by Holly Gunn
I stand and make my way toward the door. “I’ll pick my order up in the front.”
“Hold up,” she calls out. “You’re not running yet. Get your head out of your ass, Aaron, and listen.”
I turn toward her, my thumb in my belt loop, and my eyes narrowed.
She tsks and then smiles as she looks me up and down.
“You’re not my type, Sheriff, but look at you.” She repeats this, “Just look at you. Dark hair, silver growing in at the sides, a face that’s rugged, handsome, and that a woman knows will age well, and a body that ain’t doin’ poorly and appears to be heading into middle age with even more fitness than his early years.”
My jaw ticks. God knows where she’s going with this nonsense.
I remain facing her, but my eyes narrow further.
“Alright, so you’ve got all that going on, plus the blue eyes of the devil, the nature of an angel, kind but firm, the hands of a real man both literally and figuratively, and the reputation of a saint with what you put up with in this town.”
She pauses then sighs before adding, “And then there’s Charlotta Lawsen.”
She lets that hang out there, but I don’t know what the hell she means by saying all this and then seemingly saying Lotta’s different than all that.
“Explain yourself,” I demand, my voice riddled with command and rough with frustration.
She rolls her eyes. “Lotta’s had more sex partners than I think any mermaid and merman put together if you counted their escapades this decade.”
I take an involuntary step forward. “And that makes her what, Tamara? She’s trying to find her mate.”
“By sleeping with every available single man? You know it doesn’t work that way. Their mate will see the mark. Why’s she sleeping with every guy in this town when she just needs to have one see her mark?”
My gut clenches. I’ve asked myself that same question.
Finally, I answer. “Honestly, I’ve no damn clue. But it doesn’t make her happy. She’s happy when she’s at a damned festival, or laughing with Rita at the diner, or sharing a drink and talking over the bar with you. She’s happy ... until a guy walks up, then she looks like she’s being dragged to the gallows.”
Tamara’s quiet for a moment, and then she asks, her voice low, “You know what I think?”
I lift my eyes in question.
“I think her mark is someplace a man only sees when he’s being intimate with her.”
I’ve thought that as well. In fact, it’s pretty much the only reason I think she would do what she does over and over again, even though any jackass can see her heart isn’t in it.
I nod, but then shake my head. “I guess I just don’t understand why she keeps doing it when it makes her so goddamn unhappy. Her sister isn’t free until she finds her mate, so she could stay with Essie until Essie finds someone—”
Tamara shakes her head.
“What?” I ask.
“You don’t know?”
I growl, again.
She smiles. “There’s one mermaid in those waters who’s cursed with a tail but who doesn’t have a mark like the others.”
My shock must show as my reply, because her head bobs. “Yes, Sheriff, exactly. Little Essie doesn’t need to find a mate to be free. She’s got the long life but no curse.”
“So, why not just stay in the water and live out her long life with Essie?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t have a daughter, but I’m thinking Essie is the daughter Lotta never had. Would you let your own daughter stay hidden from the world, rotting away in the sea forever when you know you could both be free?”
“Essie can come out at any time, then?” I ask.
She nods. “We’ve seen her do it a couple times. Not to mention, she hasn’t aged a great deal, but she was twelve when she was cursed, and she looks closer to twenty now. But yes, Essie sheds her tail and comes on land during the month, never when her sister is near, but Lotta knows. And I know she knows because no woman puts herself through what Lotta does without knowing the cost. The cost, in this case, being that if she can find her mate, her sister won’t be stuck in the water forever. She’s a momma with a girl who is trying to stay cooped up for her. That’s gotta kill. A woman like Lotta, a woman of character and strength, she’ll do what she needs to, even give her body to every man she meets, just to have even the most minute chance that her girl can choose her fate—water or land.”
I digest all this, knowing that for all the time I’ve spent with Essie and Lotta, I’ve never known the whole story. I’ve never even asked, me, a sheriff, and I haven’t asked even those basic questions. Although, why would I suspect their story to be anything different? It goes to show that everyone’s story is unique—even, it appears, for cursed mermaids.
“Why are you telling me all this?”
The side of her mouth tips up into the saddest smile I’ve ever seen on another human being. Then, she leans forward, her petite frame dwarfed by my own. So, I lean forward as well.
“You may want her, Sheriff, but she’s had a lot of men want her,” Tamara whispers. With that jarring truth, my body jolts.
“Lotta thought …”
She ignores what I’ve started to say. She’s not done yet. The killing blow is yet to come. “What you and Lotta both haven’t realized is that what she’s needed has been here all along.”
She turns at that with a knowing look but still a great deal of sadness in her gaze, and she heads back to the bar, leaving me flummoxed and my chest aching with the knowledge that of all the outcomes, I didn’t actually think being with Lotta was one of them.
But why haven’t I?
We’ve had a connection from the start, she and I.
It kills me, this revelation. I feel the pain in my chest spread outward at the thought that maybe we’ve missed all this time, and yet, I also feel a renewed sense of hope barreling through me, taking over.
Then, resolve tempers that burst of feeling.
