A Wilderness of Glass Read online

  Haniss laughed. “No one will ever accuse your brother of being a lay-about, that’s for certain.”

  The sky was the color of cold ink by the time Odon Imre let Brida off at her front door. She was his last passenger, and she waved from her doorway until the dray turned a corner and disappeared from her sight. She yawned repeatedly now, and her eyelids felt scratchy, but she didn’t dare lie down. If she did, she’d slip so far into slumber, she’d miss her brother’s arrival, and he’d go on without her. She’d never hear the end of it from him or Norinn later.

  She changed out of her clothes into her oldest frock, tucked her flute back into its customary cabinet, and hid her money purse beneath a floorboard under her bed. Afterwards, she made herself a pot of tea. She stood at her window as she drank the entire pot, watching as the storm swept in, first on a wind that bowed trees, then the lightning that flared across the sky, followed by thunder loud enough to rattle the windows. The sky finally opened, dumping a solid wall of rain onto Ancilar. Even from this distance, Brida heard the roar of the surf as it beat against the shore.

  The buckets she’d placed on the floor under the roof leak in her bedroom and the parlor filled up fast. She exchanged them for empty ones and tossed the contents of the first out her back door. Rain blew into the kitchen before she managed to close the door against the wet, and she spent the next several minutes mopping up her floor.

  The storm’s fury lasted beyond dawn, finally lessening to a drizzle by mid morning. Sleepy, damp, and grumpy, Brida groaned at the sound of wagon wheels rolling up to her door. She opened it and leaned against the jamb to pull on her muddy boots.

  “I thought you’d be ready by now,” her brother said, a frown creasing lines in his brow. “We’re hours past when I planned to pick you up.”

  Brida climbed into the driver’s seat beside him. “Don’t start. I’ve been up all night playing for his lordship’s fancy guests and all morning battling roof leaks.” She reached behind her to pet the head of his favorite dog where it sat behind them in the wagon. Laylam had raised Moot since she was pup, and while the dog practically worshipped Laylam, she often visited Brida for treats, affection and a quiet place to sleep before the fire.

  Laylam twitched the reins. “Walk on,” he instructed the horse, and the animal pulled the cart through Ancilar toward the beach, joining an ever-growing line of other carts and wagons as villagers emerged from their houses to harvest the Gray’s bounty.

  “I’ll fix the roof for you after we harvest,” Laylam said around the pipe stem held between his teeth.

  Brida eyed him, concerned. “You don’t have time for it, and I made enough last night to hire someone in Ancilar to do it.”

  His perpetual frown deepened. “You’re my sister. We help each other. I would have patched it sooner if you’d told me it had gotten that bad.”

  “You do enough already. I can handle this. You have family to care for.” She refused to acknowledge what they both knew. She feared the label of burdensome widowed relative more than a leaky roof.

  Laylam’s frown turned into a full-fledged glare. “You are family, Brida, and if you aren’t careful, you’ll choke on all that stupid pride. I’ll come by later. You can feed me supper if it makes you feel better. Norinn won’t mind.”

  Brida didn’t pursue the argument any further. While she might suffer from too much pride, Laylam could put a mule to shame with his stubbornness. They completed the journey to the beach in silence, at least until they got their first look at the storm’s aftermath. Laylam halted the wagon, rose from his seat and gave a celebratory whoop that startled his horse, set Moot to barking, and was echoed by the other villagers who rolled up on either side of him.

  For as far as the eye could see, a carpet of seaweed in variegated shades of green to black covered the sand calf-deep, and spilled over the clusters of rocky outcroppings that tumbled from the meadows of salt grass to the foaming surf. More of it swayed in the shallow surf, so thick one could stand on it.

  “Thank the gods,” Brida breathed in a reverent voice. The first heavy storm had delivered a plenitude. If fate and deities remained generous, they’d have more then one good seaweed harvest like this one.

  The shallows still churned in places, and gulls swarmed the sand, feasting on dead fish that had been thrown onto the land by an angry tide. That tide had pulled far back now, leaving scatterings of shells in its wake. Children who had accompanied their parents to the shore raced back and forth, gathering up cockles, conches, wings, and drill tips before tossing them back into the water in a game to see who threw the farthest.

