The Teeth in the Tide

by Rebecca F. Kenney

  “We’ve tried,” said a councilwoman. “A decade ago, the people of Nishvel crafted large cranes, with huge nets that they dragged through the water. They scooped up netfuls of mermaids and hung them from the cranes to suffocate in the air. But the mermaids cut their way out with their claws. Only a few died. And once our town collected lamp oil for months and poured it on the ocean’s surface and set it afire. Some of the mermaids were wounded, but most simply dove far below until the fire had burned out. It was a waste of fuel, and we suffered for it. We’ve tried poisoned meat dropped into the sea, spiked nets flung over the water. Every time we make an attempt, the impact is less than we’d hoped, and the cost in resources sets us back for months. We can’t sustain any long-term assault on them. The swarms breed and spawn too fast.”

  “And we can’t leave,” said a councilwoman. “There aren’t enough ships to take us all away. And those that still come are not suited for passengers.”

  Flay smacked his hand over the spinning ring. “Then you may be well and truly sunk, my friends. Because, as much as I like this piece of dubious paradise, I cannot do more for you than I already do. And what I do, I may not be able to sustain for much longer without great risk to my crew.”

  “Surely there’s some way we can help each other.” Chiren’s anxious tones faded as Kestra moved away, back to the kitchen. She couldn’t invent any more reasons for staying in the common room and avoiding the rest of her chores.

  Her mother and the other girls were already hard at work cleaning up from the night’s festivities. Enree turned, red-faced from the steaming dishwater, and threw a sponge at Kestra. “It’s about time. Your turn to wash. I’m heading home.”

  Kestra plunged her hands into the soapy water and scrubbed distractedly, analyzing what she had overheard. She conjured half a dozen plans for mermaid destruction and discarded each one, convinced that there must be a better way. The quicker her thoughts raced, the faster she worked, until the chores were done.

  “I’m off to bed,” her mother said, untying her apron and wiping her wrist across her forehead. “It’s late. Lilu, run along home. Mai, Kestra—you go to bed, too.”

  “Yes, Mama. I’ll dump the dishwater and then I’ll be up.” Kestra gave the broad table a last swipe of her cloth.

  Lilu scampered out the back door, and Mai turned to Kestra, a scheming expression on her face. “I’ll probably fall asleep right away,” she said, arching an eyebrow. “So I won’t know exactly when you come up. Even if it’s a bit late.”

  Kestra’s stomach fluttered, and she glanced toward the door. A few voices still murmured in the common room beyond. “I’ll be up soon,” she said.

  Mai grinned. “Don’t forget our bargain.”

  “I won’t.”

  Her cousin disappeared up the shadowed steps, leaving Kestra alone in the kitchen. She gripped the tub full of dishwater, but it was overfull, and too heavy. She’d have to take a couple bucketfuls out before she could lift it.

  Two strong brown arms reached around her body, and two warm, rough hands passed over hers. “Allow me.” The crisp ruffle of Flay’s open shirt brushed the back of her neck, his scent surging around her—salt and spice and a faint citrusy aroma, an essence he always wore. The few citrus trees on the island grew in a scant grove to the south. Kestra always hoarded the peels from the meager supply her mother received at the inn. Once she’d used the orange peels in a batch of soap, and she kept a bar of that soap, paper-wrapped and unused, so she could smell it sometimes and think of Flay. Not that she would ever tell him about it.

  She turned, caged between his lean arms, and met his gaze—those ice-blue eyes dancing with a delight that was for her, and because of her. He had drunk two mugs of ale—she had counted—but the aroma of tea on his breath hid the smell of the liquor. She knew where his limits lay as well as he did—somewhere after the third mug. He’d only gone past that point once, a year ago, when he’d lost a man to the mermaids. The drink had turned him slow and loud and weepy, but not cruel. She’d hauled him upstairs to his room while he cried quietly into her shoulder. After that, something new had sprung up between them, something more than smiles across a crowded room. Something that had led to the night three months ago, when she went to his bed.

  And now Flay was looking at her with more delight and longing than ever.

  “Did you miss me, Blossom?” he whispered, caressing her neck with the backs of his fingers.

