"No," the mermaid said quietly, so softly Riven had to lean a bit closer to hear. "It wasn’t my choice. I’m an outcast. Banished."
"Is that why you’re here alone?" Riven asked, and immediately regretted it. She often misunderstood others’ expressions or voices, and mermaids didn’t seem to rely on the same tones or facial communication. She should have been more of a mystery to Riven than other humans, but she was almost easier to read. And now she seemed... sad. She didn’t frown, exactly, but she moved with such fatigue and heaviness that Riven felt her own energy drop. And she was so thin. How could she survive in the chill? "I’m sorry—you don’t have to answer, that was a rude question."
Riven dropped her head and stared at the dock between her knees, feeling her cheeks burn with shame. Silence stretched between them, interrupted only by the wind and gentle waves.
"Ask."
"What?" Riven looked up in surprise. She’d fully expected Moonbright to have slipped silently below the surface, leaving her alone the way so many people had, once she opened her mouth and said something wrong—or failed to speak at all. Everyone tired of it, eventually, Riven absolutely included. But here she was, still holding onto the dock’s edge, and still watching Riven with an inquisitive gaze.
"Just ask the question you want. You’re hiding it with too many words. It’s all right just to ask."
Riven pressed her lips tightly together for a few seconds. It couldn’t be that easy. People weren’t allowed to just ask what they wanted to know, there were rules, often-hidden rules everyone was expected to know and understand and follow, and they got angry when she didn’t understand. Humans were like that, so why shouldn’t mermaids be the same?
"Why did they cast you out?" she asked at last.
Moonbright didn’t answer at first. She folded her arms on the dock and lowered herself until her chin rested upon them. Her black eyes were downcast and half-shut, mysterious as the midnight ocean itself, but the pain in them was all too clear.
"Make a place for me," Moonbright said at last, and under her words, Riven heard a faint whistle, the soft sound that made up her name. There was a quiet undulation in her voice, a trill that almost sounded like two voices speaking at once; sometimes she seemed to harmonize with herself. The sound was strange but somehow enrapturing. Riven could easily imagine people following such a voice out into dangerous waters. "Safe and warm. Sit with me. Feed me. I’ll tell you all you want to know, and help you however I can."
"Help me?" Riven blinked, confusion shaking her out of her fascinated reverie.
She lifted an arm out of the water, bringing with it a small net bag. Delicate pieces of coral and what looked like shining pearls clicked together as she set it down on the dock. "There’s more where that came from. Gifts of the ocean are yours."
The mermaid smiled, pale lips stretched over too-pointed teeth, and Riven thought of grinning sharks. She’d seen a smile like that before, Riven realized, in the same time and place where the air had rushed from her lungs and the light died away, when she’d sunk into the black depths and felt the freezing pressure crush her heart. Something had clamped around her wrist, but was it pulling her up or down? Toward the surface, or cold oblivion?
But before she could speak, the mermaid had pushed off from the dock, dropping back down into the dark water, leaving nothing behind but the coral and pearls, not even a ripple.
By the time Riven got her voice back, Moonbright was gone.
IT WASN’T HARD TO MAKE a place for Moonbright, safe and warm. There was a small, round tide-pool just beside Riven’s house, near enough to the waterline at high tide to easily slip from pool to sea, but far enough that it never really emptied. Enchanting a stone to radiate heat was a simple matter, and once it sank to the bottom, the pool grew as warm and comforting as the baths that soothed the tightness and worry out of Riven’s tense muscles after her midnight outings.
They didn’t speak much those first few days. The mermaid seemed exhausted, and Riven didn’t want to disturb a very well-earned rest. Feeding her was a simple matter as well. Every night, Riven left a bowl of the stew Moonbright had loved, along with fluffy, warm bread, dried fruit, salted fish, and anything else she could easily share sitting beside the warm waters. Every night after calling the tides, she returned to find it empty, and the mermaid asleep nearby, peaceful and still.
