Chapter 4
Frieda leaned back in the tall grass of the meadow and scanned the surrounding landscape. What a strange country it was! She couldn’t decide if she loved it or wanted to run screaming back to the safety of dry land. Nothing made sense, not even how safe and happy and comfortable the place made her.
She gazed toward the wall. Only adult people walked back and forth in front of it. Why? No matter where she went, she saw only adults. The children remained hidden. Was she really so stuck in the adult world that children remained invisible to her?
A rustle in the grass made her turn around, and Deek stood behind her. He smiled down at her. “What are you doing down there?”
Frieda couldn’t stop herself from smiling back up at him. “I’m just sitting here, relaxing and thinking.”
He sat down on the grass next to her and leaned back on his arms the way she did. “What were you thinking about?”
“I was thinking about the children,” she replied. “And then you showed up.”
He studied her. “And?”
She didn’t say the words out loud. “I met some of your relatives yesterday.”
“I heard,” he replied. “Why didn’t you come to the celebration?”
“Do you mean your birthday celebration?” She snorted. “I wasn’t invited.”
“You don’t need an invitation,” he told her. “They took you to our home, didn’t they? That makes you family.”
“Since when?” she asked. “I just met them for the first time.”
He shook his head and looked away. “You don’t understand how it works here.”
“You’re right,” she replied. “I don’t, and that’s exactly why I didn’t come to your birthday celebration.”
“They would never have been able to take you to the house if you weren’t part of the family,” he told her.
“Why not?” she asked. “What would stop them?”
“The water,” he replied. “They would have taken you somewhere else, but not to our family home. You wouldn’t have been able to find it. It would have been invisible to you, and to them, if the water hadn’t intended you to go there.”
“There’s a big difference between going there and being part of the family,” she pointed out.
“Not here,” he replied. “Going to the house, sitting around with the family and talking about things—you couldn’t do that if you didn’t belong to that house’s family. That’s the way it works here.”
“Does that mean Sasha and Fritz are part of your family, too?” she asked. “They went to your celebration.”
“Fritz has been my best friend since I was a boy,” he replied. “I’m closer to him than his own brothers.”
“Is that how you became his second?” she asked. “I thought one of his own brothers would be second in line to take the Alpha position after him.”
“We don’t have Alphas,” he replied, “and the leader position isn’t handed down through families. Fritz asked me to be his second. He trusts me more than anyone else, including his brothers.”
“What about Trin?” Frieda asked. “If Fritz is family, why didn’t he mate with your sister? I would think the leader would want an Aqinas mate, rather than a foreigner.”
“Sasha is Aqinas. She’s not a foreigner,” Deek replied. “Besides, Trin is already mated. She has four sons of her own.”
Frieda’s eyes widened. “I’m surprised. She doesn’t look old enough.”
“There are so few females here and so many unattached males that females don’t stay single for long,” he told her. “All females here have mates—except you.”
Her head shot up, but she found him gazing at her with quiet interest. She colored and looked away. “Trin told me the Aqinas have the same population problem the other factions have. I suppose that’s why you were so interested to meet me.”
“I wasn’t interested to meet you,” he replied. “I didn’t even know you were here until I met you in the meadow the other day. The water brought me to meet you, so it must have been you who were interested to meet me.”
“All I did,” Frieda shot back, “was look toward the wall and think about meeting some of the people over there. I met Sasha and Fritz, and I wanted to meet someone else. I didn’t ask for you.”
“But you must have,” he countered. “I wouldn’t have come if you hadn’t asked for me.”
Frieda smacked her lips and turned away. “This is ridiculous.”
“And you must have asked for me now, too,” he went on. “When you were thinking about the children, you must have asked for me. That’s the only reason I’m here.”
She threw up her hands. “This is the craziest system of social interaction I ever heard of. Who could live like this? It’s impossible.”
“Quite a lot of people live like this,” he replied. “From what I’ve seen in the convocations, the Aqinas are the biggest faction on the planet.”
“How is that possible?” she asked.
“It’s simple,” he replied. “We don’t sacrifice large segments of our population in repeated wars the way the others do. We live a peaceful life of family and connection.”
“You’re right,” she murmured. “I don’t know how the other factions can stand it.”
“They can’t stand it,” he told her. “They’re on the brink of collapse from the pressure on their populations. They don’t have enough women to replace the men they keep wasting in these senseless wars. If they keep going the way they are, the Aqinas will be the only faction left on this planet.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she asked.
“No, we wouldn’t like it at all,” he countered. “We’ve done everything we can to keep peace with the other factions, but they insist on hating each other. There’s nothing any of us could do to stop them.”
“What will you do if they collapse?” she asked.
