Page 57 of The Sixth Spring

Itori nuzzled the back of his neck. “I do not want you to be lonely.”

“It’s just my lot in life,” Will said the words, but he was suddenly not sure if he meant them.

“What if it could be different?” Itori asked.

Will’s heart leapt at that, and he wanted to stomp on it. To question the box he was in was one thing, but to hope that beyond the walls was something better was almost too painful to consider.

“I don’t know,” Will mumbled. Then, because he didn’t want to linger on this anymore. “What about you? You have… parents, I think you’ve mentioned.”

“Yes,” Itori said slowly, as if he was hesitant to change subjects. “I visit them once a season. We are close.”

“Oh.”

“I will stay with them when I leave here. They will help me find a new home.”

“Oh,” Will said again. He was still trying to stuff his feelings back into a box so he didn’t have a breakdown. It seemed like everything he and Itori shared recently was designed to prick at him. He didn’t understand it.

The hand in his squeezed. “I think they would like you,” Itori said.

“What?”

“My parents. They have been worried I would never–but if it were you, I think they would be happy.” He made a fluting sound that Will was beginning to associate with amusement. “If surprised you are human.”

“I–you’d want me to meet your parents?” The mere idea was shocking.

“Yes.”

Will blinked rapidly, confused. That almost sounded like…

But Itori wasn’t human. It didn’t have to mean the same thing. It wasn’t possible anyway. Itori’s parents probably lived north, in a deep spring. And Will couldn’t leave here.

“I’d like that,” Will said anyway. He’d been gloomy enough for one evening.

Itori squeezed his hand, his other arm wrapping tighter around Will’s waist. “Then we shall. When I am strong enough, we will travel north and you will meet them.”

That sounded like a beautiful dream. “Okay,” Will said, even as he knew it was impossible. When Itori left, Will couldn’t go with him. He was tethered here.

Will tilted his head back against Itori’s chest, feeling the cold pearl slide across his skin. The enormous hollow of his future after Itori pressed down on his shoulders.

He closed his eyes. Behind his eyelids he imagined a different future, one where he and Itori waded into a spring to meet his parents. Parents who would not only approve of him, but love him. Pull him into their arms and hug him, tell him he was good.

In his fantasy, they all went into the waters together. They swam into the depths, and Itori showed him his world. Will stayed there and was never lonely, never untouched and unloved ever again.

But when Will opened his eyes, he saw their grasped hands. His own were small and pale and human. He had no gills or webbing, no way to live in the water.

No matter how much he ached for it, he could not live in a spring, and Itori could not stay here.

Chapter 12

The next day, Will found himself staring at Becky’s necklace.

He’d never given her jewelry much thought before, but having just been given his own necklace, Will was finding himself noticing jewelry.

Today there’d been wedding rings and butterfly earrings and jelly bracelets. He’d even noticed that Mr. Scarci wore a necklace when he came through the line. It was a thick gold chain, decidedly masculine where it peeked out from his shirt, but it was still a necklace. On a man.

Will was learning too that jewelry often said something about the wearer. It would match their ethnicity or personality. Women sometimes even color coordinated their jewelry to their outfit.

But Becky’s puka shells made no sense. It matched nothing about Becky’s preppy, pink styling.