Dawn approached. She eyed the paling horizon. “I must go.” And she half-turned, tail swishing, alarmed at having spent so much time with him that she’d forgotten others might see her if she were here in daylight.
“Wait! Wait. Will you come back? Please?”
She looked to him, and the pleading in his voice did something inside her… put a crack in her heart, maybe. Oh dear. He wanted to see her again? He wanted her to return. That alone was momentous, wonderful.
She noted how he’d grasped at the sand, to one side of him, like she had done. How taut were the muscles of his arm. Fine, manly muscles. Perhaps he too found comfort in the feel of sand, though the slide of fingers into wet sand and the squish of it inside her fist would be far nicer.
For a second, she imagined how his arm would feel under her hand. How he might taste.
How his blood—
She shook away that thought.
“I suppose, I could?”
“Tomorrow night?”
Her eyes stayed wide. For the first time she realized she could see his face properly – his dark wavy hair that sprang up in random curls and fell across his forehead. Large sinewy hands, which she always loved on a man. Remember though. He could never be hers. Never. It would mean his death.
She gnawed her lip gently, wary of the points.
Not hers.
She must think. “In three nights then.”
“Three? Done. I will be here. You promise?”
“I said so.”
“Uh-huh. You did.” Slowly, he withdrew his hand from the sand, brushed it off on his pants. “Your Ravening won’t come yet?”
“No.” She let her teeth show, and he looked curious. “Not for a week or more.”
Then she dove into the sea and did not turn back, did not look over her shoulder until she was down among the seaweed and bottom dwelling creatures, the crabs, the mollusks, and the stalking, antenna-waving lobsters. A niggling and horrid feeling arrived, a feeling familiar to her from when she was a human and mistakes had been made.
What had she done? Had she said too much? Her mouth had said too many words. She’d let him see her in her true form for hours.
That had been lovely. Talking, listening, and learning.
Three nights. She was returning in three nights. She must ask him more questions. She must find out who he was.
Three nights later, when she surfaced a little earlier in the night than the last time, he was there waiting, settled into a low chair with the leg chain leading up the beach. As she swam to the edge where she could stay submerged yet keep her head out of the water to talk, he sat forward.
“Hi! You came, Raffaela. Thank you!”
The thanking brought a warmth to her chest, right in the middle.
“Hello, Wolfgang.” She blew a little spurt of sea water, feeling playful. His scent was stronger. He was a male human, of fine reproductive age. The need to touch him had strengthened.
The Ravening neared, but then it always did. Its cycle was inevitable.
“I wish to question you, Wolfgang.”
“Of course. Of course.” He hitched a pair of black-rimmed spectacles higher on his face. They were new. She wondered if he could see her well without those. “Your prerogative, though I hope you’ll answer some of mine also.”
“Tell me.” Rocking up and down on the waves, she rested her chin on her upturned hands, her elbows in the sand, as before. “What are you apart from a seeker of mermaids?”
“Ha! A seeker of mermaids? I suppose you could call me that. My job?” The moon was up earlier too, and his frown lines were obvious.
“Yes. Your job.” The words were rolling off her tongue ever more smoothly, the centuries of disuse falling away. “What do you do to make money?”
“I’m a marine biologist. I study everything that lives in the sea. Such as you.” His mouth widened in another of his inscrutable smiles.
“Me? Hmmm. I knew that. You learn from books?”
“Do I learn from books? Yes. Sometimes. And from examining specimens in the laboratory, and live ones when at sea in boats. And from the internet.”
An odd word. Internet. In his gaze, she recognized that curiosity as to what she knew and what she did not.
“I don’t know what that is. A type of net?”
“Of course you don’t. The internet helps us humans to send things around the world, without actually going there.”
“Such as? Furniture? People?”
He barked a laugh. “No. Sorry. I shouldn’t laugh.” Wolfgang rubbed at his chin and leaned back into his chair. His slate was already on his lap. “We send words. Books, in a way. Pictures, drawings. Paintings. Moving paintings. And they get to their destination very quickly. In seconds, unless the net is crapping out.”
She made an O with her mouth, not quite understanding. “That sounds like magic?”
“In a way, it is. But then… you are magic to me. You don’t exist according to science. There are stories, myths, and legends like the Argonauts that mention sirens and mermaids, but it’s considered fantasy.”
Raffaela blinked at him, listening to the shush of the waves against the shore – the rolling shift of water, sand, small stones, and seashells.
What could she say to that? She whispered, “I wish…”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
She wished she were a fantasy, that none of this had happened to her, that she’d reached Ireland and found a husband, a good man, like this Wolfgang seemed to be. She’d had a life ahead of her, back then. It was all merely wishes, and maybe she would have died of the pox in a back alley, but she’d had hope.
Sadness swelled through her, making her want to weep. She held it in.
“So. Anyway. That is
