Page 6 of Wave Song (Deep Waters)

Chapter

Six

Something was wrong with Alys.

Imber could tell that easily enough, even if she refused to tell him what was wrong. He’d asked, and even just in asking felt as though something had changed. She obviously knew he could sense when her emotions were off. Although, he didn’t have the heart to tell her it was because he could taste them in the water.

He’d never met a creature easier to read. She wore her emotions like a second skin. Her desire was warm and musky, a scent that he regularly kept hidden under his scales for later, when he was alone. Her anxiety was bitter and noxious. It made him flatten his gills against his sides because it was hard to breathe in.

But lately, he had started to taste her fear. Bitter, acrid, it wriggled through every ounce of him and made his hearts beat faster with hers. When he’d asked her why she wasn’t feeling well, she’d brushed him off. But he could tell something was wrong.

And he wasn’t certain what it was, but he had a feeling it had something to do with her people.

Every time she went home, he had to fix her. She came to him to forget who she was, and she was getting thinner every time he saw her. Like she wasn’t eating. Hollows had bruised underneath her eyes, which she said was because she hadn’t been sleeping very well.

Just a week ago, she’d fallen asleep on top of him. Imber had cradled her against his chest, but he knew it wasn’t enough to take her pain away. He’d have done anything to help her. She knew it. He knew it. But there was nothing she would tell him to do.

At a loss for what he could do for his beautiful wave song, he’d swallowed down his emotions. But now, watching her submarine leave him behind in the kelp, he couldn’t stop the feeling that maybe he should follow her.

It was a silly thought. Even when he was a child, he had sought out the achromos. They were strange creatures, so different from his own, and many of his kind took the risk to see where they lived.

Even if he followed her home, he couldn’t leave the water. And she would.

She always did.

Sighing, he tried to will his own nerves out of his body and into the waters. Let the ocean take his fears, because the ancients knew all. They would protect the People of Water.

But he feared...

Well, maybe he was just absorbing Alys’s fears. He could let it go, even if it wanted to lodge itself in his throat.

The kelp beside him shifted, moving with a current that was rather unnatural to see. He assumed at first that it was a sea turtle, or perhaps a curious seal that had drifted a little farther than their normal hunting grounds. But then he caught a glimpse of bright green scales and he knew who it was.

For all that his sister was larger, and arguably should have been a better hunter than him, she had never been very good at hiding. Especially with a little one attached to her hip.

Leaning down to the sand, he scooped up a handful of the golden granules and let them trail between his fingers. “What do you think, Imber?” he said to himself, loud enough that his sister and her offspring would hear him. “Should we go hunting for oysters? Perhaps Virago’s child would like to go pearl hunting.”

The little one was born just as all of his people were. She could understand him easily. The long and low language with which they spoke had already been instilled in her long before she was born.

And he knew something his sister could never battle. The little one was a fiend for oysters. She loved slurping them down while finding the prettiest pearls with her uncle. No matter how hard Virago tried to keep her in the net that wrapped up her daughter, the little one would fight free with her sharp teeth and newly pointed spines to get to an oyster.

He heard the sound of struggling long before his sister’s curse filled the air. Then a little arrow darted through the water toward him, her eyes wide and her hands already outstretched for whatever he held in his hand. Like he’d somehow plucked an oyster off the ground and prepared it just for her.

Now was the tricky part. If his niece realized he didn’t have an oyster in his hand, she would dart off in another direction. The little one had a nose like a shark, and she would head to the nearest oysters in the vicinity. Of course, that would be a problem to find her. She was voracious, and would likely rip through the entire oyster strand before he or Virago had time to get to her.

Looping his tail, he gently flicked his fluke at the same moment she barreled toward him. The lightning quick child was immediately caught up in his much larger fluke that shoved her right into his waiting arms.

Catching her, he held onto her by the waist so she couldn’t wiggle free. Her spines jabbed at the delicate webs between his fingers as she struggled.

Wincing, he held her wriggling body while her mother showed herself in the kelp.

