Surrendering (Swans Landing) (27 page)

We were all trying to get back to normal around the island. It was hard, since the mists were still hanging around, thick and unrelenting. But soon it would be Song Night, and hopefully we could break the tie to Finfolkaheem and put the island back where it belonged in the human world. Then the ferry would come again and maybe even tourists with it.

“Josh.”

I jumped at the voice behind me. I hadn’t seen Dylan when I passed his house, so he must have come out and followed me.

“Hey,” I said. “I’m going over to the Sand Dollar to see if I can get my old job back. Want to come?”

Dylan shifted from side to side. “No, um, thanks. I, uh, need to ask you for a favor.”

He looked solemn, and I had a feeling this was a serious favor he was asking. Dylan and I had spent more time together over the last few weeks and were becoming somewhat friends, but it was still a bit strange for him to come to me for favors.

“Okay,” I said. “Sure. What do you need?”

Dylan took a deep breath. “I need to go to Finfolkaheem. And I need you to go with me.”

I blinked at him. “You want to go back? You’re not…planning to stay there?”

We had met with the finfolk in Swans Landing and told them about the door to the city under the sea. We gave them the chance to go there permanently, to anyone interested in leaving the island. But no one had taken the offer so far.

“No,” Dylan said. “There’s something I want to do, and I have to go there in order to do it. But I need help.” He shrugged. “I can’t ask Sailor or Mara to do this. They would try to talk me out of it.”

My skin prickled at the look on his face. “How do you know I won’t try to talk you out of it?”

“I figured I could turn you down easier than I could either of them.” He sighed again. “Will you take me there?”

“What is it you want to do?” I asked.

Dylan closed his eyes and said, “I want to be remade. To be human.”

My mouth dropped open. I had never imagined a finfolk willingly giving up the ability to be finfolk. The ability to change was taken away from Callum without his choice and it must have been agony to not be a part of the water like he had once been.

“Do you know what that would mean?” I asked him. “You’d never be able to swim like we do. You’d be completely vulnerable to the effects of the song. You would never change form again.”

“I know,” Dylan said.

“You’ve spent your life being finfolk and connected to the water. You wouldn’t have that anymore. A part of you would be gone.”

Dylan stared back at me evenly. “You gave up part of yourself to help the island. I want to give up part of myself in order to live the life I want. It’s
my
choice, Josh.”

I glanced back at the house where Dylan lived with his family. “Do your parents know?”

“I talked with them about it last night,” Dylan said. “They’re not exactly thrilled, but they’ve given me the freedom to decide for myself what kind of life I want.”

I thought about Mara and Sailor and how they’d react when they found out about this. They would probably kill me for taking Dylan to Finfolkaheem.

But he was right. It was his choice.

“Are you doing this for Elizabeth?” I asked. “You don’t have to be human just to be with her.”

Dylan shot me an annoyed scowl. “I’m not doing it for her. It’s for me. Do you know what I see when I hear the song? I see myself, walking. Just walking as far as I want to go. Never swimming, never changing form. I’ve tried to be happy here. When Mara first arrived, I thought that maybe if I could love her, I could convince myself to be fine with my life as it is. But even if she had chosen me instead of you, I don’t think it would have changed anything. I’ve thought about this for the last few months. It’s not a spur of the moment thing. I know what I’m giving up, and I know what I’ll gain. I’m ready.”

My shoulders slumped, but I nodded. He sounded confident. It wasn’t my choice to make. “Okay. Let’s go.”

As we walked toward Pirate’s Cove, I kept waiting for Dylan to change his mind. As we stripped out of our clothes on the empty beach and waded into the water, I expected him to stay behind and say it was just a joke. As we crossed through the door to Finfolkaheem, I looked to see if there was any hesitation on his face. There was nothing except stern determination. Dylan swam confidently to the square where we found the council with many other finfolk.

The council listened to Dylan’s request, their expressions blank and their mouths set in thin lines. I swam just behind him, waiting for them to tell him it was impossible. Or else that they wouldn’t do it. There had to be some sort of ancient finfolk law about doing something like this.

But after exchanging a few looks, Mairead nodded and said, “We will grant your request, young one, if it is truly what you wish.”

“It is,” Dylan said.

Finlay looked at me. “You have already been changed, so the song will not affect you if you hear it. But you are necessary in this. Once the song is complete, his lungs will be the last part of him to change. You must get him back to the door and to the surface in your world, or else he will be capable of drowning, just as any other human.”

I gulped. “I understand.”

But I didn’t really. I didn’t understand why Dylan would do this. Taking away the finfolk part of him wouldn’t save Swans Landing or anyone else. No one was asking him to do this. I looked at his tail of shimmering blue scales, knowing this was the last time anyone would see them.

I used to envy Dylan, back before everyone knew that I was finfolk. He had always seemed so sure of himself and who he was. He didn’t apologize for being finfolk. He seemed comfortable in his own skin.

It was strange how sometimes you didn’t really know a person the way you thought you did.

“Are you sure?” I asked Dylan, raising my eyebrows. “
Really
sure?”

He swished his tail back and forth through the water, looking down at it. Then he nodded. “I’m sure.”

I didn’t want to watch the transformation. I didn’t want to see part of Dylan being taken away from him. I closed my eyes as the council began the song. Thousands of finfolk voices joined in around us, a haunting melody that sounded almost like a funeral song. It was a death in a way, but I hoped that it would give Dylan the life he wanted.

I opened my eyes as the song began to fade. Dylan no longer had the blue-scaled tail. His legs were two limbs again, his skin shining pale in the glowing algae around us. Pain contorted his face and he looked like he was going to be sick.

