“I have no light,” she told him. “I won’t be able to see anything in there.” Things like once-dry expanses flooded with the incoming tide and the gods only knew what strange creatures that swam within it. Merfolk were almost commonplace compared to the horrors she imagined lurked in the concealing darkness.
Ahtin drew nearer, the splash of his fluke sounding close enough to touch. “Safe, Brida,”he crooned to her. “You are safe with me.”
In that moment, she understood what the sailors meant when they spoke of sirens’ song. She set a foot down in the direction of the cave where some of her worst childhood fears waited.
“Wait.” Ahtin shook his head. “Not that way. This way.”
Puzzled, Brida followed him on the shore as he swam around the edge of the bluff. Her skirts dragged in the surfas she waded knee-deep through water growing colder with each passing autumnal day. She clutched the satchel she’d brought with her, its contents clinking and together. Nothing inside was of much monetary value, certainly not like the pearl he’d given her, but she didn’t want to drop them and lose them to the Gray before Ahtin saw them.
She squeaked at the sight of a sharp fin slicing the watertoward her. In an instant, Ahtin disappeared from her view, leaving only a temporary wake behind him that marked a path aimed directly at the fin which also dove beneath the waves. A frothing of water boiled up from the spot before dissipating. Frozen in place, Brida stared, unbreathing, until a crown of seaweed hair emerged, and Ahtin’s glowing eyes stared back at her.
“Safe, Brida,” he repeatedand propelled himself through the surf until he floated alongside her.
“What was that?” She hated how her voice warbled, but it was hard to speak normally when her heart was still stuck in her throat.
“A hunter. It hunts something else now.”
That short answer was less than comforting, and she slogged faster toward the patch of beach revealed on the other side of the bluff and a smaller entranceshe assumed led into the cave. Here, the land rose more sharply, keeping the high tide at bay.
Brida looked down at her companion. “How will you go in?” She supposed he could pull himself along the sand, using the power of his arms and tail, but what a struggle that would be, even with him healed of his injuries.
He gestured toward the second entrance. “You go there. I will meet you from theother side.” Before she could protest, he dove once more into the deeper waves, fluke giving a single flick before sliding under the waves.
A sliver of moonlight illuminated a patch of sand just inside the low entrance. Brida bent to enter, straightening with a gasp upon discovering a large interior space of soaring height with tidal pools closest to her and the pounding of the surf against atumbled barrier of rock on the other side where the wider entrance faced the more level shore.
The darkness prevented her from seeing much more than the outline of curved walls and roof and the hint of reflection on the pools’ surfaces. A loud splash echoed in the chamber. She tensed as verdant light spread across the cave floor, brightening the waters of a large pool surrounded on three sidesby rubble, with the fourth side narrowed down to a channel where the surf spilled into the pool as a waterfall. Some of the rubble looked as if it lay in and around the water with purpose, creating an imprecise spoke pattern with the lit pool at its center.
Water lapped at the rubble shore. Brida could see all the way to the rocky bottom and track the tiny fish that darted back and forth, startledby the sudden luminescence and the addition of a much bigger occupant to their sanctuary.
Ahtin slowly revealed himself with a flex of his tail, rising above the surface until he faced her, seawater streaming down his face and torso. His hair cascaded over his broad shoulders, wrapping around his arms. In the soft light, his eyes had lost their nocturnal shine, and his double pupils shone darkwithin their pale irises.
Her sodden skirt slapped in rhythm with her steps as Brida picked her way across one of the spokes toward him. His mouth curved into a smile to match hers. “Your water magic?” she asked.
“One enchantment.” He traced an evanescent pattern on the pool’s surface with one fingertip. “There are many others.”
Brida envied him the skill of water sorcery. Any sorcery for thatmatter. There were human mages, though they weren’t common, nor had she ever met one herself. She’d heard all the Kai, the last of the Elder races not yet vanished, possessed magic that they wielded at will, but like the merfolk, they weren’t human. “Do you know many enchantments?”
He shook his head. “No. Theapsdo, but they only teach all they know to the female who will become theapafterthem.”
It had taken several rounds of whistle and word exchanges as well as numerous drawings in the sand for Brida to understand the nature of anap, and she still wasn’t certain she had the right of it.
The merfolk were a loose confederation of several extended family units, each ruled by a matriarch they called anap. At least that’s what the noise Ahtin made to signify the matriarch’s titlesounded like to Brida. Theap’sdescendents stayed with her family, the mermen leaving only temporarily to mate with merwomen of other families. In that, Ahtin told her, the merfolk were more like the great whales than the dolphins.
Merfolk lived long lives, theapseven longer than the others, sustained by sea magic whose origin had long ago been lost to memory but was passed down from matriarchto oldest living daughter who carried on the heritage generation after generation.
With Ahtin’s sorcerous light chasing away some of the darkness, the cave no longer seemed as sinister. Brida found the largest rock closest to the pool’s edge and sat down. Ahtin glided toward her, a study in grace and power as he cleaved the water.
“I have gifts for you.” She shrugged off the satchel she’d loopedover her shoulder and across her chest, settling it in her lap.
Ahtin swam up next to her, so close his arm laid a wet path across the side of her skirt where he rested it on the rock shoreline. Avid curiosity glittered in his eyes as he stared at the bag, though he said nothing and waited patiently for her to reveal its contents to him.
She held up a wooden eating spoon, turning it one way,then the other before demonstrating its use. When she passed it to him, he took it as if it were a fragile piece of pottery. Brida watched, mesmerized as his fingers caressed the utensil, stroking the oval and handle in long sweeps. He then brought the oval to his mouth, pressing it down on his lower lip before sneaking a taste with the tip of his tongue. Brida forgot to breathe.
“Spoon,” shesaid in a hoarse voice.
Both lips curved around the oval’s edge in a kiss. “Spoon,” he echoed, double eyelids closed as if in deep thought. He opened his eyes, heavy gaze settling on her where she sat frozen on her rock seat. “I like the spoon.”
Siren’s voice, siren’s stare. The sea’s seduction wasn’t confined only to mermaids.
