The merman still has me. His grip is unbreakable, but he’s no longer dragging me further down. He just hovers, staring with his halo of eyes, head cocked like a dog waiting for a command.
I say, “Let me go,” and the words come out crisp and clear. Almost normal.
He shakes his head.
I try again, “Let me go. I have to get back. They’ll be looking for me.”
He bares his teeth, all of them. “No.”
The voice is a stone in the river. Heavy. The sound vibrates in my chest, not my ears.
He starts swimming again, and I try to grab for my dagger, but he sees my attempt, so this time he pulls me with both hands. We move faster than before. I try to keep track of where we’re going, but the water is so full of green and silt and patches of black that I lose all sense of direction. Every so often, a shaft of light pierces the gloom, but then we’re diving, zigzagging through what must be tunnels in the lake bed, darting past walls covered in slime and things that look like the bones of old fish.
I try to shout, to thrash, but he’s not bothered. I try to get my legs under me and kick off the mud, but I just sink deeper. The merman’s hands never slip.
After a while, he drags me into a bubble of perfect black. Then we pop out in a space so bright I’m blinded. It’s still full of water, but itfeelsdifferent. Like it’s self-contained.
It’s a room. Or something like a room. The walls are pale stone, smoothed by water, and the ceiling is arched, strung with tattered nets. The floor is covered in sand, bones, and bits of metal that catch the light and flash. There’s a table in the center, made from a chunk of sun-bleached coral, and around it are piles and piles of trash containing things like broken cups, twisted wire, a dead bird or two, some things that were probably alive once but aren’t now.
He throws me to the floor, and I actually land there. It’s like we’re in a room full of air instead of water.
I scramble to my feet, but he’s already at the door, blocking it. I look around for exits, for anything, but there’s just him and the walls and the water. And, of course, me in nothing but my bra and underwear, feeling vulnerable and frightened.
He watches me, all of his eyes blinking in slow waves.
“What are you?” I ask, voice shaking.
“Merman,” he answers simply. Like it was obvious.
“You’re not going to kill me,” I say, voice steady. “Are you?”
He grins. “Not yet.”
I edge sideways, trying to get the dagger out of its sheath. He sees, and his smile gets wider. “Don’t bother. You’re too slow.”
“Please,” I say, hating the way it sounds, “let me go. I don’t know what you want from me.”
He points to a pile of bones in the corner. “You clean.”
I blink, thinking I heard wrong.
“Clean,” he says again. “House dirty. Fix.”
I look at the trash, the guts, the bones. “You want me to clean your house?”
He shrugs. “That’s why you’re here.”
My face gets hot.
He swims forward, and I brace for violence, but he just takes a length of chain from a hook on the wall and clamps it around my ankle. There’s a ball at the other end, like a parody of the stories about prisoners, but it’s heavy enough that I can’t lift my foot more than a few inches off the ground.
He pats my hair, almost gentle. “Stay.”
Then he turns and vanishes through the door, tail lashing behind him.
I stand there, ankle shackled, and for a minute I can’t move. Then the panic kicks in.
I try the chain, yanking with everything I have, but it doesn’t budge. The shackle is tight, but not biting. Just secure. I try to slide the ball closer to the table, hoping for leverage, but the floor is slick with slime and every time I push, it just glides in a circle.
