Fish Out of Water

by Ros Baxter

  Ouch. This wasn’t getting me anywhere.

  I fired up Ariel and sped down to the Council Chambers, where a sheepish looking Chip, Mom’s assistant, was helping her with some papers while Aldus waited outside her office. As well as being Sheriff, Aldus is a member of the Dirtwater Leadership Council, and Mom was planning to meet with him to tie up loose ends before we split back to Aegira.

  But I’d forgotten, and hadn’t planned on running into Aldus.

  “Well hello there,” he greeted me toothily. “Thought you might’ve stopped by before this.” He hitched his trousers self-importantly, and went back to scratching Benito’s ears. “We’re gonna have fun together, boy, aren’t we? While Mommy’s away.”

  “Sorry Aldus,” I shrugged sheepishly. “I had some things I really had to do. Was planning to stop by after.”

  He looked contrite for getting on my case and I realized Mom had already done a job on him. Ran bless you, Mom. “Sorry, Rania, I wasn’t tryin’ ta bust y’ chops.” He lowered his voice. “Your Mom told me about your Aunt. Terrible, terrible. Of course you must take some time off. We’ll be fine here.”

  “But what about Clee…” I almost slipped up and corrected myself before Aldus could register the gaffe. “Blondie. What about Blondie? Any leads?”

  “None,” Aldus said defiantly, shaking his head in perplexity, like a man who’s searched high and low and turned up nothing. “But don’t worry, sweetheart, we’ll keep working on it.”

  “Great,” I agreed half-heartedly. I was saved from having to provide further details about an ailing Aunt by Chip listening to his earpiece and motioning for me to go to Mom.

  “Sorry Aldus,” he mouthed. “Ladies first.”

  “Sure thing,” Aldus agreed good-naturedly, and helped himself from a plate of brownies.

  I burst into Mom’s office, a woman on a mission, and she could smell determination on me the moment I was inside. “What is it, darling?”

  She sounded sweet, but looked cagey, like she could sense the storm about to break.

  “I need to know, Mom,” I started. “I need to know what happened to you. Who happened to you. And what brought you to Dirtwater. I think it matters.”

  “Has something happened?” Mom seemed tense.

  “A lot’s happened,” I confirmed. “I was visited by the Goddess. And she thinks you need to ’fess up.”

  Mom sat down swiftly, obviously a little startled by this turn of events but not about to freak out, ’cause it just wasn’t her style. “I see,” she said placidly.

  “So?” I prompted her with my eyes.

  And hers darted sideways. Evasion.

  “Darling,” Mom sighed. “I know that the time is very close when we will need to talk. But that time is not yet. It’s hard. You see, sometimes secrets do not belong only to you. And the telling has implications for others. Not even just those who were there.”

  I expelled my breath in one noisy whoosh. It was all I could do to stop myself from whining at her: But Moooom, the Goddess said you had to tell me…

  Mom continued, and from her tone she seemed oblivious to how badly I needed this, except that I could see that little furrow between her eyebrows that meant she was stressed. A tiny sign, but the only one she ever gives away. “You have to trust me when I tell you that I will share about it all, very soon. But there are others who need the chance to hear it too.”

  “Who?” I needed something.

  “Someone you wouldn’t want to hurt. I’m sorry, Rania, I can’t go into it now. We’ll talk later. If I thought you needed to know immediately, I promise you that I would tell you. But even though I know it’s important, I can’t really believe that anything about it all is connected to what is happening now. It just can’t be. It’s such… ancient history.”

  And that was it, end of subject. But I couldn’t resist a final shot as I flounced out. “Well, that’s not what the Goddess thinks. But what would she know?” I’m not much of a one for flouncing so it was an indicator of how pissed I was that I was doing it now. This was just so Mom, not to be swayed from what she sees as the right path, even by the voice of Ran herself. And not to even be that surprised that Ran’s been talking to me.

  Ran – the Goddess herself.

