Page 2 of Somewhere Beyond the Sea (Valleywood Season Three)

CHAPTER TWO

Lucas

I ’d been wanting to make the move from Blue Haven City up onto land for ages, and at last, the day that I was going to make that happen had come. I told myself that I wasn’t sneaking out of the house or running away as I packed a few things in the rucksack I’d borrowed from my cousin Thelxiope, who routinely spent years or even decades in various places on land. I was merely making the long-overdue move to land that everyone in our family eventually made.

Not everyone was as happy about it as I was, though.

“And just where do you think you’re going?” my mom asked as I attempted to swim past her to the door of our extensive house in the water suburbs of the city. She wasn’t even looking at me as she worked on the tapestry she’d been weaving in her craft room off the main hall, but she knew I was there.

I sighed and let my shoulders drop. Telepathic communication was the norm underwater, where soundwaves didn’t behave as they did on land, but I swore that sometimes my mom could wheedle her way into my sheltered thoughts as well.

“Mom, we’ve talked about this,” I said, putting my rucksack aside and letting it float. “I’m going up to Valleywood to audition for that new production of The Little Mermaid .”

My mom jabbed her needle into her work with an irritated sound then twisted to face me.

“All the pitfalls and dangers of dry land aside,” she said, her frown sharp and disapproving, “I don’t see how you can want anything to do with a musical production that will most likely make a mockery of our kind.”

“Mom.” I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms. “There’s nothing wrong with the landies doing a show about The Little Mermaid . It’s a classic tale that has existed for hundreds of years. Even if nobody knows enough about our world to get the details right, it’s still going to be a lot of fun. I want to be a part of it.”

“The details ?” Mom was incredulous. “They don’t know the first thing about how we live. That movie they released the other day with the red-headed fish who idolized landies and collected their garbage was an insult to all of us.”

“They made that movie decades ago,” I reminded her, though it was hard for even me, as a more or less immortal being, to accurately keep track of time in such small increments. “The music was a lot of fun. And besides, with this new production, if I get a part, maybe I can convince them to be a little more accurate with the details and a little less landie-centric.”

“And expose our world and our way of life to everyone?” Mom gaped at me. “Leucosius, you know your father and I moved here to this remote lake to avoid people. There were hardly any landies living anywhere near here until just recently. The last thing I want you to do is give up all our secrets.”

I shook my head and rubbed my temples. Mom’s opinions weren’t the norm. A lot of the people who lived in Blue Haven City liked the advancements that had been made on the land nearby and thought we should have closer relations with Valleywood. A few landies had been granted special permission to come down and live within the magical air bubble that enclosed the heart of the city as well.

“It’s okay, Mom,” I said, swimming closer to her. “You know I’m way past the age when most of my cousins moved up to spend some time on land. I’m eager to see what the rest of the world has to offer.”

“You’re only six hundred years old, Leucosius,” Mom said. “You’re a baby.”

“That’s way longer than most landies ever live,” I fired right back. “And besides, I feel called to this show. Something about it sings to me.”

“That’s our job, not theirs,” Mom said, her eyes narrowed.

She was right. We were sirens. I was named after my great-grandmother, Leucosia, one of the original sirens from Greece. Our family had been singing to lure men to their deaths for millennia.

We didn’t do that anymore, though. Not to their deaths. That had all stopped in the Middle Ages, when more of the family had shifted from the winged siren branch to the aquatic siren branch. My parents’ generation had discovered that they had way more fun wooing sea captains and taking their treasure, especially books, or having torrid love affairs with them rather than killing them. My Great-Aunt Melusine had even charmed some guy in Seattle into putting her image on a coffee cup, and now everyone had to look at her all the time. Classic Great-Aunt Melusine.

Apparently, I was the product of Mom’s dalliance with Dad, a Viking sea captain trying to retrace Leif Erikson’s voyage to Greenland sometime in the fourteen hundreds, but I didn’t ask too many questions about that. I got squeamish over the idea of my mom seducing anyone, but apparently she got around in the High Middle Ages, which was why I had so many older half-brothers and sisters out there in the world. Whatever the case, my dad had chosen to be with her eternally, and she’d shared her magic with him, turning him into one of us.

Come to think of it, my paternity was probably a big part of the reason I had always been so keen to live with the landies for a while.

“It’ll be fine,” I reassured Mom, swimming over to kiss her cheek. “It’s just for a season. The play performances are for two weeks in late May. And that’s assuming I even get a part.”

