Between the Sea and Sky (14 page)

She didn’t want Dosia to be happy here. And she didn’t want him to leave her alone with Dosia, but she couldn’t say that. She rubbed her throat, which had tightened from keeping back crying, and managed a sigh.

“What do you want me to do?” he said.

“I don’t know. I wish we’d never spent that night in the vineyard.”

“Why?” he said, but he looked like he already knew. He took one step closer to her, and more than anything she wanted to fall into his embrace and repeat that kiss, but at the same time … oh waters! She felt like driftwood tossed about a stormy sea, and no one could make it all right. The safe and right thing to do was to go home now that she knew Dosia was okay, so why did it seem like such an awful prospect?

“I can’t stand it now. As if I could go home and just sit on the rocks all day for the rest of my life and forget about you.”

“Then—then don’t go.” In the dark hall, lit by a single candle, his expression was a solemn shadow, his voice soft and intimate, almost as if he whispered in her ear over the muffled chatter and joyous shrieks in the next room.

“But … how can I stay?”

“Because I can’t follow you. It doesn’t matter how much I might wish it, I
can’t
follow you.” His teeth were gritted.

“That’s not true. You were the one who came to me all those years. You stopped coming, and you said you’d come back when you were done with the Academy, and you never came back.”

“I told you why I didn’t return. But it doesn’t matter. I can knock on your door, and you can stand there and chat, but you can never invite me in. That’s what it’s like. Standing at your door like a hopeless idiot while everyone you know passes by to stare.”

“But would you really follow me if you could? Would you give up your wings to follow me to the sea? Your family? Books and paper? Everything?” A few soft tears finally dropped from her eyes. “I wouldn’t even want you to.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t want you to sacrifice for me, either. I don’t want you to come to my world where you don’t fit in, or have winged children and stay for their sake, even if I were to die. I don’t want your feet to hurt, and I’m absolutely sure I don’t want to take your belt, and I know you would have to give it up to be free of the pain you feel on land. I don’t want to love someone who had to sacrifice so much of herself to be with me.”

What was there to say? There were many reasons to care for Alan, but from the first time she saw him she had been fascinated by his wings, and all that they meant—the ability to speed through a mysterious world, to spread knowledge. The birthright of a Fandarsee. And surely Alan was just as attracted to the world she represented—a world equally mysterious to him, and equally beautiful.

“Esmerine,” he said. “There’s no good in this talk. You came to see your sister, and you need to speak with her. And I should go spend the night at the messenger post, but I’ll be back first thing in the morning, I promise.”

Esmerine knew he was right. She remained silent, fighting to rein in her emotions.

“I promise,” he repeated. He touched her shoulder, briefly, and she moved toward him with an almost instinctive yearning, but he was already turning away as Dosia slipped into the hall.

Chapter Twenty-One

Dosia squeezed Esmerine’s arm. “Oh, Esme, don’t be cross! I’ve missed you so much, and we’ve got so much to talk about. We’ll cozy up in my room away from all this and drink some tea. You’ll feel so much better.”

“I don’t want tea,” Esmerine said. “I don’t want to eat or drink one more thing.”

“All right,” Dosia said soothingly. “We’ll just talk then.”

They moved slowly up the stairs. The two little dogs came hurrying out from somewhere, panting noisily, edging their noses under Esmerine’s skirt, huffing out small barks.

Dosia snapped her fingers. “Down! Go upstairs! Dominic! Frederico! Good lads.” She smiled crookedly at Esmerine. “I’m so sorry. They were a wedding present from Fiodor and they’re not really trained. But they’re well-intentioned little things. They distracted me from my homesickness quite a bit.”

Esmerine stared at the ground. Her stomach still felt ill from the rich food, and her feet were burning. It was easiest to think of these things.

Dosia sighed. “Oh, Esmerine, can’t it be like old times for tonight? I so want to know how you got here. How did you find Alan? Was he happy to see you?”

“I’m not talking about Alan! Not until you tell me everything! We’ve all been worried sick about you. And being a siren has lost all its luster. We were going to do that
together
. Everyone told me I shouldn’t come after you, so I tried to keep going along as if everything was normal. But one day the traders said your husband had taken you away to the mountains to keep you from the sea because you were so homesick. It broke my heart. And now I’m here and you’re laughing and flirting and running around with dogs and it seems like you don’t even care how much you’ve hurt us all! Why didn’t you send word?”

