Fish Out of Water Page 10

  “Thank God!” Fred exclaimed. “A UF who understands a surface-dweller reference. Usually I get a blank stare.”

  Farrem’s laughter cut off abruptly. “Yes, I know that Off! is an insect repellant. I know many things about the surface world, as I have had to spend much time here.”

  “Uh. Yeah. Sorry. Didn’t mean to bring the party down.”

  He sat in the patio chair beside her. “You did not. I will carry my shame for the rest of my days, and deservedly so; your comments have no effect on what I have done. But there have been compensations for banishment. I am sitting beside one of them.”

  “Aw,” Fred teased. “I’m blushing.”

  “It is too dark for me to tell,” he replied.

  “Farrem, can I ask you something?”

  “Because I was arrogant and thought my wishes were more important than sparing lives. Because I was cruel and foolish.”

  “Um. I was going to ask where you’ve been living all these years.”

  “Oh! Awkward,” he said wryly, and Fred laughed again. Damn! It was great to talk to someone who didn’t sound stilted, or from another

  (species)

  country.

  “I have seen much of the planet. In my despair, I traveled much of the world during my first decade of banishment . . . starting, of course, with the East Coast of this country. Specifically, Massachusetts.”

  “Specifically, Cape Cod,” Fred said dryly, knowing well that she was conceived on one of the beaches there.

  “Indeed! My encounter with your lady mother was the one thing that kept me from despair. I had forgotten a very basic fact. Although my own people despised me, there were many people who would not know of my shame. She was kindness itself. She . . . saved me.”

  Fred said nothing, but her thoughts were awhirl. She and Jonas had long ago agreed never to tell Moon that Farrem had only taken her out of despair, had come ashore because he had, literally, nowhere else to go. But Fred was having second thoughts.

  She . . . saved me.

  Moon deserved to know the wonderful thing she had done for a man she didn’t know.

  How often, Fred mused, had she taken her mother’s generous nature for granted?

  Since day one, of course. Did anyone ever really appreciate their mom?

  Farrem had been silent while she pondered these things, and when he continued, it was in a low voice. “I had been planning my own destruction. I had planned to find land, get as far from water as I could, and die by dehydration.”

  “Jesus!”

  “It is very difficult,” he said simply, “for one of our kind to kill themselves. I supposed I could have let myself be eaten by a great white. Messy, though, and quite painful. But!” He sounded more brisk. Slightly more cheery, thank God. “Your lady mother made me rethink my course of action. So I went a’traveling. I saw many things.”

  “How did you—you know . . . Live? Make money? Whatever?”

  “At first, I caught and sold fish at various coastal markets. When I wound up in Tokyo, I realized how very expensive sushi quality fish are—tuna, whitefish, squid—”

  “Yerrggh! Stop, you’ll make me barf.”

  “What?”

  “I’m allergic.”

  “Stop that. You are teasing me.”

  “I’m absolutely not. I can’t eat any kind of fish.”

  Her father went into gales of laughter at her confession. Most Undersea Folk did. They thought her hideous affliction was hilarious. “Oh! Oh, in the king’s name! A child of mine, allergic!”

  “I’m thrilled you’re getting such a kick out of this.”

  “I do beg your pardon, Fredrika. But it is funny. I noticed you have your mother’s teeth; it’s actually quite a good thing you can’t eat fish. Frankly, you don’t have the dentition for it.”

  “Good point. So, you were in Tokyo . . .”

  “And eventually made enough money to buy a fishing boat. And due to my . . . ah . . . affinity with the sea—”

  “You always knew where to find the fish!”

  “Just so.”

  “How many boats,” she asked slyly, “do you have now?”

  “Twenty-two. And homes in Tokyo, Greenland, and Perth.”

  She laughed. “Perth, Australia? Get out of town!”

  “I assure you, I will, and quite soon. I also,” he went on with what she felt was justifiable pride, “supervise a staff of several hundred.”

  “So you did sort of get your own kingdom, after all.”