“You’ll get a part, alright,” Mom said, turning back to her tapestry. “You’re a siren. As soon as you open your mouth, you’ll get whatever you want.”

She had a point. Getting whatever we wanted came with the territory of being a siren. But as the old saying went, a saying my family came up with, by the way, you had to be careful what you wished for, because you might just get it.

As I swam back to grab my rucksack, called out one last goodbye to my mom, then headed out the door, the irony of the fact that I was getting what I wanted by leaving home for an adventure on land was not lost on me. Most of the time, sirens were immune to each other’s songs, but since I was the youngest of my siblings, most of whom were hundreds of years older than me, I generally got what I wanted anyhow.

I swam straight up instead of going inside the bubble to walk around Blue Haven City for a while first. Valleywood wasn’t the only settlement that had grown a lot in the last hundred or so years. Mom and Dad might have picked Lake Erie to settle in because it was remote and quiet, but things had changed a lot since the fifteenth century. Even Blue Haven City was bustling and thriving now. The magic bubble had helped a lot to bring air-breathers there to settle.

Home wasn’t what made me swim as fast as I could toward the surface, though. My eagerness to get to land wasn’t even about The Little Mermaid , really, although I would have to fin it if I planned to get there as soon as auditions started so I could get a good place in line. What had me soaring through the water so fast I almost lost my rucksack a few times was the hope that I might run into the adorable, omega landie I’d rescued from the lake the day before.

It wasn’t the first time I’d run into a landie who had been in trouble. In fact, just a month or so before, I’d been on one of my sneaky, exploratory swims around the surface, and I’d run into a flashy, blond-haired guy named Phobos who had thought he would swim down to the bottom of the lake to…blow up? The guy had obviously been having some sort of episode, although if all the rumors I’d heard about Valleywood were true, maybe not. I’d warned him not to go anywhere near the city at the bottom of the lake if he was planning on blowing up. I guess he’d taken me seriously, because that was the last I’d heard of him.

I wasn’t thinking about Phobos now as my head popped above the surface within sight of the bridge and the lakeshore. I was thinking that I’d been an idiot not to ask the cute omega’s name. He’d felt so good in my arms as I’d swam him to safety, like he belonged there. It had been far harder to let him go, once we’d reached the jetty, than I ever could have imagined.

He’d mentioned something about having just arrived in Valleywood though and living in an apartment near the Valleywood Performing Arts Center. So maybe, if I was lucky, our paths would cross again.

There were several safe points along the lakeshore for merpeople to make the transition from lake to land. I headed to one of them, a building that looked like a restaurant that had closed down ages ago that stood on the end of a rickety pier. It was concealed by magic to look unstable, but in fact, it was incredibly sound and comfortable. It had a long, wide column that descended into the water. I swam up to that, showed the guard my ID, and as soon as I was cleared, I swam into the column and then up.

At the surface of the water, the column opened into a small, tastefully decorated room. I was the only one there at the moment, although I knew of several merpeople who lived underwater and worked on land who commuted through checkpoints like that one every day. That made me happy, since I wasn’t a fan of transforming from fins to legs with other people around. I liked my legs and, not gonna lie, I liked my balls and cock, but I didn’t love them hanging out for everyone to see. Showing your legs for merpeople was like walking around topless on land. It was acceptable, but not in every situation.

I moved quickly from the water to one of the changing rooms off to the side, pressing the button for the forced air jets that would dry me and my belongings quickly. I still had to take everything out of the rucksack and shake it in the whirlwind-like air before it was warm and dry enough to get dressed. That was why a lot of merpeople kept lockers with dry clothes in one of the other rooms of the entry point.

As soon as I was presentable, I hiked my now dry and emptier rucksack over my shoulder and made my way out through the second checkpoint on the land side, showing my ID again. That was just a formality, and within minutes, I was strolling along the sidewalk, headed for the bus stop where I could catch a ride up to the VPAC. Not a single landie looked at me funny or turned up their nose, like they smelled something fishy.

That was why so many merpeople had moved near to Valleywood in recent years. Valleywood was a safe haven for all sorts of people, which meant for the most part, no one gave anyone else a second thought, no matter how odd they might have been. Being unusual myself, I could see things in the people on the bus with me and on the streets we passed.

One man standing on a corner waiting for someone had large, luminescent wings that he was stretching, but that I was fairly certain no one else could see. A woman I spotted briefly had curling horns. I could have sworn I saw someone else fly through the air as we reached the VPAC, but either the people out and about in Valleywood couldn’t perceive their differences or they just didn’t care.

