Chapter 3
Cold water covered Ben’s face before he could yell. After that he was fighting to breathe, blowing and gasping for air whenever his face broke the surface.
You are going to die, his mind screamed for the second time that morning.
The mermaid held him tightly on her chest as she swam. He could feel her powerful tail lashing beneath his legs, propelling them across the ocean at alarming speed. It felt like he had been tied to a torpedo and fired toward an unseen target.
Then she stopped swimming, holding them both upright with slow movements. Ben shook water out of his face, sputtering. Now her face was inches from his, eyes huge and dark and interested.
“Do you still want to drown?”
It wasn’t a threat or a joke. Just a blunt, sincere question. Looking past her shoulder, Ben could see the distant brown line of beach, broken by small white blurs of buildings.
“What? No!”
She frowned again, puzzling. Ben gulped air as his mind raced. What should he say to her? What words would get her to take him back to shore? There was no way he could swim back from here…
Then she grabbed the back of his head, covered his mouth with hers, and dove.
—
Suddenly submerged, Ben gasped, and found air. She was breathing for him? He felt her tongue in his mouth, clumsily probing. Was she…kissing him?
Ben’s ears popped and light faded as they went deeper. He closed his eyes and clung to the only source of air he had. A mad thought flashed in his mind: This is how all those sailors died, in the old stories…
Her mouth was the only warm place in the ocean.
He felt her change direction, and then a sudden surfacing into unexpected air. The mermaid pushed herself away, leaving Ben to thrash himself to a nearby edge and out of the water. He fell on his back, gulping at the thick, stagnant air. Distant green sunlight filtered down through curved windows. His ears hurt.
A metallic grinding brought his attention around. The mermaid had climbed out of the water and had her hands on a control box mounted on the wall. With a scrape of neglected mechanisms, metal panels spiraled together to cover the open pool they had just exited. The whole structure shuddered, and Ben looked up to see huge bubbles surging toward the surface. His ears popped immediately, releasing the painful pressure, and he could breathe more easily. A whir of hidden machinery began to freshen and warm the air.
By the time she turned back to him, Ben had recovered enough to ask. “OK, what…this is…what the Hell is going on?”
“What?”
“You kidnapped me!”
Her face scrunched. “But I saved your life.”
“Yeah, well…you did, thanks. But why’d you drag me back out here, down to this…” Ben gestured uncertainly at the room. “…whatever this is?”
The question seemed to confuse her. Finally, her shoulders twisted in a shrug. “I wanted to. You’re interesting. Kinda’ neat-looking. For a human.”
Ben blinked. He licked his lips and tasted salt.
“You grabbed me because you thought I was cute.”
“Sure.”
What the actual fuck, he thought.
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