Chapter Twenty-one The Maiden and her Monster #3
Her green eyes fixed on the youngest of the sisters. With one long nail, she picked at the loose thread where Elowen had lost a button. ‘What is for me?’
Elowen blushed fiercely and produced the rum. ‘I got you this, in exchange for helping us to find the Bucka?’
Merrin accepted it with a chirp and sank onto a low bench, intricately carved though bitten with rot. It must have been belonged in a ship’s captain’s quarters once and now had a home with her. As for the captain, he had likely found his final rest here too.
Kensa tried not to look at the skulls. Her neck throbbed. When she put a hand to it, Merrin smiled, her fangs on show. She rubbed her greenish legs together and shivered sand across the wood they stood upon.
‘Why should I?’
Elowen paused, considered. There was no sternness to her voice, only a calm challenge. ‘Remember when I helped you?’
‘No,’ said Merrin sulkily, setting the bottle aside.
‘When that fishing hook caught your shoulder, I took it out and treated the wound. Each day I came to visit and changed your dressing, too.’
‘No,’ repeated Merrin. ‘No.’
‘And I let you play with Mr Aldridge.’
‘No.’
‘And we’d swim together and you’d show me your treasures?’
‘You’ll tell us where the Bucka is,’ said Kensa, unsheathing the bone-handled knife. ‘Or I’ll finish what Isolde started.’ She began to roll up her sleeve with her free hand. ‘Do you want that?’
It was an empty threat. Kensa didn’t know how to banish anything. Not that it mattered, for her warning had the desired effect. Merrin hissed and lurched towards Kensa, teeth bared and hands clawed.
Elowen darted between them. ‘She doesn’t mean it, I swear!’ A meaningful glance to Kensa. ‘If you do help us, I’ll bring another treat soon, the next time I visit. How about cake or a sticky bun? You like those.’
‘You could bring the new curate,’ said Merrin slyly, retreating to her bench.
‘Or I fetch him myself soon enough.’ She spread her fingers across her lap and breathed deep, her gills flexing.
‘Ken-sa.’ She pulled the name apart with her tongue and giggled in her wet-fish voice.
‘What business have you with the Father of Storms? He’s as bad as your father was; I’ve met them both, I have, I have. ’
Kensa bit down on her tongue and lifted her knife, higher, its point angled towards Merrin. ‘Why should I tell you?’
‘A resurrection gone wrong,’ said Elowen, as though it happened every other Tuesday.
Kensa barked, ‘Don’t tell her that!’
‘She’s my friend.’
‘Hah,’ snorted Kensa, only to realise she meant it.
Indeed, there was a familiarity between the two, a shared knowledge, a secret joke only they were in on.
A sickening disgust curled in Kensa’s stomach when she understood that her sister – a woman she’d once thought innocent and pure and not a little dull – would choose this murderous harpy for company.
Merrin eased herself to standing, taking the bottle with her, and took two long steps towards Kensa and her blade, as though it were a young boy’s wooden sword.
It might well have been, for the notice she gave it.
‘Here is a wise woman ordered to keep balance and instead she tips scales.’ Below them were other creatures.
Numerous faces lurked below the waves, ever watchful, flat and fish-like in appearance.
Their bodies were crab-backed and spined as an urchin shell’s.
Fey-kind remnants lingered in their long fingers and tipped ears, bearing tortoiseshell markings.
How long had they been there? And did this asrai lie when she’d claimed to know her father?
Creatures such as her only spoke what people wanted to hear …
‘You should be respectful,’ said Merrin.
‘Before, we took a fisherman’s catch right from his stomach or pulled the pretty girls down to the deeps with us, until the Pact drove us to near-extinction.
’ She reached for Elowen, played with that loose thread on her dress.
‘I was as you, once,’ she said, lulling, ‘would you like to be as I, my little-fish-from-water, fine ladies together? You’ve never belonged with them, you know? ’
Elowen remained silent. Unreadable, as ever.
Kensa slashed forwards, separating them. ‘Tell me where to find the Bucka.’
Merrin smiled her horrible smile. She tipped the rum to her mouth – Kensa’s father’s rum, dry and sweet and potent – and did not say, ‘No,’ again.
The seabirds nested on Killigerran Head, not far from Towan Beach.
Their home was a small island where the Bucka was also thought to reside.
No one truly knew where the Father of Storms lived, Merrin had claimed, for he was no more than fog and the riddles it keeps.
The outcrop was known as Last Leap, for legend stated it compelled the heartsick to run along the edge and dash themselves on the rocks below.
Kensa swallowed thickly. If she intended to scramble down without being swept away, she would need to do it soon; the tide was low and would not be for long.
‘If I don’t come back, get Jack to help,’ she said, removing her boots, stuffing her socks inside them and tying the laces around her neck. ‘He’ll know what to do.’ Or, she hoped so. A desperate pang – a longing to be near him, touch him, hear him say her name – reverberated in her chest.
Elowen’s bare feet joined her sister’s in the grass. ‘You’re not doing this by yourself.’
Kensa shook her head. ‘It’s too dangerous.’
‘For as long as I can remember, you’ve run ahead into every situation, without me,’ Elowen continued, ‘and I won’t be left behind again.
’ Although it had only been a few days since her recovery, Elowen insisted she was strong enough.
‘I owe this to Isolde.’ She hitched her skirts even higher and descended to the waiting ocean. ‘Are you coming?’
Cormorants watched their wading progress, wings outstretched: a dozen crosses to mark their passage, teal eyes flashing ill luck, the same hue as the Bucka’s.