There was already a line in the lobby of the VPAC when I walked through the front doors, but it wasn’t so long that I worried I wouldn’t get a chance to audition. It was already the second day of auditions, the third day was for call-backs and not new auditions, so I figured that everyone who had dreams of stardom had either already taken their turn or were in the room right now, waiting.

“I’m here to audition for the chorus,” I told the woman sitting behind the table where signs directed me to check in.

Her eyes went wide and her cheeks pinked at the sight of me. “The chorus?” she asked, lowering her glasses so that she could look at me above the frames. Her gaze raked my body, making me wonder if I’d picked the wrong clothes for the day. It had been a couple years since I’d made a jaunt up to land with a few friends. We came up for a day here and there just for fun. I knew fashions changed fast, but hopefully not that fast. Bellbottoms were still acceptable, right? I liked them because they reminded me of having a tail.

“Yes,” I said. “Is there a problem?”

“Honey, with a face and a voice like yours, why aren’t you auditioning for a lead?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t have a lot of experience.”

She laughed. “Experience is nothing. Not for someone who was clearly born for the stage.” She reached for one of the clipboards spread out on her table and said, “I’m putting you down to audition for the part of Triton.”

I laughed before I could stop myself. Triton was a great-great-uncle or something on my mom’s side. He’d been at our house for Saturnalia a few centuries ago. He’d get a kick out of me playing him.

“Alright,” I said with a shrug. “I’ll give it a try.”

“Great. Betty is going to love you,” the woman said, writing something on a card then handing it to me.

“Betty?” I asked.

“Betty Hailstork. The casting director and out stage manager. She’s Ben Hailstork, the director’s, sister.”

“Oh. Gotcha.”

I winked and then stepped aside, following the directions of a few people with headsets that looked like production assistants. I had no idea how professional theater auditions worked or if this particular production was sticking to standard practices. I had the impression from their ad for an open call that they were doing things their own way.

Once I reached the door to the auditorium, a production assistant took my card and pointed me to an area at the front of the theater, telling me to take a seat. I assumed my name would be called when it was my turn to get up on the stage and sing. I was ready with a song, and even a short monologue, when the time came.

“Of course, this will be the fourth show in a row where I’ve played the lead,” the dark-haired guy with a nose that seemed perpetually turned up said to the man sitting on the other side of him as I took a seat in the front row. “I played Prince Charming and the Wolf in Into the Woods last fall, and last spring, I was cast as Billy Flynn in Chicago .”

“That’s nice,” the guy who was getting an earful said.

The one who was talking seemed to notice me. He turned and held out his hand. “Eric Keppler,” he said with a big smile full of veneers. “I’m getting the part of the prince.”

“Lucas Siren,” I said, shaking his hand and grinning back at him. “Have you already auditioned, then?”

“No,” Eric said with a shrug. “But I know I’ll get it. I always get the lead. I have the best voice of anyone in Valleywood.”

“Wow,” I said, trying not to be sarcastic. “I can’t wait to hear it.”

Eric looked past me, then stood with a smile. “And this is my buddy, Greg Wisnewski.”

“Um, hi,” Greg said, glancing confusedly between me and Eric.

“Greg is going to get the part of King Triton,” Eric informed me, throwing his arm around Greg. “All I have to do is tell the director how great he is and he’s a shoe-in.”

“Oh, nice,” I said. “I’m auditioning for Triton, too.”

Immediately, both Eric’s and Greg’s smiles dropped.

A second later, Eric took his seat again and gave me a sympathetic look. “I’m sure they’ll have a part for you in the chorus. Could you scoot over one?”

I wasn’t bothered at all by the man’s arrogance. People like that were all show. I got up and moved one seat over so Greg and Eric could sit next to each other. The two of them fell into a conversation that I clearly wasn’t invited to.

Auditions got started after a while. I enjoyed sitting through all of them, the good, the bad, and the exceptional. There were a lot of people to audition, so everyone basically only had enough time to sing a few bars of one song and deliver a monologue. I was so fascinated by the process that watched everyone with a smile and applauded when they finished.

Eric and Greg snorted or scoffed at just about everyone and muttered nasty things to each other behind their hands throughout the whole thing.

I was surprised when Eric got up to sing that he was actually pretty good. He wasn’t all bubbles and no teeth after all. There was a good chance that he was dead right when he said he’d get the part of the prince.

And then came my turn.

