the world entire. And myself. After a few moments, I settled into the pattern of it. This thing, this pool, was a thousand kinds of good for me. I imagined what it must be like for an Aegiran. I’ve lived hard, done all kinds of stuff. I found a thousand different, glorious ways to lose control before I clawed it back again. What must this be like for a mermaid, whose lives are governed by control?
It must blow their freakin’ minds.
As I exited the recovery chamber, I felt like I’d had a screaming orgasm; been to church to be absolved of all my sins; found my inner child. All in the space of about four minutes.
Lecanora and Carragheen were waiting. I went straight up to him. This man, this enigma. “How did you...?” But before he could answer, “No. Not, not how. Why?”
He looked serious. “Because people deserve to know that there’s more.”
“But why does it matter to you for people to… feel? To feel in that way?” My head was still reeling from the experience.
“I just think maybe we lost too much of the human.”
He sounded like Mom. A human lover.
Lecanora was standing very close to me, checking I was intact. Ransha. Are you okay?
I nodded. Oh yeah, baby. And then some.
She nodded back, satisfied. Okay then, I’ve located the Leigon child’s parents. I must take him to them. They are frantic. Something in her voice made me look at her closely. The child’s plight affected her. Hardly surprising, I guess. The child was lost, like she had been lost.
I nodded again. Of course.
I will only be gone five minutes. His parents are close by.
When she was gone, Carragheen and I ditched the pretence and consumed each other with our eyes. “So… you built it? The pool?”
Carragheen nodded and I asked him again. “Why?”
“All I ever wanted, my whole life, was a place to be myself.”
I searched his face and thought about what I had known of Carragheen, before today.
A real disappointment.
How had I known that? Where had I heard it? And a disappointment to whom? I had always figured his parents. But it was hard to imagine the lovely Shighsa disappointed with this man. Her own son. So Kraken?
His face was willing me to understand. “When I was younger, I wanted to find a place with no judgment, no expectation. I did a lot of wild things trying to find that place.”
Oh, ditto baby. Ditto with a capital D.
“I supposed other people felt the same too. We, Aegirans… we believe that we are so much better than them. The land people, even most of the other tribes of the sea. I wanted to show them, everyone really, that there is far more that links us than separates us. I think…” He looked at me as if wondering whether he should tell me. Something in my face obviously convinced him. “I think we need understanding of each other now, more than ever.”
My hand snaked out of its volition to touch his face, which was impossibly warm. Then his hand was at my face too, and we were moving together with agonizing slowness. I was being sucked into the depths of this man, this beautiful wolf, from another place, another universe.
But just like me.
Ransha. There is no time for this now.
Carragheen shook his head at Lecanora’s interruption into our brains, but I also saw that his eyes clocked the fear and impatience in her gaze and it puzzled him. He removed my hand and his voice was all command. “Rania, Lecanora. It’s time to tell me what’s going on.”
Wasn’t that my line?
After all, he was the one who showed up out of the blue in Dirtwater.
Lecanora widened her eyes artfully, about to deny knowing of any problem.
“I heard you.” He glared hard at the princess. “I heard you before. How do you know about Imogen?”
Lecanora closed her eyes and when she opened them she tried hard to return Carragheen’s stare. But one thing was for sure. She’d be toast in Boss Hadley’s poker room.
Following my general life theory that attack is the best form of defense, I struck.
“Shouldn’t we be asking that? We are royal, after all. Least she is.” I hooked my thumb at Lecanora. “We should know stuff. The better question is: how did you get mixed up in all of this? Why did you come to Dirtwater, chasing Blondie? What do you know?”
Lecanora looked at me, hurt that I hadn’t told her this part of the story,