another gag. Her mouth twinged as she remembered how the last one had felt. Her mouth had bled afterward. She clung to the pool wall, sinking, molding her back to it, revealing only her eyes above the water.
And there was a gun. The form of it was as far removed from the look of the guns of her time as was a sailing ship from the vessels that plied the present oceans, but she knew it. A pistol.
She feared his intent but summoned courage, surfaced higher so her mouth was above the surface.
“Will you feed me or starve me? I will not submit to that again.” She nodded at the devices.
Gun in hand, he sat in one of the long, white seats then casually rested the weapon on his knee.
“I am taking precautions.”
She angled an eyebrow.
“You are more a danger to me, currently, than I am to you. Raffaela.”
He recalled her name.
“You said you would cut me up. I doubt your words.”
“True. I did. And you know my reasons. I didn’t cut you. I have backtracked. I want to keep you. I said that too.”
He had.
“I cannot live forever in a small pool of water.” Or without enough food. She smelled the fish, and again her stomach cramped.
“Perhaps. It would be boring, but one cannot die from boredom. Besides, I have ideas, surprises. Notions about you. What if you could walk about my house?”
Startled, she blinked at him and sank to the bottom to think before she returned. “How?”
“I would have to demonstrate and try things. As long as you admit it is sensible for me to restrain you to begin with? You have such sharp…” He indicated her. “Teeth. You could rip my head from my neck, and maybe my beating heart from my chest with those.”
She favored him with a glimpse of her teeth.
These ideas made her nervous. But if she did not agree, what would he do? Fillet her after all? She needed time, and if she could get into the house below, she might escape through another door.
Houses had many doors, from memory. She hadn’t been inside a building for more than a century. The noises coming from pubs and cafés and whatever else she had walked by on her day on land, those frightened her. The yelling, the singing, and the banging, even the loud talking, it hurt her ears, made her heartbeat pound.
Which made her wonder why she wanted to become human again. It would be nice, in small bits. Maybe? If it were her choice as to when and where.
“And so. This.” He raised the gun. “And these. Submit to the restraints and we will talk, and experiments can be done on you to see about the walking.” He eyed her intently, smiling as if he knew a secret. “Then, if I think you’re safe, I will let you loose, more and more.”
That sounded fair, if dangerous. Was he lying again? She remembered lies too. People loved those. He could easily kill her.
He could do that here, in the pool. Not feed her. Poison her. Harpoon her. Those she’d seen used far too often. Her people, her ex-people, were good at making war and weapons.
Which way to go? Staying in the pool would get her nowhere.
“You can help me walk?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. How many mermaids do you think I’ve had in my hands?”
The pump that fed water to the pool hummed in the background.
“Perhaps this could be satisfactory.” Frowning, she thought some more. Experiments? She had heard of the Frankenstein experiment, and there had been stories of other things. Long ago, those tales were told, but were they true or fairy tales?
“There will be a price to pay.”
“What price?” Dread tingled through her. He didn’t mean to cut her up?
“Pleasure in exchange for freedom.” He leaned forward. “You want to walk again?”
Oh. She understood. What pleasures, might be a question an innocent would ask, but she knew the answer. The man had sexual inclinations.
Was that so awful? Only if he planned to hook her through the tail to do it.
The alternatives were starvation, boredom, and eventual death. Choice was lacking. The open ocean and the cycle of the Ravening now seemed a dream to her, not a nightmare.
To make her walk, he would need to conjure up legs. To have legs, she had to be human.
If she were human, she could have a life on land.
Could she yearn for both sea and land, at once? To choose between them on a whimsy? Yes,