I hear something above the sound of the waves, a scratching noise. I lean my head back and look toward a building on the shore, the one that looked like a ghost last night—
A girl.
There’s a girl—she’s looking at me. She sees me. She sees me, I have to go, I have to go back. Instinct overpowers everything else in me, and I rise and force myself to my feet, groan in pain as I run into the water. I collapse when it’s just deep enough for me to swim, grateful at the way it cradles me, at how comfortable it is compared with the land. I’m about to dive. The girl is running toward the water’s edge—
She calls my name. My name. Naida.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Celia
She’s here.
I see her in the water, by the pier. If I wasn’t looking for her, I’m sure I would have missed her—her skin is grayish, her hair dark brown and heavy-looking. She moves with the waves, the way that seagulls do when they sit on the water. She dives, reemerges, drawing closer, closer to the shore. And then she starts to walk.
Every step she takes looks deliberate, like she’s walking on a high wire instead of up to dry sand. As she gets closer I think I know why—the expression on her face is pure pain. Her mouth widens into a grimace. I rise, keeping my back against the church.
I’m not sure what to do. I’m not even sure what she is. A mermaid? No. Mermaids have tails. And don’t exist.
Just like triplets with powers don’t exist.
She finally makes it onto the shore, collapses. Even from here, I can see the blood running from her feet, making tiny rivers that are destroyed with each new wave. She looks limp and broken, like the ocean stole her bones and threw her out. Each time a wave sweeps far enough onto the sand to touch her toes, I see her quiver, try to cling to the water that so quickly slides back where it came from.
She is frightening, but she is also helpless. And staring at her lying there certainly won’t help me get her out of my head. I swallow and start toward her, kicking up dry sand and squinting against the reflection of the almost-set sun on the waves. She turns her head up toward me, and I see her eyes—dark, gray like stones—widen. She forces herself up shakily, moves toward the water. Her legs buckle under her with every step, like they’re broken, and there’s the blood again, though it’s now dark and thick. She makes it to where the water is shoulder-deep and falls in, and suddenly, it’s like she’s home. Her body slips under, every bit as graceful as a dolphin. She’s leaving, I have to—
“Naida!” I call her name. Again and again, I yell as I watch her dark form start away from the shore.
And then stop.
I’ve reached the edge of the water. I drop my hands to my knees and pant while trying to keep my eyes on her. She’s still, she’s listening. “Naida,” I say. “I’m not… I…” What am I, exactly? I’m not going to hurt her? I’m more worried about her hurting me, to be honest. Say something, though, anything….
“I met you last night,” I call. “I just want to talk.”
About the scream in your head. About why your memories are different from everyone else’s. I want to talk to you so I can forget about you.
I see her turn against the waves. She slowly lifts her head out of the water.
She is beautiful—more so now that she’s in the water. Her skin is not quite as gray up close, but around her ears, her hairline, her shoulder bones is a light bluish color, like she’s very cold. Everything about her matches the sea, except her hair—it has the slightest hint of chocolate brown in it, like it would be better suited to a forest.
“Please. Talk to me,” I say, finally standing up straight again. The lights on the pier flicker on automatically with the encroaching darkness. Her head snaps toward them, and for a minute, I think she’s going to vanish again.
“It hurts.”
I almost can’t hear her at first, over the sound of the waves, but I manage to understand what she said. I don’t respond, because I have no idea how to.
“It hurts to walk on land. It cuts me. It’s like knives,” she says. There’s no inflection in her voice, no happiness or sorrow, only a single note that bounces through every word.
“Can you come any closer? So I can hear you better, at least?” I call out. She considers this, then obliges, creeping closer before sitting down where the waves are knee-deep. I nod, then sit in the wet sand where the tiniest remains of waves lap up, soaking my shorts and covering my toes with sand.
She stares at me. She doesn’t blink, and I know if I were to stand suddenly, run toward her, yell, that she’d be into the deep water so quickly that I wouldn’t even make it a step before she was gone.
She’s waiting for me to speak, I can tell. I’m unpracticed at starting conversations—that’s Anne’s job, and less often, Jane’s. But…
“You left last night,” I say. The words sound stunted.
“I didn’t want to be seen.”
“I’d already seen you.”
“That was necessary. The boy would have drowned,” she says, as if this is obvious.
“That’s right. You saved him,” I say. “You pulled him out of the water.”
“You breathed for him,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m glad he’s alive. He didn’t need to die.” She pauses for a long time, but doesn’t look away from me, like she’s waiting for something.
“You… you live in the water?” I finally manage. The words sound stupid when they fall from my mouth, clunky.
“Yes. Now,” she says dismissively, and then her tone grows more serious. “But not before. Before I was this, I was Naida. You knew the name Naida.”
She might be able to maintain eye contact with me, but I’m not as strong—I look down. The fact that she came from the water, that she’s something different, someone different, that doesn’t seem to matter. Am I going to admit my power to a stranger? It seems wrong, wrong in every way, and yet…“Yes,” I answer.
“Did you know her?” she asks, and for the first time there’s the tiniest bit of inflection, of curiosity in her voice.
I raise an eyebrow, a little confused. “No. I’ve never met you before. But…” I inhale. “Sometimes when I touch people, I know things they’ve lived through.” My voice falters, like it can’t bear the fact that I’m admitting my power—despite downplaying it quite a bit—aloud.