Destined mate or not, I’m going to win Lotta back, and I’m going to spend the rest of my life, whether it be a decade or five, showing her how much that want I spoke of is really the deepest need a human can have.
Another body will never warm her bed again—not while I live and breathe and can give her what she needs in return …
Love. Even if just for a short lifetime.
CHARLOTTA
My sister sits across from me at Rita’s diner, and I see she’s blushing and looking at a trio, two women and a young man about her age, a couple tables down.
“He’s cute,” I comment, casually, taking a sip of my coffee.
“He’s shiny.”
I gulp down my hot cocoa too fast at that statement, and then slap my hand against my chest as I cough from the hot drink going down the wrong way.
She hasn’t even bothered to look my way.
Rita drops a water in front of me, a couple napkins, and the advice, “Hold your arms up.”
At that strange request, I cough a couple more times and then take a small sip of water to soothe my poor throat.
Essie is still staring at the kid.
And, in glancing over, I see he’s looking at her too.
“You should go over there and say, hey.”
Her eyes come back to me suddenly.
“Are you insane? I’m a freak. He looks shiny, and I have a freaking tail.”
I have no idea what to do with this comment. Having watched Aaron’s daughter Irina grow up in addition to what I’ve seen of other teenagers in town, I’ve noticed that particular age group is partial to tantrums and outbursts.
Not Essie, though.
She’s always been so childlike.
My sister seems to gather her wits, and then she calmly says, “I’m probably not his type.”
I watch her for a second, and I know she doesn’t like the scrutiny, but what she’s said is so revelatory, I can’t just leave it.
I reach across the table and nab
her hand.
“Systkin,” I start, sister in our old language, “Have you seen you, sweetheart? You’re stunning. You have that dark sable hair with hints of gold, porcelain skin that glistens with its own gold, and that’s not our mermaid curse. It’s a Lawsen trait. You’re beautiful.”
She glances at the boy then looks back to me.
Shaking her head, she says, “Maybe I’ll say hi later.”
“Sometimes, in life, little mermaid, you don’t have a ‘later’. You only have a now.”
She gets a sly look, and I immediately regret my words, not for her sake but because Essie is intelligent, and I know she’ll turn the tables.
In a moment of weakness, I shared what happened last night with Aaron.
Not that my sharing could have been avoided. My eyes were puffy, and I’m quite sure everyone in the boarding house heard my wracking sobs.
Breezy even stopped by this morning with a basket, taking an extra second to quietly whisper, “I put the good incense in there.”
I stumbled over a “thank you” because I adore Breezy, but sometimes I have no earthly clue what she is speaking of.
I cringe at the thought of what everyone’s thinking of me, and for once, it’s not because I’m free with my body; it’s because they all heard or saw the results of my pain.
My sister sees the cringe.
Her coffee cup hits the table, and splashes over, not in anger. She’s just careless sometimes, and her eyes are now all for her breakfast sandwich.
“You should take your own advice, talk to Aaron,” she tells me cheerily.
Normally, I can’t be mad at Essie when she’s cheery. I can’t be mad at her in general. Today, this is not true. She’s meddling. My sister has never meddled.
Everyone is changing.
And Aaron’s the worst of those changes. My heart hurts just thinking about last night.
Refocusing on my sister, I try to keep my teeth from clenching when I reply, “I think he said everything I want to hear, Essie.”
She shakes her head and takes a big bite of her breakfast sandwich.
“No,” she says, her mouth full of food. “You ran away. Like when Faðir wanted you to marry that man, and you decided to take me and run to a new land. That turned out well ...”
My own coffee mug hits the table. I stare at her in shock, and I say aloud the first thought that enters my mind. “Is this it then?” My voice rises. “Everyone’s just decided that they’re going to kick a girl when she’s already down? It’s attack Lotta week?”
Essie’s eyes are following me warily. I never get angry at her. Faðir, father, had enough anger for ten men, and we’ve never let that particular emotion come between us.
I almost take it back, but Essie’s face becomes sympathetic rather than wary, and she reaches across the table to pat my hand.
She doesn’t repeat her earlier admission, but it hangs between us, at least for me.
“Essie,” I whisper when my nerves have calmed. Her head lifts, and I slant my body forward and lay my hand on the table, almost laughing at her serious face and the sandwich halfway to her mouth that’s open wide. I smile. “Essie, are you …” I pause then take a deep breath. “We never talked about leaving home. I didn’t want Faðir to marry you off either, systkin. You were too young. I had to pack our things and leave, for the both of us. Our brothers were off on their own raids. They didn’t know how much Faðir had changed.” Quietly, I ask, “Are you angry with me that we left? Do you blame me for all that has happened since?”
Essie takes a large bite and closes her eyes as though she’s been waiting an eternity and not the ten seconds since I started speaking.
Then, a big smile on her face, she rolls her eyes and says, “No.”
That’s it. Just no.
I shake my head, and one side of my mouth lifts involuntarily in a small half-smile.
This one word is enough.
Essie doesn’t hold grudges. She collects treasure and talks about jewels and shiny objects. She likes good food, her big sister, the sheriff, Rita, Rickard, Tamara, and a few others in town. She likes her world and all the variety of exploration she has at her fingertips.
