“Why do humans cover like this?” Ahtin picked at the folds of her skirt, rooting for the shape of her thigh hidden beneath the heavy wool.
Like the night before, they spent these hours together in the sanctuary of the cave lit by Ahtin’s magic. And like the night before, they kissed and explored, learning each other’s taste, the shape of leg and tail, shoulders and arms, cheekbones and necks, chest and breast.
Brida stroked a hand down his side, contouring her palm to the ridges of muscles that laddered down his torso to his narrow waist and the smooth flesh that denoted the beginnings of his tail. The heat of his body kept her warm in the chilly cave. “For protection and warmth. Our bodies don’t get as hot as yours unless we’re sick. Clothing keeps us warm and protects our skin from other things too.” She nudged his chin with her nose. He obliged her by bending to eagerly press his mouth to hers, cool lips against hers, warm tongue sweeping the interior of her mouth.
She had taught him that the previous night, and he’d been an enthusiastic student of what he called her “land magic.” Brida might have taught him even more were it not for the far-off hint of a whistle. Ahtin’s fluke slapped the water, and his features had pinched with annoyance.
“I must go,” he told her, leaning his forehead against hers with a sigh. “Come back, Brida?”
Caution dictated she should have said no, but she’d thrown that notion to the wind the moment she’d first seen him injured on the beach. “Tomorrow,” she’d agreed.
He’d led her out of the cave, staying by her side as she waded back to the level, drier shoreline. No threatening dorsal fin raced toward her, nor had any appeared tonight, for which she was thankful.
None of this would last. She’d never been under the illusion that it could. Ahtin was a dweller of the sea and she a dweller of the land. They’d found literal common ground here, but her life was in Ancilar among her people and his somewhere in the Gray’s liquid wilderness, with other merfolk and creatures savage and sublime. That he was even here now was a wondrous thing in itself.
She refused to think beyond this ephemeral moment, this hidden place where she and a fabled merman traded loving caresses. To him, she was simply beautiful Brida. Not Brida, alone and widowed, viewed by some as a woman to be pitied while they silently thanked the gods they weren’t in her shoes. The memories she made with him would last her lifetime, gifts of value beyond measure, more precious even than the priceless pearl he’d given her.
He lifted her braid to wrap its length around his arm, letting it uncoil before catching it in his hand. He painted his cheek and the bridge of his nose with the end. “Swim in the water with me.”
She shuddered at the idea. “The pool is freezing. At least for me.” It was bad enough that her feet were submerged. If she didn’t have them pressed to the sides of Ahtin’s tail, they’d be numb from the cold. Wading all the way in was out of the question, especially since she’d have to strip to her shift so as to have dry things to wear during the trek home. “Just how cold can it get before you start to feel it?”
He shrugged. “We can swim in the waters when ice floats there, and we dive deep where it’s dark and no sunlight can reach.” A troubled expression settled on his features, and the hand on her thigh tightened for a moment. “But we don’t stay in one place. Soon, all the mer will swim for warmer seas, where the women with child will birth their young.”
The bottom dropped out of Brida’s stomach. “How soon?”
“When the aps say so. They decide when the families make the journey.”
They were migratory, just like the dolphins and the whales. She guessed it might be so. The idea lodged in the back of her mind like a splinter, making her wonder each time she traveled to meet him if he wouldn’t be there.
Ahtin nuzzled her, rubbing his nose in the soft hairs that lay against her temple. “Swim with me,” he whispered. “My magic will hold back the cold.”
A tingling sensation spread across her feet, washing feeling back into her toes. Brida pulled away from him to stare at the pool. Ahtin’s palm rested atop the surface. Runnels of fiery light coursed along the tendons and veins in the back of his hand, spreading up his arm. The water grew warmer by the second until it turned tepid.
Brida laughed, delighted, and kicked her legs so that water splashed behind Ahtin. “Amazing! So much good magic! Can all the mer do this?”
He grinned at her compliment, pale eyes glittering in the cave’s half light. “When we must. It helps the laboring merwomen and the infants when they’re born.” He tugged on her skirts. “Now will you swim?”
With the pool now more temperate than a bath, she had no reason to refuse. She’d learned to swim as a child. Too many who lived by the sea lacked the skill and had paid the ultimate price.
