Free Lies Beneath by Anne Greenwood Brown

tightened at the sound of my name on her lips. “I can’t get in the water with her.” Maris knew that. I growled with frustration, “I haven’t had the chance to build up any tolerance to the lake yet. I won’t be able to hold back the change.”
    “Fine. We’ll wait it out.” Maris looked up at the clouds. “She’ll be dead in a few minutes anyway.” Maris sat down on the rock. “Maybe this will be even better. You can carry both of his children home— one dead, the other clinging to life.” She seemed to play the scene out in her mind, and I could see she liked it.
    A trawler sped by, close to shore but not seeing the girl in the water. It created an onslaught of waves that battered Lily against the jagged edge of the rock. She was pinned to it, then sucked back, only to be slammed into the rock again. Another wave lifted her up and smashed her right cheek against the cliff.
    There was nothing for her to grab. There was nothing to put her foot on. Clouds roiled overhead.
A half second later my phone was at my ear. “Pavati, has Tallulah done anything yet?” I exhaled. “Well, don’t. . . . You heard me. We’ve got a big problem. I’ve got a big problem,” I
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corrected. “Just bring the little girl straight home. I’ll explain later. . . . Pavati? Are you listening to me?”
    There was a “Yes” on the other end just as my phone beeped. Out of minutes. I chucked it into the woods.
There were no more screams from the water. I peered over the edge. Lily was vertical in the water, her arms extended, head tipped back. Her face went under, then resurfaced, only to dip under the waterline again. She exhaled and inhaled quickly with each resurfacing.
“Oh, man, I can’t believe I’m doing this.” I said, stripping off my clothes.
“You’re going in, then?” Maris asked, her voice bored.
“What choice do I have?”
We could both hear the “He- he- heh” of Lily’s desperate intakes and exhales. She couldn’t get the oxygen necessary for an effective plea. She didn’t have much time. I desperately hoped there would be no one else on the path this close to a storm. The last thing I needed was spectators.
I stood naked at the edge of the cliff and closed my eyes, my lips rolled inward. I wasn’t sure what I was waiting for— maybe something to convince me this was the stupidest thing I’d ever done. I’d never transformed in the water near a human I intended to release. As far as I knew, none of us had. If this was going to work, she couldn’t see me, and Lake Superior was notoriously clear.
The anticipatory tingling crept through my body, starting in my toes, then spreading upward and inward. It rode roughshod over my carefully cultivated self- control until my internal organs rammed around like bumper cars at the fair. The electrical flow was so strong, my hair stood up on my head.
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    “Get it together, Calder,” Maris said as she examined her fingernails. “You hit the water with that many volts and you’re going to zap every fish within a hundred feet. It’ll be fish floats all over the place, and it probably won’t help the girl, either.”
    I took one last look over the edge. Lily was gone. I exhaled, blowing all the electricity out of me and into the air. It fizzed in the humidity. When I felt only a dull numbness, I dove.
A strangely smooth feeling came over me as I soared through the air. When I hit the black water, it was with such precision that it was like being threaded through a needle.
Down, down, at least three fathoms, until my hands touched sand. I opened my eyes and swam back toward the rock. I thrashed as the change happened, then beat my tail even more to stir up the sandy bottom. If I couldn’t resist the change, at least I could make it more difficult for her to see me, but clouding the water made it harder for me to find her. I followed her scent, turning in a circle, my head meeting my tail. I crisscrossed my arms in front of me, feeling for something