  “I had not thought of it that way. You are wise for one so young, Fredrika.”

  “I s’pose you’re going to tell me you’re eighty years old or whatever—Never mind, I don’t want to know. Tokyo, Greenland, and Perth, hmm? Lots of water in those areas.”

  “Not to mention saltwater pools on all my properties.”

  “That’s great, Farrem.” She meant it. She was proud of him, despite what he had done. At least he’d learned. He hadn’t let it get him down and, by God, he’d grown. Made something of himself. She’d known plenty of humans who couldn’t let go of the past. Who wallowed in the past.

  Shit, who hadn’t fucked up when they were younger?

  “I think you did really well in a pretty difficult situation. And I’m glad you found me. I admit, I’ve been curious about you.”

  “And I, once I saw your picture, about you. You are the only hybrid I have ever known. It never occurred to me that I might have left your lady mother in pup. I am embarrassed to say I never came back to check on her.”

  “Well, like you said. You couldn’t have known. Frankly, I’m amazed myself—two species usually can’t mate successfully. You don’t see any tiger/monkeys or seal/dolphins around.”

  “Ah . . . no. I sometimes wonder,” he mused, “if the fool things I did in my youth had a purpose. One beyond my selfish desires. Because they led to you. And look what you have done, for your mother’s people and for mine. You have changed . . . everything. Everything.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t me,” Fred said, startled and embarrassed. “The king’s the one who said his subjects could choose to show themselves or not. I’m just . . . trying to help with the transition.”

  “And I am certain you had nothing at all to do with that decision,” he said slyly, and she laughed.

  “You should hang around,” she said. “You’re good for my ego.”

  “That is part of why I wanted to speak with you. I dare not hang around. At least, not much longer. I will not jeopardize your standing among my people. We are an old race, and a stubborn one. And we blame the children for the deeds of their parents. Illogical, yes, but part of who we are. Surely you have already run into prejudice because I am your sire.”

  “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “You are kind. But if you are to rule, you must not have me forever reminding our people of the terrible danger I once placed us all in.”

  “Danger—for them?”

  “I was never meant to be king,” he said simply. “If I had succeeded in my foolishness, all of our people could have been in jeopardy. No, Mekkam’s line has been ruling us for a reason. I was too stupid in my youth to understand such things.”

  “Well. Uh.” Fred cleared her throat. “Why did you think you should take over?”

  “I once thought that just because your father, and grandfather, and great-grandfather had been king, that didn’t mean that you should be king. I thought it was more about ambition, and ability, than heredity.”

  “You must have been studying the Windsors,” Fred said dryly. “Because you’re sure not alone in that. But that’s neither here nor there—you don’t think so anymore?”

  He laughed. “I was defeated, was I not? That in itself proved me wrong. But what it took me thirty years to understand was that—and this is what you might call my ‘duh’ moment—Artur’s line rules because their formidable telepathy is hereditary. It is through that ability that he safeguards our people. I had no right to attempt to usurp him.
”

  “The way I heard the story is, you’re pretty formidable yourself. In the telepathy area, that is.”

  “That was both my gift and my curse, yes.”

  She understood: if not for his power, he never would have tried the coup; he never would have been banished.

  “That must be amazing. I can only hear the UF and fish and such when I’m in water, with my tail.”

  He frowned and cocked his head. “Beg your pardon?”

  “I can’t talk to Undersea Folk on land like purebreds can. I can’t hear fish on land, sense them—nothing like that.”

  “You—you’re mind blind when you have legs?” He was trying hard not to sound horrified, and failing.

  “Hey, it’s okay, Farrem. I’ve always felt

  (like a freak)

  different because I could hear fish. I didn’t even know about UF telepathy until I met Artur. So I never knew what I was missing. It doesn’t bother me.”

  He was—why was he looking at her so strangely?

  “Fredrika,” he said quietly, and knelt by the pool, and dipped his finger in the water, and drew some odd, complicated symbols on the dry cement, “can you tell me what this word is?”

