She could tell the village council what happened, but who would believe her? Her intruder left no trace except for a distinctive scent. He’d stolen nothing except her peace of mind and sense of safety, intangible things as precious as her flute. What did he want if not the flute? Why had her practice notes drawn him like a shark to blood in the water?
Any drowsiness she suffered burned away under the heat of her rage. She almost regretted not finding Ospodine still lurking in her house just so she’d have the pleasure of beating an apology out of him with the fireplace poker.
The image of the beached merman and merchild rose in her mind’s eye, cooling the fire of her anger and replacing it with an urgency of a different kind. She’d somehow deal with Ospodine later. She still had the flute, the key to her half-mad plan in saving her charges. Nightfall couldn’t arrive soon enough.
Evening brought a clearing of clouds along with colder temperatures as Brida hurried through the village’s deserted streets toward the distant beach. Even if she owned a horse, she’d still go on foot, unnoticed as she flitted between houses and skirted the pools of candle light spilling from windows as people settled in for the night.
She huddled in her heaviest shawl, teeth chattering as the damp breeze blowing off the Gray cut through layers of clothing to raise gooseflesh on her skin. She glanced over her shoulder every few steps to make sure no one had seen her, or worse, was following. Once past the village’s perimeter, she broke into a sprint, cutting a swath through the salt grass toward the shore. Part of her prayed the two merfolk still lived, another part cautioned her not to put much hope in the notion.
The tide had come in, black waves capped in white foam creeping farther and farther up the beach with every purl of the surf. Wet sand sucked at her bare feet, and cold water swirled around her ankles as she ran toward the tidal pools concealed by the short ridge of rocks.
A chorus of whistles, carried on a brine-scented wind, rose above the surf’s thunder, and Brida stumbled to a halt at the eerie sight of small, greenish lights flickering in the troughs and peaks of the waves like fireflies. Swatches of clouds floated past a bright half moon that paved a silver road on the water’s surface.
“My gods,” Brida breathed.
Moonlight unveiled the source of the lights. Not fireflies, but eyes, bright with the animal eyeshine that shone at night in many creatures, wild and tame alike. A cluster of the glowing eyes gathered in the water directly across from the tidal pools where the merfolk were beached, and Brida caught glimpses of flukes slapping the water as their calls grew in number and volume. Two of the whistles were repeated over and over. Names. They were the two names the merman had whistled to her on a weak breath. His kinsmen were calling to him and the wee girl trapped with him.
She resumed her sprint toward the tidal pools, splashing water as she ran. The whistles abruptly stopped, and the waves went dark. The merfolk had seen her. Brida prayed they didn’t swim away. She would need their help.
The merman and child were black silhouettes under the shadows cast by the rocks that sheltered them. Seaweed floated over their bodies, lifted by the encroaching tide. It wasn’t enough to make them buoyant, but Brida hoped the continued rise might aid her in moving them closer to the deeper surf. If they even still lived.
She tossed her shawl on one of the nearby rocks and crouched next to the merchild. “Please be alive, little one,” she prayed to any gods who might be listening. The bright moonlight didn’t reach here, and the darkness obscured details, but Brida noted the child’s tail had peeled even more, her small face hollowed out under the cheekbones as if she had withered in the autumn air. Her closed eyes were sunken, her lips cracked and bleeding. The child didn’t move when Brida laid a hand on her shoulder, nor did the merman beside her.
Brida’s eyes teared as she touched cold, dry skin. She drew a shaky breath before tightening her lips to whistle the child’s name. The mergirl didn’t respond, even when Brida’s tears dripped on her throat and chest.
Despairing, Brida scooped the child into her arms. Similar in size and maturity to a human toddler, the merchild was easily twice as heavy in Brida’s hold. She remained limp as Brida hugged her, pressing her face against her cheek, whistling softly.
The faintest twitch made her freeze. She pulled back abruptly to stare at the mergirl’s shadowed features. Her gaze traveled the length of the small body, and she swallowed back a triumphant cry when the little fluke jerked upward in an anemic flap.
She surged to her feet, staggering for a moment under the child’s weight, to face the Gray. Lantern flickers of eyeshine shimmered once more among the waves. The silenced calls started again, this time shrill or mournful. Sharp clicks and chirps accompanied them, reminding Brida of the merman’s vocalizations when she made the mistake of touching the merchild the first time.
