A deeper whistle, drawn out in the middle, dropping off at the end, and clear as the twilight sky above her. Brida turned her head slowly, half afraid she’d see nothing except the disappointment of unacknowledged hope. A sliver of silvery tail ending in a fluke gently splashed water in her direction, and she caught a glint of twin blue-green fireflies that floated among the waves. Eye-shine in a handsome, unhuman face framed in garlands of floating seaweed hair.
Still half bent toward the flute, Brida breathed out a soft exclamation. “You.”
As if he heard her, the merman edged a hand above the wave peaks in greeting. His glowing eyes shifted to the two men waiting at the dunes, their attention turned toward the castle road. Brida placed a finger to her lips in what she hoped was a universal signal for silence. He nodded and half submerged until only the crown of his head remained visible, nothing more than a ubiquitous knot of floating kelp to anyone else who might be watching the water.
Brida snatched up the flute and made her way to the elders. She wanted so badly to return to the merman, but to insist on staying alone on the beach after her confrontation with Ospodine would invite the elders’ unwelcome scrutiny and a litany of questions.
“We planned to walk toward the bluff, Brida,” the younger of the two men said. “You’re welcome to join us. We’ll see you home afterwards.”
Astran was a jovial man, one of the more reasonable men on the village council, and Brida had always liked him. He’d been the one to call out when she’d faced off with Ospodine.
She smiled at him, hatching an idea. The two men planned to walk in the opposite direction to where the merman waited. They’d be more focused on the castle in the distance and watching for any sign of Ospodine’s reappearance. “I thank you for the generous offers. I gladly accept the offer of the second, but would you mind if I stayed?” She held up her flute. “I like to come here in the evenings and play. It was my and Talmai’s favorite place.”
Their expressions softened, and both men nodded. Astran gestured to the bluff. “We’ll come back for you when we’re done, or if you find we’re taking too long, meet us halfway.”
She waved to them as they set off toward the bluff, following the fading hoofprints Ospodine’s horse left in the sand. Once they’d gone a short distance, she sped back to the spot where she’d seen the merman. “Please still be there,” she murmured to herself. The urge to move faster prickled across her lower back, but she kept her pace to a brisk walk instead of a sprint in case the elders turned to watch her.
Her visitor still floated in the waves, sleek tail and muscular arms flexing in the water to stay afloat. A delighted smile spread across his shadowed face, and Brida caught a glimpse of teeth shaped much like hers in the fading light. He whistled to her, an unfamiliar tune, and motioned toward the ledge Ospodine had claimed earlier.
She paced him on the shore as he swam to their meeting spot. He was much quicker than she and lolled in the shallow surf to wait, protected by the silhouette of the ledge where it jutted beyond the sand and into the water.
Brida climbed the natural ladder carved out by the sea to the flat expanse of stone and perched on the edge, tucking her legs under her. The merman swam closer, the shine of his eyes not so bright with the moon behind him. Brida set the flute to her lips and played the note he’d whistled earlier. His name. This flute lacked the other’s accuracy in mimicking mer speech, but the merman didn’t seem to mind.
He nodded, his smile widening even more. He tapped the water with the flat of his hand. “Brida who sings,” he said in a voice soft and deep, the words a little hesitant as if his tongue still sought to work around their unfamiliarity.
She almost dropped the flute. “You speak!” She shook her head. Of course he spoke, although the whistle language was not one she understood. “You speak my language.”
“Some,” he said. “Your words are hard. This…” he whistled and followed it with a series of clicks in the back of his throat. “Is easier for us.”
Delighted, Brida scooted closer to the edge. He, in turn, swam a little more into the shallows, bracing his elbows in the sand so that he could stretch toward her. His body curved in a faint arc, his fluke lifting high to help him balance. Moonlight plated the dual tones of his skin, highlighting the darker gray of his back and the short dorsal fin that ran the length of his spine. His face, chest, belly and underside of his tail gleamed white in the water. The wounds and lacerations he’d suffered had healed or were healing, silvery flesh knitting itself together into jagged scars.
