The Teeth in the Tide

by Rebecca F. Kenney

  THE

  TEETH

  IN THE

  TIDE

  by Rebecca F. Kenney

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by Rebecca F. Kenney

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at rfkenney@gmail.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  First Edition: August 2021

  Kenney, Rebecca F.

  The Teeth in the Tide / by Rebecca F. Kenney—First edition.

  MidnightTidePublishing.com

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1: Kestra

  Chapter 2: Rake

  Chapter 3: Kestra

  Chapter 4: Rake

  Chapter 5: Kestra

  Chapter 6: Rake

  Chapter 7: Kestra

  Chapter 8: Rake

  Chapter 9: Kestra

  Chapter 10: Rake

  Chapter 11: Kestra

  Chapter 12: Rake

  Chapter 13: Kestra

  Chapter 14: Rake

  Chapter 15: Kestra

  Chapter 16: Rake

  Chapter 17: Kestra

  Chapter 18: Rake

  Chapter 19: Kestra

  Chapter 20: Rake

  Chapter 21: Kestra

  Chapter 22: Rake

  Chapter 23: Kestra

  Chapter 24: Rake

  Chapter 25: Kestra

  Chapter 26: Rake

  Chapter 27: Kestra

  Chapter 28: Rake

  Playlist

  “Where the Shadow Ends,” BANNERS, Young Bombs

  “Drown,” Bring Me the Horizon

  “Armor,” Landon Austin

  “Into the Deep,” Eurielle

  “Sympathy,” Karmina”

  “Shallow,” Poets of the Fall

  “Never Give Up on Your Dreams,” Two Steps from Hell, Thomas Bergersen

  “Witch Image,” Ghost

  “Open Your Eyes,” Bea Miller

  “You Can’t Stop the Girl,” Bebe Rexha

  “Carry On Wayward Son,” Neoni

  “Rain,” Ben Platt

  “Overboard,” Poets of the Fall

  “Head Above Water,” Little Destroyer

  “Hell or High Water,” The Rescues

  “Run,” Delta Rae

  Content Warnings: Violence, abuse, brief mention/implication of off-screen rape/sexual slavery, cannibalism, PTSD.

  DEDICATION

  For Tristan, the blue-eyed captain of my heart,

  And for my own two little jewels.

  -1-

  Kestra

  When Kestra’s father fell into the sea, it took three men to keep her mother from leaping in after him.

  Kestra’s father had always been so careful, so sure-footed. He had to be, for he made his living shoring up the walls that protected Kiken Island from the things that writhed in the sea. The people of the town called him Death-Dancer, because he would swing outside the wall, high above the surf, finding narrow ledges with his toes and clinging with the tips of his fingers. He whistled as he tapped in each replacement stone with a mallet and swiped the mortar smooth with his trowel.

  Kestra often watched him work. She’d peer over the wall until her mother or a neighbor screeched at her not to lean out so far.

  Her father would look up at her, grinning. “They are the sparrows, little one,” he’d say. “You and I—we are the sea-hawks.”

  She thought he was invincible—that if he did happen to fall, he’d find a way to sprout wings and fly, like the mythical Sky-Born of the western islands. He’d sail back up to the top of the wall, fold his wings, and smile. “There, little sea-hawk,” he’d say. “You can do anything if you believe hard enough.”

  And then, one day, his foot slipped.

  Kestra didn’t see what happened next. One of the townswomen pulled her close, pressing seven-year-old Kestra’s face into her woolen skirts and murmuring a prayer, quick and low.

  “Eyes be salt and body be sand, but soul be the breeze that flies to the land.” The woman’s voice quavered the same refrain over and over, an undercurrent to the shrieks ripping from Kestra’s mother and the keening of the mermaids in the surf below the wall.

  Kestra never saw what the mermaids did to her father—not with her waking eyes. But she saw it again and again in dreams for the next fifteen years. The sharp teeth, slicing. The sea foam, colored crimson. Chunks and bits bobbing along the bubbling surface.

  Her father was a vigorous laugh cut short. A cheerful song chopped mid-verse.

