And then there was that other sound — definitely a melody. A haunting one of many voices.
Manyclosevoices.
Louisa’s eyes sprang open under the water. Salt stung them, blurring her vision for a moment. But even through the haze, she could make out the bone-white faces staring back at her from beyond the shimmering barrier.
A gasp of horror forced her to suck in a lungful of briny water. Louisa choked and flailed as she blindly searched for the surface. It seemed like it took an eternity for her head to find it, but in reality it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds.
Hacking up saltwater, she thrashed her arms against the current that no longer felt so gentle and inviting.
“It’s a woman,” she heard a peculiar voice note from the other side of the fence.
“Of course it’s a woman,” another one replied. “No man would be brave enough to swim here at night.”
“Is she dying?” yet another asked with what appeared to be more mild interest than concern.
“I don’t think so,” the second voice replied. “Brave woman, are you dying?”
Brave woman?Louisa flinched as a wave bobbed her up and down aggressively. Wiping saltwater out of her stinging eyes, she squinted at the three pale faces staring back at her.
Merfolk.Her stomach dropped like a stone into the watery depths.
Wheeling backward like she had any hope of out-swimming three merfolk, Louisa babbled, “Um, I’m— I’m not— sorry, I’ll just?—”
“Not dying,” the first voice announced. With a round face, big eyes, and dark hair braided back behind her ears, she appeared to be the oldest of the three.
They all seemed like adults, though Louisa couldn’t say for sure, seeing as she’d never met merfolk before. While they looked similar at first glance, they were actually very different. Their black and white facial markings were ever-so-slightly unique, and their features spanned the gamut of cherubic to aquiline.
“Oh good.” The woman she recognized as the second voice gave Louisa a razor-sharp grin with a mouthful of deadly teeth. She had a variety of glass and shell beads woven into her hair, and while the other two hung back, she swam closer to the blinking buoy that marked the top of the fence.
“What are you doing out here, brave woman?” the beaded merwoman asked, not unkindly. “You don’t seem dressed for the water.”
Glancing down at the merwoman’s bare breasts, she noted, “You don’t seem dressed at all.”
Louisa wasn’t sure where the words came from, and she was humiliated the second they fell out of her chattering mouth.
There was a beat of silence before, as one, all three merwomen erupted into cackles. “This one has jokes,” the third merwoman, who had shorn hair and wore a thick, corded necklace, exclaimed.
“You can take your dress off if you want to join us. I’m sure you have very nice breasts,” the beaded merwoman offered. “And I would know. Ilovea good pair of breasts.”
Louisa laughed and shook her head. “I’m— I think I’m good.”
“Why are you out here? Hardly anyone swims in the park at night, andno onedoes it in the winter.” The merwoman with the shorn hair pointed toward the glowing shape of the nearby wharf. Even from a few blocks away, the sounds of people and piped in music drifted across the water. “Were you watching the wharf? That’s what we were doing.”
Louisa couldn’t say what compelled her to tell them the truth. Maybe it was the fact that she was in a vulnerable position, or perhaps it was the cold addling her brain. Either way, she found herself admitting, “I got broken up with tonight because I’m boring. Going for a swim felt like— it just felt like maybe it proved him wrong. I know it’s stupid, but…”
All three merwomen’s faces froze. Incredulous, the oldest one asked, “Your mate left you?”
“Well, we weren’t officially…” Louisa shook her head. What did the details matter? “Yeah,” she answered, voice raw from emotion and saltwater. “He left me.”
Of all the things she could’ve expected from the three merwomen, it wasnotfor them to explode into howls and begin thrashing the water with their arms and massive tails. Louisa recoiled, alarmed at the terrifying sight of three vicious predators' outrage.
Lunging for the fence, the beaded merwoman bellowed, “You should eat his liver!” Her black and white claws, thinly webbed between the fingers, curled around the buoy like it was Greg’s thin neck. “You should eat his kidneys, too, so you get all the nutrients he doesn’t use for his brain.”
“You let him into your cove and he abandoned you? You should take your mating rope and string him up below the docks! Let the selkies have him,” the older one called out, aghast.
The one with the shorn hair made a sucking sound behind her sharp teeth. Slapping the surface of the water with her palms, she growled, “Merfolk would never abandon a mate. This was your first mistake, brave woman. You should’ve chosen a strong mer.”
The merwomen made a chorus of noises, some of which Louisa recognized as agreement. Shaking her head in astonishment, she kept her lips just above the water line as she mumbled, “I’m not a good fit for a merman, I think.”
