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Ebb
The motorcycle waited outside Celia's apartment, sleek machine-beast brooding by the curb, engine popping and clicking in the cold. So out of place among the cheap and sensible cars on the street. She heard her name in its weary ticks, read it in the smooth lines of black and chrome.
They'd found her.
She'd known it would happen eventually, but the sudden reality chilled her stomach. No warnings, no portents. Some psychic she was. The wind whipped at her hair and skirt as she stood frozen on the sidewalk, keys biting her palm as her fists clenched. She should turn and walk away.
But Micah would never ride that beast of a bike; no one in her family would. So who had found her, and why?
Curiosity finally won--curiosity and the ache in her back. Relaxing her grip on her keys, she went inside.
The hallway was dark as ever, fragrant with kimchi and spices from the Korean grocery. Bass rattled through the walls from the apartment above her little shop; she listened for a message in the thump thumpa thump, but didn't hear one. Besides the message to leave another complaint with the management.
He waited in the shadows by her door, a tall leather-clad shape, helmet tucked under one arm. Celia kept moving, finding her key on the ring by touch, trying to keep her hands from shaking. The air was heavy with intention, but intention for what she couldn't say.
"Madame Celia?" A deep rough voice, like whiskey and gargled razorblades. Just a hint of teasing as he nodded his bald head toward the sign. The moons and stars and hand-painted zodiac signs were due a little mockery.
"Sorry, I'm closed." The key slid home in the lock. Warm patchouli-scented air wafted around her as she opened the door, comforting earth-smell.
He followed her in. Didn't touch her, or even try to, but his presence was threat enough. He filled the doorway, black leather creaking as he moved.
"Don't be afraid."
"Which part of closed escapes you?" she asked. "Do I need to call the police?" An empty bluff; if he meant to hurt her he would. Fortune-telling was little use against fists.
The man closed the door behind him and leaned against it. She thought of reaching for the phone, but switched on the hot plate in the corner and put the kettle on instead, his eyes following her as she moved. And she wasn't afraid, though she probably should have been.
"You have heard of the police? The RCMP--Mounties? They ride horses, fight crime, protect young women from hooligans." She pressed her tongue between her teeth to stop babbling.
A smile rearranged his weathered sun-bronzed face. "What did the doctor say?"
The first real fear tightened her chest. She started to cross her arms, forced them back to her sides. "She says I need more iron--borderline anemia. Thanks for the concern."
"Boy or girl?"
"I didn't ask."
"I thought you were psychic."
She smiled, too sharp, fought to keep the tension from her shoulders and voice. "If you come back during business hours, I'll be happy to tell your fortune." She blinked, looked at him otherwise. His aura seethed with dark angry flames. Tight-twisted spirals of red and black swirled up his arms--more violence than she'd ever seen in one person. Harnessed, contained.
"Did my family send you?" She couldn't imagine her mother hiring goons. Micah would have come himself. But she'd been wrong about both of them before, hadn't she?
"No, but they're looking for you. They're close."
She shivered at the truth in the words. "Then what do you want?"
"If your family is after something, Ms. Waite, it's my job to make sure they don't get it."
"If I wanted them to have me, I wouldn't be here, would I?" The kettle began to whistle, but she ignored it.
"If you really mean to hide from them, you'll have to do better than this." He reached for the doorknob, then paused. "If you want to get away, I can help you."
"And if I don't?"
He shrugged and opened the door. The darkening of his aura was all the answer she needed.
She lay in the bathtub that night, enclosed in its slick porcelain shell; water buoyed her, caressed her. Bland chlorinated water, chemical-safe, no hint of swamp or sea. Nothing that might change her.
She was changing already. She pressed one hand against her stomach and felt the pull of amniotic tides.
The dreams were bad, the first two month--she couldn't tell portent from fear. Dreams of sirens and sea monsters and slippery scale-cold bodies. Once she dreamed she was heavy with fish eggs, a womb full of glistening black roe. That was when she cracked and made an appointment at the clinic.
But the doctor found only one heartbeat, healthy and normal. And with that fear eased, the vision came easily. A daughter, with Celia's cracked-peridot eyes and Micah's dark hair and almond-bronze skin. No fins, no scales.
What will you do? the doctor had asked when she saw the doubt on Celia's face.
I don't know, she'd answered.
Whatever you choose, decide soon.
Her mother wanted this baby. Celia knew she shouldn't keep it. Knew she couldn't give her up.
"What will you be?" she asked. Water pressed against her ears, distorted the words. "What do they want you to be?"