Noise from the nearby mines ran on the wind and bounced on the water’s surface.
Sonorous calls, a pick on stone, loud and pummelling machinery.
When the land ran out, the sisters were forced to swim.
It was not a kind sea around them, the current strong as though to guard its master.
With a final surge onwards, the outcrop grazed their palms.
‘We’ll count the waves and pull ourselves up on the highest one,’ shouted Kensa, above the rushing sound in her ears, above her mounting doubt. There was no real proof the Bucka would be here. Wouldn’t they have seen him from shore, if he was?
One, two, three – foam crashed on their chins and burned their eyes – then four.
A last effort, knees bent, fingers reaching.
Kensa was almost there. And then she wasn’t.
Underwater, there was no up or down, only pain as a hard ledge punched her chest. Elowen’s hand fumbled through the brine, seeking hers.
It guided her to the surface. The waves came higher and Kensa slipped again.
Elowen would not let go. Every movement took strength neither sister possessed, as Kensa finally hooked her knee onto a firm surface and heaved herself out of the water.
Kensa lay flat, coughing and heaving. Elowen slumped beside her, a cut streaming from her eye.
Their boots were lost, though the bone-handled knife held fast to the belt at Kensa’s hip.
Soon, she would give it back to Isolde – the real Isolde, not the ghoul she was now.
As she rolled onto her side, she took in her surroundings.
It was a small plateau with little to recommend itself.
Cormorants watched them, unperturbed, their feathered bodies within touching distance.
An ever-present breeze whipped the clouds overhead and curdled the seaweed.
There was a large circular rock pool, framed by a bed of mussels, who clenched their lips tightly.
In less than an hour, the jagged mound would be lost beneath the waves and the young women with it.
‘There’s nothing here,’ said Kensa, cursing loudly. ‘Merrin tricked us.’
‘Not everything with the Folk is at it seems.’ Elowen rolled onto her elbows and leaned towards the rock pool.
‘Here?’ She dipped her hand into the water and pointed to a channel running through the smooth stone.
A splash had the pair scream and roll backwards, as a cormorant dived into the rock pool.
The bird vanished into the tunnel and barely a ripple marked its progress.
‘The tide’s rising,’ said Kensa. ‘If we’re going, we’re going now.’
Elowen grinned and her braid – a slick, dull tail – bounced on her back as she sank forwards, taking the path the cormorant had shown them. As the eldest, Kensa was disgruntled to realise she had not gone first. For once, she could only follow.
Compared to the sea’s temperature, the rock pool was warmer, having captured the sun’s heat.
She sank into the sloping channel, which plummeted downwards and levelled out, to reveal strangely coloured sand: cobalt and white, pearlescent in turns.
It was bright enough to light her progress.
Kensa’s foot grazed it as she kicked her legs.
Movement. It was not sand. She flinched away.
Eels. Hundreds coiled together in thick shapes, writhing around themselves and flashing with an eerie luminescence.
A queer light, the kind Kensa only ever saw if she pressed too hard against her closed eyelids.
Among them was the cormorant, who caught one, wings beating, and retreated the way it had come.
Doubt grew in Kensa’s mind. What if there was no way out?
She was not worried for herself; Elowen’s lungs were smaller, ravaged by illness, and yet the younger woman swam onwards with a peculiar ease.
The tunnel narrowed. Enclosed by stone, the water’s stillness bottled Kensa’s pulse and repeated it back to her, a shell to her ear, a shell to her entire body.
When she thought she might burst or faint or drown, the tunnel expanded and the rock above them opened.
The light was low. Kensa didn’t realise she’d broken the water’s surface until the weight of her wet hair pulled at its follicles.
Elowen was beside her, alert to their surroundings.
It was a rounded cave whose eel-light trickled along a narrow walkway.
Thick blue streaks veined the rock face, which Kensa identified as copper left too long in stone, and hung as stalactites like a dead man’s fingers.
The only sound came from Kensa and Elowen’s own movements, the gentle lapping water and their breathing.
Occasionally, the eels would thicken or collide against one another, slapping and splashing, prior to settling once again.
Kensa shuddered when one slithered against her thigh.
The sisters’ clothes were saturated and heavy as they crawled out onto the pathway that stretched ominously into the blue.
Kensa cleared her throat to speak and the cave echoed her nervousness back to her.
‘I know,’ said Elowen.
It had been a brave notion back in the cottage to confront the Bucka and ask him to fix their ill work. Now, it seemed unwise. One could not forget who he was, nor the stories told about him, but what other choice did Kensa have?
She went first along the tunnel, which tilted lower and lower.
Above her, Kensa could sense the weight of the ocean, a pressure which made her head thicken.
It was quiet enough to magnify their breathing, steps, the drip, drip, drip of their clothes.
The tide would be well above the entrance to this place by now; it would be a long wait until they could leave – if they could leave.
Gradually, the tunnel flattened into a chamber, shaped like a giant bulb, with another pool in the centre, wide as a house.
There was a ringed platform around it, raised above the water.
Inside were further eels, their bodies circling the water’s edge in an undulating cyclone.
There was another body moving in the pool, this one tentacled, with an eye as large as a dinner plate and a beak that opened menacingly.
‘Is he here?’ Elowen leaned her head over the water, saw the creatures within it, and leaned hastily back again.
Kensa put a hand to her belt for reassurance, seeking the bone-handled knife. Her fingers met an empty sheath, the blade missing.
‘He is,’ said a low voice behind them, ‘but why are you?’
Kensa whipped around, hopeful and afraid, to meet the cormorant eyes of the Bucka.