I force myself to sit up higher. "Where," I say, punctuating each word. "Is. My. Dad?"
Dylan closes his eyes, takes a breath, and then faces me again. "There was a plane crash when you were flying to Hawaii. I don't know what happened to your dad, but..." He clears his throat. "You were the only one that Mrs. Hudson found."
I hear his words, but they don't make sense. So I focus on the last part. "Mrs. Hudson?"
The woman raises her hand. "That's me. You woke up in quite a fright, my dear."
"Woke up..." She means earlier when I was hallucinating that I was trapped under the sea. My hands tremble at the memory, but I tell myself that it wasn't real. Nothing about it was real.
Except for the plane crash. All those people on it, who died.
And Dad...
A sob escapes my mouth and I clap my hands to it. Because it's not real. It's not real...
But my tears start falling, and once they start, they don't stop. A searing pain rips its way through me, and I'm crying, hunched over in the bed.
How did this happen? How did an entire plane full of people perish except for me?
It doesn't make any damn sense!
Someone comes up next to me and wraps an arm about my shoulders. Dylan. I turn in toward him and cry. Like the good friend he is, he just holds me. Doesn't offer me any platitudes or false words of comfort that everything is going to be all right. He just holds me. Which is apparently what I need right now.
The woman, Mrs. Hudson, leaves us while I empty out all the grief that I can. The pain is physical, unlike anything I've ever felt before. My mind splits and goes back to the best memories that we had together and to the future of everything that my dad won't be there for.
It's not fair.
"I'm so sorry, Gwen," Dylan says, cupping my head to him.
"So you think, you think..." I say softly. "That he's dead?"
Saying the words out loud just makes the feelings even more raw.
Dylan doesn't answer for a long time, and then says, "There's always a chance, Gwen, but..."
"Does my mom know?" I ask, pulling back. "Is she here?"
As I say that, my mind starts to wonder about the other pieces of the puzzle. Such as where I am, because it really doesn't look like a hospital. And what happened before now, when I dreamt that I was underwater?
"No," Dylan says, "she's not here. She..."
"So what are you doing here?" I ask, my voice shrill as I pull back to look up at him.
He visibly hesitates. "I'm here for you," he says.
I blink at him. "What do you mean? What about Samantha? What about...?" It's stupid that I'm focusing on that, but my mind can only handle one thing at a time right now.
He lets out a bitter laugh. "Oh, Gwen, you still believe in that." He sighs, a shaking breath. "I have a lot to tell you and I'm not sure where to even start ."
I swallow thickly. "The truth. Start with the truth."
Another bark of a nervous laugh from him. "There's a lot to it, and it’s not even my place to do it, but..." He presses his lips together, sucking in through his nose. "Do you remember waking up earlier? Mrs. Hudson said that you were a mess."
I grimace. "Yeah, I was hallucinating. I guess from a concussion?"
Dylan shakes his head, and I blink.
"No to the hallucinating or no to the concussion?" I ask.
"Both," he says quietly.
It takes a little bit for me to process what he said. "So I wasn't hallucinating or dealing with a concussion? How do you know?"
"Do you remember waking up underwater?" Dylan asks.
I stare at him. "How do you know about that?" I whisper.
"Because it was real."
I start to laugh, but he looks so sincere, it dies in my throat, and I gulp compulsively.
It couldn't be real. I would have drowned long before I even woke up. It's impossible. A horrible dream.
But he looks so serious as he watches for my reaction.
"But the fish and the cave and the..."
"It was all real," he says.
I stare at him for a long moment. Maybe I still have a concussion and I'm not understanding him correctly. So I focus on the next thing.
"Where am I?" I ask suddenly. "Why am I not in a hospital?" Because hospitals wouldn't have old wood panelling like this and I wouldn't have a quilt over me. "And why isn't Mom here?"
"You're safe," Dylan assures me. "That's all that matters now."
I glare at him as I pull back the old quilt and get to my feet. I'm unsteady as I make my way to the doorway. I brace myself against the walls of the hallway and I realize that I'm in some sort of bungalow. It's not very big, and I can see a living area with large windows overlooking a beach.
It's bright daylight outside. So different from the nightmare I woke up to earlier.
I don't see Mrs. Hudson, and Dylan hasn't tried to stop me, so I open the front door and rush outside, hoping to hail down a cab or something to take me away. Bring me back to reality.
But as I stumble onto the sand and rocks and look around, I realize that -- no, I can't hail a cab. I'm only a few yards from the shoreline of the ocean, where the ocean stretches out as far as I can see. I spin, looking behind me, and I learn that the house that I came out of is actually the bottom floor of a lighthouse. And beyond that is more ocean.
I'm on a tiny island in the middle of who-knows-where with no way of getting off.
How did I end up here? And how did Dylan ever find me here?
My breath comes in short gasps. I'm going to hyperventilate if I don't get myself under control.
"Do you understand it now?"
I whirl and see Dylan emerging from the house. He looks like he's not surprised at all by our setting.
I frantically shake my head. "No," I whisper. "No, I have no idea what the hell is going on."
He drags a hand through his hair again, the other hand slipping into his pocket. "Look," he says. "I'm just going to come out and say it, okay? Don't freak out."
My heart hammers in my chest. "Say what?"
He meets my eyes. "You're not human, Gwen. You're a high mer."
9
I stare at Dylan.
"What the hell is a high mer?" I ask him. He's saying words, but they don't make sense.
He lets out a shuddering breath. "Like a mermaid, but...not quite the little mermaid. You're something else. Something bigger. Something more powerful."
"Something more powerful?"
He nods, as serious as ever.
"You're joking," I say to Dylan. A short laugh escapes me. Mermaids -- or mers, as both he and Mrs. Hudson called them -- aren't real. I don't even know what it is.
"I’m not joking," he says. "They are real and you're one of them." He sighs. "And I am one, too."
I look at him for a long moment, a small chuckle escaping me again, but I sound less forceful this time. Because my resolve is weakening, and he looks so damn sincere when saying this.
"So," I say, going along with his delusion, "you're telling me that I'm a mermaid. And you're one, too."