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“I have no idea. She just told me about a curse. No more Mayhem’s. I—” I stepped forward, reaching as though I could do anything about her sinking into the waves. “Save her!”
I looked up at my completely stunned giant merman and elbowed him. “Save her!”
He looked down at me and shook his head no. “She doesn’t need to be saved.”
We both looked back toward the water. I could feel him next to me as he dropped to take a seat on the pink sands. He needed to sit down? This man would eternally drive me crazy. I could feel that in my bones. “Thanks, Thurston.”
I heard him say, “Wait.”
I didn’t, though. I moved closer to the water that apparently loved her though it tried to murder me. I didn’t get hands that gently enveloped me. I got tossed around like the only ball of catnip being handled by a pack of frustrated familiars.
My mother, a woman I always felt kept secrets from me, emerged from the body of water with scales. “No more magic, my Darling. I’ve washed it all away.”
“And the hair?” I tried not to stare at them.
“Electricity in the ocean is a rare and powerful thing. They won’t turn you or anyone to stone. We are not from that line.” She seemed young and refreshed and beautiful, and frightening. Like everything she never seemed to be in most of my memories.
“Are you going to explain things now or am I supposed to keep guessing the right question and piecing the answers together with my imagination, which, by the way, is running quite wild at the moment?” I also wanted her to put her clothes back on because, damn, she was fit and petite and perfect in this form.
“Of course, Darling.” But she was looking at Thurston. She smiled, almost wickedly, as she said, “When I woke up this morning, I thought my life had run its course. Served its purpose for our people. Time to bring my part in it to an end.”
I opened my mouth but no words fell out of it. Not even a squeak of a sound.
She smiled at me and said, “And here I am. With my daughter. My heir. My legacy will live on through you because you have already secured a future for yourself in depths of the waters despite all warnings, all measures that had been put into place to keep you from them. You would not be denied your blood right.”
“When did you become the Mother of Riddles?” I asked as she pulled on the top and did not need the bottom as the top now fit like a dress on her.
She laughed. Again, my serious, focused, quiet Mother was laughing.
Once we made it to the monster mumbling to himself, counting on his fingers like he was just learning math, my mother laughed again. “Oh, my Darling. You have done so much already to change the tides of destiny forever, haven’t you?”
“Are you asking me or him?” I wasn’t sure.
“I made tea.” Thurst, still looking somewhere between shock and awe for some reason, looked up at us as though the entire world had landed on his shoulders and pushed him to that spot he seemed glued to at the moment.
“Lovely, Dear.” She patted his shoulder and he fell over as though she had knocked him out. “He needs a rest. Lots to process.”
She did just knock him out! “Mother!”
“Let’s chat over that cup of tea.” She strode ahead of me and Case opened the door for us to enter as though she were queen of my cabin. My cabin. My prison. Not hers.
I considered that as she moved to the spot the tea cups were waiting and looked at me and asked, “Could you heat these for us?”
“What?” I asked but moved my finger in a swirl to do just that as she brought them to the table.
“No more magic. Remember?” she asked.
“You mean… at all?” I frowned. “How?”
“Sip the tea, Darling. Mother will explain everything to you. Case?” she called and my loyal companion moved to her side. She looked down at it and smiled. “Thank you. It has not been easy for you. I know this. It won’t get any easier either. The tides have changed.”
Case rolled down the hall as I processed the little spy had every single secret, every single item that mattered to me with one exception, inside of it. I cleared my throat and placed my cup on the saucer. As calmly as I could muster in the face of possible betrayal, I asked, “You’ve been spying on me?”
She gave me an incredulous expression and said, “No, Darling. You forget who gave that to you? My parents. Your grandparents. Case has been in our family for many generations. Loyal to you as it will be to your daughter someday.”
I rolled my eyes up a bit and sighed. “Today. Let’s just get me caught up to where we are today.”
She seemed to shrug as if I were missing another clue. We used to play detectives when we hiked here. It was how I found most of the plants. How I found the power and the right spells to gather the water. Shit. Had she been manipulating me this whole time?
