by Anna Leonard
Chapter 2
He woke slowly, surfacing with a sense of panic blunted by something soft and sticky.
There was dark and a sudden shock of pain, and…nothing. He opened his eyes, his lashes gummy and stuck together, and discovered that he was in a bed. He knew it was a bed, although he hadn’t slept in one since he was a child, preferring a hammock that mimicked the motion of the waves.
A bed. In a place he didn’t recognize, filled with smells he didn’t recognize.
There were no windows wherever he was, only a single narrow doorway. White surrounded him, white sheets and walls, and shiny metals and plastics and that overwhelming smell of something that made his nostrils flare in distrust and disgust.
Cleansers, part of his brain reminded him. To clean up the shit and the blood. You’re in a hospital.
He had been in one of those, long ago. His sister had torn open her leg on a rusty nail half-submerged off a dock, and she’d had to go to the mainland and have it stitched up. As her favorite sibling, her only brother, closest in age, he had gone with her and their mother, to keep her calm while the doctors did their thing. There had been the same smells, and shots, and the adults had all been annoyed but not really worried.
That was good. Annoyed but not worried meant this was an inconvenience, not a threat. Hospitals were where they helped you. What was this hospital helping him for? What had he done to himself? Nothing hurt, nothing felt wrong…. It annoyed him that he couldn’t remember.
“Good morning.”
He turned his head and looked up at a man who was pushing back the curtains and moving to stand beside the bed. An older man, maybe even Elder. Gray hair and beard; the latter was cut into a sharp point on his chin, like a shark’s fin. But the eyes were pale blue and kind.
“Morning,” he responded, his voice raspy, like he’d been yelling. Maybe he had. He couldn’t remember even that much.
“I don’t suppose you could tell me your name?”
He could. He could remember that. But it wouldn’t mean much to this man, his name and colony-connection, identifying him as seal-kin. Nothing this human male could understand. An instant of panic flooded his brain, and then another name came to him from memories of long ago, names and connections to the land…
“Dylan.” He coughed, spoke again more firmly, confidence coming back to him with the memories. “My name’s Dylan. Dylan…Meridith.”
“Excellent.” The man took a thin instrument out of his white coat’s pocket and flicked it on, a narrow beam of light coming from one end. Dylan obediently let him flick the light into one eye and then the other, relieved when the man—a doctor?—grunted in satisfaction and turned the light off. “Look this way, please? And that way. Excellent. No headache? Very good. Lie back now, and relax. You gave us all quite a scare, Mr. Meridith, washing up like that. Usually by the time the Atlantic gets done with bodies, they go to the morgue, not the emergency room.”
He had been swimming, that was right. Heading for shore. Looking…
Looking for his mate. Yes.
Dylan lay back on the pillow, the memories returning now. Bypassing the other colonies to come here, to where humans lived, this arm of land jutting out from the mainland. Swimming, endlessly swimming: so focused that he ignored the warning signs of the storm, when he should have known better. The storm came. Waves knocking him over, being bumped by something, losing consciousness…
And waking up here.
“I… You found me on the sand.” It wasn’t a question; he remembered that, vaguely. Voices and lights, things being done to his body, bringing his temperature back up… He owed those people his life. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Although I had the easy part, just waiting for you to wake up.” He smiled, and the kind blue eyes sparkled with life and humor. “I’m Dr. Alden, by the way, and I’m the one who says when you get to go home. But first, we need to know where home is, exactly.”
Dylan froze. The name he’d given the doctor had been placed in his memory years ago, just in case, but he hadn’t thought of what to say about his home. He hadn’t even thought to think about it.
He trusted this Dr. Alden, instinctively. Despite that, his voice caught before any words escaped. You never told where the colony was. You never betrayed the kin living there. That was the first training seal-kin got, when they first went out among the human-kin. It was too dangerous.
Sometimes, following instinct was good. Sometimes, it was not so good. What was he supposed to do?
Another flash of memory: someone talking over him, something about debris, looking for debris, of…a boat?
“Daughter of the Sea,” he said, buying time with whatever came to mind. “My boat. Is it okay?”
Since there wasn’t any such boat, he wasn’t horribly crushed when Dr. Alden sadly told him that there was no sign of his boat anywhere, not even debris. But it gave him enough time to come up with a story that would get him out of this hospital.
Because he remembered something else from the night before, after the feel of sand under his face and being wrapped in blankets and bundled into a vehicle. He remembered a warm voice, and a cool hand on his skin, and the reaction he’d had, even mostly unconscious, to her presence.
A woman. The woman he had come to find.
She was here.
He had come to the right place, after all. The sea had not betrayed him.
Dr. Alden excused himself and disappeared beyond the curtains, leaving Dylan to sink into the hard comfort of his bed. She was here.
And with that thought, the urgency returned, a wave that would have knocked him over were he not already lying down. Instead, it sent him bolt upright.
He had to find her. Now.
“Where do you think you’re going, young man?”
The doctor appeared next to him, a firm hand on his arm. Dylan would have protested except that he feared, if the human let go, he would fall on his face like a weanling denied milk.