Brida stood and stepped farther back from the pool’s edge to shed her clothes. Ahtin watched her, silent, curious. Once she was down to her shift, she hesitated. The garment was thin and wouldn’t drag her down in the water the way her heavier garb might, but it was still long and restricted the movement of her legs. She played with the neckline, considering. None of the merwomen she’d seen in the group who had come for him and his niece wore coverings across their breasts. The trappings of such modesty were a land dweller’s concept, not that of the merfolk, who would find such covering not only unnecessary but also foolish. Raised within such a culture, Ahtin likely wouldn’t make much note of her breasts if she bared them. Her legs though…that was another thing altogether.
Grabbing her courage with both hands and shrugging away her embarrassment, she stripped off the shift, letting it fall atop the mound of clothes at her feet. The cave’s chilly air raised goosebumps on her skin from her ankles to her scalp, and she scampered toward the pool, hugging herself in a failed bid to retain her body heat.
Ahtin caught her, hands on her waist, and lowered her into the pool. He smiled at her happy sigh, letting her go when she pushed gently against his chest to paddle the pool’s circumference. He joined her, sleek, and quick, and quiet.
As she predicted, his gaze flickered briefly over her torso before focusing on the wavering outline of her legs as she tread water. He reached down, grasping one of her knees to lift it for closer inspection. Brida grasped for the pool’s stony shore behind her to keep the merman from her tipping her backwards. He flashed her an apologetic look before returning his attention to her leg, exposed to the air from lower thigh to foot.
“Two tails,” he said, gesturing to her other leg still underwater.
Brida snorted. “Legs. They’re called legs.”
He repeated the word, then nodded to show either his approval or his understanding.
She pointed to her toes, wiggling them for emphasis. “Toes.” Her foot jerked in his grasp while he counted the five digits with ticklish touches. At his inquiring taps on her skin, she revealed the name for each part of her leg. “Foot. Arch. Ankle. Shin. Calf. Knee. Thigh.” Every touch sent sparks shooting through her body. Was it possible to catch fire while immersed in water?
The tell-tale series of low-pitched clicks started low in his throat, a vocalization of his growing arousal. Her lessons in kissing had taught her as much as they taught Ahtin. In those interim moments when they’d come up for air, she’d caught a good look at his erection.
Displayed with neither shame nor arrogance, his cock had emerged from where it lay hidden behind the longer vertical slit in his tail. Pink in color and broader at its base than its tip, it had nudged the inside of her thigh covered by the fall of her skirt. They might be human woman and merman, of different origin with different bodies, but mating instinct possessed an accurate aim.
At the moment, his erection rubbed along her buttocks as he floated her on her back, and his breathing was as rapid as hers. He lifted her a little higher with one hand until the chilly air washed over her nicely warmed skin and pebbled her nipples. With the other, he stroked the line of her body from collar bones to the triangle of dark hair between her thighs.
Brida’s breathy moan made the ridges marking his eyebrows arch and his lips curve into a pleased smile. He repeated the caress, pausing to trace the curve of her breasts and tease her nipples with the barest hint of a touch.
“You are made like the merwomen here. You feed your young the same way?” Brida nodded, hardly able to retain a thought for more than a moment. He continued his journey down her body, stopping once more at the juncture of her thighs. “Here you are different.” She gasped as his fingers slipped lower, finding the entrance to her body. The heartbeat of her own arousal pulsed there, and her legs parted wider to give him better access. “Not so different, beautiful Brida,” he said in a low voice before slowly sliding a finger inside her.
Brida’s gasp echoed throughout the cave. She clutched his supporting arm with one hand and gripped his opposite wrist with the other, torn between wanting him to stop and urging him to keep going, use more than a finger on her. Use that lovely cock rubbing so teasingly against her backside, promising a pleasure she’d all but forgotten in the years since Talmai had died.
He played her body the same way she played her flute, with a combination of delicacy, prowess, and reverence, learning each curve and reaction as if she were the notes to a song. They floated in the water, Brida no longer on her back but pressed breast to chest with Ahtin, her legs wrapped tight around his middle, her hands clasped at his nape under the slippery cascade of his hair.
She explored his body in much the same way he had hers, hands marking a path over his shoulders, tracing the color divide that started just under his ears, transitioning from dove gray on his back to the pearlescent shade of ivory on his front, with its muted pastels shimmering just below his skin. “You’re made like human man here,” she said, running her hands down his arms and over his chest. “Different in other places.”
