A Wilderness of Glass - Grace Draven Page 0,13
She would need their help.
The merman and child were black silhouettes under the shadows cast by the rocks that sheltered them. Seaweed floated over their bodies, lifted by the encroaching tide. It wasn’t enough to make them buoyant, but Brida hoped the continued rise might aid her in moving them closer to the deeper surf. If they even still lived.
She tossed her shawl on one of the nearby rocks and crouched next to the merchild. “Please be alive, little one,” she prayed to any gods who might be listening. The bright moonlight didn’t reach here, and the darkness obscured details, but Brida noted the child’s tail had peeled even more, her small face hollowed out under the cheekbones as if she had withered in the autumn air. Her closed eyes were sunken, her lips cracked and bleeding. The child didn’t move when Brida laid a hand on her shoulder, nor did the merman beside her.
Brida’s eyes teared as she touched cold, dry skin. She drew a shaky breath before tightening her lips to whistle the child’s name. The mergirl didn’t respond, even when Brida’s tears dripped on her throat and chest.
Despairing, Brida scooped the child into her arms. Similar in size and maturity to a human toddler, the merchild was easily twice as heavy in Brida’s hold. She remained limp as Brida hugged her, pressing her face against her cheek, whistling softly.
The faintest twitch made her freeze. She pulled back abruptly to stare at the mergirl’s shadowed features. Her gaze traveled the length of the small body, and she swallowed back a triumphant cry when the little fluke jerked upward in an anemic flap.
She surged to her feet, staggering for a moment under the child’s weight, to face the Gray. Lantern flickers of eyeshine shimmered once more among the waves. The silenced calls started again, this time shrill or mournful. Sharp clicks and chirps accompanied them, reminding Brida of the merman’s vocalizations when she made the mistake of touching the merchild the first time.
Fairy tales, told by generations of mothers, grandmothers, and old salts land-bound but still sea-ensorceled, teased her memories. Leviathans that lived in the black deep and swallowed ships whole. Ancient obludas that lured their victims with grief and ate them with teeth like daggers. And merfolk who frolicked in the waters and rode the bow waves of ships, waiting for some unfortunate sailor to fall in the water and drown in a mermaid’s seductive embrace.
Brida had never sailed on a deep water ship or seen a leviathan, but she knew the obludas were real, and held in her arms proof that merfolk were more than myth. And all were dangerous to a land dweller like her. She had to get the merchild into the water, back to the family who watched her from the surf, but she didn’t want to die in a mermaid’s lethal arms.
She waded calf-deep into the surf before stopping, her unconscious burden heavy against her. Her flute nestled in a satchel slung from her shoulder, so close but completely inaccessible unless Brida put the merchild down. She sank to her knees in the water, submerging the little girl from fluke to belly but careful to keep her shoulders and face clear of the rolling surf. With one hand she fished the flute out of the bag, pulling away the cloth cover with her teeth. She spat the cloth out. It floated away, rolling back with the tide toward the cluster of glittering eyes and flashes of silvery flesh.
Twisted in a position that kept the merchild afloat in her arms, and the flute balanced in both hands, Brida raised the instrument to her mouth and blew into the end stem in a series of bursts. The sounds the flute made were sharper than those she made with just her mouth, but the tone was the same—one for the merman’s name, one for the child. He’d given her nothing else. Just their names, and she repeated them in a second burst of whistles played on the flute.
Silence greeted her playing, though she didn’t imagine that the eyes drew closer. Fear coiled snakelike up her body. She was tempted to draw back, but the merchild’s increasing movements against her kept Brida in place. She’d brought the flute in the fragile hope she might better communicate with the merman. He was either dead or too far gone into delirium to whistle to her now, but those in the waves might do so if they were as willing