Free Awakened: A New Twist on a Timeless Tale by Melissa Marr Page B

This man, Leo, has my soul in his hands.
    “That’s mine,” I say. “Please give it back.”
    “No.” He stops then, turns, and looks at me. “Since I have it, you are mine.” He strokes the skin in his arms as he stares at me. “Tell me your name.”
    “Eden,” I say. “I’m called Eden.”
    “Let’s go home, Eden.”
    I cannot go
home
. Instead, I have to obey him. It is the order of things, and so I walk away from my home. “Yes, Leo.”
    He smiles, trying to appear kind, pretending he means me no harm. Hate ripples through me like the waves during a storm as he leads me farther onto land. It’s not an unfamiliar feeling. I hate many of the humans who spill their refuse into my sea, who leave their rubbish on the sands, who desecrate my world with their noise and filth.
    I whimper at the weight of loss, at the freedom that might never be mine again.
    His gaze falls to my bare feet. “Would you like me to carry you?”
    “No,” I manage to say. He
is
carrying part of me and that is the reason I am trying not to weep. I cannot say anything to change this: while he keeps my skin in his possession, I, too, am a possession. I am bound to obey the words he speaks, trapped under his whim and will.
    Leo is quiet as we walk. I study him and find that he is strangely beautiful in that way that the very assured often are. He’s taller than me, but he looks to be only a bit older. He’s young and handsome. In times long gone, he would’ve been the sort of man a selchie felt lucky to have as a captor, but I never expected to be a captive. I believed that they had forgotten how to ensnare us. When a selchie woman’s skin is found, she has no choice. Many husbands could be unsightly or brutish, but a selchie must follow, must stay, where her skin is kept. Once one of
them
takes your other-skin, your soul, into his arms, you are his.
    I want to weep; I want to run from him. I can’t do either. All I can do is wait and hope that he will slip, that he will do one of the two things that will set me free. If he strikes me three times in anger or if he allows me to have possession of my other-skin, I can return to the sea. I hope that he does not know the truths, that his ignorance will lead to my escape, that I will be whole again one day, that I will not lose myself in captivity. I know my history, but most of the land-dwellers have forgotten that we are here. Their ignorance is our safety.
    But I am following a boy who owns me now, and I think that he was watching for me tonight. Those of us who live in the waters look much like the land-dwelling—at least when we are wearing only this skin. He glances at me, and I know that he sees only the part of me that looks like I belong on land. Other men have looked at me that way. I’ve walked on shore, and I’ve known men. None of them knew that there was another shape to me. They saw only
this
skin.
    Leo knows more, and so I am trapped. The sea calls out, beckoning as waves do, but Leo leads me away. There is nothing more I can do.
    Yet.
    He says nothing more as he takes me to his home, a house that sits on an otherwise empty stretch of beach. It’s a large squatting thing, a building of so many rooms that I become lost and sit weeping in the darkness until Leo finds me. After he chides me for foolishness, he leads me back to the room that he’s assigned me. He does not want me to share his room. This, I think, is for his own reasons, not as a kindness to me.
    As he stands just inside the doorway, he kisses me. It’s a soft peck upon the top of my salt-heavy hair. “Silly girl,” he says, but there is affection in his words.
    Perhaps all will be well. Perhaps I will be able to convince him to free me.
    Over the next few days, I realize that Leo can be kind. I am grateful for this. There are moments when I don’t feel as if the world around me is too bright, too harsh, too alien. They are few, but they are present. He tries to make me smile, and sometimes I