Where the heart is, p.20
Where the Heart Is,
p.20
White.
Blue, darkness, shadows, purple-black around him. Depths around him like a vise. Hands, teeth, hair that isn’t black as raven’s wings, as ink, but dark and almost green like seaweed on a storm-wet shore, skin that isn’t white, but tinged palest jade, the jade of deepest ocean. Breath that isn’t sweet from tea with milk, but sour and salty from devouring strange things scuttling in the sea-deep shadows.
* * *
. . . Calum?. . .
* * *
Calum. He is Calum.
Mary.
Mary?
He’s twisting in darkness, filled with brine-sour shadows. Wrapped up in seaweed and strong arms, lit by some strange unearthly blue-green glow.
He tastes her, the woman from the sea, the mer-woman. Tastes her breath in his mouth, on his lips, feels it in his lungs.
Mary.
There’s a hiss. Serpentine, almost. Frustration, anger.
I can give you the sea. She will take you, now. No more longing. No more Mary. No more sorrow.
No, no.
Mary.
Where there is your Mary, there are dreams of your wars, memories of dying in the belly of your ship. I cannot breathe for you a third time. The sea wants you; I am the sea, and I want you.
Mary.
He’s drowning in shadows. There is no memory, no susurrus of the past across his mind, only shadows.
Their darkness is broken, incomplete, however. In the shadows, flitting and swimming and seeking, is a flash of white.
White skin
Pale, slight breasts
Ink black hair darker than shadows
A soul that billows lightness and white and warmth
Movement, in the depths.
Warmer sea.
Lighter shadows.
Grayer, rather than fullest black.
One Mary. My Mary.
He fights the darkness. Remembers his promise, on the day of white, the day of vows. Love, protect, honor . . . and always, always, always be her Calum, only her Calum.
Fight the darkness.
Be her Calum.
He can almost hear her, in the twisting currents of the deeps.
* * *
. . . Calum?. . .
* * *
Another hiss of anger.
Movement, a tail beating in the currents, flicking powerfully, driving upward. Currents against his face. Cold, once again.
Sounds: gulls crying raucously in keening shrill overlapping shrieks, the surf on a shore, a bell jangling as a mast dips side to side in the waves. A seal barking.
Sensation: sand skritching under him, water flowing over him, sucking down past him, coldness deep inside him.
Calum coughs, and blinks brine from his eyes. The sky above him is heavy gray, wind blows, rain patters and prattles in a gentle drizzle. He’s on a shore, half in the water.
He’s not alone.
“You owe me two deaths, Calum.” Her voice is a shuddering vibrato, that quavering song in his head, in his soul, a voice that tolls with the power of the tides.
“I only want Mary. I’m her Calum.”
She’s there, in the sand beside him. Skin and hair tinged green, gills at her throat pulsing. Her teeth are a little too sharp, and a little too many. “I gave you my breath, twice. And now I’m returning you from the sea. The sea wants you, Calum.”
The sea wants you; I am the sea, and I want you—he remembers the sound of those words echoing inside him, shuddering in the bone of his skull and the cage of his ribs.
“The sea can have me, but give me Mary.”
She glances past Calum, at something down the shore.
A shape. A body, thin and frail and feminine, crumpled in the sand, half in the sea just like Calum.
“Your Mary.” That awful, powerful, unearthly vibrato again.
He claws through the sucking surf, his peg digging in the sand, grit under his nails, brine on his lips. He is still caught in the sea, and her currents are sucking him back in.
“No! Mary . . . Mary!” His hoarse rasp grates in his throat. “Mary . . . please, Mary.”
She’s coughing, belching and vomiting seawater. Rising up on shaky hands, ink black hair stringy and dripping. Her dress is torn, showing her white skin in places.
“MARY!” He claws at the sand and the surf, screaming.
She hears him, sees him, struggles like he struggles, but the sea has them, and refuses to release them.
