Page 67 of Bewitched By the Sea Monster
Now, food is given to me at the start of the daylight hours and the end. I am given creatures of the water, the food this body needs. But it’s not the food I want.
Nothinghere is what I want.
I want my legs, the sun, the food…everything.
But instead, I swim. Forcefully twisting my body through the waters until I hurt. I hope the hurt will hide the want, but it doesn’t.
The other creatures flee, frightened by my strange movements.
I want to call to them.I won’t hurt you.I’m sorry.
“What are you sorry for?”
Pippi’s voice.
I miss her.
Ishouldn’t.She belongs to a land far from here, a place where she hasfriendsandworkandwineriesanda house—all the things she speaks of to me. Things that sound…
Lovely.
Like her, the way she looks in her red shirt, with her red hair.Lovely.
Those lovely things are hurting me now.
I still, allowing the waters to strike and pull at my body as I look to the surface, wanting to be there. To feel land beneath my feet, the sun on my skin. To open my mouth andspeak. To find words easily. To walk with Pippi across the land, where she isunafraid, and see the lovely things she speaks of. To find my own lovely things: friends and homes and love.
I want tolive.Instead of exist.
A shadow covers the surface, turning the waters against me.
The rune above my eye is cool. I am not being called to amuse the humans. And this is not the day humans arrive on the land—I know this because of Pippi. Because I know how many tomorrows I have until the shadow carries her away and brings others in her place.
This shadow should not be here today.
It’s wrong.
I swim, following the shadow.
I see the humans staring at me, and my heart turns colder.
Iknowthem?—
The mark on my face burns. A deep, deep, deep hurt that consumes me. Blackens my sight. I cry and pull back.Too close.I am too close to the shadow.
Fleeing to deeper waters takes the hurt away.
But then I seeher.
She stares down at me, her eyes hurting me nearly as deeply as the rune.
I know her face.
It haunts me when I dream.
The last face I saw before I became what I am.
The face thatscreamsat me, telling me I’ll never walk the land again.
