Chapter Eighteen
Eighteen
We awakened in a euphoric haze. I ran my hands along his body, vowing to remember the curve of his thighs, the surprising jut of his ribs. He kept holding me, unwilling to let go.
“I have never felt this way before,” Galehaut said. “I miss you, even though you are right here with me.”
I reached for his hand and guided him through the waterfall, my heart surging. All this time, I thought, looking back at him. All this time you’ve been carrying the same gnawing emptiness, but you hid it away, unaware that I already understood every contour. I would do anything to make you whole.
“I miss you, too,” I said.
Galehaut was deliberate in all things, down to the way he ate his chicken.
But now he was practically delirious, saying whatever came to his mind, rambling about the afterlife, the sagacity of elephants, the proper way to preserve copper with tar.
I loved this Galehaut. I loved every Galehaut. I had missed him since the day we met.
The missing. The aching thoughts. He would return to Giant’s Island and Cymidei. I would marry and father a child. I tried to push these facts from my mind. They were stones for another day. I could not bear their weight.
By the time we reached the mermen rocks, the sun was high on the horizon. We were late for our lesson.
“Where have you been?” Lirius seethed.
We made some excuse or another, watching the foam gurgle from his gills. His anger had little effect. In our minds we were still at the lake, entwined on the sand.
“Do you find this amusing?” he shouted at me. I turned to Galehaut. We burst out laughing, which only agitated him further.
Lirius removed a gold coin from his scales.
“Recover it,” he said to me, launching the coin into the iron waves.
We were vertiginous, reeling. The duties of our training paled in comparison to the hidden world we’d just unlocked. What did it matter if I recovered this mean creature’s coin? What did such a task have to do with knighthood? What did knighthood matter compared to Galehaut?
“In chain mail,” Lirius barked.
I slipped on the silver netting and swam to where I thought the coin might be. I searched fruitlessly, digging through sea plants and scaring fish and crabs. All the while, I was thinking of Galehaut, the joyful scary uprush of our intimacy sharpening my senses.
After a time, I grew shaky, my lips turned blue. I kicked to the surface and tried to catch my breath, but then I felt a hard tug at my foot.
“You are making a mockery of this lesson,” Lirius barked. “A mockery of all merfolk.”
I continued my halfhearted coin hunt, knowing I would probably never find it.
Fed up, Lirius dragged me through the water and slammed my body against the beach rocks.
My head struck a spiked shell, and the pain was blinding.
It was not the first time he had attacked me in such a way, but it was the first time he’d drawn blood.
Galehaut propped me up, inspecting the wound. He pulled the chain mail from my shoulders and glared at Lirius. “I will find your stupid coin.”
I watched him dive beneath the waves. Lirius was no doubt swimming around him, prodding and poking, kicking up sand to obscure his vision. Galehaut was underwater for so long I began to worry. When he surfaced without the coin, Lirius wailed.
“Foolish humans! You do not deserve the air you breathe. You laugh in my face, you disrespect our kind. You think you will be knights? You’ll never be knights. Neither of you will.” He spun to me. “You, especially, will never amount to anything.”
Galehaut ignored him and returned to the ocean floor. Lirius continued to taunt him. I could tell he was picturing the men who’d killed his father, men like us.
After a minute, Galehaut crested the surface, arm aloft. The gold coin was wedged in his fist.
“Here!” he shouted at Lirius. “Here is your coin. We are done.”
“I say when you are done.”
Galehaut shook his head and began to swim back.
“I made a mistake with you,” Lirius shouted. “You are a worthless creature.”
Galehaut kept swimming.
“How dare you ignore me,” Lirius seethed.
With one undulating flick of his tail, the merking breached the water and plunged on top of him.
My mind went blank. From our very first day with Lirius, I feared this would happen.
We carried in our stride man’s history of ocean-siege and destruction.
The merking’s temper reflected centuries of conflict, and the buried grief of a vengeful son.
He was never more than a hair’s breadth from snapping, and our casual disregard that day had finally pushed him over the edge.
I stood, panic-stricken. Galehaut broke to the surface long enough to gasp for air before Lirius pulled him back under.
The water turned a murky brown.
Blood.
My body moved before my mind. I grabbed the dagger from the pile of fishing equipment and sprang off the rocks. Galehaut would be killed. I knew this with certainty. I crashed through the waves in a silent scream.
I kicked down, squinting through the salt. Lirius had Galehaut pinned to the ocean floor. Through the cloud of blood I could see them thrashing. My lungs heaved. It could not end like this. Galehaut could not die. Not when our lives had just begun.
This was what I was thinking when I plunged the dagger into Lirius’s back. And when I drove it into his stomach. This is what I was thinking when I stabbed him again and again and again.