by Cari Z
Chapter Seventeen
Colm barely moved for two days. He stayed where he was and let the tides flow in and out around him, always just deep enough to get water to his gills but shallow enough to leave part of his body free of the water. His new skin didn’t care for the air. It dried him out, made him feel chill and brittle, but the feeling of comfort wasn’t something that he had a right to anymore.
Colm’s mind turned in circles, always coming back to Nichol and whether or not he was still alive. He knew, he knew that what he was doing was a poor way to deal with his grief and guilt, that if he were serious about finding out what had happened to Nichol he should be moving, scouting, getting as close as he could without giving himself away and listening to the gossip at the docks, but he felt too sluggish to move. It was easier to lie here and stare at the sky, and let the gnawing grip of hunger distract him from the chaos in his mind.
Colm’s lassitude lasted up until a fish slapped him in the face. He started, accidentally gulping a breath of air before he remembered not to, and ducked his head beneath the water to refresh himself before he turned to confront Rory, who had the wriggling fish caught firmly between his teeth. The seal twisted around and smacked the fish’s head against Colm’s again.
“Little beast,” Colm tried to say, but stopped halfway through when it emerged as nothing but a hiss. Rory huffed, then went to smack him again. Colm caught the fish before it could land, wrapping his long fingers around the slippery body and holding tight. He could feel the blood pulsing fast and frightened under the scaly skin, and it made him feel…famished.
He inspected the fish. A lionsmane perch, a fairly small one, hardly more than a mouthful…but no, gods no, Colm didn’t eat fish live! He couldn’t even pry a sea roach from its shell without blanching. No.
Colm let the fish go. Rory barked irritably, darted after it and recaptured it, then brought it back to Colm.
Colm shook his head. Rory glared at him.
How could he make him understand, when he couldn’t speak? Colm thought for a moment, then spread one of his webbed hands out beneath the water and made it quaver, very faintly, mimicking the fish’s own quivering. Then he shook his head again.
If seals could roll their eyes, Rory would have. As it was, he flipped the fish up into the air, then snapped its head off on the way down. The severed body splashed down into the water, convulsing and spilling blood but very clearly no longer alive. Rory barked again.
The scent was delicious. Red soaked the water that washed around Colm’s head, and it tasted just as wonderful as it smelled. His sense of hunger got the better of him and Colm grabbed the fish and bit into its soft underbelly before his conscious mind could stop him. Soft…sweet…the meat was rich and dark in places, pungent and tainted in others, but Colm ate it all with relish.
He ate until there was nothing left but bloodstains drifting away in the shallow waves. Rory disappeared for a few minutes, then returned with another fish, this one already decapitated. He pushed it at Colm’s face, and this time Colm took it and ate without complaining. It would have been harder to bear if the fish had tasted raw or unappetizing, but it just tasted like food. Like delicious, necessary food. Colm’s sense of taste had changed just as much as his physical form, and a part of him felt bitter about the fact that the food he now had to eat wasn’t a hardship for him. Nothing should come easily after what he’d done.
Rory now seemed to devote himself to helping Colm as much as he’d once gone out of his way to harass him. It took plenty of nipping and tugging, but he finally managed to pull Colm down into deeper, richer waters toward the entrance to the cove. The darkness beneath the water was no problem. In fact, it seemed like Colm could see farther with his new eyes than he ever could above the water. Perhaps it was because his knack was a constant now, always surrounding him, telling him what was going on around him. Colm floated in the blurry delineation between water vaguely warmed by the sun and the deeper, colder currents and let his senses stretch out deliberately, seeking for the first time since he’d delivered Nichol back to the docks.
Caithmor itself was easy to orient on, a constant turbulence as the waves broke against the enormous rocks that supported the city’s seaside edge. That turbulence was increased by the movement of boats and the way that schools of fish steered clear of the area. Colm could almost tell what type of fish they were simply by the way the schools moved together, and he easily sensed where the lionsmane perch Rory had brought him were milling, still a bit disturbed by the selkie’s intrusion.