“Go,” Sorcha told me. “Hurry.”

I grabbed Dylan’s arm and pulled him with me, pumping my tail fin as fast as I could to rocket through the water. He was mostly deadweight, barely moving his legs to help propel us.

The glow of the door appeared behind the rocks just ahead. I swam harder, biting my lip as we pushed through the water. Dylan began to struggle, flailing his arms and shaking his head.

Just a little more
. I pushed Dylan through the door ahead of me. The whirlpool on the other side almost ripped him from my grasp, but I tightened my hold on his arm.

I fought against the current, pushing us toward the surface and out of the swirling water. Dylan came up next to me, sputtering and coughing.

I helped him swim to shore and then I shed my finfolk form as I walked back onto the beach. Dylan collapsed on the sand, panting heavily. I pulled my jeans on, shivering in the cold breeze, and then sat down next to him. The water crashed against the shore, just barely brushing Dylan’s toes.

Toes he would have every day for the rest of his life.

“How do you feel?” I asked after a moment.

Dylan lifted his head, his cheek coated with a layer of sand. He smiled.

“I feel human,” he said.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Night fell and almost total darkness covered Swans Landing. Every finfolk on the island gathered on the beach at Pirate’s Cove, our breaths hanging in the night air for a moment before dissolving into the mists.

The constant strobe of the lighthouse at the other end of the island was barely visible through the fog. It was getting thicker. Phone lines had gone dead a week ago. We didn’t even know if the island existed in the human world at all anymore.

Tonight we’d find out if we could bring it back for good.

Mr. Moody sat on the beach with Miss Gale, her head in his lap. She was too tired to swim, so she would sit and listen to the rest of us sing. Coral sat next to them, humming to herself as she trailed her fingers through the sand. Other people—finfolk and human—all affected by the mists, sat along the beach, waiting.

“You sure you don’t want to go back home and wait?” Callum asked Mr. Moody. “We don’t know what this song might do to you or cause you to see.”

But Mr. Moody shook his head. “I’m staying here, boy.” He waved a hand toward the water. “Y’all go on and get it over with.”

Sailor knelt to kiss her grandmother’s forehead. “I’ll come right back to you, Grandma. You’ll feel better soon.”

She stood and squeezed her mother’s hand, then followed Callum to the water.

I saw Dylan’s parents and his little brother as they made their way to the water. Dylan wasn’t there. He had seemed to be happy with his decision to become human, and he and Elizabeth were talking about applying to colleges near each other in the fall.

If things had gone according to plan, if I had been just another human guy, I would be going off to college this summer. But my life had never been normal, from the moment I was born I was something else. Now I was something even more different than that, my human genes changed by the finfolk song.

“You ready?” Mara asked, giving me a smile.

We were always tied to the island, but it didn’t have to limit my life. I would go back to school, get my GED through online classes. Maybe I could find an online oceanography or marine biology course. Something related to the water. Something that would have made my dad proud.

I nodded. “I’m ready.”

Lake stood nearby, watching me with narrowed eyes. I let out a shaky breath. He
definitely
knew I had almost slept with his daughter. I was becoming used to his watching, silent presence, but still, I made sure not to look Mara’s way as she shimmied out of her jeans, no matter how much I wanted to.

When we were all in the water and had changed forms, we turned to look back at the shore. We fell silent, listening to the crash of the waves around us and the hum of the earth below the water.

Then our voices filled the night, rising higher and louder into the mists all around us. The vibrations of both water and earth filled me. It would have been easy to become distracted by the loud water song that my body was so used to. But I closed my eyes, focusing all of my thoughts the softer, older earth song, pulling it through me and singing the notes that matched it.

We sang until my throat felt raw and my voice became hoarse. When the song finally ended, I almost felt like I had no energy left. It had taken a lot of power to pull from the earth’s essence.

But the water around me had stilled. It no longer crashed and swirled as it had done ever since I’d arrived back in Swans Landing a month ago. When I opened my eyes, the night looked clearer. There was still no moon and very little light, but stars pinpricked the sky. In the east, the first orange tint of the sunrise was touching the horizon.

“Did we do it?” Mara asked, looking around us. Finfolk floated along the calm water, all of them looking for a sign that everything was okay.

“I think so,” I said. The earth felt different, even the water felt different. The door to Finfolkaheem was closed and Swans Landing was back where it belonged in the human world.

We made our way back to the shore. Sailor pushed past me, hurrying over to her grandparents.

“Grandma?” she asked, kneeling in the sand. “Are you all right?”

Miss Gale’s eyes stayed closed and she let out a soft moan.

“Gale?” Mr. Moody asked, leaning over her. “Say something. Let us know you’re okay.”

Miss Gale opened one eye and looked up at his grizzled face. She licked her cracked lips, then said in a voice that sounded more like the woman I’d always known, “I want a wedding. A real one. Right here. With a ridiculous wedding cake covered in flowers. Lemon cream in the middle.” She pointed up at Mr. Moody. “And you don’t you start in about how you hate lemon. You know you always eat my lemon pie when you think nobody’s looking, so don’t give me none of that. And you’re moving to my house. There ain’t no way we can live in that shack you own. There ain’t even enough room for our girls over there.”

Mr. Moody’s mouth hung open a moment. Then he laughed and leaned forward, kissing Miss Gale on the lips.

Mara slipped her arm around me and grinned. “I guess it’s a good night for a proposal,” she said.

I laughed. “You want one too?”

She tilted her head to the side, tapping her finger on her chin. “Maybe in a few years. Once I decide whether I want to keep you or not.”