Free Perchance To Dream by Holly Newman Page B

her!
    Dreams and reality collided. She sat in the shallows, combing her hair with long methodical strokes, hair that fell about her like a veil. Her hair glowed where it floated in the water.
    She looked up at him, her pink bow-shaped lips lifting in a brief smile, a shy recognition of his existence, then she returned to her task. Her eyes remained downcast, but he knew she was as aware of him as he was of her.
    He gripped the boat's railing. In the soft dawn light her pale beauty ethereally shimmered, reminding him of fairy tales and legends and why knights fought for their ladies. She epitomized dreams turned to reality, of a future that might exist separate from the past. A part of him savored her discovery, for she represented a magical release from all that had gone on before, and a lodestone for the future.
    Part of him feared he experienced a waking sleep . . .or a mind gone mad.
    The boat drifted toward a rocky shore. Quickly he lowered the sails and turned toward the stern of the boat to throw out and set the anchor. He hadn't sailed carefully between coral walls just to founder his boat on the rocks.
    What should he do? How did a man address a dream woman? A creature of fantasy? My God, a Mermaid!
    He would address her as he would any other woman he wished to impress. He'd hail her, introduce himself, and treat her with courtly manners and respect. This delicate, beautiful creature deserved no less.
    He turned back to her, but she'd vanished.
    "No!" He clasped the boat's mahogany railing. "Don't disappear! Dammit, where are you?" He searched for her on the shore and in the water, but he saw only the eternal waves lapping the worn rocks on the shore.
    "I won't hurt you. I just wish to talk to you," he called out. Still, she did not appear.
    "Damn!" He quickly pulled off his shoes, tore off his vest, then climbed onto the railing and dove cleanly into the water.
    Everything had a strange familiarity.
    He swam toward the shore, searching the shallows for her. He crawled over and around all the rocks, ran up and down the rocky shore, then examined the steep cliffs that surrounded the cove, searching for stairs or caves, searching for some explanation for her disappearance.
    Searching for some evidence of her existence.
    It was as if she had been only an extension of his dreams and reality returned to remembered wisps of dreams.

     
    He asked about her at the plantation, in town, and among others on the island; but no one knew any woman, or creature, that might answer his description. But his questions set island tongues wagging. Otis Reed's voice took on a shriller note whenever he addressed Andrew, the house servants wouldn't look at him when he gave them orders or they served him food, and the field hands balked at working in the cane fields nearest the sea.
    On Sunday he walked down to the free market. It was the one day of the week the island slaves could call their own. They could buy and sell goods freely and keep whatever profits they achieved.
    He asked everyone he passed about the woman in the cove. They all shied away from him, from this crazy white man who had dealings with Merfolk. Only the oldest plantation slave, chewing pieces of splintered sugarcane as he sat by his goods at the Sunday free market, nodded.
    "You be cursed to see the Merfolk," he said, then he crossed himself and muttered a prayer under his breath.
    "Cursed?" Andrew repeated.
    The gray-grizzled old man sagely nodded. "Dey say to see a Merfolk, a man he be destined to die by the sea. Dat what dey do say, young mastah," he explained. "You best be stayin' away from dat cove if you be valuin' your life."
    Which was all the more reason for him to return to the cove, for he didn't value his life.
    Merfolk. Creatures of legends and fantasy. Hell, he needed a bit of fantasy in his life, he'd decided. And the Caribbean islands proved an appropriate locale.

     
    Occasionally thereafter he caught glimpses of her in what he'd come to think of as