Moonbright spent every day lying still in the warm pool, basking under the sun and seeming to soak up its rays like a tree spreading its leaves. Riven never saw her leave, but every night, as she returned from her nightly tide-call, she found a new treasure waiting for her on the dock. Coral, pearls, tarnished gold coins, grime-coated gems—soon, she held more wealth in her hand than she’d ever seen in her life. But Riven couldn’t bring herself to sell anything Moonbright left her. Not until she knew more than her name.
Every night since her visitor arrived, Riven had the dream. The sinking, the darkness, the glitter of shark-like teeth, something seizing her wrist and holding tight as it pulled her through the cold, rushing currents (up or down? She still didn’t know). Riven never reached the surface in her dream, but the third night did bring something new: the briefest flash of a face beyond the toothy smile. A pointed chin, all-black eyes, speckled skin that shone like night waves under a moon she had never seen and could barely even imagine.
That face was the last thing Riven saw before she woke, drenched in so cold a sweat it felt like she’d just crawled from the ocean herself.
It was her, Riven thought. Moonbright’s face in the dream, her hand that had closed over Riven’s wrist and pulled.
Part of her wanted to run. Leave this place for good, and forget her nightmares. Forget the sea. But if the mermaid wanted to hurt her, she’d be hurt. She’d have been dead all those years ago, pulled to airless fathoms below—but she was alive. And now, for the first time, answers seemed as close as the mermaid sleeping in her warm shallows.
AFTER A WEEK OR SO, Riven was no closer to asking the questions she couldn’t stop turning over in her head—words had never come easily, and these slipped away like eels through her fingers. But she had enough to occupy her waking thoughts. Grateful as she was for the pearls and gold, she rejoiced when one night, Moonbright brought her gifts of rare and flavorful seaweeds and aquatic herbs. Riven’s next stew was the best she could remember making, its delicious scent filling her house and drifting out onto the beach.
That afternoon, when one of the rare brave-but-foolish fisherman passed by on his way to better prospects, he stopped for a while on the beach, lured by the wonderful smells like a fish to irresistible bait. Riven didn’t hook or keep him, but she did trade a bowl of stew for a shiny gold coin much newer and brighter than the ones Moonbright had brought her. When she told her new mermaid friend about this, later, she couldn’t keep from smiling.
"It felt so good. That’s what I really want to do, you know," she said with a little shiver of joy, sitting with Moonbright that night on the dock, her lantern behind them, casting its warm light out onto the waves below. Why did she feel this strange mixture of contentedness and excitement now? When she never had before? Like the moon, she had no memories of this kind of happiness.
"What? Sit here?" Moonbright asked. Maybe it was Riven’s imagination, but her scales looked healthier, brighter. They caught the light and seemed to shine even when they didn’t, as if they lit up all on their own.
"No, make things–delicious smells and tastes—and give them to people, and see how happy they are when they eat it." Maybe it was because this was one of her favorite subjects, or maybe it was Moonbright’s otherworldly, all-black eyes, but meeting them didn’t make Riven uncomfortable as it did with other humans. Every time, people expected eye contact, confused or offended when she hesitated or resisted entirely. Moonbright didn’t seem to require it, and maybe that was why, with her, Riven found it easier to give. "But it’s not just about that, it’s—it’s like art, something beautiful and creative, that also keeps
you alive. Didn’t you have anything like this?"
"Can’t cook anything underwater." Sometimes she thought Moonbright might be joking. It was usually easier to tell coming from her than most humans. "Food is rarer. Harder to catch."
"I should come cook for your friends, then. They’d be so happy, they’d have to let you back."
"I’d never take you there," Moonbright said with a sudden fervor. "No human, but not you. Never you."
"They don’t like humans, I take it." She’d heard stories of people pulled down, bones washed ashore, picked clean. But surely they were only stories. Talking with Moonbright, she couldn’t imagine the awful tales held any truth.
"You wanted to know why I can’t go home," the mermaid said at last, in a much softer tone than her previous intensity. She still didn’t meet Riven’s eyes, she rarely did, but now it seemed somehow more intentional, like she couldn’t even if she’d wanted.
"Yes—if you’d like to tell me."
