“I can keep it?”
Caught in that unwavering regard, Brida didn’tcomprehend the question at first. “Keep it?”
A knowing, closed-lip smile curved Ahtin’s mouth. “The spoon.”
Later, when she lay alone in her bed, contemplating the mysteries of life in the plastered divets of her ceiling, Brida thanked the gods for the cave’s frigid air, otherwise she might have incinerated on the spot from embarrassment.
“Yes!” she practically shouted, flinching when her exclamationricocheted back to her from the walls and roof. She bent her head, tempted to dive directly into the satchel and hide the heat scorching her face. Her fingers fumbled with the next item, almost dropping it in the pool. She thrust it at Ahtin who reared back to avoid being struck in the face.
Commonplace like the spoon, the comb Brida held out to him was a plain affair, carved from a splinterremnant of a shipwreck washed ashore when she was still a child. She’d done the work herself, a practice piece given to her by her father whose skilled hands would have turned it into a work of art. Brida had used it on her hair until she married, when Talmai presented her with a brush and comb set as a wedding present.
Ahtin reached for it, his expression puzzled when she suddenly pulled itout of reach. “A comb. Watch.” She undid the bottom third of her plait and used the comb to tease out the small tangles created by the salt water drying there.
The same keen focus he displayed with the spoon sharpened even more with the comb. Brida wondered if her own expression had mirrored his when the priceless pearl had rolled across her table. These things had no real value in her world,but he held them as if they were treasures like the pearl. Unique, precious, remarkable.
His inspection of the comb was less sensuous in nature than it had been with the spoon, for which Brida was glad, until he curled a hand around her loosened plait. She sat still as the stone beneath her while he twined her hair through his fingers.
“Not like us,” Ahtin said, his smile telling her the observationwasn’t a criticism. He used the comb as she had, running it gently through the loose strands.
“No,” she agreed. “Not like you.”
Did merfolk comb out their hair in some way? The ones who’d gathered to rescue their kinsmen had left theirs unbound with bits of shell woven in for ornamentation. As he’d done with her, she reached out to snare one of Ahtin’s locks.
Slippery-smooth, the strands werethicker and wider than her own with a texture that made her think of a candle’s surface. Water beaded on the filaments instead of soaking into them like human hair.
So intent with her inspection of his hair, Brida didn’t notice Ahtin had moved until he was right in front of her, at eye level, his arms braced on either side of her, chest pressed to her bent knees. She gave a faint squeak and droppedthe lock of hair, startled by his sudden closeness.
The myriad shades of pale pink, lavender, blue, and green that pulsed just under his skin deepened along his throat and across his cheekbones. Ahtin tilted his head as if considering a most unusual shell laying on the sand. He gave her the comb. “Use here,” he said, fingers parting the curtain of hair that hid a portion of his face.
A steadyclicking, much like a feline purr, rose in his throat as she carefully ran the comb from his scalp to the tips of his hair, and his eyes closed in quiet ecstasy. Brida glanced around him to see his fluke gently fronding the water in tandem rhythm to his clicks.
This close to him, she warmed under the heat his body radiated. She was chilled to the bone herself, holding back shivers with an effort,even as she dreaded having to leave soon and end this extraordinary interlude with her merman.
Her merman. The thought made her jerk, and the comb snagged in his hair hard enough to make his eyelids snap open. The purring click abruptly became a pained whistle.
“I’m sorry! So sorry!” She dropped the comb in her lap to pat his hair and shoulders in apology.
Ahtin whistled again, softer now,reassuring. He captured one of her fluttering hands, flattening her palm against his chest. His hand was hot, like the rest of him, and Brida was reminded that the differences between them went beyond the surface visuals to more subtle elements. She would have turned blue by now were she submerged in cold seawater for any real length of time. Her feet were already numb from wading through the surfto reach this side of the cave.
“You are cold,” he said with a frown.
“And you most definitely aren’t.”
Maybe what she thought had been fever when he lay beached among the seaweed hadn’t been from sickness or injury but simply from lack of the water to keep his body cool.
“What is Brida?” he asked, repeating the same question from their second meeting.
She shrugged. “Strength.” Had he forgotten?
Ahtin shook his head and raised her hand to inspect her fingers, the slots between them where no webbing stretched, the short half moons of her nails, pale against skin still deeply brown from the vanished summer sun. The contrast between her skin and his—deep earth on shallow sea—beguiled her. They were land and water, human legs and dolphin tail with nothing in common except an abiding fascinationfor each other and the connection of the rescued to the rescuer.
His clear brow knitted into a frown. “No. Strength, yes, but more.” He struggled to express himself. “You are this light.” He gestured to the sorcerous light still shimmering around them. “This pool. The moon. The sun.”
Comprehension dawned, and once more the heat of a blush crawled up her neck, into her cheeks. “Beautiful,” shesaid. “Those things are beautiful.”
Something in her tone alerted him that she understood what he tried to impart, and the frown smoothed away. “Beautiful,” he echoed, reverence in every syllable. “You are beautiful, Brida.”
The last time a man had called her beautiful in such a way, it had been when she lay in Talmai’s arms the night before he left Ancilar to board a deep-water ship at Mataleneharbor a league from Ancilar. She’d dreamed those agonizing moments more times than she cared to count after she learned he’d died at sea. Time had passed and the keen sorrow from that particular memory was blunted now. When the merman called her beautiful, butterflies, not tears, spiraled up inside her.
