This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
MOON-BRIGHT TIDES
First edition. January 25, 2018.
Copyright © 2018 RoAnna Sylver.
Written by RoAnna Sylver.
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Moon-Bright Tides
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Moon-Bright Tides
Riven could never look at the sea without thinking of drowning. She only had to catch a glimpse of waves, and her heart would constrict, blood running cold and breath rushing from her lungs. Facing her worst fears never got easier, though she’d told herself it would for years. Because every night, she was bound to venture out of her bright, warm house and into the silent water, swaying in her clamshell boat under the stars, the sea as dark beneath her as the moonless sky above. And every night, the tide came in and carried her home.
She did it all with a shell and a song. A spiral shell hung around her neck on a chain, and when she was about a mile away from shore, she raised it to the sky and sang the song, asking the moon—wherever it was—to call the tides.
Riven had never seen its light. Nobody she knew had. Where it should have been was a hole, darker even than the rest of the night sky. Without the moon to guide the tidewaters, the job fell to a witch, singing a song and dreading the black depths. But even if there was no moon to hear her song anymore, the ocean obliged.
Waxing, waning, full and blood,
Harvest, gibbous, wolf and snow.
Flower, worm, corn and cold,
Let your light shine down.
The song and the shell had been in Riven’s family for generations, passed not from parent to child, but to whomever could sing the ocean currents into motion. Her older cousins—a pair of twins, blessed to harmonize and sing in the tide-flow together—had once told her that a fallen piece of the moon itself lay in the center of the spiral shell, but finding out would mean breaking it into pieces, and it was far too precious a treasure.
Too precious a treasure, she thought bitterly, the shell’s sharp edges digging into her palms. Not nearly as precious as hearing her cousins laugh again. Her mother’s eyes, her father’s strong-armed hug that had lifted her off the ground, spinning, flying. But the moon was long gone, and now, so were they, and Riven wanted to smash the thing. These nights, it felt like nothing but an anchor, dragging her down.
We remember
When you smiled above.
We are waiting
Here for you.
From here, she could barely see lights on the beach. Her dock, her house, the only one for miles. No one else ventured out over the water at midnight, and even in daylight this rocky beach had been all but deserted for years, far from city lights. It wasn't just the isolation that kept even the most experienced fishermen and sailors from this quiet spot. People said it was cursed, warning of riptides, telling stories of bodies pulled up on hooks.
The last time she’d been in town, she heard the rumors. Ladies swore up and down that they'd heard voices, cries and strange sounds like singing that echoed eerily in the inky dark. Grizzled old men muttered around their pipes about shapes in the fog, sinuous bodies that slipped among the jagged rocks that stuck out of the dark water like dragons' teeth. Seeing a mer was a bad omen, but if the stories were true, seeing one and living to tell the tale was lucky indeed.
The only people who ventured here were the very brave, the very foolish, and one lonely witch.
Hear me call the tides,
Echoing your long-lost voice.
As the waters flow to me,
May they guide you home.
Each night was as cold and desolate as the last, each song just as melancholy; each trip home welcoming and filled with the anticipation of lovingly-cooked stew, a hot bath, and a warm bed. The nightly ritual left her drained and anxious, so she routinely left a small stew pot and bowl waiting for her return on the dock, magically heated. When the sharp smell of herbs filled her nostrils amid the salty sea air, she knew her rest and relief was close. But even with this small comfort, the nights ran together, and so did Riven’s sad midnight songs, until it seemed like she’d been doing it all her life, and knew nothing else.
But one early summer night, as Riven made her way home, something new awaited her. The small light she’d left on a wooden pylon illuminated an unexpected movement. Someone was on her dock. They looked like they were kneeling, upper body and thin arms reaching for the stew pot.
"Hello!" Riven called out, heart pounding at the sight; she hadn’t seen another person since her last trip into town a week ago. The isolation was one of the hardest parts of her duty, and unexpected company brought her joy—even if this visitor was apparently raiding her stew, uncovering the pot and raising it to their mouth.
The person froze as soon as Riven’s voice rang through the still night air. They did not rise to their feet or reply as she approached, and Riven felt a pang of guilt for startling them. Nobody came to this beach by accident, or because they meant to stay. If this was a fisher or sailor, they must be in dire straits indeed.
"It’s all right," she called, bringing her boat in closer and squinting to get a better look at the figure on the dock. "If you’re hungry, go ahead, I have—"
She stopped with a gasp, mouth hanging open. Her own light, combined with the dock lantern, was enough to illuminate a smooth, hairless head and blue-grey skin. Long-fingered hands that ended in wicked claws. Large, all-black eyes that reflected the lamplight, and a bony, sharp-angled body that continued into a long, curved tail that hung off the dock, translucent fins brushing the water. The mer wore no clothes or ornaments on their skeletally-thin frame, sharp shoulders and elbows painful contrasts to Riven’s full figure and soft, rounded curves. Even from here Riven could see shadows of ribs.
