by Aratare, X.
Something’s happened. He wouldn’t just leave me.
Gabriel looked around the surrounding water, but he did not see anyone else. There was another flash of lightning and the whole sky lit up. It was nearly blinding and he had to blink to clear his vision. His gaze zeroed in on the boat as soon as he could see again. He could tell the boat was already struggling in the violent sea. It was riding up and down on the choppy waves.
Gabriel wanted to close his eyes, to blot out this scene, but he couldn’t. His parents were up there. His childhood self was up there.
The wave is going to come. The boat is going to capsize. And then …
Gabriel started swimming for the surface as fast as he could. He feared for half a moment that like in most nightmares he wouldn’t be able to move, that he would be stuck like a dinosaur in the tar pits, but he cut easily through the water. His naked body just sliced through the liquid with ease. He broke through the water’s surface, nearly surging three feet into the air above the trough between two waves. His head immediately whipped around towards the boat.
The first massive rogue wave that had capsized his parents’ boat was bearing down on it now. The raw power of that black wall of water stole Gabriel’s breath. His parents’ boat tried to climb the monster wave, but it was simply too steep. Gabriel saw three people, two adults and a child, on the boat, and then he saw one of them—the male adult—fall out of the boat as it rose almost vertically up out of the water. The man was his father. Gabriel saw his father’s head strike one of the winches on the way down. His head snapped forward violently and Gabriel knew, he knew, his father had died right then and there.
But I didn’t see this when it happened. I couldn’t possibly know that this is true …
All thought was blotted out as the rogue wave crested and then slammed down on top of the sailboat and Gabriel himself. He was pushed deep underneath the water, deeper than he had been when he had actually been tossed out of the boat. Gabriel’s eyes had shut in reflex as his head was pushed beneath the waves, but he forced them open. Above him, hanging in space like an ornament, was his childhood self. His childhood self did not move, at first, just stared up at the upside down boat as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.
I didn’t believe it. I didn’t understand why the boat was facing the wrong way.
He saw his childhood self start swimming for the surface. Gabriel meant to follow right after, but then he caught sight of some movement by the mast. His head jerked to face it. The mast had been snapped in half. The top half yawned drunkenly away from the bottom half, attached only by a few inches of fiberglass. The movement of the mast was not what had caught his eye, though. Near the mast was another figure. His mother. He opened his mouth to call to her, but only bubbles escaped. She was swimming towards the surface as well.
Gabriel took off after her. If he reached the surface in time, he could stop her from going after his father. His beloved father, her husband, was beyond help. He could convince her to stay with the boat, to stay with him, to not throw her life away needlessly.
This is a memory. Nothing can be changed, a voice whispered. It was not Casillus’ voice nor was it his own, but Gabriel ignored the strangeness of having yet another voice in his head and batted it away. He had a chance to reach his mother. He had a chance to change things.
If it is just a memory then how do I know about my father hitting his head? Gabriel thought.
It isn’t just your memory, the voice insisted.
Gabriel kicked his legs and stroked his arms through the water. He broke the surface just as his mother started swimming towards his father’s dead body. He was fifty feet away from her.
“MOM!” Gabriel screamed, but his call was swallowed by the raging storm.
He took off after her. His strokes were sure. His kicks were strong. He was a better swimmer than she was. But she had a head start on him.
“MOM! STOP!” he yelled. His mouth filled with saltwater and his cries sounded thin and weak to his ears. But he was only twenty-five feet away from her now, though with the powerful swells twenty-five feet seemed more like one hundred.
She reached his father at that moment. She lifted his father’s face out of the water and laid his head on her shoulder.
“John! John! Answer me!” she shouted. She slapped his cheeks and opened his mouth to clear it of water.
“He’s dead!” Gabriel cried. “Get back to the boat, Mom!”
She didn’t acknowledge him. Instead, she was focused on her husband. The ashen color of her face told him that she knew in her heart that he was gone.
“John, please, you can’t leave me. You can’t leave Gabriel!” she begged. Then she swallowed hard and hit his father’s cheeks. “Damn it, John! Wake up!”
