A beautiful mermaid and a handsome man. Everyone’s read that story. A legend, a fairytale. But what happens when someone really lives that story? Merlisa and Nicholas know. They live the legend—and maybe they will die for it….
“Living the Legend” by World Fantasy Award winner Kristine Kathryn Rusch is free on this site for one week only. The story’s also available as a standalone from Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, iTunes and other ebook sites.
Living the Legend
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
1
SHE WATCHED HIM from the waves, her arms resting across the rocks, her body hidden among the seals. He sat on a log, looking out to sea, and she fantasized that he was looking for her.
The seals smelled of wet fur and fish. Merlisa pushed herself higher on the rock, her arm nearly slipping into a tide pool. He hunched over as he stared. She couldn’t tell what he looked like—the strange cloth that protected his skin hid him from her—but she knew that he was the one.
The water broke behind her and Kalina surfaced. “Grandmere says you’re too close to shore.”
Merlisa leaned her head against the rock. Its craggy edges were cold and wet. “She always says I’m too close.”
“She worries—”
“About the legend, I know.” Merlisa turned back toward the shore. The man was sitting up now. The sun reflected off his eyes as if they were made of smooth water. “Tell her I’ll be home in a little while.”
“She won’t like it,” Kalina said.
Merlisa turned. Kalina had a sea lily tucked behind one ear. Kalina always listened to Grandmere. “I don’t care what she does and doesn’t like,” Merlisa said. “I’m staying here.”
Kalina shrugged and dove under the water, her blue-green tail fins slapping against the surface. Merlisa watched her disappear and then turned back to the man. She had been coming to the coast for years now, but it wasn’t until she saw him that she knew why. She would meet him. She had to.
2
NICHOLAS FOCUSED HIS binoculars on the seals. Their oily smooth faces revealed nothing. He could have sworn he saw a woman on the rocks and then another appear behind her, but now he could see neither of them. He panned the surface of the rock and thought he saw skin. He brought the binoculars back to the spot. Nothing. The seals were in the way.
He sighed and brought the binoculars down. Ever since he had arrived on the Oregon Coast, he thought he had been seeing women in the water. Naked women with high breasts and white hair. Naked woman, he corrected himself. And he knew why he was seeing her.
Running away from Jody had been a stupid idea. Telling her that it was over, and then leaving, made him feel the residue, as if something were unfinished. He kept seeing her from the corner of his eye, her long, white-blonde hair trailing down to her waist, her slender body swaying as she walked. He had stayed with her for three years, thinking that at last he would stop looking, at last he had found someone. The fact that he felt no passion didn’t discourage him. He had lived thirty-three years and had never experienced passion. And yet it was the lack of passion that made him walk away.
The rock seemed very distant without his binoculars. He stood and squinted again, seeing something move above the seals’ heads. In his fancy, he thought he saw an arm. He brought the binoculars back up. Seals lolling on their sides, the setting sun leaving shimmers of light across their fur, and bits of rock were all that he saw. He let the binoculars drop heavily against his chest. Perhaps if he got closer . . . .
He scrabbled out along the rocks, across the wet sand toward the rolling sea. The waves were thick and fierce, almost moaning as they broke along the shore. He hadn’t been this far along the rocks before, and the nearness of the water excited him. The locals had warned him to stay clear of the ocean, to never turn his back on it, and he didn’t plan to. He could see how fierce the water was, how possessive it was of its own domain. The waves pushed against the rock he stood on, sliding around it as if the rock were moving instead of the water.
Nicholas fumbled for his binoculars, and put their cool edges against his eyes. For a moment, he found himself staring at the sea. Large waves grew against each other, creating white foam along their surfaces. He caught a glimpse of a long blue-green tail that bobbed along the water and then disappeared. He turned his head slightly and saw the seal rock. Some of the seals had slid off into the sea. He scanned for the area where he had seen the arm, and saw her.
She had hair the color of sea foam and green eyes that seemed to dominate her small face. She was leaning against the rock, half in the water and half out. Her naked back glistened in the sunlight. She seemed so close that he felt as if he could touch her sand-dark skin.