“Please!” Mary’s voice is as he remembers, quiet, but cutting through noise with its gentility. “Calum . . . please, give me Calum back.”
The sea refuses to release them.
Beside him, the mer-woman watches, that impassive, alien expression on her face. “Two deaths. Two lives.”
Calum ceases his struggles and twists to regard her. “What? What do you mean?”
“It is the way of the sea. A life for a life. To receive, you must give.”
“Give what?”
She glances at his foot, his flesh-and-bone foot, now bare, his boot lost at some point: seaweed is tangled around his ankle, twisted and coiled like a tendril, like a tentacle.
“Your life.” She glances at Mary. “Her life.”
“What? What do you mean, our lives?”
“When the after-sea has finished with you, you will be called back to us. When the after-sea gives you up, when you feel the breath of your sky fleeing your lungs, you will return to us.”
The tendril of seaweed coils around Calum, snaking up his body as if alive, growing around him. Around his wrist. His ankle. His throat. Loops of seaweed, tangled and coiled around him. Squeezing.
“A life for a life, a life for a life.” She gestures at Mary, and Calum sees that another tendril of seaweed is snaking around her body as well: throat, ankle, and wrist.
“We have to return to the sea before we die?” He glances at Mary, desperate to go to her, and then at the mer-woman, the creature of the sea.
“Yes.” She fingers the seaweed. “This will be your reminder, all of your days walking upon the after-sea.”
“But we’ll have each other? The sea will give us back to each other?”
“Until you return to her, yes.”
“Why?”
A shrug. “Even the sea cannot unknot the strands of fate, Calum.” She glances at Mary and then at Calum. “Some loves are fated, and cannot be broken, even by death, even by the sea.”
“Anything. As long as I have Mary. She’s all that matters.”
“She must agree, as well.”
“God, Calum—Calum.” Her voice shakes in his ear.
“Mary! I’m here, Mary. I’ve got you.”
“You borrow the breath of the sky. You borrow your years on the after-sea,” the mer-woman says, in that quavering vibrato, the shuddering voice that rolls and tolls in the secret places of their souls.
The seaweed tightens around Calum’s throat, around his ankle and wrists, and he hears Mary choking as well, and the sucking grabbing currents pulls them away from shore, back into the hungry brine.
Their eyes meet, Calum’s and Mary’s, and their hands tangle, fingers twining.
“Yes,” Calum gasps.
“Yes,” Mary hisses.
The strangling pressure fades, and the currents weaken.
A long moment of silence then, except for the slap of the surf and the cry of the gulls.
Somehow Calum and Mary are tangled together in the sucking surf, currents pulling at their ankles and thighs, and her lips are on his, cold but swiftly warming, and her hands are on his, and her hands do not burn with the coldness of the deep.
“Calum?” Mary’s voice, quiet, shaky, tentative.
He rolls toward her, levers himself onto his elbow, and she’s there, in his arms, he’s breathing her warmth and her pale skin is real, and her whimpering cries are real, and the salt on his cheeks is from tears rather than brine.
“Oh, Mary, Mary.” He looks her over, touches her everywhere. “You’re real. You’re real!”
She clings to his neck. “I think I died, Calum. I drowned.” She shivers. “But I heard you. I . . . I saw you, I felt you. You were fighting. A woman . . . that woman . . . thing, she had you all wrapped up in her arms and she was going to . . . I don’t know.”
“You sank, your ship sank,” Calum says, “and I thought . . .”
She kisses him, clings to him. “Was it a dream, Calum?”
He feels the seaweed still and pulls away from Mary. Lifts his wrist, showing a thin strand wrapped tight around his wrist and another around Mary’s. “I don’t think it was.”
She shakes and clings to him once more. “You went to sea for me, Calum? You . . . you went back out, went down beneath the waves? After everything you’ve been through?”
“You were out there, Mary. I had to find you. I’m your Calum.”
