Double Life - Book 1 of the Vaiya Series (30 page)

Smiling faintly at that thought, he soon
realized that she was still watching him, as if expecting him to
say more. Blushing over his distractedness, he added, “Thanks again
for the gift, Taeria,” feeling odd how he still remembered her
name.

At his words, she gleamed with laughter,
while tapping her fingers against the top of her shoulder twice.
“So it is true what they say. Once a human boy hears a name of a
mermaid he can’t forget it.”

Ian grinned weakly, trying to cover up his
feverish embarrassment. That he was called a boy only made the
situation worse. Knowing that any words coming out of his mouth
would only sound foolish, he refrained from talking as he tried to
pull himself back together.

The princess, still watching him, laughed
softly and whispered, “Come closer, Ian. I have something for
you.”

Rather tense, though a bit excited, Ian
stepped closer to her, reaching the edge of the pier, and then sat
down, gazing down at her, as she removed a clear glass flask filled
with dark blue liquid from her dress pocket.

Curious, he peered down and looked closer at
it. What was it? Medicine? Ointment for his wounds? An exotic
drink?

As he stared at her in bewilderment, she
opened the cap, pouring a dozen drops onto her left hand and then,
before he could even discern what she was going to do, playfully
splashed the liquid onto his face.

Startled by her immaturity, he bit his lip
while trying to wipe the hot sticky liquid off his forehead and
face, but it had mysteriously absorbed into his skin, leaving only
a strong tingling feeling all over his face and a strange oceanic
fragrance, reminding him of palm trees, tropical coral reefs, and
seashells. This couldn’t be good.

“What was that for?” murmured Ian.

Grinning mischievously, she touched her index
finger to her mouth. “You’ll see. I’d love to give you more, Ian,
but I’m not sure you could handle it.” Smiling, she cupped her
hands together, filled them with seawater, and then blew on them,
before speaking: “The seagull cries. My father and the elders wish
to speak to me.” She gave him a small nod. “I will return.”

“Goodbye, then,” said Ian, as he noticed how
smooth the skin on his face felt now. Something had definitely
happened to it--but what?

As he pondered over this in suspense, she
placed her right hand on top of her left one, her voice filled with
strong emotion: “My heart and life have been saved by you, Ian. I
do not want to see you get hurt.” He gave her a weird look as she
continued, “Please use the necklace immediately and swim away from
this wicked shore. The woodsmen will not look kindly upon you when
they return.”

“I’ll consider it,” he replied faintly, as
images of savage cannibals feasting upon his flesh suddenly
bombarded his mind, sending panic through him.

As scared as he was of them though, he still
couldn’t overcome his fears of being part fish, or his worries that
something might go wrong with the transformation. Who knew what
would happen if he put the necklace on? He might either get
seriously hurt, the metamorphosis might malfunction leaving him in
a half-human, half-merman state, or he might be forever stuck as a
merman, never being able to change back.

And besides all that, he halfway doubted that
the necklace even worked anymore … that is, if it had ever even
worked at all.

As these doubts raged through his mind like a
tempest, she dove under the water and vanished, sending ripples
throughout the water.

Gazing down at the moving water, letting it
have an almost hypnotic effect on him, Ian thought back to
Shadowcrest Manor. Last time he’d teleported to this world he’d
been gone for over an hour. If that happened this time, his friends
would be long gone before he ever reappeared in the bathroom.
Either that or they’d panic and call the police, thinking he’d been
kidnapped. No, he couldn’t handle either of these scenarios. As
much as he’d like to stay here and talk to the merfolk, he really
did need to get going....

Rowdy voices erupted in the distance,
hammering his thoughts into powder. Glancing around fearfully to
see where they were coming from, he saw a ragtag band of
rough-looking men emerge from the forest yelling angrily at each
other as they gazed at first the empty cage in the tree and then at
Ian, their faces immediately exploding with rage.

“You there!” cried a middle-aged man with a
long brown beard, as he and his friends quickly surrounded the pier
and the man pointed at Ian with his chin. “You freed the fish
woman, didn’t you?”

