In the cottage doorway, the cactus shivered. Its quills clicked as they rattled against one another. “Meep?” it said. Beyond it, she saw that several of the jam jars had fallen from their shelves. They’d shattered on the floor during the storm. The smear of muddy water continued through the shop.
“Glad you’re okay,” she told the cactus, and then she rounded the corner of the jam shelves, following the mud. To her surprise, she saw the copper bathtub from the privy was in the center of the room in front of the stove.
In it was a mermaid.
Kiela felt her jaw drop open. “Why? How?”
Her body was submerged, her silver tail flopped over the edge, and her head was in her arms with her seaweed hair draped over her. When Kiela spoke, the mermaid lifted her silvery-scaled face and wailed, a piercing sound like the cry of a seagull. Inside the tiny cottage, the wail was magnified until it rattled inside Kiela’s skull.
Rushing to her side, Kiela asked, “Are you all right?” Of course she wasn’t all right. She wouldn’t be wailing if she was. But why was she here? Was she injured? Kiela felt a hundred questions battering inside her.
Behind her, Caz said, “She hauled herself up the stairs from the cove. I found her at the top, with her baby.”
Baby?“Why—”
The mermaid pointed with a trembling webbed finger.
Lying on the hearth on top of a stack of quilts was the merbaby, the same merbaby whom Kiela had seen swimming in the cove. His pale green body was covered in jagged purple slashes that reminded her of the sky split by the storm, and tiny sparks arched over his closed eyes like stray bits of lightning.
Shedding leaves as he shook, Caz said, “He can’t be in the water, not with the sparks he’s giving off, but he’s drying out in the air. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s wrong with him. Meep and I—we took out the tub and filled it for the mother, but—”
“He’s storm sick,” Kiela said. She’d read about this—if a creature born of magic absorbed too much excess magic at once, it could overwhelm them. The merbaby’s tiny body hadn’t been strong enough to process all the power within the magic-driven storm. Left unchecked, it would stop his heart. “There’s a healer. Ivor. I’ll bring him here.” He should be with the rescued woman in Larran’s house—
As Kiela turned to go, the mermaid’s hand shot out and closed over Kiela’s wrist. Her fingers were wet and hard, like they were made of shell, not flesh. “No healer.”
She can speak!Kiela hadn’t thought a mermaid’s throat was shaped to be able to utter land-dweller words. This was remarkable. Did scholars know—Stop, focus on the baby.“He needs help, and I don’t know how—”
“You.”
Kiela shook her head. “But I don’t know—”
Sloshing water out of the copper tub onto the floor, the mermaid lurched closer until her face was inches from Kiela’s. Her breath smelled like the ocean, heavy with fish. Her teeth were pointed like a shark’s. “You.”
Tears pricked her eyes. Shewantedto help, but how? What did the mermaid expect her to do? “Tell me what to do. I don’t know how to help.”
“Spell.”
Kiela shook her head. “I don’t—”
“Of course!” Caz said. “She needs magic! It’s magic-caused, so she needs a spell to heal him. If there was a sorcerer—”
But there wasn’t. There was only Kiela and her stolen spellbooks.
“You. Heal. Trees.” The mermaid flinched, as if each word hurt her. “Heal. Him.”
That’s why she came here, to us. She thinks we can help.
But the tree spell was a single remedy, only discovered after a lot of research and experimentation. She thumbed through her memory for books that could help—did she have any on storm sickness? She knew she’d read about it, but where? Had she brought those volumes with her?
Yes.
Yes, she remembered a book. Green cover. Deckled edges. Two authors, a sorcerer and a healer, had cowritten it. She’d stored it in the third crate. “Caz, speed-research.”
“Whoo!” Caz cheered.
The mermaid hissed, baring her sharklike teeth.
“Taking it seriously! I swear!”