  Alive. And then—

  The emptiness where he had been gnawed at Kestra, and not just while she slept. But she learned how to sidestep that sore place in her heart, how to crush down the dark anger that crawled inside her, souring every other emotion. She couldn’t avoid the wall altogether, or shut out the whine of the mermaids thrashing in the sea below; but she stayed as far as possible from the spot where her father had disappeared—the spot halfway between the hawk-master’s pens and the salt refinery.

  She didn’t go near that place, not even when she visited the hawk-master, or when, as now, she had errands with Umi, the salt-maker.

  She could see the wall out of the corner of her eye as she reached for the handle of the salt refinery’s door. A quick pull and a step, and she was inside. Safe.

  The hum of the salt grinders soothed her, and she breathed deeply, her gaze flitting over shelf upon shelf of neat jars and bottles, each filled with freshly ground salt and stoppered with tiny corks.

  Umi bustled out of the evaporation room, bringing a waft of humid air with her. “A pleasant morning to you,” she said warmly to Kestra. “What can I get for you? I have coarse-ground crystals, perfect for packing meat or fish—medium grains for roasts—finely ground salts for the table.”

  “I know, Umi. I come here every month.” Kestra smiled through a twinge of concern. Umi was becoming more forgetful than ever. It was time she took on an apprentice, before her memory grew worse and she forgot all her techniques for refining the various types of sea salt.

  “Of course you do,” said the woman, wiping her wrinkled forehead with a scrap of white cloth. “Yes, yes. My apologies.”

  Kestra stepped to a series of small shelves, each of which held a different color of salt. Pale green salt, like the glassy emerald of the ocean on a cloudy day. Crystalline blue, the color of sun-soaked sky on waves. Pink like the lining of a conch shell. In some of the jars, the salt was speckled with herbs, while in others it was blended with black pepper. Kestra collected several of the bottles, tucking them into her basket.

  “I hope you’ve made plenty of extra salt mixtures,” she said as she laid coins in Umi’s hand. “The Wind’s Favor should be arriving any day now.”

  Alarm widened Umi’s watery eyes. “Is it that time already?”

  “Yes, Umi. And they’ll be wanting jars of your salt, you know.”

  “Oh, dear. Yes, yes. Must prepare extra batches.” Umi turned aside, dribbling the coins into a cloth bag. “Time goes so quickly now. The days scamper right past me.”

  “Would you like me to send Mai to help you tomorrow?” Kestra asked.

  “Yes, dear, if you would. She can help run the grinders. What day is it, exactly?�
�

  “The eleventh of the eight month.”

  “Yes, yes. Of course it is. And the Wind’s Favor is running a bit late, isn’t it? That boy captain of theirs likes to push his luck.”

  Umi hadn’t said the captain’s name, but Kestra’s heart still fluttered. “Yes, he does. I suppose he likes the challenge.”

  Umi shook her head. “He’s a handsome rake, that one. There was a boy like him, years ago—a boy who used to mend the walls. A brave, brave fool. He fell, you know. The mermaids ate him.”

  Pain seized Kestra’s heart in its cracked fingers, and twisted. “I know, Umi,” she managed. “I have to go. I’ll send Mai tomorrow.”

  Gripping her basket, she rushed out of the refinery into the street. The sharp sea breeze slapped her cheeks, whipping away two tears that had managed to escape. For a brief, fierce moment, Kestra hated Umi—no, hated her age, and the slipping of the mind that made her say such cruel things. Thoughtless things.

  It wasn’t Umi’s fault. It was the horrible dance that the decades had done in her brain, breaking the bonds of her memories. A year ago, Umi would never have made a careless mention of Kestra’s father in front of her.

  Kestra stood still, trying to move past the pain. Trying, and failing, because over the rush of the wind and the clap of waves against the wall, a sound drifted—the incessant, hungry whining of a thousand sharp-toothed mouths.

  A scant ten steps away she could see it—the section of the wall where she had last seen her father. The gray rocks seemed to swell and darken until they filled all her sight, and the thin wails of the mermaids slithered through her ears into her mind.

  Sour rage surged in her, fierce and sudden.

  That piece of wall had held her under its sway long enough.

  She took one step, and then another, and more, until her shaking fingers touched the cold, clammy stone at the top of the wall.

