Page 12 of Anchored to the Storm

While Styx kept wiping my face, I reached and touched hers. “Aw, ’aby. I’ o’ay. No c’y.”

Tears kept flowing as she kissed my palm. “Mad-G. Mad-G.”

My brain started to feel a little lightheaded, and I sounded like a schoolboy as I asked Styx, “Ca’ she stay da nigh’?”

Tilting his head back, he responded. “You want the mermaid to have a sleepover?”

As my upper body began to sway, I wasn’t sure of what was happening. “Yeah, Saweeni mek eve’thing be’er.”

“Oh fuck!” Styx caught my upper body, and that was all I remembered of that night.

I woke the next morning to daylight shining through the bulletproof window. I was back in bed and under the blanket. Besides being a little confused about how I ended up here, or why I was only in my underwear briefs, I didn’t feel absolutely horrible.

On the nightstand closest to the bathroom, I saw my knuckles. Styx was resting in a chair facing my side. As soon as he heard me wake, his eyes popped open, and with his head hung forward, he quietly chanted, “Thank you. Thank you…”

Unable to process his reaction, my thoughts instantly centered on Saleeni. “Where is she? What happened?”

Elbows to his knees, he lifted his head, taking a deep breath. “She was at the seawall last time I saw her. You passed out. I had to bring you inside and tend to you.” His words began to rush as I attempted to sit up to find her. “Maddox, please.” Standing, he easily pushed my weak body back down. “We need to talk.”

I went to push him away but noticed my hand. “Where’s the bandage?”

“Maddox, we need to talk,” he repeated with more urgency.

Staring at where I had cut my hand to blood bond with my fellow fosters, I mumbled, “Healed.”

With a touch of exhaustion, Styx nodded. “Everything is healed. Your hand, your chest, your—” He looked away.

“My what?”

He plopped down in the chair again. “Your… new teeth.”

My eyes closed, remembering all the blood last night…

It felt as if the mattress I was lying on was opening up and trying to swallow me alive. In fear of being lost forever, my right hand shot into the air above me. In less than three days, I had been surrendered by my foster parents, picked up by a man who I was told was dead and ‘by the way I’m your grandpa’, brought to a new/old home, told my father was biologically part of some sort of aquatic race, and that my childhood imagination was actually factual.

I needed a savior. Someone to keep me from falling into an oblivion most have never even heard of.

Styx’s grip—palm to palm and forearm to forearm—was once again the stability to keep me from altogether losing my shit.

Eyes still closed, a deep voice whispered in my ear, “Nothing is impossible. Nothing is impossible…”

Air started to fill my lungs again as my low voice joined his chant, “Nothing is impossible. Nothing is impossible…”

Three simple words spoke so much truth. Not believing in myths didn’t mean they didn’t exist. Thinking I was human didn’t mean it was wrong to be a hybrid. What is a human, after all, if not the result of millions of years of evolution?

Holding his hand so tightly I might have stopped his blood flow, my eyes drifted open. I teetered on the verge of either tears or fire-breathing rage. “Every time I get smacked with my new reality, I feel as if I might implode or explode. Not sure which to do.”

He pulled our joined arms to his chest. “I say do nothing until you’re sure.”

Noma… My eyes welled. “You sound like her.”

He exhaled so much sorrow, yet spoke words that showed he was deeply touched. “What a kind thing to say.”

Very few times did I speak of the woman I missed so damn badly, but for some reason, it felt like the right thing to do at this crucial moment. “Since she had you in her life, that means she… wasn’t lonely, right?”

Styx, sucking in air, told me how off-guard I had caught him. “Umm…” He appeared perplexed before adding, “Shit, kid. In one of your loneliest moments, you ask about her well-being?”

“How do you know I’m lonely?”