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“Have you got to spit all over the place?”

“I can’t help it.” Haera turned away from Jonathan’s kitchen sink with a grimace.

“All this time, and fresh water still tastes disgusting.”

“Then why do you keep trying to drink it? Run the tap, if you please.”

Haera turned on the creaky tap to rinse the sink.

“Because drinking water is the most basic human function after breathing air, and I can do the first. Why not the second?”

“You’re not human, though, are you?”

By now, after a year of giving Haera lessons on human life, Jonathan could speak of it more casually.

Still, there was curiosity in his voice when he continued.

“You don’t feel the cold, you can’t abide fresh water, and there’s the way you…whenever you come inland…you know.”

She could do without the reminder of what happened when she came inland, which was about once every four nights.

Haera frowned as she approached the rickety kitchen table, which seemed nearly as old as the rickety cottage it graced.

Jonathan didn’t live in the village, where rents were higher, but on the edge of town, looking out onto a stretch of land Haera found desolate.

Its biggest advantage was that you couldn’t see the sea from any point.

As long as Haera was careful, once she was across the beach coming here and going back, she wouldn’t be spotted by the Each-uisge .

If she were, that would be bad.

These days, she thought more and more of the punishments Alban had told her about: a beating, shunning, even banishment.

This trespass was severe enough that she might be exiled from the herd for good, and she likely wouldn’t last long in the hostile ocean alone.

So she was cautious, reaching Jonathan’s home as swiftly as she could and departing the same way.

His house was a one-bedroom stone cottage with small windows and a sooty fireplace that was more reliable than the heater—and the fire was always going, including on a cool summer night like tonight.

Haera, who hated fire, had asked him to put it out, but he said that was bad luck and he got cold besides.

She adjusted her trousers as she sat.

When she’d started coming ashore for her education, Jonathan had brought her women’s clothing: a loose, ugly dress that was “the only thing tall enough for you.” She had told him to find nicer things that would allow for more freedom of movement.

After all, she was paying for it.

Now, she wore long trousers that were traditionally men’s garments, and shirts with buttons that had taken a while to learn; she liked to roll the sleeves up to her elbows so the cloth stayed out of her way.

She preferred boots to regular shoes, since they kept the mud off.

And she kept her long, black hair pulled back in what he called a “ponytail”—a demeaning term, but it was more practical.

Jonathan said it altogether made her look “bonnie, but not in the usual way.”

“Here you are.” Jonathan set before her a cup of cold tea.

Haera liked tea, especially when it was strongly flavored.

She accepted the cup and sprinkled salt into it while Jonathan added a splash of cream to his own.

She remembered what to say.

“Cheers.”

He smiled and lifted his cup.

Like most humans, he preferred hot tea, and steam rose from the liquid.

“Cheers, lassie.”

They sipped in silence for a moment, beginning their usual ritual.

They would share a cup of tea and then work.

Although these lessons had begun as a means to an end, they were more interesting than Haera had expected.

Her kind had customs, but the number of rituals humans went through staggered her.

At first, it had all seemed overwhelming—how was she supposed to learn enough to forge a bond with Sister Madeleine?

But Jonathan had encouraged her to take it “one day at a time,” and so she had.

The most basic etiquette came first. There were so many rules.

On her second visit, she’d tried to be a good guest by bringing Jonathan a seal carcass, freshly killed and fragrant with blood.

It turned out that wasn’t polite after all.

That wasn’t even the strangest thing she’d learned.

Humans couldn’t just take off all their clothes if they didn’t feel like wearing them anymore—Jonathan had been most alarmed when she’d tried that, even though they’d been indoors.

They used little utensils to eat, not just their hands.

And they didn’t void themselves wherever they felt the need, but went to specific places.

That last part seemed especially important.

Humans had done more things than even Alban had spoken of, even more than lore that had been passed down for generations.

There were inventions she could never have imagined: telephones that let you talk to someone on the other side of the world, screens that gave you information about nearly anything you wanted to know, art that was made purely for its own sake.

And weapons. Each-uisge were violent creatures, but human brutality far exceeded anything Haera’s kind had ever managed.