Mary clings to him fiercely, kissing him everywhere. “We’ll go down to the sea together, then. When that day comes, we’ll go down together.”
He kisses her back, and then, for a moment, he feels an echo of icy skin, a touch so cold his flesh burns, tastes brine-sour breath, and he shudders, pulls away, staring down at Mary to make sure she’s real.
“What is it, Calum?”
“She . . . she tried to . . . she wanted me.” He shakes his head, unwilling to put to words the dark, twisted images in his mind. “Erase it from me, Mary.”
She brushes a stray lock of his damp red hair away from his eye. “How, Calum?”
But her eyes, so blue, so loving, they tell him she knows exactly how.
They crawl out of the surf, away from the reaching tide, and Mary erases that icy touch with her own, with her warmth, her peace. In the sand, beneath the sky, with the gulls crying and the sea churning, they move together.
Perhaps someone watches from the waves.
Calum doesn’t care. His Mary is wrapped up in his arms, the sun warming their bare skin.
Let her watch; their years on the after-sea will be long and full of love. And, after all, as she said . . . some loves are fated, and cannot be broken, even by death, even by the sea.
Some loves are fated, and cannot be broken, even by death . . .
Even by the sea.
Even by the sea.
* * *
He sets the pen down, closes the notebook.
His eyelids slide closed, and his breath hitches in his lungs.
“Ava?”
He sees her now, in his mind’s eye. Slender, with small, pale breasts. Ink black hair. Vivid blue eyes.
“Ava.”
He whispers her name, as if saying her name can summon her, like an ifrit or djinn.
He doesn’t remember anything but her face, her name, her body.
Perhaps he can summon more of her, by telling another story.
He opens the notebook and begins to write again. He thinks of her, of Ava. Those blue eyes, that pale skin, her ink black hair, the way she loved him, the way he loved her.
And so he writes, to remember.
* * *
TO BE CONTINUED . . .
Also by Jasinda Wilder
Visit me at my website: www.jasindawilder.com
Email me: jasindawilder@gmail.com
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My other titles:
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The Preacher's Son:
Unbound
Unleashed
Unbroken
* * *
Biker Billionaire:
Wild Ride
* * *
Big Girls Do It:
Better (#1), Wetter (#2), Wilder (#3), On Top (#4)
Married (#5)
On Christmas (#5.5)
Pregnant (#6)
Boxed Set
* * *
Rock Stars Do It:
Harder
Dirty
Forever
Boxed Set
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From the world of Big Girls and Rock Stars:
Big Love Abroad
* * *
Delilah's Diary:
A Sexy Journey
La Vita Sexy
A Sexy Surrender
* * *
The Falling Series:
Falling Into You
Falling Into Us
Falling Under
Falling Away
Falling for Colton
* * *
The Ever Trilogy:
Forever & Always
After Forever
Saving Forever
* * *
The world of Alpha:
Alpha
Beta
Omega
Harris: Alpha One Security Book 1
Thresh: Alpha One Security Book 2
Duke: Alpha One Security Book 3
Puck: Alpha One Security Book 4
* * *
The world of Stripped:
Stripped
Trashed
* * *
The world of Wounded:
Wounded
Captured
* * *
The Houri Legends:
Jack and Djinn
Djinn and Tonic
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The Madame X Series:
Madame X
Exposed
Exiled
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Badd Brothers:
Badd Motherf*cker
Badd Ass
Badd to the Bone
Good Girl Gone Badd
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The Black Room
(With Jade London):
Door One
Door Two
Door Three
Door Four
Door Five
Door Six
Door Seven
Door Eight
Deleted Door
* * *
The One Series
The Long Way Home
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Standalone titles:
Yours
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Non-Fiction titles:
Big Girls Do It Running
Big Girls Do It Stronger
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Jack Wilder Titles:
The Missionary
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JJ Wilder Titles:
Ark
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Jasinda Wilder, Where the Heart Is
