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