Tempest

by Cari Z

  “It’s the anticipation,” he said when he saw Colm noticing, “not cold.” Then he looked down at himself and reassessed. “Never mind, it’s absolutely the cold. Otherwise, it wouldn’t look like that, and don’t laugh!”

  “I’m sorry,” Colm choked back, trying to contain himself. “I know, I know how it looks, Nichol, I’m not…not judging…” He smothered his giggles in Nichol’s shirt.

  “Git,” Nichol complained. “Why do I put up with you? All right, so…maybe I should have explained some about swimming before I went and got naked…”

  “It can’t be that hard,” Colm said reasonably. “Children do it. Animals do it.”

  “It isn’t hard, really, I just… Thrashing around isn’t good. Look, just stay next to the logs when you get in and hold on, and we’ll work on it from there, okay? Start with floating, although the gods know that will be difficult for you, you’ve no spare flesh to buoy you up.”

  Before Colm could reply to that, Nichol had turned and stepped down onto the nearest log, which sank a bit under his weight. “Oh lord,” he muttered, “that’s brisk.”

  “Just think of the sunshine,” Colm told him. “You’ll be fine.”

  “You think of the sunshine,” Nichol replied, but he was still smiling, even if it was a little rueful. “Oh, I hope there are no urchin attached to these…all right, I’m going to do it.” His muscles tensed, but he didn’t move. “I really am this time.”

  “I’ll just sit down and wait for the mood to come upon you, then,” Colm said, not bothering to hide his playful sarcasm.

  “Oh, wait until it’s your turn. You won’t be so bloody cheeky then,” Nichol warned him. “Far less high and mighty when you’re the one worrying about keeping your—” The log under his feet suddenly rolled, pitching him forward, and Nichol was thrown into the water with a yell, limbs akimbo.

  “Nichol?” Colm set the clothes aside and leaned forward, looking for pale skin and dark hair. He didn’t see anything, and reached out to dip his fingers into the water for the first time since stealing Lew’s boat. “Nichol!” What if he’d hit his head, what if he were injured—

  A wet hand emerged from the water and grabbed Colm’s wrist just an inch before he touched the surface. “Ha!” Nichol exclaimed, coughing a few times. “Well, that was unexpected.” The grin he sent Colm was wide and guileless. “You should come in. It’s…quite lovely once you acclimate a bit.”

  “You can’t even keep a straight face when you lie,” Colm accused him, but he shook off Nichol’s grip and started to remove his clothes.

  “On the contrary, I am an excellent liar. I’ve just never seen any need to do so with you,” Nichol said, swimming a few paces back and then forward again. The waves were fairly gentle, but he still rose and fell with little rhythm as they battled the odd currents bouncing from the rocks. “Be careful when you come in, all right? Go slow, not like I did.”

  “It didn’t look like you had much of a choice,” Colm said, taking off his boots and drawing down his trousers and drawers. Nichol watched his unveiling with interest.

  Gods, it might be sunny, but no matter what Nichol said, it was still cold. Colm resigned himself to a rather uncomfortable first swimming lesson, then bent down and lowered himself to the submerged piece of dock.

  “Be careful, parts of it are rotten,” Nichol said, laying his hand on Colm’s calf as soon as it came within reach. Colm’s foot slipped, and he laughed. “And there’s sea grass on everything, did I mention that? Bit slick, that stuff.”

  “You are incredibly unamusing sometimes,” Colm told his lover, setting his second foot down more carefully. It was the first time he’d dipped his feet into sea water, and they felt…odd. Warm. Apparently, he acclimated faster than Nichol did.

  “Good, now…down farther.” Colm braced against the rocks and sat down, gasping slightly at the cold, which rapidly turned to heat.

  “Nichol…”

  “Are you nervous? Don’t be nervous,” Nichol said, pressing a kiss to the top of Colm’s thigh. “I’ll be right here. I’ll keep you safe.”

