sheepishly and stood up. Are you sure this won’t scare you?
“I’m sure.” When his hands moved to the buttons on his jeans, I focused my eyes on his face only, locking my gaze on those pools of blue. He gulped, making his Adam’s apple bob, as he pushed the pants down and stepped out of them. The air between us grew thick and heavy as Saxon’s shift became eminent, and my heart started to hammer.
He turned away from me, and I finally allowed my eyes to roam downward, only making it to the curve of his muscular back, before he threw himself off the end of the dock. Making a perfect arch above the still water, time seemed to slow down when the shift happened. The only sound in the air was the sound of my breath halting, and my lungs going perfectly still as I watched him change right before my eyes.
His legs instantly snapped together as though there were powerful magnets deep within the muscles, and his feet melded together at the heels. The surface of his skin bubbled like lava as it sealed the divide between one leg and the other, then split and peeled itself into thousands of brilliant scales. Just as his upper body broke the water, Saxon’s feet flattened and spread into two tail fins that were at least three and a half feet in width. They looked feathered and torn like thin iridescent fabric, but the fin itself was rippled with muscle and sinew as it slid into the water.
I watched, mouth ajar, as rings of water spread out from the spot where he dove, disbelief washing over me. The warmth I felt in his presence started to cool, and I saw my breath in front of my face as I sat there collecting myself. What I’d just witnessed didn’t exist in real life, and I was pretty sure it was stretching the boundaries found in even the wildest of fairy tales. Maybe I was dreaming and going to wake up back in my bed at any moment.
Are you scared?
Saxon’s voice filled my head, and the coals in my belly reignited. There he was, just an inch or two below the surface at the end of the dock. My heart stuttered at the sight of him. His skin glowed a bluish hue, his dark hair danced on the currents around his head, and the gills below his ears opened and shut rhythmically.
“No.” I shook my head. “Not scared. Sorta…mesmerized.”
He wore his signature smirk when he raised one hand out of the water. I reached down and took it. Take a deep breath.
I did and was in the water before I could even think. The water wrapped me in cold and pulled my hair back in a long stream behind me as I dropped. For a second, I panicked, waving my arms at my sides and jerking back and forth. But then I felt Saxon’s hands encircle my hips and pull me against his chest.
Open your eyes.
I did, and the water momentarily stung. Blinking a few times, I grasped his hard shoulders and acclimated myself to my new surroundings. My focus came into view like a camera on auto zoom, and there in front of me was Saxon. His skin glowed in a soft, muted blue; pure, velvety warmth exuded from his touch, locking out the cold. We descended a few feet, and I looked down at his tail. It extended and swayed back and forth at least six feet below us. I was amazed that he could control where we moved with just the use of his fin.
Are you all right?
I nodded, and my hair whirled around my face. The darkness was everywhere but above our heads. I could see the moon through the top of the water, all broken into pieces like a stained-glass window.
Do you need air?
When I nodded, he extended his arms and lifted me up so that my head rose past the surface. I sucked in a long pull of oxygen, then ducked back under and put my arms around his neck. Rubbing my cheek against the side of his face, I noticed that his skin was no longer smooth and soft. Now it was ridged, but slippery like the scales of the fish my dad and I used to catch in the bay when I was little. My grip loosened, so that my hands could find the gills at the side of his neck. Tracing a line along the edge, I felt them open and close underneath my fingertips.
He tangled his fingers in the hair at the back of my neck, then combed through the locks as they danced on the current. I want to show you something.
I pulled back and looked at him. There was no fear under the water. I was safe in his arms, and I knew it right down to my toasty warm core. One side of his mouth pricked upward just before he turned my body so that my back was to him. With one swift movement, he kicked his fin so hard that the water ruffled all around us, arching us backward so we were parallel with the surface of the water.
In the blink of an eye, I was cruising along the lake at least twenty miles an hour, with the stained-glass moon following us as we glided. The surface was no more than three inches above my moving body. Clear—but waved and bubbled, like the old glass in all of the windows of our farmhouse.
Saxon’s tail moved up and down, creating a muted rushing sound and sending us streaming out of Moon’s Bay. My lungs were starting to tighten, but I couldn’t look away from the star-filled sky above us. I was mesmerized by the speed at which we were traveling and by the fact that my body was filled with radiant heat even though I was submerged in icy water.
Once we’d ridden the current to the center of Pend Oreille Lake, he arched his spine and flicked us into an underwater backflip before bringing me right back up to the surface. His hands lifted me above the surface, where I drew in another long gulp of air.
“That was amazing,” I cried before dunking back down under the water and pressing my mouth to Saxon’s. He pulled his lips back into a smile, and he looped his arms tightly around my middle so I was flush against his body. We drifted in place close to the surface for a few seconds. The only sound filling my ears was the sound of my heart thrumming in my chest. The world beneath the surface, even just a few inches down, was so peaceful and serene.
I want to tell you something.
I used my arms to bring myself to the surface for more air. “What is it?” I lowered myself back down into his arms.
Saxon’s gaze searched mine for something, roaming from my face to my hair dancing around my head like seaweed, to my fluttering T-shirt rising and falling over my bellybutton on the current. I heard another rush of water and through the corner of my eye noticed as his rippled tail whipped back and forth below us to keep us suspended near the surface.
I smiled encouragingly at him, feeling the cold water surround my teeth and chill my gums. He brought one of his hands up to brush a knuckle from my temple to my jaw, before securing it back around my middle.
Luna, where I come from, responsibility often takes precedent over love.
My stomach quickened at the sound of him saying the L-word. It was adolescent, and I knew it, but my feelings for him were so much more than anything I’d experienced before. With Ian, and any of the other boys I’d dated before him, I’d felt the telltale excitement that a new relationship cultivated. I’d experienced stuttering heartbeats and stolen glances before. I’d participated in make-out sessions that made my head spin and the thrill of catching the attention of the guy that someone else wanted. But all of that paled in comparison to what I had with Saxon.
We had a physical connection. There was no denying that. I could think about his hands touching my face hours after the fact and still feel the trail they left behind on my skin. Even the mere thought of his lips brushing mine made blood course to my mouth, leaving my lips swollen, and pulsing with my racing heartbeat.
But what really astounded me was how comfortable I felt when I was with him. Instead of shifting in my chair to make sure my shirt hung right or wishing I’d had more time to flatiron my hair, I didn’t care. It didn’t matter what I looked like when I was with him, I always knew that I was beautiful enough. I never had to wait for his compliments because I could feel what he thought of me. His attraction to me was so much more than what my chest looked like in my gym uniform or whether or not my butt looked tight in a pair of jeans. He loved what was inside of me as much as the outside package, and it felt better than winning homecoming queen, prom royalty, and Miss Teen Sandpoint all at once.