Chapter 9 Snare #2
What a crazy couple of weeks it’s been! I saw the whales, I saved a merman, and now I’m going to starve to death pinned behind a barrel on this godforsaken rock.
Some gulls fly overhead laughing at my folly.
Actually, they might peck me to death before I starve, so there’s that to look forward to.
My voice is weak, but I cry out to the only soul within miles in the tiniest, littlest squeak of embarrassment at what I’ve gotten myself into.
“Lir—”
Defeated, I hang my head. There’s no way he would hear me from down below the water, not with the sound of the waves crashing and wind howling across the surface. I can only imagine what he’d say, ‘stupid human, silly human, weak human.’
“Could a stupid human do—this?” I wriggle around violently once more. Yep, I’m still stuck.
Not far off in the indigo light, I can see his tide pool and it doesn’t stir.
He’s also too injured to drag himself across the rocks, he almost bled out last time.
I think I can still smell the blood that pooled in this direction.
In the most horrible wish, I hope that it is Lir’s from before, otherwise it’s mine.
I can’t really tell how injured I am with my limbs going numb from the cold.
Through the dim light I look down at my pinned body, nothing is broken I think, just stuck.
I want to scream, I want to cry, but I can only muster a painful curse as the tears begin to fall.
It grows dark, dark and cold. The clouds move in, eventually filling the entire dome above, blocking out those tiny stars.
It’s just pitch black now. I can only hear my own rasped breathing and the lulling sound of the waves.
My chin rests on my chest, the world too empty for my mind to look around and not see nightmarish shapes in the dark.
I can hear a sloshing of water approaching, maybe the tide is coming up.
Maybe, it will release me from this rock by floating up the barrel and I’ll be able to get free!
I try to imagine a happy fate and not just being dragged out into the cold ocean.
Expecting to see only lonely darkness, I open my heavy eyes.
Oh! Those two stars are still on the horizon in the direction of the lighthouse—but they move back and forth, they undulate as they grow closer and brighter.
A parade of glowing celestial bodies follow closely behind, swiveling back and forth in their celebratory dance.
Close enough now that the mist doesn’t obscure it, I can see that it is not a comet coming to smite me—no, it’s the second most unimaginable option, as a merman crawls towards me.
Lir drags himself next to me and the corded muscles of his arms pull the barrel towards himself with ease. Yet, his breathing still sounds pained. “I’m sorry it took me so long. It seems no one should be inhabiting this place, human or merman if we can’t even safely get across it.”
Flooding my senses, I smell the blood again, but I check myself all over and can’t find the source.
No, it is Lir’s that have opened up again, and I curse at him, “I was handling it! Why would you do this and injure yourself all over again?” I scream at him, the air finally fully filling my lungs after being compressed so long.
“Handling it? Handling it until I find you here frozen to death in the morning! Why didn't you wake me after they left? You said you’d tell me!”
“I didn't want to bother you.” I can’t bring myself to look him in the eye.
“Bother me, Andrea!” He snarls, “Or else I’ll drag myself across rocks, rocks like goddamn broken glass I might add.
” His strong unwavering voice cracks, it breaks, and not from the pain of his body’s wounds.
“I’m stuck here with you and I’m not going to let my only companion get crushed to death.
For a second, could you please think about yourself?
For if you will not think of me, I beg of you to at least have self preservation. ”
I smile wryly. “I’m sorry, Lir.”
Letting out a big sigh, his hands clench and unclench. His face twisting as he searches for the words he wants to say to me. “It’s okay, hu—Andrea. You’ll be okay.”
It’s been so long since I had someone care about me, it makes me want to just completely fall to blubbering pieces in front of him, but I keep it together. We both lean against each other bracing against the parts that hurt to support our slow half walk but mostly crawl back towards the lighthouse.
He winces, but smiles at me to encourage me through our slow progress.
“You’d so easily leave me though, eh? To just have the crabs and sea snails to chat with while I heal?
Leave the gulls to be my only companions.