  You know, as a kid I often wondered what I’d have to do to shock my mother, and I guess now I know it’s darn nigh impossible. Maybe I should have told her I’m one of The Three? Except I wasn’t sure I really believed it myself.

  I barely registered Aldus as I scooted out of there, my rebellious brain fixing to cause some trouble, one thought pushing through to the front of it.

  The purse. The secrets were in the purse. And I was gonna open it.

  By the time I got home, I’d convinced myself that it was definitely the right course.

  Mrs T knew, she knew there was something in there that mattered. She said the visions would help me know when the time is right. Well, where I come from things don’t get more right than the mother of all mermaids popping up and suggesting that some secrets need to be unlocked. So this time I was going with her intuition rather than Mom’s.

  As I pushed through our front door, and headed for the bathroom, where I’d stashed the bag, a little thrill of excitement was lighting up my circuitry. I’d wondered about Mom’s secrets for so long, and I was pretty sure I was about to get some clues. I felt like I was getting ready for a date, all nervous and fluttery but with this added buzz lent by the years of mystery.

  I was so pumped I didn’t even notice him when I first walked into the dark room. Or as I padded across to the bathroom, quiet as a thief. But as I reached for the door, I registered the other-wordly strains of Portishead coming from the ipod dock.

  Dark, ethereal and full of portent.

  I spun back, slowly.

  Knowing. Somehow, knowing.

  He was lying on the sofa, wet and motionless, and when my eyes settled on him, the tummy flutters that had been building ramped up about seven thousand notches.

  I quietly pulled out my Glock.

  “Wake up, sleeping beauty,” I said, as I pressed it into the dip between his closed eyes.

  “I wasn’t sleeping,” he growled, opening indigo eyes and smiling a lazy smile at me through sinful golden lashes and the long, black chamber of the gun.

  Carragheen was glistening wet and naked under the suddenly very small white towel he must have grabbed from the bathroom rail on arrival. He was brown and dark blonde, and his purple-blue gaze was pinning me to the spot. His hair was wet and curling on his neck, and towards one side of it I could just make out the blue green fish of the watch-keeper tattoo. As my gaze travelled down, I registered the tight bulge of his biceps under broad, elegant shoulders, and the narrow tapering of his waist, below which red-gold hair drew the eye towards white towel.

  He looked good. Oh man, did he look good. He was like some kind of God.

  “You’re okay.” His lupine face was inscrutable as indigo eyes roved insolently over me.

  I felt like he was touching me, all over, and my gorgeous Glock shook a little. “Just fine.”

  He expelled his breath and I realized he’d been holding it. And that he was relaxing now, even though I had a really very frightening weapon pressed against him.

  And possibly my crazy eyes on.

  The apartment was warm and dry, so judging by his still-wet appearance, I’d say he’d only been here a matter of moments. But his gaze was lucid, so he’d been here long enough to get through the hydroporting afterburn and pull the pieces of himself back into one spot.

  Portishead wrapped silky threads around my brain as I mentally tried on different courses of action. In the background, that mermaid-like voice entreated some man to give her a reason to love him.

  I had no idea why Carragheen was here, but even though I could barely see him through a hazy red film of guilt (about Doug) and rage (at his duplicities), even though I was holding my gun on him, determined to make him talk, a sheer wall of lus
t slammed into me.

  I was going to hell.

  “Rania.” He continued to ignore the gun and his voice was like a balm on the wrung-out, messed-up bruise that was my mind. He waited, that half-smile playing around full lips.

  I didn’t respond because I was still too busy mentally considering and discarding possible courses of action in between trying to get a handle on the confusing beauty of the man. He watched me watching him for a moment before lazily reaching up and plucking the Glock from my grasp, dropping it to the floor like a distracting child’s toy.

  And I let him.

  Then he stood, filling up every available inch of my personal space. “It is good to see you,” he whispered in that Lucky Strikes and taffy voice.

  Oh yeah, baby, and then some.