She traced the helix of his ear, not smooth and rounded like hers, but rimmed with small bony points of various heights. His ear lobe was much smaller than hers, while the auricle was much bigger, almost completely covering the entrance to his ear canal. The low-profile dorsal fin along his back, and of course his tail, were the most obvious distinctions from a human, but Brida found that it was the shape of his ears that most sharply reminded her of their dissimilarities.
The thought plagued her for the time it took her to blink before she shoved it aside. Those physical disparities didn’t matter. He made her remember happiness and spontaneity, reminded her that wonder existed in the apparent and the hidden. He made her spirit, so long asleep, awaken.
Ahtin thrust against her with a flex of his tail. “Different here as well?”
She dipped one hand below the water, reaching between their bodies to grip his cock and give him a quick stroke. His nostrils flared, and his fingers dug into her buttocks. “Only a little, and in a good way.” She kissed him then, not just with her mouth, but her entire being, rejoicing when he enthusiastically returned her ardor, those humming clicks erupting from his throat to tickle her tongue and lips with their resonance.
Waves lapped around them as Ahtin spread her thighs, opening her wider so that his cock slid long and deep inside her in one smooth stroke. Brida groaned at the penetration, the fullness of him. She squeezed his waist with her thighs, swallowing his rushed exhalation mixed with a groan of her own.
The back of his tail tensed and contracted against her heels with each thrust, his breathing as stuttered as hers when they ended one hard kiss, only to begin another. Their bodies’ positions and the rubbing of his tail against her pelvis in just the right way spiked sensations through her so hard that she climaxed before he did, nearly arching out of his arms with the intensity of her orgasm.
Ahtin soon followed her, his thrusts growing quicker, more forceful, punctuated by guttural sounds he purred into her ear even as he pumped his seed into her welcoming body. Afterwards, he stretched onto his back, with Brida atop him as they floated in the pool. He remained inside her, still semi-erect. Brida folded her hands across his chest to rest her chin on her knuckles and gaze at his handsome features, a little slack now with satiated pleasure. She suspected she looked much the same.
What a strange and marvelous thing she had just experienced. A small part of her feared she dreamed all of this: a merman, his magic, the discovery of the merfolk, Ahtin’s strong body beneath her, inside her. Brida feared waking up to discover none of it was real—that life, as she had always known it before the storms had dumped seaweed and a wounded merman on the shore, continued on as it always had. Days of mundane existence and hard work ending in nights of solitary quiet in which she would wonder if she might go mad one day from sheer boredom.
“What are you thinking, beautiful Brida?” Ahtin’s webbed hands skated down her back, one finger following the indentation of her spine.
She smiled. Dark thoughts had no place here or in this moment, and weren’t meant to be shared. She brushed them away. “I like being here. With you. I wish we could stay this way for a long time.” Forever, she thought but didn’t say it aloud.
He frowned a little. “Why can’t we?”
Struck by his question and his reaction, she shrugged. “Because dawn isn’t far off. I need to be home before I’m missed, and no doubt your people wonder where you go to each night.” In all honesty, Brida was surprised she hadn’t seen even a hint of the merfolk so far besides Ahtin. Maybe they weren’t as nosy and far less enamored with gossip than humans were.
His frown deepened, darkened. He abruptly rolled them, slipping out of Brida so suddenly, she gasped. She still floated in his arms, though now she faced him once more, treading water. “Do you have another mate?”
Her eyes rounded. Was that jealousy she heard? The idea stunned her. Was she wrong in her earlier translations when he described the habits of the mer? They found mates, but the unions were temporary, the only permanent, long-lasting relationship that of the merfolk to their familial groups led by their aps.
Brida stroked his arm in a soothing gesture. “I did, once. He died.”
Compassion softened the pinched lines of his face. He grasped her hand and brought it to his mouth, kissing her fingers. His eyes darkened with a remembered sorrow. “I had a mate too, and a child. They died as well.”
She pressed her palm to his cheek. It seemed Death was no more merciful to the merfolk than it was to humanity. “Losing one is terrible enough. Losing both, an unbearable grief.”
