“I’ve let Barnaby keep me from Keyvnor for three months. Yes, he gave me a warning, but that doesn’t mean he’ll really harm me. And it’s quite possible he may have forgotten me.”
Her great-uncle frowned.
“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life having to sail anywhere or be bound to Hollybrook Park for the rest of my days, which could happen if Endellion is not appeased.”
“He will remember you, Miranda,” Uncle Jonathan warned gravely.
“You don’t know that for certain.”
“It’s not something I wish to test.”
Miranda notched her chin. “I will be fine.” She prayed with all of her might that her words were true.
Maybe she was being foolish, but she’d need to step on Keyvnor land one day and today was as good as any.
“I will not allow you to step foot on Keyvnor land,” her uncle bellowed.
“You can’t keep me here,” Miranda yelled back.
“He will kill you, Miranda,” Uncle Jonathan warned.
“Or, perhaps not,” she mused aloud.
“Don’t be a fool,” Uncle Jonathan barked.
Wesley had gotten little sleep, and when he did slumber, Miranda came to him in his dreams.
It was a fitful rest and he finally pulled himself from his bed as the sun began to rise. He then dressed for the day and wandered along the cliffs, looking out to the sea.
The water was still rough, violent even, and had risen even higher than it had been yesterday. With each crash of a wave, water came over the cliffs.
Wesley stared off into the distance, searching for storm clouds, but none were to be found.
Given the state of the seas, and the time of the shipwreck in Laswell, Wesley could understand why everyone believed Endellion was angry. And, if he had a fanciful imagination, he might even believe that to be the case. But mythical gods were just that, a myth, and no more real than ghosts or pixies. Though a part of him wished he could believe, then he wouldn’t have lost Miranda, but it simply wasn’t logical.
At one time he did believe, with his whole heart. Wesley had pushed those memories far way into the darkness because the most unpleasant memories of his youth were connected to that fairy tale. But those memories were in the forefront this morning, haunting him.
So often his grandmother had taken him and his brothers to the shore to watch the water, searching for mermaids and she’d tell stories of King Merrik and the secreted island of Atargatis.
He smiled at the memory of her pointing to mermaids in the distance. His five-year-old mind believed what he saw to be just that. As an adult, he now knew that they were probably dolphins.
Most boys would have stopped believing in magic and fairy tales before they went off to Eton. His tutor had certainly tried to dissuade Wesley from believing in nonsense, but Wesley had held onto the possibility that there was a world that nobody could see, except for a lucky few. When Wesley had insisted that the Sea God of Cornwall and mermaids did exist that first quarter, he’d first been laughed at, then the boys had gotten rougher in their assaults and called him any number of names, and told him to go home to be with the other infants in his family The humiliation had been so great that he hadn’t wanted to return to school, but his father forced him to do so. That’s when Wesley had made up his mind that he’d never speak of magical creatures again and over time, and as he matured, realized how ridiculous it was to believe in such nonsense in the first place. It didn’t matter that he’d been just a boy, he’d been old enough to have known reality from myths. And the more he studied the sciences, the more convinced he became that anyone who truly believed in mermaids, ghosts, and all other mythical creatures were fools because there was no logic supporting their existence.
Remembering those days was painful and his stomach knotted, much as it had every day that first term, whenever those boys noticed him.
A part of him wished he could believe, for Miranda. He envied her acceptance of what was beyond. She didn’t need proof to know something was real. She simply accepted as fact. And as much as he attempted to do so last night, to open his mind to the possibilities that maybe it all was true, it couldn’t be done.
Wesley pushed his fingers through his hair and decided to return