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Beyond the Depths

Chapter 4: The Double-Skinned One and His Grumbling Stomach

The feeding continued on for a while longer, the screams of the humans slowly dying beneath the victorious clicks and guffaws of the starving merfolk.

As Sam struggled to hold in her tears, the boy nestled against her to provide comfort. His cold nose inched against her shoulder and the crook of her neck, his soft breaths little more than puffs against her skin. She could feel him as a steady warmth, his strangely human heartbeat a lullaby. And in her exhaustion, she leaned her head against his and breathed in his scent, which was something nice but undefinable by human standards. She was careful not to move or squirm too much, for she did not want to upset the relatively positive status quo between her and the boy.

In the silence, her body quivered with an uneven breath or two, her tears still slipping down her face. The puncture wounds on her ankle had stopped bleeding, as had her arms, but the injuries still hurt to move—and thinking about them made her want to begin crying all over again. Mom. Dad. I'm so sorry—I'm so sorry—

The boy's arm and shoulder still bled because he was forgetful and did not always apply pressure, which made him huff and squirm against her. If she paid close attention, Sam could feel the quiver in the boy's muscles, the way his breath shook uneasily. The nerves in his arm still twitched in abnormal ways. The tablecloth wrapped around his elbow had seeped red, and the metallic smell of his blood had begun to permeate the small room. His whole body was strained with the pain of having been bitten.

Sam realized that she was being selfish, feeling sorry for herself when the boy cramped beside her was likely in just as much mental and physical pain as her. His own kind had turned against him. That wasn't a problem to scoff at.

And so she winced a bit as she moved, gently grabbing onto his twitching hand to steady him. He flinched for a second, only to relax at her touch, which was unassuming and innocent.

"Ngh?" he whispered softly, his tenor voice upturned in a question as he looked up at her. What did this human want with his arm?

"I just wanna see," she whispered. She wasn't sure what kind of abilities this merboy-turned-human had—and if he were still bleeding, then they'd have to figure out something to do. She didn't want to lose her only friend by watching the boy slowly descend into death. She'd help him apply pressure if nothing else. "Is that okay if I see?"

He eyed her, then nodded. He would trust this human to look over him—which was again something that only certain people did in mer-culture, but he knew that she was quite ignorant to that.

She unwrapped and peeled away the tablecloth, and they both winced at the soaked slurp the cloth made.

Under the flickering light above them, Sam expected to see something horrific. But she quickly realized something quite shocking: He wasn't in pain because his injury was getting worse or infected. He was in pain because it was healing. Several of the once-deep puncture wounds had already begun to fill in, even though others still bleed sluggishly. She whispered, eyes wide, "Holy—"

A strange gasp flinched his whole body again, and he pulled his arm away from her to cradle it close to his stomach. He hissed, his lips pulling back to bare his sharp teeth out of instinct. He was in pain. Too much pain. The tendons in his hand locked up for a second, and the wave of pain rode over him. Then, after a second or two, the tension in his body fell away, and his arm dropped uselessly against his covered leg. But now, even fewer puncture wounds were bleeding.

Sam stared at him, jaw opening in shock. "You can heal that fast?" she whispered.

He nodded, closing his eyes. He almost wish he wouldn't. Doing so required energy he didn't have, for it came at a great cost.

Sam immediately thought back to the seaweed-like merman she'd stabbed in the neck. "Can others heal like you?" she asked.

He caught the strange tinge of fear in her voice, and he nodded hesitantly. The environment in which merfolk lived demanded a particular form of coagulation to minimize attracting sharks. It was quick, designed to layer rapidly-healing films of tissue over an injury. According to the Elders, that was why the Massacres so often ended in the humans burning their prisoners with fire, because a simple bullet (those strange, metal darts human liked to use so much) was not enough to take them down.

"The seaweed one—that I st-stabbed?" Sam's purple eyes began to strain uneasily. "Will he come back?"

But merfolk coagulation wasn't that fast. He shook his head, then tiredly leaned into her to nuzzle her for comfort. No, he will not return. The other had bled too much too fast. His glow had died, which meant his soul had fled to another world that none of the Elders could speak of in great confidence.

