Ahtin whistled her name a second time. Whatever spirits sheltered in Ixada Cave, they didn’t seem interested in revealing themselves to him. Brida inhaled and exhaled a long breath, glanced behind her at the dark silhouette of Castle Banat atop its bluff and the empty shoreline below it before climbing down the ledge to join the merman. There were worse things than ghosts.
Obludas.
The thought halted her for a moment before she resumed her trek, ears tuned to any melancholy dirges that might suddenly rise up from the Gray. She stepped over mounds of seaweed and skirted the corpses of jellyfish with their long tentacles stretched like venomous ribbons across the sand.
Ahtin swam parallel to the shore, powerful shoulders flexing in tandem with the rise and fall of his back and tail through the water. He paused when she did, near the cave’s black maw. He gestured to the opening with a thrust of his chin. “Go inside, Brida. I want to show you.”
She trusted him. Mostly. Had he wished to hurt her, the chances to do so had been many and varied since they first crossed paths. Brida didn’t believe he’d lead her to an otherworldly trap where some monstrous thing waited to wrest her soul from her body and plunge it into nightmarish oblivion. But Ixada Cave…
So dark, with its untold mysteries and stories of the haunted dead.
“I have no light,” she told him. “I won’t be able to see anything in there.” Things like once-dry expanses flooded with the incoming tide and the gods only knew what strange creatures that swam within it. Merfolk were almost commonplace compared to the horrors she imagined lurked in the concealing darkness.
Ahtin drew nearer, the splash of his fluke sounding close enough to touch. “Safe, Brida,” he crooned to her. “You are safe with me.”
In that moment, she understood what the sailors meant when they spoke of sirens’ song. She set a foot down in the direction of the cave where some of her worst childhood fears waited.
“Wait.” Ahtin shook his head. “Not that way. This way.”
Puzzled, Brida followed him on the shore as he swam around the edge of the bluff. Her skirts dragged in the surf as she waded knee-deep through water growing colder with each passing autumnal day. She clutched the satchel she’d brought with her, its contents clinking and together. Nothing inside was of much monetary value, certainly not like the pearl he’d given her, but she didn’t want to drop them and lose them to the Gray before Ahtin saw them.
She squeaked at the sight of a sharp fin slicing the water toward her. In an instant, Ahtin disappeared from her view, leaving only a temporary wake behind him that marked a path aimed directly at the fin which also dove beneath the waves. A frothing of water boiled up from the spot before dissipating. Frozen in place, Brida stared, unbreathing, until a crown of seaweed hair emerged, and Ahtin’s glowing eyes stared back at her.
“Safe, Brida,” he repeated and propelled himself through the surf until he floated alongside her.
“What was that?” She hated how her voice warbled, but it was hard to speak normally when her heart was still stuck in her throat.
“A hunter. It hunts something else now.”
That short answer was less than comforting, and she slogged faster toward the patch of beach revealed on the other side of the bluff and a smaller entrance she assumed led into the cave. Here, the land rose more sharply, keeping the high tide at bay.
Brida looked down at her companion. “How will you go in?” She supposed he could pull himself along the sand, using the power of his arms and tail, but what a struggle that would be, even with him healed of his injuries.
He gestured toward the second entrance. “You go there. I will meet you from the other side.” Before she could protest, he dove once more into the deeper waves, fluke giving a single flick before sliding under the waves.
A sliver of moonlight illuminated a patch of sand just inside the low entrance. Brida bent to enter, straightening with a gasp upon discovering a large interior space of soaring height with tidal pools closest to her and the pounding of the surf against a tumbled barrier of rock on the other side where the wider entrance faced the more level shore.
The darkness prevented her from seeing much more than the outline of curved walls and roof and the hint of reflection on the pools’ surfaces. A loud splash echoed in the chamber. She tensed as verdant light spread across the cave floor, brightening the waters of a large pool surrounded on three sides by rubble, with the fourth side narrowed down to a channel where the surf spilled into the pool as a waterfall. Some of the rubble looked as if it lay in and around the water with purpose, creating an imprecise spoke pattern with the lit pool at its center.