They had wars and prisons and whatnot.

When she’d asked Jonathan why such things happened, he’d shrugged helplessly and said there was no good explanation for why people hurt each other.

It was just how things were.

All of it was fascinating in its own way, and there was more besides.

Haera had heard the songs of the sirens, but they were so much less compelling than human music.

She’d never have dreamed that random objects could produce such pleasing sounds when touched the right way.

Jonathan had a collection of records he said would be part of her education.

When Sister Madeleine returned, Haera could talk to her about Madonna, Freddie Mercury, and ABBA.

She set down her cup and looked at Jonathan expectantly.

“Shall we begin? I want to see how many words with five letters I can write from memory.”

Her progress with Jonathan’s alphabet hadn’t been as swift as she’d expected.

It was tedious, but she’d persevered and could now read basic sentences, although writing was more challenging.

She’d asked Jonathan if her learning pace was fast or slow, and he’d said hell if he knew how long it was supposed to take a water horse to become literate.

At first, she’d been infuriated by his insolence—and then had realized it was actually affection.

Jonathan had come to like her.

How strange. And how much stranger that she’d come to like Jonathan too, as useless as he’d seemed at the start.

Now, though, he was looking at her instead of answering her question.

“What’s wrong?” Haera asked.

“It’s been a year to the day,” he said.

“One of your ‘turns’ since you first came ashore. Did you know that?”

Haera blinked.

Her skin prickled to realize he was right.

Her kind didn’t attach the same meaning to time as Jonathan’s did; a “week” was useless to her, a “month” only remarkable for the phases of the moon.

But a full turn of the world since she’d met Sister Madeleine felt significant.

“I hadn’t realized,” she said.

“I just wondered if it’d matter to you.”

Yes, it mattered.

A turn of the world in which her woman hadn’t returned.

She’d never imagined it would take this long.

Would there be more such turns?

There couldn’t be many, could there?

She couldn’t afford too many, not if she was to avoid becoming a brood mare.

Faith. She had to have faith.

It would work out in the end.

She quoted one of Jonathan’s sayings back to him.

“It is what it is. Does it matter to you?”

Jonathan looked at his tea.

He turned the cup so that the liquid swirled like a weak brown whirlpool.

“It does, yeah.”

A note in his voice grabbed her attention.

After a turn, a year, she’d come to know something of Jonathan—when he was trying to be funny, when he was sad, when he had something important to say.

This was the latter.

Of course, they had different definitions of “important,” but Haera would indulge him.

“Why?”

“It’s changed everything.” Jonathan looked up at her, his brown eyes wide and earnest. “I feel like a new man. When I first went to Edinburgh with your treasure chest, I thought, this can’t be happening to me. Now I’m the richest man on Jorsay—not that that’s saying much, but still, nobody knows about it yet. I worried at first. Would I spend it all on drink? But I haven’t, and now…” He glanced over at a desk by the window, where a computer sat next to a stack of notebooks.

“I know those numbers mean nothing to you, but I’m nearly ready to make an offer on the land.”

Jonathan’s lifelong dream was, apparently, to buy the same desolate stretch of land Haera could see from the cottage windows.

He thought it was beautiful.

It had been part of a dairy where he’d worked off and on for twenty years.

The last owner had died without issue two years ago, leaving the estate to a niece in Aberdeen who clearly wasn’t interested in maintenance.

Now, Jonathan wanted to raise livestock on it.

At sixty-two years old, he’d given up hope it could happen.

While many of Orkney’s islands had thriving farms and tourism, Jorsay’s only industry was fishing.

The island’s few young men had mostly left to work the oil terminals off the island of Flotta.

The presence of a viable farm would be good for something called “the local economy.”

In spite of his age, Jonathan wanted to start this enterprise.

Then, he said, he’d finally have something to show for his life.

When he’d said that, Haera had imagined a pair of wings growing from her back as she took flight.

“I’m glad it’s happening,” she said now.

“You’ve held up your end of the bargain so far.”

Jonathan snorted.