  This didn’t feel like nerves. This felt like nothing Colm had ever experienced before. He’d been soaked to the bone with rain, washed in well water and drenched with the sea, but never submerged in it. His whole lower half was itching. “Nichol, I don’t—”

  “Too late for don’t!” Nichol shouted gleefully, and grabbed his arm and pulled Colm down into the water next to him. It closed over his head and, for a brief moment, Colm panicked.

  Then there was no more thought for panicking.

  The first thing he noticed when he surfaced was the warmth all over his body, a comfortable temperature, like an early summer’s day. That comfort rapidly faded in the wake of the furious, excruciating itch that was crawling across his body. Colm began to hyperventilate, clawing at the logs in an effort to pull himself free of the water.

  “Colm?” Nichol said, and there was no mischievous joy in his tone now, only concern. “Colm, what—”

  “Out,” Colm gasped, “out of the water, get me out of the—” Pain overwhelmed his voice, and he screamed once, thin and barely audible, before his legs began to thrash uncontrollably.

  Colm lost all sense of his surroundings. It was as if his body belonged to someone else; he had no control over it. His legs melted like wax, limbs reforming and snapping into alien new shapes. His back arched uncontrollably, forcing his neck to extend. Colm could feel when the slits opened to either side of his throat, feathery things that suddenly turned the salty death filling his lungs into something he could handle, something that felt thicker than air but just as crucial to his well-being. Points of pain erupted along his shoulders and head, and with vision that seemed somehow improved, sharpened beyond what he’d ever known before, Colm could see bits and pieces of his pale, sodden locks floating around his face before they drifted away, unmoored from his head.

  After another seemingly endless moment of agony, all the tethers of pain suddenly coiled in on themselves, vanishing into the pit of Colm’s stomach. He felt…not good, but whole. Like he’d been breaking and someone had come along and glued him back together, but in a different shape. Colm swished his tail, then boggled over the fact that he had a tail to swish, and not legs. A tail with fins…not a seal like Nichol had thought, then.

  Nichol. Oh gods, Nichol. Colm looked around frantically and saw pale, motionless legs below the water. He closed the distance awkwardly, not yet sure how to control his new appendage, and surfaced next to his lover, who was clinging to the nearest rotten log, his eyes wide with shock and pain. Colm opened his mouth to speak, but all that emerged from his throat was a rough, snapping vibration.

  “Oh, Colm,” Nichol whispered, one hand pressed to his side. It was only then that Colm tasted the blood in the water, and saw the ragged edge of a slender, barbed spine protruding from between Nichol’s ribs. “No, Colm, oh no.”

  “Nichol,” Colm tried to say, but his new voice wouldn’t cooperate. It was just snaps, ending with a hiss that made Colm wince. He pressed his tongue to his teeth and felt their new, sharp edges, felt his feathery gills flutter in the breeze—it seemed so much harder to get air now, even though it was going down into his lungs. They simply couldn’t cope with it as well. It felt too dry, abrasive inside of him. Colm ducked his head under again, felt the water brush past his gills and renew him, then surfaced again.

  “Colm…” Nichol grasped for him, releasing the log, and sank immediately. Colm tried desperately to assess where the rest of the damnable spines he carried were, then went after Nichol, gripping him under his arms and twisting his tail awkwardly to get them both to the surface again.

  Nichol’s eyes were closed, and Colm realized after a moment that he could feel the vibration of Nichol’s heartbeat, and that it was getting slower. He reached down to Nichol’s side and pulled the spine out. It was a small th
ing, but clearly it was doing more damage than was evident from the size of the wound. Colm had to get Nichol back to the Cove. Meg would know what to do.

  But how would he? How could Colm move Nichol when he could barely move himself in this strange new form? And why, why had it happened? If water was the catalyst for his transformation, then perhaps air would turn him back again.

  Colm pushed Nichol up onto the dock, making sure his head was out of the water, before heaving himself up onto the rocks. He was longer now, the tail protruding far past where his feet would have stopped, but his arms felt stronger. Colm dragged his new body out of the water, coiling his tail in close, and stared up at the blue sky, willing for it to change him back. Please…please… All he got was light-headed, though, the air rasping uncomfortably through his chest until he couldn’t hold himself up any more, and fell back into the water.