A look of alarm crossed her face only a second before the wave hit him. He fell against the rock, cringing as pain flooded through him. The water grabbed his ankles and dragged him forward. He flailed with his arms, but couldn’t surface. Salt water filled his nostrils, and he was suddenly very cold.
A pressure started growing in his lungs. He hadn’t got much air before falling. He reached down to push off the rock, but found nothing below his hands. Only water. He reached in front and found more water. If he kept calm, he would be all right. But he always calmed himself by taking deep breaths. The air was seeping from him. Black spots were dancing in front of his eyes. He had to remain conscious. Had to or he would die. Had to—
Someone grabbed him by the hair and yanked him up. His face surfaced, and he took an involuntary breath, swallowing more water than air. He blinked and found himself against the seal rock. His presence had scared the seals, and they had left, sliding into the water with the ease of alligators. He grabbed onto the wet stone, feeling it carve into his sodden clothing. His teeth were chattering and he coughed up water. He had nearly drowned. He had been stupid and nearly drowned.
The hands removed his clothing, rubbed the water from his eyes, patted him on the back, and made him breathe. Then another body pressed his, and the warmth felt so good that it took a moment before he realized that the person beside him was female.
He opened his eyes and saw her. Her hair was white and soft as it brushed against his skin. He reached up to her, and she kissed him. He caressed her sand-dark skin, touching her firm breasts, her nipples, her narrow waist. Her hands kept him warm, bringing him to the peak of arousal, and down until he could stand it no longer. He tugged at her breasts and brought his fingers across her buttocks until his palms found—
Scales. Scales sharp and oily, biting into his skin. She had no legs, no thighs, no place for him to join with her. Only scales, blue-green scales that trailed along the curves where her legs should have been.
He tried to pull away, but she held him until he looked at her. Her dark green eyes held something like sadness. She touched his temples and his panic eased. Words like the shush-shush of waves washed over him, and he grew drowsy. As he eased into sleep, a tear fell on his lips. The drop was as cold, heavy, and clear as a mountain river during spring runoff. He reached for her, ready to forgive her the scales, her strangeness, but sleep overcame him and his consciousness faded away.
3
MERLISA WAITED. SHE caressed his skin and held him tightly, wishing that he would respond as he had before. She had frightened him. Her tail had scared him because his kind did not have tails. She explored his body, the strange separation into legs, the exposed genitals that changed with touch, and wished that there could be more than glances and dreams. She waited until she heard laughter on the beach, and remembering the old legend, watched to see if the laughter came from a female.
It did not, a child ran after a dog, and then a couple followed. Three humans, none of them dangerous. He would fall in love with no one else. Merlisa lifted him off the rock and swam with him to shore, careful to keep his face above water. She let waves push her as deeply into the shallows as possible. She laid him against the sand as the wave receded, and made a crying noise.
The couple turned. Merlisa ducked and cried again. The man spoke garbled, air-filled words and pointed in her direction. Another wave flowed in, and she held her man’s head above the water. She had to get back to the sea. She wasn’t used to being this close to shore. The water seemed less oxygen-rich here, more sand-filled and briny. Her gills felt as if they were clogging, even though her hips were still underwater.
The couple climbed over the rocks, and Merlisa pushed herself back, deeper into the water. She watched from her perch as the couple found her man. They lifted him away, without a single glance backward at her.
She waited until another wave came in, and let it drag her back to sea. Now she would have to go home and explain why she was late to Grandmere. And Merlisa wouldn’t dare say anything about the man.
4
HE WOKE UP between cool sheets, smelling antiseptic. Even with his eyes closed, he knew that he was in a hospital. His chest ached and his muscles throbbed. But he checked his entire body for unusual pain and found none.
Nicholas opened his eyes. Across the room, a television peered down at him as if it were spying for the medical staff. Sunlight poured in from a small window, half-hidden by brown net curtains. He glanced to the bed across from him. It was empty.
A nurse peeked her head around the door. When she saw that he was awake, she smiled. “Hello,” she said.
He didn’t smile back. “What happened to the woman?”
“Which woman?” The nurse had come in. She had curly grey hair and laugh lines around her eyes.
