Tide

by Lacy Sheridan

  There was nothing but casual fact in the way he said it—no grief, no anger, none of the weight that must have pressed down on him with such a vow. But he didn’t look at Moray or I. I got to my feet, crossed to where he was studying the trees, and stopped beside him. I wondered if he was even thinking about how he might make a spear from them or if he only needed to look like he was. “Was there another war?”

  “One.”

  I looked at him, taking in the lean muscles that had become so much more evident since he’d gotten his skin back. The faint flecks of scars. I thought of the way he carried himself, sure and strong, of the way he fought—always fought, even when he was sure to lose. How he’d killed the sellye, the vodianoi, so easily. His command of the wind and the clouds and the rain, or of a stolen spear. I’d never put the word warrior to Aven, but I wondered now why I hadn’t.

  I chewed on the inside of my cheek before I asked, “Did you help stop it?”

  A single, silent nod was my answer. And then in a smooth, lightning-quick motion he grabbed a low hanging branch in both hands, bracing one foot against the trunk of the tree, and broke it off with a rough crack that made me jump. He turned it in his hands, testing it; it was long, slender but sturdy. When he decided that it was satisfactory, he glanced to me and I knew from the gleam in his eyes that all talk of war was done. “Now that you’re rid of that bow, want to learn to hunt like a selkie?”

  I tried not to let the reminder cut through me and forced a smile. “I thought selkies hunted best in the water?”

  “Our fishing skill is renowned, I won’t lie, but we can get by on land, too.”

  “Well, I should know how to survive without you, if I ever need to.”

  “I’d never let that happen,” he scoffed, walking into the trees. “But it wouldn’t hurt, considering how often you get into trouble.”

  The three of us hunted for hours, Moray making its snide remarks at every turn, but they were more playful than they used to be. Aven and I passed the makeshift spear back and forth, him whispering corrections on my stance or the position of my hands as we tracked the forest life, or else fixing them with fleeting touches that made my pulse trip and stutter, as much as I begged for it not to. The spear was crude, and the kills bloody, like Moray had said, but it was better than nothing, and by time we had a small fire roasting our dinner I was grinning as I listened to Moray and Aven shoot half-serious insults.

  And we ate, and slept, and for the first time in a long while there were no nightmares haunting me.

  We should have kept going as soon as we were up in the morning, but the sun was bright and warm and the breeze incredible. The forest was like a dream, and I wanted nothing less than to leave it. We needed to hurry. I knew we needed to hurry, but I also knew it would take more willpower than before to drag myself to the Court’s borders. As difficult and dangerous as things had been so far, they were going get worse very soon.

  I ate my breakfast slowly, savoring the quiet before we’d throw ourselves back into the chaos that stalked our every step. Moray had drifted off in search of something to entertain itself while it waited, leaving Aven and I eating in companionable silence.

  The fourth time he looked across to me and said nothing I put my food down. “What is it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Aven.”

  He hesitated, a glint in his eyes that I’d never take for granted again after seeing them so dark and pained and wild. He said, “I want to show you something. We should get to the Court, but it’d be a shame not to see it while we’re here.”

  “What?” I knew from the look on his face he wasn’t telling, and he didn’t wait for an answer. My heart raced like a bird’s in the base of my throat as I followed him. There was only the rush of the tide and the whisper of our feet across the dusky grass. Aven kept his gaze trained ahead to wherever it was he was taking me. I tried not to look at him, but I couldn’t keep my focus from narrowing to where his hand almost brushed along mine in time with our steps. “Where are we going?” I asked. It had to be my imagination that my voice caught in my throat.

  I suspected from the faint, amused curl of his lips that it wasn’t, and that he was aware of my nerves. I always forgot the way tidespeople could hear and smell beyond any human—I knew he could hear the rhythm of my breath, my heartbeat, and wouldn’t have been surprised to learn he could smell the anxiety on me. But he never commented, and I could never be sure if it was because he didn’t want to scare me or he just didn’t care to.

  There was so much I didn’t know about him. He was letting me see more, bit by bit, and I suspected I’d seen more than most humans. The jokes and grins, the longing for adventure, the cold warrior. But the more he gave me the more I wanted. It wasn’t my place to want it—I shouldn’t have wanted it—but I did. I wanted anything he’d be willing to give me. Not just because he was my friend, but because something in me said he had something I needed. Something like that strangeness in me that didn’t know what it was or what it wanted.

  “Aven?” My voice almost cracked on his name.

  If he caught how my fear doubled he didn’t show it. “Yes?”

  “What is it like?” He glanced at me, waiting for elaboration. “Your Court, I mean. The place you come from.”

  He looked ahead again. “Now’s not the time for that. Later. Close your eyes.” I stared at him, my heartbeat picking up again. “Close your eyes,” he repeated, smiling this time.

  I took a breath and closed them. He took my hand and stepped forward, leading me, and I couldn’t keep my grip from tightening. “Don’t let me crash into anything, please.”

  He laughed. “Never.”

  I stretched my free arm out, feeling for the trees as we passed. The cold, stony edges of them brushed along my fingertips; Aven navigated expertly. But after another few minutes, the trees disappeared and I resisted the urge to open my eyes and see why.

