The Teeth in the Tide

by Rebecca F. Kenney

  “And now,” he said, stepping back, “the cage is free for the next resident. “

  -12-

  Rake

  Rake writhed in the cage, his tail thrashing. His head protruded through a circular gap at the front of the enclosure, and his hands were shackled in tight cuffs on either side. He was half-submerged in enough water to keep his tail from drying out, but he couldn’t flick it far to one side or the other before it struck the walls of his prison.

  Fury boiled hot in his heart. He hated being trapped like this, being stared at like some kind of loathsome monster. Why had he assumed the humans would be any different from the Queens? Kestra, the girl he’d met in the street—the one with the hair like squid ink and the deliciously curved figure—she was the worst of them all. Vicious as Acrid, violent as Bruta. She’d killed Scythe quickly, never flinching, only showing frustration when the blade stuck in Scythe’s voice-box.

  Rake wasn’t sorry that Scythe was dead. She was the mermidon he feared the most, the one he’d thought might come looking for him while he was away, who would have reported his absence to the Queens. But the way she had died—so suddenly, so helplessly, at the hands of the first human he’d trusted—it shook him.

  He eyed the other humans with a greater distrust. The golden-haired captain he knew already, if only from a distance; but here on land, the man seemed less inaccessible and godlike. He was vulnerable, mundane. Human. Strangely, Rake found this disappointment harder to bear than Kestra’s betrayal.

  The other three males apparently served Kestra. They’d locked Rake into the cage, then rinsed off Scythe’s body and carried her inside the shed. She was to be dissected by the shorter, thinner female—Mai, they called her.

  “I’ll need to work on her now, while she’s fresh,” Mai had said. “I wish I’d had some advance notice about spending my evening elbow-deep in a mermaid corpse.”

  “Don’t complain, Mai,” Kestra retorted. “I’ve given you exactly what you wanted. A dead one to study, a live one to question.”

  While the sailors carried Scythe away, the golden-haired captain caught Kestra’s elbow. He pulled her aside into the shadows and spoke low, but Rake’s ears could pick up sounds through the gurgle of deep water. He had no trouble hearing the words through the thin air.

  “Blossom, are you all right?” asked the captain.

  “Of course. I’m happy. Excited. Aren’t you? I mean, this is a bigger piece of luck than we ever expected.”

  “Yes,” said the captain cautiously. “But—I’ve never seen you like that.”

  “Like what? Angry? Determined to do what’s necessary?” She wrenched her arm out of his grasp.

  “Oh, I’ve seen you angry, love.” The captain’s voice was low and smooth, like a song meant only for her. And he smiled, but Rake saw the lines of worry between his eyebrows. “And I saw you do what was necessary today, in the ship’s hold. But this was different. You killed her.”

  “I’ve killed animals for meat before, Flay,” Kestra replied. “This was no different.”

  So the captain’s name was Flay. Simple, easy, but with an edge to it. It suited him.

  Rake’s ear twitched, tuning in to the rhythm of the girl’s breath. Faster than the other human’s breath. Short and shallow.

  “All right, love,” said Flay. “If you say so.”

  “I do.” But she hesitated, shoulders slumping, hands twisting together.

  “Come here,” he murmured, pulling her to his chest. And she let him. Laid her head on his shoulder. Relaxed against him, as if he meant safety and comfort. Rake hardly breathed, enchanted by the sight.

  And then Kestra’s eyes met his, and all the softness drained from her gaze. “The monster is watching us,” she hissed.

  “Want me to blindfold him?” Flay asked. “And should we muzzle him?”

  “I give you my word I won’t bite,” Rake said.

  “Blossom, he speaks like an educated man. Why?”

  “He said he came from the mermaid court. He serves the queens, or something.” She swept back her damp hair. “Can we leave someone here to guard him? I should change and help with dinner. And the people in the common room will be missing you.”

  “I can leave Jazadri here with him.”

  Kestra bit her lower lip, her white eyetooth denting the pink flesh. A thrill shivered through Rake’s body. He wanted her to do it again.

  “Is Jazadri recovered enough?” she asked.