  She stared at the squiggles and lines. “It’s a word? It looks like abstract art to me.”

  He sat back on his haunches, and why in the world did he look so sad?

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, nearly gasped. Suddenly it was hard to get a breath. “You look—what’s wrong with me?”

  “This is your name in our language,” he said quietly, gently. “You can only speak our language in your mind, in water.”

  “I can’t speak your language at all! When I talk to fish and—and Artur and Tennian and those guys, we’re speaking English.”

  “You are not. You are speaking the ancient language of all the seas, the tongue that was common long before a fish who wanted to be a man crawled out of the ocean and grew lungs. We—the Undersea Folk—we know it through ancestral memories. We are all born knowing it. When you communicate with us telepathically, you are speaking our ancient tongue. It cannot be taught; you must have the memories for it, the ancient memories. But your mother’s blood is strong in you, and—it’s not just your teeth, daughter.”

  “What—I—what?”

  “You can never read our legends. You can never communicate with us on land in our language. We can learn English . . . or French . . . or Italian. Those chatterings are ludicrously simple compared to the much older language of the sea. That is why we can speak with you on land. But you never can speak our tongue, hear those thoughts, read those stories, learn those legends. And you might pass on that—that surface-dweller trait—” My, how diplomatic he was! “You might pass that on to any children you give the prince.”

  Fred sat, frozen, and digested everything he had told her. “Why—why didn’t Tennian tell me? Why didn’t Artur?”

  “I suspect,” he said softly, “they could not bear to.”

  “Well.” She mulled the shock of the day over for a minute or two. “That explains why Artur acts so weird whenever I do an un-mermaid-like thing.”

  “With all respect to the prince, your—ah—genetic inability to understand our language presents a considerable handicap.” Farrem paused, then added, “He must love you a great deal to wish you for his queen.”

  “Yes,” she said sharply, “he managed to overcome his repugnance at the thought of my gross defect.” Which wasn’t far from the truth. Certainly when Artur had first realized her limits, he and Tennian had acted as if she’d been born blind or something. Sad, and sympathetic, and slightly weirded out. It had been—

  “Forgive me. I—I was thoughtless and—and cruel.”

  She waved a hand. “No, no. It’s just—the shock, is all. And the thing is, I think my, um, handicap or what-have-you bothers him more than he lets on.”

  “It matters not, if he loves you, and he must—a great deal! I truly meant no offense. I was surprised. I naturally assumed one of my blood—Oh, Fredrika,” he said sadly. “I am so very sorry.”

  “For God’s sake, what are we, at a wake? I told you, it’s fine.”

  But was it?

  She was amazed that Artur would chance her polluting the royal family with—to be brutally honest—surface-dweller retardation. What good was a future king who couldn’t speak or read the fucking language?

  Did Artur perhaps feel that, after pursuing her for two years, he could not back down? Could not take back his proposal when she told him she’d marry him?

  “It’s fine,” she repeated stubbornly.

  “Then you are truly of my blood, Fredrika, because we have both acquitted ourselves in difficult situations.”

  “If you say so. Listen, I get your remorse and everything, and I probably wouldn’t be the only one. Maybe if some of the, uh, old guard heard you talking like that, they might—”

  She quit when he laughed.

  “All right, maybe that’s naïve. But here’s something you might not know—people from my generation don’t blame me for what you did. They weren’t around for what you did. My friend Tennian doesn’t blame me, and her friend Wennd doesn’t, either—it’s a story to them and that’s all.”

  “Wennd?”

  “Oh, just the most beautiful woman in the world. Don’t get me started. Anyway, that’s the generation I’ll be ruling. Maybe I could un-banish you when I become queen.”

  He looked at her for a long time. Finally he said, “You are your mother’s daughter. Which is more than I deserve. I will not hold you to what you just said, and I will not repeat it, ever, because I would not jeopardize your throne for anything. But I will never forget it.”

