The Merman’s Kiss (Boundlands)

Chapter 1

Sadira

A late spring squall had left a mess of seaweed strewn about the rocks of the jetty. Clambering along the sharp boulders that made up the wave breakers protecting the inlet was an already difficult task, but the piles of slippery seaweed made navigating my path that much more cumbersome.

I was twelve, and we had traveled to our summer home on the coast, like we always did.

Most of the help traveled ahead of us to prepare the small cottage estate for my parents, but there was always a flurry of activity for several days even after we arrived.

The chatter of servants—all dark elves like us—organizing dishes, dusting every surface, and airing linens, as well as the annoyed comments from my parents about how I sat, the way I drank my tea, or what I chose to read usually drove me outside to play on my own immediately, but I’d been trapped inside and underfoot for the last week, thanks to the storm.

My nursemaid, Nan, had always fretted about me climbing on these rocks.

When I was younger, she’d gone so far as to forbid me altogether from exploring this far out, saying that the currents on the far side were too dangerous for swimming.

I knew better than to try to swim this far from shore, but she wasn’t with me today, anyway—she’d stayed behind to help with housework since I was too old for a minder.

The lure of peaceful quiet and tiny pockets of hidden ocean creatures drew me further and further along the jetty, content with the knowledge that I was far enough from the beach house to protect me from prying eyes and unnecessary rules.

The fresh salt air was spoiled slightly by the rank odor of sea life exposed too long to the sun, making me wrinkle my nose occasionally at the stench, but after so many days spent watching rain drops chase each other across the windows I needed to stretch my limbs and explore.

I hummed an old tune Nan used to sing to me as I went, enjoying the feeling of warm sunshine on my face and the soothing sound of waves breaking into foam on the rocks around me.

Brightly colored fish darted between the boulders as I climbed from one to the next, each of my steps and handholds precariously but carefully placed—all while clutching my skirts to keep them from getting wet.

I didn’t want to catch an earful from Nan about dirtying them…

again. A beautiful, pink fan worm nestled into a small crack between the rocks at the edge of the jetty caught my eye.

I leaned down to take a closer look, fighting to focus through the rippling water, only to slowly become aware of eyes peering back at me from a ghostly face in the depths beyond it.

A short shriek escaped me as I jolted and slipped from my perch.

The sharp pain in my palms as I scrabbled for purchase on the jagged rocks was instantly replaced by the icy sting of seawater as I plunged into the waves below.

A gasp—a reflex I couldn’t control—filled my mouth and throat with seawater before I clamped my teeth shut, and my panicked flailing was hindered by the heavy clothes I’d donned against the last of the storm’s chill.

The sturdy woolen coat, my favorite pink dress and matching ruffled petticoat, the stout children’s boots I’d laced so tightly just moments ago, all made it impossible to orient myself in the frigid water—let alone to surface—no matter how hard I struggled against the strong current.

Terror seized my mind for an eternal second before something hard hit me from behind, wrapping around me like an octopus and gripping me firmly under the arms as it jerked me upward.

I coughed violently as my head broke the surface, sputtering and fighting desperately to clear the drops of saltwater from my lungs, gripping what I slowly realized was an oddly colored arm around my chest. My movements were frantic, my fear made so much worse by the way it felt like I was fighting through ice-cold molasses because of my wet clothing weighing down my limbs.

But then, as the waves towed me along the jetty and into the cove, I felt a strange vibration at my back, confusing me into stillness.

I recognized that vibration. Whatever held me was humming Nan’s nursery song.

Once we entered the gentler waters of the cove, we sliced through the bobbing waves far more quickly than I could ever swim even without my cumbersome clothing, and once I felt the gently sloping sand beneath my feet, I began to flail again, trying to find purchase but unable to make my muscles respond the way I needed them to.

The firm grip holding me tightened until I was in waist deep water, where I finally planted a boot on the bottom and twisted myself enough to see the face of a boy near my age who released me, only to shove me—hard—toward the shoreline.

I fell backward as I sputtered in the waves.

My eyes played tricks on me as I crawled through the surf, clumsily trying to fight my way to the beach, coughing the whole way, nearly convinced that this ghostly looking boy had quills in his hair and gaping slits in the sides of his neck.

Large eyes the color of storm clouds stared back at me from a face that was so pale it was nearly translucent.

His shoulders were mottled with pale blues and grays, but my eyes were riveted on the reddish-pink slits in his neck.

“Are you hurt?” I asked over the sounds of breaking waves, remembering how I’d fallen on a patch of oyster shells last summer, the horrible sting of the saltwater in the wound, and how long it had taken Nan to stop the bleeding.

Alarmed, I instinctively reached toward the slits in his neck while stumbling to stand in the frigid surf.

He shook his head at me, a mixture of distress and confusion on his face, and pushed me again toward the dry sand, dodging deftly away from my hands before diving back beneath the water as I fell on my backside.

His lower half broke the surface, flashing a long, silver tail covered in glittering scales and pale blue fins.

I was too stunned to move, not even to acknowledge Nan as she came barreling through the trees moments later, calling my name and exclaiming in dismay over my soaked state while I sat in the breaking waves fully clothed.

The boy never surfaced again, though I watched for him as she struggled to get me out of the water and bustled me back to the house, scolding me the entire way.

It was more than a week before Nan let me out to roam again.

The day I’d fallen from the jetty had been a confusing flurry of activity, with Nan calling for one of the maids to help her strip my wet clothes from me as she hauled me into the house, shouts for the cooks to heat some water, and my teeth chattering so badly that it made it hard to hear what everyone was saying.

The phrase “catch her death” was repeated enough times that it was impossible to miss as I was stripped bare and packed into bed with jugs of hot water wrapped in strips of linen before having a mound of blankets heaped atop me and an enormous fire built in my bedroom’s hearth.