“I haven’t heard that in a while. Drunks aren’t known for it. Ask anyone on Jorsay how far they’d trust me with anything important.”

“Then why do you stay here?” For that matter, why was Jonathan building something that would tie him even more to the islands?

“Well, I…I’ve wondered that.” Jonathan’s brow creased, as it did when he was trying to remember something, or when something didn’t make sense to him.

“I used to try to leave, after everything happened with your brother. Why shouldn’t I start over? But every time I tried, something held me back. There wouldn’t be a job, or something would fall through, or I’d drink away the chance, but in the end…”

“What?”

“I just couldn’t leave,” Jonathan said slowly.

“That’s what it all comes down to. I think about leaving Orkney, and I can’t. That’s all.”

Haera leaned forward and placed her chin on her hand.

Jonathan had never elaborated on what had passed between him and Asgall.

Perhaps that was because Haera had never asked.

As curious as she was about her brother’s failure, her time with Jonathan must be used efficiently.

Better to focus on gaining necessary skills than revisiting a painful past.

Now that they were approaching the first year, the past was apparently calling.

“Will you tell me what happened between you and Asgall?” she asked.

Jonathan raised his eyebrows.

His cheeks reddened a bit.

“He never told you?”

This could be tricky.

She couldn’t tell him what Asgall had really wanted to do, lest he suspect Haera’s own plan.

She hadn’t even told him about the existence of the herd.

So far as Jonathan knew, Haera and Asgall were the only ones of their kind.

“He knew better than to tell me,” she said.

“I told you, I abhor what he did.”

“Oh. Well.” Jonathan took in a deep, shaking breath.

When he exhaled, it blew away the steam over his teacup.

“I was a young man, barely twenty-one. Climbing over the rocks by the cliff like a proper idiot, and all of a sudden I see a horse in the water. I think it’s lost, though I can’t imagine how it swam all the way out there, but then it lifts its head, and it…he…starts talking to me. A horse talking to me! I thought I’d lost my mind. But he said he knew me, he’d been watching me, figured I was a hale and hearty fellow. And I was, you know…then.”

Haera tilted her head in acknowledgment.

Once, she wouldn’t have believed the staggering drunk she’d met on the shore could have been an impressive specimen of humanity.

Now that she’d gotten to know Jonathan better, she could imagine it.

“I was a young fool, and I thought, who the hell knows what’s going on, but why not talk back to him? He told me I was special….chosen. Like the heroes in stories or some bollocks. And we talked. It was dark by the time we finished talking, and I’d missed my work shift. He told me to come back next evening, and I did. And the evening after that, and after that, and so on.”

“How many evenings?” Haera asked, half dreading the answer, because however many it was, Asgall had already surpassed her total with Sister Madeleine.

Would it take so long to forge a lasting bond between them?

How would she manage it?

To her dismay, he said, “All summer. I’d come to the rocks every night—my mates thought I had a girl hidden away. They didn’t know I had a friend.” Jonathan’s mouth twisted.

“Or so I thought.”

“Asgall is nobody’s friend,” Haera said.

“But he can pretend.”

“Aye, he pretended all right. He pretended right until the day he…changed. Just like you did.” Jonathan looked off into the distance, as if into the past. “He said he wanted to prove he was telling the truth, and right before my eyes, he changed into a man and climbed up on the rocks.”

“What did he look like?” Haera asked, curious in spite of herself.

“Young, like me. Like I was, then.” Jonathan still didn’t look at her.

What was he seeing over her shoulder, through the window?

“Tall and slim. Black hair like yours, but his eyes were…I never saw anything like them before. They were almost red.”

Asgall’s scarlet eyes had flashed maliciously at Haera many a time.

“I expect that showed you something was wrong.”

Jonathan snorted.

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? It didn’t. He seemed to shine in the sun. He was…”

His voice trailed off.

Haera was about to interrupt when Jonathan said, “He was beautiful.”

Haera barely held back her snort of disbelief.

Her monster of a brother, beautiful?

She’d believe it when she saw it.

“We talked even more, then,” Jonathan continued.

