Falling in Deep Collection Box Set

by Pauline Creeden

  He smelled different than her father. Like earth and salt water.

  Her father stood just outside the circle, a faraway look on his face.

  Guillaume took an amulet from the pouch he wore belted around his waist. Syreena had seen plenty of them. Many of the slaves wore them, believing they provided protection from everything from illness to demons.

  She looked at Papa. His blue eyes were tired. The light reflected off the tears rolling down his face. He was crushed, but he smiled and nodded at her anyway. Her strong and tender Papa until the end. Emotion squeezed her heart and she wasn’t sure she could continue. More than anything she wanted to dash out of the circle and into his arms. She wanted their life to go back to what it was, what it had been for the bulk of her life.

  “This you must wear around your neck always. Never take it off. Never. Do you understand?” Guillaume’s eyes met hers. They were solemn.

  It was a small amulet, about the size of a small Manonsillo fruit. Inside the circle was the painted image of Mami Wata, a mermaid-like deity venerated by the slaves from West Africa. She was carefully painted, from the curls in her ebony hair to the scales of the snake wrapped around her neck.

  “Mami Wata?” Syreena asked.

  Guillaume nodded. “She will protect you. She will show you the way.” He held up a small leather pouch. It was tightly closed with a drawstring. He threaded it onto the thin leather strap that held the amulet. “There are special things inside. Do not lose them. Do not be without them. Not until you are sure you do not need them anymore.”

  “How will I know I don’t need them?”

  “You will know. Then, and only then, you are to throw them, along with this charm, into the sea. Here, in this place. Then the circle will be complete.”

  She nodded even though she had no idea what was happening.

  “You may not understand what it is happening but you will be safe. I vow this to you.” The lyrical sounds of West Africa were heavy in his voice. “Do not be afraid, mademoiselle. Your papa and I are doing this because it is all we can do.”

  Syreena looked up and down the beach. “But there are no boats. No horseman. Where am I going?”

  “You’re going to a place where you will be hidden from everyone until you meet the man who can keep you safe forever. When it is time,” Guillaume said, “you must return here, to this beach, to this spot. Do you understand?” His eyes were serious. “You must come back here. To the place it all began.” He pointed his finger emphatically downward.

  “I understand,” she replied in a whisper. She didn’t, but the weight of his voice told her there was nothing more he could say to explain.

  Guillaume nodded and moved to stand behind her. He placed the necklace over her head. The leather pouch hung right above her breasts. She touched it with her index finger. It felt warm, alive.

  “Keep your fingers on it,” Guillaume said. He placed his hands on her shoulders, a familiarity unimagined only days ago. “We wish you the best of luck, mademoiselle.”

  He began chanting. His bass voice was hypnotic. At first, she recognized a few of the words. The language drifted between the patois of the island, Creole, and the stranger, foreign sounds of West Africa. Her eyelids became very heavy; she was falling into a deep sleep, as if she’d been up for days and days.

  The sounds of the waves lapping onto the beach became louder and louder and Guillaume’s voice became more and more distant.

  The last thing she heard, in Guillaume’s melodic, bass voice, was, “She will swim alone until the man who is her true equal in all things comes to her.”

  She felt herself falling, spinning, whirling into a vortex of color and sound and wind. Her body began to feel lighter and lighter, as if she were weightless.

  Then there was nothing but blue.

  CHAPTER ONE

  2015, Somewhere in the Caribbean

  This was drowning.

  He’d always wondered what it felt like.

  All those classes, first as a lifeguard and then as a Coast Guard Officer. Hours and hours of facts and figures. Strategies and advice. The bulk of his life spent on or near the water and he’d had no idea.

  The training had all been bullshit.

  The instinct to breathe was stronger than anything Dylan had ever felt. It was a desperation beyond words. His brain was in overload, the primitive part of it screaming at him to breathe. Demanding oxygen.

  He fought the urge because he knew one breath would seal his fate. If it wasn’t sealed already.

  Eighty-seven lousy seconds. One minute and twenty-seven seconds. No matter how it was sliced, that’s what the experts said. In eighty-eight seconds, the brain switched to auto-pilot and forced a person to inhale whether it was in the best interest of the attached body or not.

  Everything boiled down to less than a minute and a half.

  Proms and graduations, learning to throw a fastball, sex, birthday cakes, children. All the things that made life a grand adventure could do nothing to save him.

  He had to get to the surface. Now.

  There had been no reason to grab a life jacket. Clear weather. Calm winds. He’d strode onto the deck without any fear.

  Off duty for a few hours, he’d pulled the paperback, a pulp thriller he’d bought on his last shore leave from under his bunk. He tucked it into the weatherproof cover he’d crafted from duct tape, a zipper from an old windbreaker and the plastic from the inside of an old suitcase. Being in the Coast Guard, he’d learned quickly to waterproof everything.

  On deck, the weather was fantastic, especially after they’d spent the last couple of months in the colder, northern reaches of the USCGS Campbell’s patrol area. The Caribbean was a welcome change.

  With his face in the book and his iPod shuffling a classical mix, he’d wandered the length of the deck until he found the perfect spot. He planned to lean against the rail and get some sun on his back.