..” he says. I half smile and exhale, squeezing Lir’s forearm which wraps over my shoulder in acknowledgement.
I let out a thin breath, the closest thing I can muster to a laugh.
He continues, his calm voice carrying me along with him.
“Not that I mind their conversations, but they aren’t nearly as entertaining as you,” he says while grinning.
“Just entertainment, huh?” I release him suddenly from our tangled crutch hold. He falls like a lead weight and splashes into the pool with half the water flying up into the air as he displaces it. I ignore his flopping. I know now that he’s tougher than any human man.
Less frantically this time, I get the medical kit from upstairs and slowly close Lir’s wounds. I couldn’t do it any faster even if I tried. My ribs aren’t broken but definitely bruised and I lack the adrenaline of the last mirrored encounter.
In swirling motions, he rubs his hands over my stitch work, though not as quick it is neater than before.
“Practice makes perfect.” I scowl at him. “Don’t try and give me any more practice though!”
“I guess you’ll be stuck with me here a while longer than you hoped,” he mutters as he rubs his shoulder in pain.
“A while longer…” I can’t show the tiny spark of glee that plumes in my heart, the embers of a small hope that I cannot even begin to flame. I cup some freezing cold water and splash it into my face to dampen out those feelings.
Through his dampened curls, he looks at me surprised. “You do strange things…but I don't claim to understand humans anyways.”
“Us human women, we’re even more difficult than the rest of ‘em. I don't even understand half of the things that I do,” I say while tapping my finger to my forehead. “That’s how I keep you on your toes.” He tilts his head at me confused. “Oh yeah, no toes.”
“Okay!” I slap my hands on my knees getting up from the edge of the pool. “Almost died, no big deal. Back to work!” I exclaim as I dust off my hands and loosen my collar.
I startle Lir as I jolt up from my crouch. “Well Lir, thanks for saving me, now we’re even and we’ll be able to forget this ever happened—”
“Ah, no. You restitched me.” He clicks his tongue. “I owe you all over again it looks like.”
I kick a rock into the pool, “I don’t want to be beholden or be-um—held by anyone, Lir!”
“Too bad.” He laughs as he sinks back halfway under the water of the pool.
He takes my hand, the much needed warmth coursing back through my veins.
I want to bake between the furnaces of his fingers, he holds me even though I try to pull away.
“Andrea, debt, no debt, none of it matters. I would have come for you either way.” He looks down into the water, searching for words that would flow smoothly off of his ancient tongue, but in no language I would understand. “I think I would always come for you.”
I pull my hand back, stunned at the solemnness of his words, the vows my husband said to me on our wedding day did not ring as true as Lir’s did in this moment. I back into the shadowed doorway, my mind not even being able to comprehend this complete truth after hearing a lifetime of half lies.
His hands effortlessly slip up just below my shirt, they are hot on my defrosting skin.
I didn’t even consider that I would first freeze to death out there before any other cruel fate.
I hold my breath as his palms graze up past layers of fabric, up past my goosebumps, guiding effortlessly to my ribs.
They rest strong and purposefully as they are enveloping me.
They are welded shut at their intersections into a metal birdcage around my heart.
I can see the want drifting on his mouth, a want to heal me again.
“Please not with your mouth, I can’t I can’t stand it—“ I whimper.
Tenderly he holds my ribs in his claws, grasping at the flesh and bones as if he is holding the beating organ itself, not lustful but in desperate fascination at the fluttering key-wound automaton in my chest. His head hangs as if cut from his neck by the sword of his apparent uselessness.
He slowly releases me, finger by finger and I wince at the pain.
As if his hands were holding me together from shattering. I exhale a painful breath, “Goodnight.”
As I stomp up the lighthouse stairs to my post, every tiny movement hurts that sore rib.
Though it barely stings compared to this new thorn in my side—the left side, higher up and just below the sternum.
It pangs with a deep resting intensity. I can feel the thorn twist and poke as I try to catch my breath.
It carves a name with its painful quill, Lir.