Brida patted her own hip and pointed to the spot on his tail where he’d been most grievously injured. “That looks good. No blood. No pain?” She chose her words carefully and spoke slowly, trying not to overwhelm him with rapid-fire speech. If he suddenly started whistling and chirping at her in an unending succession of sound, she’d be completely lost.
He nodded. “You saved me. Saved…” Again, a whistle, only different, higher, and she recognized the name he’d given the merchild.
It was her turn to grin. She had prayed both man and child would survive, even when her doubts about his chances made the praying seem futile at times. “I’m happy,” she said. “Your daughter?” she asked.
He frowned, then shook his head. “Daughter?” He parsed out the word’s two syllables carefully, as if saying them aloud might help him better comprehend its meaning.
Flummoxed by how to explain the meaning, Brida decided to put it aside. If she was fortunate enough to see the merman again, she’d figure out a way to translate words for him and have him do the same for her with whistles and clicks.
“What is Brida?” he asked.
She blinked. How to answer? She was a human, but that was obvious, and instinct told her that wasn’t really his question. Comprehension dawned. She held up her arms and flexed her biceps, feeling foolish, but figuring it was the best way to impart her name’s meaning. “Brida is strength.” She patted one arm for emphasis. “Strength.”
The merman’s fluke twitched as if it waved at her. He tested the word. “Strength.” This time the whistle he uttered was a burst of sound, short and sharp. “Brida,” he said and repeated the whistle.
She had a mer name now. Thrilled at the idea, Brida took up her flute and played the note. It lacked the melodic tones of the four-note tune the merwoman had uttered, but it was her name in a language of the sea spoken by legendary creatures from its depths.
“What is…” She played his name on the flute.
Her companion spread his arms to indicate size, then curved one in a darting motion to indicate speed.
Brida raised an eyebrow. “Your name is Fast Fish?” This communication exchange was difficult.
Like the more abstract term for “daughter,” his name defied simple translation through gestures. Brida waved a hand at him to signal it didn’t matter. She was happy to call him in the language of his folk. It seemed only fair to return the courtesy.
Hints of conversation drifted toward her. The elders were returning from their short stroll. It was time to leave.
She sighed, wishing this extraordinary meeting wouldn’t end. “I must go,” she said and unfolded her legs to stand. A muscular arm stretched out before a webbed hand gripped her ankle, and she froze, heart leaping in her chest in a mixture of fright and a feeling she hadn’t experienced in a long time.
The merman’s gaze flickered in the direction of the two men before returning to her. He released her ankle. “Come back, Brida?” He clicked at her before pointing to the sky with his free hand. “When lights shine?”
A garland of seaweed hair spilled over his arm to trail across her foot. Brida looked up at the ever-darkening sky and the “lights.” His expression held both hope and entreaty. “Stars,” she said and singled out a few of the brighter lights sailors used to navigate over the vast expanse of ocean. “The lights are stars.”
“Stars,” he repeated and clicked twice. She tried to mimic him, and they both grinned
at her failure.
“Come back, Brida?” He said a second time.
“I’ll try.” She wanted very much to say yes, but such would be a lie. With Ospodine still in Ancilar and his unwanted attention focused on her, she had to be careful. And he was only one of several challenges in returning to the beach in the evening hours without attracting notice or inviting questions.
She raised a hand, beguiled by the sight of him, so strange yet so beautiful in the Gray’s shallow caress. “Goodbye.”
“Wait.” She halted, watching as he unwound a thin strip of dark cloth from around his upper arm and offered it to her. “For you from me and…” He whistled the merchild’s name.
Brida’s hand closed on the fabric, startled to discover it was the sheathe for her flute she’d lost in the waves when she carried the merchild out to her kinsmen. The cloth had seen better days, its weave unravelling in places and heavy with salt water. Something hard and weighted lay hidden in one end.