Riven tried to talk, but no sound came out. Every story she’d ever heard spoke of sailors lost to watery graves, pulled down by clawed hands, and they jangled together in her brain. This was a creature from the deep. A mer, an ocean predator, a man-eater. But they weren’t attacking, and from the look of them, they hadn’t eaten anything—or anyone—in a very long time. Riven held very still, and held her tongue as well, waiting.
The mer did not speak, or take their dark eyes off of Riven. But, very slowly, they brought the pot back up to their thin lips. Their emaciated limbs must be stronger than they looked, Riven thought a bit dizzily, because they did not shake. And the mer must be hungry, because the only time they broke the shared gaze was to shut their eyes in what looked like momentary bliss.
When the mer’s frantic meal was done, they dropped the pot to the dock—and jumped at the clang, letting out a small, truncated shriek. Riven was startled as well, but not so much that she missed something flare out at the mer’s neck—gills perhaps? Riven didn’t have time to ponder any of this, because the mer recoiled from the noise, flopped awkwardly over the side of the dock, and disappeared with a splash.
"Wait!" Riven cried, docking and tying off her boat as fast as she could with her cold-sweaty hands. It was too late. The mer was gone, the black water as empty as ever. Riven should be thanking every star still left in the sky that the probably-bloodthirsty creature had left her unscathed—but she didn’t. Instead, she just felt disappointed, and even lonelier than before.
But there was something left something behind, Riven noticed as she went to retrieve her now-empty stew
pot. In the mer’s place rested a small pile of tarnished gold coins, glinting gold in her lantern’s light.
RIVEN FELL INTO AN uneasy sleep and woke far too early, startled by an unsettling dream. It was one she'd had many times, but could never quite recall. Just the impression of having relived something disturbing and beautiful all at once, shining and precious and quick to slip through her fingers.
It had been like that for years. A sudden awakening, the feeling that she'd dreamed something strange and important. (Deep, dark water, cold, pulled beneath. A glint of light, something that moved in the deep...) She would struggle to remember, but come up empty-handed, like reeling in an empty line. Resignation to the mystery was the last to come, a weary acceptance of more dreams with no answers.
But not this grey morning. This wasn’t just one more day in a string of identical sunrises and sunsets that stretched unending to the horizon. This one was different. She’d seen a face in the waves, and, like the riddle of the dreams, Riven had to know more. All day, she found herself looking out across the grey water, searching for a human-like shape, and finding none. She didn’t know how to call the mer back like calling in the sea, and she spent the day feeling agitated, taken by a strange impulse to do something, but not knowing what. Cleaning took care of some of the nervous energy, and there was always sand to sweep out, but she still felt like she was waiting for someone to knock on the door—though she couldn’t remember that ever happening.
And the next night, when she returned from calling in the tides, a dark shape waited for her.
The mer sat beside the stew pot this time instead of raiding it, and they did not flee, holding perfectly still and carefully watching as Riven brought her boat in and tied it off. Their angular shoulders and thin chest did not move as Riven stepped onto the dock, but slight movement at their neck betrayed the fluttering of her gills.
Slowly, keeping her movements as smooth and regular as possible, Riven filled the nearby bowl with hot, fragrant stew, delighting in the way the sharp scents of chives and spices opened her sinuses and warmed her from within even on this cold night. Then she knelt down, set the bowl on the dock, and gently pushed it toward her silent guest.
The mer seized the bowl with dripping, skeletally-thin fingers, clutching its warmth to their chest before drinking it down whole, in long, ravenous swallows. A few seconds later, the bowl thunked against the dock-wood as they unceremoniously dropped it—then jumped as if startled at the noise, slipping over the edge and back into the water. Riven caught a glimpse of shining, all-black eyes as the ocean closed silently over her head, and the mer was gone.
In her place, and where the coins had been the previous night, rested a shining, fist-sized pearl.
RIVEN WENT OUT THE next night, for the third time since meeting the stranger on her dock, and for the third time, she returned to find her waiting. The mer’s black eyes followed Riven as she guided her boat into the dock, tied it off in a practiced square knot, and stepped out, but they didn’t seem as apprehensive as the night before, not as quick to flee. Riven repeated last night’s same slow, smooth movements, filling the bowl with slow-cooked stew from the pot and sliding it over.
This time, the mer didn’t snatch it up, gobble it, and disappear. They curled long fingers around it slowly, picking it up and drinking from it without the feverish desperation from last night. Their black eyes widened a bit at the first sip, as if the heat and flavor remained new and surprising—but their gaze never strayed from Riven, who sat a small distance away on the dock, gazing out across the dark, silent water. It was never polite to stare at someone while they ate.
"Thank you," the mer said at last in a soft, rasping voice. If they’d been human, Riven would have thought they were thirsty, but mers didn’t seem to lack for water.
"It’s nothing," Riven returned immediately, brain only registering afterwards that she was actually speaking with a mer. Riven had, of course, heard stories of unearthly singing luring sailors to their doom, but nothing of ordinary conversation. "You must be hungry, and I have a lot of soup."