“You said I was fine.”
“I said you hadn’t suffered any permanent damage. That’s not fine. You were badly dehydrated, battered, and unless I miss my guess, your muscles aren’t responding very well to commands even now.”
“I’ll be fine. I…” This doctor had eyes like Dylan’s grandfather: wide-set, sky-blue and gentle, but still able to see through any lie you might even think about telling. “I mean no disrespect, sir. I know that you mean well. But I don’t like being indoors, especially in a medical facility. I’d do better if I could find a place with…with windows, at least.”
“Humph.” The doctor’s gruff voice didn’t match the understanding in those eyes, and Dylan felt himself relax, even as the older man ushered him back onto the bed.
“I’ll tell you what. You let me run a few tests, make me feel better about turning you out into the street, and I’ll sign off on your discharge papers today. Deal?”
Dylan nodded. “Deal.”
Part of the test involved giving up quantities of his blood, and breathing into a strange device of three tubes with small balls inside. Dylan amused himself by making all three balls rise and fall in unison, until Doctor Alden admitted that his lungs were in excellent shape and took the device away. Then, he had to walk the length of the clinic—ten beds and two exam rooms—without faltering.
A glimpse out the one window in the hallway, a single clear pane of glass, reassured him that he was not far from the sea—set on a rise of land, the clinic looked over rooftops toward the wide expanse of water. Dr. Alden left him there, staring out at the horizon, while he went off to do whatever it was that doctors did. Soon enough the nurse came by and shooed him back to his bed, where a pair of dark blue pants, a white shirt and cheap white sneakers waited. “Your clothing didn’t survive your wreck,” she said apologetically. “We had to guess at your size and the color choices were, well, limited.”
“Thank you.” He had left home so quickly, without thinking anything through, he hadn’t even th
ought about clothing. Or money. Oh, hell.
He dropped the simple robe and reached for the jeans. The nurse let out a noise that was a cross between a giggle and a squeak, and left him to get dressed.
“So.” Dr. Alden appeared without fanfare as he was lacing up the shoes. “No dizziness? No last-minute headache to crash your escape plans?”
“I’m good?” Dylan waited with bated breath for the answer.
“You’re annoyingly good. If all of my patients healed up as quickly as you did, I’d be out of business and have to find honest work.”
The nurse walking by snickered quietly, then ducked her head when the doctor mock-glared at her. “You can see that I get no respect at all, already.”
Dylan wisely stayed out of the argument. At home, females outnumbered males 3:2 and bossed the younger males around mercilessly, giving way only when males reached what his mother called “the interesting age.” That snicker had sounded reassuringly familiar to a man who grew up surrounded by sisters.
“All right. Yes, you get your walking papers, and consider yourself a lucky son of a bitch. Try to keep on top of the water, not under it, from now on?”
Dylan merely smiled and took the papers the doctor handed him, scrawling something on the line for his own signature. His people spent almost half their lives riding underneath the waves. But he appreciated the concern.
Dr. Alden put his own signature on the papers that made his release official and tucked them into his clipboard. “There you go. I want you to check in with your own doctor when you get home, though, just to be on the safe side. All right?”
“I had actually planned on staying in town for a little while,” Dylan admitted. “It seems like a nice place. From the little I saw of it last night.”
Dr. Alden laughed. “Watery and dark, you mean. It is a nice enough place, yes. We avoid the worst of the tourist invasion, and I certainly like it here, but I can’t imagine there’d be much to keep you occupied, unless you’re here for the beach or the views. Still, if you’re going to stay, welcome to you. And feel free to stop by if anything at all feels odd or uneasy.”
“I will. Ah…” Dylan suddenly felt awkward again. Free. Nothing in the human world was free, and he had no money. Nothing at all, except… The weight on his ankle was a sudden, reassuring shock—the anklet, a gift from his sister years before, was so familiar he had forgotten it was there. He could sell that, maybe. Sell it, and settle his debt.
“Don’t worry about it, young Dylan.” Dr. Alden’s eyes were kind again. “Men who show up stark naked on our beach, and don’t immediately ask for a phone to call their family? We don’t expect you’re going to pull out a platinum card. Fortunately, you weren’t exactly a financial burden, not needing much more than a bed and treatment for mild dehydration and exhaustion.”
“Still, I…”
“Someday, when you can, you’ll make a donation. Yes?”
“Yes.” He would. Even if he had to swim all the way back from the colony with the funds clenched between his teeth, he would.
“Do you have somewhere to stay? Tourist town, Nantucket’s become. No decent place cheap anymore. But you go to the Blue Anchor. I’ll call ahead, and Brandt will take care of you for a few days, until you figure things out.”
Seals were communal, and so by default were their kin. But they tended to care only for their own, and strangers were not welcomed. Humans, it seemed, were different. That pleased Dylan, even as it confused him slightly. If they knew how very much a stranger he was, would they still welcome him? Or would they drive him out?
