Surrendering (Swans Landing) (21 page)

My father.

My father…

No. The image that flashed into my head wasn’t my father.

It was my mother.

I jerked backward, crashing into the rock wall. Mara stared wide-eyed at me, her lips swollen and red.

“Josh?” she asked, reaching toward me. “What’s wrong?”

The song filled my head and I felt myself relaxing. No. I didn’t want to relax. I had to hang onto the thought. My mother…my mother in trouble.

My mother trapped by…Domnall.

“The song,” I said, pressing the heels of my palms into my forehead. “We have to fight against the song. It’s making us forget.”

“Forget what?” Mara asked. She laughed as she swam toward me. “Josh, you’re acting weird. Come back to bed with me. Everything is all right.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s not! We’re forgetting why we came here.” I grabbed her arms, squeezing my fingers into her skin as I fought against the haziness that licked at my mind. “Mara, think! Remember Swans Landing. Remember the finfolk there. Remember your dad and Miss Gale.”

I didn’t know how, but the city and the song were making it hard for us to remember anything above the surface. I struggled to hold onto the thoughts of Swans Landing. We had to find help and get back to the island.

Mara looked confused, but she said, “Lake?”

I nodded. “Right. Remember why we’re here. We need to get help.” Everything was coming back to me, fighting through the haze the song had settled over my mind.

Mara’s eyes became clear with understanding. “We need to get out of here.”

“Let’s find Sailor and Dylan,” I said, hoping we could fight off the song’s effects long enough to find the help we needed.

* * *

Silence fell over the square after we had finished explaining everything that was happening in Swans Landing. Mara and I had found Sailor and Dylan, swimming aimlessly through the alleys of Finfolkaheem. It had taken a lot of talking to get them to remember who they were and why we were here, but the four of us continued to fight against the effects of the song. All around us, I could now see how the people of Finfolkaheem moved with glazed, contented expressions on their faces. It was no wonder that no one who had left Swans Landing in the past had ever returned. If they had found their way here to Finfolkaheem, the song probably had them under its spell. It would be so easy to be like them, to let the song soothe away all of my worries and just forget about life above the surface. But we couldn’t do that, we couldn’t leave Swans Landing to Domnall.

I had told about what I’d learned from my dad’s papers, and Sailor and I had told about our journey to Hether Blether, while Mara and Dylan talked about the changes in Swans Landing’s weather and how the ferry had stopped coming. Then we spoke about Domnall and the Hether Blether finfolk.

It was a long story, and it was hard to keep track of time. The song still made my thoughts fuzzy and every now and then one of us would trail off, blinking in confusion, until someone else reminded them of where we were. Each minute that we remained underwater was another minute things could go terribly wrong above the surface. Another minute for Elizabeth to be found and taken like the other humans. Another minute for us to lose any chance we might have. We had already lost too much time.

The crowd assembled around us seemed to be holding their breath, all eyes on the four men and women of the council. But even they didn’t speak.

I flicked my tail back and forth. “We need your help,” I said again. “We don’t know how to defeat Domnall when he can use the song against us. Please. Come back to Swans Landing with us. You can do something.”

The four exchanged long looks. Then Finlay spoke. “We will not leave Finfolkaheem.”

“Why not?” Mara asked, her voice tinged with defeat.

“Our people do not walk on land any longer,” Mairead said. “We saw how the human world corrupted our people and killed our lands. When we left Hildaland for the last time, we left for good to save ourselves. Finfolkaheem is connected to both land and water, and we can satisfy our urges for them here on the ocean floor. We no longer visit your world. We will not leave Finfolkaheem.”

An icy chill spread down my spine. Without their help, we didn’t have much of a chance of defeating Domnall.

“You have to come with us,” I said. “We can’t let Domnall take our home. He’s controlling humans. Our friends and family.”

“We are sorry,” Sorcha said. “But we cannot go. If there are others here who would be willing to return to the surface with you, you may ask them.”

I felt the eyes of hundreds of finfolk watching us from all around the cliff walls. Even the children had stopped playing and studied us with blank faces.

“Please!” Sailor shouted, her face crinkled into a deep frown. “We need your help!”

But no one came forward. No one spoke.

“Your people are welcome to seek refuge here with us,” Finlay said. “We welcome all of our kind, even those who are lost.”

“What about the humans?” Dylan asked. “We’re supposed to leave them behind with these other finfolk controlling them?”

Mairead shrugged. “The humans have never shown concern for our kind, so we have no concern for them either. We know you carry human blood, and it is through no fault of your own that your people mingled with the humans. But we do not involve ourselves in the affairs of the surface walkers.”

“It’s our home,” I said. “How do you expect us to leave it?”

“We left our home,” Sorcha said. “We gave Hildaland to the humans. You will learn to call Finfolkaheem home, just as our people have.”

“We’re not leaving our friends behind,” Dylan said through clenched teeth.

I shook my head at the council. “I’m sorry, but we can’t give up our island so easily.”

“I remember that island,” a voice in the crowd said.

A woman swam forward, her silver scales sparkling in the light of the algae as she passed. Her face was lined with wrinkles that even the water couldn’t smooth away, and even though everyone else kept their hair unbound, she had hers in a dark braid that trailed behind her in the water.

Her face was familiar, though I couldn’t figure out why.

“The humans control that island,” she said. “They berate us and treat us like we’re not even people. You know that. All of you should know that.”

“You’re Nora Moray,” Dylan said, his eyes widening as he looked at the woman.