  She was touching it, and not dying. Touching it, and not hearing his voice again, not hearing the screams again, only the whip of the wind and the rattle of shutters and the voices, the voices—

  She had to see them.

  For fifteen years she had not looked down into the sea.

  But now—

  There was a boy, years ago—a boy who used to mend the walls. A brave, brave fool. He fell, you know. The mermaids ate him.

  Her heart pounded, an inner tide slamming against her ribs. Slowly she lowered the basket to the ground and placed both hands on the cool stone of the wall.

  Pretending the swarms were not there did no good, for anyone. Her entire village had been pretending for too long, denying and hoping until they were barely eking by, shuffling along an ever-narrowing path above the chasm of ruin, disease, and starvation. A century ago they were part of a prosperous trade route; and now, cut off by mermaids and monsters, the island sat helpless while fertile soil grew ever scarcer. It was time to seize the pain by the throat, and look.

  So she leaned forward, and she looked down.

  Down at the gray-green water laced with pale foam, shot through with ribboning wakes. When she squinted, she could see the mermaids—fishtails whipping through the waves, fins streaking madly, then stopping in a cloud of bubbles before swirling back in the opposite direction. Mouths, gaping like the hungry maws of baby sea-hawks—except these mouths had purple lips and double rows of blade-sharp teeth. She could barely distinguish each wild, glassy-eyed face before it ducked back underwater and was replaced by another.

  “There are more of them now. More than ever.”

  The voice at her shoulder made her jump. She turned, trembling, but it was only Takajo the hawk-master, his black hair scraped back into its usual long plait, his dark eyes full of the reflected sky.

  “How do they survive?” Kestra asked. “Surely they must have eaten all the fish for miles around by now. Why do they stay here, by the wall?”

  He shrugged, laying broad brown hands on the stony edge. “Some say they eat each other when they cannot find fish or humans to devour. I don’t doubt it—I’ve seen blood in that water many a time. And I’ve seen them leap and grab unwary gulls right out of the air.” He made a snatching motion with one hand. “They are spawned, they eat, and they die, but not before more are spawned to eat and then die. A mindless cycle.”

  “Are they truly mindless? All of them?”

  “I’ve seen these—” Takajo gestured to the swarming mermaids below— “and I’ve caught a glimpse of the others, the larger ones that look more like us. The big ones might be easier on the eyes, but they’ll eat human flesh just the same. I’d wager they like having us here, trapped and frightened. They like it when a toddling child or an elder topples into the sea. They won’t go, because they like the power we give them. And we stay, because we are too proud and stubborn to leave.” He smacked both hands on the rocks. “Come away, Kestra. There’s nothing to be gained by standing here—only sadness, and hard memories.”

  She let him lead her away, even though a sick, horrified part of her itched to go back and gaze into those gaping mouths again. Why, why should she want to watch them when she hated them so, when their very existence was like a bitter black knot in the pit of her stomach? But she did want to watch, to stare, to pick at her grief like a child picks at the scab of a sore.

  Kestra shoved the urge aside and scrambled for a reasonable bit of conversation.

  “How are your birds, Takajo?”

  “They are well,” he answered. “The new batch is promising. I think they will be good hunters. But I’m having to send them farther and farther away to find fish. And I lost two young ones to the mermaids this month.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged massive shoulders. “It is the way of things.”

  The way of things? The death of the birds, and the death of her father, and the slow death of Umi’s mind—was it all “the way of things”? And why? Why should it be? Why did no one ever try to change it?

  “Be well, Takajo.” She hurried away from him, sensing his surprise at the abrupt farewell. But she couldn’t walk beside him, her father’s one-time friend, and chatter about the young sea-hawks and the perils of their training—not after what she had just seen.

  When she was sure Takajo must have gone back into his shop, she broke into a run that jostled the jars of salt together in her basket. She ran along the street, around a curve, and up the steep slant of Watcher’s Hill to The Three Cherries.

  The village’s sole inn and tavern was a rambling three-story building, one of the only establishments in town prosperous enough to waste money on fresh coats of paint. Its position on the peak of Watcher’s Hill meant that every ship coming to Kiken Island noticed the curves and peaks of its crimson rooftops before anything else—and so every crew that dared to disembark headed straight for The Three Cherries to toast the fact that they had made it ashore with limbs intact.

