Submerging (Swans Landing) (14 page)

The room was small, the walls a pale sandstone. A simple bed took up most of the room, covered with a frayed blue quilt. In front of the window stood a table that served as a desk, covered with books and papers.

And in a chair at the desk sat a woman. She was too thin. I could see the bones of her shoulder blades poking through her robe, which hung off her, threatening to slip down one skeletal shoulder. She was bent over the desk, concentrating on the lines she drew on the paper in front of her. Her hair wasn’t the brilliant gold it was in Grandma’s photo albums, but a dull shade of graying blonde that fell in greasy locks around her shoulders.

My mouth had gone dry. I swallowed, scraping my sandpaper tongue against my teeth. “Mama?” I asked, my voice almost a squeak.

For a moment, she didn’t acknowledge me. Then she turned, looking over her shoulder. Her face was hollow, her eyes sunken and lined with dark circles. Lines etched the skin around her tight mouth and her cheeks hung from her bones. There was no spark of recognition in her eyes.

I tried to fight the urge to run to her, to throw my arms around her and burst into tears. Here she was at last. My mama and I were in the same room, she was so close I could reach out and touch her.

“I don’t want anything to eat right now,” she said after a moment. Then she turned back to her papers.

I stood there, trying to make sense of her words. Hadn’t she heard what I’d said?

I stepped closer, reaching out a trembling arm to touch her shoulder, but then pulled it back before I did.

“Mama?” I said again. “It’s me. It’s Sailor.”

She blinked at me. I stared into her blue eyes, searching for anything that would let me know she knew who I was.

Her eyes lit up and my heart skipped a beat. “My Sailor. So small, so perfect. He would have loved her.” Her smile faded and her chin quivered.

Was she talking about Oliver Canavan, Josh’s and my father?

“Mama?” I said again. “I’m here. It’s Sailor. I came to find you.”

Mama shook her head, but her expression still had a faraway look, as if she didn’t hear me. “Sailor is at home, with her grandmother,” she said. “It’s better this way. It will all be better.”

“Mama,” I said again, trying to keep my voice even, “I’m here. It’s time to come home. I’ll take you back.” I was aware of Domnall’s presence in the doorway and I sucked in a steadying breath. I didn’t want him to know how I was crumbling inside.

Mama turned back to her drawings. “I have to leave the island,” she said. She shuffled the papers together into a messy stack. “I have to go. I have to save them.”

“Save who?” I asked.

But my mother kept stacking her papers, not even paying attention to me. “I have to find it,” she said. Her voice rose higher and higher as she spoke. “I promised. It will all be better when I go.”

Suddenly she reached out, grasping my hand tight in hers. Her eyes were wide and panicked. “Everything will be okay. Right?”

She looked so lost, so scared. Tears burned in my eyes, but I nodded. “Everything will be okay,” I said.

She relaxed, letting go of my hand and turning back to her desk. She unstacked her papers and set them in front of her. “Everything will be okay,” she echoed.

It felt like the conversation had come to an end. My mother turned her attention back to her drawings, leaving me to look at her sloping back.

I backed out of the room, pulling the door shut. My hands clenched into fists at my sides and I shuddered as I took a deep breath.

“You knew?” I asked in a hoarse whisper. I didn’t turn to look at Domnall. “You knew she was...like that?”

“She has been like that since I found her on the beach sixteen years ago,” he said.

Something lodged deep in my throat, a burning ache that wouldn’t go away no matter how many times I swallowed. “And you didn’t think to tell me before I...” I paused, trying to regain my composure. “You didn’t think I should know before I walked in there?”

I glared up at him. He didn’t look surprised or concerned. The scar on his face cut across his skin, leaving a jagged line that never moved.

“Would you have still wanted to see her if you had known what would be waiting for you in there?” he asked.

“She’s my mother,” I said.

“She is broken,” Domnall told me. “We keep her here to protect her.”

“She needs help. She doesn’t need to be hidden away in this ghost town. Does anyone else know she’s here?”

Domnall took a few steps, his gaze roaming over the decrepit homes. “This was once a beautiful village.” He reached out to pull a young bud from a tree, twirling the green leaves between his fingers. “Not only finfolk lived here. There were humans, as well.”

My eyes widened. “You have humans here?”

Domnall sneered as he shook his head. “Not anymore. The last of them died many years ago. Now this is a home for those who are lost.”

“How many others like her have there been?”

“A few, here and there over the years,” Domnall told me. “All of them sick in some way. They stay here until they pass on or return to the sea. We keep them away from the rest of the people here because their presence would only raise questions for which we do not yet have the answers. Your mother is the only one still here. I was not certain the woman we had here was your mother, until I came to see her myself two days ago. When I mentioned your name to her, she became agitated, like she did today.”

There was still so much I needed to know. I had come so far, only to find her like this.

“What happened to her?” I asked.

Domnall stepped closer, leaning down slightly so we were more at eye level. “Humans did this,” he said in a soft voice. “This is the effect they have on our people.”

I swallowed, clenching my fists tight at my sides.

“They destroy what makes us finfolk. They make us live in fear, ashamed of who we are. You know this. You have seen it.”

Memories flashed before my eyes. Elizabeth Connors and her friends, laughing as they tormented me again and again. Sneers shot my way in the hall, being pushed into lockers, mashed potatoes crushed into my hair in the cafeteria. Dylan at my side, continually telling me to ignore it all, even though I wanted to explode and make them all as miserable as they tried to make me.

Yes, I knew what humans were capable of doing to us.