But she’s not a child.
And each year, this becomes clearer. She’s aging. In recent years, she’s snuck out of the water in between moons more and more often, and in those recent years, maybe the last few decades, she’s aged from about twelve or thirteen physically and become a woman.
Her body’s filled out, and she looks like our móðir, mother.
Móðir passed three years before we left for what would become America, and that was when Faðir started plotting. He wasn’t always a harsh man, clichéd as it might sound. He used to be kind. He used to be playful. He used to be a Viking himself, a sea-farer with a lust for life. But losing Móðir changed him.
“I still think you should listen to what Aaron has to say,” Essie interrupts my thoughts.
I lift my eyes to my beautiful younger sister and give her one of those looks only big sisters can give. She smirks, accidentally burps, then giggles.
I giggle with her.
Then, I share with her.
“Essie, I want my mate. I do. Sometimes, it’s tiring looking and not having the satisfaction of finding him, the one I’m meant to be with, but I won’t do that, not with Aaron. I can’t. I lo—”
I cut myself off and shudder. I almost said it aloud.
I love him.
“You what?” she asks, her voice curious.
“Nothing,” I say, shaking off the moment. “I just didn’t think Aaron was like that, that he wanted me for my body. All the men I know want something, and I’m willing to give it because, in the end, I know I’ll find my mate and break my curse. But I never expected Aaron to think that way.”
Essie’s lips purse in stubbornness. “Are you that stupid?”
I’m taken aback by the vehemence in the question.
“You have someone, Lotta. You have a man who wants you, really wants you. He doesn’t want your body. Okay, maybe he does. But that’s not all he wants. He comes to see you every full moon. Every … full moon. Without fail. For what? How many years has it been, sis?”
My palms are clammy, my face warm, and my belly is full of seahorses. I gasp.
No, I couldn’t have been that wrong. Could I?
“Fifteen years, at least,” I whisper.
“Longer,” Essie challenges. And she would know. She doesn’t just have every piece of her treasure from the last twenty-five years since we’ve been awake mentally cataloged, she has a mental bucket list of three-hundred-and-twelve things she wants to do and seven-hundred-and-eight places she wants to see, and she remembers dates and names with the accuracy of a champion marksman. My sister is so far from simple-minded, I don’t know how anyone ever thought her so. “Even when Aaron was with the evil witch …” I smile at that because there are some grudges my sister holds, “... he still made sure to be there for us when we came ashore, even before he was sheriff.”
He had, always.
Aaron had always been there.
“You call me little mermaid, like Ariel, all the time, big sis, but you were sleeping beauty before Aaron came along.”
A great many of us mermaids and mermen are. We can choose to sleep, and there are still many who haven’t awoken from the curse. But she’s correct. I was asleep until I met our now sheriff of Aurora Falls.
“I see you’re speechless. This is good. Rita asked me to help out in the kitchen today, and you have about two seconds until the sheriff comes over here and interrupts our serious conversation. He’s been waylaid. That won’t last.”
I don’t turn toward him.
I want to.
My sister stands and grabs both of our plates. I watch her hand movements, my mind screaming for me to do something—probably to run.
Essie, my little sister who’s apparently growing up in ways I haven’t been paying attention to, leans forward an
d whispers, “Don’t you dare run, Lotta. Don’t you flippin’ dare.”
I glance up at her and ask, my voice barely audible, “When did you grow up, little Essie?”
Essie uses a kiss to my forehead as her dramatic pause. “When I was cursed.”
“But you’re not—”
She tsks, another sound I’ve never heard from her.
“Your curse is my curse, Lotta. I needed to be a gift, not a burden, so I stayed the girl you needed me to be, but I don’t think that’s going to work any longer, is it? You don’t need a sparkly, happy, simple-minded soul to fight for. You need to do this for yourself.” Her voice is pleading when she adds, softly but firmly, “I’m only free when you’re free, and I need you to be free, Lotta.”
Our eyes meet. Our gazes hold.
A thousand years of words live in that moment.
We’ve been protecting each other.
My sister might have preoccupations with oddities and shiny objects, but I’m not exactly normal, and I’m the one who’s been slowly slipping as my sister’s grown wiser.
“I love you, systkin.”
“Ek elska þik,” she counters with. I love you in the old language.
It brings tears to my eyes.
She wipes one of my tears away and then high energy returning, she turns on her red Keds and calls out to Rita, “I’m on, Rita!” and skips off.
I don’t have time to recover.
Aaron moves into exactly the same spot Essie’s abandoned. His body close, he’s leaning forward, and his voice is low when he challenges, “You ready to talk, Lotta?”
There are no words.
I feel his roughly spoken question, my sister’s advice, and the twenty-five years of something building between us, settle inside me.
It’s a rush of information and a moment of epiphany.
So, the first thing I do is nod.
Then I stand on my tiptoes.
And finally, finally, I wrap my hand around the back of his neck and pull his mouth down to meet mine, feeling his lips and tasting him for the first time.
It’s not my first kiss, but it is.
It’s not my first anything, but it feels like my first everything.