Slipping - Book 1.5 in the Swans Landing series

Chapter 13

She shook her head. “It’s fine. Forget about it.”

But I couldn’t forget. I needed her to understand. “She’s not always like that. She doesn’t want to take her medicine anymore, doesn’t think she needs it. I can’t convince her that she does.”

She pressed her fingers to my lips. “It’s okay.”

I kissed her fingertips. “I thought she had scared you off.”

“I’m not an ordinary girl,” Mara said. “It takes a lot more than that to scare me.”

I laughed and she moved closer to me, our noses almost brushing each other’s.

“Let’s leave this place,” she said. “We won’t have to worry about any of this stuff out there. It can be you and me forever.”

I closed my eyes and imagined the two of us escaping this island. “Where will we go?” I asked.

“Anywhere you want. Hawaii. Africa. Australia. Anywhere the water touches. No one can stop us.”

It would be perfect, just the two of us on our own. No hiding from anyone or worrying about what they thought. No secrets, just freedom.

But I had too many responsibilities here.

I opened my eyes. “I can’t,” I said.

Mara’s eyes turned glassy with tears. “Come with me. I don’t want to go without you.”

“Then don’t go,” I told her, pulling her back to me. “Stay.”

“I don’t belong here.”

“You belong with me,” I whispered.

Mara was quiet as we waded back to shore. We got dressed and then sat in the sand, looking out at the water as a cold breeze washed over us.

“I have to ask you something,” Mara said after a while.

“Yes?”

“What’s going on between you and Sailor?”

Sailor? Why would she ask about Sailor? “What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean…” She hesitated, trailing her fingers through the sand.

When she didn’t say anything more, I said, “Nothing’s going on between Sailor and me. I promise.”

Mara nodded, but she didn’t look convinced. I wanted to tell her the truth about Sailor and me, but it wasn’t my secret to tell.

“What exactly happened to make people here hate finfolk?” Mara asked.

I looked out at the ocean, watching birds swoop down in search of fish. “I only know what I’ve managed to put together over the years, bits and pieces of stories. There was a death, a human death, and the people blamed the finfolk. A lot of finfolk went back to the water after what happened. A lot of them stopped resisting the ocean’s call.”

“So the ones that stayed behind try to call them back each new moon,” Mara said.

I nodded.

“Who died?” she asked. “What happened that night?”

“It started before I was born,” I said. “A human man had the bad luck of falling in love with a young finfolk woman. But the problem was, he was already married, with a young child.

“At first, no one suspected anything,” I went on. “The man wanted to learn more about the finfolk and their lives in the water. He had listened to the song secretly for many months, but back then, it wasn’t uncommon for people of the island to listen sometimes. It wasn’t like it is now, where everyone hides out in their homes on song nights to pretend that it isn’t happening.”

I paused, swallowing hard. I had never talked about my dad with anyone before. I fought to keep my voice even. “But eventually, the man started wandering closer and closer to the finfolk on these nights, talking with them as they emerged from the water. That’s how he first became involved with her, the woman he had an affair with.”

“So what happened?” Mara asked.

“The truth came out eventually. The finfolk woman got pregnant by the human man. He decided to leave his wife, but the woman didn’t want him to. When the news of the affair spread among the island, the people became divided. The humans accused the finfolk woman of throwing herself at a married man. The finfolk accused the human man of taking advantage of a young woman. The woman got scared and told the man to go back to his wife. He tried, but he was still obsessed with the finfolk. During the next song night, he followed them into the water. But there had been a storm that day and the water was rough, too rough for a human to swim.”

I let out a long breath as I said, “So he drowned.”

Mara shivered next to me as the cold wind gusted at us.

“Some people on the island choose to believe that the finfolk killed the man,” I said. “That they pulled him under until he drowned in revenge for what he’d done. The finfolk insist that he drowned before anyone knew he was there, that it was an accident. But things were never the same after that. A lot of finfolk went back to the water instead of dealing with the harassment from the people on the island. No one knows what has happened to them or if there are still any finfolk left other than the few of us on this island. We’ve been calling them home for years, but none have come back.” I smiled slightly. “Except for you.”

“Why doesn’t anyone outside of this island know about the finfolk?” Mara asked. “Why hasn’t anyone told the world that we really do exist?”

I smirked. “If you had never come here or found out the truth about yourself, would you have believed some crazy story about merpeople secretly living among the humans on a small island?”

“What happened to the finfolk woman in that story?” Mara asked. “And her child? Are they still here?”

I pressed my lips together. This was getting too close to revealing Sailor’s secret. “The child is.”

She studied me for a moment. “Are you that child? Is that why you’re finfolk?”

I shook my head. “My mom is not the finfolk woman. I told you, I’m finfolk on my dad’s side.”

She reached over and entwined her fingers in mine. She was probably the only person on the island who could understand exactly how I felt, losing a parent and living with secrets.

I leaned toward her, brushing my lips across hers. Just as our lips touched, a voice behind us said, “See, Dylan? I told you she’d be here with him.”