“The one that brought me here.”
The nurse picked up his arm, held his wrist between two cool fingers, and looked at her watch. “Mr. and Mrs. Crenshaw were over from Portland. They left a number if you wanted to reach them.”
Mr. and Mrs.? “No,” he said. “Another woman. With white hair, dark skin, and green eyes.”
The nurse shook her head. “I don’t know, sir,” she said. “I could check with admitting.”
Then he remembered the feeling of scales against his palms. “No need.” He watched her pick up his chart and scribble something on it. “What’s wrong with me?”
“You must have slipped into the sea, and you were unconscious for the past twenty-four hours. I’ll have Dr. Nysten come and check on you.”
He frowned. He remembered falling, remembered the woman and how she had tasted of salt water. He remembered everything, even falling asleep in her arms. He lifted his hands just before the nurse left, and saw that they were wrapped in bandages.
“What happened?” he asked.
“You sliced them. They were bleeding quite badly when you came in.” Sliced them, he thought, on scales.
5
WHEN MERLISA ARRIVED home, Kalina had already told Grandmere. Merlisa could tell by Grandmere’s stance outside the weed branches. Grandmere had wrapped her sea-green tail around herself in a show of displeasure.
“I warned you about playing too close to shore,” Grandmere said.
“He almost drowned,” Merlisa replied and wished she hadn’t.
“They drown in these waters every year. If they didn’t, I would have no work.”
Merlisa bowed her head. Grandmere collected things from the drowned and dying: cloth, trinkets, hair, and memories. She stored it all in case someone in the tribe needed to use something. Grandmere could release the power of those items. Merlisa had been waiting to see if Grandmere would teach her how, but the lessons never happened.
“I’m going inside,” Merlisa said.
Grandmere grabbed her arm. “It would do you well to remember legend, child.”
“Myth, Grandmere,” Merlisa said as she swam through the entrance into the weed branches. Papa sat near a slit in the weeds, staring into the murky water. He grew melancholy when he bred. Mama always left after depositing the baby in his mouth, and he would be sad until she returned.
Merlisa swam to the food area and took out some shellfish. She knew the legend. Grandmere didn’t have to remind her. They had all been raised on the story of the merwoman who had used the tribe’s magic to become human because she had fallen in love with a human man. Then she learned that humans could not be trusted, and sacrificed herself for the good of the tribe. Grandmere did not want Merlisa to become a sacrifice.
But, oh, he was beautiful. She remembered the strange smooth skin, the long free legs. Somewhere in his eyes, she recognized the man that he was, as if she had known him once, in a long-distant memory. The wise woman had said, during Merlisa’s first reading, that Merlisa had an old soul with old debts. The words had made Grandmere cry, but the wise woman explained to Merlisa that the old soul marked her as special.
The shellfish tasted stale. Merlisa spat it out, and the half-chewed food spun in the water’s thick undercurrent. Even though it wasn’t time, she knew that she would have to visit the wise woman again.
6
NICHOLAS SPENT THE first afternoon back in his bookstore, researching mermaids. He reread the Hans Christian Anderson, of course, remembering the version he had heard as a child. His father had bought him a record with Gregory Peck retelling the story, Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A rolling behind the words like an ocean supporting sea creatures. Nicholas had loved the story and would listen over and over again. He had forgotten about that.
Until now.
He closed the last book and looked up. The round school clock he had bought at a garage sale showed five o’clock. He pulled down the shades, took the money from the cash register, and locked the store. Then he left.
He knew without consciously knowing that he was going to the beach. He stopped at the bank and made his nightly deposit and then drove to the spot where he had nearly drowned. He pulled the car over and stared at the foaming ocean.
She haunted his dreams. Each night, as he slept, he felt her hands on him, the warmth of her lips. Sometimes he would wake and lie in bed with his arms behind his head. All of his life felt like a quest for this woman. The only women he had ever been attracted to were tall and high breasted, with sea-green eyes and white-blonde hair. When he met Jody, he remembered that feeling of disappointment as she looked deeply into his eyes. She had had nothing, as if he were looking for some sign, some recognition of who he was before they had even known each other.