My head whipped back to her and I studied her face closer. I had only a vague memory of the woman swimming before us. She had left Swans Landing when I was young. She was a cousin of mine through my father’s grandmother. No one had ever heard from her again. We hadn’t found her in Hether Blether either. We hadn’t found anyone that had left our island there except for Sailor’s mom.

“Yes, I am,” she answered. “I left your island because I was tired of being treated like I was nothing. Think about everything the humans have put you through. You can save the rest of the finfolk by bringing them here, where they’ll be happy and can live with their own kind. Leave the humans to whatever fate awaits them. Finfolkaheem is where you belong, where you can be happy.”

She made it sound so simple. The humans had mistreated the finfolk for a long time. Maybe it was just the way humans were. It was what they had always done to each other all throughout history, so why should we expect them to treat us any differently?

The Hether Blether finfolk called the mixed human blood a weakness. Finfolk belonged with each other. We could protect each other and be happy. We could be safe.

But I had to go back to Swans Landing….Didn’t I?

“We can’t do that,” I told her, shaking away the haziness that had filled my head. “Yes, the humans have been unfair to the finfolk. But this isn’t simply a matter of finfolk versus human. We—” I gestured between myself and Mara and Dylan and Sailor. “—are not just finfolk. We’re human too. And some of the humans up there are our friends and family. We have to help them.”

Nora shook her head. “Then you will do it on your own. Those of us who left have no intentions of ever going back.”

She swam past us, disappearing into the alley between two rows of homes.

The last bit of hope I’d had disappeared as Nora swam out of sight.

“I guess that’s it then,” Mara said, reaching for my hand.

I nodded. “We have to go back. Maybe it’s not too late.”

The fourth council member, Iomhar, who had been silent while the others spoke to us, cleared his throat.

“There may be a way that you can save your people,” Iomhar said.

I didn’t dare hope. I didn’t want to be disappointed again. “How?” I asked.

“These finfolk from Hether Blether, they are resistant to the song because they have no human blood,” Iomhar said. “Your people are of mixed heritage and therefore, are vulnerable to the song’s effects in the way that humans are.”

I nodded. “Right. So how do we defeat them when they can use the song against us?”

“You cannot,” Iomhar said.

Mara started to swim toward the older finfolk, her face contorted into a scowl, but I held her back. “If you can’t help us, don’t pretend you can,” she snapped.

Iomhar shook his head. “I mean, you cannot defeat them as you are now. But you could, if you were fully finfolk.”

I frowned. “How can we do that?”

“You need to be immune to the song’s effects,” Iomhar said. “You need pure finfolk blood. You need to be
remade
.”

Sorcha looked sharply at Iomhar. “No one has attempted that in a long time. We have never sung that song.”

“It will take a lot of effort,” Finlay added.

Iomhar gestured around the square. “We have plenty of energy to help us do it.”

“Do what exactly?” Sailor asked. “Is it like when my friend Callum couldn’t change to finfolk form? Domnall used a song to keep him human.”

Iomhar tilted his head. “That is only a surface change, and takes less energy than what I am proposing. What your friend went through is only a block in the mind that would keep the body in one form. This, however, would be a complete rebirth of your entire body and mind. The song recreates the structure of your body from the inside, erasing the human parts and turning them finfolk.”

“So Domnall wouldn’t be able to use the song against us,” I said. “It wouldn’t manipulate our minds the way it does now.”

Iomhar nodded. “Precisely. You would be on level ground against him.”

It was the only option we had. All of the finfolk in Swans Landing had some human blood in them, so we were all susceptible to Domnall’s song. Callum might have been the only full finfolk on our side, but he was just one person and we didn’t know what had happened to him. We needed as many as we could get.

Just as I opened my mouth to agree to the change, Iomhar held up his hand.

“There is one warning I must give you before you agree,” he said. “If you undergo the change, it will be permanent. Everything that makes you as you are now will be irreversibly changed. There will be no way to turn the finfolk genes back to the blended human form you have now. You will be reborn as a new, fully finfolk person and will erase all evidence of your human ancestry.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Finfolkaheem was a beautiful city. As the four of us swam through the alleys between the homes, I took in all the engravings etched along the sides of the rock to try to keep my thoughts grounded on something. If I let my mind wander, I could feel the effects of the song in the water threatening to take over. I couldn’t afford to lose anymore time here.

Finfolk history was carved into stone, pictures showing finfolk throughout the years. Some were crude and worn until parts of them had disappeared. Others were newer, the lines deep but already being smoothed by the water that constantly passed over it. Even here, finfolk history could be erased over time, changed to suit the beliefs of newer generations.

“So what do you think?” Mara asked.

Sailor paused, reaching out to brush her hand over a cluster of bright pink and orange anemones that grew along the side of a home. The spindly tips swayed back and forth, as if waving at her. “I’ll do to save Swans Landing,” she said.

We had asked for time to think over the offer. Time wasn’t something we really had much of, but this kind of decision wasn’t something we could rush into. If we agreed to be changed, we would face a lifetime in our new bodies. We’d leave behind part of our families’ heritage.

How would it feel? Would we know that a part of us was gone?

I put my hand on her shoulder, squeezing a little. “You don’t have to. I’ll do it.”

Mara narrowed her eyes at me. “You don’t sound worried.”

I shrugged and turned away from her.

Mara swam over to me, until our faces were only inches apart. “Why are you doing it?” she asked.

“Like Sailor said. To save Swans Landing.”