Sam's breath began to hitch again in strange ways despite the boy's response, thinking in horror of the seaweed merman rising from the dead, ripping off the door, grabbing for her with his claws, opening his razor-sharp beak and clamping down on her arm—

She squeezed her eyes shut, tears burning her eyes all over again. She pressed a hand over her mouth to stop the whimper that agonized at her throat, and she willingly turned her face to hide it in the boy's soft, black hair. She'd never felt such fear in her life, especially not against something so real. It won't happen, he said it won't, we'll be okay—

As the girl descended into fear, another twitch of pain ran through the boy, and he barely hid a moan of pain, pressing his lips against her shoulder to stifle it. Her skin was soft like swaying seaweed and ocean sand, which gave him a sense of comfort all for himself as his breath streamed from his nose in harsh pants, his eyes squeezing shut again until tears leaked out.

And the two remained huddled close to each other, almost intimately. If they were going to die here, together, they would do so with a bond. The linen closet was cramped and uncomfortable, and there was no way of knowing a minute from an hour within it. Without the moon or other forms of natural light, Phantom could not tell time at all. But he felt attachment to this human girl now. He wanted to endure or die with her. And Sam seemed to feel the same way.

Eventually, even the distant guffaws of the merfolk grew harder to hear, dying down into soft clicks. The dozens of merfolk lazed about with engorged bellies, soaking in the brine and blood on the deck. Then came the echoes of strange, dragging noises and the distant crunch of the bone, then of splashes. It made Sam grow pale, but the boy's eyes perked wide.

"...Are they leaving now?" Sam whispered.

Phantom nodded. They were taking their spoils with them. Whether he felt agony or joy about it, he did not know. But if his tribe left, then that would at least give him time to figure a way to revert back to normal without being attacked by a brother or sister. Multiple splashes and clicks suddenly rained down the side of the ship deck. And just as quickly as the merfolk had attacked, they were gone, the whole ship silent in the wake of devastation, rocking in the waves.

But then Phantom realized a major problem with himself. In his fear and adrenaline, he had forgotten about his own hunger. In the silence, he felt that hunger down every fiber of his being, and this time with a vengeance, now that his body had expended incredible energy without reward. The hum of the flickering light above them made it worse. He grabbed onto his stomach and moaned, closing his eyes to hide his pain. It felt as if an eel were weaving within him, eating his insides.

Sam's voice was hardly above a whisper, still quivering with fear. "Are you…hungry?"

One of his eyes snapped open. Slowly, he nodded. His stomach grumbled loudly, and he huffed again, almost in a whimper. His human fingers rubbed across sleek skin against which the shadow of his ribs stood strong.

She bit her lip, lips raising nervously. "Yeah, I guess you didn't get to eat me," she joked, voice soft and strained.

He looked down, almost embarrassed. Then he tried to stuff one of the table napkins in his mouth and moaned again in displeasure when he discovered he could not eat it either. He let it fall listlessly onto his bare chest, his jaws opening slowly in depression.

Real tears were beginning to well in his eyes. He'd missed his chance to feed—to care for his Hunger. No matter his feelings for the human named Sam, he was still Hungry. He turned his face away from her, and she heard him inhale shakily again.

She looked as if she were growing nervous but trying to hide it. "Have you…hunted before?" she asked quietly. She tried to think that this was all a stroke of luck—that she'd been attacked by a young merman instead of a fully matured one, that this merboy had transformed upon leaving the salt waters, and that he was now too weak to attack her again.

He shook his head, not turning to face her. The Elders had only recently sanctioned such hunting parties against the human race.

"Why is your kind attacking humans again? I mean, we went over ten years without an attack. Why now?"

She watched him bite his lip. His stomach growled again and he winced, wrapping his arms around himself, leaning forward. He didn't look her way, but he figured she could figure it out.

"You look like you haven't eaten in a while. Is that why? You ran out of food?"

His lip curled into a snarl. He suddenly looked her way with a glare dark enough to curdle milk. The human race had fished out their hunting spots, drudging up whole fish colonies with their greedy nets. The ocean was becoming barren again.

