Silver Bells

by Holly Gunn

  Some saw this as cold, and one nurse even commented on it. But it was Lotta who understood. Lotta, who two weeks after the incident, when she saw Irina’s cast and I told her what had happened, said, “It’s just who you are, Aaron. You’re steady. In a world of so many personalities, we need those who get dramatic in a crisis. We need those who feel so much, it boils over. We need those who are calm on the outside but terrified on the inside. And we need men and women like you, who are calm from the crown of their heads to their very spirit. Everyone has a role to play. Who you are,” she’d said softly at the time, “that’s needed. And your girl knows that. The nurse, she just expected someone different. Instead, she got a sheriff and how sad is it for her that she didn’t see the truth of who you are.” Then she’d smiled slyly and added, “But those of us who know you get to keep that secret all for ourselves, so I guess just let her think what she thinks. She doesn’t know you, Aaron.”

  I’m reminded of that memory now, but the feeling that comes with it is stronger.

  I’m just as calm, inside and outside, as the day my daughter scared me half to death.

  I like order, but it’s not for order’s sake. It’s so I can be the man those I care about know me to be when they need it most.

  I pull out the cell phone I rarely use from the front of my truck where it sits ready to charge whenever my truck runs, and I call up the deputies, Bjarke, and then finally Essie and a few others.

  We’ll find her.

  I haven’t come this far to lose the only woman I’ve ever really loved.

  “Yeah,” I say into the walkie.

  “Sheriff, the outlying path near Mystic Heights, where the mountains intersect. That pass. Reggie was herding sheep and cows for winter and getting his fields in final order when he saw a man and a blonde woman with, well he says she had a tail …” Sandy’s voice trails over this comment nervously, and rightfully so. As far as anyone knowns, the cursed mermaids and mermen can’t leave the water of the lake except during a full moon. She continues. “Reggie says the man was carrying the woman, muttering to himself. He was also dressed like a … ummm …”

  There’s hesitation over the line, and I ask, “Sandy, he was dressed like a what?”

  She clears her throat over the walkie and answers, “Well, Sheriff, he was dressed like a Viking it seems.”

  “Copy,” I reply, thinking of the video feed from the jewelry store robbery, and then cut out with, “Be there in five.”

  “We heading out, old man?” Bjarke asks.

  My baby girl found out she’s having a baby of her own just last week, and while I want nothing more than to stay angry at my son-in-law forever for taking my little girl away, I know he’s not really taking her away. He’s giving her a new adventure like Lotta’s trying to give Essie. I can’t fault him for that. I can only move forward with the hope that he’ll offer her the grandest adventure she’s ever needed or wanted.

  I jut out my chin. “In my truck, Bjarke.” Then, god help me, I say words I never thought I’d say aloud, “It’s time to hunt a Viking.”

  My son-in-law smirks.

  I shake my head in humor, though I don’t know how it’s possible at a time like this.

  Then, Bjarke and myself, Essie and George in another car, the other two deputies that aren’t out with Sandy, and about two dozen town folk, who’ve refused to be left behind, hop in their vehicles to do exactly what I’ve said we’re headed to do: hunt a Viking.

  CHARLOTTA

  I’m suffocating. I only come to because I can’t breathe—I’ve been out of the water too long.

  The day I found out my sister didn’t have a mark is the only other time I’ve felt something like this, like death, only a slow one that lights a fire in my lungs.

  Essie had gone ashore. It was only a week after we woke up and right after the full moon. And my sister being who she is, was excited to explore, but she didn’t understand the dangers the other cursed ones were telling us about, the rules one might call them, of living as what we had become.

  Realizing Essie was gone, I’d rushed to the beach, using my tail to propel me ashore.

  It was the most terrifying moment of my life.

  I threw myself onto the sand before I knew what was happening, and then, floundering like a fish out of water, my breath coming in small pants, my lungs on fire, I cried out for her, over and over again.

  She finally came, and the mermen and mermaids who were there that day tell me I must have been on that beach for an hour calling out her name.

  I don’t remember being helped back in the water.

  I don’t even remember the exclamations as Essie, on two legs, came around the corner to help.

  I only remember the pain of not being able to breathe, the fear of where Essie had gotten to, and that she was feeling what I was, and the paradoxical feeling of blissful oblivion as I fell into a deep slumber.

  I didn’t wake again for almost three weeks at the next full moon.

  But awaken, I did.

  Feeling my lungs burning once more, I know I’m near to passing out and not because of the noxious drug I’ve been given, but because I’m a literal fish out of water.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been out. Perhaps the drug has slowed down my gills from collapsing, but it won’t be long. The whole of my lungs from my chest to my lower back are painfully strained.

  “Faðir,” I rasp out, and then ask the question most pertinent. “How?”

  He answers in the old language with an accent so perfect I wonder at how he has preserved his native tongue to such flawlessness.

  “Daughter, you have cursed us to this strange land. I woke up in the stone cave on the ocean floor.”

  I see no fins, no signs of his being cursed, but I must ask.

  “Are you cursed then, Faðir? Are you a merman?”