“It’s not as if I can just post a letter. I can’t even write myself, and I’d have to figure out a way to be sure it got to you. And it was so hard to figure out what to say.”

“Well, you could have … tried.”

They reached Dosia’s room. Dosia quietly asked the maid to light the candles and leave them alone.

“I’m sorry,” Dosia said. “I guess I didn’t think how it would affect you all. I suppose I flung myself into my new world a little too hard. I don’t want to seem like a weepy little merwife.” Dosia suddenly clamped Esmerine into another tight hug. “I’m so sorry,” she repeated. “I never thought I’d see you again. But I’m so glad you came to see me. Did Mother and Father want you to come? Do they even know you’re here?”

“Yes,” Esmerine said. “I’m here with their consent. We couldn’t rest without … knowing. I mean—you were kidnapped. Your husband … is he …?”

Dosia stepped into the bedroom. The candles cast eerie, flickering light in the overlarge space, illuminating the tapestries, and Esmerine could see why Swift had been frightened. “Esmerine, I … I let Fiodor come close.” Her color had deepened, and Esmerine understood with a sudden jolt that she had been mistaken all along. Dosia hadn’t been kidnapped. She had gone willingly. She had left them all behind.

When Dosia was fourteen, she had her first beau, a skinny boy to whom everything was a joke. Esmerine hated how Dosia only wanted to talk of Baroden instead of playing games or anything else.

One afternoon Esmerine had come across Dosia and Baroden in a cave, tails twined, hands and mouths all over one another. Esmerine had screamed, horrified by the sight, and run to tell her mother, who had severely scolded Dosia for such inappropriate behavior and confined her to the home cave until the next turn of the moon. Dosia and Esmerine had the worst fight of their lives, but Esmerine had always felt in the right. She had never understood why Dosia wanted to get so close to a boy, and in secret, at that. Why couldn’t she just behave herself?

“You gave him your belt?” Esmerine whispered.

“I did …” Dosia met Esmerine’s eyes. “That last night at home, when I told you about them … I thought you’d be more curious. I thought you’d come with me. I didn’t intend to run away then, but I wanted to see him again, and I was afraid you’d try and stop me. And then—well, Fiodor told me he’d have to go home to the mountains, and I couldn’t bear the thought, and everything just happened so fast.”

“You willingly gave your freedom away to a man you’d only just met?”

“I chose this,” Dosia said. “You don’t understand these things. I don’t think you ever have, and you always made me feel ashamed when I did, but I can’t help being attracted to boys, and Fiodor’s rich and lovely and I knew I’d never have another chance like this.”

Esmerine couldn’t believe Dosia would make her sound like the strange one. “But how can you ever know if he really loves you, if he’s enchanted?”

“Does it really matter, if we’re both happy?” Dosia said. “Anyway, what are you going to do about your situation?”

“
Me
?”

“Yes, about Alander. Don’t pretend as if there’s nothing going on. Even as a child you were mad about him, and he must have gone to a lot of trouble to bring you here. Don’t you think it’s amazing that you found him again?”

“Well, it was lucky, but that doesn’t mean anything,” Esmerine said sternly. Dosia was twisting everything, trying to get her to stay on the surface world so she wouldn’t be alone, wouldn’t be the only irresponsible one. “And even if there was something there, what about Mother and Father? Do you expect me to go back and tell them we’re both going to leave them?”

“Maybe they’d feel better if they knew we were both happy here.”

“Are you really
happy
here?”

Dosia perched on the bed between the dogs, stroking their heads in unison. “I think so.”

“When we talked about coming to the surface world, it wasn’t like this.”

“No. That’s true. But things don’t have to work out like we expect to be good. I feel like you want me to say I’m happy all the time, and I’m not. I still cry sometimes, and I’m still getting to know Fiodor, and some things are strange. But I will tell you this … even though I never imagined it would turn out quite like this, I think I always meant to end up in the human world. I miss you desperately. I’m glad you came. I just wish you didn’t have to go.”

Esmerine sat on the bed and drew her legs up to her chest. “I feel like I’ve lived years since you left. I was going to be a siren, and everything was
fine
— No, everything wasn’t fine. When I said my oath, I was terrified. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but I never thought I could have what I really wanted.” She lowered her head, letting her hair fall around her face. “Now I’m terrified because … I’ve seen what I want. But I still can’t have it. I can’t give Alan my belt.”