  “No more than you missed me.”

  “Terribly, then.”

  “I doubt it.” She smirked, taking the edges of his collar in both hands, admiring the sweep of his sun-browned throat. He stilled, every line of his body tense, waiting. Kestra thrilled again, not just at his nearness, but at the sense of her power over him. He gave her the power, when he could easily have taken what he wanted—he was vital to the town, and the villagers would have forgiven him any sin. But he never seized or stole. He waited.

  Kestra ran her fingers up his neck, swept her thumb along his sharp jaw. And kissed him.

  He wrapped both arms around her, sighing into her mouth. She kept her eyes open for a second so she could watch his lids flutter closed, blond lashes brushing tanned cheekbones. And then she yielded to the bliss of it, to the slick glide of his tongue over hers, and the warm pressure of his lips, tasting, twisting, taking her mouth again and again.

  The minutes melted together, slow and sugared, but after a while Kestra felt him growing more urgent, pressing more closely against her. An answering heat flared through her veins, and she broke the kiss. “Not here,” she whispered. “The shed. Come on.”

  Clutching his fingers with one hand and snatching a lantern with the other, she led him outside and eased the back door shut. They ran through the garden—at least, she ran, and Flay stumbled, crashing into her when they were nearly to the shed door. She caught him, barely saving the lantern from being smashed.

  “Sorry,” he whispered, stifling a laugh into her shoulder. “I’ve still got my sea legs.”

  “You’re forgiven.”

  His body molded to hers for a second, his blond hair gleaming silvery-white in the moonlight, but just as she was about to kiss him again, he moved back.

  “I was so glad to see you, I forgot to ask.” He brushed his fingers through her hair. “But if you’d rather not do this, I can go to my room, alone. There’s no need to feel obliged, or—”

  “Do I seem like I feel obliged?” What she did not say was that she’d been imagining this, craving this, ever since he sailed away last time. Best not to swell his head.

  Flay gave her a slow smile. “You seem—enthusiastic.”

  Kestra kissed his mouth. “I am most definitely enthusiastic.” Moving her hand behind her, she grasped the handle and flung wide the door of the shed. “Enter, Captain,” she said dramatically. “But touch not the works of my cousin, or you shall feel her prodigious wrath.”

  “Is that so?” He grinned. “You’re about to feel my prodigious—” He stopped as the lantern light swept over the papers on the table. Mai had spread out her drawings again and weighted them down with rocks and with scales. Mermaid scales.

  Flay turned, his face sober. “What’s all this?”

  -4-

  Rake

  By the lavender light of a woven glowfish lamp, Rake watched his spawn shoveling handfuls of pulpy sea-greens into his mouth. Tendrils of the plants floated from the little one’s lips, bobbing with every chew.

  “Didn’t they feed you in the nurseries?” Rake asked.

  “Not much,” said Jewel. A few bits of seaweed escaped when he opened his mouth, and he poked them back in quickly, as if afraid they might slither off. “The females and the big males got most of the chum and bits.”

  Rake swirled past him, eyeing the spawn’s jutting ribs, his bone-thin arms, his slim tail, and his sharply pointed elbows. The little one had been starving.

  “Your cave is big,” Jewel said, and then darted away from Rake as if he expec
ted to be punished for the comment.

  “Big enough, I suppose,” Rake answered.

  “At the nurseries, we males are all squished together in a cave like this.” Jewel snatched a rock and lined it up with two other rocks, and piled a few more on top of those. “It’s hard to swim in there sometimes. And the others pull my tail. The females have more space. More food. Why?”

  “Why?” Rake scrambled for an answer. “Because—because males are softer and weaker. Less intelligent. More likely to be foolish and wander off.”

  Jewel chewed, a thoughtful expression on his small face. “Perhaps males act that way because we’re not given enough space, or food. Or lessons.”

  Rake glanced around and darted to his spawn, lifting Jewel’s pointed chin with the tips of his claws. “Never speak like that again,” he said. “Not here, and definitely not outside this cave. Do you understand? You’ll be thrown to the merlows or sharks if you talk that way.”

  Jewel nodded, his gold-flecked eyes wide.