  But I gave myself a solid talking to inside my head before I responded. Bad enough that I’d totally ruined my cop cred by letting him disarm me. I couldn’t come over all easy-to-get. I needed answers. About Zorax. About Tila, and “the second one”. He had explaining to do. I tried hard to block out the magical music and give my inner harlot a solid shake. “What are you doing here?” I was going for terse, but suspected I was just coming off strangled.

  “Zorax came to see me,” he said softly. “After he saw you, in Williamstown. He wanted to know if I’d learned anything from Cleedaline before she died. About where Imogen is.”

  Zorax again. Persistent.

  I waved the Glock at Carragheen like I had at Zorax earlier in the day.

  “Were you the one who told him Imogen was missing?”

  “No.” He was searching my face, as I was his. His words were deliberate and they had the ring of truth to me. I’m an expert in lies, but the truth has a quality you can’t describe. Like I said before, you just know it when you see it. He was telling the truth.

  “Did you tell him you’d been to Cleedaline?”

  “No.” His words were clipped, and his body stiff, affront in every hard angle. But even cold and distant those hot eyes were still nothing like those of any merman I’d ever seen.

  Portishead insinuated its way back into my brain, telling me something about how a thousand flowers could bloom. I suppressed a shiver and hoped the semi-darkness would hide the flush I could feel creeping up my chest to my face. “I hadn’t talked to him at all, until a few hours ago, when he came to me. He said he had seen you, and that you told him Cleedaline died because I visited her. He wanted to know if I learned anything from her before she died.”

  Again, I believed him. “Didn’t you wonder why he went to Williamstown?”

  “He told me he’d been tasked by the Triad to investigate Imogen’s death.”

  I thought about Zorax with Imogen’s locket around his neck, and wondered why he drew attention to himself by going to Carragheen. Maybe his “investigative” efforts were actually some not-very-slick cover for whatever it was that he’d done with her, was doing to her.

  I watched Carragheen’s face, wondering what he made of it all. “What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing.” His voice was a hiss, laced with poison. “I don’t trust him.”

  Clever boy.

  “Well, that’s a coincidence,” I said slowly. “Because he doesn’t trust you either. And neither do I.”

  Carragheen was up from the sofa now, moving towards me, and I was like a sheep, caught in the wolf’s stare. He was so close I could smell the salt on him, and see the golden hair curling on his arms, and the blue veins tracking like highways across them. The music had stopped and I could hear his breathing. I noticed it was in time with mine. Perfectly.

  In, out. In, out.

  Somewhere I heard the dripping of a tap and wondered which water source he had used to get here. It sounded slow, like an old record played on the wrong speed.

  We were sizing each other up.

  In, out. In, out.

  Drip, drip.

  “Is that true?” He was asking with his mouth but watching with those wild midnight eyes. “Is it true that you don’t trust me?”

  I tried to make light. “Don’t take it personally,” I offered, going for a giggle but sounding kind of emphysemic instead. “I don’t trust anyone.”

  “That’s not true,” he countered, moving even closer so I could almost touch him. “You trust Lecanora. You trust your mother. You even trust that dolphin.”

  “Yeah, well, we have some history there. You and I, we have…”

  “The future.”

  I looked at him quickly, but he didn’t look worried or embarrassed. My mouth swung open. “Hang on now,” I started. “Where I come from one kiss doesn’t mean—”

  “Rania,” he cut me off. “I grow tired of this nonsense. Let us finish it. Is it Tila?”

  I considered lying, denying I even cared, but I didn’t. I wanted to know. I wanted to understand. So I just swallowed and nodded.

  He sighed, and brought one warm hand up to cup my chin, stroking the side of it with one long finger. “Sit,” he instructed me, motioning to the sofa. I did as he told me to, powerless before the purple-black intensity of his stare.

  He started softly, staring off into space. I could see him measuring his words. “Tila is my sister,” he said. “Well, half-sister really. Her mother, my… wife… is a young woman I knew, a girl really. She’s very beautiful and was very pure. Leisen. Her name is Leisen.”

  My face flushed at the sick jealousy that consumed me as he spoke.

  “My father raped her.”