“Why not? If you want to spend your life with him …”

“He doesn’t want it. I can’t live my whole life in pain … but neither of us want the burden of enchantment between us.”

“Then you’ll have to decide,” Dosia said. “I
know
it isn’t easy. I can’t tell you what to do either. It’s obvious what I wish you would choose, but only if it’s what you really want. I just wonder … could you really go back home, now that you’ve seen a glimpse of that other life? That was the question that sealed it for me. Even though I’m sometimes homesick here, whenever I ask myself that question, the answer is always the same.”

Esmerine dropped her feet back onto the floor. Even then she could feel a hint of pain. There would always be pain for her here. She could never forget that mermaids belonged in the sea. But Alan couldn’t follow her there.

Dosia threw back the bedclothes and slipped her feet between the sheets. “Maybe we should get some sleep. Things will seem clearer in the morning.”

Esmerine obeyed, but she doubted she would sleep much. She had already fallen to sleep quite a few times pondering the same questions, but the answers remained elusive.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The next day the sky was a brilliant blue, with great complicated puffs of clouds, perfect for imagining shapes. Dosia declared that they simply
had
to spend the day out of doors, and quickly silenced the grumbling of last night’s drunken man, who was now quite a regretful sight, clutching his cup of coffee and groaning periodically. He seemed to be hoping—without luck—for some female sympathy.

Alan arrived during breakfast and sat beside Esmerine, but he didn’t speak beyond exchanging greetings, and she found herself suddenly shy around him, even when, as usual, they walked together at the back of the group on the way to the picnicking spot.

Dosia led the party farther than Esmerine expected, past the gardens and into the woods. The trees were tall and sheltering, and the path underfoot thick with leaves. The trees whispered in the wind, which made the laughter and loud voices of Dosia and Fiodor and their friends seem disrespectful. Esmerine looked up at the sun, dappling through the dark branches, casting spots and lines of gold on her arms.

“Esmerine … you’ve never been in a forest, have you?” Alan asked.

“No. It reminds me of being underwater, the way the sun comes through … It feels softer here.”

“My favorite forest is north of Torna,” Alan said. “Maybe on the way back, we can stop and eat. I see the most wildlife there—lynx, bear, foxes, deer … but the real prizes are the mushrooms.”

“I’ve never had a mushroom.”

“I have a secret spot for chanterelles. I don’t think the other Fandarsee know. Ginnia makes them with butter and white wine.” He sighed softly. “Too early in the season for them now.”

“Esmerine!” Dosia made her way back to Esmerine’s side, a basket draped over her arm, displaying a palm full of small strawberries. “We’re berry picking. They look like this and they’re everywhere. Then up ahead we have blackberries. Or if you need to sit down, the servants are setting up a canopy, and I can bring you some berries.”

“I’ll pick.” Esmerine badly wanted to explore the forest. If she decided to go home, she only had a few days left to experience the surface world, and if she decided to stay and keep her belt, she would have to endure pain or she’d never see anything.

“Here, take my basket,” said Dosia. “The servants have more.”

Picking berries proved the ideal activity, because Esmerine and Alan could break off from the noisy group and make simple conversation about spotting fruitful bushes. Esmerine enjoyed filling her hand with berries, small and sweet and bright. Occasionally, they exchanged a tacit glance, as when one of the women exclaimed, in a voice loud enough that it had already scattered a pair of birds, “I can’t believe we haven’t seen any deer!”

Alan had more trouble with the blackberries, as his wings were too unwieldy to weave between brambles and snatch the more elusive prizes. She could reach most of them, although her stays prevented her from reaching over her head. They worked together until her arms were mapped with thin scratches. The brief pain of snagging a bramble was almost satisfying, because she had something for her troubles at the end of it.

Her aching feet could be dealt with, moment by moment, but after over an hour of wandering from bush to bush it grew exhausting, and the sun was climbing—proving hotter than expected, as the others kept exclaiming—bringing on sweat and thirst. The breeze that periodically rustled through the bushes couldn’t overcome Esmerine’s layers of clothes, especially her stays.

Esmerine lay down upon the blanket, beneath the white canopy erected in a broad patch of grass. The servants had set up a few folding tables around it and were bustling to and fro with food and pitchers of beverages. They offered her a cup of lemonade, tart but refreshing. A thick cluster of clouds slid over the sun, bringing blessed relief from the heat. Soon enough, the rest of the party joined her, exclaiming over the heat and the bounty of berries. Esmerine let their feet thump around her for a moment while her thoughts floated far away.