Water lapped at the rubble shore. Brida could see all the way to the rocky bottom and track the tiny fish that darted back and forth, startled by the sudden luminescence and the addition of a much bigger occupant to their sanctuary.
Ahtin slowly revealed himself with a flex of his tail, rising above the surface until he faced her, seawater streaming down his face and torso. His hair cascaded over his broad shoulders, wrapping around his arms. In the soft light, his eyes had lost their nocturnal shine, and his double pupils shone dark within their pale irises.
Her sodden skirt slapped in rhythm with her steps as Brida picked her way across one of the spokes toward him. His mouth curved into a smile to match hers. “Your water magic?” she asked.
“One enchantment.” He traced an evanescent pattern on the pool’s surface with one fingertip. “There are many others.”
Brida envied him the skill of water sorcery. Any sorcery for that matter. There were human mages, though they weren’t common, nor had she ever met one herself. She’d heard all the Kai, the last of the Elder races not yet vanished, possessed magic that they wielded at will, but like the merfolk, they weren’t human. “Do you know many enchantments?”
He shook his head. “No. The aps do, but they only teach all they know to the female who will become the ap after them.”
It had taken several rounds of whistle and word exchanges as well as numerous drawings in the sand for Brida to understand the nature of an ap, and she still wasn’t certain she had the right of it.
The merfolk were a loose confederation of several extended family units, each ruled by a matriarch they called an ap. At least that’s what the noise Ahtin made to signify the matriarch’s title sounded like to Brida. The ap’s descendents stayed with her family, the mermen leaving only temporarily to mate with merwomen of other families. In that, Ahtin told her, the merfolk were more like the great whales than the dolphins.
Merfolk lived long lives, the aps even longer than the others, sustained by sea magic whose origin had long ago been lost to memory but was passed down from matriarch to oldest living daughter who carried on the heritage generation after generation.
With Ahtin’s sorcerous light chasing away some of the darkness, the cave no longer seemed as sinister. Brida found the largest rock closest to the pool’s edge and sat down. Ahtin glided toward her, a study in grace and power as he cleaved the water.
“I have gifts for you.” She shrugged off the satchel she’d looped over her shoulder and across her chest, settling it in her lap.
Ahtin swam up next to her, so close his arm laid a wet path across the side of her skirt where he rested it on the rock shoreline. Avid curiosity glittered in his eyes as he stared at the bag, though he said nothing and waited patiently for her to reveal its contents to him.
She held up a wooden eating spoon, turning it one way, then the other before demonstrating its use. When she passed it to him, he took it as if it were a fragile piece of pottery. Brida watched, mesmerized as his fingers caressed the utensil, stroking the oval and handle in long sweeps. He then brought the oval to his mouth, pressing it down on his lower lip before sneaking a taste with the tip of his tongue. Brida forgot to breathe.
“Spoon,” she said in a hoarse voice.
Both lips curved around the oval’s edge in a kiss. “Spoon,” he echoed, double eyelids clo
sed as if in deep thought. He opened his eyes, heavy gaze settling on her where she sat frozen on her rock seat. “I like the spoon.”
Siren’s voice, siren’s stare. The sea’s seduction wasn’t confined only to mermaids.
“I can keep it?”
Caught in that unwavering regard, Brida didn’t comprehend the question at first. “Keep it?”
A knowing, closed-lip smile curved Ahtin’s mouth. “The spoon.”
Later, when she lay alone in her bed, contemplating the mysteries of life in the plastered divets of her ceiling, Brida thanked the gods for the cave’s frigid air, otherwise she might have incinerated on the spot from embarrassment.
“Yes!” she practically shouted, flinching when her exclamation ricocheted back to her from the walls and roof. She bent her head, tempted to dive directly into the satchel and hide the heat scorching her face. Her fingers fumbled with the next item, almost dropping it in the pool. She thrust it at Ahtin who reared back to avoid being struck in the face.