She had recognized him.
The thought sent a shiver through him. He yanked open the car door. The sea breeze smelled tangy. He wrapped his coat around his shoulders and stared at the seal rock.
His binoculars had disappeared the day of his dowsing, but if he squinted, he could make out dark shapes on the rocks. Was she there, watching him, keeping him safe as she always had? Or had she returned to someone, something else in the deep?
He didn’t know. All that he did know was that, according to the legends, the next move was hers. And he would be on the beach, waiting for her.
7
THE PATH DOWN to the wise woman’s caves was dark and cold. Merlisa had swum there once before, with her Grandmere, for the first reading. Second reading wasn’t supposed to happen until Merlisa was mated. But, she felt, in a strange sort of way, she was.
Large fish swam out of her way. The giant rocks glistened red, leading the way to the wise woman.
The wise woman lived alone. She was the tribe’s oracle, its seer and prophet. She prescribed the magic that others, like Merlisa’s grandmother, performed. Merlisa swam down deeper, feeling the chill sink into her scales.
When she reached the first cave, she started. The wise woman’s bright red tail flickered. The wise woman was sitting among the weeds, waiting. Merlisa frowned. She had never thought that the wise woman would go so far into the regular ocean.
“You have come to fulfill the prophecy, Merlisa,” the wise woman said.
Merlisa’s body tightened. She had come to live the legend, if tradition allowed. She knew that her people had the power to make her human.
“Come into the first cave.” The wise woman turned and swam inside. Merlisa followed. The cave itself seemed colder than the water around it. The wise woman sat on a carved stone throne, surrounded by flickering red trinkets. Perhaps that was where her red tail came from. Merlisa remembered asking Grandmere after their first visit, and Grandmere had simply told her to hush.
“You saw him on the beach,” the wise woman said. She rested her long thin arms on the sides of the throne. Merlisa frowned. The wise woman seemed frailer than she remembered. “And he nearly drowned, thereby coming to you.”
“You’ve talked to Grandmere.”
“No, child. I recognize the signs. And I remember your prophecy.”
“What should I do?” Merlisa asked.
“First, you understand why.” The wise woman picked up some of the trinkets and ran them through her hands. She began to chant, just as she had at their first meeting, retelling yet again the myth of the beginning.
Merlisa tried to concentrate, but she had heard the myth of the beginning perhaps a thousand times in her life. The merrace and the human race came from the same blood, but they split as their warring increased. They signed a pact, giving the merrace the sea and the human race the land. The races were linked and yet separate.
“A couple like you form once every few generations,” the wise woman said. Merlisa snapped back to attention. “I don’t know if you were once human or if he was once mer. All I do know is that you have a history, and your separation is the result of problems between you both. You have to resolve that before you are together again. And you cannot resolve it while you live in the sea and he lives on land.”
“What should I do?” Merlisa repeated.
The wise woman handed her three trinkets. They shone redly and were as smooth as water-tempered stone. “Show these to your grandmother. Tell her I said that you must fulfill the prophecy.”
Merlisa looked at the stones. “And what if I don’t want to?”
The wise woman touched Merlisa’s cheek. “It has gone too far, child. You are living the legend whether you want to or not.”
8
NICHOLAS SAT ON the log near the back of the beach. He wrapped his ski jacket around his body. The coast seemed colder, the ocean wilder, with each passing day. It had been nearly two weeks, and he had yet to see her. He grabbed the binoculars he bought at a secondhand shop. They weren’t as good as the binoculars he lost, but they would do.
He scanned the seal rock and the ocean, seeing nothing. He was beginning to wonder if she had been the product of some dream caused by lack of oxygen and fear. The perfect woman appeared in his life, in unattainable form. What would Freud say about that?
Nicholas smiled to himself and brought his binoculars down. He stood, unwilling to sit any longer, and walked to the tiny Oceanside café. He pulled the door open and stepped into the warmth.
The café smelled of coffee and fish. Nicholas took a seat on a ripped brown plastic booth overlooking the sea. From here, he could see her without freezing. He stared at the ocean as the waitress served him coffee. Stared at the ocean and saw nothing.