Dosia sat nearby. “You’ll feel better once you have some lunch.”

Esmerine was not at all sure of that, but she tried to perk up. She watched Alan attempt to settle himself on a corner of the blanket—without chairs, he had to carefully fan his wings behind him.

Despite the informal setting of the picnic, the servants still got up an impressive spread of fruit, bread, slices of cheese and meat, sausages, corn cakes, buttery pastries, and chilled wine. Esmerine didn’t try to be polite and eat everything this time. She still didn’t feel fully recovered from dinner.

The luncheon conversation was quickly doomed when one of the men brought up the Hauzdeen pamphlet. “Hauzdeen likes to blame the nobility for everything.”

“You must not have read it very thoroughly,” Alan said. She touched the tip of his wing, which was the only part of him easily within reach, but he didn’t even seem to notice her attempt to divert him. “Hauzdeen actually takes the most balanced view I have found. He is quite sympathetic indeed to the fact that the treasury was depleted by the recent wars, which had just cause—well,
reasonably
just cause—”

“Of course it was just cause,” Fiodor said. “They attacked the Lorrinese first—”

“But not entirely without precedent, certainly—the terms of the embargo—”

Dosia yawned pointedly. “You have to marry him, Esmerine,” she whispered. “Think about having this kind of fun every holiday.”

Before the argument could grow too heated, a few raindrops began to fall from the sky, quite unexpectedly, as it was still halfway sunny. They pattered on the canopy and moistened the grass, awakening the aroma of sweet greenery and the earthy smell of soil. This water smelled so different from the salty ocean.

“Look at that,” said Ambra, pointing beyond her corner of the canopy. She sat at the opposite corner from Esmerine. “The clouds over there look cruel.”

“Should we go inside?” Dosia glanced at Esmerine.

“Nonsense,” Fiodor said. “All the food is laid out, and by the time we get everything packed away and inside, the storm will be over. Summer showers never last long, and we’ve got a roof over our heads.” He called to the servants, “If it starts to rain hard, you can go take shelter in the shed until it passes.”

“What is a shed?” Esmerine asked Dosia quietly. It didn’t sound very nice.

The Ibronians laughed.

“It’s a small outbuilding where some of the tools are kept,” Fiodor said. “And a perfectly good question, no thanks to my rude friends.” He elbowed the formerly drunk man—who seemed well on his way to becoming drunk again. They tussled a little, good-naturedly. There was talk of running races when the rain ended, and bets placed on who would win.

Up until then, it had been as ordinary a day as Esmerine could expect in such a strange place—a few pleasant moments with Alan, a few unpleasant moments with everyone else. A great sense of restlessness hovered in the air, as if something needed to happen, but she didn’t understand what it was.

Then it seemed the universe was willing to oblige her. A hard gust of wind blew, almost tugging Ambra’s bonnet off her head, disturbing hairstyles and lifting a corner of the blanket right into a bowl of berries. One of the servants rushed to correct it, but Fiodor said, “No, no, just hurry on into the shed.”

The skies opened before any of the servants could make it, but they scattered off, clutching their hats. The rain was slanting in, and Octavia and Ambra shrieked and moved closer to the center, shuffling aside dishes of food. Falling water roared on the roof of the canopy and poured off the sides in sheets.

“Maybe we should have gone inside,” Dosia said. “My goodness!”

Fiodor seemed to enjoy it. “It will be over soon, and in the meantime, none of you are made of paper!”

No, but Esmerine felt as if she were made of water, and her body wanted to join with the rain, even if it wasn’t the water of home. Tickles and shivers ran down her arms and legs, and her head was full of the moist smell of it. Her toes convulsed, crying to be released from stocking and slippers. There was no way she would transform here, but the desire was so unbearable that she clutched her stomach and hunched forward, concentrating on the feel of her separate legs.

“Esmerine, are you all right?” Dosia asked quietly.

“Stomachache,” Esmerine said.

“Chocolate is good for that,” Octavia said, offering a tiny confection.

“No … thank you.” Did Dosia not understand? Maybe because she had given up her belt right away she had never felt a burning need to transform.

Alan, on the other hand, had seen her desperation to transform when they landed on the island beach. He edged closer, and his eyes questioned hers. She shook her head a little. She didn’t know what else to do but fight it off and wait for the rain to stop.