“I thought we had said we weren’t going to spy on each other,” he grumbled, eyeing his sister. “That was a rule from when we were children. Need I remind you?”

“Yes, yes, well, we’re all simply so curious about who you’ve been meeting that I had to be the one to see. Otherwise, it would have been one of the other younger ones.” His sister shuddered. “The last thing you needed was someone else discovering you’ve been meeting with an achromo.”

His entire world ground to a halt.

His sister knew.

Virago had seen him with Alys, which meant she knew he’d been meeting with someone who wasn’t of their kind.

He had said for so long that he was meeting with a young woman that he was falling completely and utterly tail over head for. Everyone knew he wasn’t even available anymore. They could smell Alys on him.

His pod was kind. They were more open than the other pods of their people, especially the ones that were deeper in the ocean. But he hadn’t really given much thought to what they would do if he... if he...

Bringing her home to his people had never been an option, he realized. He risked losing everything if he did. And yet, if he lost Alys, then hadn’t he already lost everything?

Breathing hard, he gulped and held his niece out from his body. Even though her tail slapped at his wrists, he couldn’t stop staring at his sister in horror. “So what now?”

“What do you mean, what now?”

“What are you going to do?” Was she going to tell the pod? Would he have to leave everyone because he was the deviant who had covered himself in the scent of an achromo?

Virago looked at him with pity in her eyes. “Imber.”

The single word wasn’t enough of an answer. He needed to know what she was going to do, because right now, she was the only one who could save him.

“Virago,” he croaked. “None of it was a lie.”

“None of it? You’ve been meeting with an achromo for weeks. Months, maybe. You’ve been telling stories about how you’ve found your mate, and how she makes you feel more complete than you ever hoped to feel.” She grabbed her child, gently wrapping her back up in the net attached to her waist. “Was it because you didn’t think you’d get to mate with anyone else? I know you’re smaller than the other males, Imber. But clearly that doesn’t matter. Look who I chose to mate with.”

“And you killed him in the process,” he muttered.

“A mistake.” Virago at least looked a little guilty. “He was smaller than even I anticipated, but there are females smaller than me. A few scars later and you’d be a father. You’re so good with your niece already, just think if she was your own.”

He shook himself free from old thoughts. “I don’t want a mate from our people, Virago. I’ve already found my mate.”

His sister tilted her head back and laughed. Sharp teeth flashing, she looked somehow even more terrifying than usual with the mirth that made her shoulders wobble and the muscles on her belly visibly seizing before she got control of herself. “Hilarious, brother. But you don’t have to lie to me.”

He wasn’t laughing with her. And it took a bit for her to realize that. “I’m not lying to you, Virago.”

An awkward silence fell between them. Even the sea seemed to hold its breath, not moving a single current as the two siblings stared at each other. Imber refused to change what he had said, though. His sister needed to understand this wasn’t some ruse, so the others would leave him alone.

Alys meant something to him. More than anyone else had ever meant, if he was being honest. She made his soul feel like he mattered. Like there was someone out there who saw him as more than just a potential mate. As more than someone who could bring life into this world.

“What?” Virago finally asked. “I don’t understand what you’re saying. You think that... that achromo is your mate?”

“I don’t think she is my mate.” He watched his sister deflate with relief, knowing that he was about to bring that tension back. “I know that she is. I choose her above all others, Virago. She is the one that the sea has sent for me.”

“A soul bond?” his sister scoffed. “It is impossible with their kind. You have no idea what they are doing underneath the water. You haven’t been going out on the scouting missions with the others. You haven’t seen the madness they bring to our waters.”

“I don’t need to see anything to know how she makes me feel.” He pressed a clawed hand to his chest, trying to convey how serious he was. “She sees me, sister. She makes me feel brave. When I speak, she laughs at what I say. She takes the gifts I give her and treats them like they are treasures that I stole from the gods themselves. And when she lies against my chest...” He tapped twice over each heart. “I feel that I am whole.”