A spike of fear ran through Sam. "Hey, sorry. I'm just asking questions."

He looked as if he could snap at her, but the anger bled out of him quick enough, leaving only an empty, begrudging depression. He knew it was not worth it to be angry at the human named Sam. This girl had been willing to communicate with him and was compassionate. He could not fault her for the sins of her people, just as she had not faulted him for the sins of his own.

He hid his face in his hands. His ribs expanded in and out, the veins down his strong arms standing out against his skin. So hungry. No food. Need food.

He looked entirely as miserable as she felt, and silence fell over them again.

Sam set her jaw in determination. If she wanted to remain in this boy's good graces—if she wanted to convince him that humans were more than mindless food items themselves—she needed to help him settle his hunger. Her mind raced. She had passed a bar when she was running through the hall earlier. Perhaps there was actual food to be had still… "Wait here, okay?" she whispered. "I think I can get you some food."

His blue eyes snapped up to her in suspicion. "Ngh," he shook his head. Must go with you. Protect. He knew that the merfolk had left, but he did not want his human friend to stumble about by herself on her injured leg. And he did not want to be left alone in the strange box-room of cloth and flickering lights. "Ngh."

He grabbed onto a shelf beside him and winced, his arm straining. He slowly lifted himself up onto shaking legs. By now, his brain had recalibrated to the strange, individual weights of each leg, but balancing upon them was still a very new experience. He held onto the tablecloth around his waist with his injured arm, subconsciously aware that his human would feel emotional distress again if he did not.

Sam stared at him in surprise. "Uh...you want to go with me?"

He nodded, watching as the girl struggled her way up by using the multilevel shelves in a similar manner as he had.

She winced as she put weight upon her injured ankle. The bite wounds he'd given her were sore, but she did not think he'd torn any major tendons. Her greatest risk would be tearing open the scabs. "Okay," she breathed. "This is a ship. There's food everywhere. Closest thing would be the bar."

He blinked at her, implicitly trusting her judgment. "Ngh," he nodded, as to beg, Lead the way. He was hungry. He'd do anything to eat at this point. Even if it was food that other humans had touched.

She opened up the door and limped out, trying to hide her discomfort. Her dress was soaked on one side from the blood the boy had lost from the seaweed merman's bite. As the cold, hall air hit her, she realized she felt dirty and shaken, and that her dress had very well split up to her thigh. Lucky her, this mer-turned-human had no concept of modesty anyway. They probably both looked as if they belonged in a horror film, and likely she would have nightmares about all of this for weeks.

She held her hand out. "Come on," she said. Her voice still wavered with adrenaline, and she was still quiet, as if the merfolk were still around to terrorize them. "Put your arm over my shoulder—like we did last time."

The boy nodded and tentatively reached for her. He stepped forward. His movements were slightly more fluid, his strong legs capable of holding his weight. But he leaned on her for balance. And though she hissed in a wince, she held them both strong.

"A step at a time," she said, and his tenor voice hummed in agreement. Together, they stepped forward, moving at a slow, steady pace.

The boy seemed distracted and pained, his mouth twisted. His hunger was rising. He had to eat. He needed to eat now. He could not even enjoy the marvel of standing tall on his own legs, or how walking was actually quite an efficient way for a human to get around. All that seemed to matter now was his snarling stomach and the weakness of his mind against it.

They passed the ballroom, where Sam caught the unmoving sight of the seaweed merman. His body hadn't moved, but something about it made her shiver and look away. "Just a little farther," she said shakily, eyes wide and dazed. Everything on her hurt, and her heart hurt worst of all because there forever was the body of a creature she had killed, its blood crusted into the ballroom floor.

As they turned the bend, the hall opened up into the abandoned bar, where kitchen workers had made drinks and servers had brought back dishes. The door to the deck was still shut, and the hall was still littered with the plates and chairs she'd thrown in an attempt to slow down the merboy when he'd been attacking her. And within that mess were the half-eaten remains of food from the plates the servers had brought in.

She looked down, then at the boy. He was staring at a lobster tail lying innocently on the floor, his blue eyes dark with want, his mouth opening. He looked as if he were almost ready to drool.