“Lucas Siren,” a middle-aged woman who I assumed was Betty called out.

I stood, waved, and walked onto the stage using the small set of stairs not to far from where I was seated.

“Hi,” I said as I walked across to stand on the taped X in the center of the stage. “I’m Lucas Siren, and I guess I’m auditioning for the part of Triton.”

“Music?” the accompanist seated at the piano off to one side of the stage asked.

“Oh, I don’t have any sheet music,” I said quietly to him. “Do you know Beyond the Sea ?”

The man nodded, then turned and started playing the opening bars.

I faced front again, and on cue, I turned on all my charm and started singing, “Somewhere beyond the sea, somewhere waiting for me….”

I nearly stumbled. He was here. My omega was here.

He was at the very back of the auditorium and he stood up so fast that he knocked into a woman who was holding a stack of papers. The papers went flying everywhere, but my adorable, sweet omega didn’t seem to notice. He lurched to the side, practically tripping over his feet as he made his way to the center aisle. He came a few steps closer to the stage, his face bursting with the biggest smile I’d ever seen, before checking himself and staying right where he was.

My heart suddenly felt so expansive and my lungs so tight I was worried I’d accidentally transformed back into a merman on dry land. It was him. It was actually him. The omega I rescued and let get away. I felt as happy to see him again as he looked to see me.

Fortunately for me, all that excitement and joy went straight into my song. “We’ll meet just as before. We’ll kiss beyond the shore….” I hoped and prayed with everything in me that we actually would.

It came as a shock when everyone in the auditorium burst into applause. I hadn’t realized I’d stopped singing or that the song was over. I couldn’t pull my eyes off my rescued omega. Forget the show, I just wanted to go to him and ask his name and see if he’d spend the rest of his life with me.

Or maybe just Friday night.

“Perfect. Absolutely amazing,” the man sitting at a table propped up in the middle of the house said, standing as he clapped. I assumed he was Ben, the director. “I don’t think we need to see anything more. You’ve got the part.”

“What?”

The angry shout came from Eric, who launched to his feet and whipped to face the directors.

“We’ll continue auditions for Triton’s understudy, of course,” Ben said, a little flustered, like he was shocked he’d just handed me the part before auditions were over. I knew what had happened, though. He’d been sirened.

“Thanks,” I said, stepping forward and climbing down from the stage right at the end of the central aisle. “I’ll take the part. Just let me know what I need to do and when.”

“Excellent,” Ben the director said. “I’ll send Janet around to get your information. Now, next up we have Greg Wisnewski?”

I tuned everything else out but my omega, who stood at the top of the aisle near the back of the house. His eyes were wide and alive as I strode up to meet him. By the time I was in front of him as Greg took to the stage, my heart was beating so fast I didn’t have room in my head for any other rhythm.

“Hi,” I said, wanting to touch the omega. That in itself was weird and a little worrying. I didn’t have reactions to people like this. Ever. “I see you made it home in one piece.”

“I got warm,” the omega said, eyes starry.

A moment later, he scrunched his face with embarrassment and shook his head.

“I mean, thank you for saving me the other day,” he said, his tone of voice much more down to earth. “I’m Zack, by the way.” He held out his hand to me. “Zack deMuse.”

“Hi, Zack. I’m Lucas,” I said. “Are you auditioning for the show?”

Zack shook his head. “No, I just got hired for the stage crew.”

“That’s great,” I said, ridiculously breathless. Zack and I would be working together for the run of the show. I might even get to see him every day.

I couldn’t think of anything else to say, and evidently neither could he. We just stood there, smiling at each other. It felt like a bubble of warm, tasty water was swirling around us and we were the only two people in the world.

“Um, excuse me. I hate to break this up, but I’m Janet, and I need to get things sorted with you.”

I dragged my eyes from Zack to find a no-nonsense woman with a headset and a clipboard waiting for me.

“Oh. Right,” I said, half turning toward her. My eyes wanted to stay on Zack. “I guess we’ll be seeing a lot of each other during rehearsals and things,” I said.

“Yeah,” Zack said dreamily. “I guess we will.”

“Oh, boy,” Janet said under her breath, rolling her eyes. “Come on, Romeo. Let’s get your info.”

I let Janet pull me away, but I kept looking at Zack for as long as possible. There was something special between the two of us already. Something that felt…fated.

Maybe the urge to spend some time with the landies wasn’t just about adventure after all. Maybe the Universe was trying to tell me something and lead me to my fated mate.