It stalked us. Pale green eyes stark under a mass of dark hair matted and clumped around a massive set of shoulders thick with muscle. It tracked Noah’s every move. Each counter step Noah took to keep himself in front of me. Arms as strong and powerful as cannons. Hands shrouded in webs so they weren’t really hands at all. Its bare torso was ribbed and corded with muscle encased in skin a ghostly blue and textured like sand paper, covered only in what might have once been a pair of shorts. An animated being from the pages of a comic book. Something beyond our existence. Neither fully a beast, nor fully a man.
Oddly beautiful.
Noah inhaled sharply. His muscles tensed and bunched as if he’d received an electrical shock. His voice, when he spoke, was choked with disbelief. “Jamie?”
Green eyes honed in on Noah at the sound of his voice, sharp and intelligent.
“Jamie,” Noah said again. The name held a world of confusion.
I stared. How could this monster be Jamie?
The monster’s head turned, eyes shifting toward the gulf, its sharp profile in relief against the white sand, as though he heard something we didn’t. Panic flashed through his harsh features. He opened his mouth, spread his arms to the sky and let out a roar, so loud I nearly doubled over. My hands covered my ears. The sand seemed to tremble under my feet. I swear the waves rose in response to the harsh command in his voice, crashing angrily on the shore. I wondered if any landers were nearby to witness this. I was too afraid to turn and look. I couldn’t look away from this thing. I felt the absurd need to drop to my knees.
“Noah?” I whispered into the sudden quiet that descended in the wake of such a chaos of sound. Jamie’s eyes, if this were indeed Jamie, met mine briefly, and I was swamped by a wave of pure desolation. As though behind the pale green was a barren landscape of nothing.
Then he was gone so fast it was like the Deep yanked him back as if to claim him as hers.
“Jamie!” Noah yelled as he started to go after him. He stopped when he reached the surf, the waves crashing around his legs. He glanced back at me. “Stay here.” Then Noah went after him.
I stood on the beach, too shocked to disobey.
* * *
Every night for three nights I waited on the beach, and still Noah hadn’t come back. My days were a fog of sameness. School. Working at Maggie’s shop. Dodging questions and making excuses for Noah’s continued absence.
The worst part was standing by my locker at school with Erin beside me, knowing what I did. But what did I really know? I knew monsters were real. I knew Noah called that monster Jamie. But what if he was wrong? Until I knew for sure, my mouth was sealed. And I wouldn’t know for sure until Noah came back.
If he ever did.
Months. He’d been gone for months the last time he’d gone searching for his brother. I couldn’t bear months. I should have followed him. Waiting sucked, the unknown playing havoc in my mind.
What if Noah found him? What if that thing hurt him?
The third night I spent on the Muerte Blanca with Sol, staring into the dark, silently waiting. He didn’t ask about my sullen and pensive mood, and I didn’t tell. When morning came, I wordlessly dove back into the Deep and spent another day avoiding Erin at school.
On the fourth night, the cold chased me from the beach to my balcony. I sat in one of the chairs wrapped in a blanket, staring out at the gulf. Any minute his head would pop out of the water. He’d walk out of the surf. The bracelet he’d given me was clutched in my hand. I’d wanted Noah to be the one to put it back on. I wanted to look him in the eye when I accepted what he offered. When I accepted always.
My Song begged for release. My heart wanting so bad to sing him back. I could do it. I’d done it before. Instead, I took the bracelet Noah gave me and put it back on my wrist. The weight of it felt right. Forever didn’t sound so long anymore.
Another day passed. And the next night found me in my bed wide awake. Sleep eluded me. I was about to go out to the beach when I heard someone out on the balcony. A chair scraped over the concrete. My door slid the rest of the way open. My heart thudded, not out of fear, but in utter relief. I could smell him and when Noah paused by the bed and the pearl at my wrist infused with heat, it felt more right than ever before.
I opened my mouth to say something and shut it quickly when he walked into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. The shower came on and ran for a long time. By the time it shut off, I had nearly fallen asleep, my body finally able to give in to the tiredness accumulated over the past few days now that I knew he was back and safe. The bathroom door opened and the light clicked off. A few seconds later, Noah crawled into bed with me.
“Noah.” I tried to turn around so I faced him, but he rolled me over on my side and pulled me against his front.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. I just needed to see you.” His breath blew over my cheek, smelling of minty toothpaste.
“Are you naked?” His skin was still damp from his shower. His days spent in the Deep lingered like a whisper under the lavender smell of my body wash.
“It’s okay. I know I should have gone home first and cleaned up, but I wanted to see you. I didn’t think you’d want my dirty shorts in your clean bed. I promise I just want to lay here.” He tucked the sheet between us and I immediately pulled it away. I wanted to feel his heat on my back as much as I could through my shirt.
I waited for him to get situated, one arm over my hip, his even breathing in my hair, his body relaxed against mine before I asked, “Was that really Jamie?”
“Yes. No. Hell, I don’t know. You remember that night you asked me if you would grow a tail?”
“Yes.” I smiled into my pillow at the absurdity of the question. Though now I wondered if it had been so absurd after all.
