Brightly (Flicker #2) (20 page)

Henry nodded. “That sounds like a sea serpent.”

“What else did she say about the curse?” Nasser asked. “How does it work?”

“The singing is part of it,” Filo replied. “I mean, merfolk normally sing quite a bit, but this time, it’s ritualistic: a chant, a spell, a way to send the magic they generate over the island so it can attach to human hosts. The magic doesn’t stick to everyone, but even if it only attaches to a handful of people, that’s tremendous for the merfolk.”

“It’s nearly perfect,” Henry said bitterly. “As long as they have access to humans, the colony can create dozens more of their kind, adults, within a few months. They don’t have to worry about dying out, not when they can replenish their population like that.”

Davis was shaking his head. “This is insane. The human body couldn’t tolerate a change like that. It would be too traumatic.”

“You saw the gills yourself,” Nasser said. “And more people are developing them. What else could they possibly be for?”

“I don’t know,” Davis muttered. “I just know this is entirely too radical a transformation. It can’t possibly be safe, even after they’ve changed. Don’t merfolk
die
on land?”

“Only part of the transformation takes place on land,” Filo said. “When they’ve developed enough to survive underwater, the curse victims walk into the sea and join the colony. That’s where they complete the transformation. The sea water might act as some kind of trigger.”

“So the change could stop at a certain point, if they don’t go into the sea,” Alice said.

Filo shrugged. “Potentially. I don’t know if that would happen.”

“It stands to reason that it would,” Alice said. “If that’s the case, can’t we just keep doing what we’ve been doing for now, until we can figure out a way to break the curse?”

“Keeping them from the sea for too long could cause a completely different set of problems,” Nasser pointed out. “Their health could suffer in other ways.”

“Most of them are already declining,” Davis said. “Not eating, not drinking, barely sleeping. They’re like sleepwalkers. That could be a result of delaying the rest of the transformation. For all we know, they’ll get worse the longer we keep them confined.”

“So we can contain them, or we can send them into the sea,” Clementine said. “Either option is equally horrible.”

“There has to be something else we can do,” Henry said.

“We have another place to go,” Lee said, looking around at the others. “Deception Pass.”

Chapter Eleven:

When they departed Siren Island early the next morning, the sky was steely, threatening rain for the first time in weeks. The choppy sea had made the voyage to Seattle feel longer than it was. Filo had spent the entire voyage in the cabin, his head between his knees, determined not to throw up. After picking up the van in Seattle, which Henry had left in the care of a friend, they headed north to Deception Pass State Park.

Around the halfway point of the drive, the sky finally broke and Henry flicked on the windshield wipers to combat the heavy rain. Later, he pulled in at a gas station not far from their destination, where everyone dashed from the van to the minimart in the station to buy cheap instant coffee and sandwiches.

The cashier was leaning his elbows on the counter and watching Filo the way normals always watched him: like he knew something was wrong with Filo, something inherently unnerving, but he couldn’t quite figure out what.

Eventually, Filo grew tired of feeling the cashier’s eyes on him and slipped outside. He trotted around to the other side of the building and stood under the eave, watching rainwater stream down. It was cold enough that he could just barely see his breath, but it was quiet, and nobody was looking at him.

A minute later, the minimart’s glass door swung open and Henry stepped outside. He joined Filo under the eave.

“What’re you doing out here?” Filo asked, and immediately realized how stupid that question must’ve sounded coming from him. He’d wandered out into the rain first.

“I just wanted to talk to you. I didn’t have the chance last night, and today…” Henry cleared his throat, and Filo knew what he was going to ask before he ever opened his mouth. “What did she say to you? The mermaid?”

Filo hesitated. “I don’t think…”

Henry shook his head. In this light, with everything muted blue and gray, his eyes looked almost as dark as the evergreens that lined the street across from the gas station. “Don’t decide what’s best for me,” he said. “Please. Not you.”

For a moment, Filo wavered. Knowing wouldn’t make Henry any happier. It wouldn’t make anything better.

Then he thought of Alice—Alice, whom he’d always trusted, whom he’d never doubted, and who had always kept secrets from him. She’d done it to avoid hurting him, he knew, but in the end, she’d only made it hurt worse.

At last, Filo said, “She recognized you… from that night.”

Henry went very still. “She was one of them? She was in the cove?”

“That’s what she told me. I think that’s why she accepted your payment. Because she remembered you.”

“Was that all she said?”

“No,” Filo admitted. “She said she could taste your anger in your blood. Your despair. She said she was glad they didn’t drown you because she never would’ve had the chance to taste it otherwise.”

Henry let out a long breath. He leaned against the building and tilted his head back. “I shouldn’t have done it in the first place,” he said. “But I got the idea in my head and it was like an
itch.
I had to know what would happen. I think… I think I kind of wanted her to attack me.”

“So you’d have an excuse to hurt her?” Filo asked. “Or so you’d get hurt?”

“I don’t know,” Henry groaned. “And that’s the thing. This isn’t me. I don’t
do
this. I don’t slice my hand open and hope a mermaid tries to bite it off!”

Filo shifted from foot to foot. “Those merfolk almost drowned you. Sometimes, after something like that, the thing that hurt you doesn’t scare you like it should. It makes you curious instead. It makes you wonder how close you can get. You want to touch it to see if you still bleed. You want to know if it still has power over you.”

The rain hissed against the asphalt. Cars sped past on the street, water whipping up under their tires. For a while, neither of them spoke.

