Seasons of Sorcery Page 11

  Brida followed at a leisurely pace, trekking over hillocks of kelp. She’d be salt-caked and sand-encrusted by the end of the day and reeking of seaweed, but for now she enjoyed the hike and the hints of sunlight breaking through the cloud cover.

  She was the only one on this section of beach. The rest of the harvesters had dispersed into the shallows behind her or toward the bigger pools that lay in the opposite direction where the cups of the bluffs were deeper and trapped more of the seaweed.

  Moot had mostly disappeared behind a tall shard of rock, only the last third of her tail peeking out to reveal her whereabouts. The hound’s tail suddenly drooped before she backed away, teeth bared at whatever lay hidden behind the rock’s shelter.

  Brida slowed her approach, gripping the sickle a little harder as Moot growled low in her throat. Sometimes the Gray coughed up predators that swam too close to the shore during the storms and were slung onto the beaches where they gasped their last breaths. Alarm swirled through Brida’s belly. What if it was an obluda? One of those foul abominations that usually lurked in the black deep?

  An obluda had terrorized Ancilar during the long summer before Zigana Imre had dispatched it with the help of her mare Gitta and Lord Frantisek. Even now, with that thing crushed to bone splinters under Gitta’s massive hooves, people still feared falling asleep, feared dreaming in case another such creature lured a grieving, unwary villager into the water to feast on them.

  What had the dog found?

  She peeked around the line of stone. Moot pressed against her leg, preventing Brida from getting any closer. Brida’s heart surged into her throat at the sight before her.

  Like the beach and shallows, the tidal pools were choked with seaweed. The stuff draped over the rocks and spilled across the sand, dotted with tiny sand crabs that skittered across the lacy leaves before burrowing under them to reach the water in the pools. Entangled within a net of the weed, a man and a child sprawled. Bright blood streaked the man’s bare torso and the arm stretched across the child in a protective clasp. The pair looked asleep, their features slack, eyes closed. From her vantage point, Brida couldn’t tell if they breathed.

  Seeing two gravely injured people sprawled in the sand should have stunned her speechless for only a moment before she’d start screaming for help. But in this moment she remained silent, her shock making her doubt her own eyes.

  Where there should have been hips, and legs, and feet, the two possessed tails, sleek and muscular that ended in flukes similar to those of dolphins. Their skin shimmered in the sun like the inside of an abalone shell bleached by the sun—striations of blue, indigo, silvery gray, and cascading green. Their hair was nearly indistinguishable from the leafy varieties of seaweed spilled around them, neither blond, brunet, or ginger, but multiple shades of pearlescent green and purple.

  A dozen memories from childhood skated across Brida’s mind, stories told by her mother and others to enthralled children, of the mysteries of the sea, of things that swam there, beautiful and dark, dangerous and benevolent. Some believed and others scoffed at such fanciful tales as nothing more than the delusions of bored sailors trapped too long on deep-water ships.

  Brida wasn’t a sailor, and her feet were planted firmly on the shore. She’d outgrown fairytales a long time ago, and while she was sleep-deprived, she wasn’t hallucinating. Merfolk were real, and two lay before her, dead or dying.

  Chapter Two

  Brida crept forward, balanced on the balls of her feet and ready to sprint away. Despite the chilly air blowing off the Gray, her hand on the sickle handle was slippery with sweat. She used her knees to nudge Moot out of the way so she could get a closer look at the two stranded merfolk.

  The child made a faint noise, a cross between a kittenish mew and a whistle. The small fluke flapped against the sand, dislodging swags of seaweed. The merman’s hand flexed in response to the sound, fingers splaying wide to reveal webbing between the digits, the translucent skin patterned in a lacework of tiny blue veins.

  Brida leapt back, nearly trampling Moot who’d stuck to her legs like a barnacle. The hound let loose with another round of barking, the hair on her back stiffening into a ridge that ran the length of her spine.

  “Moot! Hush!”

  The dog only did what instinct and training required of her, but Brida didn’t want half the village running over here to see what all the commotion was about. Moot quieted, though her hackles remained high and her teeth bared as she guarded Brida.