"Ngh," he seemed to plead, his voice more guttural than before. There was an instinctive edge. A need to feed. He tried to unhook from her so that he could reach for the food, but it unbalanced them both and nearly sent them tumbling.

"Hold on," she said shakily. She did not want to be in the way of when he let his control go. "Can you hold on a second? I can grab it for you. But I can't do that with both of us—can you sit down for me?" She gently leaned them against the wall, and he released her. His eyes were glazed with hunger at this point, but he nodded distantly, too tired from his walk to hold himself up for long. He softly collapsed onto the floor in an awkward tangle of limbs, the blood-crusted tablecloth around his waist twisting.

She turned away and unsteadily moved onto her hands and knees and very quietly felt around. "This is disgusting," she whispered, lips pulled down in a frown. She was scavenging within the remains of food, but if it meant appeasing the merboy's Hunger… Her hands locked around the fallen lobster tail and meat. She tried not to think about how it was half-eaten and how it'd fallen from someone's forgotten plate brought back in by a server. But she grabbed onto an unbroken plate within the mess and began to gather shrimp and uneaten mussels. It was a meager sacrifice, but hopefully enough.

With a worried sigh, she turned back to the boy and crawled beside him, pushing the plate at him. "It's not much," she said. "But it's better than me, I promise."

He stared at the plate, and all aspects of his self-awareness fled. He lunged at the food with desperate fingers, stuffing the lobster meat in his mouth. "Mfh," he cried, chomping hard into the sweet meat. His face twisted in mindless, savage hunger, and he nearly inhaled the food, shoving it into his mouth all at once, his sharp teeth tearing it to pieces. He swallowed it without hardly chewing. Then he moved onto the mussels, pulling out the meat with nimble fingers and tossing aside the shells.

Sam was instantly reminded then that this boy was not human, for he ate like a shark, swallowing things practically whole. Her nose scrunched in disgust, but she saw the way his emaciated ribs stood strong against his thin skin and could not fault him for his mad hunger.

In short order, he cleaned the plate but for the last lobster tail. With a little food in his stomach, his self-awareness seemed to return to him, and he looked down at himself, then at the worn and exhausted girl beside him, who was watching him with wide, disgusted eyes.

He realized he had perhaps frightened the human or offended her for not sharing. And so he offered the tail to her in some half-hesitant attempt to hide his embarrassment.

"…Trust me," she breathed, looking queasy. "I'm not hungry."

He eyed her, as if to measure her truthfulness, and then he ate the last tail and hummed, closing his eyes at the feeling of food in his stomach.

"Did that help?" she asked hesitantly. "Do you feel better now?"

He smiled at the human to show his appreciation, his eyes shining. "Mmh," he said happily, nodding his head. He'd survived off of seaweed and small fish for so long—the nets the humans had placed in the sea had warded off any attempts to grab the better food. It tasted so good to eat real food. Real meat. He was still hungry, but it was not an unending gnaw anymore.

"Well," she said dryly, "they always said the best way to a man's heart is through his stomach."

The mer smiled cheekily now, humming in delight. Oh, he liked this human. She was feeding him good food, and she knew exactly what he liked. Lobster and mussels. Oh, he loved lobster especially. He could count on one fin the times he'd managed to grab one before the human machines did.

Sam pulled away from him. "Actually, I bet there's a fridge around here…" she trailed off in sudden thought. She winced as she stood again, grabbing onto the edge of the bar counter to hoist herself up. Off to the side was a door she'd missed before. Employees only, it said.

"Hold on," she told him. "There might be more food in here." And so she limped forward. Helping the merboy to eat was a pleasant distraction from the rest of her life, which made it easy to help him. It kept her from thinking of her own pain or her parents, or of the deck beyond where she'd seen and heard a massacre worthy of three years counseling.

She pushed open the door, realizing it opened into the back section of a kitchen area. With a refrigerator. "Thank god," she breathed in relief, limping forward. She expected the door to swing shut behind her.

But the door caught, and she jumped before she realized it was the boy, who was standing on his own now, his blue eyes bright with joy and curiosity. "Ngh?" he asked her. He placed a hand on her shoulder to help steady himself, his nose nearly in her hair, his breath strong puffs against her skin.

