Chapter 9
Nine
Both pairs of hands released her.
Sweet merciful Buddha.
Still clutching the gun, Angie broke into a flutter kick, her legs in hyperdrive until she touched the shoal, and breathed in the sweet, sweet air.
She crawled back onto the beach, coughing up globs of seawater.
Saltwater exposure blurred her vision. Gritting her teeth, she swiped at her eyes with the backs of her hands and screwed them shut to expel the scratchy, salty liquid.
Her hair, which she normally curled at the ends to give more volume, now lay pin-straight and stuck to her back like an adhesive.
She spun in a one-eighty direction after hearing furious splashing behind her. A familiar maroon tail came into view, the mer leaked streams of blood resembling tiny, crimson snakes wriggling across the sea’s surface. A tuft of dark hair emerged like a flash.
The mer struggled, movements in the water sudden and jerky, fighting the small currents.
Good. He was hurt, but Angie couldn’t unearth much more than a shred of empathy for the son of a fish.
Especially if it was that rude merman who had spewed a lungful of venom at her.
She stopped in a half-kneel position when ashy triangular shapes appeared from the horizon, coasting along like toy sailboats.
Sharks.
Three, no, four of them circled the struggling mer, who thrashed and flopped about like an injured fish desperate to survive, which, she supposed, he was.
The sharks were familiar to her. They were a species she learned about for her final project for her bachelor of science degree, a presentation on lesser-known shark species.
Two, short, brown fins belonged to blue sharks, and two, long, gray fins were from salmon sharks, and their curious and aggressive natures would drive them to poke and prod until they had their fill.
The sharks closed in, and Angie clambered to the shoreline and then watched the scene play out. One shark struck, biting the mer’s tail. Another followed, but the mer dodged it and jerked his torso and arm away from the sharks’ jaws.
Angie flinched. As averse as she was to the mer, her heart constricted at the thought of one suffering a slow, drawn-out death by sharks because of her.
She cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled. “Hey! Come back!”
Of course he couldn’t hear. His head was submerged.
Damn it. Angie chewed on a nail, gaze zeroing in on a pile of rubble in front of her. Another shark attacked, and she grabbed her gun, aiming it for the fins darting and zigzagging around. She couldn’t get a clear shot.
Stuffing her gun back into its holster, Angie instead reached for a rock the size of her fist. The sharks hadn’t relented. Even if she scared one away, others would soon follow the scent of blood.
More fins appeared from the horizon.
The mer’s dorsal fin appeared, and Angie reared her arm back and chucked it in the mer’s direction.
The rock bounced off him, breaking the water’s surface with an audible plop. The merman’s head jerked out of the water.
Angie waved her arms. She didn’t know if he would understand her meaning, but she had to try.
He ducked underwater, tail wiggling and thrashing beneath the glassy surface as if his life depended on it. It did. Once he was closer to shore, the merman faced the encroaching sharks. Angie grabbed his tailfins with both hands and gave a forceful pull.
He pushed himself onto the seashore. He was the same one from the other day.
The merman clutched at his arm, falling to one side, breaths coming out in long, wheezing heaves.
He curled up and tucked his slender tail underneath him, coiled like a muscular snake.
Deep crimson scales glimmered beneath the emerging sun while the rainstorm passed.
Angie eyed him up and down, chest heaving with worry.
Rivulets of thick, red blood trickled down his biceps, forming a spider web around his elbow, and sliding toward his forearm.
She swallowed a gulp, eyes trailing to the gunshot wound at the front of his shoulder.
“Ugh.” The merman put a strong, rugged hand over the wound, applying pressure. The sharks lingered, but did not move too close to the shore.
She slipped off one boot and pulled off her long sock. “What are you doing—” His eyes were as wide as two shiny globes of Tiger’s Eye.
“Stopping the bleeding. I know the sock is wet, but you know, you live in the water. So it should be fine.” She tied the sock tight around his arm and made a knot. “Wait here.” The makeshift gauze would hold temporarily, but blood was starting to seep through the gray sock.
“Where are you going?”
“Getting something that will hold a little better!” she called back.
After a quick look around to make sure she was in the clear, Angie ran to the nearest storehouse a five-minute walk away and grabbed a blanket, waterproof bandages, and gauze, and a packet of antiseptic.
She could do the bare minimum, at least: patch him up, throw him back to the sea, and quell her guilty conscience that at least he hadn’t died a long, bloody death by her hand.
When she returned, he was on his back, tail straight out, tapping his caudal fins on the ground in a staccato rhythm.
The two semicircular fins bordering his hips fluttered with the breeze, a dividing line between his fleshy upper half and scaly lower half.
“I don’t need your help.” Was the first thing he said when they made eye contact again. His shoulders were elevated and arms tensed in a defensive posture.
Was this merman an idiot? She gritted her teeth. “Oh?”
He gave no indication of catching onto the sarcasm lacing her tone.
“Yes, I’ll wait for the sharks to lose interest. Then I can make my way back home.
” He rolled to his side, propping himself up with his good arm.
“I’ve been cut by coral many times, bitten by kuiyu and shayu with teeth like knives when I’ve accidentally entered their territory.
I will survive and don’t need help from a landwalker. ”
“Great for you. I’m assuming you’re talking about viperfish and sharks. Guns are a little different from them. Why come back when I threw the rock at you?” Angie tucked her chin. “You could have stayed out there, tried to survive by yourself.”