  Just as he settled into the fourth chapter and Pachelbel’s Canon in D, a stiff wind blew off the water. Dylan didn’t take his eyes off the print.

  He hadn’t spent eight years in the Coast Guard just to be put off by a stiff wind. Plus, this was the Caribbean. Nothing like the North Atlantic or The Bering Sea. This was the best duty in the Coast Guard because of the warm weather and the smooth sailing.

  Dylan flipped the page.

  Another wind, this one stiffer than the first.

  A sucking noise. Strange. Almost like a watery vacuum.

  No way. They were miles and miles from shore. There was nothing nearby. Not unless you counted a few cays–-no more than sandbars with a palm tree or two.

  He saw the wave coming. It was at least twenty feet over the bow of the boat.

  He blinked several times. There was no way a wave like this was in the Atlantic. Not this time of year. Not without a hurricane warning.

  Surely the Captain would’ve mentioned a hurricane warning.

  It was big ass wave, but he’d seen worse. He scooted backwards, intent on holding onto one of the rungs lining the side of the ship. Dylan zipped the book and tucked it into his breast pocket.

  Too late.

  He’d been stupid to waste time on a seven dollar thriller.

  Dylan didn’t even have the time to say, “What the fuck?” before water was rushing across the deck.

  The wave picked him up as if he were as insignificant as a paperclip. It tossed him over the side of the Cutter and into the depths of the Atlantic, banging his head on the steel deck rail on his way overboard. The water rushed up at him like a brick wall. Solid. Hard. Unforgiving.

  Water. His only constant companion for the last eight years as a Coast Guard Officer. It was strangely fitting that it would be his companion in the end. He was losing his grip on time. Had he been underwater for thirty seconds or a minute? Thirty seconds, in this situation, was a lifetime. Every second mattered.

  Dylan wrestled for mental control. He couldn’t allow his mind to wander. It was a safe bet
that he was down to less than a minute now.

  The water was getting darker, enclosing him in a tighter and tighter liquid cocoon. The claustrophobia was almost as overwhelming as the urge to breathe.

  You’ve got enough air to surface. You’ve got enough air to surface.

  A macabre mantra he’d didn’t even believe himself.

  Follow the bubbles up. Follow the bubbles up.

  His eyes stung with the salt and he couldn’t see clearly enough to make out the bubbles. They were everywhere, seeming to go in every direction. Those sons of bitches teaching the water safety and survival had made it seem so easy. They’d never drowned. Smug bastards.

  His mind wandered no matter how hard he fought for control. It floated through space and time as if his life had been a movie.

  Mariana. Blue eyes, the color of a storm at sea. Sun-bleached blonde hair. Small, honest face that would attract all the boys in just a few short years. His daughter. Only seven years old. He worried about not being there for her. Then he remembered he’d been at sea most of her life. He hadn’t been there when he was alive.

  Her mother had begged him to spend more time with the child but he’d been too busy living his own life. Building his career.

  Total and utter bullshit.

  The joke was on him.

  He wished he could laugh. He longed to feel the release once more. Laughter would kill the few seconds he had left. But then again, maybe it was the way to go out. Giggling like a sailor on shore leave stumbling into a bar with free beer. Giving fate the fucking finger.

  Mariana.

  Talk about missing the boat.

  Instead of cruising the seven seas with his shipmates, he should’ve listened to his ex-wife and his mother and resigned his commission to spend time with Mariana.

  Now it was too late.

  Eighty-seven seconds.

  Dylan breathed.

  *****

  The boredom was a killer.

  Swimming freely in the warm waters of the Atlantic sounded like a fairy tale until it was something you did every day of the year. The novelty had worn off before Syreena had even gotten used to her fins. Transforming from the privileged daughter of a sugar plantation into a mermaid was the worst kind of curse.

  It sounded like a little girl’s dream: spend some time as a mermaid, when you’re safe in the arms of your true love, you can be a woman again.

  It turned out to be a fate worse than death.

  Her father’s intention to save her life, at any cost, was admirable, but most days she wished he’d let her die alongside him. Then she wouldn’t have to spend the rest of her life in the shadows of the deep and on deserted islands where her only company was the occasional lizard or crab.

  There were a lot of things she missed: dresses made of fine lawn, shoes with shiny buckles, hair ribbons the color of candy, but most of all she missed books. The smell, the feel, the time spent resting against the trunk of a tree, reading.

  She missed being noticed.

  Sometimes, in the evenings, when the setting sun turned the sea the color of the hibiscus flowers that had been everywhere on the island, her island, she’d lie against a rock and try to remember some of her favorite stories or the songs she learned from her nanny. It was getting harder to remember them as time passed.

  If she had only one book, maybe it would ease some of the loneliness. She could read it and escape back into the realm of humans, the world she missed so desperately.

  When she Changed, she could wander among humans. She liked the markets. They were busy and she could eavesdrop on the conversations of shoppers.

  How many loaves of bread? Does this shell necklace look good on me?