He gathered her close, and they held each other until his magic faded, and the pool grew colder with every passing moment. When even Ahtin’s body heat couldn’t keep the shivers at bay, he swam with her to the rocky edge and helped her out of the water. She dressed quickly, shaking hands struggling with laces and clasps until she was finally wrapped in her shawl and her damp hair bundled in a kerchief she’d tied around her head to keep her ears warm. She wouldn’t be totally dry until she got home, changed, and buried under her blankets, but it would do for now.
Once more standing on the other side of the bluff, with retreating tide stroking her feet, and the red edge of dawn just cresting the horizon, Brida blew a kiss to Ahtin. He returned the gesture.
“Come tomorrow, Brida.” His farewell carried a tone she hadn’t heard before, an unspoken promise, an assurance of deepening emotion. It made her soul dance and her heart clench.
“I will,” she said. For as long as he and his kinsmen lingered in these waters, she’d return.
She watched him turn and dive into the waves, a flicker of pearl and smoke that quickly disappeared into the Gray.
The beach was littered with shells and empty of people as Brida made her way home. She’d gone a little past the tidal pools where Ahtin had stranded himself when a familiar, four-note tune drifted toward her from the sea. She spun around, lifting her skirts to jog in the direction of the sound, drawn by a powerful need to answer its call.
A merwoman swam toward her, and Brida recognized her as the obvious leader of the group who’d come to rescue Ahtin. If her guess was right, this was the ap of his family.
The two women, human and mer, met in the shallows. Brida regretted not bringing her flute with her. It made it much easier to communicate with the mer.
She needn’t have worried. Her mouth fell open, and she gaped at the merwoman when the other told her in perfect, articulate words that any might hear in an Ancilar meeting hall “You are Brida. Ahtin told me about you.”
If Brida didn’t already possess proof of the fantastical, she’d swear she dreamed this scenario. “Are you his ap?” She did her best to repeat the front-forward sound Ahtin had made when he described the mer matriarchs.
The merwoman nodded. “And the grandmother of his grandmother. I’m called Edonin in human tongue.”
Brida marveled at Edonin’s mastery of human speech, wondering who had taught her. Another human? Or another mer taught by a human? Or had she listened to the conversation of sailors and fishermen who sailed the Gray? “I wish I knew the language of the mer as well as you know ours.”
Edonin’s grave expression didn’t change with Brida’s compliment. Her features, lovely in the way of the mer, grew even more stern the longer she stared at Brida. “You put Ahtin in danger every time you meet him in the cave,” she finally said, the statement more of an accusation.
Brida stiffened. She didn’t need another to tell her what she already knew. That worry had fractured her sleep and plagued her thoughts during the days when she worked and wondered about him. However, neither she nor Ahtin were children, nor did they need a minder. Despite her irritation, she kept her voice neutral. “I don’t mean to. And is it not dangerous in your world? Even more so? He told me what happened to his mate and child. The sea is no different from the land in that way.”
The ap slapped her fluke against the water, revealing her own annoyance. “You saved him. I and mine are in your debt. You will always be safe with us in the sea, but Ahtin isn’t yours to keep.”
“He isn’t my prisoner. His will is his own,” Brida shot back.
“His will is to be with you. He can’t.” Another fluke slap. “He is merfolk. You are land dweller.”
Brida had expected this from the moment the conversation started but was still disappointed by its appearance. “And no lesser for it.”
Edonin’s severe expression suddenly softened with a pity that made Brida’s stomach twist a little. “You haven’t asked what I told you those years ago when I saw you grieving on the shore.”
Brida wasn’t sure she wanted to know now. “I’ve always wondered,” she said, careful not to reveal too much of her curiosity or her dread.
Judging by the enigmatic look in her double pupil eyes, the merwoman wasn’t fooled. “I told you ‘Edonin shares your grief, land woman.’ She nodded when Brida’s eyebrows arched in question. “I once loved a land dweller. When he was killed, a part of me died with him. He died because we refused to part, even when we knew no good would come of it.”
The twisting in Brida’s gut only worsened at the revelation. Edonin’s warning didn’t come from a place of familial intrusion or protection but from old heartbreak that, if the ap’s tone was anything to judge by, still had not healed.
At Brida’s silence, Edonin continued. “Our mistakes stay with us all our lives. Don’t make the one I did. If not for Ahtin, then for yourself.” She raised a hand. “Farewell, Brida.”