With every word, his sister’s mouth dropped open wider and wider. If she wasn’t careful, a fish was going to swim into that open maw of hers. And yet, she didn’t close it even when he finished.

His statement hung between them. If he had been with any other person, he would have feared judgment. He would have worried they would slice him along the tail and leave him for the sharks after they decided he had clearly lost his mind.

But his sister wasn’t like that. She understood that there were different people out there. She had chosen a male that no one else had ever thought she would choose because she saw the value in who he was.

Her mate had been a good man. And now his name was lost to the sea, because she had not been gentle enough to preserve him.

Virago snapped her jaws shut, the echoing click making him flinch. “You truly feel this way?”

“With both my hearts.” He sighed. “I cannot explain the feeling much more than that, Virago. I know that I am where I should be when I am with her. And I know that she is not of our kind.”

“You see how difficult it is going to be?”

“Of course I do.” His words came out harsher than he’d intended, spitting them at his sister, who had always treated him like a child. “I see how difficult it is going to be. She cannot stay in the water forever, and I cannot go onto the land. But if I must chase her sunlight across the seas, I will. Just to bask in the light of her smile.”

Something changed in Virago’s expression. She went from confused and perhaps concerned, then calm and serene.

It was unnerving.

He flicked his tail to put distance between them. “What is that expression?”

It took her a while to respond, and when she did, he almost didn’t hear the words. “I believe you, Imber.”

He was... stunned. He hadn’t thought she would believe him, let alone admit it. Imber had never dreamed it would be this easy for him to tell her, either.

This was his little secret. His greatest hope delivered to him in a package that his own people may very well never understand. How he wanted them to. He wanted them to see her and love her just as he did.

“Oh,” he muttered, sinking down onto the sands with a horrified expression on his face. “Oh, no.”

“What?” His sister’s spines rose. She curved a clawed hand around her child, looking around for whatever danger might be upon them.

“I love her,” he breathed. “I think I love her so very much. I might have loved her for a long time. But I just realized...”

Virago breathed out a sigh of relief, all the tension in her easing as she wrapped herself around him. Her tail flopped on top of his, heavy enough to squeeze out some of the anxiety. “Of course you do. You don’t want her just as a mate, even I can see that. You want to keep her, Imber.”

That was the problem, wasn’t it? He couldn’t keep her. No one could.

Trailing his hands over his niece’s back, he let the soft skin remind him of what he had always wanted. A family. Someone to love him as much as he loved them. “I chose an impossible path, didn’t I?”

“Maybe,” Virago replied with a chuckle. “But you also could have chosen a path that changes the way we all see the world. Your achromo might be the reason we all need to help us get along. They don’t even know we exist, Imber. If you continue down this path with her, maybe they will see that we are a people they have to contend with.”

“Why would we want them to know we are even here?”

“Because they are doing something.” His sister frowned, her eyes turning in a direction he couldn’t see. “They’re going to an area near where we hunt, very close to where the pod sleeps. We’re not sure why.”

There were more of the shells that she traveled in? He hadn’t seen many in this area, but they were far from their hunting grounds. “What are they doing there?”

“None of us are sure. There’s just strange bubbles always in the same area. The last time I went scouting, there were green rays coming out of the shells.” His sister shuddered. “The light made me frightened, brother. I’m not sure they were there for a good reason.”

That strange pit in his stomach was back. The same pit that happened when he smelled her fear.

Suddenly, he wondered if Alys hadn’t been telling him everything. “I can ask her.”

“You can speak with her?”

“She gifted me her language, and I gave her ours.” The lights along his tail brightened in embarrassment as his sister thumped his tail with hers. “Sorry. I should have asked before I did that.”

“Yes, you should have.” She grabbed onto his cheeks and gave him a little shake before shoving him up into the current. She trailed along behind him as he made his way back toward their home. “I’m proud of you, though.”

“I’m older than you, Virago. You don’t get to be proud of me.”

“Well, I’m bigger than you.” His sister shrugged. “So maybe I get to be proud of my brother when I wish to be.”