God, he was tired. A man obsessed with a fantasy. He had been in the town only a few months. He ran his bookstore during the day and went home alone at night. The only people he talked to were his regulars, and while they discussed books, they didn’t care if he ate alone seven nights running or if he wandered around his apartment looking for something to do. His interest in the mermaid was getting in the way of his social life.
He looked away from the ocean. A young couple sat in the other booth; tourists, by their summer dress. Only tourists believed the ocean was warm. The Oregon Coast was chilly, wild, not at all like the bright blue waters of California.
A waitress passed. If he were to come here every night, he could talk to the waitresses, make them his friends. She set food down at the couple’s table. He could see the lines on her face, the wisps of grey hair slipping from her bun. He didn’t really want to know a waitress. She probably had two kids and an absent husband, no time to read and no desire either. He knew what sort of woman he wanted, a woman with long white-blonde hair and eyes the color of the Oregon ocean. He wanted a woman who didn’t exist.
9
GRANDMERE SAID NOTHING when Merlisa returned. The older woman merely led the way into her shop. Merlisa followed, feeling more curiosity than fear. Grandmere had never let any of the grandchildren into her shop. It was, she used to say, a place for the desperate.
Human cloth and trinkets hung from the weeds. The shades of drowning victims were imprisoned in a rope net off toward the back. Long, flowing strands of hair seemed to be growing from the walls.
“Sit here.” Grandmere patted a flat rock in the middle of the room. “Some of this will hurt.”
Merlisa sat. The rock felt warm against her scales. She didn’t move as Grandmere wove human hair with her hair, as the older woman’s fingers caressed her skull. Only when Grandmere closed Merlisa’s eyes and mixed human memories with her own did Merlisa cry out. It felt as if her head were being stuffed, as if too much information were trapped inside.
Then Grandmere helped her stand. “Swim to the surface, and you will have your wish.” Grandmere handed her a dagger. “If you want to return, you must cover your legs with heart’s blood.”
I will not return, Merlisa wanted to say. Instead she said, “Thank you, Grandmere.”
“Do not call attention to yourself, Merlisa. He must notice you. If you force him, you will lose him. Do you understand?”
Merlisa nodded. Her grandmother’s words were frightening her. “Grandmere, I want to be with him.”
Grandmere looked away, her eyes glowing in the gentle motion of the water. “What you want, child, doesn’t matter. All that matters is what you do.”
Grandmere bent to kiss her and then moved away. With a push of her hand, she led Merlisa out of the shop. Merlisa was halfway to the shallows before she heard her grandmother’s voice, but she couldn’t make out the words. Merlisa looked back at the shop. It seemed small and far away. She could see Grandmere, floating beside the entrance, watching.
Merlisa waved. Grandmere did not wave back.
10
NICHOLAS WATCHED HER from the restaurant window, the tall, leggy woman with the white-blonde hair. She looked something like Jody, something like his mermaid. He wanted to go out and talk to her, but he was afraid that, like the mermaid, she would disappear.
Three weeks and still nothing. Nicholas took a sip of his coffee. The liquid was brown and bitter. It tasted of beans. Sometimes he thought this quest of his silly, yet he could not seem to abandon it. His dreams spoke of something old, something unfinished, but exactly what, he didn’t know. Sometimes he thought it her fault, sometimes he thought it his, but whatever it was, he knew that he was paying for it now.
The woman crouched on the sand and dug at it with a stick. She wore a leather jacket and tight blue jeans. He liked her long hair, liked the way she moved. The urge to touch her rose strong within him, but he knew it was too soon. He would sit here, watch her, and wait.
11
MERLISA KNELT ON the booth behind him, and as she reached up to close the blinds, she found herself staring at his hair. It was long with a slightly ragged cut, bleached blond mixing with sandy brown. His collar held half the strands inside, and she longed to flick them free knowing that they would feel soft and smell of summer sunshine.
The blinds clattered down beside her booth, hiding the wave-swept beach, the ocean glistening beyond the rocks. Nicholas—she had heard him introduce himself to a local the day before—ignored her, preferring to stare at his cup of coffee. The menu beside his hand was closed, had been closed since he ordered. He would drink and leave, as he always did, with barely a word for her, barely a smile.