  Brida climbed down from the driver seat after her brother to join the other villagers gathered in a group to divvy up sections of the beach. Each family was assigned a spot to harvest, that lot marked by a stone set at the allotment’s edge.

  Once they were assigned their allotments, the siblings met at the back of their wagon where Brida unloaded a sickle and pair of baskets with straps sewn to them. Moot abandoned them on arrival. She leapt off the wagon and raced away, barking with excitement as she plunged into the knot of children gathered by the water’s edge.

  The wind still howled off the Gray, whipping Brida’s skirts around her legs and nearly tearing the baskets out of her hands. She had to shout in order for Laylam to hear her.

  “I’m off to the tidal pools!” She pointed to her allotment. Rock formations edged parts of the beach had been carved out by the sea’s endless wash. The tidal pools nestled in their shelters were too hard for the horses to navigate with the cage-like rakes dragging behind them, so the seaweed piled there was cut and gathered by hand. Laylam nodded and waved her away as he unloaded his rake from the wagon and unhooked the horse from its traces.

  Moot left the children to join Brida, bounding ahead only to double back and run circles around her, snapping at the fluttering hem of Brida’s skirts. The dog’s ears suddenly swiveled forward, and she stopped, nose raised in the air as she sniffed something more interesting than salt, seaweed, and dead fish. A curious whine escaped her mouth before she bolted for the tidal pools where Brida planned to harvest.

  Brida followed at a leisurely pace, trekking over hillocks of kelp. She’d be salt-caked and sand-encrusted by the end of the day and reeking of seaweed, but for now she enjoyed the hike and the hints of sunlight breaking through the cloud cover.

  She was the only one on this section of beach. The rest of the harvesters had dispersed into the shallows behind her or toward the bigger pools that lay in the opposite direction where the cups of the bluffs were deeper and trapped more of the seaweed.

  Moot had mostly disappeared behind a tall shard of rock, only the last third of her tail peeking out to reveal her whereabouts. The hound’s tail suddenly drooped before she backed away, teeth bared at whatever lay hidden behind the rock’s shelter.

  Brida slowed her approach, gripping the sickle a little harder as Moot growled low in her throat. Sometimes the Gray coughed up predators that swam too close to the shore during the storms and were slung onto the beaches where they gasped their last breaths. Alarm swirled through Brida’s belly. What if it was an obluda? One of those foul abominations that usually lurked in the black deep?

  An obluda had terrorized Ancilar during the long summer before Zigana Imre had dispatched it with the help of her mare Gitta and Lord Frantisek. Even now, with that thing crushed to bone splinters under Gitta’s massive hooves, people still feared falling asleep, feared dreaming in case another such creature lured a grieving, unwary villager into the water to feast on them.

  What had the dog found?

  She peeked around the line of stone. Moot pressed against her leg, preventing Brida from getting any closer. Brida’s heart surged into her throat at the sight before her.

  Like the beach and shallows, the tidal pools were choked with seaweed. The stuff draped over the rocks and spilled across the sand, dotted with tiny sand crabs that skittered across the lacy leaves before burrowing under them
to reach the water in the pools. Entangled within a net of the weed, a man and a child sprawled. Bright blood streaked the man’s bare torso and the arm stretched across the child in a protective clasp. The pair looked asleep, their features slack, eyes closed. From her vantage point, Brida couldn’t tell if they breathed.

  Seeing two gravely injured people sprawled in the sand should have stunned her speechless for only a moment before she’d start screaming for help. But in this moment she remained silent, her shock making her doubt her own eyes.

  Where there should have been hips, and legs, and feet, the two possessed tails, sleek and muscular that ended in flukes similar to those of dolphins. Their skin shimmered in the sun like the inside of an abalone shell bleached by the sun—striations of blue, indigo, silvery gray, and cascading green. Their hair was nearly indistinguishable from the leafy varieties of seaweed spilled around them, neither blond, brunet, or ginger, but multiple shades of pearlescent green and purple.

  A dozen memories from childhood skated across Brida’s mind, stories told by her mother and others to enthralled children, of the mysteries of the sea, of things that swam there, beautiful and dark, dangerous and benevolent. Some believed and others scoffed at such fanciful tales as nothing more than the delusions of bored sailors trapped too long on deep-water ships.