  While the human voices kept her company, no one ever spoke to her. In fact, no one ever seemed to even notice she was there. Syreena was invisible to them. Guillaume’s spell had made her an observer, stuck in an in-between world. Alone.

  Every once in a while, someone would almost notice her. Usually it was someone with dark skin, dressed in traditional clothes, wearing an amulet similar to the weathered one just above her breast bone. They’d look at her with a puzzled expression, leaning this way and that, until they were convinced she was just a trick of the light, a figment of imagination.

  Never a touch, a kind word.

  Markets made her sad and hopeful. Lonely and comforted.

  Many times she’d approached a market stall filled with books and run her fingers along the spines.

  Wishing, dreaming.

  But she had no money. No way to buy anything.

  She’d considered stealing one but she could never square it with her conscience. It was lucky for the shopkeepers that she hadn’t found a book of maps. She’d have stolen an atlas without a twinge of guilt. Breaking the spell required two things: a man who was her equal and returning to the beach where it was cast.

  Syreena only had a few hours a week to walk on human legs. Just long enough to feel deliciously dry and then The Change began again. As soon as her stomach was empty, she turned back into a mermaid.

  If only she could find the beach, she’d beg protection from any man she could get her hands on. Maps were trickier than men. Surely the world hadn’t changed that much.

  At night, when the vendors packed up and left the market empty, she went back to the sea. Alone. Now, as she swam, she practiced her English. Yesterday, she’d practiced French. Her father had insisted on fluency in both languages, and while she preferred her native French, she wanted to be able to speak both. When the opportunity came to transform back into a human body, she didn’t want a language barrier to sink her chances.

  If she ever got the opportunity to be a regular woman again.

  Many times, she’d decided, in her head, that it was time to return home and for everything to come full circle. But she had no way to figure out where Belle Emilie was and it wasn’t for lack of swimming. The only beaches that were familiar to her now were ones she’d discovered after The Change.

  In her heart, she knew it wasn’t time to throw the amulet of Mami Wata into the ocean along with the closed leather pouch. More than anything, Syreena wanted to go home. But she knew she couldn’t until it was time.

  Suddenly, the feeling in the water changed. The vibration went from peaceful and serene to frenzied and dark. She looked into the water ahead.

  No wonder the mood had changed so quickly.

  Sharks.

  The top predators in the Caribbean were no threat to her. The talisman she wore around her neck, a final gift from her father and Guillaume, protected her. She swam to the side of them, wondered why there were so many at the same place.

  Sharks were usually solitary, especially this far from the coast. The only thing out here was an occasional sand bar or a small, uninhabited island. Over the years, she’d returned time after time to one small cay. Even though there were only a few trees and a lot of sand, she’d begun to think of the place as home. It was beautiful and it was where she’d found the most treasures. Sea glass, shards or mirrors, even jewelry. She had been swimming toward it when she swam into the sharks.

  She refocused on them, swimming around in large circles, trying to see them from all angles. They were getting closer and closer to the light, swimming higher and higher toward the top.

  No. It couldn’t be. She blinked, unsure of what she was seeing. Fearing it was an illusion. Fearing her mind had finally left her.

  There was no mistaking the form. Falling from the surface, sinking like a stone, was the body of a man.

  A man who had no business out here.

  The water around him was pink. He was bleeding, attracting the sharks. She had to get to him. Fast.

  Syreena worked her tail, pushing as hard as she could toward the falling man. She said a silent prayer that the amulet would work. She’d seen plenty of sharks, but she always gave them a wide berth, fearing the charm might have worn off after so many years in the ocean. She’d never swam into the midst of so many.r />
  But then, what did she care? Dying quickly beat living this half-life.

  She dove fifteen or twenty feet beneath them, kicking up the sand on the ocean floor with her powerful tail, and ascended through the center of the circle. As soon as the sharks sensed her, they spread out, making the circle bigger, as if she were repelling them like a magnet.

  The amulet still had the power to protect her.

  The man fell into her arms. A large gash spread across his forehead, blood leaking into the water making it a sickly pink hue. Syreena had to get him to the surface. Quickly.

  She flicked her powerful tail, pushing him toward the top. It was only a short swim to the small cay, but she needed to get him breathing first. She had no idea how she was going to save him, only that she must. After being isolated from humans for so many years, she needed him as much as he needed her. If she gave him life, maybe he could give her life.

  She didn’t want him to die before she knew if he was her ticket back to Saint-Domingue.

  Maybe this falling man was the one. The one who could take her in his arms and back onto the land.

  For the first time in recent memory, she felt the bubbly sensation of hope building in her chest.

  Syreena linked her arms beneath his and powered up through the remaining three or four feet of water. When she reached the surface, she spread her body out on the surface, her tail floating under just an inch or two of water. She wrestled the man so that he was lying across the width of her tail. She flicked and kicked, flicked and kicked again. Syreena had no idea what else to do. She had no way to hold him above the surface and make him cough up the water that was surely flooding his lungs.

  Her tail slapped him on the back again. Harder this time.

  She couldn’t see his face in this position. How would she know if she was helping at all?

  A gurgle.

  She snaked around as best she could and listened.

  Another gurgle.