  “Enough to sit in a chair and watch a caged monster? Yes.”

  “And will Jazadri kill him?”

  “I’ll give him orders not to.”

  “But will he obey? After what happened today, and what they did to his brother?”

  “He knows how important our project is. Keeping this one alive gives us a shot at destroying them all.”

  As the captain spoke, facts joined together in Rake’s mind. The dark-skinned youth that Bruta caught and devoured with the other Queens, and the big dark male who had pinioned Rake’s arms. They were connected somehow. Brothers. He scrambled through his bits of human knowledge for the meaning of the word. It had something to do with spawning, with shared ancestry. And from the look on the humans’ faces, eating someone’s brother was a terrible, terrible thing.

  He must let them know he hadn’t feasted on the boy himself, that he was different. So he said abruptly, “I’ve never eaten a human.”

  The black-haired girl turned. “But that’s what your people eat.”

  “The females do, but it’s a delicacy. Males like me aren’t considered worthy of a taste.”

  “So you haven’t eaten one of us.” Kestra walked toward him, and he found himself mesmerized by the slow sway of her hips. She crouched, and he swallowed, staring at her face. “That doesn’t mean you don’t want to.”

  “Blossom,” Flay said warningly. “Not too close.”

  “He says he won’t bite,” she answered. “Let’s find out if he means it.”

  She held her arm near his mouth. He could smell her, rainwater and warm skin, and a faint, sweet scent, like the green plants they’d walked through earlier.

  He raised his eyes to hers, disturbed by the festering hate he saw there. It mirrored what he felt for Acrid and Bruta.

  “Please,” he said, as gently as he could. “I came here for your help. I trusted you. Please let me out. Let me speak with you like equals, as we did when we first met.”

  She laughed. Maybe the sound was supposed to be harsh, but it was sweeter than any laugh he’d heard under the sea. “I wasn’t speaking to you as an equal,” she said. “I wanted to kill you. And then I decided to deceive you instead.”

  He smiled. “Are you sure? Because you asked who I was, before you asked what I was.”

  “An oversight on my part.” She drew back her arm and rose, speaking to the captain. “Let’s go find the others.” She cast a dark look at Rake as they left, taking the lantern with them.

  Rake inhaled through his mouth and let out the breath slowly. The act seemed to release a little of his tension. Left with nothing else to do, he stared at the rain. He’d seen it before, splashing on the surface of the sea—but he’d never watched it fall onto this type of surface, this slick of wet dirt and land-grass. The rain coursed off the side of the sailcloth overhead, a mesmerizing fall of glistening water.

  He had made it to land. It hadn’t worked out as well as he hoped—but he’d known they might attack him, imprison him, kill him. He hadn’t brought his spawn along because of those very risks. If Rake failed to find a haven here, if he died in the attempt, at least Jewel might have some sort of life under the sea. A miserable life, no doubt—but the young one was intelligent, and brave. He’d find a way to survive.

  Rake shook the desperate thoughts out of his head. All hope for allies on land was not lost, not yet. If he could ingratiate himself to the cruel Queens, surely he could find a way into the good graces of the humans. But first he would have to learn more about them, what the
y liked, how they were connected to each other, and what they wanted that he might be able to give.

  A few minutes later, another light bobbed around the corner of the shed, illuminating the immense figure of the dark male who’d restrained Rake in the shed.

  “Jazadri,” said Rake, testing the name on his tongue.

  The man ignored him, setting down a chair he’d brought and placing the lantern on a rock. He wrapped a great garment of some kind around himself and eased into the chair with a sigh. His left hand bore a thick cloth wrapping, and he favored it as if it pained him. A fresh wound, maybe.

  “You’ve hurt your hand,” said Rake.

  “One of your kind took a nibble at me.”

  “And you came away alive?” Rake chuckled. “You must be a powerful warrior. Human men are allowed to be warriors, yes?”

  A gruff nod was his only answer.

  “I am sorry about your brother,” Rake said. “I saw him Below.”

  The man’s head snapped up. “You saw him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you—” Jazadri’s jaw clenched, and Rake understood what he wanted to ask.