Gabriel was only five feet away. He was going to grab her and drag her back towards the boat when he saw the second rogue wave coming. His breath froze in his chest and his stomach dropped into his feet. His mother saw it then, too.
“I’m so sorry, Gabriel,” he heard her say as she closed her eyes. “Keep swimming. Please, keep swimming.”
The wave smashed on top of them both just as he reached for her shoulder. Everything spun. Gabriel felt like he was in a laundry machine on the spin cycle as he was tossed end over end by the power of the rogue wave. By the time he was able to right himself and get his bearings, he found he had been sent deep underwater. And he wasn’t the only one.
Slowly sinking downwards from the ocean’s surface was his parents’ boat. It was an almost graceful dive. The mainsail, which his father had never gotten fully down, fluttered as if in a breeze. The ropes for the jib flared out behind the boat like party streamers. And then he saw them. His parents. They were wound together like they were embracing one another. One of the ropes was wound around their bodies. They were falling together, falling into the deep, being dragged to the ocean floor by the dead boat.
NO!
Gabriel raced towards them. The boat gracefully continued its fast fall, the ropes streaming after it. And then his parents were falling past his location. He dove down. One of his mother’s arms was wound around her husband, but her other arm was reaching upwards. She was straining towards the surface. Her eyes were open, as were her lips, though no thin stream of bubbles came out. Gabriel shot down to her and grabbed that free hand. Her hand did not grip his back, though. It was limp and unresponsive in his. She did not blink nor gasp nor register his touch in any way.
Gabriel immediately started sinking with his parents and the boat. He grasped her arm with both hands and tugged, trying to dislodge her from the tangle of ropes that held her captive. But he couldn’t break her loose.
Frantically he crawled down her arm to her torso and tried to detangle her chest and legs from the rope by hand, but she was wound too tightly in it. He noticed that the light from the storm had dimmed significantly. He quickly glanced over his shoulder at the surface. What he saw froze his heart in his chest. The surface was far, far away. He was headed towards the crushing depths with his parents. There was a soft popping noise and suddenly bubbles shot up all around him, blinding him. The boat was reacting to the pressure.
When the bubbles cleared, he realized that there were lights coming up from the deep. They were the same ones he had seen the day of the accident and then in the dream of the man. They streamed up towards him. He squinted as they first blotted out the boat, then the rope, and then his parents.
Mom!
He still had a hold of her hand. Suddenly, her hand moved in his. It felt like a flex of her fingers.
Mom? Mom?
But then her hand changed. It seemed to elongate. The texture of the skin changed as well, going from soft to rubbery. He felt her hand slide up his arm and something that wasn’t fingers wrap around his wrist. It was a tentacle.
The Mer’s guardian was said to be miles high … with tentacles, his mother’s voice whispered in his mind.
And I saw tentacles that day. They r
eached up for me from the deep …
Gabriel let go of the soft, squishy mass and tried to yank his arm away from whatever was holding on to him, dragging him down, down, down into the deep. But it was too strong. He couldn’t get away. Gabriel began to scream silently as the beautiful lights twirled around him and the tentacle slithered farther up his arm, caressing him. The light’s brilliance was almost sickening and Gabriel closed his eyes.
Gabriel? GABRIEL! Casillus’ voice rocketed through his mind.
Gabriel’s eyelids shot open and he let out a scream that Casillus just barely manage to muffle by covering his mouth with one webbed hand. They were no longer in the sea. They were in Gabriel’s bedroom in his grandmother’s house. Casillus, dripping wet with sea water, was straddling him. Gabriel’s arms were flailing above his head as if reaching for something unseen. Casillus used his free hand to grab Gabriel’s right one and clasp it. Gabriel could feel the membrane between Casillus’ fingers, but it wasn’t weird or gross. It was warm and soft.
Gabriel, do you know where you are? Casillus asked.
Gabriel let out a choked cough and nodded. Casillus removed his hand from Gabriel’s mouth and Gabriel took in a huge breath. His lungs strained to get air.
