Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 43197 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 216(@200wpm)___ 173(@250wpm)___ 144(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43197 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 216(@200wpm)___ 173(@250wpm)___ 144(@300wpm)
I heard a husky voice whispering, “Take a breath, Kailar. It’ll be fine. I’ve used my magic to help you in this form. Just breathe it in. I promise you all will be well.”
I didn’t believe the hallucination, no matter how good-looking he was, and I didn’t follow his instructions, but I just couldn’t hold my breath any longer. I lost the battle and instinctively gasped, opening my mouth and sucking in the water. I could feel it filling my nostrils and my lungs. Death by drowning…not what I expected. Yet my brain must still have been hallucinating and telling itself stories, because the ocean water felt like a bright, shining liquid sliding throughout my body, cool and refreshing and even nourishing, like it was doing my body good. A huge smile spread across the boy’s face, and he nodded at me happily.
Not only was I not drowning, but the tentacles imprisoning me started loosening their hold one by one until I was finally free. I reached for the boy’s hand and was able to hold it for a second. We twined our fingers together and a feeling of rightness came over me. I knew this boy. I wasn’t sure how or why, but I knew him like a part of my own soul. I felt like a wanderer who had finally come back home, like Odysseus when he finally spotted the shores of Ithaca.
My lips curved into a smile at the crazy thought. I had read The Odyssey in high school, but I never thought it had made such an impression on me. This handsome creature in front of me was someone I knew very well though—someone dear to me, whom I’d been desperate to see for so long. I almost had it figured out—who he was to me. It was just right there, dangling above us in the cold waters, just out of reach, when suddenly, without any warning, disaster struck again.
The gorgeous boy was suddenly ripped away from me. Through the murky water, I could see him twisting and turning to fight the ugly, green tentacles—monstrously huge, thick ones like the ones that had held me in their grip—they were trying to wrap around him like they had me. I screamed my fury. My savior, the boy with the beautiful, emerald eyes and hair, was being torn away from me. He reached for me, but there was nothing I could do. Even as I held out my hands to him, he was gone. The last image I had of him was a long fish tail of many colors, like aquamarine and sapphire and verdigris, swirling and thrashing behind him in the sea as he fought against his capture. The tail that had been attached to his body at the waist—as crazy as that sounded, it was true.
I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I had just encountered a merman, half fish, half human.
I relaxed my body—maybe I even passed out for a moment from the shock—and I slowly drifted upward toward the ocean’s surface. I remember being surprised when my head broke through the waves, and I saw the little boat bobbing nearby, everyone on board looking frantic and excited as they shouted and pointed at me. They waved their arms desperately for me to swim toward them and I kicked toward the boat. The sea was suddenly as calm as it had been just a short time ago, before the entire nightmare had begun. But now I felt an unreasoning fear. Instead of feeling welcomed by the sea, I was now suddenly appalled by it—all the joy I had felt earlier dragged down to the depths, drowned and gone. With every stroke I was terrified I would feel those tentacles wrapping around my legs again, or hands pulling me back down.
When they finally pulled me back on board the boat, I lay exhausted on the deck, gasping for the air that now felt too rich and foreign in my lungs. I realized the boy in the water must have been some kind of dream—some last, desperate delusion from a dying brain. But that thing—that giant octopus looking thing—had been all too real.
I made myself a promise that day. I’d had a lucky escape, but I would never, ever go near the ocean again.
Chapter Two
Kailar
6 months later in Knoxville, Tennessee
After listening to woman I called the Dragon Lady explain how she’d worked incredibly hard and finally found a possible job for me, I couldn’t do anything more than just stare at her pinched lips which were painted heavily with bright orange lipstick. She had long since left her youth behind her, but that wasn’t what made her so unattractive. No, that was her personality—or the lack thereof.
She was a mean-spirited woman, who probably hadn’t felt any real joy in years, unless she was kicking puppies or pulling the wings off butterflies. She had tiny, ugly-shaped lips, so I guessed she thought that drawing on bigger ones with bright, atrocious orange lipstick improved her appearance. She was mistaken…just like she was about this latest job being a perfect fit for me. Every day for three weeks, I’d met with Dragon Lady at the State Unemployment office to discuss possible job leads for me. Every day for three weeks, she’d made it clear she didn’t believe I was employable.