Chapter 2 #2
We approached the landwalkers’ bulging net just as they began the process of hauling it up and grabbed hold of it in our claws, pulling and swimming downward with it as one, driving it toward the bottom of the sea with such strong thrusts of our tails that the boat above began to tilt.
Shouts echoed from above, and the other boys and I released our hold and set to work on the braided strands with our razor-sharp knives, rushing to cut through the netting.
The first fish began to slip through the holes we made and the rest started to thrash wildly as more space opened up inside the net, and then it was chaos as hundreds of fish fought for freedom in the small openings with our hands—each trying to break free as we tried to cut ever wider holes for them.
They broke out the net as quickly as they could, a small trickle at first and then streaming out as we continued to work and suddenly the weight of it began to lessen, making it easier for the sailors to fight against our own pulling, and before long we were all at the surface, the boys and I still cutting netting and the older men still pulling and everyone shouting angrily back and forth with the landwalkers.
My father and the other men argued with mouth-words that their own landwalker laws forbade them from fishing here, that they were damaging fragile spawning grounds, and were spilling blood too close to our home.
I didn’t understand the mouth-words of the drylanders because their accent wasn’t the same as the shore traders, but they were enraged and jabbed at us with their spears.
These weren’t the same kind of landwalkers as the girl on the beach or even the various types of shore traders I had seen, but much smaller people called swamp goblins with bald, round heads and bulbous eyes, and teeth more jagged than ours.
They had ropes attached to the butts of their spears so that they could retrieve them from the water after they’d been thrown, but we caught the ones they aimed at us and pulled them free from the boat rigging, which made them even angrier.
They had no idea how foolish it was to fish here or how lucky they were that we had discovered them and not the sirens. The sirens from the nearby islands would have no qualms about sinking this ship and everyone aboard if they threatened our people.
And sometimes, even if they didn’t.
A pulse of electricity in my fingertips and face told me something big was approaching fast, but between the frenzy of fish fleeing the nets and watching for spears splashing down around us, it caught me by surprise when I felt a sharp, slicing pain on my tail.
A short-finned shark darted back into the darkness below me, leaving a shallow, bloody gash in my scales just above my largest fins.
I gritted my teeth in pain and gave a shrill, whistled warning call to alert the shoal of his presence.
The rest of the group acknowledged my call and began casting quick glances to the perimeters to keep an eye out for the predator, but not my father.
Even with all the fish blood in the water, he almost immediately tasted my own.
His gaze flicked to me with anger and confusion written on his features.
He looked me up and down, quickly spotting the wound marring my scales.
Superficial injury or not, his rage increased tenfold in an instant, and drops of venom bloomed on the delicate fins that covered his head and sprouted from the spikes at the backs of his arms. He called instructions to the other men to finish gathering up the ruined netting and grabbed me by the wrist, pulling me away from the fray.
“I’m fine,” I protested with a low-pitched note, still wanting to help, but it didn’t matter. Merfolk have a reputation for being protective of our young for a reason. “I know the way to the witch doctor,” I conceded with a glum, water-filled sigh when it became clear I wouldn’t be allowed to stay.
“And if another shark comes,” he answered in frustrated, staccato notes, “can you fight it off alone?”
Probably, but I didn’t argue with him.
“You don’t have enough venom,” he continued, a lament he’d made a thousand times, releasing my hand so that he could brush his fingers against the strands of hair that were unique to me among my shoal.
“My mother doesn’t seem to feel the lack,” I answered, annoyed at his grievance.
Only she, among all the merfolk I’d ever seen, had hair on her head like I did, a trait that marked her—and me—as having mixed blood.
But she was a formidable siren, feared by many, and her hair didn’t detract from that at all.
Maybe it even made her more effective because she wouldn’t immediately stand out as a mer to a foe.
My hair was a curiosity among the men of my shoal, something that made me different…
other. Mostly it was viewed with pity because it took the place of the venomous spined fins that the rest of my people bore.
I could still hunt and defend myself—I had my teeth and my claws, I knew how to wield a knife and spear, and I still had some venom…
just not as much as those with a head full of fins.
But because I lacked some, my father had always been extra protective of me.
Or maybe that was just his way. I didn’t know. I was his only child.
He escorted me all the way to the bottom of the sea where the healer’s nest was located, which felt oppressively smothering to me—a boy of fourteen whole summers with only a small nick in his scales.
The old witch gave a humored peal at my grumbling after my father left to make sure the boat had indeed left our waters. The elderly man’s head-fins were nearly translucent with age as he shook his head with mirth.
“The need to protect is written on our bones,” he told me absently as he searched his shelves for whatever potion he was looking for.
It was still night, and though the moonlight filtered through the water and into through the cracks in the little dwelling he had fashioned for himself of whale bones and other sea creature remains, it was much darker inside than in the open ocean.
There were all kinds of fascinating little bottles and urns covering every inch of his shelves, and I didn’t care so much about what was inside them as the vessels themselves.
Intact glass bottles were hard to find in the ocean, and he had so many.
I wondered what other treasures he had tucked away in the recesses of his shadowy hut.