She swallowed hard, then a strange laugh of relief overcame her. "Yeah," she said. "You can follow me."

The room was dark but for a few emergency lights. They limped forward towards the large, metallic fridge. Then with a wince, she opened the heavy door. "Here we go. Fingers crossed."

Cold air, as cold as the North Atlantic rip tides, swept against them. And though the fridge was dark without an immediate power source, shelves upon shelves of shrimp cocktail platters and crab cakes and mussels stared back at them.

The boy's blue eyes widened. He stumbled unevenly towards it. This was much, much better than eating humans. His tribe had simply assumed that the humans had eaten all the food and fattened themselves. They did not know humans kept storages of all they'd stolen from the sea…!

He threw his arms around the fridge door with a gasp of delight. The tablecloth about his waist fell, revealing his naked backside.

Sam clapped her hand over her eyes. "Oh my god," she breathed, face heating up with a blush. She turned her head. "Oh my god." She was never going to be able to unsee that. Obviously, nakedness had never been something his kind worried about.

The boy craned his neck at her, then realized the human was exhibiting embarrassment on his behalf again. Tentatively, he pulled away from the fridge and grabbed the tablecloth from the floor. It all seemed too silly and relative to the reality that there was an abundance of food before him. "Ngh?" he said quickly. With clumsy fingers, he tied the edges around his waist so that he could still move both of his hands.

Very hesitantly, she peeked through her fingers, then breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh good," she said. "Okay, yeah. I can look at you now."

He half-thought to pursue exploring why Sam felt such intense emotional reactions to bodies—why were humans so obsessed with clothing? But then…food…He turned back to the fridge, mouth watering in hunger.

He grabbed at shrimp, then at the mussels, then at the crab cakes. He piled it all in his arms until food began to fall onto the floor, and he stuffed his face with several shrimp at a time.

He sunk to the floor, munching happily. Thank you, he wanted to tell the girl. Thank you.

And despite all the reservations she had about the predatory way he ate, Sam noticed that he had begun to cry in joy, and she softened towards him all over again.

Only me, she thought ruefully, thinking back to the terrifying twist of this boy's face when he'd attacked her. And now, as she stared at him, she realized he looked like an orphan who had been deprived of the most basic of necessities. And damn if she didn't have a soft spot for hurt and abused creatures.

Sometime later, after the boy had contentedly eaten his fill, they gained the courage to face the ship deck. Sam had a feeling about what she'd see, but if there was any chance at all of her parents still lying there—

The boy peeked his head out first beyond the door, stepping forward without Sam for the first time. His legs were stronger now, his body energized from the food in his stomach. In his hands was a small, netted bag—an onion sack from the kitchen that he'd filled with the shrimp and crab cakes he could not eat. Sam supposed it was something of a security blanket to ensure that he would not immediately go hungry again.

As they cautiously stumbled back out onto the deck, they noticed it was completely abandoned. Not a soul, neither merfolk or human, was in sight. The deck ran a sticky, metallic red in many places, tables and chairs overturned, but nothing remained. The limp body of her father, the body of her mother—all of the rich investors and their small children—all gone. A blood-spattered clock hanging from a wall suggested it was a little after midnight.

"Well," Sam said, voice wavering. She was trying to be confident but was failing. "Maybe that's…for the best."

What would she have done, if she'd walked back onto the deck to see the bodies of her parents half-mauled and left for dead? The thought made her nauseated. As it was, her memories were of her parents as full human beings. Perhaps it really was for the best.

But this meant now that Pamela and Thurston Manson were not only dead but also lost to the sea. If there was anything left of them to be lost.

Tears burned her eyes, and she inhaled shakily. "Mom," she cried softly. Her voice broke. Her mother was what she would consider a generally horrible human being—selfish and vain. They'd fought more than they'd gotten along. And yet now there was a hole inside of her soul, because she knew that the infamous Pamela Manson would never again prance into her room with pink dresses and clouds of perfume and call out, Sammikins!