Commonplace like the spoon, the comb Brida held out to him was a plain affair, carved from a splinter remnant of a shipwreck washed ashore when she was still a child. She’d done the work herself, a practice piece given to her by her father whose skilled hands would have turned it into a work of art. Brida had used it on her hair until she married, when Talmai presented her with a brush and comb set as a wedding present.
Ahtin reached for it, his expression puzzled when she suddenly pulled it out of reach. “A comb. Watch.” She undid the bottom third of her plait and used the comb to tease out the small tangles created by the salt water drying there.
The same keen focus he displayed with the spoon sharpened even more with the comb. Brida wondered if her own expression had mirrored his when the priceless pearl had rolled across her table. These things had no real value in her world, but he held them as if they were treasures like the pearl. Unique, precious, remarkable.
His inspection of the comb was less sensuous in nature than it had been with the spoon, for which Brida was glad, until he curled a hand around her loosened plait. She sat still as the stone beneath her while he twined her hair through his fingers.
“Not like us,” Ahtin said, his smile telling her the observation wasn’t a criticism. He used the comb as she had, running it gently through the loose strands.
“No,” she agreed. “Not like you.”
Did merfolk comb out their hair in some way? The ones who’d gathered to rescue their kinsmen had left theirs unbound with bits of shell woven in for ornamentation. As he’d done with her, she reached out to snare one of Ahtin’s locks.
Slippery-smooth, the strands were thicker and wider than her own with a texture that made her think of a candle’s surface. Water beaded on the filaments instead of soaking into them like human hair.
So intent with her inspection of his hair, Brida didn’t notice Ahtin had moved until he was right in front of her, at eye level, his arms braced on either side of her, chest pressed to her bent knees. She gave a faint squeak and dropped the lock of hair, startled by his sudden closeness.
The myriad shades of pale pink, lavender, blue, and green that pulsed just under his skin deepened along his throat and across his cheekbones. Ahtin tilted his head as if considering a most unusual shell laying on the sand. He gave her the comb. “Use here,” he said, fingers parting the curtain of hair that hid a portion of his face.
A steady clicking, much like a feline purr, rose in his throat as she carefully ran the comb from his scalp to the tips of his hair, and his eyes closed in quiet ecstasy. Brida glanced around him to see his fluke gently fronding the water in tandem rhythm to his clicks.
This close to him, she warmed under the heat his body radiated. She was chilled to the bone herself, holding back shivers with an effort, even as she dreaded having to leave soon and end this extraordinary interlude with her merman.
Her merman. The thought made her jerk, and the comb snagged in his hair hard enough to make his eyelids snap open. The purring click abruptly became a pained whistle.
“I’m sorry! So sorry!” She dropped the comb in her lap to pat his hair and shoulders in apology.
Ahtin whistled again, softer now, reassuring. He captured one of her fluttering hands, flattening her palm against his chest. His hand was hot, like the rest of him, and Brida was reminded that the differences between them went beyond the surface visuals to more subtle elements. She would have turned blue by now were she submerged in cold seawater for any real length of time. Her feet were already numb from wading through the surf to reach this side of the cave.
“You are cold,” he said with a frown.
“And you most definitely aren’t.”
Maybe what she thought had been fever when he lay beached among the seaweed hadn’t been from sickness or injury but simply from lack of the water to keep his body cool.
“What is Brida?” he asked, repeating the same question from their second meeting.
She shrugged. “Strength.” Had he forgotten?
Ahtin shook his head and raised her hand to inspect her fingers, the slots between them where no webbing stretched, the short half moons of her nails, pale against skin still deeply brown from the vanished summer sun. The contrast between her skin and his—deep earth on shallow sea—beguiled her. They were land and water, human legs and dolphin tail with nothing in common except an abiding fascination for each other and the connection of the rescued to the rescuer.
His clear brow knitted into a frown. “No. Strength, yes, but more.” He struggled to express himself. “You are this light.” He gestured to the sorcerous light still shimmering around them. “This pool. The moon. The sun.”