The merwoman was nearly out of sight when Brida remembered something she had meant to tell Ahtin but forgot. Edonin’s translation of her four-note tune to Brida alarmed her even more now that she knew what they meant. She called out to Edonin, relieved when the merwoman heard and swam back to her.
Edonin had warned that Ahtin courted danger by courting Brida, but Brida wondered if maybe the ap herself was at more risk and unaware of it. “I don’t know if this will mean anything to you, but there’s a land dweller in Ancilar who I think searches for the mer. Searches for you specifically. His name is Ospodine.” At Edonin’s puzzled look, Brida clarified. “Ospodine means ‘horse of the sea.’”
A sound, desolate and stricken, erupted from Edonin’s mouth. Her skin turned the shade of old hearth ash. Desolation, mixed with terror, darkened her eyes. She shuddered, the motion traveling from the top of her shoulders, through her tail, and into her fluke.
Shocked by the extraordinary reaction, Brida waded toward her. Edonin raised a hand to stop her. “Again, I’m in your debt.” Her voice no longer carried the lyrical quality Brida had learned to associate with the merfolk. “I beg you, please, if you care anything for Ahtin—anything—stay away from him. If you care for your own life, stay away from the one you call Ospodine. I know him well, and wish with all my soul I never did.”
At that, the ap sped away, the wake of her quick departure a cut in the waves that marked the direction of her path to the deep from which she’d come.
Brida, thoroughly frightened now, for Ahtin, for Edonin, and for herself, sprinted home, throwing the bolt to her front door as soon as she closed it behind her. Her body, still throbbing from Ahtin’s lovemaking, now shivered as much from fear as from chills. Her instincts regarding Ospodine had been right. She had no idea what terrible thing existed between him and a merfolk matriarch, but Brida had no doubt that Edonin’s reaction had not been overly dramatic or unjustified. Ospodine was dangerous. She only wished she knew exactly why.
She checked all her locks twice before changing into warm night clothes and crawling into bed. Brida didn’t know why she bothered. She’d have to be up in a couple of hours, and there was no chance her spinning thoughts would allow her to drift off. Moments after she nuzzled into her pillow she was asleep.
A sharp pounding awakened her to a bedroom bathed in punishing sunlight. Her throat was on fire, and every swallow was like downing a handful of ground glass. The incessant pounding came from inside her skull, but also from her front door.
She wove her way through the parlor on unsteady feet. “Who is it?” she croaked, surprising herself by the awful sound. Gone were the days when she opened her door without knowing her visitor first. Ospodine’s trespassing had seen to that.
“Are you all right, Brida? Open the door.” Norinn’s exasperated command seeped through the wood. Brida yanked back the bolt and shoved the door open, squinting against the unseasonal brightness. The slant of the sun on the cobblestones told her it was well past morning and into early afternoon.
Her sister-in-law’s irritation changed to concern, and she gently nudged Brida farther into the house, closing the door behind her. “My gods, you look ghastly. I think I’ve seen healthier looking wraiths. Are you sick?”
Brida shuffled back to her bedroom and collapsed on the mattress. “I must be. I feel like death.” Inwardly, she wailed her frustration. Now was not the time to be ill!
“You look like it,” Norinn blithely informed her. She tucked Brida’s feet back under the covers, then adjusted them until Brida huddled under their weight, certain she’d never get warm.
Norinn pressed a hand to her forehead. “A fever as well.” She clucked, reminding Brida of a disgruntled chicken. “Stay in bed. I’ll make willow bark tea before I go.” She clucked again at Brida’s disgusted rumble. “Bad taste or not, it will help,” she admonished. “I’ll send Yenec over later with soup. She can mind the house for you while you rest.”
Brida didn’t argue. If she ever decided to take over the world, the first thing she’d do was enlist Norinn as the general to lead her armies. She drifted off to sleep, waking only long enough to down a cup of bitter willow bark tea at Norinn’s urgings.
Night had fallen when she roused again, feeling fractionally better but still like Zigana Imre’s brave mare had decided to stomp on someone else after the obluda and had chosen Brida as her next victim.
“Come tomorrow, Brida.” Ahtin’s voice wove through her foggy mind.
