of the rubble looked as if it lay in and around the water with purpose, creating an imprecise spoke pattern with the lit pool at its center.
Water lapped at the rubble shore. Brida could see all the way to the rocky bottom and track the tiny fish that darted back and forth, startled by the sudden luminescence and the addition of a much bigger occupant to their sanctuary.
Ahtin slowly revealed himself with a flex of his tail, rising above the surface until he faced her, seawater streaming down his face and torso. His hair cascaded over his broad shoulders, wrapping around his arms. In the soft light, his eyes had lost their nocturnal shine, and his double pupils shone dark within their pale irises.
Her sodden skirt slapped in rhythm with her steps as Brida picked her way across one of the spokes toward him. His mouth curved into a smile to match hers. “Your water magic?” she asked.
“One enchantment.” He traced an evanescent pattern on the pool’s surface with one fingertip. “There are many others.”
Brida envied him the skill of water sorcery. Any sorcery for that matter. There were human mages, though they weren’t common, nor had she ever met one herself. She’d heard all the Kai, the last of the Elder races not yet vanished, possessed magic that they wielded at will, but like the merfolk, they weren’t human. “Do you know many enchantments?”
He shook his head. “No. The aps do, but they only teach all they know to the female who will become the ap after them.”
It had taken several rounds of whistle and word exchanges as well as numerous drawings in the sand for Brida to understand the nature of an ap, and she still wasn’t certain she had the right of it.
The merfolk were a loose confederation of several extended family units, each ruled by a matriarch they called an ap. At least that’s what the noise Ahtin made to signify the matriarch’s title sounded like to Brida. The ap’s descendents stayed with her family, the mermen leaving only temporarily to mate with merwomen of other families. In that, Ahtin told her, the merfolk were more like the great whales than the dolphins.
Merfolk lived long lives, the aps even longer than the others, sustained by sea magic whose origin had long ago been lost to memory but was passed down from matriarch to oldest living daughter who carried on the heritage generation after generation.
With Ahtin’s sorcerous light chasing away some of the darkness, the cave no longer seemed as sinister. Brida found the largest rock closest to the pool’s edge and sat down. Ahtin glided toward her, a study in grace and power as he cleaved the water.
“I have gifts for you.” She shrugged off the satchel she’d looped over her shoulder and across her chest, settling it in her lap.
Ahtin swam up next to her, so close his arm laid a wet path across the side of her skirt where he rested it on the rock shoreline. Avid curiosity glittered in his eyes as he stared at the bag, though he said nothing and waited patiently for her to reveal its contents to him.
She held up a wooden eating spoon, turning it one way, then the other before demonstrating its use. When she passed it to him, he took it as if it were a fragile piece of pottery. Brida watched, mesmerized as his fingers caressed the utensil, stroking the oval and handle in long sweeps. He then brought the oval to his mouth, pressing it down on his lower lip before sneaking a taste with the tip of his tongue. Brida forgot to breathe.
“Spoon,” she said in a hoarse voice.
Both lips curved around the oval’s edge in a kiss. “Spoon,” he echoed, double eyelids closed as if in deep thought. He opened his eyes, heavy gaze settling on her where she sat frozen on her rock seat. “I like the spoon.”
Siren’s voice, siren’s stare. The sea’s seduction wasn’t confined only to mermaids.
“I can keep it?”
Caught in that unwavering regard, Brida didn’t comprehend the question at first. “Keep it?”
A knowing, closed-lip smile curved Ahtin’s mouth. “The spoon.”
Later, when she lay alone in her bed, contemplating the mysteries of life in the plastered divets of her ceiling, Brida thanked the gods for the cave’s frigid air, otherwise she might have incinerated on the spot from embarrassment.
“Yes!” she practically shouted, flinching when her exclamation ricocheted back to her from the walls and roof. She bent her head,