Brida walked barefoot among a flock of gulls patrolling the beach. Some followed her in hopes of reaping scraps she might drop as they hunted for crabs and darter fish at the edge of the surf. She kept a close eye on those winging above her, grateful for the kerchief she wore around her head to tame her hair and protect her head from bird droppings.
Some of the villagers had begun giving her odd looks, pitying ones even, and she’d overheard a whisper or two floating amongst the crowds during the busy market day. They worried the solitude of her widowhood had brought on a dangerous melancholy. She walked the beach these days far more than a body should, especially now that colder temperatures had seeped in and settled, and the autumn sky was often bleak.
Brida smiled as she wrapped her shawl tightly about her shoulders, her flute tucked under one arm. Who knew that she, Talmai’s flute-playing widow, would ever become as interesting a topic of public house conversation a the noble family to whom Ancilar was a vassal village? They were welcome to their conjectures. Gossip was its own form of entertainment in Ancilar, and she found it funny that for once, people weren’t gossiping as much about the inhabitants of Castle Banat perched on the bluff behind her.
Her smile faded a little. Solitude wasn’t a bad thing, nor did she possess an overabundance of it as her neighbors assumed. Helping her sister-in-law with her large brood of children during the day guaranteed she was rarely alone or uninterrupted. She’d resorted to spinning wool—her main source of income—at night, when she escaped to her own house for some much needed quiet.
Sometimes though, her curiosity got the best of her, along with a futile hope, and she put aside her spinning to walk the shoreline in the twilight hours before the gulls settled down to roost. Except for the birds, the beach was hers, as it was now, with only the waking stars to keep her company and the surf to sing to her.
A fortnight had passed since she’d watched the merfolk disappear into the Gray with the injured merman and child he’d done his best to protect. She thought of the two often, especially the merman. He haunted her dreams, and she found herself remembering his unique eyes and the apologetic whistles he’d uttered in a weak breath after he landed that strike on her with his tail. She’d woken the following day with a painful lump on the back of her head but nothing more, except maybe a passing uncertainty that the events of the previous night had actually happened. She told no one. Who would believe her anyway?
You know of one, her inner voice warned.
As if her uncharitable thoughts had summoned him, a familiar figure perched for a second time on her favorite lookout spot. A saddled horse grazed on sea oats growing amid the salt grass nearby. Brida paused, pondering whether to continue or turn around and go home.
“No reeking nobleman with his nose high in the wind is going to chase me away,” she grumbled under her breath and continued toward the ledge. She had her spare flute with her instead of the one her father had made for her, and if Ospodine tried to take it from her, she’d willingly surrender it to him and wish him good luck and good riddance.
That pale, cool stare didn’t waver as she drew closer, and the thin smile playing across his mouth was as insincere as the cheery tone of his greeting. “A pleasure to see you here again, Madam Gazi. It seems we both like to stroll the shore this time of evening.”
Brida considered herself a mild-mannered woman with a wealth of patience. This man, however, made her hackles rise. He wore an air of contempt about him that belied his surface manners. She hadn’t forgotten he’d entered her house to pry while she and the rest of the village harvested seaweed. She’d been startled and then dismayed to see him at Ancilar’s market day a few days after Lord Frantisek’s party, a guest who had not yet worn out his welcome at the castle or didn’t have the sense to know when he actually had done so.
“Syr Ospodine,” she said shortly, not bothering to smile in return. This was no one she wanted to befriend, even under different circumstances. He reminded her too much of a cat that played with its prey before killing it.
He unfolded his tall frame from the perch and gestured to the space. “Please, take my seat. I believe this is your favored spot, isn’t it?”
An oily shiver eeled down her back. How often had he seen her sitting here this past fortnight, watching the Gray and playing her flute? Once? Twice? Every night?
“You’re welcome to your privacy, syr,” she said and pivoted to trek back the way she came.
The slap of footsteps in wet sand echoed behind her as Ospodine caught up with her. She jerked away when he touched her elbow, and he dropped his hand as if scalded. His expression held a mix of mutual dislike and revulsion.
She didn’t stop walking until he strode ahead and stopped in front of her, blocking her path. He held up his hands in mock surrender. “Please. I mean you no harm. I only want to ask you something.”
Wary, Brida tucked her hands into her shawl, using one to grasp the scissors on the chatelaine tied at her waist. “And what is that?”
“Would you play the tune I heard at Lord Frantisek’s?”
