In The Dark Of Dreams Part 16

"Oh, no," she murmured dangerously. "Why would I be scared?"

I'm sorry, he wanted to say. I'm sorry.

Instead, Perrin held out his hand and waited for her to take it. She hesitated too long, and he rasped, "I won't bite."

"It's not that," she said. "I know your hand."

"Yes," he replied. "Just like I know yours."

Your touch. Your touch, for sixteen years of my life. Holding me in my dreams, keeping me sane in the darkness.

It frightened him now. Frightened him that he felt so much.

Jenny winced, touching her head. "G.o.d," she said, then gasped, arching backward in the water with her mouth twisted open, contorted with pain. She grabbed at him as she began to sink below the waves, and he pulled Jenny into his arms, frightened for her. She trembled violently as they bobbed and tilted, and he kissed the top of her head and whispered her name, unsure if she heard him, but needing to say it. Needing to say the name he had never known, like a prayer.

"I'm better," Jenny whispered, but she sounded as though she was trying to convince herself. Nor did she pull away.

Gulls wheeled overhead, and he settled his mind behind their eyes, glimpsing a wide expanse of blue sea, a thick green canopy shrouded in that silver mist-and nothing else. Flashes so brief they were almost meaningless.

He let the waves carry them in, swimming easily, careful not to look at Jenny. She was so quiet against him, small and light, and warm. Her fingers were tight around his. Every now and then, a tremor shook her.

Close to sh.o.r.e, she disentangled herself. Her hands were the last to leave him, sliding from his, slow and careful. Perrin felt light, and disturbingly empty, when she stopped touching him.

Jenny tried to stand. Almost fell. Crouched, finally, with one hand buried in wet sand, buffeted forward by the waves that crashed against her. Perrin watched as she crawled out of the water and collapsed on the beach-first on her face, then rolling on her side to look at him as he beached himself near her feet. She was pale, shadows under eyes.

Exhausted, he thought. Of course, she would be.

Perrin lay still, letting her take him in, from his face down to the silver sheen of his tail. Even he wanted to look at himself. He needed the reminder that yes, this was real. He was real. After eight years of exile, he had entered the sea, and now lay on a beach with the girl who had haunted his dreams. A girl who had first met him just like this, on another beach, sixteen years ago.

He had been cleaning toilets on Friday. Sc.r.a.ping gum from gla.s.s cages. Living in a bathtub.

Now Perrin tasted salt in his mouth. His skin was wet and warm. Sand ground into his skin, against his scales, and the waves that crashed over his tail lifted him, pushed him, soothed and lulled him. Each sensation rich and heavy.

He felt Jenny's gaze, heaviest of all. Another kind of heat, a tingle of awareness that spread over him, through him, into his bones. He had felt it before, as a boy, with her. Before he even understood what it meant.

"We were both so young," he found himself saying.

Jenny looked away, her face crumpling with grief. It lasted only a moment. He would have missed it if he hadn't been watching her.

But the sight, the memory, hit him low in the gut and hard in the heart. He couldn't breathe. All he could do was watch as she pushed her fists into the sand, trying to stand. She managed to sway into an upright position, teetering there. Perrin suffered the insane desire to put her arms around his neck, just so he could hold her up.

Idiot, he told himself, forcing his focus to his lower body, which resisted his desire to transform. One taste of the sea, and his unconscious refused to leave.

But Perrin managed finally to tap that native, primal instinct, and s.h.i.+fted shape. Bones cracked, joints popping.

Jenny's gaze slid toward him as his tail receded, those silver scales rippling and dividing into pale human flesh. She watched every moment of his transformation, unblinking and intense, until he lay in front of her. Human. Naked.

She didn't stop staring.

Perrin rolled over and sat up. Too quickly. His head spun. He pressed his palm against his forehead, steadying himself.

Swim trunks flew into his lap. He glanced over his shoulder, and found Jenny struggling from her wetsuit. When she s.h.i.+mmied it down, her soaked shorts went with it. He glimpsed the edge of her hip, the smooth pale curve of her backside, and was. .h.i.t with another jolt. Hot, aching.

She hitched up her shorts. His gaze ticked upward, meeting hers. Her cheeks were red, but this time he didn't think it had to do with her fever.

Perrin cleared his throat and stood. Slipped on the swim trunks.

Behind him, Jenny said, "I dreamed."

He closed his eyes.

"From the first night I found that boy," she went on, softly. "Until eight years ago. And now . . . now it seems . . . you were really there, inside my head. It wasn't just . . ."

"No," he finished. "It was real."

She was silent too long. He opened his eyes and turned. Found her staring at him with a terrible vulnerability that the grim line of her mouth did nothing to hide.

"This is too much," she whispered.

Perrin could not move, except to look away, at the sea. "I didn't expect to find you here. Or to ever find you, at all."

"You remembered me."

He glanced back at her, sharply. "You changed my life. You were with me, always."

He might as well have hit her. The look she gave him was so stricken, so devastated, he wanted to drop down on his knees and crawl to her. The strength of his reaction frightened him. He had never felt this way. Even those dreams felt pale in comparison.

Perrin couldn't face it. Eight years, burying himself. Eight years, forcing himself to feel nothing.

Bleeding now, on the inside.

He turned and walked away.

Not far, before Jenny caught up with him. He heard her feet digging into the sand, and her soft labored breathing. Still weak from the fever.

Or from being tied up, kidnapped, terrified, nearly drowned. Stolen away into the sea by a virtual stranger who refused to return her to her people. Take your pick.

As if one of those things alone wasn't bad enough. He could have lost her.