  He scratches his head and his long beard, and I may have no clue what is happening, I may even be frightened, but I feel a deep-seated sadness for him and how lost he looks.

  “Faðir, the witch … she cursed us because—”

  “Yes, yes,” he whispers in old Norse as though now remembering. “He never could keep it in his pants, could he?”

  His gaze fastens back on me.

  “Where is she?” his rough voice asks. “Where is your móðir?”

  My gills are working heartily now, and I know if I do not get back to water soon, I will die.

  I speak cautiously when I say, “Faðir, Móðir died ... a very long time ago.”

  He’s shaking his head before I even finish.

  “No,” he says. “No. No, no, no.”

  I know where we are, only about thirty feet away from the river that runs into Sapphire Lake. If I can shift my body, I can get there.

  But I can also get some answers as I shuffle.

  “Faðir, do you not change into a merman?”

  He’s still shaking his head, but I realize this time, he’s answering me.

  “But you are cursed?”

  He nods.

  “I woke up to this place, and I swam to the surface, barely making it.”

  “You lived in the cave then?”

  He nods. “It was sealed. Then it wasn’t.”

  The cave Essie discovered while searching for new treasures.

  He’d somehow been trapped in there.

  “But,” I say, shuffling, “how did you even come to be here? Last I knew, you were marrying off my brothers and—”

  “Trying to save you!” he cries.

  I stop my movements as he looks my way, seemingly seeing me for the first time.

  “Faðir,” I say, my voice quiet due to lack of oxygen, “I cannot survive outside of water. You must let me go, or I’ll die.”

  He shakes his head, then nods.

  “Only wanted to protect you, Charlotta. Only wanted to protect you.”

  I nod in return, backing further away from him. Only fifteen feet to the river. That’s all, and then I can breathe.
<
br />   He’s watching me but it’s as though I’m not there, as though he’s in some other place and time.

  “I got your móðir jewels,” he tells me, his voice like a child’s. “Do you think she’ll come back if I bring her treasure?”

  I feel a tear slip down my cheek.

  A thousand years.

  He’s been locked away for a thousand years.

  And he still loves her.

  “I think,” I say, “that Móðir always loved everything you gave her.”

  “She loved you girls.”

  “Yes,” I reply, nodding, only five feet from the water. “She loved us. And she loved my brothers. And she loved you so much, Faðir. And we can talk about that, but you have to let me back into the water.”

  His head shoots up at that, and he’s two feet in front of me before I can blink, dragging me back to where I was, twenty feet from breathing.

  My gills are closing.

  “Please,” I whisper, tears sliding down my face, and my world going black as my breath leaves me. “Please, Faðir, please … you have to let me go. I’m dying.”

  AARON

  I hear her words as we near the river’s edge, and the ramblings of her father. Essie almost ran forward at the sight, but Bjarke and two others, including Sandy, held her back.

  I know I don’t have much time, but I press forward and Bjarke follows, Essie with him.

  “Faðir?” Essie asks in Old Norse with Bjarke translating for us, even as her voice is breaking over her tears. “You have to let Lotta go. She’ll die if you don’t.”

  The older man shakes his head, and Bjarke continues to translate. “No, no. Must protect her. Let her and you leave me when I promised your móðir I would protect you both. Now, we’re here in this strange place and the water is trying to steal her back.”

  “Faðir,” Essie repeats, moving closer, until she’s near toe to toe with a man who might be insane, “You have to know this is wrong, that something isn’t right. You can’t protect Lotta by letting her die. Trust me, Faðir. Please trust me, and let Aaron and Bjarke get her back in the water.”

  He has no gun.

  He has no knife.

  I jut my head toward Bjarke, and he understands my motion.

  Not a moment later, I’ve lifted Lotta into my arms and fully clothed, I bring her into the water. She’s silent, but underwater, I can see her gills start to work again.

  I glance toward Essie, who’s watching me, her hand out toward her father. He’s being held by three men, his wails, the sound of nightmares.

  “She’ll be fine, Aaron,” Essie tells me, her eyes moving right back to her father after nodding in my direction. “Let her go. She needs to let the water help her recover.”

  “She’ll be okay?” I ask, and I don’t even know my own voice, it’s so tortured.

  “Yes,” Essie replies, nodding once more. “This happened once before. Her gills are working. She’ll be fine. Give it time.”

  I slowly let her go, and at the exact moment I do, there’s a vibrant stream of color in the evening waters of the river as several dozen of the cursed mermaids and mermen find their way to us and bring her home to the depths of the lake.

  Her father is still crying out and Bjarke’s translation is rough, as though he too feels all that has happened, but I see he especially feels for Lotta and Essie’s father.

  For all that I’m furious at her being put in danger, I can feel a father’s pain acutely. How could any of us who are fathers or fathers-to-be not feel this older man’s pain? It isn’t often we see a grown man trapped underwater for over a thousand years breaking free only to find the world changed, and feeling powerless against the threats his daughters have faced and are still facing.

  “I was supposed to protect her,” Bjarke translates. “I was supposed to protect you, Maranessie.”

  “Faðir,” Essie whispers, and then she’s pulled into the old man’s arms.