“Now?” Brida stared at the nobleman, very glad for several reasons that she’d brought her spare flute with her this evening.
He nodded, an avid gleam entering his eyes. “Yes! Here. Now.”
He knew. Knew just as she did that the four-note tune was something other than varied breaths blown through a musical instrument during warm-up exercises. The man vibrated with a suppressed eagerness verging on hysteria. The flatness of his mouth against his teeth and the narrow gaze he cast on her warned Brida that she might well compromise her safety if she refused.
She adopted a bored expression, matching it with an equally casual shrug. “All right. If it means that much to you. Though I can play a ballad or a plaint for you that’s more entertaining.”
“No,” he almost snarled before remembering himself. The false smile grew ever more strained. “Just the tune, and play it more than once.”
Brida didn’t dare mention that only the flute her father had made could replicate the merwoman’s whistles perfectly. This flute, no matter how hard or how often she played it, had never accomplished the same.
She fished the flute out of the folds of her shawl, warmed it up with a few experimental scales, and played the merwoman’s short song, never taking her eyes off her audience who loomed over her like a vulture.
He flinched as if the sounds grated on his ears. “That isn’t right,” he complained. “Play it again. As you did at his lordship’s celebration.”
Brida did as he commanded, playing and replaying the notes until Ospodine cursed her and snatched the flute out of her hands. “Stupid woman,” he snapped. “Like this.” Instead of putting the flute to his mouth, he whistled the notes himself, and this time it was her turn to wince at the discordant sound.
She barely dodged out of the way in time when the nobleman flung the flute at her, enraged. It landed in the sand, and she left it where it lay, far too busy with keeping an eye on the red-faced Ospodine and her hand on the scissors. With her heart in her throat, she backed away from him.
“Where did you learn to play that tune?” he shouted at her, advancing on her with long strides.
“I didn’t ‘learn’ it! I only heard it long ago and repeated it!” Her shout carried alongside his over the dunes.
“Oy!” a voice called out, making them both turn. “What are you going on about down there?”
Brida almost burst into relieved tears at the sight of two of the village elders watching from the top of one of the dunes. She used the distraction to dart around Ospodine and run for the safety of their company.
He didn’t follow, taking the opposite path to retrieve his horse and vault into the saddle before galloping back toward the castle. Brida watched him go, her heartbeat still banging inside her skull like a war drum. She and the elders watched as his figure soon diminished, becoming nothing more than a fast moving speck that disappeared behind a hillock of sand before reappearing at the bottom of the castle road.
“Trouble, that one,” one of the two elders said as he squinted into the distance. “He’s been roaming about the village, asking odd questions.” His aging gaze drifted to Brida. “A few of those questions about you, Brida.”
“What were you two arguing about?” the second elder asked. “We could hear you playing and then you both shouting afterwards.”
Brida shuddered. “He’s obsessed with a few notes I played at the castle during her ladyship’s name day celebration. They mean nothing to me.” That wasn’t quite true. “But they’re important to him for reasons he’s chosen not to share.”
“He didn’t hurt you, did he?” The second elder’s face bunched into a thunderous frown. “Laylam will want his head on a plate, nobleman or not, if he did.”
She groaned inwardly. The last thing she needed was her brother’s already overprotective instincts to flare into a bonfire. He’d try to nail her feet to the floor of her own house in a misguided attempt to keep her safe. “He didn’t touch me. Just grew angry when I played what he requested, but it seems I played poorly.”
Thank the gods she hadn’t brought her bone flute. After discovering Ospodine had wandered uninvited through her house, Brida had taken the flute to Laylam’s where Norinn had stashed it and Brida’s earnings in a locked box stored beneath the kitchen floor.
The thought reminded her of her forgotten second-best flute, still in the sand where Ospodine had thrown it. She asked the elders to wait for her while she retrieved the instrument. She bent to pick up the flute and froze at the faintest sound purling toward her from the incoming tide.
A deeper whistle, drawn out in the middle, dropping off at the end, and clear as the twilight sky above her. Brida turned her head slowly, half afraid she’d see nothing except the disappointment of unacknowledged hope. A sliver of silvery tail ending in a fluke gently splashed water in her direction, and she caught a glint of twin blue-green fireflies that floated among the waves. Eye-shine in a handsome, unhuman face framed in garlands of floating seaweed hair.
Still half bent toward the flute, Brida breathed out a soft exclamation. “You.”