But I was also part human and the two sides of me battled for control of my thoughts.

“They are killing our people,” Domnall told me. “We once thought they were good for us. We kept some of them here as toys, trinkets from the outside world. But they poisoned our land. When they mated with our people, they introduced a weakness we had not expected. We learned our lesson too late. Their influence is spreading and killing the mists that keep us from their sight. Soon, we will no longer remain hidden. They will find us and they will take this island as they have taken our homes before.”

Domnall’s blue eyes looked back at me, his face soft and open. “I need your help to save us. To keep everyone from becoming like your mother.”

“How?” I asked.

“Hether Blether needs its people back in order to survive. Tell me where your people are,” he said in a soothing tone. “I can bring them home.”

“What good can we do? My people don’t even know for sure that this place exists.”

Domnall ran a hand over my head, smiling tenderly. “You have more magic inside you than you know, Sailor Mooring.”

“Finfolk aren’t magical,” I said.

He laughed. “Do you think the song is only meant to call us home? We speak the essence of the water and earth. We can manipulate them and the beings created from them to our will.”

I couldn’t imagine Grandma ever willingly leaving Swans Landing. Even a part of me missed the island and wanted to go back.

“No,” I said in a firm voice. “I’m not telling you where the others are.”

Domnall’s expression was kind and gentle as he reached for my hand. “Sailor, please understand we are only trying to help you. Help
all
of you. We want everyone to live healthy, peaceful lives. You can do that here. This is a safe place.”

His fingers were icy cold when they touched mine and I jerked back from his grasp. Despite his reassuring words, something about this place didn’t feel safe at all.

“Thank you for bringing me to my mother,” I told him.

I pushed past him and hurried down the path, back toward the dock where Artair waited.

If my mama was the only living lost finfolk here besides Josh and me, what exactly had happened to the others who’d left Swans Landing?

Chapter Eighteen

“Maybe I should talk to her,” Josh said. He squatted in the sand on the part of the beach directly under our suite. The large door in the floor gaped open above us, and a rope ladder hung down to allow us access in and out. Josh kept his gaze focused on the approaching water as he spoke. His hand shot out as the tide rolled in, sending a splash up around him. “Damn,” he muttered when he came up empty-handed.

Josh had been trying to catch small fish that became trapped in the tide pool he had created, which he would then use as bait for larger fish. While I’d been visiting my mother, he had spent the morning carving a homemade fishing pole from a long stick and an old piece of string he’d found in the cabin.

Josh didn’t like being indebted to Domnall for food, and so he had come up with a plan to catch food for us. Apparently, this involved the human way of catching fish with a pole and bait.

“She doesn’t know where she is,” I reminded him. Mama had seemed so empty, so hollow and unfocused. A part of me wished I had never come here and had never found her. Shame flooded through me at those thoughts. She was my mother, and I couldn’t leave her here for the rest of her life.

“She wouldn’t be able to answer any questions,” I went on. “She barely even knows her own name.”

A group of finfolk swam in the water nearby, only a few yards down the beach. They jumped among the waves before disappearing under the surface. They had given us curious looks before entering the water about half an hour before, but none had dared come close. I wondered what the finfolk of Hether Blether thought about us outsiders. We didn’t look any different than they did, but it was obvious we were not a part of their world.

“You said she’s confused about past and present,” Josh pointed out. “She may very well remember what happened the night our dad died. She may be able to tell us what we need to know.”

Did Josh ever stop thinking about himself? All he cared about was getting answers to his questions.

“What she needs is to go home,” I snapped. “She doesn’t need to be locked away in that little shack.”

Josh looked at me over his shoulder. “Do you honestly think she could swim that far?”

I crossed my arms and turned away from him, watching the clouds glide across the gray sky.

“If she could remember that night,” Josh said, “we could have our answers.”

“You mean,
you
could have your answers,” I snapped. “I don’t care about anything other than getting my mama home.”

Josh didn’t look at me as he said, “He was your father too. You should be at least a little curious to know how he died.”

Biologically, Oliver Canavan was my father, but he had never been more than a name to me. I’d had no photos of him, not like the ones of my mother that I’d poured over so many times while growing up. I had no stories that anyone had told me about him. The only thing I knew was he had been married to another woman, fell in love with my mama, and then drowned.

He might have been Josh’s daddy, but I had no claim to him.

“I don’t want to bother her with questions that might upset her,” I said at last. “We’re not going to ask about that night until she gets better.”

A shout nearby caught our attention. The finfolk that had gone out to swim had gathered together in a group, bobbing among the waves. They shouted to each other, waving others still lingering farther away to come close.

As we watched, the finfolk waded toward shore, already shedding their fin form. They carried a woman between them, her head limp against her chest. Bright red blood trickled in rivulets down her tail fin from a long gash where her skin met blue-green scales. The woman didn’t change form as they carried her onto the beach and she didn’t respond to their shouts.

I followed Josh closer to the group. They didn’t look at us as we approached. Everyone bent over the woman, all eyes on her still limp shape on the sand.

“Caileigh,” a man said in a throaty voice, looking toward an older woman. “She’s been bit.”

The woman nodded as she pushed a lock of wet gray hair from her lips. She closed her eyes, placing one hand on the injured woman’s stomach.

A low hum filled the air around us. It was a finfolk song like I had never heard before. The other voices of the group joined in, humming louder and deeper. I waited for the visions of my mama that always came when I heard the song, but nothing happened other than a vibration that filled my body with energy.