Before he even had a chance to respond to
this new language, which, unlike the merfolk and elven languages,
was harsh and clipped with many consonants, a gray-haired man
possessing only one eye waved his crossbow at Ian and gnashed at
him with his words. “You picked the wrong crowd to meddle with,
pretty boy. The deep sea is callin’ for you.”

Tentacles of fear wrapping themselves about
his heart, Ian didn’t even ponder how he knew their language. All
he knew was, he had to say something quickly, or he was as good as
dead.

“Hey,” Ian shouted, trying to sound bold, as
he backed up to the end of the pier, clenching his fists in anger,
noticing that all the men had the symbol of an axe stitched into
their garments. “I did the only logical thing any humane person
would do. You wanted to eat her.” It was an assumption, a stretch,
but not illogical. Anything seemed possible with these men.

At his words, however, a brawny man of about
thirty, carrying a hatchet, simply burst out into maniacal
laughter. “We aren’t cannibals, boy; we wouldn’t dare eat that
slimy fish girl!” His companions followed his lead and erupted into
raucous laughter--Ian might as well be involved in a tavern
brawl.

Focusing on the likely leader of the group, a
man with an iron axe, Ian’s face hardened, though his heart still
trembled. “Then what did you want with her?”

“Money!” yelled the tallest man in the group,
who was dressed in tattered clothes as if he were a vagabond. “We
would’ve made the king’s palace off her!”

“And how’d you intend to do that?” Disgusted
anger gripped Ian.

The lanky man ripped off a dirty corner of
his shirt’s sleeve and threw it at Ian. “A gray-cloaked man offered
us high money--”

“Silence, Dargo!” the leader punched the
ragged man in the chest, giving him a bruise worth remembering and
sending him to his knees. Taking his cold eyes off the wounded man
and fixing them on Ian, he approached him with the sly grin of a
trained barbarian and lifted his axe into the air. “How about I
swing this axe into your chest and hear your little screams?”

A hearty laughter broke out from all of his
comrades except the injured man. Then the leader noticed Ian’s
golden necklace bulging out of his pocket, and a devilish smile
formed on his face. “What do you have there, my boy?” He took a
greasy step towards Ian. Then another.

“A necklace,” he murmured, limbs trembling
terribly, his bravado all but vanished. He had to do something and
quickly; he couldn’t stay here any longer. Oh how he wished he
would’ve simply swam away when he had the chance. Even swimming in
his blue jeans and dress shirt would’ve been a small price to pay
for escaping death. Now he had little chance of survival if he
didn’t act fast. But what could he do?

Gazing at the leader with terror clinging to
his heart, as he firmly clutched the necklace, Ian watched his face
grow amused, then the leader just sneered at him.

“A necklace? We can see that clearly,”
scoffed the commander, cruel sarcasm brimming in his voice. Then he
held his axe higher, a diabolical grin worming into his face. “Give
me that pretty jewelry right now or I’ll chop you into little
pieces,” he suddenly demanded.

Eyes wide with fear, Ian’s heart beat like a
windmill. Desperate, clinging to the hope that Taeria hadn’t lied
to him about the necklace’s power, and not even caring about its
side effects anymore, he flung it over his neck, whispered her
name, turned around sharply, and dove into the water like an
experienced diver. As he touched the salty lake, his cut hand and
skinned knuckles stung wildly, yet his fear of dying drove the pain
away.

Five feet underwater, Ian heard the garbled
voices of the men yelling something, before he heard four loud
splashes in the water. Yet for all the noise around him, time
seemed to crawl to a halt. As he swam through the water, a sudden
metamorphosis came over him. His legs instantly melded together,
his bone structure changing, before all of the skin on his lower
body instantaneously turned into fish scales.

A moment later, his lungs and internal organs
altered as well, and his clothing--his blue jeans, collared
t-shirt, and plain undershirt--were transformed into a
close-fitting tunic, which covered his chest, back, and a portion
of his upper arms.

Full of astonishment at the necklace’s power,
Ian caught the sound of an arrow whizzing through the air and
instinctively tumbled downwards through the surface of the lukewarm
water, using his new long tail to propel himself. He wasn’t a
second too late--the bolt came within inches of piercing through
his back.