The day after had been the opposite, as my body grew hot and I sweated so much I left the bedclothes wet.

Nan placed a cool cloth on my head as I slept and made me drink water every time I roused, alternating between tutting over me with a worried tone and chiding me about how proper elves behave.

I had strange dreams about a boy with a fish tail and odd, pale skin.

Perhaps my parents came to check on me while I was sleeping, but I don’t remember seeing them during that time.

I wasn’t strong enough to play outside for several more days, and once I finally was, the maids would tattle to Nan every time I stepped too far away, as if I were some very young child.

Finally, over breakfast one morning, my mother declared that she’d had enough of me being in the way and Nan had no choice but to relent, admonishing me to stay close to the summerhouse.

She said something about fresh air and proper decorum, to which I quickly agreed without listening.

She was clearly peevish about the chores that prevented her from keeping her hawkish eye on me.

I took the first opportunity to slip into the trees and follow the path down to the shore.

I was half convinced that the boy I’d seen was merely a fever dream.

There were many races of people—elves like me, orcs, shifters, all kinds of fae—but we didn’t interact with them.

I only knew other dark elves, and while I’d heard of merpeople—called mer or merrow, or sometimes even undine—I’d never seen one.

I’d assumed they would look just like my own dark-skinned elven people but with a tail instead of legs.

The water looked calm today, but I eyed the jetty with distinct distrust and shunned the slippery rocks in favor of the soft sand beach at the back of the cove.

I spent some time digging in the sand and sunning myself while trying to keep a covert eye on the surface of the water before eventually growing bored when nothing out of the ordinary showed up.

Looking back toward the house to make sure no one was watching, I stripped off my outer layers of clothing, leaving them strewn about on the sand in a way that would have given Nan fits.

When I wore only my thin inner layers that would dry quickly if I got them wet, I dallied a bit at the edge of the surf, before finally plucking up the courage to test the water again, surprised to find it had warmed significantly since the storm.

Slowly feeling my way along the bottom as I entered gave me time to adjust to the temperature and test the water for any current that might pull me under again.

I dipped to peek under the surface, feeling silly as I searched and wondering, yet again, if I’d perhaps imagined the boy from my memory, although I didn’t think I was creative enough to imagine something as unique as him. Surely he must have been a figment of my fever?

After an hour spent paddling around my little cove, poking at empty seashells and practicing my swimming strokes until I felt more confident in the gentle waves, I began to consider that I might never see the strange boy who rescued me again.

But then a thought occurred to me. I took as deep a breath as my lungs could hold and sank beneath the lapping waves, doing my best as I did to hum the nursery song I’d been humming the day I’d spotted him and fallen in.

I had to surface a few times to take more air before I could finish the tune, but it didn’t take long before I heard an answering melody—piercing and strong—and spied a long, sparkling tail through the stinging salt water.

He found me again.

I broke the surface and planted my feet firmly in the sand below, as if a firm footing could still my racing heart, feeling a little tremulous as I waited.

Whether it was my intense curiosity or the locked muscles in my legs that kept me from fleeing toward the beach, I wasn’t sure, but three deep breaths were all it took before he breached the surface between me and the rocks.

His movements were serpentine as he drew closer to me, lending him a grace that made me conscious of how clumsy my own movements were, but I realized his face could have been described as nearly elvish. Nearly.

He had long sun-bleached hair that flowed out around him in the water like blond tentacles in the lapping waves, with a few quill-like spikes behind his ears that held it back from his eyes.

His skin was so pale, far paler than my own dark elven gray, until he revealed his shoulders and the mottled blues and grays that I remembered playing over ropey muscle.

Spikes with connecting silver-blue fins ran down the backs of his upper arms and his spine.

His body had the lean, gangly lines of my own youth, but when he parted his lips in a grin, his teeth looked nothing like mine—sharp and jagged.

He caught me staring and clamped his mouth shut, tucking his chin and sliding into the water until only his light-grey eyes peeked at me from above the surface, and I could see the slits on his neck fluttering slightly below.

He was beautiful and otherworldly, wholly alien to me—apart from maybe his light-colored hair—and I was fascinated.

I wanted to know everything about him. Who was he? Where did he live? What was he like?

I wished I could know him.

“Can you speak?” I finally asked once I found my own voice.

I knew he could hum—I’d heard him before—and just now he’d sung wordlessly from underwater, but he didn’t answer me.

His eyes were large, deep pools of reflective gray as he regarded me in silence, peering at me from just over the waterline.

Everything about his countenance spoke of shyness until he slowly raised a small object from the water between us.

It was a figurine, a woman, clutched between the dark-clawed tips of his long fingers, and I looked back and forth between his face and the object, wondering what he meant by it.

When he continued to hold it up between us, I leaned in tentatively to take a closer look, only to have him shove it toward me in an abrupt movement.

I caught myself before I reared back and took it from him gingerly, careful of his sharp claws, and saw that it was a marble carving of an elven woman, complete with pointed ears and a delicate crown perched atop her long, flowing hair.

She stood on a little, round pedestal. It reminded me of a piece from a game adults liked to play called Kings and Queens, but even though I loved to gaze at all the different little pieces, the strategy of the game escaped me.

“She’s beautiful,” I told him sincerely, and pressed it carefully back into his hand.

He gave me the smallest smile as he clutched it gently to his chest, before opening his hand slightly and touching her ear with a finger, then slowly raising his hand to nearly touch the tip of my own ear.

I felt my cheeks heat at the comparison, until he drew his wet hair back to reveal his own pointed ear, and gave me a beaming, closed-lip smile before disappearing once again into the waves.