I clutched the hand of a stranger. Strangers, everywhere. Every thing was strange. I was on land—inside of a house.
“Where am I?” I screamed, in a blubbering panic. “What happened to me? I’m a mermaid—I’m a mermaid—I can’t remember anything.”
“Shh, dear.” An older woman patted my hand. “You’re all right now.”
“This is Prince Wrindel. He’ll take good care of you,” a younger woman said.
Prince Wrindel? I was hyperventilating, but I managed to stop screaming. Something about Prince Wrindel seemed…sort of…familiar.
I certainly hoped he was familiar, because he was absolutely gorgeous, and as scared as I was, that fact still didn’t hurt.
Everything else was strange beyond words. I was disoriented, my mind reaching for something it knew was there but couldn’t find. My memories were a haze. Instead of a tail, I had legs. Human legs. Human everything. I had been thrashing but once I realized this I went completely still and hugged my legs together. It frightened me, seeing them.
Wrindel pulled the sheet over me. “Talwyn…do you remember anything?”
“Not really! I remember my name. I know I’m a mermaid. It’s all—vague.”
“You lost your memory. I’m going to take you home and explain all that I know. Don’t worry.” He put a steady hand on my shoulder. “I’ll take care of everything for you and make sure you get your memories back. All right?”
I nodded, somewhat dumbstruck. What else could I say? I didn’t even know where I belonged, except under the water.
“I’ll get you a dress,” the younger woman said, opening a small cabinet with clothes inside.
I had only seen human rooms in shipwrecks, which meant I felt them in the shadows almost as much as I saw them. So in some basic way, this place felt familiar, but I had never seen a fire crackling softly in a hearth, or felt bed clothes around me, or been able to observe the details of furniture, curtains, and the way the light fell through the window. I couldn’t decide whether it was nice, or deeply disconcerting.
“This is the best I have,” the girl said, bringing over a green gown. “I’m sorry it’s not much, your highness. I do think it will fit.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Wrindel said. “It’s perfect. Hold out your arms, sunshine.”
I did, and he pushed the sleeves onto my arms. He seemed pretty relaxed, like he knew what to do, and I just went along with it as he tugged my head through the collar. I pulled it down over me the rest of the way. It was tight on me, and I felt trapped. Like I was wearing a net. I pinched and pulled at the fabric. But I realized the other women were dressed similarly. I suppose I just wasn’t used to wearing clothes.
“There,” he said. “Can you walk?”
“Walk? I don’t know how to walk.”
“I has a horse I can loan you,” the older woman said.
“Very good. I want to get her somewhere safe and quiet as soon as possible,” he said. “Thank you, ladies. You’ve both been so helpful.” He gave them each a few coins and they flushed and beamed, even the older one. My first thought was that I didn’t like the way the young elven maid looked at him.
I clutched my head.
I felt like I was in some strange dream where none of my circumstances or emotions made any sense.
The young woman tried to offer me something to eat, which I refused, and something to drink, which I accepted. It was good ale, and helped calm my nerves a bit. A horse appeared outside. It poked its head in one of the open windows. The young woman laughed. “There is your ride, dear prince. Thank you so much.”
“You’ve nothing to thank me for,” he said. “I am grateful to you for helping me rescue my friend.” To me, he said, “I’m going to carry you out of here, put you on the horse and bring you home. Then, we’ll sort it all out. I’ll get the healers to look at you. We’ll get your memories back.”
“Do you suppose I could take that ale with me?” I asked the young woman.
“Of course!” She gave me the entire skin.
Wrindel grinned at me. “There’s a girl,” he said.
Yes, whoever he was, he did know me. It was strange to have emotions for someone you didn’t remember, but I did. He said I was his friend, and I sensed the edge of more. He was protective of me and I felt a little possessive of him. We couldn’t have been lovers…no, not a mermaid and an elven prince. But he had reason to care for me, and that was the only thing I had to cling to right now.
