Each Step Like Knives Read Online Free PDF Page A

another
room.
     
    He followed her toward a bowl of carved shell. She
held his arm over the bowl and sliced it deeply until the blood
flowed, thick like sludge, into the container. Not one drop of it
was lost to the water, and Jeenai shook his head in wonder at her
power. She ran her finger along the wound, and it closed up.
     
    She gestured for him to wait while she uncapped many
bottles and dispensed many vile substances into the bowl. She mixed
it with a sharpened bone, then offered it to him. He took it, but
didn't drink.
     
    "You understand you won't be able to talk to her.
Our bodies aren't made for their sort of communication, and she
won't understand our language."
     
    "I'll make her understand." The shell bowl had grown
warm in his hands.
     
    The hag rolled her eyes. "Your gill slits will
close. You'll have to breathe air, the way they do, through your
nose or your mouth. Fresh water will do you no harm, but enter the
sea, or let even a drop of the sea water touch you, and you'll turn
back into what you were when you came into this place. Do you
understand?"
     
    He lifted his hands from his waist to his chest. It
was hard to speak with the bowl in his grip, but she understood his
answer. "Yes."
     
    "You'll have legs." She spat toward the sand floor.
"Nasty, ugly things. You'll have them, and they'll work, but every
step will be as though you walked on knives. Do you understand
that, mal?"
     
    "I do."
     
    "You are willing to live in near-constant agony for
this split-tail?"
     
    "I am." He shifted the bowl.
     
    "Because you...love her?" The hag sounded curious,
as though she could not understand such a thing.
     
    Jeenai didn't understand it himself. "From what I
know of love, yes. I want to be with her. To touch her. To hear her
speak my name."
     
    "She won't do that, you fool." The hag gestured at
the bowl. "Just remember, you'll look human, and you can learn to
act human, but human you will never be! Her mouth can't form your
name any more than you'll be able to speak hers aloud. You can have
the fuck with her, I've no doubt, for your cock will remain
unchanged, just no longer protected as it is for us.
     
    "One more thing, foolish mal. If you decide you do
not love her after all, all you need do is return to the sea. But
if she does not love you as you do her, if she chooses another over
you, all of this will vanish. You will become nothing more than
foam on the waves. You won't even be able to live out the rest of
your natural life here below. You will die."
     
    He nodded. "I understand."
     
    The hag released him. "Go on. Drink your brew. And
one more thing, stupid mal."
     
    "Yes?"
     
    She gave him a leer so wicked it made his eyes burn.
"Don't forget to take a deep breath. You're going to need it."
     
    The brew burned his gut as it went down. Agony
doubled him over. His tail thrashed, sending him upward, and he
gulped the breath the hag told him to take. In moments, another
searing pain ripped through him, this time centered in his tail. He
pushed with it, trying to reach the surface before he changed
completely.
     
    He didn't make it. His lungs were bursting, but his
gill slits were no longer working. His legs pushed with little
effect against the water. He looked down into the depths, but his
eyes no longer could see in the dark. They burned and stung.
     
    The hag swam up below him. She gestured and twirled.
The water swirled around her hands then rose up toward him. It
captured him, cradled him, and lifted him upward in its spout until
it pushed him above the surface.
     
    He still couldn't breathe. He could barely move. He
was caught in the maelstrom that rode the waves toward the shore.
Pain engulfed him. He couldn't think.
     
    Then, just when he thought even turning to foam
would be better than the agony tearing him apart, he saw her. The
woman he had fallen in love with. She reached for him, her face a
mask of wonder and terror, and somewhere inside himself, Jeenai
found the strength to