Anne Brown - Lies Beneath

Maris ripped through the water, Tallulah a silver streak behind her.

My mind tried to calculate the distance and their rate of speed, but there was something about having Hancock so close, and on the water, that pulled at my heart, too.

I shook my head to clear the ingrained urge for justice. I had greater desires. I had to stop my sisters.

Adrenaline pushed me faster than normal. But Maris was fast, too. And then there was something else. A new smell on the water. Lily in a second kayak. My heart leapt as Lily’s face flashed in my thoughts.

“No!” screamed Tallulah. She twitched her tail and changed course.

“Why?” I called out to her. “Tallulah, leave Lily alone.”

Hancock reached Sophie within seconds—just fifty yards from shore. He pulled her into his boat and tied the kayak to the defective motor. Maris was closing in, but I beat her to Hancock. I put one hand on the back of his boat and shoved it with more strength than I expected. The unexpected momentum threw Hancock and Sophie onto the floor of the boat.

A few seconds later their boat scraped across the sand as it hit the shore. Maris’s curses and Pavati’s fury muffled the sound.

Tallulah was quiet. I panicked when I realized I couldn’t sense where she was.

I was forced to surface, not even caring who was watching. I didn’t need to look to know that Hancock was still near. The sun hadn’t set, and if he wanted to know about the monster in the lake, he was getting a better show than we could have ever rehearsed.

Lily was twenty yards to my south. She’d stopped paddling when she realized her dad and sister were safe. Now she looked disoriented, like she was finding herself somewhere she’d never planned to be. She turned her head, searching for someone or something. I might have felt better if she didn’t know what she was looking for. I imagined her searching for ripples, backs arching, and tails splashing against the water.

“You told her!” Tallulah was screaming at me. “She knows. I can tell.”

“Leave her alone, Tallulah. She’s mine.”

“We’ve lost the element of surprise, Calder. You’ve ruined everything. And now you, you …” —her voice broke on a sob— “ love her. How could you do this to me? ”

“You? What do you have to do with this? Back off, Lu. Now!”

“No. I can’t let you.”

We collided just ten feet from Lily’s kayak. The force of the impact sent us both sailing out of the water, entwined like a wild vine, before crashing back down. The water churned and the kayak rocked violently. My arm wrapped around Tallulah’s neck, and I dragged her down to the bottom. My hand covered her mouth, and she sank her teeth into my fingers. I didn’t stand a chance once Maris got there. Even Pavati would be impossible to fight off.

I dragged Tallulah across the rocks on the lake bottom, scraping her soft belly until there was blood in the water. She bit down hard on my arm. I put my tail against her back and heaved. The force did two things: it sent her deeper into the lake, and it propelled me closer to Lily.

When I surfaced, Lily screamed and scooped ineffectively at the water with her hands. I deserved her terror. I could only imagine what she expected me to do.

“Lily, it’s me.”

She still batted at the water.

“You’re fine. Your family’s fine. I’m not going to hurt you.” I pushed her kayak into the weeds until the bow dug into the sand and my tail scraped along the rocks. “Please get inside, Lily. They won’t touch you. Not tonight.”

“Or Dad?” she panted. Her face was as pale as the moon.

“Or your dad. I won’t let them.”

“What about you?” she asked.

I looked nervously out on the now-stilled water. “Lily. If you don’t see me first thing in the morning, you need to get your family out of here.”

As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t stay out on the lake all night. I would have to go back to Basswood and face my sisters. It was almost an exercise in redundancy. I’d played the whole confrontation out in my head several times before I ever reached the island. It wasn’t like I didn’t know what they were going to say. There’d be no reasoning with them. I’d barely been able to reason it out for myself. I would be lucky to get through it without being maimed. Tallulah presented the only wild card in any of this.

Under any other circumstances, I could count on her defending me. But I didn’t understand her reaction to Lily. Sure, we never intended to make our true selves known to her, but for all Tallulah knew, the mission was all but accomplished. Why she’d pulled away from the pursuit of Jason Hancock and gone after Lily … I just didn’t understand. Was it possible she was no longer interested in revenge? If that was the case, she would defend my decision.

I came at the island from a different angle. I could see their campfire burning, and someone was throwing stones out into the lake. My survival depended on a showing of contrition. A straight-on approach wouldn’t signal an apology. I reached the island’s northern point and followed the shoreline south, stopping one hundred feet north of where they sat. I stood up with my arms stretched out to them, palms up. I didn’t say anything, but waited for them to notice me.

Tallulah turned first, and I could see she’d been crying. She nudged Maris. Maris and Pavati turned and looked at me. No one said anything. I couldn’t tell if they were still deliberating or if they’d already reached a verdict.

Maris put her arm around Tallulah, and Tallulah laid her head on Maris’s shoulder. They all turned back to the fire. There was no expression to read on their faces. The silence was worse than I’d anticipated.

I swam closer, my arms still laid out across the surface of the water. Maris hissed at me, spitting vitriol. I stopped.

“Maris,” I said. “Let me explain.”

“You’ve done enough tonight. We have nothing more to say to you.”

I stuttered, realizing what she meant. “Y-you’re shunning me? That’s what it’s come to? You won’t even hear me out?”

“I can’t imagine what you could possibly have to say, Calder. You have no idea how disappointed I am, how disappointed we all are. It’s one thing to leave us for so long each year, to be so direct in telling us how little you care for us. It’s quite another to betray us, to betray our mother. Do you think I enjoy being such a harpy? Do you think I come by this naturally? My only hope is that the end of Hancock will be my salvation from this hell. But you have chosen him over me. And you have chosen his daughter over your own sister.”

I was about to ask what she meant when Tallulah looked up at me with wide, watery eyes, heartbreak etched across her face. I knew the look. A twisted horror snaked through me. Tallulah’s aversion to Lily, her sudden and unprovoked attack …

“You’re my sister,” I said, still disbelieving. “It’s vile!”

Pavati smirked and stoked the fire, shooting a sideways glance at Tallulah.

Another sob caught in Tallulah’s throat, and Maris was on her feet. The closer she came to the water, the quicker I backed up. She stopped just as the edge of the water crossed her toes. “Stay out of our way, Calder.” She bared her teeth and snarled. “Don’t think I won’t kill you if it comes to that.”

I dove backward, arching my back, disappearing into the dark water.

An hour later I was still swimming. If I’d paid attention to the rocks, the sand, the sunken timbers, I would have known I was five miles north of Cornucopia. I could navigate this lake without ever looking for above-water landmarks. But the truth was, I didn’t care where I was.