Her lips pulled back in a sob. Her parents, for all of their faults, had given their lives to save hers in a sacrifice of true love. And they were gone. All gone. She wouldn't even know which blood puddle was theirs to mourn over.

Across the deck, Phantom was holding himself up by the railing, taking small steps towards a large puddle of seawater. He could hear Sam's soft crying, but he did not know how to comfort her. He figured that "mom" was a term of endearment for a mother—but then he had never had one of those. They existed in mer-culture only as legends, for merfolk were not born. The ocean was his only true mother. And the ocean was calling him in ways, reminding him that this human body was not his true form.

But on that thought, maybe he did understand Sam's cry. The need to be beside a mother was like the pain he felt as he stared at the ocean and realized he was not a part of it. "Ngh," he called out to the waves. The midnight air whipped his hair about into his face. The feeling was alien and strange and did not quite match how the currents and eddies would swarm around him in the heart of the merfolk's cove.

The merboy stared at the puddle of water on the deck, then at his hands. If he were truly of the merfolk, then he likely was able to transform back into one. It did not make sense that he could not return to being one. So he stepped forward towards the puddle. If it was a lack of water that had made him change…

The instant he stepped into the large puddle, the flats of his feet covered in water, bright lights covered him and stormed down.

Sam's neck snapped to him, and her eyes widened as she raced to him—only to pull up short.

The bright rings of light stormed down the boy's body—and the next thing both of them knew, he was leaning hard on his arms, his legs gone and replaced with a long and sleek, black tail, the tablecloth he'd used as a covering now fallen to the side.

Sam froze.

Phantom's electric green eyes widened as he stared at the webbed hands before him, and he raised one up to stare at it. His old body. His normal body. It worked. Fear and relief overcame him at once, and he looked up into the eyes of the human he had quasi-bonded with.

Sam made no move. For the first time, she stood in awe of him. But her total lack of response made him fear that he perhaps terrified her in this form. They both grew tentative of each other again, and he backed away from her. His tail curled up, stretching against the wooden deck as he used his arms to push himself away. He instinctively grabbed onto the onion sack of shrimp that had fallen in his transformation, his black claws nearly cutting the material. No matter Sam's opinion of him, he was not going to leave without his extra shrimp and crab cakes.

That seemed to break the tension between them, and a soft, sad giggle escaped Sam. "Oh, good. You're still you."

The merboy tentatively clicked at her, raising his lips in a smile to match hers.

And Sam realized in that moment that this being before her carried some remnant of the legendary status of merfolk—majestic and exotic. The sharp lines of his trim body were shadowed in the night, but his body glowed by itself, the way water would when struck by moonlight. The black scales that trickled from his waist solidified into a powerful tail with sweeping fins that looked to be a translucent silver. "Wow," she whispered. She'd almost forgotten that the boy she'd leaned against and stumbled about with was of the merfolk. And yet here he was now, curled before her in his true form, allowing her to gaze upon him.

He stared at her as well, as if attempting to permanently ingrain her image and scent into his mind. He moved forward again, his strong arms pushing himself forward. His tail curled a bit with the effort, his large fins fanning out and shining. He moved quietly and slowly so as not to scare her, still dragging the shrimp bag with him. Then he held out his clawed hand to her, the webbed fingers opened with invitation.

For a time, only the crash of the waters was between them. Then Sam seemed to come out of her daze, and tentatively, she pressed her fingers against his. His skin was cold and wet from the seawater upon the deck. The skin did not feel entirely human anymore.

He curled his fingers around hers, clicking in curiosity. In this form, he felt the extreme difference in their respective body heats. Her fingers were hot against the webbing of his hand. It tickled a bit when she touched the webbing between his fingers to caress the silk texture.

"I wish I knew your name," she whispered.

Phantom wanted to tell her, but he knew his tongue would not work well in a way she could understand. In his form, he could certainly only click it out.

Suddenly, pounding noises echoed from within the ship, and they both flinched away.

It was human voices—wailing and the static of radio.

"—not hearing sounds any more. Four crew members with me. Coming up on deck now—"

In that second, Sam realized she was not the only human being left. That perhaps a few people had successfully hidden themselves in the underbelly of the small dinner ship, among them a crew member with a radio. Which meant her friend was potentially in danger for more than one reason.