“Well, the real answer is a lot more complicated,” he said tiredly. I wondered if he’d slept in the four days he was out searching.
“Did you find him?” I asked, somehow knowing if he did he wouldn’t be here with me now.
“No. God, Caris, he was so fast. I was chasing a phantom. I never even caught his scent.” Awe crept into his voice, sparking that sense of worship I’d felt when I’d watched the beast that was Jamie on the beach.
“What will you do?” I couldn’t imagine Noah just giving up now that he knew Jamie was out there. Alive. A beast.
“Wait for him to come back. I don’t know.” His lips moved against my ear, and I shivered as his warm breath caressed those sensitive layers of skin.
His hand trailed over my arm and found my wrist. He circled it with his fingers under the bracelet. “You put it back on.”
“I love you, Noah. Not wearing it didn’t change that.”
He buried his face in my hair, his arms tight over my chest. “God, I love you too, but only if you’re sure.”
I wasn’t sure what he was asking but it didn’t matter. I was sure how I felt about him and all that mattered was he was back. “What are you going to tell your mom?”
“I don’t know. Right now, I just want to sleep with you.”
I tucked his hand under my chin, relishing the feel of him behind me. I lay awake a long time, long after the steady rhythm of Noah’s breath indicated he was deep asleep. His arm was a solid weight on my hip, anchoring me to him.
Careful not wake him, I lifted his arm and placed it gently behind me. I waited a beat while Noah rolled over, settling once again into stillness, his face angled toward the open door. The cool breeze infused with a shot of warmth and gentled over his face, lifting a strand of his hair off his cheek. The wind coaxed me from the bed and out into the clear starry night.
My eyes searched the endless array of stars, glittering like tiny promises against a velvet sky. Whatever lay ahead for Noah in regards to Jamie, I’d be with him.
I stood with my hands on the railing, letting the sense of home cloak my bare shoulders and legs. From here, I could see the end of the world, but it wasn’t an end, it was a beginning.
/>
It was the start of always.
Copyright © 2014 by Kimberly James
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real persons, events or places is purely coincidental; any reference to actual places, people or brands are fictitious. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
About the Author
Thank you for reading Waterdreamer. Erin and Jamie’s story continues in Watermark, coming March 2015. Turn the page for sneak peek.
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Watermark
Erin
I dipped my paddle into the coppery water. Other than the occasional kayaker, the lake was deserted. The sun cast its cheery smile on the back of my shoulders as I glided to a stop before I sat, straddling the board with my knees. Tall slimy grass slithered like live things around my legs. I ignored the tickle on my toes and placed a small cube of raw fish on the end of my paddleboard.
“Come on girl, you know you want a bite.”
I was breaking the rules. Luna was supposed to be learning to fend for herself. And she could. I’d seen her do it, scavenging for small shells and tiny fish. But Luna occupied the one tender spot in my otherwise calloused heart, and I couldn’t see the harm in offering her a few freebies.
I owed her after all.
Luna swam in a lazy circle two feet away from the tip of my board. Her curious brown eyes brightened at the sound of my voice. Her eyes didn’t exactly match. A silvery scar bisected the left one above and below the rim; a hairless line that caused her left eye to droop. The vet assured me she retained as much as eighty percent of her vision in the injured eye, otherwise he never would have signed off on her release. But I noticed she always favored the right one. Even now, she angled her head at me so that her right eye had a direct bead on the end of my board and the tempting treat.
It had been friends at first sight the day Luna had been brought to the Walton County Wildlife Rescue Center. My life at the time hadn’t really resembled a life at all. Certainly not the life of a normal seventeen-year-old. My parents wanted me to go to grief counseling. I refused. I didn’t want to talk to a stranger about my dead husband. There was no way I was going to talk to a stranger about my baby girl. So we agreed I could volunteer at the WCWRC instead.
Luna came in on my first day. She was a brown river otter. She’d survived a close encounter with a boat propeller and we latched onto each other like the barnacles on the pilings of our dock. I held no illusions. I was the parasite in this equation, but I had needed something to cling to that couldn’t hurt me. I looked into her scared but trusting eyes and deemed her safe.
Luna proved to be a very good therapist.
She’d been released back into the wild three weeks ago and appeared to be thriving. I hoped it was a good omen for me. Today was my release day. My release back into the wilds of that place called high school.
“Aren’t you hungry?” I teased the fish with my finger. Her nose twitched, then stilled, her little claws curling into fists.
“What’s the matter girl?” She usually jumped right up on the end of the board and gobbled up whatever snack I brought her. She was unduly skittish this morning, exhibiting a nervousness I hadn’t seen in her since the day she’d been brought into the center.
Her nose gave another little twitch and she flipped over and disappeared, leaving me staring after a lonely ripple that grew lonelier the farther it traveled from its epicenter until it too disappeared all together.
Seconds later, Luna emerged on the far side of the lake and scrambled up the opposite bank. She paused and looked back at me, twitched her tail once, then scampered into the underbrush.
