made it here so quickly without you.”
“Most welcome, friend,” Jye’s voice says in the waning gloom. I squint to make out her face.
“How long should we wait for your return?” Elae asks.
“Tomorrow.”
“So soon?”
“It’s for the best,” I whisper. “Leith will be made a man tonight, and my duties will be done.” I try to keep the sadness from my voice, but I know the mermaids hear it.
“We will be waiting,” Jye hums softly back to me. “Sing our names if we’re in the water.”
I nod, and they slide into the shallow waves like eels, disappearing without so much as a sound.
The women and Leith are waiting for me by the lift. My brother and I ascend first with our gifts.
Bonfire and laughter await us. The light of the flames nearly chase back the red glow of the comet—the moon, which when I glance up, is like a beady evil eye staring directly down at me.
It’s just the moon, I remind myself, forcing my thoughts away from it.
As I watch Leith being introduced to Sand’s Hunters’ chosen bride, quiet pleasure takes away my eerie unease.
I stiffen when I see her.
She is a beautiful, curvy girl his age with thick dark braids tossed over her shoulder and kept in place by a heavy-looking band of gold shells, gifted with slanted dark eyes that are heavy with kohl. She wears a snakeskin over her breasts with a skirt to match. Braided threads and many more gold shells dangle from her hair, her neck, her wrists, and her ankles.
Recognition hits me. Delina. Beautiful child Delina. My friend Aida’s younger sister. It’s not Aida. My eyes hurry over the villagers but don’t see my friend. I expected to see Aida presented to Leith, not Delina.
The light of the bonfire at Delina’s back makes her skin even darker as it also makes her eyes and shells glint provocatively.
Checking Leith’s expression, I find him priming and smitten, with a grin on his face bigger than I’ve seen in weeks. A lightness lifts my weighted heart. He grabs Delina to him and plants a kiss on her lips.
The villagers cheer and a sneaky tear falls from my eye. I wipe it away before anyone notices.
Part of me wishes, covets deeply for a celebration like this of my own. Of dressing up in the village’s finest to offer myself to a male who has traveled from afar to be mine. To lead him by hand to my bedding and take his manhood into me…
I clench at the fantasy.
The same way I clench and moan late at night as my body hollows out with emptiness. I’m longing, desperate to be sated by this shadow male who doesn’t exist. This other half of me who would forever be missing.
I sigh.
Then, like always, the loneliness settles through, filling my void like a chilly breeze, and I hide my face.
Tulia noticed when my first blood came, when my breasts grew, and when my eyes began to linger on the mermen who would sometimes come to visit and smile at me. They liked luring me close with the promise of a simple kiss, only to laugh at me and go toy with their playmates. How I gazed upon them with the envy nipping at me now, wishing I could do the same as them.
Tulia was as a mother to me during those years as I tried to grasp what was happening to my being, why I cared so much for a mate of my own. She helped me understand that all my nights would be lonely. And that there were other ways of finding satisfaction… Like caring for my tribe, helping the elders, and protecting my brother so another may not long as I do.
I lift my raw palms to my mouth and blow on them again, cooling the burn.
Delina leads Leith away into the dark. Goodbye, brother.
His nights will never be lonely. And because of that, there may still be a good future for our people. There’s pride in this as well, I note. I helped make this happen.
Aida appears out of nowhere, joining me now that our siblings are gone.
Her fellow tribesmen begin dancing around the bonfire as a freshly cooked feast of fish and fruit is passed around.
“I thought it would be you,” I whisper, dropping my hands, facing her.
“The elders think Delina will bear more and healthier young than I,” she murmurs back.
Pain laces her voice. Aida’s been looking forward to this celebration for years, believing Leith would be hers.