The surface world was full of things I think I had heard of, or perhaps seen in other contexts, but I was pretty sure I’d never been in the middle of a town before. A lot of people were gathered around. A few of them greeted the prince, but mostly they were quiet, just politely snooping. He lifted me onto the horse and I suppressed a wave of terror at how big the creature was and that I had to split my legs to sit on it. It felt so wrong to have legs, like I had broken into pieces. The horse snuffled and moved slightly. I gripped the saddle in terror, afraid to move in case I upset it somehow.
Wrindel mounted behind me and settled me back against his chest. Clearly, he knew what he was doing.
The skin of my legs was exquisitely sensitive. A few minutes ago, it had not even existed, at least not in this form. Human skin seemed more fragile than my tail, and it was very strange to have such fragile skin surrounding such important parts of me. Between my legs, I was especially sensitive. As the horse walked, the leather saddle rubbed against me in a way that made me squirm. Paired with the arm of this strangely familiar and very attractive man at my waist, I had to squelch a wave of unexpected desire.
I’m not supposed to be enjoying this!
“You had me worried,” he said, spurring the horse on down the street. I tensed at the movement, and he held me closer still. “You’re steady,” he said. “Not used to this, are you?”
“No. None of this.”
“The last time I saw you, you were helping me track down a ship,” he said. “I wondered why I hadn’t seen you since. Then, they told me you’d lost your memory.”
“How?”
“You hit your head.”
“I can’t believe I would hit my head!” I was indignant at the very idea. I had never been clumsy. I might not have my memories, but I knew my own self.
“Anyone can make a mistake…” But he sounded like he found it an odd story as well. “Do you remember anything?”
“No…”
“Something happened. I don’t trust that old mermaid, but we’ll figure it out.”
“You keep saying that, but…how will you figure it out? Who is this woman?”
As we rode, he told me that he had met an old mermaid on the shore who told him of my condition, and that later she had brought me to him. The Palace of Waterfalls grew closer with every beat of the horse’s hooves. I had never seen the palace up close, but it was unmistakable—and beautiful. So beautiful that I almost missed a chunk of his story, even though it was so important.
The palace was the perfect marriage of natural rock, surface construction, and water. It had been built into the side of a hill and was several stories tall, with small waterfalls spilling into pools on every level, ending in a moat at the bottom. It was very symmetrical, with neat rows of tall glass windows—so different from the natural caves and rocks that formed our homes. The light was clear today and smelled of bread and spices; the sun glinted on the waterfalls as the sky turned pink from the sunset. I had some idea of what this world was like, but it was always from the shore. I had never been in the midst of it before.
“You’ve always wanted to see it,” he said. “You told me so. I know you were trying to pretend you didn’t care that much that you couldn’t travel on land. But you’re here now, so you ought to enjoy it.”
“How long have we known each other?”
“Should I tell you how we first met?”
“Of course!”
“Well…” He leaned back in the saddle a bit, but his hand remained at my
hip, comfortingly solid through the thin fabric of my dress. “All my life, I’ve taken walks on the shore when I need to be alone. I think it was in the spring when I first saw you sitting there, picking bits of things off the beach. You told me you hadn’t been in this region for long, and that you travel around looking for treasures. You aren’t the first mermaid I’ve ever gotten conversational with, but…”
“But?” I prodded.
He hesitated, and then shrugged. “Well, I went to the trouble of saving you today, so there must be something about you.”
“How often have we talked?”
“Not often enough. I’m lucky to see you once a week. Of course, mermaids don’t have clocks, and princes can’t spend all their time wandering beaches hoping to run into them.”
“We’ve spoken once a week since spring? It’s autumn now.” That was more than enough time for courting, if we had been the same species.
“Yes…”
“That’s quite a lot of visits we’ve had.”
“My family had no idea I was meeting a mermaid down there. Of course, my family doesn’t know half of what I’m up to. But I’m going to have to explain you now.”
“Explain me?”
