Anne Brown - Promise Bound

I abandoned the car and sprinted for the lake, just beyond the tree line. I couldn’t wait any longer for this road to carry me home.

LILY

Waking was like coming out of the grave. My room was dark, the curtains drawn, alarm clock unplugged. There were no sounds in the house to confess the time. No coffee gurgling, no Queen on the stereo, no smell of onions frying in a pan.

My Nadia dreams still lingered on the fringes of my mind, but, slowly, I shed the cloak of death and found my way back to reality. My head pounded and my shaking fingers found the very real goose egg on my forehead. It throbbed, and I remembered the sickeningly dull thud of my head hitting the boat cleat.

“How are you feeling?” asked a low voice.

It startled me and, not yet certain of my surroundings, I nearly rolled out of bed. “Who? Dad?”

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yes,” I lied, not wanting to confess what I had known for quite some time. Ever since Calder had left, the mermaid’s black cloud of despair had been slowly descending until I was deep within the well. Too deep. And I didn’t see any way of climbing out of this hole I’d dug for myself.

Even Dad’s voice tunneled away from me, getting smaller and smaller like the circle of light at the top of the well. I could barely see him sitting there in a wooden chair in the corner of my room. I was conscious of only one sense. It was as if the world I’d known had been sucked into a black hole, and all that was left was a high-pitched keening in my brain. Mom was dead.

“Mom?” I asked, my voice trembling, my heart a heavy anchor in my chest.

“She’s fine,” he said. “Well, not fine. But alive.”

I didn’t believe him. I’d seen it all firsthand. He was lying to pacify me. But I wasn’t a child. He couldn’t treat me like a child. “Maris killed her,” I said.

“Almost.”

Yes, he was a very good liar. “I failed!”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Dad said.

I shook my head, trying to clear the wailing in my brain. It drowned out the sound of my own voice. “It is. It is. Mom’s gone, and now you’re bound to your promise. You’ll have to leave and join up with Maris.”

“I told you. She’s alive. But you are right about that last part. We only asked Maris to try, and there were no loopholes when it came to me.”

“I’ll kill her!” I screamed, tearing at my blankets. I didn’t care if Maris thought she had been freeing Dad from the so-called problem. I would be her problem from now on.

Dad looked at me with a puzzled expression, which only made me angrier.

“Maris,” I explained, as if my threat required further explanation. “I’ll kill her.”

“Lie down, Lily,” Dad said. “You hit your head pretty hard. You’ve been sleeping for two days. You must be starving. I’ll go make you some tea and toast, then I’ll explain everything.”

As soon as he was gone, I whipped back the covers and went to the window. My feet were unsteady from lack of use. Staggering across the floor on pins and needles, I bumped my hip against the dresser. The screen on my cell phone lit up. It was ten a.m. and there was a text from Calder:

Lily? You still there?

Unfortunately, his message did nothing to pull me out of the hole. It was too little, too late. I scrolled back and found my original message to him:

Does Mick Elroy mean anything to you? I think it’s important.

I couldn’t remember what my message meant, or why I’d wanted to send it. I dropped my phone on the floor with a clatter and pulled back the thick curtains that covered my window. The bright sunlight was an assault on my eyes and a personal insult. Stupid sun. Stupid ball of gas making me go blind .

I slung both legs over the windowsill and slunk across the porch roof. Dropping to the ground, I crouched beneath the downstairs windows and looked toward the lake, which lapped at the shore like a thirsty dog, all tongue and slobber.

The very smell of it—an icy coldness, if cold has a smell—attached itself to the center of my brain like a lead sinker that, when released, plummeted down my central cortex, through my nasal passages and my throat, burning past my heart, to the cold empty pit of my stomach.

I was gone before Dad came back with the toast.

A black web of misery spun out from the center of my body. When it felt like the last bit of life had been pulled through my final fiber, I found myself standing in the lake with no memory of having crossed the yard.

A face appeared no less than twenty feet in front of me. A rippling circle broke around her square shoulders. Would Maris really make it this easy for me to kill her?

“Lily,” she said, without any hint of apology for what she had done. Her voice threw gasoline on the fire raging inside me. I charged into the water, my hands drawn like claws.

She didn’t retreat. Her tone was soft. Soothing even, like balm to my splintered mind. It was a well-practiced sound, as if she had been confronted by someone like me a million times before. There was no concern on her face at all, which only made me angrier.

I snarled, swiping at her cheek. She dodged the blow, saying, “I see how low you’ve fallen.”

“That’s ironic!” I screamed, aiming for her eyes, my fingers like talons. Within seconds, Maris was directly behind me, one arm wrapped around my waist, the other around my throat. The image was that of an orderly subduing a mental patient with a straitjacket. I was still in human form, but she was not. The disparity of our physical states made her infinitely stronger. I couldn’t break away.

“I can help you,” she said, her voice like butter.

“I’ll take a pass on any help you’re offering,” I said, straining against her arms.

“You’re not feeling well,” Maris said.

“You think?”

Maris’s coal-black tail undulated beneath us, slowly pulling me out deeper. “I know how to help with that,” she said. “Do you think you’re the first of our family to fall so low? I know you’re angry. Maybe rightfully so. But there’s no need to suffer. Let me do at least one good thing here. One good thing for you.”

“I’ll feel better once Calder gets back,” I growled, remembering his text. I knew it was a stretch.

Maris clicked her tongue behind my ear. “You can’t be serious. He turned his back on his human family. Then he turned his back on us. You’re just the next in a long line of abandoned people in Calder’s wake. We’re creatures of habit, and leaving … that is his.”

By this time I’d been in the lake for more than a minute. The change was rippling through my body in uncontrollable waves of energy. Maris released me and backed away as my body exploded and my clothes tore away, floating to the surface.

I wheeled around. We were now evenly matched. Or so I thought.

“Calder hasn’t turned his back on his family. He’s looking for them,” I countered.

“You’re sure?” she asked, still annoyingly calm.

Of course I wasn’t sure. Not at all. He could be anywhere, doing anything. This was all my fault. Just like always—I wanted to make things better, but I made them worse.

I lunged at Maris, but she flipped under my arms and came up behind me.

“Lily, I know what you need. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

I shivered in response. I never felt cold when Calder was here.

“Seriously,” Maris scoffed, breaking her calm exterior for the first time. “I will never understand anyone’s aversion to survival. There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging your nature.”

Once more Maris’s eyes dropped to my neck. Although we weren’t submerged, I could tell what she was thinking—that I wasn’t worthy to wear her mother’s pendant.