Fairy tales, told by generations of mothers, grandmothers, and old salts land-bound but still sea-ensorceled, teased her memories. Leviathans that lived in the black deep and swallowed ships whole. Ancientobludasthat lured their victims with grief and ate them with teeth like daggers. And merfolk who frolicked in the waters and rode the bow waves of ships, waiting for some unfortunate sailor to fall in the water and drown in a mermaid’s seductive embrace.
Brida had never sailed on a deep water ship or seen a leviathan, but she knew theobludaswere real, and held in her arms proof that merfolk were more than myth. And all were dangerous to a land dweller like her. She had to get the merchild into the water, back to the family who watched her from the surf, but she didn’t want to die in a mermaid’s lethal arms.
She waded calf-deep into the surf before stopping, her unconscious burden heavy against her. Her flute nestled in a satchel slung from her shoulder, so close but completely inaccessible unless Brida put the merchild down. She sank to her knees in the water, submerging the little girl from fluke to belly but careful to keep her shoulders and face clear of the rolling surf. With one hand she fished the flute out of the bag, pulling away the cloth cover with her teeth. She spat the cloth out. It floated away, rolling back with the tide toward the cluster of glittering eyes and flashes of silvery flesh.
Twisted in a position that kept the merchild afloat in her arms, and the flute balanced in both hands, Brida raised the instrument to her mouth and blew into the end stem in a series of bursts. The sounds the flute made were sharper than those she made with just her mouth, but the tone was the same—one for the merman’s name, one for the child. He’d given her nothing else. Just their names, and she repeated them in a second burst of whistles played on the flute.
Silence greeted her playing, though she didn’t imagine that the eyes drew closer. Fear coiled snakelike up her body. She was tempted to draw back, but the merchild’s increasing movements against her kept Brida in place. She’d brought the flute in the fragile hope she might better communicate with the merman. He was either dead or too far gone into delirium to whistle to her now, but those in the waves might do so if they were as willing to set aside their wariness of her as she was of them.
She repeated the names twice more before changing tactics. Five years earlier, she had stood on this very beach and wailed her grief over the loss of her husband to a deaf sky. The moon didn’t answer, nor did the stars, but something in the Gray did—the four-note whistle she still played on her flute. A reply from the black waves, so full of sorrow and sympathy that Brida had fallen to her knees and sobbed until she retched.
A mysterious reply from an unseen source then. Possibly a mystery no longer. Brida braced the merchild against her knees as she swayed with the surf’s infinite purling. She licked her lips before pressing them to the flute’s mouthpiece again, fingertips perched on the playing holes, and played the four-note tune.
Had she lobbed a live, starving shark into the water, the reaction to the tune couldn’t have been more vehement, much like the wounded merman’s when she whistled it earlier. A frenzy of splashing heralded a cacophony of whistles and clicks that shrieked above the Gray’s dull roar. Multiple wakes of frothing water raced toward the shore. Brida almost dropped flute and merchild as she struggled to her feet, nearly falling face first into the water amidst a tangle of soggy skirts.
A deeper, sharper whistle rose above the rest, and as one body, the merfolk splashed to a halt, their eyes shimmering green coins in the darkness. Flukes slapped impatiently at the waves, and Brida got her first clear view of the sea people who had come to claim their own.
Like the merman on the beach, and the merchild in her arms, their kinsmen possessed the tails and flukes of dolphins instead of fish, and their skin glowed shades of silver in the moonlight. Seaweed hair spilled down their backs and shoulders, some woven with bits of shell. Like her merman, the males were muscular, with broad shoulders and powerful arms. The females in the group were smaller than the males, sleek and arresting, their long hair at times revealing or obscuring their bare breasts.
One female swam through the center of the group, moving slowly as if all the time in the world lay before them. She entered the shallows just shy of any danger of beaching herself and stared at Brida with a puzzling combination of wariness and recognition. She parted her lips and whistled the four-note tune in clear, perfect mimicry.
Brida’s throat closed against an involuntary sob, and new tears coursed down her cheeks. She swallowed several times in an effort to speak. “You,” she told the merwoman. “I heard you once. Long ago.”
The merwoman didn’t reply with either words or whistles, only watched Brida for a moment before her gaze slid to the mechild. She raised a webbed hand in an unmistakable command for Brida to bring the girl to her.
Brida’s feet moved of their own accord, or at the will of a sea spell cast silently by one of its denizens. She clutched her flute in one hand and waded deeper, closer and closer until she stood directly in front of the mermaid, and stared down into a pair of sea glass eyes full of ancient secrets. She dropped to her knees and held out her arms, her muscles quivering with the effort to hold the heavy merchild.