  “No,” he said. “I did not eat him. I told your friends I’ve never eaten a human. As a male, I’m not considered worthy of such a delicacy, and I’m glad of it.”

  Jazadri did not answer.

  “Would you like to know more? About your brother?”

  “Tell me.”

  “He was brave,” said Rake. “They kept him alive for a time, using a breathing device. A piece of old craftsmanship, similar to the belt you saw me wearing. The Queens that I serve devoured him before my eyes. I wanted to save him, but if I had tried, I would have died as well.”

  “You talk as if you are blameless,” growled Jazadri. “In my mind you are as guilty as they are.”

  “What if I help you?” Rake said. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know about my people. I have no love for them.”

  “No loyalty, eh?” Jazadri threw him a look of disgust. “You’re a discontented servant, and a traitor to your kind.”

  “I’m a traitor to cruelty and humiliation and death,” retorted Rake. “You have no idea what my world is like.”

  “And I don’t care. Save your story for those who might.”

  “Like the small student, Mai? And Kestra. She rules you all, yes?”

  Jazadri snorted. “No. Though she did act like it tonight. I serve the captain, Flay.”

  “The one with yellow hair.”

  Jazadri grunted assent.

  “But Kestra is a warrior, isn’t she?”

  “She’s a cook and a gardener. And one who keeps my captain warm at night.”

  Rake’s mind flooded with questions, each one more pressing than the one before it. “What does that mean? And why do they touch each other with such gentleness? And would you tell me what this word brother means? He was special to you, I know—but how?”

  Jazadri’s mouth opened. “Torrent and tide! You don’t know?”

  “We don’t have these words, these connections, in the Realm Below.”

  “I s’pose you wouldn’t, would you?” Jazadri scratched his head. “Well, a brother means someone who has the same parents as you.”

  “Parents?”

  “Great crags of Vishi! You don’t know that word either?”

  “No. Forgive me.” Rake thought he might burst out of his skin with the desire to know, not just the words, but the feelings behind them. Humans seemed to have so many feelings, and not just the ones he knew, like hatred and lust and hunger. The softness between Kestra and Flay—he’d felt something like it with Jewel, but the two experiences weren’t quite the same, and he wasn’t sure why. “Please, Jazadri. Please tell me.”

  “What if you’re a spy?”

  “A spy?”

  “Someone sent to learn about us and then ruin us. Eat us. Destroy us.”

  “How would teaching me about ‘brother’ and ‘parents’ destroy you?”

  Jazadri chuckled, then caught himself. “I s’pose it wouldn’t. All right then. Since we’re stuck out here ’til the others are done with dinner, I’ll give you a lesson on families.”

  Over the next hour or two, Rake ate information as greedily as any merlow ever gobbled flesh. He learned that humans often mated for life, usually as man and woman, but occasionally in other pairings or groups. And it wasn’t always for life. Sometimes they split and joined with new partners. But spawn from their union were “brothers” or “sisters”—part of a family. Rake liked that word family, because of the warmth in Jazadri’s eyes whenever he said it.

  Rake was shocked to learn that human spawn took three-quarters of a year to grow inside their mother, and that they grew only one at a time, or in rare cases two or three at once. No wonder the humans had not overpopulated their island yet.

  They finished with their discussion of families and moved on to the topic of the village and the goods it traded with Flay’s crew. Rake asked Jazadri about his large garment, learned its proper name—coat, and inquired about human clothing—materials, construction, and design. He felt as if his brain were expanding inside his head, like a blowfish. Was it possible to absorb too much information and then explode?

  Jazadri was explaining the process of fabric dyeing when Kestra, Flay, and Mai rounded the corner of the shed again, bringing a small table, another lantern, and Rake’s bag, along with his belt.

  “You’re talking to it?” Flay said, frowning. “What the maelstrom, Jaza?”

  “He knows nothing.” Jazadri shrugged, rubbing his palms on his thighs. “Didn’t know what a brother was, or parents. Or anything.”

  “I know some things,” Rake said. “But there is apparently much more that I don’t know.”