  The sound of the tide was louder here. The breeze swept around me, cool and soft, and carried the scents of flowers I had no names for. Aven’s hand was like a flame against mine. A protest rose to my tongue when he let go and I bit it back, warmth creeping up my neck. Then I felt him circle behind me and the heat in my face flared.

  There was a chuckle close to my ear, taking away any hope of fighting the blush off. “Why has your heart started beating faster all of a sudden?” he asked in a whisper.

  I forced my voice to stay steady. “We’ve gone back to me wondering if you want to kill me or flirt with me.”

  “I told you, I’m a gentleman. You get yourself almost killed, running off all the time.”

  “I do not run off. A lady doesn’t run off without the protection of her fearsome selkie escort.”

  He scoffed, but I could hear the grin in it. “Some lady. Moray said you cursed like a street rat when they stuffed you in that cage.”

  “That was…a unique exception.”

  His voice lowered. “Moray also said you fought tooth and nail to escape. Stubborn and brilliant, I believe were the words it used.”

  I trembled at his closeness. I wanted so badly to turn and face him, to open my eyes, but fastened my knees in place. “It told you that?”

  “I thought when I met you that you were like any human. Fragile. Weak. That you’d give up before the first week was out, because you were too scared of me, or too small or young or pampered to handle it, or you’d decide it wasn’t worth the trouble and you’d rather be in your warm bed. But the first time you snapped at me I thought…this one may just be something. This one has summer in her hair and sunlight in her eyes, but steel in her spine. I keep telling myself you’re only human, you’ll break any minute, this is because I made a deal, but you keep proving me wrong.”

  I pressed my lips together to keep in the grin fighting to show itself. “You’re not so bad yourself, for a selkie.”

  Not so bad was an understatement, to say the least, but no other words would come. How could I tell him that he’d somehow
made me go from fearing his touch, thinking of claws and pain and death, to craving it? How could I tell him that when I thought of tidespeople now I thought of him lying on the beach, or that when those blue eyes met mine something in me felt like liquid? How could I tell him that where once I’d thought there was only darkness and danger in him there was light, and that it made me want to do everything better so that maybe I could match it?

  Summer and sunlight and steel—that wasn’t me, that was Aven.

  His voice was a whisper again and sent an entirely new kind of chill through me. “Open your eyes.”

  I did, blinking as my vision adjusted to the sun.

  We stood in a glade, the dusky-violet grass stretching long and soft around us and the painted sky glowing above, the sun beating down and warming me head to toe. Flowers dotted the ground, waving in the breeze, a million colors and shapes, unlike any wildflowers I’d seen before. The scent of them floated around us, and I took a second to inhale it. It smelled like spring at home but more—everything here was more. Between the hunger and the scrambling for survival I’d stopped paying attention to anything but the danger in the Realm of Tides. The shock of it had faded away, but now it struck me in full force and I recognized all over again how beautiful Aven’s world was.

  No, beautiful wasn’t enough. The sight took my breath away. It was nothing strange or majestic. No magic pulsed through the air. But it was a kind of serenity and simplicity that chased away everything else.

  I twisted to look at Aven behind me, but before I could speak he put one finger to his lips, quieting me, and pointed. I followed his gaze to a shape drifting on the wind.

  It was like a jellyfish in shape, like the ones I sometimes saw at home. A delicate bell-like body with tentacles streaming behind it, rippling like ribbons on the breeze. The sunlight shone through it like Moray, but rather than turning it into a dazzling burst of light it glowed from the inside, gold and magenta and turquoise. My gaze centered on it, speechless, as it floated gently across the glade.

  More followed, appearing from the trees and drifting along behind the first. They were a glowing rainbow, more and more adding to the spread of color as they filled the glade. Some no larger than the palm of my hand, some with tentacles as long as I was tall, but none threatening. If they saw us they didn’t care; they floated past without a care in the world. One brushed along my arm, silky-soft. They had no eyes that I could see, no mouths, nothing but that glassy, smooth surface, but they pulsed with life.

  And the more that came the clearer their sounds became, a chorus that mingled with that ever-present tide. A thousand crystalline voices humming. I closed my eyes and let them echo through to my bones, let my heartbeat fall into the melody.

  “We call them the summer-drifters,” Aven said. “Nobody knows exactly what they are or where they come from, but they pass through here every summer and disappear for the rest of the year. They never harm anyone, they never do anything at all, just wander and sing until the cold drives them away.”

  My heart pounded in my ears, my throat. “They’re beautiful.”

  “I thought you’d like them.”

  I tore my gaze from them to him. He stared at me and something I couldn’t read played in his eyes. “I think finding you was the greatest thing I’ve ever done,” I breathed. The words slipped from me unbidden, but for once I didn’t want to take them back. I didn’t blush at the meaning in them. I watched him and the smile that almost pulled at his lips but didn’t quite show itself.

  His eyes flicked around my face, searching it. The closeness of him pushed all thought from my mind but the song coursing through my veins and the smell of rain and wind off his skin. “I think you’re the greatest person who could have found me,” he said.