“I have no merling of my own to dote on,” he continued, “so all my care goes to my precious little pigeons,” he said, reaching out to pat one of the fat little sea kraits that sat coiled in his hovel.
“And to the healing of wayward youth with skinned tails who find their way to my abode in the middle of the night, of course.”
“I’m not wayward,” I disagreed as he selected a pair of bottles and came to rest with a quiet groan in front of me, holding his hand out expectantly for my tail. I’d been doing exactly what I was supposed to.
I lifted my tail into his waiting hand, feeling the whole time that this was entirely unnecessary and ready to return to my bed of seaweed and soft sand, except that I wouldn’t mind a closer look at the bottles he held.
“No?” he asked with humor still coloring his tone as he examined the cut, ignoring my obvious interest in his bottles.
“I suppose that must be a wholly different boy who nearly beaches himself with curiosity over things that walk on the shore.” He shook his head again, my astonishment at his words amusing him further.
“I see all, child. Especially foolish little boys.”
I didn’t see how that was possible, considering his eyes were so clouded with milky haze that they were nearly white, and beneath the haze his pupils were blown wide like the deepest sea dwellers.
Perhaps he was addled, since he confused me with a small child.
I was nearly the size of my father already. Kind of. Well, I would be soon.
The old witch pried the stopper out of one of the bottles with his claws and then held it between his yellowing teeth to keep it from floating away.
“Where did you get that?” I asked him, unable to contain my curiosity any longer and reaching for the bottle before he could pour its contents out onto my wound.
“I made it,” he intoned flatly, lifting it just out of my reach as he leaned closer to inspect my injury.
“The bottle,” I clarified grumpily. We didn’t make glass underwater. I thought of all the shipwrecks I’d scoured looking for treasures just like this, and here he had an entire wall of them.
He shook a dab of his thick potion out onto his hand and smeared it on my cut.
“I traded for it.” He capped the bottle and handed it to me, finally obliging my curiosity.
It was a sturdy-looking thing—square glass with some fine bubbles captured in the walls like sea foam frozen in time, the body nearly as wide as it was tall with a squat, tapered opening.
“By the shore,” he added unnecessarily. The lip of it was nicely turned with no visible chips. Amazing.
“I want to learn to speak mouth-words so I can trade at the shore, too,” I told him. It was only a little lie, I decided, thinking of the landchild and my desire to ask her to sing for me. Trading would be nice as well, but it was simply a more acceptable thing to desire, I thought.
“You admire my bottles, do you? Here, you’ll like this one,” he told me, quickly removing some thick, viscous contents from the second, more delicate-looking bottle before capping it again and handing it to me.
“This will sting,” he warned, as he smeared it on my cut, “but it will keep the eaters from smelling your blood.”
I clamped my gills shut in anticipation of the pain, but still managed to suck some water through them in reaction to the sharp stinging. The delicate, fluted bottle I gripped in my hand lost all of its luster to me now that I knew the painful sensation caused by the liquid inside. I gave it back.
The old man quirked his lips at me before returning his attention to my cut.
“Someday, when you’re much older, you can learn to speak as the landwalkers do, so you can trade for some bottles like mine, but perhaps without such spicy contents.
For now… well, I’m sure some of the elders can make trades for you if you have something the landwalkers want,” he told me as he dabbed at the edges of my torn scales.
“You’re all done,” he declared, and released my tail, which I took back gratefully.
“I don’t want to wait until I’m older,” I protested doubtfully, but he was already returning the bottles to his shelves of treasures and flicking his fingers at his sea kraits to shoo them out of the way.
“Why can’t I learn to use mouth-words now?
” It was difficult to form the words, but surely it wasn’t impossible.
I felt as much as I heard the sigh of water leave his gills.
The mirth had left his voice this time when he responded, and he took on a chastising tone.
“You’re much too young for that now, child.
You will damage your vocal cords, and then you won’t be able to speak in our language either.
We’re not made for speaking in the way they do.
And you’re too young to be anywhere near the shore, anyhow.
You think your father will let you out of his sight if you get yourself beached? ”
I frowned at him though he wasn’t looking, before finally testing my tail, wincing a bit at the soreness.
“Will I be able to have legs then, too?” I asked curiously, ignoring his warning and thinking of the mermen that sometimes morphed their tails into legs for walking—a magical remnant left over from our ancient origins—though everyone who spoke of it always did so with a grimace.
None of our kind seemed to enjoy shifting forms, but sometimes older leaders of the merrow did it so they could interact with leaders of the landwalkers.
It was considered a great sacrifice because it was painful and disturbing to venture that far from the water.
He waved me off, now focused on re-organizing the potions on his shelves.
“It will be decades before you’re able to do that.
Tell your father I want some eel larvae for my little pigeons as payment,” he finished, patting one of the coiled-up kraits absently and dismissing me to return home to my bed.
“Here,” he said as I turned to leave, and then thrust his hand out toward me, holding a tiny glass bottle with a crack down one side.
“It’s not useful for holding medicine. You can have it if you want it. ”
I took the bottle reverently, thanked him profusely, and then fled toward home before he could change his mind.