More caps of red broke from the white waves.
The song of the merrow, close enough, wouldn’t allow me to look away long.
A red cap, feathered and slick, clung tightly to her head. I felt the magic in it, thrumming soft and urgent, like the heartbeat of the deep itself.
“Without her cap, she would drown on land. With it, she breathes the same air you and I do.” Dilly whispered. “They are the harbingers of the deep.”
The merrow looked at me as if she knew every secret I’d never spoken aloud, and she was singing it now for all to hear.
“What the fuck is that sound?” Oscar asked, coming up beside me, but I held out my hand to his chest, silencing him.
The song she sang wasn’t just lost notes now, but words that held profound meaning.
Come down, daughter of the sea,
With your pretty wrists and curious eyes.
We know the mark upon your skin,
We heard the oath the serpent ties.
Come down, daughter of the sea—
Your breath is borrowed, your fate is drawn.
I couldn’t take my next breath, not with the way she pulled me to her, begging me to follow after her. I heard her words, knew she knew my secrets, and I wanted to know too. More than that, I wanted to be with her. To feel the way her fingers caressed.
“Report, Shaw,” Bash ordered as his arm wrapped around my waist.
“They are calling to her,” Dilly said, voice distant. “I’ve heard they sing to lure their prey, but the way that one is locked onto her and the rest are harmonizing, it’s like they only want her.”
And I wanted them.
I needed them.
“Rose,” Bash ordered.
I shook my head.
“She knows what I am. She knows my days are numbered.” I whispered.
“You can understand her?” Dilly asked.
And so I repeated the words she sang over and over, her voice carrying on the wind like a promise only the two of us understood.
There was no space between the last word I translated and the gunshot, and the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.
The merrow launched beneath the ship, green blood polluting the white of the ocean’s dance.
Just like that, I knew I would have leapt to my death if she’d only asked one more time.
“You can’t shoot a merrow, Bash!” Dilly shrieked.
“Well, I did,” Bash said, pulling me into him and lodging his pistol back at his side.
I was acutely aware of green eyes watching me. Blackbeard sat, entirely unbothered, watching me from where he was perched on the side.
“What happens if you shoot one?” Oscar asked.
