AllFreeNovel
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He’s right. The power inside of me ... the one I unleashed to start a storm … can also be harnessed. Power works both ways.
I move under the water, this time with more confidence. Schools of fish surround me, and their glistening bodies seem to guide me toward the light surrounding West. I move to him, my fin pushing me fast, and I have no time to marvel over this incarnation of my body because West and Eric are still lost at sea.
I must save them.
I must.
West is in a nest of light. A light I know and understand.
The nest of light that saved me.
I move toward it, trying to see where the source is coming from, but there is no beginning or end.
“West,” I cry, pulling at his lifeless body. “No!” I shake my head. He can’t be dead but he has been under water for so long. His face is white, his body limp.
“No,” I bellow to the ocean that misunderstood me. “Save him,” I beg, pulling at his body, desperate to bring him up to the surface, for Crew to pull him on the boat. To breathe life back into him.
“Help me,” I cry, unable to move him, though I try with all my might. Why could I bring Kai up so easily? Was he less... dead?
Suddenly the ocean water that fills my lungs suffocates me.
“Help,” I cry, trying to take West from the nest of light. “I need him.”
I press my hands to his face, kissing him, my hair flowing in the water, and my tail waving with the current, sending green sparkles of light with each flutter.
His lips move against mine. He tastes like honey and memories and a deep, dark forest. His eyelids flutter open at our kiss, his eyes a beacon of light and his brows knit heavy like his heart.
“Harlow,” he whispers under the sea and somehow, he is alive. In my arms. Somehow, he is here, he isn’t lost at sea despite the tattoo on his arm.
“How?” I shake my head, tears stinging my eyes and my words catch in my throat. There are tears on my cheeks; tears I feared I would never shed again. And I don’t know how you can cry under the sea--but you can. Because I am.
Maybe it’s because the ocean isn’t one fluid thing. It’s ever-changing. Yes, the tides move on a table you can read but the deep sea is not as simple as that.
It’s the same with our hearts. Maybe you can memorize the shallow parts, but the depths? Those are ever-changing. Deep and wide. The breadth of which can swallow you up, or deliver you to safety.
“Gaia came. She saved me.” West says, blinking heavily. “Then she went for Eric.”
Eric.
My Eric.
I have to go after him.
I take West’s hand in mine without another word, the nest of light vanishing as we swim up, up, up. As we move toward the safety of the sea breeze and salty skies.
With a burst, we break through the surface of the water. West can swim now, his strength renewed--both through my kiss and whatever vigor the elusive Gaia bestowed upon him.
“Go,” he tells me, moving toward Crew on the boat. “Get him, Harlow.”
I nod, wanting to both fall apart and fall in love, in his arms. I don’t want to leave any of them. I want them to cradle me against their chests and whisper sweet nothings in my ear. I want them to smooth out my tangle of hair and hold my hand as tenderly as they have taken hold of my heart.
“Go,” he says, more adamantly this time, breaking me from my trance.
I love these men.
With all that I am.
The truth forces me to swim back into the water I am just learning to trust, and I reach deep inside myself, I beg for Eric to be known to me.
Where is he?
I swim, going deep in the dangerously dark waters. They remind me of one thing--when I was caught in the whirlpool by a force I didn’t understand. That same power curls around me now.
I can’t get swept into this, not now. Now I need to find Eric. I need to save him.
But West said Gaia went after him.
Is she coming after me too? Is she the force fighting against me?
No. She came to protect, not to destroy.
What then, is trying to hurt me?
The whirlpool’s power grows but I remember the way I made a storm arise out of nothing with my call. Maybe I can push the power away with my voice.
I open my mouth, not knowing if it will push the spiraling water away. I close my eyes and press my hands to my throat and sing a song I don’t know. My thigh burns and I look down, seeing the tattoo glows against my fin.