As if he heard her, the merman edged a hand above the wave peaks in greeting. His glowing eyes shifted to the two men waiting at the dunes, their attention turned toward the castle road. Brida placed a finger to her lips in what she hoped was a universal signal for silence. He nodded and half submerged until only the crown of his head remained visible, nothing more than a ubiquitous knot of floating kelp to anyone else who might be watching the water.
Brida snatched up the flute and made her way to the elders. She wanted so badly to return to the merman, but to insist on staying alone on the beach after her confrontation with Ospodine would invite the elders’ unwelcome scrutiny and a litany of questions.
“We planned to walk toward the bluff, Brida,” the younger of the two men said. “You’re welcome to join us. We’ll see you home afterwards.”
Astran was a jovial man, one of the more reasonable men on the village council, and Brida had always liked him. He’d been the one to call out when she’d faced off with Ospodine.
She smiled at him, hatching an idea. The two men planned to walk in the opposite direction to where the merman waited. They’d be more focused on the castle in the distance and watching for any sign of Ospodine’s reappearance. “I thank you for the generous offers. I gladly accept the offer of the second, but would you mind if I stayed?” She held up her flute. “I like to come here in the evenings and play. It was my and Talmai’s favorite place.”
Their expressions softened, and both men nodded. Astran gestured to the bluff. “We’ll come back for you when we’re done, or if you find we’re taking too long, meet us halfway.”
She waved to them as they set off toward the bluff, following the fading hoofprints Ospodine’s horse left in the sand. Once they’d gone a short distance, she sped back to the spot where she’d seen the merman. “Please still be there,” she murmured to herself. The urge to move faster prickled across her lower back, but she kept her pace to a brisk walk instead of a sprint in case the elders turned to watch her.
Her visitor still floated in the waves, sleek tail and muscular arms flexing in the water to stay afloat. A delighted smile spread across his shadowed face, and Brida caught a glimpse of teeth shaped much like hers in the fading light. He whistled to her, an unfamiliar tune, and motioned toward the ledge Ospodine had claimed earlier.
She paced him on the shore as he swam to their meeting spot. He was much quicker than she and lolled in the shallow surf to wait, protected by the silhouette of the ledge where it jutted beyond the sand and into the water.
Brida climbed the natural ladder carved out by the sea to the flat expanse of stone and perched on the edge, tucking her legs under her. The merman swam closer, the shine of his eyes not so bright with the moon behind him. Brida set the flute to her lips and played the note he’d whistled earlier. His name. This flute lacked the other’s accuracy in mimicking mer speech, but the merman didn’t seem to mind.
He nodded, his smile widening even more. He tapped the water with the flat of his hand. “Brida who sings,” he said in a voice soft and deep, the words a little hesitant as if his tongue still sought to work around their unfamiliarity.
She almost dropped the flute. “You speak!” She shook her head. Of course he spoke, although the whistle language was not one she understood. “You speak my language.”
“Some,” he said. “Your words are hard. This…” he whistled and followed it with a series of clicks in the back of his throat. “Is easier for us.”
Delighted, Brida scooted closer to the edge. He, in turn, swam a little more into the shallows, bracing his elbows in the sand so that he could stretch toward her. His body curved in a faint arc, his fluke lifting high to help him balance. Moonlight plated the dual tones of his skin, highlighting the darker gray of his back and the short dorsal fin that ran the length of his spine. His face, chest, belly and underside of his tail gleamed white in the water. The wounds and lacerations he’d suffered had healed or were healing, silvery flesh knitting itself together into jagged scars.
Brida patted her own hip and pointed to the spot on his tail where he’d been most grievously injured. “That looks good. No blood. No pain?” She chose her words carefully and spoke slowly, trying not to overwhelm him with rapid-fire speech. If he suddenly started whistling and chirping at her in an unending succession of sound, she’d be completely lost.
He nodded. “You saved me. Saved…” Again, a whistle, only different, higher, and she recognized the name he’d given the merchild.
It was her turn to grin. She had prayed both man and child would survive, even when her doubts about his chances made the praying seem futile at times. “I’m happy,” she said. “Your daughter?” she asked.
He frowned, then shook his head. “Daughter?” He parsed out the word’s two syllables carefully, as if saying them aloud might help him better comprehend its meaning.
Flummoxed by how to explain the meaning, Brida decided to put it aside. If she was fortunate enough to see the merman again, she’d figure out a way to translate words for him and have him do the same for her with whistles and clicks.
“What is Brida?” he asked.