  Rake swam to the open roof of his cave and gazed up. All was dark above—it was night in the surface world. Excitement raced through his veins, and he called to the spawn. “Have you ever seen the surface?”

  “No,” said Jewel.

  “Come with me.”

  Jewel didn’t need a second invitation. He shot upward, following Rake out of the cave toward the surface.

  When their heads broke through the waves, Jewel began to gasp and flounder. Rake seized him and ducked back under the water. “Calm down,” he said. “You have to change your breathing. Open your mouth like this, and suck in the air with your chest. Watch me.” Pulling them above the surface again, Rake drew in a big breath. For a second Jewel flailed, but then he opened his mouth and pulled the air in.

  “There,” said Rake, startled because his voice sounded so loud and painfully sharp without the water to cushion it. He focused on speaking more quietly. “I knew you could do it.”

  Jewel’s mouth opened and closed comically as he breathed, and Rake felt something welling up inside him. It burst from his lips, a harsh cascade of sound that frightened them both.

  “Are you dying?” asked Jewel soberly.

  “No,” said Rake. “I’m laughing. I can’t remember the last time I laughed.” And he did it again. The second time it wasn’t so awkward or dissonant. “Look, Jewel.” He pointed overhead. “You see those tiny points of light, sprinkled over the sky? Those are stars.”

  “Stars,” Jewel breathed. “I like them. And what is that very big star shaped like a mermidon’s knife?”

  “The moon. It isn’t always that shape. Sometimes it’s fuller, like this.” Rake made a circle with his fingers. “Did the nursery guards teach you nothing about the surface, or the sky?”

  “No,” said the spawn. “They teach us nothing about anything.”

  Rake shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d been taught practically nothing either, but he did have a talent for eavesdropping, and for extracting stories from even the most unwilling mermaids. His proximity to the Queens meant that he overheard plenty of fascinating information about the world, the Queens’ domain, and the humans on the island—the “land-slugs,” as Bruta called them.

  The idea of the humans caught in his brain and linked with the image he’d seen earlier—the dark-skinned human boy in the strange mouthpiece. Where did that device come from? Did the Queens have more artifacts like it? If they did—

  He closed his eyes, hardly daring to think it. He could see a murky channel opening up, a chain of possibilities leading to a desire so shameful, so secret, that he hadn’t shared it with another living soul. A dream inspired by the sight of the golden-haired captain aboard his ship. A desire encompassed by one shining word.

  Land.

  Leaving the turmoil and torture of the ocean. Getting out, getting away from it all, away from them. Away from the whipping tails and the claws that slashed whenever he didn’t do as he was told, devotedly and immediately. Freedom from the spears poked between his ribs and the knives held to his throat whenever he made too many errors or asked too many questions.

  He rose higher in the water, inspecting his chest and arms. The Queens might have chosen him for his beauty, but they were certainly fond of marring it. The faint light of the crescent moon gleamed on a network of countless scars, silver against his pale skin.

  One day, they would go too far. They would scar him beyond hope, beyond beauty, and toss him aside in favor of a new male. He’d be sent to the mermidons, for them to use or to eat. Or the Queens might one day kill him by accident during one of the punishment sessions they seemed to love so dearly.

  Rake’s eyes rested on Jewel, the one innocent, untainted thing he possessed. Already Jewel had a few scars on his back. Another decade, and he would have many more.

  Fury blasted through Rake’s brain, raw and red. He’d felt anger before, had blunted his claws and broken his scales crashing into the walls of his cave in an outburst of helpless panic. This was different. This was a blazing certainty that the life he led would not be the life of the little creature staring open-mouthed at the stars.

  For Jewel, he would do anything and everything. Break rules, and borders, and crowns.

  “Come,” he said. “You need to sleep. And I have work to do.”

  “What work?” asked Jewel as they dove.

  “Special work. Work that you cannot speak of to anyone. And while I’m gone, you must stay in the cave. Yes?”

  Jewel nodded. “Yes.”

  Rake took Jewel’s face in his hand. Despite the child’s thinness, his cheeks felt soft as feathery shoal-weed. “This is a very important order, little one. If you disobey me, you could die. Do you understand?”