As she stepped back on her scuffed white work shoes, sharp shooting pains ran through her legs. When she walked, it felt as if she were treading on daggers, not on the cushy rubber soles that the shoe salesman had promised her. She limped behind the counter and grabbed the coffeepot, feeling the half-familiar plastic beneath her fingers. The memories her grandmother had scraped from the dying and newly drowned still seemed foreign. Merlisa spoke English with an accent, an accent, she thought, that burbled with the sea.
“More coffee, sir?” she asked, wishing that he would look at her. One glance would save them both.
He lifted his head without raising his eyes. “No.” His look was for the ocean, for that grey-green moment of twilight when she had first held him. She wanted to speak to him of it, but she knew that she could not.
Merlisa put the coffeepot back on the burner. She heard, as she knew she would, the rustle of his jacket, the clink of coins on the Formica tabletop, and the jingle of the bell on the front door. She sighed.
The first week had been easy and difficult. She had sold the wise woman’s trinkets and used the knowledge Grandmere had given her to find a home and a job. Yet she couldn’t get Nicholas to see her. Nicholas, with the soft hair and the warm dark eyes. She missed the constant murmur of the sea in her ears, the ease with which her body flowed through water. Sometimes she found herself wondering if she had made the right choice, and then she would try to silence her mind.
She glanced back out the window. He was walking along the edge of the sand, hands thrust in his pockets, looking very alone. She would have gone to him if it weren’t for her grandmother’s words, if it weren’t for the stricture against calling attention to herself. She wanted to fling herself in his arms, to apologize for things she only dimly remembered, to hold him against her forever.
He was walking away from her. She wished that he would look up, but she was afraid that he never would.
12
THE SEA SMELLED briny, and the wind was chill and damp. Nicholas’s cheeks stung with cold. He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked through the sand to the waterline. The sun was setting, but its rays were golden. It took a minute for him to realize that he was following her, that his loneliness had finally driven him from his self-imposed isolation.
He sat on a piece of driftwood. Pursuing her in this mood would be foolish. It would lead to another Jody.
A hand touched his shoulder. He looked up into the woman’s face. Instantly, he knew that she wasn’t the woman he was waiting for. Her eyes were green and warm, but they held no recognition.
“It gets cold here at night,” she said. “I have a fire.”
She pointed down the beach a ways to the small fire smoldering beside a rock. Her smile was soft. And he hadn’t realized how lonely he had become.
“Sounds good,” he said and joined her.
13
HER REFLECTION IN the warped mirror over the bathroom sink looked like her reflection in a tide pool. Merlisa tugged a strand of hair. Here, on land, her hair had become a golden blonde, whitish, but not white. Deep circles ran under her eyes, and her hands were becoming roughened from their contact with the air.
The strain of remembering things that were not her memories, pulling details into focus, was wearing her down. Sometimes she couldn’t remember how a dolphin laughed or the way the sea molded her grandmother’s hair. Sometimes Merlisa couldn’t remember how unhappy she had been in the tribe even before she had saved Nicholas.
The memory made Merlisa shiver. She wrapped her uniform tightly about her body, but her legs—the legs that felt as if she were being stabbed with each step—showed beneath the skirt. Pain. Grandmere had warned her about the pain. And Merlisa could take the sharpness in her feet if only he would look at her, if only he would see the eyes that had held him so captive once before.
She pushed open the bathroom door and saw that his booth was taken. A white-haired woman sat there, staring out the window. Merlisa sighed. He would be disappointed. He liked that booth, liked its view. But perhaps the change would make him see her when she told him that he had to sit somewhere else.
She grabbed the coffeepot and the menu and walked to the booth. She was nearly there when she saw him, sitting across from the white-haired woman, gazing wistfully at the sea. The woman spoke and nodded, but he still looked at the twilight and the setting sun.
Merlisa stopped before the table. He had a right to sit with another woman. He still stared at the sea. But she dropped the menu she had meant to set down. The laminated paper landed with a slap, and for a minute Merlisa thought that he would turn, but it was the woman who looked up. The woman, with her grass-green eyes and moonlit hair.