  The sea revived him like before, and Colm gnashed his sharp new teeth with frustration. What was he to do? How could he get Nichol back to where someone could care for him?

  Swimming was the only answer, but it would be difficult. There was no choice, though. It was either face difficulty or face utter failure, and that end result didn’t bear thinking about. He could do this. How hard could swimming be when you were shaped like a fish?

  To his dismay, Colm found out that it was incredibly hard. He had no experience in the water, didn’t understand how to keep himself afloat without thrashing, and thrashing about dunked Nichol’s head under the water. It was exhausting, dragging him along the surface, fighting for every foot of distance they achieved, and all the while Nichol grew colder and colder, his heartbeat slowing ever further, his lungs growing still.

  Colm had to persist, though. Nichol was all that mattered now.

  Once they reached the regular docks, it got better. Colm could pull himself from boat to boat, using his newfound arm strength to propel them through the water as he fought on. Past the Serpent’s Tail, oh, he longed to stop right here, but Lew wouldn’t be aboard; few fishermen went out these days. He had to go farther.

  Colm made it to within a hundred yards of the Cove without being seen. The water was disgusting this close to the city, filthy with sewage and waste that made his gills feel clogged, but he had to get Nichol onto the quay. As soon as he was close enough to try to push him up, Colm let himself surface. He had a full-body sense of where things were in the water now, but that ability didn’t extend to land.

  An instant after Colm’s head breeched the water, someone screamed. One scream led to more, and Colm didn’t know exactly what they were seeing when they looked at him, but it had to be frightful. Monster… He couldn’t think about himself right now. He didn’t have the time. He had to take care of Nichol.

  Colm slung Nichol up onto the cobblestones of the quay, as gently as he could given his poor positioning. Nichol was still breathing, and his heart was still beating, but just barely. Colm wanted to scream himself, to scream and get Nichol help, but his voice… The last thing he needed was to make a noise that would frighten the people around him even more.

  Apparently, the sight of him was more than enough to inspire violence, at least. A broken brick suddenly crashed into Colm’s shoulder, knocking him back into the water. He surfaced angrily, the yell that he instinctively tried to make coming out as vicious clicks and hissing. Colm couldn’t leave yet. He had to make sure Nichol was taken care of—

  Another brick hit him in the chest as he tried the lever himself up. The one after that knocked his head, and Colm fell back into the water, utterly dazed. He smelled—no, tasted—his own blood in the water, and his new body’s instincts kicked in, his tail writhing weakly in an attempt to get him away from the source of his pain.

  Oars splashed down into the water beside him and above him, and as Colm’s head cleared, he saw the sharp edge of one come scything down at an angle, and just managed to dodge it. Swimming still felt awkward, but it was a lot easier without Nichol in his arms, and Colm slid deeper into the water, out of sight, and headed away from the oily, clinging refuse of the docks.

  His new, unburdened body was full of energy, a seemingly boundless stamina that Colm had never experienced before. While Colm’s mind wanted to stop, to process and understand what had happened, his body fought it for control and won. With no Nichol to care for, Colm’s blood risen and pumping fast, it would be so easy to go back and grab one of those people from the dock, drag them down into the water and tear—

  No. Colm instinctively shied away from the violence of that thought. He had to get away from people, away from temptation. His tail, strong and muscular and powerful, propelled him forward. He could feel the fish scatter as they detected his presence. He could feel the glide of boats on the surface of the water, feel larger, darker creatures moving farther out in the deeper parts of the water, where the sea wall fell away. Sharks—the thought of confronting one filled his new brain with a vicious thrill of expectation, and so Colm deliberately steered back into the shallows. He swam past the sea wall, away from Caithmor, away from everything he knew… Nothing touched him, nothing disturbed him. If he could just swim like this, on and on and on forever, Colm thought he might be all right.