  The merman’s eyelids lifted, and Brida gasped. His eyes were pale and strange, not human, yet so full of misery and pain that an involuntary moan of sympathy erupted from Brida’s throat. The bloodshot whites of his eyes contrasted against irises almost silvery in color. Two pupils, one atop the other and no bigger than the heads of pins, dotted their centers.

  He blinked, a rapid flutter of a double set of eyelids, one a delicate membrane nestled under a thicker-skinned lid. The movement mimicked the sudden thrash of his tail. A piercing whistle cut the air, the sound so sharp that Brida dropped the sickle to cover her ears with her hands. Next to her, Moot yelped and danced backward, shaking her head hard enough that her ears flapped like flags in a hard breeze.

  Brida held out one hand, palm forward, and pressed the index finger of her other hand against her lips. “Shhh. Shhh,” she told the merman. “I mean no harm.”

  Blood cascaded down his tail to drip off the edges of his fluke. A jagged wound, where the hip might be on a human man, pursed open with his movements. Crescent in shape, it matched another one farther down his tail. Something had bitten him. Something big.

  Numerous smaller wounds marred his body, from human torso down to dolphin tail, a mural of slashes and shallow bite marks. Brida glanced at the child, noting the absence of any bites or blood. Had the merman battled a hungry predator to save the merchild and ended up stranded on the shore, too weak to propel himself and his charge back to the water?

  Both were alive, but not for long by the look of them. Their breathing was shallow, barely discernible, and the merchild’s newing sounded thin. Blood ran in continuous rivulets along the merman’s body, tempting tiny crabs to investigate and taste the salt and iron in the red flow. The lovely abalone shell shimmer of the pair’s flesh was dulling before her eyes, and flecks of skin furled off their tails and arms under the weak sun, peeling away as if they’d suffered sunburn.

  She knew nothing of merfolk, but creatures born of the water belonged in the water. Beaching was a death sentence. She’d seen it firsthand as a child in the tragedy of a dying whale crushed by its own weight as it lay on the sand.

  The urge to call to for help warred with the caution to remain silent. Brida’s cries would bring the entire village running to her aid. Of that, she had no doubt. But she feared that call would elicit a massacre, driven by a mindless fear engendered into people still traumatized by the terror the obluda had subjected them too not so long ago.

  She jumped again when a voice boomed over the beach. “Ziga! Odon!”

  Moot renewed her frantic barking, capturing the hem of Brida’s skirts in her teeth and tugging to pull her away from the tidal pools.

  “Stop it, Moot!” She tugged her skirts up, lifting the dog with them as those teeth remained firmly clamped on the fabric.

  Hobbled by the dog’s weight, she shuffled from behind the concealing rock face to see the new arrivals on the shore. Odon Imre and his daughter Zigana had joined the harvesters, leading their two mares by tether lines into the shallows.

  The villager who greeted them pointed at the water, nodding and gesturing to the water seers as they engaged in conversation. Brida was too far away to hear, but she could guess at what was said. Odon and Zigana possessed the gift of water sight, an ability that allowed them to sense whether or not it was safe to trawl the waters for shrimp, fish from the boats or rake the seaweed from the shallows. The last had never required their unique assistance before. The horses and villagers harvested the kelp, w
ildweed, featherweed, sea whip, and pepper fern from the rocks or in the surf where the water was too shallow for predator fish to lurk. These days, however, the Imres’ talent was in high demand. No one dipped a toe in the waves without their signal that all was well. Brida could only imagine the reactions if she showed them the two merfolk trapped in the tidal pools behind her.

  Laylam waved to her not far away, his gelding standing patiently beside him, cage rake attached to the traces behind him, as the pair waited for the signal it was safe to harvest. “All right there, Brida?” he shouted.

  The wind caught his question, whirling it toward her. She waved back. “Fine.” She pointed to Moot who finally let go of her skirts. “Moot’s battling crabs, and they’re winning!” she shouted back to him.