The words came out without a struggle. Without thinking. It was strange—when someone thanked you, wasn’t that what you said, no matter who they were? If someone called ‘hello,’ weren’t you always supposed to say it back? There seemed to be rules about this, laws of interaction others seemed to inherently grasp. Riven never really understood them, and they never came easily. Until now, in a conversation that should have been strangest of all.
"It’s wonderful," the mer said around another mouthful. Some of it fell out of their mouth and back into the bowl, but they didn’t seem to care beyond mild surprise. Gravity probably worked differently underwater, Riven thought, remembering their surprise at dropping the bowl last night. "Best I’ve ever had."
"Me too," Riven said, feeling a little warm inside, as if she’d swallowed a hot spoonful herself. "I’m pretty proud of it. It’s an old family recipe. You have to cook it all day to get the sage to—I’m sorry," she said, stopping her nervous babbling. "I’ve just never spoken with a mermaid befo—I mean, is that right? Mermaid? We call you ‘mers,’ mostly, but you usually hear about mermaids, not mer-man, or mer-person, or..."
"You have different words than we do," the mer said at last, peering at Riven in a way that suggested they were just as curious as she was. "Different—kinds? ‘Maid’ is closest, I think, to what you understand."
"Oh, good," Riven said automatically, then felt mortified. "I mean, not that anything’s better or worse, just—that’s what I am too. A girl, she, her..."
The mermaid didn’t answer, just kept drinking in the soup, but something crossed her face that almost looked like a smile, and she let out a soft trill through her gill-flaps that sounded almost like laughter.
"What’s your name?" Riven asked, feeling emboldened by the fact that her guest hadn’t disappeared yet; her conversation skills must not be as terrible as she thought. "If your people have them? I’m sorry if that’s a rude question, I just realized I don’t know the first thing about—well, about most people, actually, even humans I find difficult to talk to, but I at least know most of us have names. So, just, if I ask something foolish..." She trailed off, hoping the mermaid would pick up where she left off, but all she did was tilt her head and watch Riven with her deep black eyes, shining but dark as a starless night sky.
"We have names. Mine is..." The mermaid’s blue-tinged lips did not move, but her gills twitched, sound rushing from them that sounded like a dolphin’s whistle and a gull’s cry mingling amid crashing salt-spray.
"I don’t think I can say that," Riven said, feeling abashed despite the truth she spoke. No human’s throat could recreate that noise, and something about that made her very sad, as if something precious and irreplaceable had been lost. "Does it mean something?"
"All names mean something." It wasn’t an answer to her question, but she didn’t press. There was truth even in this evasion.
"I don’t think mine does. ‘Riven’ is almost a word, like ‘river,’ but it isn’t, not if there’s an ’n’ there instead of an ‘r.’ They’re nice sounds, I guess, but together they don’t mean anything."
"They do," the mermaid disagreed, a bit more emphatically than her last statement. "They mean you."
"Oh. I guess they do." Riven smiled—felt herself smiling, rather, she didn’t decide to. It made her cheeks ache, and she had to wonder how long it had been since she’d smiled at anything, or had a reason. "But is there something else I should call you? It doesn’t seem fair, calling you nothing because I can’t say your name."
"Just call me ‘friend,’" she said in her faint, slightly rasping voice. "That’s enough."
"All right... friend." Riven still couldn’t help smiling—but neither could she help ruminating over the question. She often did that, fell into loops of thought and worry when someone else long since thought the matter closed. Unresolved dilemmas were like sore teeth; she couldn’t stop poking at it even if th
ere was nothing to be gained. Riven could no more resist slipping into circular patterns than a stone could float in the sea. "I’m sorry to keep asking, but, does your name mean anything? A word that I could say?"
"It means..." The mermaid turned her dark-eyed gaze out across the sea, then flicked a thin finger at a small spot of bright ripples, the reflection of Riven’s lantern, faintly shining against the little waves. It reminded Riven of the slick sheen of the mermaid’s face and arms, the scales glinting in the tail she’d only briefly glimpsed. "That. The way that happens, the bright against the surface. But from the moon. When it was here."
"It must have been lovely. The water, the silver moon, so bright..." Riven stopped speaking aloud but kept forming the sounds with her lips, feeling the words against her teeth and tongue, the repetition calming and illuminating in itself. "Bright moon. Moon, bright... Moon-bright."
The mermaid looked up quickly, the fastest movement Riven had seen from her yet, the most energized, galvanized, awake. "Yes. That. That’s good, that means me. Moonbright."
"All right then, Moonbright it is," Riven said, resisting the urge to squeal, spin, let her hands fly through the air in celebration. She didn’t want to scare her new friend away. Her new friend named Moonbright, with whom she’d exchanged more words tonight than with anyone else in the past month. "But I’ll still call you my friend, too. If you don’t mind."
The mermaid didn’t answer, but gave a deliberate incline of her head, a careful nod, and Riven realized this was the first time she’d seen Moonbright do anything like this. Mermaids must not have the same gesture language as humans, but here she was, picking it up.
"The ocean is a mysterious place to humans—and land must be the same for you," Riven said, curiosity awakened and excitement rising. "Did you come up here to learn about us?"
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