  He leaned in. Touched her hair. Turned.

  Left.

  Thirty-four

  Jonas opened the door to the guest room and stepped inside. His ridiculously hot fiancée, Barb, was barefoot, in her linen capris and a navy blue bra. Her blond hair was out of its habitual ponytail and streaming past her shoulders. She was looking at herself critically in the mirror, her almond-shaped brown eyes narrowed in concentration.

  “What’s up, sexy?”

  “I’ve decided you’re marrying a crone.”

  He groaned and flopped, face-first, onto the bed. Then he rolled over so he could ogle her. “Not this again, Barb. I swear, you got progressively more neurotic about your age the moment we got engaged.”

  “A crone,” she repeated, examining her laugh lines.

  “Fifteen years, Barb. BFD.”

  “What?”

  “Big. Fucking. Deal.”

  “You kids and your slang,” she teased.

  He wasn’t about to be diverted. “So what if you’re older than me? You’re supposed to be older, remember? As in, I’m not attracted to women my own age? I’ve got the hot schoolteacher/older woman fetish? Any of this ringing a bell?”

  “Some of it,” she admitted and smiled at him.

  “I wanted you the second I saw you in that starchy lab coat, all strict and hot and hot.”

  “You said hot twice.”

  “Well. You’re twice as hot as anybody else.”

  She laughed at him. “You can say that with a straight face, surrounded by all these ridiculously beautiful mermaids?”

  “What can I say?” He sighed. “Love is blind.”

  “Mmmm.” She stripped off her pants and hung them neatly over the chair before the mirror. “Did you get a chance to talk to Dr. Bimm?”

  “Barb, since you’re marrying her best friend, and since she keeps trying to quit and thus doesn’t consider herself your employee anymore, I think you can start calling her Fred.”

  “She will not quit. I will never allow her to quit,” she said firmly. “Even before I knew of her—ah—her unique heritage, she was the finest employee I ever had. She is on a leave of absence. She has not quit.”

  Jonas wondered why he surrounded himself with the most stubborn women on the planet.

  O
h. Right. Because they were super damned sexy.

  “I love how you’re all formal and stuff.”

  “And I love how you’re not.” She smiled at him in the mirror. “But back to Dr. Bimm. Did you get a chance to talk with her?”

  “Yeah. She had a rough day. All kinds of shit going on. I think I cheered her up a little. Or at least made her feel better.”

  “Can I help?”

  “I don’t think so, hon. She and Thomas and Artur have some sort of plan to fix the problem of the year, and the three of them make a good team.”

  “So my late ex-husband will attest,” she said dryly. Then: “I worry about the stress she’s under.” She disappeared into the bathroom and Jonas heard running water. “Shhhzz gnnn mmm mmmms.”

  “Spit out the toothpaste and try again, hon.”

  Spitting. Rinsing. Then: “She’s got too many problems. It’s not fair that so much should be on her shoulders, and in such a short time.”

  “Haven’t you been paying attention, gorgeous? We don’t live in a fair world. Anybody who says different is selling something.”

  “You stole that,” Barb accused, “from The Princess Bride.”

  “Sure I did. But it doesn’t make it less true.”

  Barb came out of the bathroom naked. She sighed and said, “I wish Dr. Bimm was the type of person who would ask for help.”

  “What?”

  “I said, I wish—Jonas, I know that look.”

  He’d gotten off the bed and was battling with his belt. “What look?”

  “Your I-must-be-sexually-satisfied-right-now look. And I said, I wish Dr. Bimm was the type of—”

  “Please. Please stop talking about Fred. It’ll ruin everything. The only way it could be less sexy is if you starting talking about one of my aunts.” He managed to shove down his jeans and underwear, then nearly tripped as he tried to close in on Barb. “Fred’s fine. Hey, you don’t know where I can find a hot older woman to play stern schoolteacher, do you?”

  Barb had a hand over her mouth, trying in vain to stifle her giggles. “You’re going to fall and give yourself a concussion.”