The Island Curse

Forgiveness

"Mama?" Tara hissed, looking at me with shocked eyes.

"No," I said, shaking my head. I could see the difference now. As similar as her eyes were to my mother's, the differences were important. Dead. Cold. Empty. 

But for that, they could be twins.

The creature turned her head to the side and studied me for several moments before swimming closer. Her sinuous movements drew my eyes to her lower half, pulling another gasp from my throat. Where Ewan's started at his navel and were limited to his tail, her iridescent scales wound up from her hips and over her breasts. A few speckled her neck and forehead- all shimmering like sea glass in the moonlight.

"Kieran," I whispered, pressing my shivering body against his back, "those scales. They look just like the one in class."

Kieran's head drooped, and the woman laughed. She slid her finger along his jawline, moving up to where his dimple would be when he smiled. Her finger tapped against the spot, and he recoiled. I could feel his muscles bunch beneath my fingers.

"Why do you look so guilty?" she crooned and then pushed him aside. He didn't resist, and now, nothing separated me from her. "Oh, I've waited many years for this. Centuries."

"What are you?" I demanded with a raised chin. It was so cold. The water was like ice against my fevered flesh, but I focused all my efforts on not shivering. 

I would not tremble before this beast.

"Did your father not tell you of your family history?" Every syllable was musical, sliding into my ears like silk and making me sigh.

"What does that have to do with you?"

"Oh dear child. Everything."

"Lorelei, stop this. You promised." Kieran's plea was desperate. 

"I'm not the only one breaking promises," the woman argued in return, her wide, filigreed tail fin rising up out of the blue and slapping down hard.

"Lorelei?" I drew a hand over my mouth. "Jamie's Lorelei?"

Something came alive in her eyes. A flare burned where before chill had reigned. "Do not speak that bastard's name again. Is that understood?"

"You should be dead."

She came closer, the wind howling between the thin tunnel between our bodies. "Many things should've been that aren't. I shouldn't be a cursed sea creature, and yet I am. But you're going to change it all."

"What?"

Lorelei waved away my question. "That's not for tonight. I'm here for Alban."

Tara lunged for her brother, but Ewan grabbed her by the arms and dragged her back. Kieran reached for him but another creature, this one with a tail of blue and gold, restrained him. Al and I remained alone in the middle of a loose circle. Most of Lorelei's sycophants swam just below the white capped waves, their various scale colors glinting in the places where the water was calm.

"Do you accept the terms of my agreement?" Lorelei asked, her attention focused on Al.

"Y-yes," he responded, holding out his right arm, his palm facing the sky.

Lorelei rose up higher in the water, revealing about three quarters of her tail. Her dorsal fin started mid-back and ran down the back of her tail. It was sheer, shimmering faintly pink like her tail, but as she began to chant, her fin and scales began to glow.

"Alban Shannon, from this day forward, your soul is tied to mine," she shouted, slashing a nail across his palm. Blood welled up from the cut, spilling out over his hand and dripping into the ocean with a poisonous hiss.

"No," Tara sobbed. Her body went limp, bending in the middle so that her hair skimmed the top of the ocean.

An unearthly roar bellowed behind me, and I was jerked back. I didn't fight it. I knew who had me. Kieran's unconscious captor was rolling in the surf, cluing me in, but it was the scent that gave him away.

Even when we reached the shore, I didn't take my eyes away from the spot where Al stood, a searing light, as golden as the sun, enfolded his form, and when it faded, I cried. His legs were gone, replaced by a powerful tail, the saffron color a stark contrast next to his coal colored skin.

"Shhh," Kieran said, rocking me on the sand. "It's okay Isla. It's going to be okay."

His hand stroked my hair. One arm tightened around my middle. I knew I should pull away and demand answers. But for now, I needed him. Needed the comfort of his familiar warmth while my mind fissured beneath the weight of all that happened tonight.

Long after Lorelei called her followers to the ocean depths, long after Tara collapsed beside us, long after dawn broke over the horizon, we remained. 

I forced frigid fingers to straighten and reach for the girl at my side. Her face was pressed into her arms, but I could reach her hand. She didn't move at the first hint of touch, but when I didn't pull away, she linked her fingers through mine. 

                                               ************************************************

We were forced to walk home. The jeep's bent carcass taunted us from the roadside, and I could see the trail we'd forged in the night, the long stemmed grass bent and broken. 

Everything was broken this morning. My mind. Our bodies. Our hearts.

I had no clue how to put any of it back together, and terror filled me at the thought of what else I would learn. Knowledge I was certain would gather the fractured pieces I'd protected and pulverize them to ash.

"Tara are you okay?" Kieran asked, his words so soft they were almost carried off by the morning's gentle breeze. When the girl didn't answer, he stopped and pulled her into a hug. "He's still Al."

I wanted to argue with his conviction. The last I'd seen of the boy was nothing like the playful person I'd met...a week ago. Yesterday had marked a week since I started school on the Island. I thought my mom's decision to leave us had turned my life upside down, but one week on this Island and life didn't even make sense anymore.

"You and I both know that's a lie. He belongs to her now."

"Not for long."

Tara shoved him away, black eyes snapping as they landed on me. "Really? You think yer still going through with it now? I saw you kiss her back there. We've all seen how you look at her."

Kieran tugged on his tousled curls and groaned. He kept his back to me. "There has to be a way. Another way."

I sat on the road and waited for them to stop talking as if I wasn't present. Yesterday, I would've thrown a fit for answers. Today, I was too tired.

"It's been nearly three hundred years, Kieran. If there was another way, we would've found it by now, and I know that it was Al's choice to make. I won't fight you on it, but the others will. They're going to demand the bargain be kept."

"I can't," he pleaded. He walked to my side and dropped to his knees. "Isla, I need yer forgiveness."

Sighing, I cupped his face. "I can't forgive you."

His tan skin paled, and he covered my hand with his. Tara crossed her arms over her chest and kicked a stone across the asphalt. It landed in the brush with a startling crunch, making us all jump. I took my hand away and stood up.

"Isla, please."

"I can't forgive you because I don't know what you've done."