She turned to him, eyes wide. "Go," she whispered, waving back to the water. "I'll be fine. Get out of here." Her voice was pained. "Before they see you!"

Almost reluctantly, Phantom began to back away, his tail curling to propel him. A sharp click escaped his throat. He did not want to leave her. But then he did not want to risk an unpleasant encounter with other humans.

Her whisper strained into a cry. "Go!"

His face twisted in pain. I know. In a graceful turn, he dragged himself to the railing of the ship. And in the blink of an eye, he slipped over the edge, still clutching the bag of food to his body.

The instant the waters encompassed him, fins and scaled fanned out from his skin in a powerful twist. The cold water was a shock to his system, and he nearly shivered, his gills flaring with the now-strange means of obtaining air. The ocean was dark, even for his sharp, predatory eyes, and he felt momentarily lost.

After a few seconds of listlessly floating in a daze, he snapped to attention. His sense of smell began to adjust, and he quickly noted the scent of blood that trailed down into the depths. Judging by the trail, his tribe had already moved back to their home cove.

But he hesitated to follow.

Instead, the merboy found himself staring at the top of the water and the distortion of the dark sky and moon above him.

Sam stood on the deck, blinking back strange tears as she waited for the other humans to walk onto the deck. She wanted to laugh and cry. She'd made a friend out of a merboy who had almost eaten her. She'd killed a merman. Her parents were dead.

And now even the nameless merboy was gone, sunken back into the waters… likely forever.

Her legs lost their strength. She suddenly felt dizzy and strange—as if she were not truly in her own body. "I'm alive," she whispered. She held onto the railing, feeling herself fall. "I'm still alive." Her adrenaline was gone. The next thing she knew, she was sitting in a daze on the blood-washed deck, her eyes wide as she stared at the silent waters. She watched the white caps turn peacefully over into soft waves, moving in a rhythm unknown to all but nature.

It was almost as if nothing had happened. Everything was so quiet.

The next thing she knew, a woman in an engineer suit was kneeling before her, shaking her lightly. "Miss?" her voice wavered in and out. Sam stared at her, almost unblinkingly. Strange, she couldn't remember hearing people walk out onto the deck.

Her arms and legs were shaking. When had she sat down?

"Miss?" the woman called worriedly. Her face turned. "Jim, she's in shock."

A man's voice cut in. "I know, but I'm not a doctor." The static of a radio blitzed over the crash of the ocean waves against the ship. "Mayday, mayday. U.S.S. Titan drifting north with five survivors. Major ocean attack. Requesting immediate air assistance. Mayday, mayday."

But nothing responded.

The man's voice grew more frustrated. "Dammit, our equipment's still shot. I can't connect to anything!"

But the woman wasn't paying attention to him. Instead she was gently holding onto Sam's shoulders. "Dear, are you hurt? Can you hear me?"

To the strangers, Samantha Manson looked as if she should be dead. Her black dress was a frayed mess of fresh and dried blood. The girl's eyes watered with distant tears, and she turned to the engineer woman. "You …s-survived too?" she whispered.

The woman nodded, her own eyes bloodshot. "We hid in the hull," she said. "We heard the screams, and we knew. We tried sending distress signals, but their…noise? A high-pitched something or other—it messed with the frequency. We haven't been able to get a signal out."

Sam's arms and legs began to shake. Everything felt odd, and even her own heartbeat suddenly did not feel like her heartbeat. "Oh," she said. And that's all she could think to say. She'd been in a massacre. She'd nearly been eaten. And her own murderer had become a friend—which was now something that felt like more of a dream than a reality—

Without him beside her, did he really exist?

She collapsed into the woman's arms, dazed. The woman grew worried. "Dear? Dear, can you tell me your name? Oh my goodness—please don't go into shock."

She began to shake, shock finally setting in now that her adrenaline had left her. "Oh my god," she whispered, voice quivering. "Oh my god."

Out of the twenty-odd passengers who'd been on the deck, only she had survived.

The woman's voice grew more panicked. "Jim? Jim, give me an ETA on the turbines. We need to get out of here, now. Before they come back. And we need to get this girl some medical attention."