The elders were close enough now that another minute more, and they’d spot the merman where he rested in the shallows. Brida gave him a quick smile and a last wave before abandoning the ledge to meet the pair on the beach. She dared not look back, though the temptation nearly overwhelmed her.
She tucked the wet flute cover into one of the pockets of her skirt, feeling it soak through to her skin, and wondering what lay inside. A shell? A rock? A dead fish? She hoped it wasn’t the last.
The two elders gave no indication they’d seen anything odd on their stroll, though they admonished her to be careful going anywhere alone and promised to keep an eye on Lord Frantisek’s sinister guest should he choose to visit Ancilar again or the beach itself.
Alone once more in her house, she barred the door behind her, lit a few more candles, and set a kettle of water to warm on the still hot grate over the banked coals in her hearth. Her tea would be lukewarm at best, but she craved a cup, not only to warm her bones but calm her racing thoughts.
Tomorrow. The merman had pleaded with her to return tomorrow, and Brida vowed she’d find a way to do so, regardless of nosy neighbors and threatening outsiders.
She fished out the soggy bit of cloth from her pocket and set it on her kitchen table. Flickering light from a single candle cast a warm glow on the cloth and the mysterious lump in one end. Brida shook out the contents, her shocked gasp loud in the quiet room as the merman’s gift rolled across the table’s surface to fall into her palm.
A pearl, the size of a hazelnut, and perfectly round, gleamed a lustrous ivory in the candlelight. Beautiful. Flawless. Priceless. A gift of thanks that carried the wealth of kings. Brida, a widow of small worth had suddenly become Brida, a widow of significant means.
Chapter Four
The click of the latch as she opened her back gate made Brida flinch, and she looked both ways into the quiet street. No one was about. She scurried along the edge of the cobblestone path, up on her tiptoes so as to make as little sound as possible. It was a sad day when she had to sneak out of her own house so as not to explain her business to every busybody who thought themselves entitled to that knowledge.
The merman’s appeal of “Come back, Brida?” played inside her mind For seven evenings he’d asked the same thing each time they parted. She had yet to tell him no.
A niggling of guilt plagued her. Laylam sensed something beyond the usual preparations for winter and the upcoming harvest festival celebrated by all the villages under Castle Banat’s demesne distracted her. He questioned her about it each time he saw her, and each time she lied to him without batting an eyelash.
“You’ve not been yourself for nearly a month now, Brida. What’s wrong?”
I’m chatting with mermen at night and hiding from harassing noblemen during the day, she was tempted to reply but kept the words behind her teeth and answered with a brief shrug. “I’m fine, Laylam. I’d think you have a lot more to concern yourself with than your sister’s mood.” Three of his nine children had been sick with a cold the past few days, and Brida had tended to the healthy children while Norinn treated the sick ones. It had been left to Laylam to finish drying the last of their harvested seaweed, load it, and transport it to the big trading market in Galagan.
She’d left Norinn an hour ago, long enough to change clothes and bolt a cup of hot tea. The gloaming had passed. Half the village was dark, villagers finding their beds for the night. Brida didn’t hold much hope that her seagoing companion still awaited her, but she intended to visit their meeting place anyway. The little time they spent together each evening had become the highlight of her life, a magic all its own beyond the fact she was visiting one of the fabled merfolk.
Her shoulders sagged when she reached the ledge and found the waters that lapped at its base empty. No silvery fluke or skin dappled by moonlight. No firefly eyes or a webbed hand raised in greeting.
“Ahtin?” she called softly. The wind caught her question, tossing it into the surf.
She’d figured out the spoken equivalent of his whistled name after more failed hand gestures and fleeting drawings dug into the sand with a stick. “Fast fish” wasn’t quite right, but Brida had been close in her initial translation.
The sand drawings had done much to further their communication. She’d learned the merchild was not his daughter, but his niece, child of a sister mermaid. When the merman held out his hand for the stick, she’d passed it to him, watching as he arched his torso and tail for balance before sketching out a sleek fish with a nose that elongated into the shape of a spear or spike.
