Why should I even bother with you, Jotun? Her voice purred in my head. You don’t taste nearly as good as human does.
If you don’t get away from him I’m going to crush you with about a thousand pounds of water from all sides. That is, if I don’t choose to rip the water out of your actual body.
She flinched. It was barely perceptible, but my threat had worked. At least for now.
Then the nasty smile was back. You haven’t even given us any reason to believe you have control over it at all. All you’ve done is drift around and whine so far.
My fingers curled into fists, and I struggled to keep myself from bringing the water crashing down on either side of her, trapping her in a vice grip of crushing liquid. I didn’t know how effective a weapon water could be. At the very least, I could use it to push her away from us. This I did, reaching out, probing the limits of my power, creating my own current that sent her back a few feet, well out of arms reach of Eli.
Tilla looked shocked.
The dophins were still swimming, and we were coming nearer to the surface now, almost there, the light was impossibly bright, and I found myself squinting. Apparently I had become accustomed to the darkness.
When I turned back, realizing that I’d taken my eyes off Tilla for a second longer than was wise, it was to see her shooting up through the water, arms outstretched, reaching for Eli. Eli gave as strangled cry, kicking his legs, trying to keep his feet out of her grasp.
I nearly let go of Rykin’s fin and launched myself at her, but I forced myself to hang on and rely on the water around me, shoving the mermaid back, using the force of the water to push her down as much as I could. Tilla shrieked, her face set in a mask of anger. She was cursing in my head in a language I didn’t recognize, vowing to rip me to shreds.
Angry, I shoved harder, forcing her deeper and deeper, until something shot up out of the darkness, a pale hand attached to a slender arm, and yanked Tilla down. Her scream cut off seconds later, and I grimaced. Her sister had found her again. Who knew what would happen next, but somehow I doubted that mermaid had an aversion to killing one another, even blood relatives.
At least that took care of Tilla.
Breaking the surface of the water was both exhilarating and painful. Eli and I both gasped in relief. He ripped his mask off and let it hang around his neck by the narrow white cord it was attached to and gasped in a huge gulp of fresh air. I did the same, more out of relief than necessity, letting the cool, salty air sooth my lungs and calm my nerves. Jotun were not made for the bottom of the sea.
The spray splashed my face as I relaxed my body and allowed the dolphin to tow me along behind it. Rykin and Penny chittered merrily back and forth to one another, apparently also relieved to be rid of the mermaid. Did mermaids eat dolphins? Somehow I wouldn’t put it past them to try.
The thought made me nervous. What else lay beneath the surface of the ocean? I’d felt other things, huge things. Were there sharks in here? I felt drained from all the water manipulation I’d just done, and I honestly wasn’t sure I would fare well against a shark right now. All I wanted to do was roll into bed and sleep for a century.
Thankfully only several minutes had passed before Eli gave a shout, and I jerked my head up to see land coming into view, a vague shape of green and brown rising up out of the water in the very far distance. I could already make out the rolling blue hills, which looked as small as bumps in the road from here. But I knew what they were, the rocky mountains. It was the closest pass into Jotunheimer. It was were we’d finally cross over and get help, to tell my people.
We could stop at one of the safe houses just on the boarder and resupply ourselves with food and clothing, Eli was probably half dead with hunger by now.
I snuck a glance in his direction. On second thought, it was likely that Eli wouldn’t be able to come with me into Jotunheimer at all. He had very little Jotun blood in him, and humans couldn’t cross the pass.
At least, they shouldn’t be able to, yet somehow, Eli’s grandfather had found a way.
My stomach began churning.
I was the one that had to report this breach of safety to the king and queen of the entire realm. I was the messenger of this terrible news, and nobody else. The thought of Queen Megan, of how she might look when she heard the news, of how she might react, was enough to make me tense up again. She and Loki were in danger. And now that I’d broken out of the compound and Eli’s grandfather was after us, I’d put them in even more danger.
The humans were chasing me, maybe they would even follow me into Jotunheim.
It took nearly twenty minutes for the dolphins to reach the distant shoreline, and by the time my feet touched down on the sandy bottom I was weak from the effort of holding onto the slippery fin. Several times I had almost dropped the sack of food I was carrying, and I’d ended up shoving it awkwardly under my arm in an effort to hold on to it.
Though I wanted nothing more than to stagger onto the rocky shore and collapse, I stood in the shallows for a few minutes, up to my waist in water, one hand on Rykin’s slippery skin. There was no way of knowing if he or Penny really understood what I was saying when I projected my thoughts, but I had the feeling they did.
“Thank you, friends.”
They exchanged another series of clicks and chips, which I pretended meant “you're welcome” in dolphin talk, and then they both turned in the water, heading back out to sea.
Eli was already making his way to shore, splashing through the shallows in jerky forward movements until he got to the shoreline. Then he collapsed over onto his side, panting heavily.
Seconds later I was beside him, though I hoped my descent to the ground was not nearly as graceless as his was. I tried to sit instead of falling over.
Eli rolled over onto his back and let his arms fall open, his head rolling back on his neck as he released a heavy sigh. We were both quiet for a moment, and it was just the sounds of our breathing, a little ragged and a little uneven, but steadily getting better.
We were both exhausted, but we had to press on.
“You know…” Eli’s voice in the stillness startled me. “You should just let go sometimes.”
I blinked, startled, and glanced over at him. He was still staring up at the sky, not looking at me, his eyes far away. “What do you mean by that?”
“Just…the way you are. Everything is so controlled. The way you speak, the way you move. Let yourself collapse on the ground once in a while. You’ve earned it.”
My brows creased, a flash of irritation making me sit up straighter. “I don’t know what you’re saying.”
Eli suddenly sat up, faster than I’d expected him to. “Vee, weren’t you scared back there? Those…fish women…” He shuddered, then said firmly. “Those aren’t proper mermaids. The little mermaid was a mermaid, those things are…they’re evil.”
I frowned again. “The little mermaid? I can assure you, those are real. They’ve always had sharp teeth and a habit of killing men they find attractive.”
This seemed to make Eli even more flustered, but I wasn’t finished with him. “What did you mean…let go? What does that mean?”
“Nothing,” he muttered, and shook his head. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just…I was terrified down there, and you seemed perfectly fine. Like all of that was no big deal.”
“I was terrified too. Through all of it.” I glanced down at the thin, silky dress I was wearing, which seemed to be drying out extremely fast in spite of the biting wind that had started to push my hair in front of my eyes. It was cold, goosebumps had begun running up my arms, a feeling I was unfamiliar with. I hated feeling cold. It made me feel weak.
“Right.” Eli shook his head. “Well you sure don’t show it.”
There was something about Eli, and about the way he was looking at me right then, that made me want to talk to him, but now wasn’t the time to get caught up in a conversation, no matter how tempting it was. We were on the other side, and it was time to go home. It was time to warn my people.
I climbed slowly to my feet, groaning a little at how stiff I felt. “We have to go. We’ll go to the safehouse nearest to the boarder and we can get warm clothing and proper food. Until then…” I tossed him the sack, and Eli caught it, looking down at it with trepidation.
“What’s this?”
“Seaweed, I expect.”
He made a face, and I shrugged. “That’s all we’ll have for the next few miles. It’s going to be a long walk.”
He groaned, and I could hear him grumbling under his breath as he hauled himself to his feet. I was already walking away into the forest. He would follow. The question was, whether he could follow me into Jotunheim or not. It seemed unlikely.