  But with the growing numbers of mermaids, fewer and fewer ships came near the island anymore. Those that did took care to follow the patterns of the mermaids’ spawning cycles. The ships’ captains knew better than to make port right after a spawning. They timed their arrival to coincide with the mermaids’ mating and gestation periods, and they always fled before another spawn session was due to begin.

  How kind of the mermaids to keep a strict schedule, Kestra thought wryly. She skirted The Three Cherries, casting a fond glance at the flourishing herb garden behind the inn, and banged through the back door into the kitchen.

  Her mother Lumina jumped and dropped a rolling pin. “Skies and serpents, child!” She brushed flour off her cheek with an equally floury forearm. As she bent to pick up the rolling pin, strands of shiny black hair swung past her cheeks, escaped from the ivory cloth around her head.

  “Sorry.” Kestra set the basket on one of the broad kitchen tables. “Here’s the salt.”

  “Did you get the fish?”

  Curse her distracted brain. “I forgot.”

  Lumina’s eyes narrowed. �
�You forgot?”

  “I’ll go out again later,” Kestra said. Or you could go fetch it, she thought—but it would be useless to say the words aloud. Her mother never went down Watcher’s Hill. She hadn’t set foot beyond the courtyard of The Three Cherries for almost fifteen years.

  Lumina shook her head. “Never mind, I’ll send one of the other girls for it. I need you here this afternoon, to do the soup for tonight.”

  “Which one?”

  “The kind with the chicken and potatoes and leeks—nice and rich, perfect for a crew coming in off the sea.”

  A blush crept up Kestra’s neck into her cheeks. “Has the ship been spotted then?”

  “Not yet, but it could be today. Or tomorrow.”

  “I hope it’s soon, or they may run into trouble.” Kestra plucked a bit of dough from the lump her mother was rolling and got her knuckles rapped for her trouble. She mouthed the dough. “This is for the dumplings? I’d have put in a bit more grated onion. And a touch more salt.”

  “You weren’t here.” Lumina pressed the dough harder, thinning it to a creamy sheet. “And yes, I’m aware that you’re a better cook than I am. Cawl never fails to remind me that my daughter’s skills have surpassed my own.”

  “But your management skills remain far superior.” Kestra kissed her mother’s cheek. “You’ve ensured that Cawl will never put you out of work, because he has no idea how to run this place without you. Now where’s Mai? Umi is going to need her help tomorrow—and possibly every day after that.”

  “Mai won’t like it.”

  “I know. Where is she?”

  Her mother picked up a sharp knife and began slicing the dough into strips. “She’s in that shed at the back of the garden. Where else?”

  Kestra went out the back door more softly this time, her stiff sandals crunching the pebbled garden path. On either side of the path climbed beds of fragrant herbs, luscious heads of lettuce, and sprays of greenery from thriving root vegetables. The tiered structure of the beds was Mai’s design, but the results were all due to Kestra’s careful tending.

  Kestra breathed deeply of the air, scented with spice and florals. The branches of maples, cherry trees, and palmatas tossed gently in the evening breeze. Behind the garden and beyond the shed at its far end, the distant peak of the island’s central mountain rose smoky blue and steadfast. The islanders revered that dead volcano, not only because its crater served as a natural reservoir, but because of the precious metals threaded through its crags and caves. The people of the twin towns, Nishvel and Anchel, mined those metals slowly and carefully, always mindful of the mountain’s structure and of the finite nature of the resources hidden within. But in the hundreds of years since the island was first settled, the mines had never been fully emptied. The excavation teams were always discovering fresh sprinklings of the precious metal asthore waiting to be refined from the rock. Those veins of asthore were the true life-blood of the island, for they brought the ships. Asthore could be refined to paper thinness and still stop a crossbow bolt without taking a dent. Since Kiken Island was the only known source of asthore, a handful of bold captains braved the waters every three months, while the mermaids were gestating their next brood of ravenous young. A few of the ships docked at the western town of Nishvel, which mined from the opposite side of the mountain; but for the past three years, the Wind’s Favor, guided by its handsome captain, had been the only ship to visit Kestra’s village of Anchel.