Merlisa poured the two cups, her hands shaking. She wondered if she spilled the liquid on him, if that would count against the magic by calling attention to herself.
Merlisa poured the coffee. She set the cups down and returned to her other customers. When she looked back at his booth, the couple was gone.
14
THE ROLLING BOOM of the waves reminded him of the deep, rolling, opening chords of Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A. For a moment, Nicholas was transported back to his childhood, to Sunday afternoons spent listening to that record. Since then, he had always associated Grieg with the sea, and mermaids with the realm of the possible.
It had just been a dream.
He had been telling himself that ever since the night of the fire, the night he and Lisel had hit it off so well. They walked now arm in arm, her body a buffer against the cold sea wind, but he couldn’t help looking and hoping for the grey-green light easing across the water. If he had a choice, he would go into the sea and find her, the woman with hair the color of sea foam and blue-green scales that had cut his skin.
“You’re quiet,” Lisel said.
He nodded, not wanting to shatter his mood. He felt as if he had walked into the fairy tale, as if somewhere behind the rocks, the mermaid watched, her little heart snapping in two.
Suddenly, he didn’t want to be with Lisel anymore.
“I think I am going to turn in,” he said.
She smiled, apparently taking his words as an invitation. “It’s still early.” She pressed her body against his, and his loneliness, his frustration, silenced the voice in his head. Her kiss, deep and warm, tasted of coffee and lipstick, and he drank from it, although he really wanted lips that tasted of the sea.
15
SHE WATCHED THEM kiss through the dirty pane of the restaurant window and knew that he left her no choice. No tears touched her eyes, but she felt an ache, a dull ache, around the center of her heart. She could live with the pain in her feet, the loneliness, the strange memories superimposed upon her memories, but she could not watch him go for woman after woman looking for her. By the time he found her, he would never recognize her. She would be a dream, a figment, a woman still young after his youth had gone.
Pain. Grandmere had not explained what type of pain.
Merlisa limped into the kitchen. The burgers sizzled on the grill, and her stomach turned. She still wasn’t used to cooked meat. The cook flipped the burgers over and reached for two plates. Merlisa crossed the kitchen and went to the employee’s lounge. She took the dagger out of her purse and stared for a moment. The blade was long and thin, obviously man-made. It was also old and stained with use. She had carried it since she had arrived, although she didn’t know why.
Now she did.
She left the lounge and returned to the front of the restaurant. Nicholas had his arm around the white-haired woman. His hand was resting in her back pocket. They walked slowly—Merlisa didn’t think she would have been able to follow otherwise—and as they walked, he looked out to the sea.
Merlisa looked too. The waves frothed over the rocks. The turbulent surface hid the tranquil life below. She would take the heart’s blood, the only blood she could, and still meet the destiny her old soul had planned for her.
16
MIDWAY THROUGH THE lovemaking, Nicholas found himself thinking of her salty kiss, the softness of her high breasts, the strange feel of her scales. Outside he could hear the roar of the surf. The feeling of magic, of destiny, rose in him and he shivered.
Lisel, thinking the shiver was passion, pulled him down on her. Afterward, she drifted to sleep while he stared out the window at the moonlit beach.
If he hadn’t been awake, he wouldn’t have heard the rustle. Faint, almost like the whisper of water moving sand. Nicholas sat up. He knew then that the scars on his hands weren’t the stigma of a strange dream, that she had been out there, her small heart breaking, and now she was going to go home.
Home. The culmination of the fairy tale, the gruesome bloody part that his mother had hated. She had finally taken the record from him because he would listen with fascination as the littlest mermaid raised her knife over the prince and his bride, and then plunged the blade into her own broken heart.
Something silver reflected moonlight. “Stop!” he cried and grabbed her sand-brown wrist. The knife dug into his upper arm, and he felt the blood coat the opening and drip. Her sea-green eyes caught the moonlight, and he recognized her outfit as the waitress uniform from the restaurant where he had spent his evenings.
All those evenings, and he hadn’t even looked at her.