“You’ll have to live in the palace for a little while. But it’s a pretty nice place.”
We were right at the foot of the building now. My eyes cast upward, taking in details: fish carved into eaves, colored tiles decorating the wall under an open walkway. Even the stone channel that the moat water spilled out of was carved on the end into a shape like flower petals unfurling. I had the sense that I wasn’t supposed to be admiring the surface world as much as I did. I was supposed to tell myself I didn’t belong here.
I could hardly wait to see the rooms inside.
“A ‘pretty nice place’?” I said. “If only the merfolk could build such dwellings.”
“Well, sunshine, every place gets boring after a while,” he said. He led the horse into an adjacent building to the palace. I could smell the livestock from a distance. Inside, dozens and dozens of stalls held as many horses in an enormous room that smelled of hay and dung. I wrinkled my nose. The ocean currents kept waste from being a problem.
He dismounted and helped me down into his arms, and I felt like I was made of knees and elbows.
“I’ve got you,” he said.
I was going to make a joke about the horse shit, but the way he looked at me put the world on pause.
“I’ve always wished I could show you this place, at least once,” he said.
I felt as if I had dreamed of being here with him, too—even as I suspected that this was a terrible, hopeless thing to dream. Mermaids didn’t belong here. Every minute I spent in this place, I was leaving something important behind. I just couldn’t remember what it was. With every passing moment, it seemed to matter less.
My eyes drank in the sight of him, eyes full of humor and…need. Yes. I saw it there. He desired me; he had been dreaming of this. I had never been close to a merman, but an elven man was quite different in any case. Everything on land seemed more solid and important and dangerous—including the people. It stirred my curiosity.
“Talwyn…,” he said, his voice low, like a caress on my ear.
My heart was beating so fast I was sure he could hear it. Don’t you dare, I told myself. You need to get your memories back and go home, and if you entangle yourself, it will only make it harder to do what must be done.
“Wrin?”
When another male voice called out behind us, Wrindel shifted his grip on me. I went from ‘rescued girl’ to ‘sack of grain’. Clearly he didn’t want to get caught being too intimate with me. “Ah,” Wrindel said. “This is Talwyn. I need to see if the healers can help her. Seems she has a little amnesia.”
“Is this the mermaid you were talking about?” The other man bore a strong similarity to Wrindel. His fair hair was a little longer, his eyes darker, his body a little more tall and lean, but I wasn’t surprised when he said, “I’m Ithrin. Wrindel’s older brother.”
“Yeah, I did mention her to you once, didn’t I?”
“Yes.” Ithrin lifted an eyebrow. “A little amnesia? How does one get ‘a little’ amnesia?”
“She hit her head.”
“Sounds like magic.”
“I don’t know, that’s why I want to take her to the healer. But first I just want her to have a chance to rest. She’s not used to our world.”
Ithrin flicked a gaze at me and then back to his brother again. “Can I talk to you for a moment, Wrin?”
Wrindel scowled at his brother. “Not now.” He started walking briskly toward the door. “How is Father doing?”
“No change, for better or for worse, but I suppose that’s good enough for now. His mood has improved; at least, he’s been teasing the maids, although he did ask for a gods’ blessing again this morning.”
“Good enough for now,” Wrindel agreed, but he sounded grim. “I’ll see you at dinner.”
“But—wait—”
“At dinner,” Wrindel insisted. “I’m obviously busy.”
“You be careful with him!” Ithrin told me as Wrindel hustled me up a narrow staircase.
“Ignore him,” Wrindel said. “He’s always trying to tell me what to do.”
“Siblings can be like that,” I said, memories pricking me. I had siblings, didn’t I? It was very distressing that I couldn’t remember any family at all. “Your father isn’t well?” I asked.