He shrugged. “We haven’t discussed it, but I’m sure we would take in the stragglers if they wanted to come. We would certainly welcome any females that wanted to come, but we would require the males to give up their warlike ways. They would have to if they wanted to live underwater.”
Frieda nodded. “That makes sense.”
“What about you?” he asked. “Have you decided whether you want to stay, or will you go back to the land?”
“I haven’t decided,” she replied. “I can see advantages to going back, and I wouldn’t want to give them up by staying here.”
“What are the advantages of going back?” he asked.
“In the first place,” she replied, “I could see my family again and set their minds at ease that I’m alive and well and not dead in a stream somewhere. As generous and kind as your family was, it only made me miss my own family more.”
He nodded. “I can understand that.”
“I might even be able to help the Aqinas by going back,” she went on.
“How could you help us?” he asked. “We don’t need any help.”
“You’re wrong there,” she replied. “Trin said you would never ask the human women to leave the Lycaon to come here to help rebuild your population. A human woman who had been here and went back could explain to them what it’s really like. Some of them might decide to give it a try, once they heard firsthand what it’s like.”
He cocked his head. “Interesting idea.”
“The other factions are suspicious of you because they know nothing about you,” she went on. “No one has ever come back from the Aqinas. Everything they know about you comes from the brief times you’ve stuck your noses out of the water to intervene in their affairs. It makes sense they would impute the worst motives to your actions.”
He listened with sparkling eyes.
“Someone who knew you and could describe in detail how you live and how you think could dispel those myths and prejudices,” she told him. “Someone like that could get the human women to come and live with you. I knew a lot less when I made the decision to go live with the Avitras. If someone told me what I know now, I might have come here instead.”
“Would you, really?” he asked. “Are you sure about that?”
She dropped her eyes to the ground. “Well, maybe not. But it certainly would have helped. Besides, Sasha is here. When they hear there’s another human woman here mated to one of your men, they’ll realize it can’t be all bad. No one knows Sasha is here. They probably think it isn’t possible for a human to live here. They think you’re slugs living in the mud.”
He burst out laughing.
She smiled. “It isn’t so funny when you think the Aqinas could also collapse from some misguided sense of social honor that stops you from sending word to the Lycaon that you’re in just as desperate need of females as the other factions. You should be grateful someone is willing to carry that message for you.”
His laughter died, but his eyes twinkled. He leaned forward and took her hand. “You’re right, and I am grateful. I’m glad to hear the only reasons you could have for leaving are concern for your family and concern for the Aqinas. I’m glad you don’t hate it here enough to want to leave.”
“I don’t hate it here,” she replied. “I love it here.”
His eyes widened. “You do?”
“Sure,” she replied. “What’s not to love? The whole place is geared to be perfect in every way. It’s the most ideal, most beautiful place I can possibly imagine.” She chuckled. “I guess that’s the whole point.”
“Then why don’t you stay?” he asked.
“I haven’t decided if I’m going to stay or not,” she replied. “But whatever I decide to do, it will be permanent. If I leave, I can’t come back, and if I stay, I can’t leave.”
“You can always leave,” he told her. “You’re not a prisoner here.”
She shook her head. “If I decide to stay, I will stay. There’s no going back. I couldn’t live here with the question always nagging at my mind if I should be here or not. I have to decide and stand by my decision. That’s the only way I could live with it.”
He gazed into her eyes. Then he laughed again. “Now I understand why the water brought me to meet you.”
“Why?” she asked.
“What you just said about making a decision and standing by it,” he replied. “That’s why.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” He shook his head and chuckled. “Believe me, whatever decision you make, I’m sure it will be the right one.”
“I’m glad you think so,” she replied. “I’m not so sure.”
His laughter died and he became serious again. “You’re a strong woman who knows your own mind. You might not be sure what you will do yet, but your way will become clear to you soon enough. When you make your decision, you will go through with it and never look back.”
She stared at him. “Is that all you have to say?”
“What more do you want me to say?” he asked.
“Aren’t you going to beg me to stay?” she asked.
“Beg?” he repeated. “No, I won’t beg you to do anything.”
She blushed. “I don’t mean beg. I wouldn’t want you to beg, either. I only meant aren’t you going to say you don’t want me to leave?”
“You should know by now I don’t want you to leave,” he replied. “None of us does. We need you too much.”
She smacked her lips. “I know that. I’m not talking about the Aqinas. I’m talking about you.”
He studied her with his head on one side. “What about me?”
She yanked her hand out of his grip. “You’re impossible. Go away.”
But he didn’t go away. He sat there and scrutinized her with his inscrutable expression. The longer he sat there, the more he annoyed her. This was the first time someone hadn’t immediately withdrawn from her presence at her first thought that she might prefer to be alone.