When he finished, he tapped the stick against the drawing, then tapped his chest with one finger and whistled his name.
He’d drawn an ahtin, a big, sleek, deep-water fish highly prized by fishermen, not for its meat but for the challenge of catching it. Fast and aggressive, the ahtin fought every attempt at being hooked or netted, its ferociousness legendary. More than a few fishermen had died in the attempt, impaled on the spike.
It seemed an odd name to give the merman, Brida thought. He had been anything but aggressive toward her. The name seemed more fitting for someone like Ospodine. Still, he’d managed to fight off and escape something with big teeth and a bigger appetite, saving himself and his niece, even if it had been a near death for them both.
“Ahtin,” she’d told him when he gave her an inquiring look. “Your name is Ahtin.”
“Ahtin,” he’d repeated before nodding his approval. “Ahtin and Brida.”
The pairing of their two names sent a frisson of warmth through her body, startling her. “Oh, Brida,” she silently admonished herself. “Don’t be a nitwit. It’s simply two names and someone learning how to say them.”
She hadn’t echoed his words, turning her attention instead to drawing more pictographs in the sand so she and Ahtin could exchange their meanings in both spoken word and whistle. He learned her language much faster than she learned his, his fascination for this new speech reflected in the avid spark that lit his eyes and the way his gaze settled on her mouth and stayed as she spoke. It might have been disconcerting were it not for the softness of his expression, as if what she said wasn’t nearly as enchanting as the way she said it.
“Vanity,” that inner voice, with its relentless criticism, cautioned her. “Just your vanity.”
This evening she’d promised herself not to read into Ahtin’s expressions those emotions experienced by humans. He wasn’t human, and his people remained a mystery to her. She’d witnessed some of their behavior when they gathered in the hope of rescuing Ahtin and the merchild Brida now called Samath, after the spirit of beaches. They displayed fear and affection, anger and worry, just like humans did, but much of that emotion had manifested audibly. The nuances of facial expression might be very different in merfolk than in humans. Though it was impossible to misinterpret the wide smile Ahtin wore every time he saw her.
No merman greeted her now with his welcoming smile, and the sea lapped solitary against the rock ledge as if to mock her.
Brida climbed to the flat top anyway and peered out at the waves. Vague hints of dorsal fins rose and fell in the surf, darting one way and then the other under the dull light of stars and a fading moon. Hunting, she thought. The toothy predators that made night fishing so dangerous were out in numbers now, patrolling the waters for the unwary. Brida was suddenly glad Ahtin hadn’t come, or if he had, that he chose not to stay.
The sharp whistle that was her name in the mer language proved that assumption wrong. Brida turned toward the sound coming from her left where the tidal pools in which she’d first found Ahtin were now submerged by the tide. Beyond them, a stretch of beach unfurled past the salt grass to the place where a curving ladder of rock hugged the shoreline. The black eye of a sea cave stared back at her, and in the glass-thin water kissing the entrance, a pale figure beckoned.
Brida’s spirit sang with a silent joy at the sight of Ahtin waving to her, but she hesitated to join him. Ixada cave was a haunted place, a doorway to the world of the dead, or so the old stories went. Every child born and raised in Ancilar had challenged their playmates to enter the caves, including Brida. She’d only been brave enough to linger at the entrance and peer inside, at which point Laylam had leapt out of the shadows with a roar and nearly made her wet herself with terror. She’d raced home crying, unsympathetic to her brother’s plight when he earned a hard swat from their father and a night without supper for scaring his sister.
Childhood was long behind her, but her wariness of the cave remained, as it did with even the most skeptical villagers. Fishermen told of hearing strange whispering from its depths during moonless nights and especially on the Day of Spirits when the year also died. Some even reported seeing vaporous shapes floating out of the blackness to fade into the waves, singing wordless songs in wailing voices.
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