“He’s…recovering. He’ll be fine.” I could tell he didn’t want to talk about it, and it was easy to put it all out of my head as he carried me into the main interior of the palace. The room opened up like a vast cave, only no cave could ever be as beautiful as this. Stone walls soared into arches, with clear glass windows on our eye level and colored ones up high. The golden light of sunset played in huge shapes on the floor and caught the sparkling water in rows of square pools. It was very strange to see water placed in such orderly containers, each one with a statue in the middle, water burbling up around the carved forms of fish and mermaids.
I looked over his shoulder and then twitched in his arms, wanting to look closer. I wished I knew how to walk, but it also stirred some childish instinct to play in the water, the way I used to when I was little.
The hall was fairly empty and quiet. A few elven ladies were strolling arm in arm, speaking in soft voices to one another, glancing at Wrindel with polite curiosity.
“I’ll introduce you later,” he said. “Let’s get you somewhere quiet first, sunshine.”
“Who told you you could call me ‘sunshine’, anyway?”
“You did. When we first met, you didn’t want to tell me your name. I asked if I could call you ‘sunshine’ because your hair. It’s not as naturally fair as mine, but it shows that you’ve been kissed by the sun. You said it would be all right. You wrinkled your nose a bit. Nobody calls you pet names back home, I guess?”
“I guess not.”
“Eventually, you did tell me your name, but by then, it was a habit.”
I don’t think anyone ever pays this much attention to me, I thought.
He passed through the hall, to a smaller but still airy corridor. The palace seemed vast, and every inch of it continued to be lovely and unfamiliar to me. I could hardly fathom the wealth and resources the royal family must have, to own all this. A damp chill pervaded the stone walls. Despite the beauty, I’m not sure it was the most comfortable dwelling.
He nudged open a door with his shoulder, finally carrying me into a bedroom. Bedrooms were another thing I had only seen on shipwrecks. Many ships had just one bedroom for the captain, some had several, and otherwise they contained hammocks or bunks. The bedrooms were the nicest spots on the ship, the best rooms for plunder outside of the cargo hold, and particularly eerie underwater: bed curtains and sheets softly floating in the shadowy waters, rooms full of the personal effects of their (usually dead) inhabitants.
This, for some reason,
I did remember.
He put me down on the bed and then he took the skin of ale from me. It had been resting on my lap and I’d almost forgotten I had it. He poured some into a glass and handed it to me. “That’ll warm you up until I get a fire going,” he said. “It’s cold in here.”
“Mermaids don’t…really get cold,” I said, but as soon as I said it, I realized I was actually shivering.
“We poor land people do,” he said, pulling up the blankets and draping them around my shoulders. “And you’re one of us, for the moment. I’ll be right back. I need to find you a proper court gown, get some shoes on your feet.”
“Shoes…” I wasn’t sure I liked the idea.
“Yes, sunshine. You’ll have to wear shoes.”
“Even if I can’t walk?”
“How long do you suppose it’ll take you to learn to walk? Not long, I bet. You have good strong legs.”
I clenched my knees together tight, as if I could will myself back to normal.
My tense form made him pause. He put his hands on my knees and gently moved them apart. A rush of heat swept over me, like I was back on the horse again. “Doesn’t hurt, does it?” he asked.
“No…”
His eyes, blue-gray and beautiful, danced along my curves. I held my breath. I wondered if we had ever spoken of a moment like this, back when I was a mermaid. I wondered if we had ever talked about what it would be like, to be the same.
“Good,” he said.
He left the room, shutting me in there alone. The room was huge, adorned with paintings and pieces of furniture made of a dark, solid wood. The only things within my reach from the bed were books, with writing on their surface. He had a few of them sitting on a little table next to where he slept.
I opened one and found a colored picture.
A picture? I had never realized books had pictures too. And this picture…it was a mermaid. A mermaid sitting on a rock and a man on the shore, reaching a hand out to clasp hers. The lines were so detailed that I was mesmerized. The mermaid and the man looked so yearning, but the shore was like a barrier between them, drawing a line they could never cross.
I slammed it shut. I didn’t know how to feel.
The Mermaid Bride (Fairy Tale Heat Book 6) Page 4