Page 22 of The Lighthouse Keeper and the Mermaid
CHAPTER 21
“So, what did you want to show me?” she asked, settling in on the rock beside him, letting her legs dangle into the water. It was something she hadn’t done yet before with him, but sitting dry on the rock felt too lonely.
Leaning back on the rock beside her, he gestured up to the stars. “You probably already know,” he said. “But I wanted to see together.”
“The stars?” she asked, looking up. Today, on that clear summer night, the Milky Way was visible in all its glory. She always loved it, how it looked like unmoving clouds glowing gold and pink.
“No, sometimes they move,” he said.
“Ah, shooting stars,” she said, leaning back on her hands to stare at the sky.
“You know?”
“I do know of them. Or I’ve seen them. Legend says you can wish on them, but I don’t think I believe in something like that.”
“Why?”
“Hmm, I don’t know. But why would a star care about me and my wish?”
He nodded thoughtfully. “We say they’re souls leaving.”
“Oh?” She didn’t miss the little pulse of excitement she got from him talking about himself or his own people.
“I don’t believe that either,” he said. “There was none for my mother.”
The excitement quickly dropped. “Oh. Oh, I’m so sorry.”What had possibly happened?she wondered, but she didn’t dare ask when he already made a face that sad.
“My mom…passed too,” she said. “A little after she had me. And my father…” She sighed. “I don’t know what happened. One day, he didn’t wake up.”
“Is that why you’re alone?”
“I guess,” she said. “Partially at least. I choose to stay here. By myself. But I was born here. I grew up here. I love this island and this lighthouse, and I’ll stay until they drag me out.”
She supposed that meant, in a way, she was choosing to be alone. She had never really thought of it like that before. But she couldn’t imagine leaving; she didn’t want to and she hadn’t met someone shewantedto share such a tiny island with nor anyone she cared about enough to leave it for.
“I haven’t met anyone I’d want to spend forever with,” she said to his confusion. Did mermaids not bond forever like humans did?
She gave a sheepish smile. “Humans tend to only really live with family. And well”—she blushed—“when humans find a partner….”
She blushed again. “Oh, how should I put this? Oh! Like the prince and the princesses in the stories with the happily ever afters. Humans are like that!”
“Always happy?”
“Oh, ah no. Not…not that part. Humans—well, typically men pick a woman they like and they court and then they become married, which is like where they agree to be together forever, and then they have children and become a family of their own.”
There was a long pause and then he nodded.
“The happily ever after part is really just that humans tend to stay together until death. Or at least they try. That’s marriage. A pact to always stay together through the good and the bad. Do…do mermaids not have that?”
He looked far off into the sea. “I don’t know.” There was such overwhelming sadness there, such heartbreak that her heart broke with him, and moving quickly, she threw her arms around his neck, hugging him from behind.
He stiffened in shock at first, but then his hand settled on hers and he relaxed into it, his head lowering over her arms as if securing her there.
“Pups stay with their mom while they wean off her,” he said, “like cows!”
She huffed a little laugh. “Okay.”
“Most stay in shallow water until the kid isolder. It’s…more danger out there.” His gaze fell back to open waters and even from behind, she could feel the tension in his spine, the hauntedness.