“Who was it?” Henry asked at last. His voice was quiet, gentle, and he was looking at Filo sidelong, as if trying not to spook him. “Who hurt you?”

Filo shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

If Henry disagreed, he didn’t say so. “Thank you,” he said. “For telling me the truth.”

“You don’t have to thank me.”

“I wanted to.”

“You’re welcome, I guess,” Filo said.

Glancing back toward the minimart, Henry said, “It’s too cold to stand around out here. Come on. I’ll buy you something to eat.”

“You don’t have to do that, either,” Filo mumbled, suddenly embarrassed. The back of his neck prickled with heat; he rubbed at it with one hand, trying to banish the sensation.

Henry smiled. “Well, I want to.”

With that, he turned and headed toward the entrance of the minimart. Filo hung back for a moment. Then he followed Henry out of the rain.

Cold coastal air blew off the water as Lee approached the Maiden of Deception Pass. The wooden story pole was glazed with rainwater. It stood on Rosario Beach, in a clearing ringed by evergreens. The air here smelled of salt, rain and wood.

The story pole was carved into the shape of a woman hoisting a fish above her head. It had two distinct sides. One side depicted a woman with a serious expression and hair that fell past her shoulders. The other side showed a woman with waist-length seaweed for hair, decorated with fish and shells. On the lower half of her body, Lee noticed a cross-hatching pattern carved into the wood that reminded her of scales.

The Maiden of Deception Pass, Lee thought: as a human, and as a creature of the sea.

The grass around the pole had been worn away by countless feet, leaving a partial ring of dark earth. Lee walked a slow circuit around the pole, studying the four panels that surrounded it, each one telling part of the story.

“Ko-kwal-al-woot,” Lee read softly, bending to examine one of the panels. “That’s her name.”

Beside her, Nasser gazed thoughtfully up at the pole. “Do you think she’s still around?”

“I bet we could find out,” Alice said.

Clementine peered around the other side of the pole, wearing a dubious expression. “Drawing a mermaid is one thing,” she said. “Drawing
her
would be different. If she’s here, she’s ancient—and she’s probably not interested in us. I don’t think a little blood in the water would do the trick.”

“In that case,” Alice said, “we’re lucky we have something stronger than that.”

“Yeah?” Clementine asked. “What’s that?”

Alice smiled. “We have Jason.”

As they made their way down the beach, Lee felt like they were being watched. She was sure she could see whoever was trailing them if she only turned around fast enough, but each time she looked over her shoulder, she saw nothing but greenery: Moss blanketed everything, claiming every fallen log and living tree. In places, patches of bright wildflowers interrupted the endless green, but for the most part, the forest floor was a sea of ferns.

The beach was deserted. Mist swirled across the steel-colored water. The shoreline was covered by a tumble of stones, littered with driftwood and logs that had washed up on the beach. Lee stepped carefully around the little crabs scuttling among the rocks.

At last, they stopped at a secluded spot surrounded by thick trees where the rocky shore plunged into deep water. From here, Lee could see the opposite shore: green and dark, half hidden in the mist.

Jason approached the water’s edge and looked down. The water was almost the same color as his eyes. “I didn’t bring my guitar.”

Filo snorted. “You don’t need it.”

“We’ll see.”

Lee, Nasser and the others assembled in a loose half-circle behind Jason. He faced away from them, looking out across the water. For a moment, he let the water continue singing to itself before he joined it.

Lee recognized the song: “The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond.” She’d heard Jason play it before. When it came to old ballads, he liked to experiment with different tempos and arrangements, but this time, he took a more traditional approach: mournful and tender and unlike anything Lee had ever heard.

He sang it like a love song. He sang it like a dirge. He sang it like a piece of music he’d found carved into Lee’s heart. She felt the music deep in her chest, in the same place she felt her heartbeat. Every note was tinged with a strange, familiar ache, like a broken one that had never healed quite right. Each sound seemed to linger, hovering for a moment above the water before dissolving into the mist.

When the last note faded, Lee realized that she had sunk to her knees. The cold of the beach had seeped through her jeans. She knew no more than five minutes had passed, but when Jason sang like that, infusing his already-entrancing voice with magic, time seemed to disappear.

Once he’d snared a listener, Jason was in control. His song could’ve told her to drown herself in the pass, and she would’ve done it without thought or hesitation, as unaware of her actions as she was when she fell to her knees on this beach.

It was moments like this when Lee grasped the full weight of Jason’s power, of what he could do with his music—and how grateful she was that he chose not to go the route of the Pied Piper, usually making an effort to tone down his magic when singing. His voice was enough to stop people in their tracks. He didn’t even need magic to do that.

At first, the air was silent and still. Then a cold blast of air swept down the beach, making Lee shudder and brace her shoulders against it. From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed movement in the water, near the shore—and when she turned her head to look closer, Lee saw her.

A woman was chest-deep in the steely water, bobbing gently, white fingers of mist curling around her. Even with barnacles spiraling around her throat and climbing her face, she was beautiful, with dark brown skin, strong features and saltwater eyes. Masses of green hair spilled past her shoulders and down her back. As it drifted in the current, it looked like seaweed.

She didn’t look like the other merfolk Lee had seen, but she didn’t look human, either. She looked like someone caught between the land and the sea.

For a long minute, the humans stared at her, and she stared back with an unreadable expression. The wind was still blowing. No matter how hard Lee rubbed her arms, the goose bumps didn’t go away.

“That music was beautiful,” the woman said finally. Her voice was low and soft, like the whisper of water over sand.

“It was for you,” Jason said.