The other crew member called worriedly, "Look, I don't know what they did to the engines, but the turbines registered a blockage that won't let them spin. We're dead in the water."

"Try it again." The woman's voice broke. "We have to keep trying."

Beneath the water, the white-haired merboy clicked in indecision, swimming about the great turbines that the hunting party had blocked with nets made from whale bone. The human girl, Sam—she was still on the ship, so far away from her people. Others had also survived the hunting party's hunger, for he understood now that the ship was much larger than the deck. That meant they were also separated from their natural home of the land. It was almost comforting, because he knew then that Sam had a few human companions who could help guide their ship back to shore. But that left this net...

It appeared that the turbines were occasionally trying to spin, as if a human were trying to control such sorcery again. The net grinded against it with an awful noise, and he put his hands over his ears, grimacing and hissing at the tone. Humans and their awful technology.

But then deep shame rocked through him as he remembered how his hunger and the hype of the hunting party had made him forget everything but the gnawing pang of his stomach. It had turned him into a monster even worse than the humans and their technology. He'd given into baser instincts, allowing his mind to disappear to a dark place. The look of terror Sam had given him in those moments was nothing to be proud of. Which made the large ship's turbines and their awful noise almost…relative.

He looked around the dark waters, checking to see if he were the only one around. And it looked that he was. He could sense no one to help him.

He supposed the other merfolk had already dragged their victims back to the bottom of the sea to munch on for a couple of days. And he supposed his tribe would laugh and call him weak when he'd go to return to the nesting grounds. They would probably box his ears and fins until he bruised for his incompetence, then ban him from hunting parties so that he could watch over the sick instead and leave the hard work to "real merman."

He looked down at his tan skin and black tail, touching the scales. Now that he'd gone for a bit with legs, it was strange to think of himself with a fish tail. It was strange to think of humans as food, and as the clicking animals who had eaten Sam's companions as family.

Imagine that.

With a grimace, he decided to act on his own. He pulled at the whale bone net that bound the turbines. The hum of the powerful engines as they reactivated reminded him that this was dangerous to do by himself. But for Sam, he would do it. He would not let her drift away into the unknown reaches of the ocean.

His arms shook as he pulled the heavy net away, and then he quickly swam out of range of the turbine. Its blades stopped and started, crunching the net now that a few of its blades were free. Then the turbine beside it began to loosen, starting and stopping, breaking link after link between its blades.

Eventually, the net could not contain the rapidly freeing turbines, and it broke with a great explosion. The merboy shielded himself from the shards that stormed through the water, his fins on his tail fanning out about him protectively. He winced when sharp debris still struck him, nicking his scales and skin.

The water churned and bubbled as the ship began to move again, surging forward, and the merboy watched with mixed emotions, lowering his arms and fins, unable to stop thinking of the human girl Sam as the whale bone floated around him.

Sam. Strange, bright-eyed Sam.

He had too many thoughts and questions now, and he felt a strange sense of justice rise in him. He'd been told that humans were unintelligent, but Sam was not unintelligent. He'd been told that humans did not feel pain, but yet Sam had felt pain—deeply. And she'd still trudged through it to help him, of all people.

He would have to go to the Elders and speak with them in private about his experience—but only the ones he trusted most. He had to learn more about this strange ability to transform into a human, and if anyone else possessed it. He had to learn more about humans.

His mind was racing now. Maybe, sometime in the future, he could try to turn human again to see Sam and perhaps steal more food from the humans. It would allow him to be useful to his tribe while also giving him the chance to remain in contact with the human he felt softness for. But it would mean he'd have to strengthen his legs and learn the human tongue in order to find her. And that meant going to the surface and drying out again, which had not necessarily felt pleasant. And, of course, he'd have to cover up his human form in that illogical, human way.

He sighed, and bubbles escaped from his lips as he ran a hand through his white hair, then opened up his bag of shrimp and crab cakes.

He was still hungry.

A/N: Sorry about the late update; I had some indecision about the plot. I'm still taking ideas if anyone has some. Please review with thoughts, questions, constructive criticism, or requests! Thank you! :)