“What happened? I was … dreaming,” Gabriel gasped out.
A nightmare. No dream, Casillus said.
“You weren’t with me! You said you would never leave me! Not even in dreams!” Gabriel heard how accusing his voice sounded and modified it. “I—I’m sorry, that’s—”
No, you are right, Casillus said. I do not know what happened. I was with you and then … it was like a wall fell between us. A wall of black water that I could not breach.
“Black water?” Gabriel thought of the huge rogue waves.
Yes, please forgive me. I came as soon as I could. No one saw me come. The rest of the house is still asleep. Casillus glanced towards the door. It was cracked open and Gabriel could see the hallway beyond. It was dark, and there was the faintest sound of Corey’s snores reverberating in the air.
He shook himself as he realized with growing wonder what Casillus had risked by coming inside a human house. “You came inside my grandmother’s house because you couldn’t reach me, didn’t you? You risked humans seeing you to keep your promise to me?”
Casillus nodded. I promised I would never leave you, and I will do whatever I must to keep my word to you.
Gabriel felt like he was about to laugh or cry. He wasn’t sure which. Maybe both. That simple statement—whose meaning was not simple at all—had Gabriel squeezing Casillus’ hand tightly. The Mer squeezed back.
“Thank you,” Gabriel said. “Thank you so much.”
Thanks are not necessary, the Mer said with a soft smile crossing his lips.
“You need to stop saying that, because it really isn’t true,” Gabriel said with a quirk of his own lips.
The pain of one is the pain of all. The fear of one is the fear of all. The loss of one is an incalculable loss, Casillus said. Each Mer is precious. Every Mer has a duty to one another.
“Oh, duty, right. That’s why you’re … here,” Gabriel said, feeling a stab of something like disappointment that Casillus’ motivation to help was based on something other than his individual worth.
Casillus squeezed Gabriel’s hand, smiling. I am not just here out of a sense of duty, Gabriel. Surely you sense … The Mer actually ducked his head, then looked at Gabriel though thick, dark lashes. Surely you sense that I like you very much. As an individual.
“I’ve given you very little reason to,” Gabriel said with a faint, pleased laugh. “I’ve questioned your very existence for most of our, ah, friendship.”
But you are not doing so now, I see. Casillus tilted his head to the side.
Gabriel looked at their still clasped hands. “You’re real. Everything in me tells me that you are. I think I knew you really existed before, but … well, I can’t deny you any longer. I don’t want to deny you exist, because …” Gabriel smiled uncertainly up at the Mer. “Because I like you, too.”
And what about yourself? Do you still believe that you are human and not Mer? Casillus’ stunning blue-green eyes studied Gabriel’s.
Gabriel felt the heaviness in his lungs. It was like he had pneumonia. He thought of the past year and all its strange illnesses. He remembered how good he had felt in comparison in the water. And then he thought of how he had inexplicably survived drowning when his parents had not. Him being a Mer made sense of that rather than it being just random fate. “I wish I could just say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ but I just don’t know anything for sure. Can you imagine suddenly finding out that you aren’t you anymore? It’s not exactly an easy thing to accept.”
You are no different than you were before, Gabriel. You now simply know who you truly are, the Mer said. He shifted his weight lightly on top of the young man.
That was when Gabriel realized that the Mer was literally straddling him on the bed. The damp and clinging sheer material around Casillus’ hips did absolutely nothing to hide his beautiful cock and powerful thighs. As he watched, water trickled down those thighs and wet the thin blanket that Gabriel had pulled over himself. Gabriel’s cheeks flushed hotly and he jerked his gaze away from Casillus’ lovely body.
“How long can you stay out of the water?” Gabriel asked, pretending that the water droplets and not the strong thighs had been the focus of his gaze. The fact that they were still clasping hands was making the deception, if the Mer was fooled at all, that much harder.
Not as long as you need. I will not leave you tonight, though. Only when dawn kisses the sea will I return there. Unless … Casillus looked at Gabriel mournfully.