"We don’t see humans much out there," Moonbright said, sounding faraway, multilayered voice taking on an almost musical quality. "But when we do... when they fall from up above..."
Riven stayed quiet, listening and watching with everything she had. She remembered her dream, shapes moving in the dark, and was suddenly frightened of what she was about to hear. But at the same time, wanting to. Needing to.
A soft wind whispered through their hair, sending tiny ripples across the water below them. At last, Moonbright spoke again, almost too quietly to hear. "We get very hungry."
"Then it’s true?" Riven asked in an equally low voice, but with an edge that surprised herself. "You eat humans?"
"If the choice is this or death. We say it’s natural," Moonbright said, and now some of the melodious subvocals faded from her voice, leaving it flat and lifeless-sounding. Really no different from a human’s voice, then, but from her, it sounded wrong. "No more than what they deserve, after what they did."
"What we did?" Riven asked in a whisper.
"To the moon. When it disappeared, everything changed. The currents died."
"Even with my family’s magic?" Riven asked, clinging to a hope she didn’t fully understand. "We’ve been singing the tides in for generations, but it wasn’t enough?" Moonbright’s silence was answer enough. "Of course not. Silly of me, to think we could replace a whole moon."
"First it was gone," Moonbright said, very quietly. "Then the fish. And without them... us."
Riven looked up into the night sky, toward the patch of darkness, like a hole in the stars. "I don’t know what happened to the moon, it was such a long time ago... but you’re right about one thing. It was probably us. We make a mess out of almost everything we touch."
"Don’t care," Moonbright answered with a twitch of her gill-flaps. Her tone didn’t change, but the gesture seemed like a dismissive snort or shake of her head. "Wasn’t going to do it."
"What, eat humans?" Riven almost laughed, but it caught in her throat, came out closer to a sob. It wasn’t hysteria she felt, and not even resignation, something lighter, almost hopeful. She knew the stories. She’d known the risk she took, helping a mermaid. But the alternative had never entered her mind. There’d never really been one.
"No. Never." Moonbright sounded faraway again, seeming to slip back into her reverie of memory. The lantern light reflected in her black eyes as she stared into the distance, but Riven could only guess at what she was seeing. "But some of us thought it was the only choice." Moonbright’s eyes fell to look down into the dark water. Maybe miles deep, from whence she’d come. "It isn’t just storms that sink your ships."
"What did you do?" Riven asked, heart pounding as if she’d just sprinted for her life, and adrenaline still slammed through her veins.
"I... left," Moonbright said. "I left home. I left everyone. Didn’t want to live like that. Thought they’d have a better chance without me anyway. I’d find another way."
"That’s terrible," Riven whispered. She’d been right to fear the ocean, right in her dreams and awake—but she couldn’t bring herself to fear the person before her. "You were starving, even together. And you went out on your own?"
"Yes. And I survived," Moonbright answered simply, but not casually. In her inhuman voice and movements, Riven saw the momentous decision, and every following moment of solitude. "For years. On what I could catch. Or steal from ships, from docks like this one. But I was always alone, I spoke to no one. And got weaker every day. Until I was too hungry and tired to go on."
She fell silent then, and Riven didn’t break the stillness. There was so much to absorb—a mermaid who didn’t eat humans, who’d left her home rather than take another’s life—so much to say, so much to ask, she almost didn’t know where to begin. But there was one question that burned in her mind brighter than any other. Even if it didn’t sound related, it was all tied up with both of them, the way they seemed tied to one another.
"Do you dream?"
"We do," Moonbright answered without hesitation despite the sudden shift. Riven was sure that the mermaid’s voice sounded stronger now than it had when they’d first met. The past several days of recuperation had done her good. "Mostly of the moon. The joy we will feel at its light returning. The sorrow we felt at its light extinguishing." She was quiet for a few seconds, then finally turned to face Riven, head slightly tilted. "What do humans dream of?"
"I don’t know about everyone," Riven said, with only a slight flicker of anxiety. "But I dream about drowning. Almost every night."
"A bad dream," Moonbright said, and it wasn’t hard for Riven to hear the sympathy beneath her softly trilling subharmonics.