“We talked until the sun was setting, about things I’d never told another soul. Then he held out his hand to me. Suggested I get in the water so he could transform and take me for a ride. Said he’d show me things no human had ever seen before. I…I wanted to go, but there was a little voice in my head. And it said, run. ”

Haera raised her eyebrows, impressed.

Jonathan was definitely more perceptive than her first impression had suggested.

“I listened to it. I didn’t want to, but something inside me made me move, yeah? I got up and tried to leave, but he was too close, and he grabbed my hand. He was so bloody strong. I didn’t have a chance, and next thing I knew, I was in the water. Then…” Jonathan ran a shaking hand over the back of his head.

“He’s not grabbing my arm anymore. I feel teeth on my leg, sharp as knives. And he’s dragging me under, and that’s when I really see him—not just his beauty but his horror too, there was this big-arsed fish tail…”

He trailed off, clenching his jaw again.

“But you escaped,” Haera murmured.

That was even more impressive.

Once an Each-uisge dragged down prey, it was hard to break free.

“You’re damned right I did. I kicked him in the face—I think I got his eye—and I punched him in the nose. I remember thinking, ‘You’re meant to do that to sharks.’ He let go, and I kicked up to the surface. Thought I was done for, but there was a fishing boat, and I waved and screamed and they spotted me. Started heading my way. I reckon that scared him off.”

Scared off by the presence of a boat!

Haera’s lip curled. If Asgall had stayed underwater and dragged Jonathan back down, the humans wouldn’t have seen him.

All that effort, and he’d given up right at the cusp of victory.

Haera had never exchanged a real word with Sister Madeleine, and she still couldn’t imagine what could separate them after they’d gotten that close.

Nevertheless…Asgall had had the chance to speak to his human at some length.

Could Haera manage something similar when Sister Madeleine returned?

“I sound like a fool for talking to him in the first place, but…life is lonely, right?” Jonathan hung his head.

“It’s a bugger. We come in alone, and we go out the same.”

Sister Madeleine wouldn’t.

Once Haera ate her, her spirit would be part of Haera forever.

And when the Last Current took Haera, she wouldn’t go by herself.

No more loneliness for either of them.

Haera thought often of how Sister Madeleine had looked on the sandy beach that afternoon: strong, but solitary.

That woman knew what loneliness was.

“After all, it’s just you and him ,” Jonathan said.

“And you don’t like him much. Course you’d know what it is to look for what you can’t find, to…” He glanced at the window, toward the darkness outside.

When Haera first started visiting him, the windows had been so clouded with salt and dirt you could barely see through them.

Now he’d washed them.

“To what?” she snapped.

“I’m only looking for Sister Madeleine. I’ll find her. That is, she’ll come back.”

She had to, because the depths knew Haera couldn’t get to her.

Once she’d gained his trust, Jonathan had obliged her by going to the hotel where Sister Madeleine’s group had stayed.

He’d reported back that they’d come from somewhere called “Philadelphia,” a city that didn’t border the ocean and was full of a million humans besides.

Haera couldn’t help thinking of them all sweeping in and out of the place like krill into the baleen of a whale.

“You must think about her a lot.” Jonathan had that look in his eyes, the one he wore when he was about to seek information from Haera.

“Even though you only knew her for a day.”

Haera would not shift about in the chair.

She’d learned that was a gesture of restlessness that gave away more than she intended.

“So?”

“I don’t mean to pry,” said Jonathan, prying.

“Just wondering if it works differently for you—love, that is. Most humans can’t fall that fast, but is that the same for you and him?”

Fall in love?

Haera looked at him, dumbstruck.

She knew, conceptually, what he meant.

Humans formed emotional bonds with each other before they mated.

It was part of the species’ preservation.

They could get very passionate about sexual coupling.

Each-uisge knew no such passion except during mating season, when mares went into heat.

Their real delight was in the frenzy of the hunt, riding the currents, or tearing into a rival.

Her current body was different, though.

For all that it wasn’t truly human, it had responded…

strongly…to Sister Madeleine lying beneath it.

When she’d touched Sister Madeleine’s mouth with her own—a “kiss,” she knew now—she’d felt a hungry pulse between her thighs.