To breathe underwater, to look around and sense so much more than he ever had before in his life… Once upon a time, this would have been a gift to Colm. If he had come here and never met Nichol, if he’d known his family was well and safe, if Colm had simply taken a moment to step into the sea before he grew so attached to life on land, this could have been glorious. It was a simple, brutal explanation for all his differences, for his mother’s disappearance, his father’s fear, for why Honored Srain’s spell of magic detection hurt him so badly. It explained all the things Colm never quite learned to do right, all the parts of being human he never quite mastered. Colm wasn’t human. He wasn’t even as close as Rory, who had lived a long life with a loving family before letting himself change. He was half mer, and he couldn’t ignore that, even if he didn’t understand how such a thing could come about.
Colm never should have existed, but he did. And now he had to continue to exist until he knew what had happened to Nichol. Colm shut his eyes as he was suddenly racked by a whole-body shudder.
Rory swam nearby, keeping his distance for a while before his patience apparently began to run out. He circled closer and closer, finally swimming a path around Colm’s head until their eyes met again. He pressed his muzzle against Colm’s nose, then turned and swam toward the school of perch. When Colm didn’t follow fast enough, Rory turned around and nipped at the broad fin at the base of Colm’s tail.
I understand, Colm thought, no longer bothering with attempting to speak but holding his hands out placatingly. He swam after Rory, amazed at how quickly he could cover distance now. He outpaced the selkie before they reached the fish, but quickly learned upon arriving that he didn’t have nearly the same dexterity that Rory did. The selkie’s seal form was short and sleek and could turn in a flash, whereas Colm was too long and awkward to turn fast enough. In the time it took him to catch a single perch, Rory had caught and eaten three. The selkie swam over lazily and snapped the head off the one that struggled in Colm’s long grasp, looking pleased with himself. Colm ate and tried to be grateful.
As the sea grew darker with the setting of the sun, Rory led the way back to the cove, very adamantly prodding Colm up until he was in the shallows again. Colm lay down carefully on the sand and Rory snugged up next to him, not afraid of Colm’s spines piercing his thick, tough skin. Colm let his face break the surface and stared up at the stars, glittering like the distant lights of a celestial city. The air was dry and cold, and Colm could hear the harshness of the wind rolling across the cliffs above him, but for all that he was learning to exist in this new world, it was the one he looked at now that he still yearned for.
Tomorrow, he would go back to Caithmor. Tomorrow he’d try to find out about Nichol.
* * * * *
Getting back to the city was simple enough. Colm avoided everything that could have crossed his path with a graceful fluidity that he would never have attributed to himself at the beginning. Working to keep up with Rory had been good for that, at least. Forcing himself to push farther into the dark, greasy waters of Caithmor’s harbor was hard, but Colm still made himself do it. He slid along the keels of the boats like a shadow, surfaced beneath the docks closest to the Cove, and settled in to listen.
His ears picked up sound differently now, and everything above the water felt muffled and dull. Not to mention he couldn’t keep his head out in the air for too long wi
thout becoming faint. It was bothersome, but that hardship was nothing compared to his feverish curiosity. Colm spent the busiest part of the day patiently straining with his ears and grudgingly replenishing his breath, but he didn’t learn anything other than the fact that his appearance had been enough to cause quite a commotion. He heard Nichol mentioned twice by name, but there was nothing definitive about his status, only the fact that—
“Poor lad laid out like that on the stones, pale as death,” Kiara the sea-roach vendor sighed. “His gran is beside herself, what with poor Nichol, and then the nephew gone missing like that.”
“Do y’reckon they had a falling-out?” another girl asked—Colm didn’t get her name; he had to duck back under the water. “Maybe Nichol killed ’im and left ’im out for the mer, only the mer came for Nichol as well.”
“Nichol wouldn’t have killed that boy, any more than my own sister would kill me,” Kiara said staunchly. “They were the best of friends, even when Windlove and his lads were still hanging about. Nichol’d never do anything hurtful to him.”