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I wasn’t sure it would come out coherent even if I did. I kept my gaze on his as he raised one hand and pushed a stray hair from my face, tucking it behind my ear. His fingertips grazed down along my jaw, feather-light. A trail of fire burned its way after them, and my head felt too light.

  He was so close. So close we shared breath, so close it wouldn’t even take a step to take what I wanted. But I couldn’t move. His fingers stayed there, lingering, hesitant.

  “Aven…” I had no idea what I meant to say beyond that.

  It didn’t matter; he pushed my chin up the fraction it needed, ever so gently, like I was made of spun glass, and his lips brushed along mine.

  Sparks burnt through my entire body in the instant before he stepped away. My world emptied of everything but the heat of his hand beneath my chin and the cold where he’d pulled away, making my head spin and ache in protest.

  Another offer, waiting for me to take or leave. Like always.

  I shifted closer and he kissed me again—finally, really kissed me, a kiss that made the world tilt and me wonder if I’d fall right off it. I felt it in every touch: pain and loneliness and exhaustion and relief, and something so warm and bright it put the sun above us to shame.

  I thought I might be nothing more than one of the summer-drifters in that moment, senseless and weightless and floating with the wind.

  By the time he pulled away, I was breathless and dizzy and wondering if I was dreaming, because this felt too surreal for anything else. I was dreaming and I’d wake with my heart pounding and my face flaming and Aven would know, but he’d do nothing but give me that look and get on with how far we needed to go that day. But Aven was standing before me, real and solid. It was him staring at me like I was something strange and exotic and new, and it was his hands cupping my face, and I was certain my legs were trembling with shock and happiness.

  I braced my forehead against his shoulder and closed my eyes, because I thought I might fall over if I didn’t, judging by how lightheaded I was. His arms hooked around me, careful of the raw scrapes across my back, and we stood like that and listened to the song of the summer-drifters as they passed into the trees and the glade quieted. And still we stood, silent. For the first time in weeks, a peace settled over me.

  “That shouldn’t have happened.”

  Every word hurt as it passed my lips. I’d wanted it to happen. And I wanted to enjoy that it had, not to have those fears and doubts creeping across my mind, but even if, for the moment, we were a world away from danger, we’d have to walk back to it soon. Too soon. Even if it weren’t for the simple fact of what he was and what I was, I was here for my brother. My brother who the people of Aven’s home had taken, maybe killed by now. The same people who would kill me if they had the chance. My brother had to be my priority. He would always be my priority. He needed to go home, and I needed to go home, and Aven…Aven’s home was not mine.

  But I couldn’t stop the traitorous, terrible thought that here, in his arms with the summer wind around us, felt a lot like a nice home too.

  The quiet ache in Aven’s voice was worse than any claw or fang or blade any tidesperson would have struck me with. “I know.”

  The question lingered on my tongue before I asked it. “Does that mean we…we pretend it didn’t, or we…don’t?”

  “You have people to go home to, and so do I. You don’t belong here, and I don’t belong there.”

  And just like that the homesickness returned, fiercer and sharper than before. Their faces swam in my mind, betrayal stinging in their eyes. Papa. Edrick. Isla. How long had it been since I’d thought of them? My world had been only fear and worry and wondering.

  And Aven’s smile, and Moray’s attitude, and Aven again. A pang of guilt rang through me.

  I stepped away from Aven and sat in the long grass, fingertips pushed into my hair. Sometime between the passing and here, I’d lost that thin thread tugging me away. The sense that something deep inside me couldn’t settle. It had grown quieter and more tranquil, so gradual I hadn’t noticed it until Aven and Moray and the ever-present sunrise were puzzle pieces sliding into place around me to fill a picture I didn’t want to look at. Half a picture of Hania
the quiet farmgirl, half a picture of Hania the human who dared to walk beside a selkie. A picture that could never be permanent, no matter what either of us wanted.

  Aven sat beside me, staring out across the glade. “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “Maybe your brother is already dead. Maybe you’ll die, too. Maybe you’ll save him and you two will go back to your village and everything will be as it was before. And I don’t know what the right thing to do is. Because I look at you sometimes, Hania, and it’s like the air gets knocked out of the world. And other times I’m reminded that you’re so human and you shouldn’t be here, and if I had any honor I’d take you right back home.”

  “I asked you to bring me here. I want to be here, and I know what might happen. And if it does, at least I tried.”

  “I’ll do everything I can to make sure it doesn’t happen. But my Court is not kind to humans.”

  I couldn’t help the curiosity pushing at me again. “Why?” I asked.

  “The barrier. The war. All of it. The same as why your people aren’t kind to us. Gods know there are people on both sides who deserve it.”

  There was more he wasn’t saying. I could see it, in the way he looked down at the long grass, the way his voice moved. I dared to shift a fraction closer. “Tell me about your Court.”

  He didn’t push the subject away this time. He looked at me. “I’m one of them. Are you sure you want to know the details?”

  I fought off the image of the watchman collapsing at the festival, armor dripping blood, and nodded. “They raised you. It can’t be all bad. I want to know where you come from.” What I’ll be walking into.