Because of A'lesander, he thought, and something ugly unfolded inside his chest. He might still lose her. Chances were good he would, one way or another.

Perrin slowed his pace. She didn't match his stride but lingered behind. His skin p.r.i.c.kled, every nerve strung tight, knowing she was there, so close. He stopped, and turned. Jenny had already quit walking. Her cheeks were flushed, and there was a look in her eyes that he didn't like. She fumbled with the pack belted to her waist and dropped down on her knees in the sand. Hard, quick, exhausted.

Perrin crouched, and nudged her hands aside. He wasn't certain what she had inside the pack, but when he found the ibuprofen, she reached for the bottle.

"I'll do it," he said, flipping open the cap. "Two or three?"

"Two for now." Jenny swallowed the pills dry with a grimace and gagging cough.

Perrin rubbed his thigh, uneasy. "You need a doctor."

"I need an ER," she muttered, which frightened him. "Before all h.e.l.l broke loose on the boat, something happened in the water. I didn't know it at the time. Not until later. It's making me sick."

Dread touched him. "There are many poisons in the sea."

"This isn't poison. Not like that." Jenny swallowed hard, her gaze pained, frightened. "I don't even know what to call it."

Her hand twitched, and moved haltingly to her neck. Perrin suffered the urge to mirror her movements. A jolt hit him, followed by an even deeper unease. It was the placement of her hand. Just coincidence. It had to be coincidence. And yet, he wanted to touch the hole just above his neck, in the base of his skull. To see if he felt the impossible presence of something that had been ripped away from him, eight years ago.

His head throbbed. He imagined a voice whisper through him, incomprehensible but familiar.

Jenny stilled, closing her eyes. "I'm losing my mind."

Her voice was tight, restrained. Everything about her, tense. Perrin stopped rubbing his thigh and dug in his fingers instead, hard enough to feel pain. "No. You're not."

"I'm hearing things," she said, then shook her head, small jerky movements, her right hand gingerly touching the back of her head. "A woman singing."

Perrin stilled, and glanced around them. The mist had faded, but it always did upon reaching sh.o.r.e. The island was just an island-beautiful, but very much of the world. The old crone had never cared for illusions, except the ones that left her safely anonymous.

But he did not hear her song. Not here, on land.

"Jenny," he said, but she shook her head.

"I heard her before in the water, just like you did. If this is just my imagination . . ." Jenny looked away. "Help me stand."

Perrin drew her up, and she looked down the beach. Her hair was coming loose from her braids, tangled around her clear green eyes; and there was a wildness in her face that wasn't fear but something darker-and vulnerable. "I hear her, that way."

"I believe you," he said, and watched her shoulders relax.

They walked. Slow, careful. Neither of them wore shoes, but the sand was soft. Perrin studied the shadows of the forest, listening to birds caw and trill. He saw no other animals but sensed eyes watching him. Animals, or something else. He made Jenny walk ocean side, just in case, and picked up a long piece of driftwood to hold in his hand.

Jenny glanced at it. "Not dangerous, you said?"

Perrin grunted. "Maybe I shouldn't have brought you here."

"Was there ever a choice?"

"There's always a choice," he muttered. "But the other options were worse. No other boats nearby, no settlements."

Jenny looked down at her feet, stumbling a little. "I don't understand any of this, and I've seen some . . . strange things. I was just never one of those strange things."

"It won't get easier," he said. "Dealing with the strange and unfamiliar. Even when you think it has, that you've finally acclimated, something will happen, and you'll realize that all you were was numb."

"That's depressing."

Perrin had never thought of it as depressing. "It's survival. You shut down your fear to focus only on what is necessary, until you see nothing else. Until nothing else can affect you."

"The strange can be beautiful," she said quietly. "Even if it frightens you. Even if it confuses."

"And when it's too much?" Perrin gave her a sharp look. "If you're alone, and it's too much?"

Jenny stared at him. He looked away, ashamed and irritated.

"You were on land," she said. "You spent a lot of time there."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"You've already said plenty."

Perrin rubbed the back of his neck. "Fine. I lived on land for eight years. I had no choice in the matter. It was difficult."

"No choice?" He could hear in her voice, But you told me there's always a choice, and he thought, It's easier to lie to myself than to you.

"I was exiled," he told her. "On pain of death."

Jenny stopped walking. "But you came back."

"I told you. It was important."

Her gaze was so full. "Why were you exiled?"

"I won't discuss that."

Jenny wanted to argue with him. He knew it, felt it, braced himself-wondering how long it would be before he broke, and told her the truth, and saw real fear in her eyes.

But she surprised him. In a quiet voice she said, "Was it always horrible, living like a human?"

Perrin marveled that one simple question could reach into his heart and make it stop beating. Or maybe that was her voice, the thoughtfulness of it, and the compa.s.sion he heard in each word.

It had been a long time since anyone had even pretended to care.

"No," he told her. "It wasn't always bad."

"And you would have lived your whole life as human?"

"For as long as I could. Which might not have been long. My health was worsening. Household chemicals, smog, the common flu . . ." Perrin hesitated, glancing down at his arm, with its fading rash. "I planned to return to the sea if it became too bad. I didn't want to die on land, even if it meant my own kind would execute me on sight." He forced himself to look at her. "My soul belongs to the sea."

And to her, whispered a dry, familiar voice inside his mind. You belong to each other first.

Perrin stopped walking. Jenny said, "What?"

What, he thought. What was that?

Something impossible. A voice he should never have heard again.

The whisper of his kra'a.

"Maybe I'm losing my mind," he murmured, and Jenny grabbed his hand.