“Unless we both go into the sea now, right?” Gabriel shivered. “I can’t … please don’t ask me to. I just can’t.”
What happened in your nightmare, Gabriel? Casillus clearly sensed that Gabriel’s fear of the sea had inexplicably grown.
“I dreamed about my parents’ deaths and—and something else …” Gabriel shook his head. He did not want to think about the thing with tentacles ever again if he could help it. He was certain that it had nothing to do with the Mers. The tentacled thing was undoubtedly just a figment of his overworked imagination. “Just the thought of going into the sea after dreaming about that is … I just can’t do it, Casillus.”
I will need water, as will you. Your breathing is becoming labored, the Mer said.
“Water ... of course!” Gabriel grinned. “The bathtub!”
6
ACCEPTANCE
The bathtub? Ah, yes, now I understand, the Mer said with a nod. That was where you first saw through my eyes.
“Exactly. I just took a shower then, but there’s a pretty big tub in there as well. I can fill that up and we can—ah, take turns being in the water,” Gabriel said.
Or we could share the tub, Casillus suggested. The Mer watched Gabriel’s reaction to his offer closely.
“Y—yeah, we could do that. I think we’d both fit.” Gabriel’s cheeks flooded with color as he imagined sitting snugly between Casillus’ thighs, lying back against Casillus’ powerful chest, and feeling the heat of the Mer’s body right along with the water’s.
I am glad we will be in water. It will give us a chance to speak more. Though perhaps you should rest. You look so tired. Casillus ran his right thumb under Gabriel’s left eye where the skin was softest. Gabriel guessed that there was a black circle there. The Mer’s touch was so gentle that he wanted to turn his head into it, but instead he held himself very still so that the Mer wouldn’t stop touching him.
“There’s this saying: I’ll rest when I’m dead,” Gabriel said. And that could be in a few days if I don’t go into the sea.
Then you will never rest, for you are Mer and you will never die.
“Maybe if that’s true then I’ll try to rest a little.” Gabriel took in a deep breath. He couldn’t quite believe he wasn’t human. Not yet. He knew Casillus was real, which m
eant that everything else was real. But he still resisted thinking of himself as a Mer. Looking at Casillus’ beauty did nothing to make him feel like he was of the same species. He found that he couldn’t stop looking at Casillus and admitted, “I just don’t want to sleep now that you’re here.”
We shall talk, but if you get too tired then we shall rest. Casillus gracefully swung his leg over Gabriel’s body and stood up beside the bed. He did not release Gabriel’s hand. Instead, he used that grip to help Gabriel stand. Unlike the Mer, Gabriel’s legs were a bit shaky beneath him.
“Whoa! And here I thought that you would be the one having trouble on solid land,” Gabriel laughed as the muscles in his legs jittered.
The transition is changing every part of you. This weakness will disappear as soon as it is complete, Casillus said.
“That’s good to know. I can’t tell you how sick I am of, well, feeling sick,” Gabriel confessed.
You will be strong and healthy again soon, Casillus assured him.
Gabriel smiled gratefully at the Mer. Neither of them moved until the muscles in his legs stopped trembling, and Gabriel felt his smile changing into something else as the seconds passed. Something more intimate. Casillus stood so close to him that he could feel the warmth of the Mer’s body radiating down his front. The Mer stood a good six inches taller than him, and his broad shoulders jutted out several inches farther than Gabriel’s own. The fingers of his webbed right hand rubbed a tender circle over the soft skin between Gabriel’s thumb and pointer finger. Gabriel found himself looking into Casillus’ eyes and then quickly away. His heart thudded in his chest.
Love always shows up first in the eyes, his mother had always said.
Love? LOVE? I didn’t even think he was real and here I am thinking … it’s ridiculous. Corey would never let me live these thoughts down. Yet every time I look at Casillus, I feel … I don’t know. My heart lifts. My soul shakes a little.
Gabriel cleared his throat. “Okay, I think I’m good to go now. The bathroom is just across the hall.”