"It is. But then something grabs my wrist, and starts pulling me through the water." As she spoke, Riven watched her new friend’s face. Moonbright’s face was nearly always serene-looking, might have been difficult for someone else to read. But Riven was familiar enough now to know that gill-twitches meant tension, apprehension. They moved faintly now, the way Riven’s heart pounded in her chest. "I always wake up before I reach the bottom, or the top, wherever it’s pulling me. I don’t even know if that part’s real..."
"Is the rest real?" Moonbright asked at last, a quaver in her voice. She almost sounded afraid to hear the answer. Riven could relate. There was much she was afraid to ask, or to hear, but she was even more afraid of never knowing.
"Yes," Riven said quietly. Now, the words didn’t come without a fight. She pushed them out, simply forming syllables taking every bit of her strength. "It happened a long time ago. My family, all of us in a boat. Bigger than mine. There was a storm. We fell. I was the only one to survive."
"I’m... sorry." It was a faint whisper, nothing more, and Riven continued to watch Moonbright’s face, her mysterious eyes and gently shifting gill slits. Riven struggled to stay quiet herself, holding her breath as she waited for Moonbright to continue. Confirm or deny the hope taking hold in Riven’s heart, alongside the fear. Had Moonbright been there? Seen it? Held her hand, pulled her toward the light? Or was Riven just searching for imaginary treasures, fabricating reasons to reach out and end her solitude?
But the mermaid didn’t speak, and Riven had been forced into words enough times in her life not to ask again.
"So now I’m the only one left," Riven said at last, with a heavy sigh. Suddenly she was exhausted, all the fatigue of her lonely existence and nightly trials seeming to weigh down on her at once. "The last one, here to call the tides. It was never supposed to be me, it should have been my cousins, or anyone else but me. But here I am."
Moonbright didn’t reply, and just as Riven thought she never would, she spoke in as faint but hopeful-sounding tones as Riven had heard yet. A fragile optimism flowed in her modulated subvocals, a harmony of light through the gloom. "And here I am. With you, now."
Now it was Riven’s turn to be struck mute. Sometimes, words were too much. Sometimes they weren’t enough. Sometimes it seemed like both at the same time, like the world was pressing in and
opening up all at once, dizzying and dreamlike and overwhelmingly real.
She reached out to gently cover Moonbright’s cold, thin hand with her soft, warm one. The answering squeeze after only the briefest hesitation was an answer in itself.
EVEN IF MANY THINGS had changed in Riven’s life, one thing remained the same—she still had to go out every midnight and sing the spell. But one night, as Riven left, Moonbright followed. As she’d suspected, as Moonbright recovered, her scales sometimes took on a faint luminescent sheen, a glow after the sun had gone down. They shone through the water as she swam alongside Riven’s boat, and this new light, though not as strong as her lantern, made Riven feel a great deal safer. Maybe these nightly trips weren’t the worst things in the world. Still, they came close.
"You don’t seem to enjoy this," Moonbright observed when Riven started to make a soft but high-pitched whine. It continued as she brought her boat to a halt and slowly rose to her feet.
"I don’t," she said at last, reaching for the chain around her neck and pulling out the shell on the end. "It’s cold and dark and wet, and maybe you like those things, or other humans do, but I don’t, and never have. The ocean at night terrifies me, and I spend every minute praying for this job to be over."
Moonbright gave a lazy turn in the cold water, scales gleaming and tail flowing behind her in a graceful curve. "Why do you do this if it frightens you so?"
"Because I have to," Riven sighed, looking up at the empty place the moon had once hung in the sky. "Somebody has to bring in the tides, and send them out again. And without the moon, it’s up to us. Me," she murmured, dropping her head. "It’s just up to me, now."
"It’s that?" Moonbright inquired, pointing at the shell in Riven’s hand. It was a thoroughly human gesture; until now she tended to indicate something with a head-tilt or full-arm flowing gesture, not a direct finger-point. Riven wondered if she’d unconsciously picked anything up from her. "What calls the ocean, yes?"
Moon-Bright Tides Page 2