Celia never met her father. A Gilman, her mother told her, an ugly frog of a man. She called Celia her little tadpole. Never very fondly.
The Waites, Esther always told her daughter, were not fish, not frogs. They were sorcerers, magi, not backwater freaks who couldn't decide which direction on the evolutionary ladder they wanted to go. Celia had met a few Marshes and Gilmans, and was glad she took after her mother's side.
Not enough for Esther, though. Never enough. She frowned at her daughter's wide swamp-colored eyes, looked down her aquiline nose and told Celia to stand straighter, lose weight. She berated Celia's wild talents and dreams, cursed her inability to master ritual and summoning.
But we're your family, Esther would say between chidings. We love you. No one but family will ever really love you.
She dreamed of Micah. Not a portent or vision, just old sorrow, bitter joy. She'd dreamed of Micah a lot in the last three months.
Laughing, bright-eyed Micah Fischer, who'd proved her mother wrong, proved that someone could love her. She'd smiled to herself at his name, at the sea-storm colors of his aura, but she'd never looked too deep. He really loved her, and that was enough.
It might have still been enough, even after the phone calls she wasn't meant to hear, the clouded-dark flashes of avoidance. Even after she suspected the truth, that her mother had arranged everything, arranged the love of Celia's life as coldly as Esther had arranged to lie down with a frog who did not become a prince. It might have been enough.
Until she woke one morning and knew with blood and bone that she was pregnant, knew that it was her mother's design.
Then the nightmares started. And then she ran.
She fumbled through the next day's appointments, telling lonely widows and neurotic housewives what they wanted to hear. More truth than she intended slipped into her readings, and the cards whispered sly asides. By the time her last customer left, Celia's hands shook so badly she could barely shuffle the deck.
She glanced past gauzy curtains and hanging beads toward the street. It seemed empty, but she felt the presence waiting there. Her back ached again, and her breasts, and all she wanted was to lie down.
Instead she wrapped herself in coat and scarf and braved the biting December afternoon. The wind slipped its fingers up her skirt, tugged the curls off the back of her neck. The sky hung low and leaden, threatening rain.
Her eyes passed over him once, twice, but on the third look she saw through the glamours wrapped around man and bike. He sat, one leg balancing the massive machine, and watched. Or she guessed that he watched; the helmet's visor hid his face.
She approached, chin raised, and stopped within arm's reach of him. "What's your name?"
For a moment she stared at her own dark reflection in his helmet. The he raised the visor with a black-gloved hand. "Etienne."
"If you're going to stalk me, don't you think you should at least buy me dinner first?"
That earned her a smile. Good--she wanted him smiling, not threatening. If the two were any different.
"What's your pleasure, then?"
Her own smile was sharp and teasing. "Sushi."
"Why did you warn me?" Celia stirred more wasabi and soy sauce with one chopstick. "Why not just..." She shrugged.
"I don't like to just..." He returned the gesture, eyes glinting. The chopsticks were tiny and graceful in his broad blunt hand as he picked up another California roll. A tattoo crawled down his left arm, poking its head out of his sleeve; a snake, maybe, or a dragon. "And," he said after he swallowed, "I thought you might really want to get away from them. But I couldn't be sure."
"No." She sipped bitter green tea and watched plates of sushi float past the counter on tiny boats. "I might just be trying to get attention, after all. Trying to prove something."
"You could disappear. That would prove something."
"Disappear. Is it that simple?"
He shrugged again. The heat of his skin washed over her, raising goosebumps. "It could be."
"Why do you care?"
"It's my job." His rough face was impossible to read, but she caught the swirl of emotion out of one otherwise eye. Old guilt, old regret. Celia pushed a slice of ginger around her plate and chewed the inside of her lip.
"Are you going to keep the baby?" he asked later as he returned her to the shop, walking her to the door like a dutiful date. She still couldn't summon up fear in his presence, for all he unnerved her. He might kill her, but he couldn't really hurt her--not like family could.
"I shouldn't, should I?" She touched her stomach--not showing yet, though the waist of her skirt was snugger than usual. She let him see the doubt in that gesture, the desire. Lure them in with breadcrumbs of emotion; her mother had taught her that.
"Even if she's...normal, I still don't know what I'd do with a child. My mother didn't set the best example." Truth, all of it. The truth was always more dangerous.
"She?"
One corner of her mouth curled. "I am psychic." She swallowed. "What does my mother want with my baby?"