Lisel moaned and rolled over. Nicholas got up and took his mermaid by the hand. Gently, he took the knife from her and set it on the night table. “You don’t have to go back,” he whispered.
She flung herself into his arms, clinging, until he pulled back enough to kiss her. She tasted as he remembered, warm and salty and so good that he couldn’t get enough. Lisel sighed, and he felt strange kissing his woman in the moonlight while another woman slept in his bed. He put his arm around her and headed for the living room.
She limped.
“What is it?” he asked.
“My legs,” she said. “They hurt.”
Her pain was his pain. He picked her up. She was light. Her legs were smooth and muscular, human. He found he almost missed the scales. He carried her into the living room and set her on the couch. Then he turned on the light.
Her hair glistened, the color of sea foam when it hit land. Her eyes were wide and green and so full of love that he wondered how he ever could have turned to another woman, why he hadn’t waited for her. He put his hand on her thigh as he leaned over to kiss her. The skin was warm, and coated, coated with blood.
They both looked down. The blood from his arm had covered her legs. Already the dark red droplets were changing, scaling, binding her feet together.
“No,” she whispered. “Not now.”
“You can stay here, can’t you, with me?”
She shook her head. “Not if I change back. I can’t stay out of the water long.”
“Then how—?”
She ripped the corner of her skirt and began wiping the blood off her legs. He grabbed some material too and wiped, but even as the cloth stroked her skin, he saw little scales shimmering where the blood had been.
“It’s too late,” she whispered. For a moment, her eyes closed. “Too late.”
He shook his head. “We have to do something.”
She kissed him, deep and full. He kissed her back, feeling the desperation in both of their actions. He knew as well as she that as long as they were different, they could only watch each other, viewing with love from across their separate worlds.
Her arms twined around his neck, pulling him toward her, against her, nearly drowning him in her grasp. He held her and tried to memorize the moment at the same time. They held each other until she started to shiver.
“What is it?” he whispered.
Her face was pale under the darkness of her skin, and her eyes had hollowed out like that of a woman in pain. He kissed her one last time, then he picked her up and took her out the door. The wind had risen, sending sea salt and droplets of rain through the air. The ocean boomed against the shore, and the slight hope he carried, of going with her, died with each crashing wave.
By the time they reached the sea, her legs were immobile, even though he could still see the mixture of skin and scales. She held him tightly, caressed his hair. He kissed her again, but she pulled away from him. She would take him with her if she could, he knew that. But the frothy water was his death as clearly as the air was hers.
He set her on the sand below the waterline and stepped back as a wave rushed up to take her. She raised her arms to him. “I love you,” she called. The words seemed to burble with the sea. The water took her, swept her away, until all that he could see was the red of her scales glinting in the moonlight.
17
THE WATER WAS cold, ice cold. The pain in her legs was gone, but the pain in her heart remained. So close, so close and still she was here, in the dark, cold water of the sea, swimming home.
Heart’s blood, her grandmother had said. And Nicholas was Merlisa’s heart.
She swam deep into the sea caves because something called her there, some feeling that she should see the wise woman before going home. The wise woman was waiting outside her cave, her red tail flicking. Merlisa stopped and hovered. There, in the clearer water, she could see the wise woman for the first time. The wise woman seemed ill. Red scales floated around her, and her stomach seemed bloated.
“I’m sorry, child,” the wise woman said. The sympathy in the words brought Merlisa down closer. The wise woman smelled faintly of death. The wise woman took Merlisa by the hand. “Pain brings wisdom.”
The words seemed to swell the ache in Merlisa’s heart. She remembered those moments in the living room, on the beach, the warmth of his body against hers. “Like love draws fools,” Merlisa said.
The wise woman wrapped her tail around Merlisa’s. Merlisa looked down. She hadn’t noticed until now that her own tail was red too. The wise woman saw Merlisa’s glance. “Just remember,” the wise woman said, the words burbling out of her, “that only fools have the chance to be wise.”
Copyright © 2014 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
First published in Amazing Stories, November, 1990
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and Layout copyright © 2014 by WMG Publishing
Cover design by Allyson Longueira/WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © Katalinks/Dreamstime
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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