still black and ominous in the early morning light. “Stay away from the edge,” she warned Eden.
Nuala peered down. About fifty yards directly below them, a rocky beach ran along the coastline for a couple hundred yards before meeting the vertical sides of the cliff. A woman dressed in a sheer white gown walked along the beach. She was pacing back and forth, from one end of the beach to the other, moaning such a mournful tone that Nuala felt the hair on her arms rise. On a small island of rock several yards from shore was a battered old hut, big enough for two men, at most, to move around in. Nuala had heard the stories. Long ago, an aging fisherman had struck up a friendship with one of the Merrow, and this hut is where they would meet and get drunk together. There were no such friendships now, not since the Merrow queen had been betrayed by a human lover. Now the Merrow hid themselves from humans, all past affections forgotten.
Nuala swore as she saw Eden leaning over the cliff’s edge to get a better look. She yanked her back by her belt. “Are you stupid?” she said. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
Eden looked at Nuala in surprise, her face crumpling.
“Oh, don’t start crying,” Nuala snapped. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Is that the mermaid?” Eden sniffed. “Where’s her tail?”
“How the hell am I supposed to know?” Nuala said with a scowl. “I suppose we’ll have to go down and find out. And Eden, whatever I say to Deardra, just go along with it, okay? We need her to help us so you can get to your father, but I might need to make some things up. So it’s best you don’t say anything. Got it?”
Eden nodded, and Nuala hoped the kid would keep her mouth shut. She was nervous about meeting Deardra. The Merrows’ minds were not susceptible to Danann abilities such as hers, and there was bad blood between the races. Nuala knew she would have to resort to old-fashioned diplomacy, something that had never been her forte.
“I don’t want to go down there!” wailed Eden.
“Don’t worry. Brighid said there’s a rope here somewhere that should carry us down.” Nuala groped around until her eyes fell on a single golden thread that seemed to grow out of the rock. She grabbed it and spoke the words Brighid had taught her.
“I mean no harm to the sea, or to those who dwell therein. I seek only to find, and not to take. If my words prove false, may I be buried forthwith beneath the waves, never to taste the air again.”
When she finished speaking, the rope grew thicker and sturdier in her hands. She told Eden to climb onto her back and wrap her hands around her neck. Clinging to the rope, she backed up and took a tentative step off the edge of the cliff, looking for a foothold. Eden screamed as all of a sudden they started dropping. But it was a controlled drop, and Nuala realized there was no need to climb down. The golden rope was dangling them out away from the rocks and gently lowering them to the beach below. When their feet touched the rocks, the rope receded to the top of the cliff. Nuala set Eden on the ground and turned to find the white woman standing only a foot away. Eden stared at her, eyes and mouth wide open. The woman’s gown was made out of sheer white fabric that clung to her wasted body as if she had just emerged from the ocean. Her skin was even paler than the dress, and tinged slightly with green. Her eyes were bloodshot, so much so that the whites were almost completely red, and her hair was the color of the deep purple sky Nuala and Eden had reclined beneath the previous night. It fell in a series of tangles and knots down the length of her back.
Nuala was unsure of the proper protocol, so she simply asked, “Deardra, Queen of the Merrow?”
The woman looked at them both. Then she spoke in a rasping voice that grated against Nuala’s nerves like a steel block being dragged across a cement floor. “It has been many years since the Tuatha Dé Danann have deigned to visit these shores.”
“Yes, it has been,” Nuala said uncertainly. “I bring greetings from my people. I am Fionnghuala. This child is Eden. As you