  He nodded and returned his attention to the Imres who stood together and gave a tandem nod. It was safe to enter the water. Like racers perched on a starting line, the harvesters guided their horses into the surf with a snap of the lead lines. Around them, women and children with baskets hoisted on their backs or strapped to their hips waded into the shallows, bending to pick the Gray’s gifts washed in by the storm.

  Brida strode back to the beached merfolk. They lay as she left them, the merman’s webbed hand still resting on the child’s small body. The pool under the adult’s tail had turned a dark pink, evicting resident starfish from its tainted waters.

  The merman watched her with that strange double-lidded gaze, his face a study in suffering. Discounting the most obvious physical differences, he looked mostly human. His nose was like any other she’d seen, neither too long or too broad, but his nostrils were smaller. They flared in rapid bursts as he struggled to breathe. In contrast to his nostrils, his eyes were large, sunk a little deeper in their sockets than a human’s. He didn’t have eyelashes, and his eyebrows were arches of rippled flesh instead of short hairs along his brow ridge. No hint of beard shadowed the sharp line of his jaw or his chin, and his partially open mouth hid his teeth from her view.

  Beside him, the merchild breathed just as hard, though seemed in less pain than the adult. From the waist up, it looked much like a human child of two or three, with tiny webbed hands, rounded belly, and features still plump with baby fat. Brida couldn’t tell the child’s gender by the appearance of its face or torso, but there were differences between the pair on the exposed undersides of their tails not far from the flukes. The merman possessed two slits in the flesh, one long, the other much shorter and just below it. In the child, there was only the one long slit. If her assumption was right, the merchild was a girl.

  Brida stared at the surf and then the distressed pair so far from it. The merman was much too big for her to move. She could see that in a glance, but if she was quick enough, she might be able to sneak the merchild into the water without the harvesters noticing.

  Then what? Leave her in the water to drown? That inner voice, with its merciless reason, made her curse under her breath. She had no idea, no true plan for how she might possibly save these two on her own, and asking for help from the villagers wasn’t an option.

  Moot’s ears pricked forward when Brida turned to her and shook her finger. “No barking, Moot. Understand? Hush.” The dog cocked her head to the side as if considering, her tail wagging. Satisfied, Brida shrugged off her baskets.

  She pushed one to the side and used the other as a pail to scoop water from the pools. Liquid streamed from the basket’s holes, but enough stayed in for Brida to gently pour it over the merman. He gasped, a convulsive shiver rippling along his tail and up his torso. The muscles in his arms, chest, and midriff flexed, and blood streamed off his skin in pink ribbons. Still, he didn’t let go of the merchild.

  The little girl twitched and mewed as Brida trickled water across her body. Brida crooned to her in a sing-song voice, words of reassurance she’d sometimes used to comfort her younger nieces and nephews after a spill in the garden or a nightmare during a nap. “Easy, love. You’re a brave girl. We’ll get you home soon.”

  Lies always hung sour on the tongue, even when told with the best of intentions. Brida didn’t know if she could fulfill that implied promise to the merchild. Even if she managed to get her in the water, without the merman there with her, she wouldn’t survive. Some sea creature had already attacked the merman, gravely wounding him.

  Overwhelmed with sympathy, Brida forgot caution, set the basket aside, and reached out a hesitant hand to push the lacy locks of seaweed hair away from the merchild’s face. Another shrill whistle nearly burst her eardrums. She had only a moment to catch a glimpse from the corner of her eye of an arching fluke before a powerful force slammed into her, flinging her sideways. She smashed into the rock face concealing the pools. A shockwave of pain bolted down her spine and up the back of her head while black stars exploded across her vision.

  She sprawled on the wet seaweed, breath knocked out of her lungs. Moot’s frantic barking sounded far away, though the dog’s face was so close, they nearly touched noses. “Moot,” she whispered when she could finally breathe. “Stop.”

  The dog whined and leaned forward to nuzzle Brida’s cheek with her wet nose. Brida turned away, wincing as the movement made her vision swim and her stomach roil. An odd set of clicks and pops sounded nearby, punctuated by a series of softer whistles that held the unmistakable tones of inquiry and regret. She must have hit her head harder than she thought if she was imagining such things.

