Page 105 of Bewitched By the Sea Monster
I yawned—wide enough to make my jaw pop—and stretched my hands over my head as I sat up. Surprisingly, my back wasn’t sore. My hips didn’t creak. All the aches and pains I usually had first thing in the morning weren’t there.
Apparently, Alistair made for a comfy mattress.
My hair though…Yikes.
The dried salt had my curls sticking up in a porcupine style.
“Ugh.” I finger-combed the strands, wincing when they crunched. “Jeeze, I’m sorry, Alistair. I spent half the night crying, and then I passed out on you. I wasn’t very good company, huh?”
“You were lovely,” he said.
“H-h-how long was I o-o-o-out?” This yawn started as a quiver in my belly and it rolled upward, gathering momentum, until it wrenched my mouth open and escaped.
“A while. And I didn’t want to wake you. But it’s nearing orb…sun-sunrise.”
Wakefulness crashed over me like an icy wave. “Itis!? Oh no. I…Gosh, Alistair, I’m so sorry. I really didn’t mean to stay out this late! Ihaveto get back.”
“You’re nearly back, Pippi,” Alistair soothed. “But I can’t stay above the surface. And I didn’t want to go under while you slept…”
“Oh.” It took a few seconds before realization actually hit me. “Oh.Yeah. Well, thank you for the heads up.” I clambered to my feet, clutching onto his horn for support. “No one likes to wake up with a soggy bottom, eh?”
He purred an affirmative as his head sank beneath the surface.
I tried not to squeal when the frigid water slashed into my bare feet.
Tried.
“Sorry,” he murmured.
“No worries.” I shook my left foot, trying to get the blood flowing back to my toes. “I can’t believeI passed out like that.”
“You needed it. The sleep.”
“Yeah, I guess.” I chewed on my lip as Alistair passed the jagged cliffs bordering the inlet.
Those craggy rocks had been in my dream too, and they’d looked just as malicious beneath a sparkling blanket of moonlight as they did swaddled in curtains of fog. The dream man had been beautiful, though, with his skin glowing under the ethereal light. And he’d felt as solid, warm, and realas the rocks around us.
But he wasn’t.
“I am human.”
The man was a wish. My heart’s mournful, desperate desire for Alistair—this charming creature I’d grown so attached to—to be a human. Someone I could take with me,awayfrom this island. Someone I could share a life with.
In just a scant handful of days, I’d somehow forged a connection with Alistair that ran deeper than any other. But I couldn’t keep him.
We were two lonely souls that lifted each other up. We belonged together.
But wecouldn’tbe together.
So I dreamed of him as a human man. And grieved when that dream ended.
“We’re here. Pippi,” Alistair said.
I blinked. Realized I’d been blankly staring at my hand, where it was curled around his horn, and looked up.
My eyes immediately found the cliff path that would lead to my cottage. My tennis shoes were still scattered there, one teetering close to the edge while the other was thrown back against the rocks. Because I’d ripped them off with shaky hands and had been too blinded by tears to notice where I’d chucked them.
My mouth suddenly went dry. Painfully so. The sort of dry that hurt to swallow.