“It’s the mer part I don’t understand,” the other girl confessed, ignoring Kiara’s protestation. “If the mer got the other one, then what was it doing bringing Nichol back here?”
“How would I know?” Kiara asked, exasperated, then ignored the girl altogether in favor of a customer. It was the closest Colm got all day to hearing something of worth, but not close enough. He stayed and waited all through the long day, watching the shells of eviscerated sea roaches fall down through the cracks in the planks above him and listening until his head felt full of sand and his gills coated with grease.
In the end, it took Rory appearing and nipping at his tail for Colm to snap out of the fog of his day and swim back to the actual cove. The fog stayed with him, though, and it wasn’t until Rory smacked him with another headless fish that Colm realized it was because he was hungry. He took the meal and inclined his head gratefully, and when Rory bumped him next time, it was gentle, and without teeth.
Colm’s head felt raw after exposure to the air all day, and that night he left his face underwater for the first time. He still stared up at the stars for as long as he could, but they were indistinguishable from the sky under the wavering surface. No answers yet, nothing useful. Colm would try again.
Rory seemed to dislike the water close to the city, and Colm couldn’t blame him. The selkie left the cove every morning with Colm but went his own way once they reached the sea wall. Colm wove his way beneath the boats, dodging offal and anchors, and took his position beneath the dock to listen for anything new.
For three more long days, there was nothing. There was no word of Nichol or Megg, and the only other things of faint interest were the tales of services at the Ardeaglais, the number of parishioners vastly increased since so many had caught sight of Colm. There was a panic at the thought of mer stalking the docks of Caithmor, and on the fourth day, a group of priests led a vast congregation down to the edge of the water, where they used the prayers of the faithful to help lay a spell of protection across the entirety of the harbor.
Colm, who had fled as soon as he identified the voice of Honored Srain, was barely touched by the change in the water as he swam out past Caithmor’s pillar, but he felt its aftereffects quite clearly. All the creatures that clung close to the rocky sea shelf beneath the city were scalded, as though the water had turned boiling hot. Those who couldn’t swim deep enough or far enough in time died and floated to the surface in droves.
Unfortunately for the priests, they hadn’t accounted for the need for specificity. The spell they cast targeted inhuman creatures, which included the land-loving fish that schooled in the harbor. The bodies that surfaced went to waste, the meat of the fish puckered and the skin broken by boils. Colm had tried one, thinking it would save him the trouble of killing something else to eat, but the flesh was gritty and ashen on his tongue, and he spat out his mouthful in disgust.
Needless to say, the spell was lifted by the next morning. The only creature other than fish that it had killed was a selkie—not Rory, a young one that Colm hadn’t recognized. After its pelt sloughed off, its childlike human body was pushed ashore by its grieving kin. Colm watched the somber affair from a great distance. The other selkies were wary, despite the fact that he and Rory shared a space at night, and he couldn’t blame them for fearing him. The child’s body was gone by the next dawn.
A full two weeks after Colm’s transformation, things had quieted down in Caithmor. The fish die-off had diminished the people’s fervor, and things seemed to be slowly going back to normal. Colm didn’t hear anything new about Nichol, no word on his health and only occasional mentions of Megg, but still he swam to the docks and listened every day. He had to know for sure. He had to be certain that Nichol was well again. Not happy, Colm imagined that Nichol was probably devastated, and likely to stay that way for a long time. He had trusted Colm, and in return, Colm’s body had betrayed both of them, leaving Nichol more alone than ever before, if he’d even survived.
You couldn’t have known. That was the only thought that gave Colm a hint of solace during the long, dry days of listening and the too-short times of dreaming beneath the waves. There was no way he could have known what he was, not a hint from his father to go on and everyone saying that his mix would be selkie, it was always selkie along the coast. Nothing to be ashamed of, for the most part. Safe, if occasionally heartbreaking. Selkies were not monstrous, not like what had emerged from the salty sea and pierced Nichol with its poisonous spine.