She blinked. How to answer? She was a human, but that was obvious, and instinct told her that wasn’t really his question. Comprehension dawned. She held up her arms and flexed her biceps, feeling foolish, but figuring it was the best way to impart her name’s meaning. “Brida is strength.” She patted one arm for emphasis. “Strength.”
The merman’s fluke twitched as if it waved at her. He tested the word. “Strength.” This time the whistle he uttered was a burst of sound, short and sharp. “Brida,” he said and repeated the whistle.
She had a mer name now. Thrilled at the idea, Brida took up her flute and played the note. It lacked the melodic tones of the four-note tune the merwoman had uttered, but it was her name in a language of the sea spoken by legendary creatures from its depths.
“What is…” She played his name on the flute.
Her companion spread his arms to indicate size, then curved one in a darting motion to indicate speed.
Brida raised an eyebrow. “Your name is Fast Fish?” This communication exchange was difficult.
Like the more abstract term for “daughter,” his name defied simple translation through gestures. Brida waved a hand at him to signal it didn’t matter. She was happy to call him in the language of his folk. It seemed only fair to return the courtesy.
Hints of conversation drifted toward her. The elders were returning from their short stroll. It was time to leave.
She sighed, wishing this extraordinary meeting wouldn’t end. “I must go,” she said and unfolded her legs to stand. A muscular arm stretched out before a webbed hand gripped her ankle, and she froze, heart leaping in her chest in a mixture of fright and a feeling she hadn’t experienced in a long time.
The merman’s gaze flickered in the direction of the two men before returning to her. He released her ankle. “Come back, Brida?” He clicked at her before pointing to the sky with his free hand. “When lights shine?”
A garland of seaweed hair spilled over his arm to trail across her foot. Brida looked up at the ever-darkening sky and the “lights.” His expression held both hope and entreaty. “Stars,” she said and singled out a few of the brighter lights sailors used to navigate over the vast expanse of ocean. “The lights are stars.”
“Stars,” he repeated and clicked twice. She tried to mimic him, and they both grinned at her failure.
“Come back, Brida?” He said a second time.
“I’ll try.” She wanted very much to say yes, but such would be a lie. With Ospodine still in Ancilar and his unwanted attention focused on her, she had to be careful. And he was only one of several challenges in returning to the beach in the evening hours without attracting notice or inviting questions.
She raised a hand, beguiled by the sight of him, so strange yet so beautiful in the Gray’s shallow caress. “Goodbye.”
“Wait.” She halted, watching as he unwound a thin strip of dark cloth from around his upper arm and offered it to her. “For you from me and…” He whistled the merchild’s name.
Brida’s hand closed on the fabric, startled to discover it was the sheathe for her flute she’d lost in the waves when she carried the merchild out to her kinsmen. The cloth had seen better days, its weave unravelling in places and heavy with salt water. Something hard and weighted lay hidden in one end.
The elders were close enough now that another minute more, and they’d spot the merman where he rested in the shallows. Brida gave him a quick smile and a last wave before abandoning the ledge to meet the pair on the beach. She dared not look back, though the temptation nearly overwhelmed her.
She tucked the wet flute cover into one of the pockets of her skirt, feeling it soak through to her skin, and wondering what lay inside. A shell? A rock? A dead fish? She hoped it wasn’t the last.
The two elders gave no indication they’d seen anything odd on their stroll, though they admonished her to be careful going anywhere alone and promised to keep an eye on Lord Frantisek’s sinister guest should he choose to visit Ancilar again or the beach itself.
Alone once more in her house, she barred the door behind her, lit a few more candles, and set a kettle of water to warm on the still hot grate over the banked coals in her hearth. Her tea would be lukewarm at best, but she craved a cup, not only to warm her bones but calm her racing thoughts.
Tomorrow. The merman had pleaded with her to return tomorrow, and Brida vowed she’d find a way to do so, regardless of nosy neighbors and threatening outsiders.
She fished out the soggy bit of cloth from her pocket and set it on her kitchen table. Flickering light from a single candle cast a warm glow on the cloth and the mysterious lump in one end. Brida shook out the contents, her shocked gasp loud in the quiet room as the merman’s gift rolled across the table’s surface to fall into her palm.
A pearl, the size of a hazelnut, and perfectly round, gleamed a lustrous ivory in the candlelight. Beautiful. Flawless. Priceless. A gift of thanks that carried the wealth of kings. Brida, a widow of small worth had suddenly become Brida, a widow of significant means.