She glared at him. “What are you still doing here?”
He smiled. Then he sighed. “All right. You win.”
“Did we have a contest?” she shot back.
He leaned forward and took her hand, and this time, it wasn’t like all the times Jen and Trin and Sasha took her hand. His was the first human touch she’d felt since she gave her sister Anna a hug the night before she fell out of that tree. Of all the people who took her by the hand in Aqinas territory since then, he was the first to really touch her.
His expression softened. He wasn’t playing anymore. “Don’t leave, Frieda. Stay here.”
She caught her breath so she could barely answer. “What are you saying?”
“The water knows what we want and what we need even better than we do,” he replied. “You said you were thinking about meeting Aqinas, and it brought me to you. You said you were thinking about children, and it brought me to you a second time in answer to your questions. Don’t you see? We belong together.”
She considered pulling her hand away, but she couldn’t summon the strength to do it. “You’re crazy.”
“Am I?” he asked. “Why do you think the water brought my mother and sister and relatives to you, and brought you to our family home? You’re part of our family. You’re my family.”
She shut her eyes against the inevitable, but a flood of images tumbled through her mind where the sight of his face used to be. The whole sequence of events, from meeting him the first time, to meeting his family and going with them to their house, her conversations with Jen and Trin—and now.
If she believed all this hocus-pocus about the water creating a fantasy environment where everything and everyone appeared in their most idealized form, she had no choice but to believe this, too. It would bring her the man she most perfectly matched. If she thought about children, it would bring her the man most suited to give them to her and to accompany her into a future where they shared family, community, home, and country.
Ever since she landed on Angondra, her destiny, along with all the other human women with her, was bound inextricably to the men with whom they mated. None of those women found a stable home for themselves until they met the man with whom they would share their lives. The men bound them to Angondra, to their people, to their homes, to their futures.
Why would it be any different with her? She didn’t find any man that inspired her in Lycaon territory, and she wasn’t in Avitras territory long enough to form more than a passing acquaintance with anyone. If she wandered through the Aqinas world without connecting with anybody, she would certainly leave and go back to the land in search of a stronger connection. The water matched her with a man she could connect with. If she couldn’t connect with Deek, she couldn’t connect with anybody on this planet or anywhere else.
Where would she go if she did leave? She wouldn’t try again to find a faction she could call her own. If she didn’t stay with the Aqinas, no other faction would ever be her own. How could a simple touch of his hand make her so certain of that? But it did. She would search for her sisters. She would visit her cousin Aimee in the Lycaon village, and she would tell the Angondran people what she knew about the Aqinas. But she wouldn’t make any further effort to find a mate. That search ended here, with Deek.
Her vision cleared, and she started in surprise when she saw the glazed look in his eyes. He gazed at some point over her shoulder. He was seeing the same vision in the water. All of a sudden, his eyes snapped to her face, and the sparkle returned to them.
He squeezed her hand. “You won’t leave. You’ll stay.”
“What makes you so certain?” She didn’t even have to ask.
He gazed at her for a moment. Then he bent over and kissed her. He kept his lips firm and closed, with no soft, mushy open-mouthed passion. He planted a quick kiss on her lips and pulled back to look her in the eye again.
“What was that for?” she asked.
“I just thought I’d get it over with,” he told her. “No sense prolonging the inevitable.”
She drew farther back. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
He held onto her hand. “Why not? We both know we belong together. You won’t leave. You’ll stay here, and we’ll be mated, and we’ll be one family.”
“What about my sisters?” she asked. “I already have a family on land. You don’t really expect me to turn my back on them, do you?”
He paused. “I don’t expect you to turn your back on them.”
“I’ll have to find them some day,” she told him, “and the only way to do that is to leave the water.”
He gazed across the meadow toward the wall and nodded. “You’re right.”
“How can I stay here, then?” She still couldn’t form the words to say she would stay with him. That would be giving away too much.
He faced her, and when he pressed her hand this time, the warm reassurance of his touch drew her even deeper into the protective comfort surrounding her on all sides. That comfort and protection came from the water. Its silky currents caressed every inch of her skin and even her heart and mind and spirit.
His hand cradling hers represented better than anything else the seamless harmony of water bathing all these people and connecting them to one another through their very cells. It left no gap between them the way air did on land. They shared a collective consciousness through the water with no friction, no isolation, no discord.
She became aware of his lips against hers, but this time, she could detect no line of demarcation between his skin and hers. She had no skin, and neither did he. They were one organism in the water. She understood all his thoughts and feelings and desires, and she offered no resistance to him knowing hers.
She stared straight ahead into the vast limitless universe of the ocean. Only through her conscious vision did she comprehend she stared at that universe through Deek’s eyes.