Colm hadn’t known, and neither had Nichol, and in his clearest moments, when he wasn’t hungry or pained or terribly sad, Colm could see the truth in that. Most of the time, though, objectivity was beyond him. All he could feel was remorse, all he knew was what he’d done, all he could hope for was Nichol’s life. Beyond that, Colm didn’t let himself consider anything for very long.
He spent so much time at the docks that he almost missed Megg’s visit to the Cove. It was close to sunset by the time he swam back there, and when he felt the gentle slap-slap of waves against a little boat, Colm slowed his pace, stopping in the deep shadows beneath the cliff on the far side of the cavern. He lifted his head out of the water and heard Megg’s voice, saw her crouched on the little beach with Sari by her side and two men he didn’t recognize standing a few respectful paces behind. Rory sat by her feet, for once completely focused on someone other than Colm.
“There’s naught else to be done,” Megg was saying. Her voice was thready and worn, tired in a way that Colm had never heard from his aunt before. It had the sound of hopelessness in it, and Colm’s heart clenched in his chest as he realized why she sounded that way. “Nichol won’t speak to me. He won’t speak to anyone, poor lad. Not since he first woke up. Lost him, he said. ‘I lost him, Gran.’ Then he wept, and he didn’t stop, not for days. He only got back on his feet a few days ago, and since then, I’ve barely seen him. He haunts the sea wall where they went to swim, just stares at the water like he expects Colm to reappear.” Megg sighed heavily.
“I thought he was like you.” Colm could hear her fingers scritch-scratching along Rory’s back. “A selkie, love. With what Colm could do, with his little strange ways on the water, how he knew things, I thought he had to be like you. But if he was a selkie, Nichol wouldn’t have been hurt, would he? I thought we’d lose him for sure those first few days, with both a healer and a priest working on him. And then all that talk of mer… It must have gotten Colm. It must have been terrible. Poor lad, it must have been—” Her voice cut off on a sob, and Colm took advantage of the lull to dip his head below the water and breathe.
He couldn’t show himself to Megg. Not like this, not with other people here. They would be afraid. They would lash out. No, Colm couldn’t do anything but listen, and wish with all his heart that he could heal the pain in Megg’s voice. I’m alive, he wanted to say. I’m right here! Monstrous, but he
re.
Colm surfaced quietly in time to hear, “—wouldn’t come, but it has to be done. Colm deserves the rites, and he was as much a child of the sea as any ever born in Caithmor. Gods love him, for I surely did.” Colm watched Megg make the sign of the Four in the air with a sweet-smelling smudge stick. She set a clear bowl into the water, set a little package inside it, then added a lit candle to the top of that. After a moment, Megg pushed it away from the shore.
The sugarglass bowl hovered there at the edge of the water, and for a moment, Colm was sure that it wouldn’t move. How could it? He was still alive. As soon as Megg began the prayers, though, it started to drift out into the water.
“May…may the Four look with favor on the spirit of our departed kin, Colm Weathercliff,” Megg said, her voice wavering with grief. “May they welcome him back to their fold. May they give him the comfort that he has earned after his time toiling in this world.” Colm stared, captivated, at the little light, which seemed to be getting brighter. “May his spirit find the peace of the water, the strength of the earth, the gentleness of the air and the warmth of the fire. Bless him, and take him back into your loving embrace until such time as his spirit is ready to return again.”
In the sudden silence, Colm snapped out of his stupor and realized that the light looked brighter because it was getting closer to him. The burial bowl, filled with whatever offering of his Megg could muster since she didn’t have his ashes, was heading straight for his dark, secluded corner of the cove. If the light touched him, it would give away his presence, illuminating the horror of his new reality. Colm suddenly couldn’t bear to spend one more moment in the harsh dry air, and he ducked down into the water. Maybe it would pass him by. Maybe it would go out to sea…
The bowl stopped just above him, hovering there for almost a minute before the sugar finally melted through. The light snuffed out as the remnants of the bowl sank, and Colm reached out with trembling fingers and grabbed Megg’s offering to the gods, the things that she felt represented him best.