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Then Hailana was there, holding her arms open to my mother. She looked tired, worn out, and I could see that she was injured too, though not as severely as Cecily. I have to admit, it surprised me a little to see the blood on Hailana’s temple and shoulder. For as long as I’d known her she’d seemed so invulnerable, so indomitable, that it was hard to imagine she could actually bleed.
The knowledge that she was, indeed, mortal was nowhere near as reassuring as it should have been.
What was even more unexpected, though, was that my mother—Hailana’s self-professed best friend—walked right by her like she wasn’t even there. For one brief moment, Hailana’s face registered shock and then she was rushing after Cecily, grabbing on to her.
Cecily flinched away, and I could see clearly now the livid bruises on her arm. I couldn’t tell if Hailana had given them to her or if she had received them in whatever battle had gone down.
When Hailana reached for her again, tried to put herself in Cecily’s path, my mother shoved the merQueen as hard as she could. Hailana hit the floor and then my mother was lurching painfully across the sea bed. Moving as quickly as she could away from the queen.
She paused once, and I knew it was because Hailana had said something to her. I would have given anything to know what it was—what the two of them were saying to each other—but the sound effects of this memory (or whatever it was) couldn’t breach the walls of telepathic communication between them.
Then my mother started moving, and again I wondered why she didn’t shift—it would be so much easier for her to move with a tail, especially if she wasn’t used to human legs. Then I remembered what the healer had told me about shifting, about how I had been stuck with my tail until I healed up a little more, no matter how much I longed for the comfort of my legs.
The memory changed then, became less sharp, more confused. The pain was still there, but it was different. More bearable, less all-encompassing.
Cecily was being tossed from wave to wave, current to current, and as I watched, everything took on an even blurrier feel, as if the camera that had recorded these memories was just a little out of focus. She was numb, I realized, recognizing the feeling from some of what I’d been through. Completely disconnected from what happened to her family, from what was happening to her now. The pain I felt, like a hard punch blunted with cotton, was her physical reaction, her body’s response to its injuries. The white-hot agony I’d felt before had been my glimpse into her emotional devastation.
My stomach clenched as I watched her, sometimes swimming, sometimes floating unconscious. Though I saw only small sections of time, I got the impression that her disoriented flight lasted a long while. And then things changed again, grew clear and crisp like the razor-sharp edge of a scalpel.
Cecily, in human form, was lying facedown on a beach. Hair matted, body bruised and scabbed over, bikini top missing. I narrowed my eyes, tried to look more closely, but couldn’t figure out where she was. It was too tropical to be home, but we’d been to a lot of different beaches in my life—it could be anywhere from American Samoa to Tahiti.
Then I saw my father—or at least a much younger version of him—shooting a barrel, and I knew. She was in Hawaii. This is where they met. I’d heard the story a hundred times through the years, but neither of my parents had ever portrayed it as happening quite like this.
My father spotted her as he came into shore, ran to her. Checked for a pulse. Then carried her to his car.
My heart hurt a little, watching them, realizing that nothing was ever quite what I expected it to be. It was like the ocean changed everything, twisted it, until what was left was barely recognizable. Like my mother and, I was very afraid, like me as well.
The pearl grew dim, its fire weakening against my palm. There was one last scene, though. My mom in a hospital bed with my father beside her. He was spooning green Jell-O into her mouth and cracking jokes. Though I couldn’t hear what he was saying, I recognized the look on his face and the smile on my mother’s that said she was more amused than she wanted to admit.
I hoped to see more, to know more, but the pearl turned cold—one second before it floated from my hand like I’d never had trouble shaking it loose.
As I sat there on the jagged rocks that made up the bottom of the cave, I didn’t know how to feel. For seven years now, I’d resented my mother and the choices she’d made. The choices I’d had to make because of who she was and what her genetics had made me.
And now, having watched all of that, I still resented her. This time, however, I felt guilty about those emotions. My mother’s life, her choices, had not been as easy for her as I’d always imagined they were. And maybe in time, that knowledge—I looked around the cavern at the many, many pearls on the shelves—and all the knowledge that was to come, would somehow change my feelings.
For now, I just felt numb. Except, of course, for the pain all that seizing and crashing around earlier had inflicted on my already messed-up body.
I stood slowly. Carefully. Suddenly I felt a lot older than seventeen, though I didn’t know if that was because of what I’d just seen or if it was a result of all the injuries I had sustained in the last twenty-four hours.
I should leave. I didn’t know how much time had passed, but I figured I’d been gone long enough for it to have gotten late. Kona was probably trying to check on me, and God only knew what Hailana had planned in my absence.
Yet I was strangely reluctant go. Half an hour ago I would have done anything to get out of here, to run away from the horrors swamping me. But now, now that the pearl had done what it was supposed to, now that the enchantment that had brought me here had finally let up, I wasn’t sure what to do.
Go or stay.
Get another pearl or get the hell away from them.
Learn more about my mother or keep my memories of her exactly as I was used to.
I shook my head, fought the urge to bury my face in my hands. I was sick of all these questions, all these dilemmas. In some ways, it was just like being back on land with my birthday looming. I’d been forced to make choices I wasn’t ready for, and I felt like I was being forced to do it again now.
I was tired.
I hurt.
And nothing was turning out quite the way I had expected it to when I’d first decided on this life. Maybe it never would.
With that thought foremost in my head, I coasted closer to the wall. Examined pearl after pearl without actually touching any of them. Trying to decide which one I would drop into next.
On the second row there was a brilliant white blister pearl in the shape of a thumbprint. I liked it, felt it call to me even with the awkwardness of its contours. Despite the warnings in my head, despite all the reasons I had to back away and simply disappear, I found myself reaching out. Wanting to touch it. Wanting to know more about the woman I had spent so much of my life despising.
I was almost there, my fingers almost brushed against the cool, slick surface of the pearl, when I heard Hailana’s voice in the back of my head. Low, cool, and oh so urgent, it sent chills through me—as did all the things she refused to say, even though no one would think about dropping in on Hailana’s private lines of communication.
Get back to Coral Straits right now, she told me impatiently. I need you!
Chapter 11
What’s wrong? I demanded, even as I shot straight up to the hole at the top of the cavern, pausing only to extinguish the lights I had created.