Comprehension dawned, and once more the heat of a blush crawled up her neck, into her cheeks. “Beautiful,” she said. “Those things are beautiful.”
Something in her tone alerted him that she understood what he tried to impart, and the frown smoothed away. “Beautiful,” he echoed, reverence in every syllable. “You are beautiful, Brida.”
The last time a man had called her beautiful in such a way, it had been when she lay in Talmai’s arms the night before he left Ancilar to board a deep-water ship at Matalene harbor a league from Ancilar. She’d dreamed those agonizing moments more times than she cared to count after she learned he’d died at sea. Time had passed and the keen sorrow from that particular memory was blunted now. When the merman called her beautiful, butterflies, not tears, spiraled up inside her.
She didn’t move when he leaned in even closer, and his hands settled on her hips, slippery hair shrouding them both. His sigh matched hers when his lips grazed her cheek, tickling her skin with the lightest touch as they mapped a path over the bridge of her nose to her other cheek before drifting up to caress her temple and eyebrows. She closed her eyes against their feathery pressure on her eyelids. Her lips parted as his mouth rested briefly on hers and stayed.
Did merfolk kiss?
The question drifted across her thoughts before fading. It didn’t matter. If he didn’t know, she would teach him and hold close in her dotage the wondrous memory of it.
He twitched against her when she took his bottom lip between her lips and lightly sucked, exhaled a moan when her tongue traced its outline, tasting a hint of brine. Strong hands dug into the folds of her skirt to hold her hips even harder, and he surged against her, the powerful flex of his tail almost carrying him out of the water.
Brida’s eyes snapped open and she pulled away to stare at Ahtin who stared back with a gaze gone almost completely black. Heat poured off him like a furnace, and he loosened his grip on her body long enough to touch his mouth with one fingertip.
A series of clicks, much too rapid and unfamiliar for her to translate, spilled from him before he went silent, scrutiny never wavering as he searched for a word.
“Kiss,” Brida told him. “That’s a kiss.”
“Kiss.” He drew out the end of the word as if savoring its sound and texture.
Sh
e smiled a tentative smile. “You like it?” The gods knew she certainly did.
He wore the same look as when he licked the spoon she’d given him. A quick nod, and he reached for her, drawing her closer to him until the lower half of her skirts floated in the pool, drifting around him like a spill of blue ink in the luminescent water. “Land magic,” he breathed across her mouth. “Teach me, beautiful Brida.”
Chapter Five
“Why do humans cover like this?” Ahtin picked at the folds of her skirt, rooting for the shape of her thigh hidden beneath the heavy wool.
Like the night before, they spent these hours together in the sanctuary of the cave lit by Ahtin’s magic. And like the night before, they kissed and explored, learning each other’s taste, the shape of leg and tail, shoulders and arms, cheekbones and necks, chest and breast.
Brida stroked a hand down his side, contouring her palm to the ridges of muscles that laddered down his torso to his narrow waist and the smooth flesh that denoted the beginnings of his tail. The heat of his body kept her warm in the chilly cave. “For protection and warmth. Our bodies don’t get as hot as yours unless we’re sick. Clothing keeps us warm and protects our skin from other things too.” She nudged his chin with her nose. He obliged her by bending to eagerly press his mouth to hers, cool lips against hers, warm tongue sweeping the interior of her mouth.
She had taught him that the previous night, and he’d been an enthusiastic student of what he called her “land magic.” Brida might have taught him even more were it not for the far-off hint of a whistle. Ahtin’s fluke slapped the water, and his features had pinched with annoyance.
“I must go,” he told her, leaning his forehead against hers with a sigh. “Come back, Brida?”
Caution dictated she should have said no, but she’d thrown that notion to the wind the moment she’d first seen him injured on the beach. “Tomorrow,” she’d agreed.
He’d led her out of the cave, staying by her side as she waded back to the level, drier shoreline. No threatening dorsal fin raced toward her, nor had any appeared tonight, for which she was thankful.
Seasons of Sorcery Page 15