  Jewel’s eyes narrowed. “You sound like them.”

  “No. They threaten you out of hate. I do it because I want you to be safe, and the simple truth is that here, in my cave, you are protected. Out there,” he pointed to the dark waters beyond the arch, “you are not.”

  Jewel’s lower lip thrust out, but he said, “I will stay.”

  “Good. You may play with anything you find in the cave—rocks, jewelry, the glowfish—anything, so long as you stay.”

  “Can I have more food?” Jewel pointed to the slatted food-box in the corner of the cave.

  “There isn’t much left, but you are welcome to whatever you find,” said Rake. “I’ll be back. It could be a long time.”

  But his spawn was already occupied with scraping more fresh sea-greens from the box. Rake filled his eyes with the sight, with the eager fingers and dark blue curls and the tiny golden tail. Then he twisted away and, with a powerful pulse of his tail, shot out of the cave.

  The Queens would not call him again for a while. He should have time to reach the Bone Trench and return before Jewel forgot his directive and wandered out of Rake’s quarters.

  For a while Rake swam openly. He was allowed to roam south as far as the shark territories, north to the Blue Reef, and west to the edge of the Shallows, where the merlow swarms thickened around the humans’ island. To the east swirled more merlows, but they were fewer in number, and he knew the peculiar cadence of the cry that the mermidons used to send them scattering. He could pitch his voice to imitate it perfectly, a talent he’d perfected in secret when he was eleven.

  The eastern boundary wasn’t firmly established, but all the breeders knew better than to go too far in that direction. All except Rake, of course. He smiled grimly and thrashed his tail for more speed, his arms straight at his sides. Out here he could be more than an amusement or a tool for producing spawn. Here he could be fast, strong, and glorious. A hero. A—

  Screaming, a merlow streaked toward him, its milky eyes bleak with ravenous hunger and its thin fingers outstretched. The jutting jaw and crooked rows of spiked teeth champed in anticipation of his flesh.

  Rake curved and whipped his tail at the creature, batting it away. It was only half his size, not formidable on its own—but when he
looked beyond it, he saw dozens more of those toothy maws speeding toward him.

  “Queen’s bones,” he swore. He tightened the muscles of his belly and screamed the control cry with all his might. It ripped through the water, a shrill, pulsating warning. He wasn’t sure what it meant to the merlows. “I am your kind—don’t eat me”? Or maybe “I am more evolved, and I will kill you”? He doubted that the merlows perceived it as any clear message. They operated on two basic instincts—eat and survive. Whatever the reason, his scream shattered their formation, and they skittered away into the darkness.

  He moved on, keeping to the shadows, slithering along crevices and weaving through forests of gently waving kelp. Not that the shadows would do him much good if he encountered a mermidon patrol—they could see in the dark better than he could. If they intercepted him wandering out here, he’d be dragged to the Queens for chastisement. Bruta enjoyed causing pain through blunt force, but Acrid’s specialty was the infliction of the most unexpected and exquisite pain. She had all sorts of favorite places—between his fingers, under his chin, behind his ears. The center of his palm. The sensitive root of his fin, where it joined his tail.

  Prickles of phantom anguish coursed over him, clouding his mind. He shook them off and swam faster, as if he could leave the memories in his wake.

  He hadn’t been out this way in a year or more, but he recognized a knobby outcropping of rock festooned with anemones, and the savage-looking spires of stone beyond it. The sand in this area used to ripple with rays, but he supposed the merlows must have eaten them all—or those that remained had become skilled at hiding.

  “The ocean itself recoils from us,” he murmured. “We are the scourge of all living things.”

  He’d heard tales of ocean reefs rich with fish of all colors, teeming with vibrant life. But in the mermaids’ domain, only the most vicious, cunning, or poisonous creatures could survive. Spiked blowfish. Tiny clownfish that slunk through anemones, claiming their protection. Eels charged with nerve-jangling electricity. Flatfish that blended in with the sand. Every month the mermidons had to swim farther to find enough food for themselves and the Court. How long could his kind sustain their life here, especially if they continued spawning as recklessly as they did?