A Wilderness of Glass - Grace Draven Page 0,14
to set aside their wariness of her as she was of them.
She repeated the names twice more before changing tactics. Five years earlier, she had stood on this very beach and wailed her grief over the loss of her husband to a deaf sky. The moon didn’t answer, nor did the stars, but something in the Gray did—the four-note whistle she still played on her flute. A reply from the black waves, so full of sorrow and sympathy that Brida had fallen to her knees and sobbed until she retched.
A mysterious reply from an unseen source then. Possibly a mystery no longer. Brida braced the merchild against her knees as she swayed with the surf’s infinite purling. She licked her lips before pressing them to the flute’s mouthpiece again, fingertips perched on the playing holes, and played the four-note tune.
Had she lobbed a live, starving shark into the water, the reaction to the tune couldn’t have been more vehement, much like the wounded merman’s when she whistled it earlier. A frenzy of splashing heralded a cacophony of whistles and clicks that shrieked above the Gray’s dull roar. Multiple wakes of frothing water raced toward the shore. Brida almost dropped flute and merchild as she struggled to her feet, nearly falling face first into the water amidst a tangle of soggy skirts.
A deeper, sharper whistle rose above the rest, and as one body, the merfolk splashed to a halt, their eyes shimmering green coins in the darkness. Flukes slapped impatiently at the waves, and Brida got her first clear view of the sea people who had come to claim their own.
Like the merman on the beach, and the merchild in her arms, their kinsmen possessed the tails and flukes of dolphins instead of fish, and their skin glowed shades of silver in the moonlight. Seaweed hair spilled down their backs and shoulders, some woven with bits of shell. Like her merman, the males were muscular, with broad shoulders and powerful arms. The females in the group were smaller than the males, sleek and arresting, their long hair at times revealing or obscuring their bare breasts.
One female swam through the center of the group, moving slowly as if all the time in the world lay before them. She entered the shallows just shy of any danger of beaching herself and stared at Brida with a puzzling combination of wariness and recognition. She parted her lips and whistled the four-note tune in clear, perfect mimicry.
Brida’s throat closed against an involuntary sob, and new tears coursed down her cheeks. She swallowed several times in an effort to speak. “You,” she told the merwoman. “I heard you once. Long ago.”
The merwoman didn’t reply with either words or whistles, only watched Brida for a moment before her gaze slid to the mechild. She raised a webbed hand in an unmistakable command for Brida to bring the girl to her.
Brida’s feet moved of their own accord, or at the will of a sea spell cast silently by one of its denizens. She clutched her flute in one hand and waded deeper, closer and closer until she stood directly in front of the mermaid, and stared down into a pair of sea glass eyes full of ancient secrets. She dropped to her knees and held out her arms, her muscles quivering with the effort to hold the heavy merchild.
“She lives,” she told the merwoman. “For now.”
Slender hands lifted the girl from Brida’s embrace. The merwoman spoke in a series of soft clicks, and the child’s eyes opened for just a moment before closing once more. The merfolk surrounding them trilled as the merwoman passed her to a mermaid who snatched her away before disappearing into the deep. Three more merfolk followed, but the rest stayed behind, their regard unwavering as they watched Brida.
She braced a hand in the sand to keep the waves from knocking her over. She considered standing, but something warned her to stay put, at least for now. The merwoman whose voice had haunted her all these years whistled again, a single note ending on a question, and Brida recognized it as the merman’s name.
Her shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I don’t know. I can’t know, and I can’t help unless I go back ashore.”
The two stared at each other for long moments before the merwoman nodded as if she understood what Brida said. Careful to act as if negotiating with merfolk was an everyday event, Brida stood and waded steadily back to the beach