Everyone else was talking about how the sky looked and would it really pass soon and wasn’t it all sort of exciting. Esmerine stayed hunched, battling with herself, panicked by how perilously close she was to losing control. She had worn legs almost continuously for two weeks, suppressing her true form, and now her nature was howling at her through the wind and rain to be set free.

Suddenly, the wind caught the canopy so sharply that it snapped free from two of its posts and fell on its side. Rain lashed Esmerine’s face and arms. The pastries were instantly sodden. All the girls screamed and scrambled for their bonnets while trying to save the food. The men grabbed at the canopy, trying to sort it out. Alan stood and leaned down to help her up, but the wind caught his wings and knocked him a step backward.

Despite the chill rain now pattering on her skin, plastering layers of clothes against her, Esmerine’s body was hot with the exertion of holding back. Panicked, she grabbed the edge of Alan’s wing, a silent plea for him to help her, but before he could react, something inside her broke. She was going to transform and she couldn’t stop herself. With one last great effort, she shoved back the impulse, scrambled to her feet, and tore off into the woods. Her knees quickly gave out. Her bones were already shifting. Transformation had never felt this intense—her legs were searing with so much pain that her lips trembled and a moan escaped her throat. She tore off her shoes, and before she had removed her stockings all the way, her legs melted together. The torn stockings dangled off the fins where once her feet had been. She yanked them free, tossed them aside, and collapsed.

Rain poured over her, pulling strands of limp hair across her eyes, trickling into her open mouth as she breathed hard with relief. In another moment, she became conscious of things poking her in places, and she pulled a few twigs out from under her. She pushed back her hair with shaky hands and managed to sit up and look back.

She was out of the way, but not entirely out of sight. Fiodor and one of the other men were looking at her, and Dosia was pointing and shouting something, but the rain obscured both voices and vision, and for a moment Esmerine felt she was in another world, looking out at them as if through a window or an enchanted looking glass.

Alan broke the spell, stepping into her world.

His wings were folded tightly around his body so the wind wouldn’t catch them, but he had his left fingers curled around his eyes to protect them from the water running off his flattened hair. Esmerine recalled how her family feared being loomed over by him. She felt that way now, as he looked down at the fins that looked absurd spreading far beyond the hem of her dress.

He had seen her as a mermaid a thousand times as a child, and again when she visited her family, but in this human place, in these human clothes, she felt sudden shame. She tried to will her tail back into legs, but her body refused to obey so utterly that it was as if she’d forgotten how.

“Don’t look at me!” she gasped. Then she twisted away, hands braced against the moist leaves carpeting the ground. Her arms, her dress, her hair, her tail—all were dirty now, covered with brown flecks of forest detritus and smudges.

He knelt beside her, folding a wing over her. “Esmerine.”

“I don’t know what happened … I—I just lost control. I had to transform. All the water—I’ve been a human too long. I couldn’t stand it. And they all saw me, didn’t they? I look so ridiculous—all wrong—I don’t belong here!” She tried to look past him. “Are they still there? Tell them they can go. Tell them to
please
go.”

“I told them I’d take care of you. They went to get out of the rain.” He swallowed hard, looking her over, anguish in his eyes. When she had legs, they could both pretend, for a moment, that she might belong here. Not now. She had never been close to him like this, as her true self.

Her heart was pounding, and the rain roared in her ears. “You should go too.”

“Why would I leave you alone in the rain?”

“I want to be alone,” she said, but as soon as she said it, she knew she wanted the opposite. She turned around within his embrace, and slid a hand up to his collar, hooking her fingers around the soaked wool.

“I don’t think you’re being quite honest with me,” he said.

Alan kissed her then, and she shut her eyes against the rain as he held her as a mermaid. In that moment, the hard decisions were gone. She felt that he saw her as a merman would—not disgusted or seduced—but as a real person. And he touched her as a merman would, letting her curl against him, lying in the grass, only with more wonder, and a hint of thrilling fear. They were both afraid of what this moment would mean; she could feel it in him.

It was one thing to kiss in the vineyard, in the middle of the night—inevitable that they would kiss that once, give in to a fleeting moment. This, though, was conscious, as if a new world had broken open. One of shared breath, of his fingers grazing her jaw and her ears, of her hands on his chest, feeling the lines of his rib cage and collarbone beneath his clothes, the solid realness of him—skin and bone and muscle.

“Esmerine—” he said, leaving it unfinished.

But what could he say? He couldn’t follow her to the sea. She was the one who had to say something.