Page 39 of Bewitched By the Sea Monster
He whuffled and gingerly lowered his head until the tip of his nose brushed my hip. “Climb,” he said.
But I didn’t. Not immediately. Because when I reached out, touching my fingers to the tip of his nose, something curdled my insides.
Sadness.The kind that destroyed—swept over you like a black plague—ravaging your body and leeching the life from your bones.
I ripped my hand back. The sorrow faded.
“What’s w-wrong?” His nostrils fanned.
You’re in pain, aren’t you? I’m so sorry. Who do you grieve for? Is there anything I can do to help?If he’d been human, I might’ve asked those questions. But they seemed far too intimate to hurl at a sea beast. So I swallowed them down and said, “Nothing. It’s just...D-do you have a name?” A slightly lessprodding question to start with. “If you’re gonna be wearing meon your head like a naked human hat…I mean, in my book, that’s pretty personal, no? I like to know what to call people—or, well, you’re notpeople,but you get the idea—when things get personal. And I’ve just been calling you ‘monster’ in my head. But it doesn’t seem right to keep calling you that. So I figured I’d ask…Do you have a name?”
The monster made a low rattle, a noise that visibly traveled along the length of his throat, making his scales vibrate.
“Or, if that’s toopersonal, I?—”
“Alistair,” he said.
“Alistair.” Golly, no wonder he had such a posh-sounding accent. The voice had to live up to the posh-er name. “It’s beautiful.”
“And you”—Alistair nudged his nose against my hip—“have a name?”
“Pippi.”
“Pippiiii,” he dragged my name out. “Pippi.” A laugh burbled in his throat. “Yours is b-b-beautiful too.”
“Pippi.”My name rumbled through Alistair as he cut through the angering sea, holding his head just high enough to keep me out of the water’s reach.
“Pippiiii.” He kept chewing on it, trying to get a feel for all its textures and tastes, maybe hoping the repetition would make it stick better to his brain.
“Pip-ee.” Okay. This was actually adorable. It shouldn’t have been, but delight warmed my insides all the same.
Which, I mean, at least I was warmsomewhere. Because a chilling current now snaked through the air, and icy water still clung to my body, leeching the feeling out of my extremities.
And the thought of having to slide off Alistair’s head and get back into those frigid, rabid waves…
“Pippi,” Alistair said, “you’re…s-shivering?”
And that catch aroundshivering, the uncertainty when he finally got it out, as though he wasn’t sure it was the right word…Stars. Why,whydid I find him so endearing?
“Can you feel that?” I muttered.
Iwasshivering. Big body-quaking shivers—a fruitless attempt to thaw my frozen limbs.
“Yes,” Alistair said. “Are you c-cold?”
“Freezing.”
“Free-zing.” He gnawed on the word, and then gruffed a sincere, “I’m sorry.”
“There’s no need for you to be sorry,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault I went for a swim in my birthday suit. Although”—I tightened my arm around his horn for balance when he bobbed up and down with a choppy set of waves—“I didn’t think it’d bethiscold.”
“The warmer months haven’t arrived,” Alistair said. “They haven’t…released the cold from the waters.”
“I know. I was freezing the whole ship ride tothe island. But the island itself is so warm you kinda forget it’s still only May.”
“May…”
“Yeah. The month. Or…You probably don’t know the months, do you?”