"I don't know. But she went to a lot of trouble to make sure this baby happened."
"People do that, don't they? Want children. Try for children."
An ugly frog of a man. Like lying down with a toad. But I wanted a child. Always that distant look in Esther's eyes when she said it. She'd wanted a child, but no the one she'd had. But we love you. Maybe she only wanted a real daughter, not some pale fat frog of a girl.
But Celia knew her mother had never only wanted anything, not without a tangled skein of reasons and plans and prices.
She dreamed of sunlight on the water, of columned cities in the deep and a haunting choral swell of siren-song. She dreamed of stormy seas, of waves lashing cruel and wild.
This is hers, not mine. All this is hers.
What could she be to this child?
She woke with tears like sea-salt on her tongue, and no answers.
It rained the next day, cold and sharp. Celia finally took pity on her stalker and invited him in for tea. His glamour might fool the eye, but not the weather; water glistened on oiled leather, soaked the neck of his shirt where helmet and collar didn't seal.
As he shrugged out of his jacket she thought she saw steam rising off his skin. Fire and rock, whatever else he might be, not someone to be easily turned. But maybe she could wear him down.
"Do you do this often?" She passed him a towel and their hands brushed. For a heartbeat she felt heat like a volcano's breath, smelled smoke and ash and hot metal. The smell of destruction. She jerked her hand back.
"Too often," he said, drying himself as best he could.
Goosebumps crawled her arms. "Why?"
"Mission from God." He said it with a smile and a shrug, but he wasn't lying. "I help people who need it."
"You hurt people, too." The bloody streaks twining his hands told that story eloquently enough.
"Only when they need it."
Silence stretched, broken only by their breath and the patter of rain. "Are you going to hurt me?"
"I don't want to."
She turned to pour the tea, spooned milk and honey into his. The smell of clove and cinnamon and dark anise drifted through the air. "Why do you care about any of this? About me and my baby." Heat soaked her hands through the worn mismatched cups. She held them tight to still her trembling.
"Your family is dangerous. I can't let another child suffer for their schemes."
A bit late for that, isn't it? "What do you mean, another?"
He glanced away, his colors clouding. "There was another girl, once. Another Waite. I tried to help her, but it was too late. She was already tangled too tight in her father's webs, and I couldn't cut her loose."
"What happened to her?"
"Her father used her up. She died in a madhouse."
Celia set her cup aside untasted. "You think that will happen to my daughter?"
His eyes were dark in the shadow of heavy brows. "I think something worse might happen to her. Ephraim used his daughter because she was convenient, but Esther doesn't do anything without a reason. I don't know what she wants her grandchild to do, but it won't be good."
"You think she'll be dangerous? Just because she's my daughter?"
"Maybe not for who she is, or even what, but if your mother has anything to do with it..." He lifted broad bloody hands.
Celia sipped her tea, but all she tasted was bitter salt.
She dreamed of her daughter. A laughing infant, a confection of brown sugar and almond milk in her arms. A laughing child, running down a beach, curls bouncing wild in the sun.
Running away, toward the foaming waves.
She will never be all mine.
Celia woke at dawn and knew Micah was coming, felt the connection between them reeling him in. The smell of his skin lingered like a ghost. She rose and dressed in the dark. The need to see him filled her chest, sharp and heavy, but she couldn't stand the thought of being cornered. She needed air, space--somewhere she could run again if she had to.
She waited in Stanley Park as the rising sun burned opalescent through the haze. Cold misting rain rippled over the water, trickled down her face. Through shifting shadows she stared at the statue of a girl sitting on a rock, gazing at the sea. Only a girl in a wetsuit, but she could have been a mermaid, some lonely ocean child.
"Is that what you'll be?" she whispered, one hand on her stomach. "A mermaid, a siren? Will your feet bleed on dry land?"
She felt him coming, felt him like a wave. He came alone, and that eased some of her twisting fear. She turned to watch Micah approach and the bottom fell out of her stomach. It always did, when she watched him.
No frog prince, Micah. Tall and lean, sleek-muscled shoulders buried under sweater and coat. His hair curled in the rain, clung to his cheeks and brow. She wanted to touch him, to know he was real. She stood her ground.
"Celia--" Her name caught in his throat. She met his dark eyes and her own throat closed. "Cel, you scared the hell out of me." Sea-storm colors swirled around him, greys and greens. No trace of a lie.
There had never been anyone before him. Not when she could see every lie, every denial, the murky shades of ulterior motives. She'd never met anyone else who could win past her sight, past all her insecurities and neuroses.