Instinct warned him to stay silent, to try to fit in as quickly and quietly as possible. There was so much he didn’t know, so many ways he could do the wrong thing. He wasn’t used to being uncertain. It pissed him off, both the sensation and the hesitation.
Leaving the clinic, the sharp scent of sea and salt slid into his pores and made his muscles relax after the antiseptic feel of the clinic. The sun was warm overhead, white clouds scudding against a clear blue sky, and the sound of gulls soaring and screaming overhead was like laughter in his ears.
A full day waited in front of him. A full day, and his mate waiting for him, somewhere nearby. The thought that she might be within earshot, even, her silken skin waiting for his touch…
The rush of blood to his groin wasn’t unexpected. The strange tightness in his chest was more of a surprise. He tried to breathe normally, remembering how easy it had been to breathe into the medical apparatus, but the tightness remained. It wasn’t his lungs that weren’t working, but the muscles in his chest, constricting around his heart with a pang that felt a little like hunger, and a little like sadness.
When he claimed his mate, all those emotions would go away. The knowledge came to him the same way awareness of her had, appearing like something he’d always known only never consciously realized until now. He had to find her. Everything would be all right once he found her.
But first, he needed to find a place that would buy his anklet. A jewelry store, or a crafts stall. Or a pawnshop. Something like that, any town of decent size would have to have those, yes? Then, he would go to this bed-and-breakfast. It burned him to take charity, but maybe, if he got enough for the anklet, he wouldn’t have to. Money was the first priority, though. He might be willing to sleep on the beach without fuss, but if he was going to look among humans, he needed to stay among them, too.
Glancing down at the sheet of paper Dr. Alden had given him, with a rough-drawn map and a name on it, he stepped onto the sidewalk, and started moving toward his goal.
Chapter 3
Beth had woken early that morning, listening to the birds doing their welcome-the-dawn thing outside her window, and cautiously probed her emotional status the way a bomb technician might inspect a suspicious package. Yes, still twitchy, even though the storm had blown through, and the skies were now clear and bright. In fact, she thought that it might even be worse now, and she couldn’t blame it on the weather.
Or the dream she’d had, all sea-green and salty, the pressure on her lungs as though she were holding her breath too long, like being held underwater but without any of the fear or agitation you might think would come from a dream about drowning.
She knew how to swim, of course. You didn’t grow up on an island and not know how to swim. But her family was odd among the Nantucket old-timers; nobody in her family went to sea for their career. Not back when there was an actual sailing-and-whaling industry based on the island, not to the navy, marines, or Coasties—although there were stories of a distant cousin in the air force, during WWII—and not now. Hell, they didn’t even own a boat, relying on the ferry to get them the short distance between the island and mainland. They stayed put on land, and did landy things—without ever getting too far from the ocean itself. She tried to remember a single close relative who had moved to a landlocked state, and failed. She had gone away for college, but come home as soon as she could, and her father had never even gotten that far away, and every cousin within two generations had been the same.
So why was she now dreaming of the sea like it was something she had been missing all her life? How could you yearn for something you always had, and never particularly wanted?
It had been an erotic dream, too, she remembered now, stretching and blushing slightly at the memory. Waves like hands stroking her skin, the water blood-warm, even as her blood warmed more. Her own hand slid down her belly, tangling briefly in the curls between her legs, curls that were still damp from the intensity of that dream.
Beth let out a deep sigh and scrubbed at her face with both hands, trying to erase all images, erotic or otherwise, from her head. “That storm just messed with you, is all. The storm, and that naked man on the beach…
“Oh, yeah. Time to get out of the house, away from the darkroom and the computer and all the stress, and put some fresh air on your face,” she told herself, throwing off the covers and making her way, shivering, to the wardrobe. Never mind tha
t it hadn’t worked all that well yesterday; today was a new day. Anything was possible, right?
Underwear, a pair of sweats and a jog bra, and a windbreaker over that, two pairs of socks, and her sneakers, and she was ready to go. Ten minutes later, she had pulled her bike out of storage and was pedaling down the road, already feeling her mood improve even as the memory of the dream faded. The road was slick with morning dew, and the air was crisp and salty on her skin, just the way it should be. Instead of heading to the beach road as usual, though, she went upland, above town, and away from the water. It was more of a workout that way, she justified to herself, feeling her muscles protest as she headed up a steep incline. If she worked hard this morning, she could eat an éclair from Peggie’s Bakery after dinner without guilt.
Maybe even two, if she only had a salad for dinner itself.
An hour later, sweating and grinning, éclairs earned and her mood on a definite upswing, she locked the bike up outside the local diner and went inside.
“Morning, Miss Elizabeth,” the man behind the counter called out. “Coffee ’n’ eggroll?”
“Please, yes, thank you, Ben.” The eggroll had been a joke since she was ten—it was exactly that, a hard roll with scrambled eggs inside. No bacon, no ham, nothing except egg, to which Beth would add a dose of hot sauce just before she ate it. The first time she had gone to a Chinese restaurant, the notion that there might be another kind of egg roll had completely floored her.