  “He’s not all bad,” said Jazadri. “Seems to genuinely want to learn.”

  “Of course he does,” Kestra snapped. “He wants to report back to his queens and tell them how they can conquer our defenses and eat us all.”

  “No! I told you, I need your help.”

  “So you said.” She gripped his chin, and he smelled something so enticing his entire body jerked with desire. She held a wide, shallow bowl, and in that bowl swam a brown liquid dotted with green vegetable chunks, pale rounded lumps, and chunks of something darker brown and stringy.

  He inhaled, nostrils flaring. “What is it?”

  “It’s stew.”

  Flay crossed his arms. “I said we shouldn’t waste it on you. In fact, I suggested serving you chicken bones and onion tops. But I was overruled.”

  “It’s an experiment, as Mai said. We want to see how his tastebuds compare to human ones.” Kestra dipped a spoon into the mixture and brought it brimming to Rake’s mouth.

  “Careful,” said Mai, her dark eyes a storm of curiosity and suspicion. “He might bite off your hand instead.”

  “I won’t—” Rake started to protest—but then the spoon slid into his mouth and he forgot what words were.

  He forgot how to chew.

  The explosion of warmth over his tongue—the layers of flavor, both subtle and strong—overwhelmed him. The green vegetables reminded him of plants he’d eaten under the sea, but the rest of the tastes were wholly unfamiliar and bewitchingly delightful.

  He moved his jaws, chewing, and then reluctantly swallowed, wishing the taste could stay in his mouth forever.

  “Did you make this? You’re—” he looked to Jazadri for confirmation— “a cook? You use fire to change the food and make it into this stew?”

  “It’s more complicated than that, but yes,” said Kestra crisply. “What do you think?”

  He wanted to praise her with every splendid word he’d ever heard—call her a goddess and a beauty beyond compare. But he was used to delivering false flattery to his queens, and this girl was different. Had to be different, in spite of her slaughter of Scythe.

  “Did you like it?” she prompted again.

  On impulse, he half-smiled at her. “I�
�m not sure yet. I think I need another bite.”

  -13-

  Kestra

  Kestra gritted her teeth every time she moved her hand nearer to the monster’s mouth. He took each bite greedily but savored it before swallowing, his eyelids drooping with pleasure. She watched his mouth moving as he chewed, and tried not to think of similarly pointed teeth chewing morsels of her father’s flesh, or ripping Jazadri’s brother apart. How could Jazadri have conversed so casually with the thing? He was well-spoken, yes—his crisp enunciation and low tones could be mesmerizing—but he was still a monster of the depths. She must not forget that savage reality.

  “His tastebuds are very receptive to human fare,” she said, stepping away and placing the empty bowl on the table the men had brought out.

  Mai nodded. “Though their tongues seem tougher than ours. Probably so they don’t cut themselves with their own teeth.” She stepped over to the creature and pried his lip aside with her thumb, exposing several sharp, serrated triangles.

  Kestra gasped, and Flay darted forward. “Don’t!”

  “It’s all right,” Mai said. “He didn’t bite Kestra, and he seems docile enough. Aren’t you? Your name’s Rake, isn’t it?”

  The ache in the creature’s eyes, the resigned familiarity with being handled and prodded, made Kestra uneasy.

  “Yes, my name is Rake,” he answered, and Kestra cringed as those pointed teeth clicked shut so near her cousin’s fingers.

  “Open your mouth please, Rake,” said Mai, all business. “And stick out your tongue.”

  He obeyed, and Mai inspected it. “His tongue is pinker than the other one’s, and softer. Hers was purple, with ridges. Still, I’d have to touch his tongue to see if—”

  “Don’t,” said Flay again. “You might trigger his taste for human flesh.”

  Mai narrowed her eyes, unhappy at being forbidden. To distract her, Kestra snatched up the strange belt from the table. “Mai, do you have any idea how this thing works?”

  Her cousin rose, eagerly collecting the belt. “It seems to corroborate a theory I have. How animals, humans, insects, mermaids—all living things—develop their unique physical traits.”