Was that what Jonathan meant?

He said, “I just don’t know what to make of the look in your eyes when we talk of her. As if there’s nothing else in the world.”

Haera’s face grew as hot as the unwelcome fire.

“I don’t judge,” Jonathan said quickly.

“I, er, might if you didn’t take on this body right here. But you’re learning to read and act like us. God knows I’m no romantic, but I can’t work out what else it means, and…”

Haera stood so quickly that her chair toppled backward, and Jonathan cut himself off, looking startled.

She glared down at him, teeth bared at his effrontery.

Implying that she would ever…

Just imagine what her father would say to that.

It would serve this human right for Haera to tear him to pieces here and now.

How dare he speak such lies, presuming something that couldn’t possibly be right?

Instead of looking properly terrified, Jonathan narrowed his eyes.

“What’s all this, then?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she snarled.

“Do you think I’d stoop to that sort of connection with your kind?”

“What are you doing, then?” Jonathan asked, sounding as if he didn’t believe her.

“You saved her life, and now you want to see her again. And truth to tell, I don’t think she’s the only reason you come here of nights.”

Blood roared in her human ears.

“Are you joking? Why else would I come?”

“Because you’re lonely.” Jonathan stood up.

Shorter than Haera, and weaker too.

“Because you want a friend.”

Haera stared at him, and then stared some more, at this man who’d taken her gold in exchange for clothing and an alphabet.

He’d pissed himself the night they met, and now he presumed such things of her?

He didn’t know what she really wanted.

If someone didn’t know what you wanted, then they didn’t know you.

“My brother and I don’t love,” she said, her voice as cold as an ice floe.

“We could never love humans in the way you say. Never.”

Something in Jonathan’s eyes flickered.

A line appeared between his eyebrows.

“I don’t have any friends,” she said.

“I don’t need them.”

“But—”

“And if I did, I wouldn’t seek them on shore.” Why did her human heart pound as if she were fighting her way through a riptide?

Perhaps because it was so small, while her fear felt as big as ever.

“You’re the lonely one who hides out here because you lack the resolve to leave a place where nobody wants you.”

Jonathan recoiled.

Haera turned on her heel and stomped toward the back door.

Talk about an unpleasant way to mark the turn since she’d met Sister Madeleine.

“Then what do you want?” Jonathan’s voice was raw, as if Haera had somehow hurt him by speaking the truth.

“I know what he wanted, but I don’t know about you!”

I want the storm.

I want the thunder. I want…

Two sea-green eyes flashed in her memory like lightning.

Without a word, Haera left, the door banging shut behind her.

Jonathan didn’t follow.

She headed for the shore.

As she did, she inhaled deeply of the sea air and sighed in relief as her strength began to return in full.

Jonathan had referred to what happened when she came inland.

The farther she got from the ocean, the more her physical strength diminished.

She hadn’t known that would happen until she first came to visit him.

She called this body her “human form,” but it wasn’t truly.

It was more like her real body twisted into human shape, with an indifference to cold and wind, and a preference for salt water and raw meat.

And strength and speed no human could match.

At least, to a point.

Carrying the treasure chest to Jonathan’s house, to say nothing of the dead seal, had been harder than she’d expected.

She was still stronger and faster than any human—at least, Jonathan said so.

But Haera hated her weakness, and Jonathan was obviously wrong about many things.

And yet, with every stronger step to the sea, Haera felt worse about how she’d left him.

He was harmless. He’d kept to the terms of their bargain.

He was a surprisingly effective teacher.

And he was…kind, in a way her species never was.

Maybe she could have been patient.

She’d kept more company with him in the last turn than she had with any other creature.

She could have been kinder too.

In her imagination, Sister Madeleine regarded her seriously, reminding her that there was strength in caring for others.

Curse it. Next time Haera came ashore, she’d have to apologize to Jonathan.

She couldn’t face it yet.

With a groan, she continued to the beach, her steps strangely heavy even though her strength was returning.

He was still wrong, though.

Love . What an idea.

Love and hunger were not the same.