What had the dog found?
She peeked around the line of stone. Moot pressedagainst her leg, preventing Brida from getting any closer. Brida’s heart surged into her throat at the sight before her.
Like the beach and shallows, the tidal pools were choked with seaweed. The stuff draped over the rocks and spilled across the sand, dotted with tiny sand crabs that skittered across the lacy leaves before burrowing under them to reach the water in the pools. Entangled withina net of the weed, a man and a child sprawled. Bright blood streaked the man’s bare torso and the arm stretched across the child in a protective clasp. The pair looked asleep, their features slack, eyes closed. From her vantage point, Brida couldn’t tell if they breathed.
Seeing two gravely injured people sprawled in the sand should have stunned her speechless for only a moment before she’d startscreaming for help. But inthismoment she remained silent, her shock making her doubt her own eyes.
Where there should have been hips, and legs, and feet, the two possessed tails, sleek and muscular that ended in flukes similar to those of dolphins. Their skin shimmered in the sun like the inside of an abalone shell bleached by the sun—striations of blue, indigo, silvery gray, and cascadinggreen. Their hair was nearly indistinguishable from the leafy varieties of seaweed spilled around them, neither blond, brunet, or ginger, but multiple shades of pearlescent green and purple.
A dozen memories from childhood skated across Brida’s mind, stories told by her mother and others to enthralled children, of the mysteries of the sea, of things that swam there, beautiful and dark, dangerousand benevolent. Some believed and others scoffed at such fanciful tales as nothing more than the delusions of bored sailors trapped too long on deep-water ships.
Brida wasn’t a sailor, and her feet were planted firmly on the shore. She’d outgrown fairytales a long time ago, and while she was sleep-deprived, she wasn’t hallucinating. Merfolk were real, and two lay before her, dead or dying.