  The gasp escaped before I can stop it. “How do you know?”

  “I know him,” Carragheen said. “I’ve had a life-time of knowing him, his arrogance and cruelty. He was her priest. She was… is… a very pious woman. She was searching for something. My father took advantage of that. And then she became pregnant.”

  “But what did she say? Did she say Tila was his?”

  “Yes, of course,” Carragheen’s face was creased and distant, sharp folds biting into the boyness of him. He was gripping the edge of the sofa and concentrating on the tale, telling it in sharp, staccato sentences, as though the words themselves were brutal. “She told me they had been lovers. Eventually. One of her friends called to see me. Leisen wasn’t coping during her carrying time. She was sad, and sick. The friend told me that the baby was Kraken’s, but that he’d denied any ownership of it. I tried to help. Sometimes Leisen would become… sick? Very sad. I would stay over, stay with her. That’s when I heard her nightmares, and I knew then that my father had hurt her.”

  “What did you do?” My stomach rolled and churned as I thought about what had happened to the girl. I’d seen it so many times, and yet it still made me quiver inside.

  “I went to him. I told him what I knew. He denied it, of course.”

  “What did you do?”

  Carragheen paused, and I watched one fist flexing unconsciously in his lap. “I hurt him.”

  “Ah.” A brawl? Down there?

  He saw the question in my eyes. “I can fight,” he said. “And I’m not afraid to.”

  I imagined the scene. The horror of it.

  “And you know what else?” he was asking me, but his eyes were distant, looking up at the ceiling.

  I shook my head.

  “It felt really good.” Each word was enunciated slowly, precisely, like he was still savoring the memory. “But they intervened. They protected him. The temple guards.”

  Damn.

  “He told me that if I told anyone what I had said to him, he would denounce the girl, and the baby.” He smiled wryly, those dark eyes firing. “And then, of course, she would be lost.”

  I nodded, understanding. Denouncement is a form of excommunication. It doesn’t happen often but when it does, it cuts the victim off from other Aegirans. For creatures of community, the effect is worse than death. But Carragheen had more to tell.

  “You know how it is there. Children cannot be fatherless. And Leisen was afraid of my father.” The question hung between us, althou
gh the answer seemed clear to me now. He looked right into me, purple eyes direct. “Marriage was the only way to protect her, and the baby. And then… my sister came, and I loved her so much.” The angry angles of his face softened at the mention of Tila, and my throat constricted as I watched him.

  “But why did you send Leisen away?”

  Carragheen’s lush mouth tightened into a sharp line. “I did no such thing.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him.

  “We’ve never lived together. Even if I felt that way about her, which I don’t, Leisen has no interest in men, in love. She never has. And now, even less so. She spends her days in prayer, trying to get closer to the Mother.” He paused. “She’s been getting worse, Leisen. She loves Tila, very much, but she’s not able to look after her all the time. Leisen knows she’s not well, and she asks me to take Tila, for a while, and I do. And then she wants her back, but I try to wait until she’s better. It’s very hard on Tila. My sister. I look in her eyes and I see so much of me.”

  It was an incredible story, and yet I could read his disillusion with his father in the defeated lines of his body as he told the tale. I went to him, and put my hand on his arm. Then I remembered, and yanked it back. He started as though I’d slapped him, and looked hard at me, his indigo eyes boring into my brown ones. “There’s something else that’s troubling you.”

  Oh yeah, baby. I was thinking about “the second one”. What could he possibly tell me to explain that away? Carragheen shifted uncomfortably in his seat, his head facing downward into his palms, and I wondered if he was going to deny, or obfuscate. Then he looked up at me again. “Yes, there is something else to tell you,” he started. “Rania, this is going to be hard for you to believe, to understand.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting.

  “I’ve been… seeing things.”

  My eyes snapped open and everything in me sang out loud. I don’t know what I thought he was going to say, but not that. I couldn’t have been happier if he’d said: Let’s forget all this Aegira crap and go get some Ben ‘n’ Jerry’s.

  He had visions too. I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t alone.