“I seized the opportunity. It was better than being torn apart by sharks,” he said, voice softening and eyes downcast. “But I will take my leave now.” He braced his tail as if he was about to launch himself into the sea.
“Uh, no you can’t. You have a giant hole in your shoulder, which I assume is going to affect your ability to swim.
You’re bleeding profusely, and you’re shark bait.
There’s more coming.” She pointed to the horizon, where two more fins had appeared.
“Also, I want my sock back. Let me bandage up your shoulder. Then you can go back, and we can pretend we never saw each other, alright? So, we’ll both be happy. ”
The merman cast his gaze over the water and pulled a long face. “Fine.”
She removed the sock and pressed a cotton ball to the wound.
“Hold that there?” He did, and she returned her attention to her sock which was now soaked through with thick, dark blood.
She wrinkled her nose and turned the sock inside out before bundling it into a ball and shoving it deep in her coat pocket.
Once, she thought of becoming a physician so she’d have an excuse to move out of Creston, but volunteering at a local hospital during her gap year changed her mind. Blood made her squeamish. The metallic smell, its odd viscosity, the way it wouldn’t stop coming out when skin was lacerated.
Her stomach roiled with nausea.
Throwing the blanket around herself to keep warm, she went to work on his arm and held her breath so she wouldn’t have to smell the blood. “Why the Hells did you try to drown me? That was you, right?”
“Yes, it was me, but I didn’t cause the waves to do that. Another merman did, and I was trying to pull you to the surface.”
She didn’t want to meet his eyes, as she dabbed antiseptic on the wound and plastered one bandage over it. He flinched under her touch.
“You could have let him drown me.”
His shoulder twitched when she dabbed alcohol on the wound. “There is no love lost between us, now that your people have started a war with mine. I hope I don’t come to regret what I did for you.”
“Makes the two of us.” She wrapped another layer of gauze over the bandage, finishing it with a waterproof wrapping. Then she sat back and cocooned herself in the blanket so her head poked out, bringing her knees to her chest. The warmth invited her to stay nestled in the blanket forever.
“Thank you.” He rolled his arm around. “The stinging is subsiding.”
“Why did you push me to the surface?” She steeled herself for his answer.
“I can sense you’re not out for our blood.”
“Mer can read minds?” Angie cocked an eyebrow. “I shot you. And I almost shot you before. In the face.”
“No. It is something about you, I suppose. I cannot describe it.” He sat upright, taking in a deep breath and rounding his broad chest.
“I see.” Angie didn’t see, but she let it go. She kept her distance, and he seemed content to stay where he was as well. “What about the merman who dragged me under? Won’t he know you helped me?”
“No, in the rough turbulence, we were thrashing, the waves haphazard. It was a mess of debris and tails and hands. He fled when you fired your weapon, leaving me as your target. He does not know it was me who was helping you.”
“Appreciated.” His explanation was feasible enough for now. “So, you can manipulate the seas?”
He looked away without answering, staring at some invisible sight over the waves.
His face was impassive, but Angie caught a twitch feathering along his jaw.
It drew her attention to the side of his face, and his full, sea-kissed head of dark hair.
His skin was smooth and hairless, to ensure easy movement through water, she knew, without the impedance of body hair.
The newly emerged sun highlighted his pert nose, not much larger than her own, and angular jaw and high cheekbones.
A breeze blew his hair back, revealing his gills.
So human, and yet so foreign.
The question of why he was hairless except for his head and eyebrows interested her. She said nothing, not wanting him to have any inclination that she was looking at his body. Even if it was for scientific reasons.
Angie didn’t know if the mer thought the same way, but she had had enough young men misinterpret her friendliness and curiosity for interest.
She looked back down at her feet before he could catch her staring.
“The sharks are dispersing. Thank you again,” he said, and rolled onto his belly, tucking his tail beneath his hips. He cut his gaze to her. “I come ashore every few days. I may see you again.”
What was it about this merman, and the thought of seeing him again, that intrigued her? “What’s your name?”
A pause before he answered. “My name in your language is Kaden.”
“My language? So, what is it in your language, then?”
“Also Kaden.” A twitch appeared in one corner of his lips, but it disappeared as fast as it appeared. “In Renyuhua. Yours?”
He spoke slowly enough that she made out the sounds of his language, and it sounded like “merfolk speak.” Yet, the tones were off.
Angie had picked up local tongues from her family trips to Taiwan and China as a child and preteen, but this sounded like a strange Chinese dialect. “Angie Song.” She flushed.
“Why do you have two names?” Kaden’s tail relaxed, followed by the rest of his body.
“My first name is Angie, and Song is my last name, uh, my family name.”
Kaden cast a sideways, inquisitive glance at her. “Ah, we do not have family names. We distinguish ourselves by colors. When two mer join, their tail colors meld together to signify the forming of a new family.” He thinned his full lips. “What shall I call you, then? Angie? Or Song?”
“Angie.”
“Okay. Angie it is then.” Kaden offered the tiniest hint of a smile, making his face light up. Then it fell, and his shoulders went rigid. “The sentinels will be looking for me.” Angie gave him a small nod as her goodbye. He pushed off his tail into the water, and then he was gone.