“I’m sorry,” she croaked. “So sorry.”
Would he wonder why she didn’t appear? Would he wait or search? She prayed not, especially after Edonin’s warning.
Her niece Yenec entered the bedroom, balancing a tray with a bowl whose contents sent up ghostly tendrils of steam. The girl, oldest of Laylam’s and Norinn’s nine children, smiled as she set the tray down on the table close to the bed. “You’re awake, aunt. That’s good. How do you feel?”
“Terrible,” Brida whispered, regretting it instantly as more of the glass splinters embedded themselves in her throat. “How long was I asleep?”
Yenec helped her sit up, fluffing the pillows behind her. “A few hours. You were restless. Dreaming and talking in your sleep. Who’s Ahtin?”
Brida froze, then offered her niece a casual shrug. “I have no idea. For all I know I was dreaming about someone’s sheepdog named Ahtin.”
She spent the next half hour eating the soup Yenec prepared and drinking more of the vile tea before plummeting into sleep that left her more tired than rejuvenated each time she awoke. Four days passed before she felt well enough to leave her bed and sit at her table, and two more days beyond that before Norinn declared her well enough to take a much-needed bath. In that time, Brida fretted and worried over Ahtin. And said nothing to anyone.
By the time the next market day arrived in Ancilar, she was well enough to leave the house and vowed she’d return to the cave. She had no hope that Ahtin would be there. The weather was fast leaving autumn behind for winter with its bitter, gusting winds, snowfall, and sea ice. Edonin would have urged her extended family to migrate south to warmer seas, and Ahtin would have followed. At least she hoped that was the case. A part of her sorrowed that she hadn’t had a chance to tell him goodbye, while another part feared he might think she’d abandoned him. But the greatest part prayed he had left with the others, finding sanctuary in safer waters, away from a man whose very name had made the ap blanch in horror.
Norinn had fetched her early in the morning, bundling Brida so thoroughly in layers of wool, she sweltered in the house and felt none of the cold, despite her breath steaming in front of her as the two women strolled to the market. Brida’s larder was nearly bare, and she intended on using the money she’d earned from her spinning to restock. The pearl Ahtin had given her rested safely in a box buried in her garden at the base of a citrus tree. Reason dictated she sell it in the spring when she could travel to one of the bigger towns and find a jewel merchant who wouldn’t cheat her too badly in the sale. Her emotions refused to consider the idea.
Norinn had wandered off to browbeat her favorite costermonger into selling her produce for half the price that he was hawking it, leaving Brida to load her basket with those things she needed to fill her bare cupboards.
A voice she hoped she might never hear again addressed her. “Mistress Gazi.”
Brida gripped her basket, took a bracing breath and turned slowly to face Ospodine. She stared at him without returning the greeting, uncaring that it was rude. This man had breached the sanctity of her privacy, nearly attacked her in Lord Frantisek’s castle, and threatened her on the beach. She didn’t owe him a thread of civility. “Leave me be, syr. I’ve nothing to say to you.”
She turned her back to him and strolled to the next stall, hoping he’d go away. She hoped in vain.
He kept his distance but didn’t leave. “I only wish to inquire about your health. I’d heard you’d taken ill.”
Her skin crawled at the thought of him asking about her, or worse, lurking about to see when she might emerge. He believed she knew more about Edonin than she was saying, and now that suspicion bore out. She did know.
“I’m fine,” she snapped. “You need not concern yourself.” She moved to the next stall where the merchant sold brooms and washing bats. Brida eyed one of the stouter bats, wondering if she’d have to resort to clubbing Ospodine in order to for him to leave her alone.
“The sea air can be hard on the lungs in autumn and winter, especially at night.” His oily voice oozed an unpleasant slyness. “Better to stay inside by the fire, don’t you think? But you’re a strong woman, befitting of your name. I’ve no doubt you’ll be right as rain and playing your flute in no time. Good day.”
Brida kept her back to him until she heard his footsteps walking away. Only then did she turn to watch him, made even more uneasy by his emphasis on her name. He hadn’t gone far when he began to whistle, a discordant combination of notes that sound like nothing more than tuneless ramblings, but which swamped Brida with terror.
“Come tomorrow, Brida,” he whistled as he sauntered off. “Beautiful, beautiful Brida. Come tomorrow.”