Terrified at such a narrow escape, he
plummeted deeper into the water, away from the bolts of the
crossbowman and the four angry swimmers, who he was quickly
outpacing, before darting away from them at an incredible
speed.

Once he’d gone some distance, he opened up
his eyes slightly, and to his surprise, the salt water didn’t sting
at all and he could see clearly. Encouraged by this unnatural
ability, as well as the ability to breathe underwater, he opened
his eyes fully, and gazed down at his dark black tunic, in complete
awe over how it had so suddenly appeared on him and how his old
clothes had just as quickly vanished. The princess was right. This
necklace was magical. Nothing else made any sense.

Besides his amazement over the tunic’s sudden
appearance though, the tunic was also a wonder in itself. Not only
was it embroidered with dark purple starfish designs and adorned
with shining red pearls, it also shimmered with specks of diamond
dust that clung to the tunic as if they were sewn into it and could
never be washed away. In all reality, the tunic looked far more
magnificent than anything he’d ever seen before, with the few
exceptions of all the royal apparel he’d seen in this world, and he
felt himself to be wearing a prince’s garment. The princess had
definitely outdone herself with this gift.

Captivated by the tunic, he continued gazing
at it with admiration, until a fearful thought struck him that the
woodsmen could be upon him at any second.

Turning around sharply in terror, feeling
foolish for have wasted so much time when his life was in danger,
Ian scanned around him in suspense for anybody, but saw no one,
only scores of yellow-spotted fish swimming calmly past him, as if
not afraid of him, and a fiery orange dolphin smoothly gliding
through the water about twenty feet below him.

Though encouraged by this, he still felt that
the woodsmen might be in close proximity, and so he darted away
rapidly and swam for over two minutes, before having the courage to
resurface and glance around him.

When he did so, to his relief, he spotted the
four swimmers on the pier a great distance away from him, shouting
angrily at their companions as if they couldn’t believe how he’d
escaped from them.

Overjoyed at their failure to kill him,
feeling relatively safe now, Ian turned his back to them, grateful
to be alive, and ducked his head under water again, re-analyzing
his tunic, when he suddenly noticed his tail for the first time.
How he hadn’t seen it before or felt it, he didn’t know, but at the
sight of it, his stomach turned upside down and panic set in. His
legs were completely gone--he now had a long fish tail instead.

Horrified, feeling like he was suffocating,
he continued staring at his cerulean blue tail, analyzing all its
beautiful silvery designs and examining its length and texture,
until he felt completely unsettled. Unlike some people in his
situation, he wasn’t a bit curious to touch his tail and see what
it felt like. The mere thought utterly repulsed him and sent
shockwaves of illness through him.

Entirely shook up and nauseated, Ian rose to
the surface and surveyed the panorama around him, desperately
trying to take his mind off his fish tail, and observed that his
previous hunch that the western part of the lake did connect to an
ocean was entirely accurate.

Suddenly eager to see the ocean, he darted
off like a barracuda in that direction, keeping his head above
water, his tail swishing back and forth like a pendulum.

As he swam under a large archway built from
slabs of crimson red and obsidian black stone, he reached the ocean
and gazed around him; all he could see in front of him was crystal
clear water. Behind him, a wide beach covered with bright
cream-colored sand, and two tidal pools summoned him. He could lie
out all day on a beach like that. It was beautiful.

Interest sparked, Ian was just about to draw
near to the shore so he could check out what kind of marine
creatures lived in the tidal pools, when he heard a sorrowful
girl’s voice beside him.

“Ian!” Taeria’s head emerged out of the water
next to him, her eyes radiating guilt. “I never should’ve delayed
you. They almost--”

“Forget it,” he murmured, shaking his head
around, trying to recover from the shock of her sudden appearance.
“It was my fault. I should’ve listened to you.”

But she barely seemed to hear his words. “Oh,
Ian! I thought the ocean had claimed you. I was so worried.”

Blushing, as he stared into her lovely eyes
that had the same light blue hue as Hazel’s, Ian whispered softly
in a tone unusual for him, “Thanks for caring.”