“Thanks a lot,” I called after her, trying not to take offense at her abrupt departure. Not that I could blame her. She‘d been through quite a trauma and still had the scars to prove it. I had scars too, but unlike Luna, mine were on the inside, barely healed, the edges still festering. Like Luna’s face, I imagined my heart rested lopsided in my chest. And like the ankle I’d sprained during volleyball practice last week, I’d packed ice around it, numbing it to the pain of loss, the grief.
Something grazed against my foot. I jerked my legs out of the water, tucking my knees to my chin. My board shimmied underneath me, paddle teetering precariously before my hand closed around it.
My heart leapt with possibilities. I hated that after nearly two years there was a part of me still looking for him. Still hoping. If Jamie hadn’t been what he was these crazy thoughts would never cross my mind. But Jamie had been different. He’d been special.
I’d lived in this resort community on the Gulf Coast of Florida all my life. “Florida’s Best Kept Secret.” That’s what the sign said at the foot of the bridge that linked our community to the rest of the panhandle. Any tourist reading that sign would rightly assume it was referring to our white sandy beaches, the clear emerald water. But the locals knew it also had a hidden meaning. A reference to another secret. One not so well kept. Our community was habitat to another species of human. Unless you were attuned to the subtle differences, on the outside they appeared mostly the same as anyone else.
The first time I’d seen Jamie Jacobs I’d been attuned to them. I’d never seen eyes like Jamie’s on a regular human before, pale and sparkling green like the water he’d emerged from. I’d never be able to look at the Gulf of Mexico and not think of him. One of the reasons I’d started coming to the lake, forsaking the beach. I didn’t see those pale green eyes in the coppery depths of the lake. It was hard to see anything at all.
He had a sensitive spot behind his ears, a crescent shaped layer of translucent membrane that when immersed, gave him the ability to cycle oxygen through his skin, allowing him to breathe water. Jamie was strong, stupidly brave, and I’d believed him invincible. He’d been trained to be invincible. And not only was he a hero to our country, he was my hero.
I’d fallen for him so hard, I found myself pregnant. Two weeks later we’d been married. Then the unthinkable happened and I discovered Jamie wasn’t invincible after all. And neither was the tiny life growing inside me. I lost the one thing he’d left behind and spent the next year drowning in my grief, spilling my guts to an otter. Now it was time to move on, and part of moving on for me was finishing high school, picking back up at normal. If such a thing were possible.
I was counting on it being possible.
I shook off thoughts of what used to be and stood up, angling the tip of my board toward the dock. Underneath me something flashed through the water as quick as a shooting star. Dark instead of light. Looming instead of wishful.
An alligator? Possible, even though I’d never seen one in the nine months I’d been coming here. Is that what had scared Luna? I hadn’t seen anything, nothing more than a shadow, but for some reason my pulse raced in the quiet growing around me, putting a chill on my skin despite the warmth from the rising sun. My toes gripped the board as my arms stroked faster. I cast a glance downward.
Something was underneath me, shadowing my progress. Stalking me.
The twenty feet of water between the end of my board and the dock loomed like twenty miles. Whatever shadowed me hit my board, causing it to shoot out from underneath me. I fell flat on my back, the sting stealing my breath. I surfaced, gasping, the snake-like grass coiling around my legs. I watched my board glide along the surface back toward the center of the lake. I thought about going after it for about half a breath, then turned and swam for the dock. I wasn’t alone in this lake. It had to be an alligator. What else could it be? I imagined its jaws clamping around an arm or a leg, dragging me under, trapping me there until I drowned.
My arms worked faster. No way was that going to happen. Not after all I’d live
d through. Maybe at one time, in those darkest days when I’d felt like I had nothing to live for, the thought of dying would have brought with it a sense of relief. It didn’t today. I had a life now. Too many people had made sure of that. I had high school to finish, college to attend, a future. I finally, after so long without it, had found a sense of hope.
I grabbed the edge of the dock, fingers biting into the splintered wood and pulled myself up. The corner of the dock dug into my stomach as I lay half on, half off the weathered wood. The lower half of my legs remained submerged as the wood vibrated as though absorbing the blows from something big. Something strong enough to knock the whole thing down into the water. My grip faltered, and I slipped farther back into the water, the wood scraping away a layer of skin on my thigh. I ignored the sting as my brain spurred me on. With one desperate heave, I propelled myself out of the water. I landed on my stomach, my breaths coming short and tight, my arms and legs weak with the relief of making it to the safety the dock. But I didn’t feel safe. I didn’t think I would until I was back in my Tahoe, back at my house.
A loud keening rent the air and the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood on end. I flipped over, my eyes searching the rippling water before raising to the thick growth of vegetation surrounding the lake. Nothing. Not a stir. Not the slightest breeze.
Not many panthers this far north, but we had our share of black bears and deer. None of those animals could’ve made the noise I just heard. And it hadn’t come from the thick sponge of scrub oaks and palmetto bushes. It came from the lake.
I had no idea what it was, but it was still there. I felt its eyes on me. I lurched to my feet and ran.
I didn’t get far. Somehow I’d failed to register the footsteps pounding down the dock until a pair of arms caught me, holding me away from a sweat soaked t-shirt.
“Whoa.” Long fingers tightened on my upper arms, preventing my escape. “You all right? I thought I heard someone screaming.”
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