He sat back, propping his feet on the beer crate. ‘Go off and give yourself the space to work out whether you like this fella of yours. Or go find a new fella, or a pretty lass, or whatever it is that makes your heart beat like it’s worth banging out a tune. Cuz I’d wager it ain’t making any noise at all out here.’
Having dropped this advice like a five hundred pound barbell, Graham continued drinking in silence.
He really did make it sound simple. And Rory was on the verge of going for it.
Was it possible to reinvent his life?
Was there space for a big blue merman in it?
For a quiet moment, while the waves were calm under a bright moon, anything felt possible.
Chapter Eighteen
Rory rose even earlier than usual the next morning.
He started by spending time in front of his bathroom mirror. Tidying up, he told himself. Shaving away the neck stubble and neatening his scruff of beard. But he was also, surreptitiously, checking for gills.
Rory avoided the thought as soon as it crossed his mind and continued to steadfastly not think it even as he carefully prodded his throat.
Surely there’d have been some evidence in his family’s history if somehow, somewhere way back down the line, someone had gotten intimate with a denizen of the deep? It wasn’t the kind of story a family would forget, right?
Fionn’s tale about humans and mermen living together had been swimming around his brain for days.Picts.Of course Rory knew about the Picts. Anyone with an ounce of Scottish pride who could draw their family tree past a few hundred years in the Highlands liked to say they were descended from the Picts.
Anyone including Hamish Douglas. Scottish through and through, he’d always said. An Ullapool boy until the day he’d die.
As for Nancy Douglas, Rory’s mother…
Rory knew a little about her history. Her family came from Lancashire, as English as Hamish was Scottish. Nancy was a nurse and had met Hamish while on a long holiday exploring the Scottish Highlands. They became penfriend sweethearts, andeventually he asked her to marry him. She moved to Ullapool and settled down.
Then Rory came along, and five years later she died.
Rory’s memories of her consisted of little more than soft hugs and a calm voice reading him a bedtime story about ducks. He wondered what she would think of him now, entertaining the idea of something as absurd as merman heritage.
All this passed behind Rory’s eyes with only the faintest glimmer of acknowledgement from his expression in the mirror.
The fact he was even half-thinking such non-thoughts was proof, in a way, that Rory wanted to see this soul bond business through. Because maybe it really was fate. A chance at something new, offering him a hand up and out of the future he’d resigned himself to. Or more like yanking him—dragging him forcefully out of the fugue state he’d built through all his non-choices.
Today Rory was making a choice. And he was terrified of where it might lead him.
He left the house quietly, slipping down Ullapool’s backstreets in grey dawn twilight. Rory didn’t want anyone to spot where he was going, or to interrupt him for that matter. He knew he’d lose his nerve if given the chance.
There was a secluded cove outside of town, a sort of sheltered beach with a few sea caves extending into the cliffs. Too rocky and slimy with seaweed to make for an attractive seaside spot, so it was rarely visited by people.
Rory had grown up swimming in the waters of this cove when he wasn’t diving into the harbour with Graham. The water was bloody cold even in summer. He mildly dreaded setting foot in it at 6 AM when the sun hadn’t even had chance to graze it yet, but some part of him felt the water was necessary. As though it would help open the connection he was seeking.
It’s not a feckin’ phone line,he told himself while grumpily taking his boots and socks off. He left them on a rock and waded ankle deep into the surf.
The soul bond swirled in his chest, not totally unlike a poorly digested curry fighting to come back up. Rory found it to be an uneasy feeling as he tried to reach within himself to meet this constant tugging. He closed his eyes, letting the bond pull at him in time with the waves washing over his feet.
He was glad of his oilskin keeping the wind out. It was a bitter morning and the chill threatened to break his concentration. The water was strangely warm, however. Not the walking-on-glass-shards freezing cold that he’d been prepared for.
The warmth crept up his legs from his feet. Rory’s skin began to itch again.
‘Fucking concentrate,’ he berated himself.
He wasn’t sure what he needed to do, exactly. How to bring Fionn… here. Or even what he was going to say to him, if the merman showed up. But Rory knew he was deciding to dosomething. He hadn’t figured out exactly what it was, but he was doing it.
He stared out over the loch in the direction of the Minch. The sun was rising behind him, casting his shadow over the gentle waves.