  Their cries fill the area, and I take a deep breath, knowing I can trust Essie’s word that Lotta will be alright, but also knowing I won’t be sleeping for near on two weeks.

  CHARLOTTA

  I see him lying in the sand when I awake.

  I feel more refreshed than I ever have after a moon cycle.

  Dusk has settled, and his salt and pepper hair has a silvery glow that I’ve always loved in the moonlight.

  It’s his even breaths as I make it to shore after my shift that alert me to the fact that he’s sleeping.

  I draw nearer.

  I’ve not changed into my clothes yet. Breezy, or sometimes Rita, usually brings them for Essie and me. Now I see them at Aaron’s side.

  Here I am, completely nude, walking on a secluded section of beach without a care in the world that anyone might see me—and only because all I see is him.

  I want to see my faðir and Essie, but there is time for that. Right now, it’s about Aaron.

  It’s warm for a December evening. The early snow from November has completely melted away, and the moon shines brightly overhead. I lay beside him on the sand, feeling the cool, soft grated stone rub pleasantly against my skin. I’ve grown used to its texture over the years.

  My fingers lay proudly against his bearded jaw a moment later, and I move them back and forth, enjoying the texture and whispering silly words in his ear to get him to wake up.

  Then my words aren’t so silly.

  They’re confessions.

  “You say you fell in love with me when you first met me, Aaron. You say it, and yet, someday I’m going to have the courage to tell you …”

  Even now, with his breaths even, his body close, his eyes shuttered in sleep, it’s hard to speak the truth. But I do it, because he deserves the words even if I’m not yet able to say them to him while he’s awake.

  I lean forward and my mouth directly at his ear, I confess, “I spent a thousand years asleep, and then, twenty-five years ago, I took my first real breath in a millennium.”

  It seems almost anticlimactic to say it aloud, as though they are just words. Because, I think, I’ve already said these words to him in other ways.

  I smile and then roll into his body in an attempt to wake him again, but his arm snakes around me, and a moment later, I’m under him.

  He glances down the line of my body, and I think we’re both surprised. Me, that he’s awake. And him, that I’m naked.

  “Hey,” he says at the same time I do.

  We laugh, as we always do.

  Only this time, he adds, before the laugh is finished, “That’s quite an outfit you have on there, darlin’.”

  I drop my voice and joke, “Wanna take it off, Sheriff?”

  He’s quiet for a moment, his blue eyes darkening in the moonlight.

  “Yeah,” he answers.

  And he does.

  He strips me down further, to my very soul.

  His hands span my body, reaching for my thigh, and he lifts it so he can settle himself against me.

  “Don’t you want to—”

  I start but he shakes his head.

  “No mark, Lotta. Not yet. Tonight isn’t about your curse. It’s about you and me and what I’ve been dying to do to you for too long to measure.”

  “O-okay …” I say, and then, ever so slowly, I slide my hand behind his head and draw his mouth toward mine.

  He comes to me, his tongue touching mine in blissful harmony, and our life-breath mingling as though we are one.

  One of his hands slips between us and he’s touching my breast, feeling its heaviness, lifting it at the base and running his thumb over its tip, touching and teasing, flicking and savoring, just as his tongue does, so too, do his hands mimic his mouth in its tenacious exploration of every part of me.

  I reach for his jeans and slowly undo his belt buckle, then his button, then slide the zipper down, feeling the weight of his cock as he’s freed from the confines of his pants.

  “Well, well, Sheriff, seems someone is neither boxers or briefs,”
I comment, my hand running the length of him, feeling his hardness and knowing that while he’s been with other women—never from this town, but there have been enough rumors from neighboring towns in years past—and I’ve been with other men, there’s a sharing of memories and a building of new ones that can never compare to our past partners.

  He groans at my touch, but I’m realizing he’s not much of a talker during sex.

  His hand joins mine and we stroke his cock together, until a bit of precum leaks out of the tip.

  He removes my hand from him, drawing it to his shoulder and then taking my mouth in a warmth and honey kiss. His hand fists in my hair to maneuver my head sideways so he can go deeper with his kiss. And at the same time, he’s spreading my legs, opening me wider, and I feel the head of his cock as he enters me. Just that small tease.

  I shudder with the sensation of him so close to being inside me.

  Then he moves.

  Inching in, he slides deeper and deeper, his hand rough in my hair, his hips pressed into mine, his mouth taking all the air from my lungs and burning through me in a blaze as my heart climbs higher, my pulse quickens, and my pussy clenches around him, drawing him further inside.

  Then, my tame sheriff with the glimmer of an edge in his eyes loses control.

  My back to the sand, he hammers into me, driving his cock and tongue deep, pulling my hair with bruising strength all while I wrap my legs around him, and hold on with my fingers clawing and my heels digging into his back, trying to take him as deep as he can go.

  My climax hits then, like a rushing waterfall, stealing my belly’s breath and setting me free to soar over the water’s depths.

  He drives his cock into me one, two, three more times, until with a loud groan, he comes, his own climax causing him to throw his head back.

  His hips settle against mine and his hold on my hair loosens, but my pussy continues to ripple around his cock, drawing every last drop of his cum from his body.