  An exploratory touch to her scalp told her she’d have a lump, but there was no blood. Her vision rapidly cleared, and her nausea faded as the pain dulled to a throbbing ache.

  She met the merman’s wide-eyed stare. He’d drawn the merchild closer to him, sheltering her even deeper into the cove of his body. His mouth moved, emitting more of the clicks and short whistles that carried the ring of apology.

  Brida clambered to her feet, swaying. She raised both hands toward the merman in a supplicating gesture. “Forgive me,” she said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  She grabbed her basket and staggered to the pool for more water to pour on the pair. She bore no resentment toward the merman. He had only tried to protect his charge from an entity who might be a threat, despite the benevolent gestures she’d shown so far. Had she been in his place, she didn’t doubt she would have done the same. The fault was hers for being so careless.

  Laylam would soon notice Brida wasn’t helping to fill the family wagon, so she split her time. After each trip to the beach with loaded baskets, she poured more water over the merfolk, and cut kelp, discarded plan after plan for returning the pair back to the Gray, alive and unnoticed.

  “I’ll be right back,” she assured the merman. Even knowing he probably didn’t understand a word she said, she hoped the tone of her voice conveyed some of her intention not to abandon them.

  This time her sister-in-law, Norinn, had joined the harvesters and met Brida at the back of the dray with a full basket of her own. “You didn’t tell Laylam about that nobleman accosting you last night, did you?” Disapproval dripped from every word. “Haniss told me when the children and I got here.”

  Brida scooped out bits of kelp stuck to the bottom of one basket. “I wasn’t accosted. He didn’t even touch me, although I think he was on the verge of accusing me of stealing my flute. His lordship sent him on his way.” She shrugged. “What’s there to tell?”

  The memory of Ospodine still made her uneasy. There had been about him an unnatural intensity. She’d been almost surprised not to find burn marks on her back this morning when she dressed, his regard of her had been that scorching. That hostile. Still, she didn’t think it either useful or necessary to worry her brother. His lordship had expertly diffused the situation, and Brida doubted she’d ever cross path with Ospodine again.

  “Laylam won’t like that you didn’t say anything, Brida.”

  Brida stiffened. She liked Norinn very much, though the woman sometimes had a bad habit of expecting Brida to report everything in her life to Lay
lam. “He’ll adjust. He’s my brother, not my keeper.”

  The other woman sighed, reaching out to pat Brida’s shoulder in a gesture of truce. “You’re his only sibling, Brida. He’s just protective.”

  “I know, and I love him for it, even when he’s being his most annoying.” She offered Norinn a quick smile before shouldering her empty baskets. She didn’t have time to chat. “I’ll talk to you later. Over tea. I still have a lot to harvest at my allotment.”

  “Do you need help?” Norinn called to her as she left. Brida waved and shook her head, leaving Moot behind this time. She desperately needed help, just not the kind Norinn offered.

  The dread building inside her from the moment she left the title pool eased a fraction when she discovered the merman and child still breathed.

  Brida had emptied one small tidal pool trying to keep her charges wet and cool and started on the second one. The merman’s closed eyelids fluttered but didn’t lift as she poured water on him. Her mind raced as she did the same to the merchild.

  Merfolk obviously communicated with a series of whistles and clicks, a language of the sea both mysterious and yet familiar to her. She’d heard something similar years earlier. Brief, sadly beautiful, and a balm to her soul when she was at her most wretched. She’d never forgotten those four tuneful whistles drifting off the night surf.

  The whistles the merman and child made were different, frightened instead of mournful, yet Brida guessed they came from the same origin as the ones she played on her flute. She didn’t have the instrument with her now and could only attempt to reproduce those sounds with her mouth.

  She set her basket aside to ease a little closer to the merman’s head and stay out of striking range of his powerful tail. Either he heard her approach or sensed her nearness, because his eyes opened, and the muscles in his torso visibly tensed.