  What was this, though? This thing that was coming up on him, small but fast, harrying him. It nipped at his tail, and Colm rounded on it in a fury, teeth bared and ready to bite. The small thing darted away, then back in again, too nimble to catch. It teased and bit and infuriated Colm into following it, until they were in such shallow water that he could feel the sand scrape against his belly as he fought to stay beneath the surface. There was a single shaft of light ahead, shining down from the top of the cove… Rocks, the entrance, and there was the little beach. Colm was inside the cove, the Searunner’s cove. He hadn’t been here since his father’s funeral, he didn’t even remember how to—oh gods, Rory!

  The anger and bloodlust broke and shattered in Colm’s mind, the shards washing away with each new beat of his heart. Rory had found him and brought him here, to a place of safety, and Colm had tried to kill him in exchange.

  The reality of what had happened to him suddenly fell on Colm like a tidal wave. For the first time since his change—gods, could it really have been just an hour ago, perhaps less?—he looked at himself. His hands, always long-fingered, were now webbed, and his nails had become harder and sharper. The skin of his stomach and the bottoms of his arms were a mottled bluish white, the color of a frozen corpse. By contrast, the scales over his tail and climbing up his back had a dark iridescence to them, like the shell of an abalone. His shoulders and spine bristled with more of those thin, venomous filaments, and his head…

  Colm pulled himself up onto the beach, ignoring his growing need for oxygen as he waited for the water to settle enough that he could see himself. His reflection wavered in the ripples and the faint light, but it was enough. Just one glance was enough.

  His hair was gone, all gone, the top of his head covered in scales. Small spines, striped blue and green and white, feathered back from his temples, and the dorsal fin that he’d felt between his shoulders had a crest that extended all the way up the back of his head. Colm turned his head and watched the crest flare with distress as his lungs began to burn. His gills, three long slits that had been red before but were rapidly becoming a pale pink, fluttered uselessly. Only his eyes were the same, such a pale, icy blue that they were practically colorless.

  Fins. Gills. The teeth of a predator. Colm knew the secret of his birth now. He knew the reason his father had run as fast as he could from his home. Ger Weathercliff had made a monster, and the only safe place for them was far away from the treacherous, changeable sea.

  Colm might have killed Nichol, without even realizing it. Nichol might lie dead right now. Colm might have been too late despite how hard he tried, despite everything…

  Colm screamed, an ululating hiss that echoed off the walls of the cove and up into the sky
, a fierce, hideous sound that would have chilled the blood of a mariner. He screamed until the spots swimming in front of his eyes became nothing but overwhelming dark, and he slumped limply down into the water. It was just deep enough here to reach his gills, and little by little, it revived Colm.

  He didn’t want to be revived. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to be this thing that might have killed his lover. Colm rolled over onto his back in the shallows, oblivious to the discomfort of mashing his fins against the sand, and stared up at the thin sliver of sky. His face breached the water, just his face, and Colm stared at the sky and felt the tremors of his grief rack his frame, all the worse because he found he couldn’t cry. He wanted to, his soul was desperate to prove its human loyalty with tears, but nothing came. There was nothing.

  Actually…there was something. It wasn’t a touch, it was barely even a ripple, but when Rory settled down in the shallows not far from Colm, Colm could feel him. He felt the selkie’s even breaths, and the steady beat of his heart. He felt the subvocal grunt Rory made as he settled deeper into his place, and all of it together was just enough to keep Colm from trying to rip out his own eyes. Because he wasn’t alone, and he couldn’t bear the thought of not knowing what Nichol’s fate would be. He had to cope with this transformation somehow, to bear it long enough to discover the truth. But that didn’t mean he would let himself enjoy it.

  Colm and Rory lay in the sand together until the light faded from the sky, and stars came out and the stillness of the cove was slowly overcome by harder winds and bigger waves. When the tide finally covered him completely with dark, silty water, it felt like being buried. Colm closed his eyes and let the sensation carry him into an uneasy sleep.