"Tell me the truth. About us."
He sighed, shoulders slumping. "They asked me--the family asked me--to find you, to meet you. That was all. Your mother said she thought we'd be good together. So I met you, and she was right."
"And what if we hadn't worked? What then?"
"I don't know. No one ever talked about that." He pushed his hair off his forehead with a long-fingered hand. "It wasn't some dark conspiracy, Cel. It was just a suggestion. And I'm glad I listened."
"And it never mattered to you that it was all arranged?"
"Why should it? I love you."
Every word of it true, every word a weight in her chest. "What about our baby?"
His eyes widened. "It's true? When?"
"Some time in June, most likely. If everything is normal."
And he walked toward her, reached for her, and the distance between them vanished too fast and she was in his arms. She stiffened, gasped, then relaxed against him with a sob. The smell of wet wool filled her nose as she pressed her face against his chest, and beneath that the salt-sweet of his skin.
He held her, stroked her hair, whispered her name as the rain misted around them. Just a boy and a girl, and their baby. All she'd ever wanted. A family. Love.
She let Micah lead her away from the shore, his arm around her safe and warm. She felt eyes on her back as she walked.
They lay on her bed, skin to skin. Micah's hair still smelled like rain. He pressed his hand to her stomach and made a low wondering noise.
"What should we name her?"
Celia smiled, nestled her cheek against the curve of his neck. "I don't know yet." Even as she said it a name rang in her mind like a chime. A name heavy with implication. She shoved it down, pushed it away.
"My mother wants the baby."
"Of course she does. Why shouldn't she want a grandchild?"
"She wants this baby, Micah. That's why she wanted us together."
He wrapped his arms around her. "Don't be so paranoid. This isn't some plot, some breeding program. Your mother just wants you to be happy. I know she doesn't show it sometimes, but she loves you."
He believed it.
Was that it? Was she just paranoid? A neurotic mess of a girl, too screwed up to let herself be happy.
"Come home with me," Micah murmured against her ear. "Everything will be all right. Or--" He tensed. "Or run away with me. We don't have to go home, we can go anywhere. Just us." He caressed her stomach. "Just us. Celia, marry me."
Her breath caught, then rushed out on a sigh. Tears prickled her sinuses. "Micah--" And she kissed him until they were both too breathless to speak.
She dreamed of a dragon, a kraken, vast and ancient, sleeping in the lightless depths, buried beneath eons of silt. A nest of ancient bones crumbled around him. Sometimes the kraken's sleep grew troubled and he tossed, wings flexing, tentacled face turning. The seabed shook and cracked, and new wounds split the skin of the earth.
She saw her daughter grown, standing by the frothing sea. Spray glistened on slender limbs, soaked wild dark curls. The woman raised her face to the thunder-dark sky and sang. Whether she meant to sing the beast to sleep or rouse it Celia didn't know.
This is what she is meant to do.
Micah still slept when night came, his face smooth and peaceful. Celia slipped out of his warm embrace, tucked a pillow under his arm to replace her. She didn't know how she'd slept alone so long, didn't know how she'd even lived before she met him. Her heart was cold as glass.
Etienne waited outside the shop, black leather blending with the darkness. They stood in silence for a while.
"He wants me to run away with him."
"That's good."
Her smile hurt. "No, it's not. Micah is... He's the kindest person I've ever known. He doesn't believe my mother would ever hurt anyone, let alone her family. He'd forget, or just not care. We'd run away and in three weeks he'd call to tell her how we're doing, to let her know everything's okay."
Etienne watched her for a moment. "You could get rid of the baby."
The fear, the nightmares. The laughing eyes in her dreams. "I can't."
She waited for the threats, but none came. He wouldn't hurt her. He'd let her walk away. But she couldn't do that either--she'd need help when the baby came.
Celia let out a breath, watched it stream away like a ghost in the wind. "Come with me."
Red and black rippled with relief. "Yes. Do you want to say goodbye?"
The glass in her chest broke into a thousand glittering shards. "No."
He nodded and led her toward the motorcycle. She kept her eyes on the back of his jacket. If she turned she would crumble to salt; her eyes burned with it already.
The wind sighed cold and damp around them as he lifted her onto the bike. The engine growled to life, rumbling through her bones. "What are you going to name her?"
She smiled into the dark, bittersweet. "Andromeda."
Her hands tightened on his waist, and the motorcycle carried them into the night.
© 2005 Amanda Downum