  Brida wasn’t a sailor, and her feet were planted firmly on the shore. She’d outgrown fairytales a long time ago, and while she was sleep-deprived, she wasn’t hallucinating. Merfolk were real, and two lay before her, dead or dying.

  Chapter Two

  Brida crept forward, balanced on the balls of her feet and ready to sprint away. Despite the chilly air blowing off the Gray, her hand on the sickle handle was slippery with sweat. She used her knees to nudge Moot out of the way so she could get a closer look at the two stranded merfolk.

  The child made a faint noise, a cross between a kittenish mew and a whistle. The small fluke flapped against the sand, dislodging swags of seaweed. The merman’s hand flexed in response to the sound, fingers splaying wide to reveal webbing between the digits, the translucent skin patterned in a lacework of tiny blue veins.

  Brida leapt back, nearly trampling Moot who’d stuck to her legs like a barnacle. The hound let loose with another round of barking, the hair on her back stiffening into a ridge that ran the length of her spine.

  “Moot! Hush!”

  The dog only did what instinct and training required of her, but Brida didn’t want half the village running over here to see what all the commotion was about. Moot quieted, though her hackles remained high and her teeth bared as she guarded Brida.

  The merman’s eyelids lifted, and Brida gasped. His eyes were pale and strange, not human, yet so full of misery and pain that an involuntary moan of sympathy erupted from Brida’s throat. The bloodshot whites of his eyes contrasted against irises almost silvery in color. Two pupils, one atop the other and no bigger than the heads of pins, dotted their centers.

  He blinked, a rapid flutter of a double set of eyelids, one a delicate membrane nestled under a thicker-skinned lid. The movement mimicked the sudden thrash of his tail. A piercing whistle cut the air, the sound so sharp that Brida dropped the sickle to cover her ears with her hands. Next to her, Moot yelped and danced backward, shaking her head hard enough that her ears flapped like flags in a hard breeze.

  Brida held out one hand, palm forward, and pressed the index finger of her other hand against her lips. “Shhh. Shhh,” she told the merman. “I mean no harm.”

  Blood cascaded down his tail to drip off the edges of his fluke. A jagged wound, where the hip might be on a human man, pursed open with his movements. Crescent in shape, it matched another one farther down his tail. Something had bitten him. Something big.

  Numerous smaller wounds marred his body, from human torso down to dolphin tail, a mural of slashes and shallow bite marks. Brida glanced at the child, noting the absence of any bites or blood. Had the merman battled a hungry predator to save the merchild and ended up stranded on the shore, too weak to propel himself and his charge back to the water?

  Both were alive, but not for long by the look of them. Their breathing was shallow, barely discernible, and the merchild’s newing sounded thin. Blood ran in continuous rivulets along the merman’s body, tempting tiny crabs to investigate and taste the salt and iron in the red flow. The lovely abalone shell shimmer of the pair’s flesh was dulling before her eyes, and flecks of skin furled off their tails and arms under the weak sun, peeling away as if they’d suffered sunburn.

  She knew nothing of merfolk, but creatures born of the water belonged in the water. Beaching was a death sentence. She’d seen it firsthand as a child in the tragedy of a dying whale crushed by its own weight as it lay on the sand.

  The urge to call to for help warred with the caution to remain silent. Brida’s cries would bring the entire village running to her aid. Of that, she had no doubt. But she feared that call would elicit a massacre, driven by a mindless fear engendered into people still traumatized by the terror the obluda had subjected them too not so long ago.

  She jumped again when a voice boomed over the beach. “Ziga! Odon!”

  Moot renewed her frantic barking, capturing the hem of Brida’s skirts in her teeth and tugging to pull her away from the tidal pools.

  “Stop it, Moot!” She tugged her skirts up, lifting the dog with them as those teeth remained firmly clamped on the fabric.

  Hobbled by the dog’s weight, she shuffled from behind the concealing rock face to see the new arrivals on the shore. Odon Imre and his daughter Zigana had joined the harvesters, leading their two mares by tether lines into the shallows.

  The villager who greeted them pointed at the water, nodding and gesturing to the water seers as they engaged in conversation. Brida was too far away to hear, but she could guess at what was said. Odon and Zigana possessed the gift of water sight, an ability that allowed them to sense whether or not it was safe to trawl the waters for shrimp, fish from the boats or rake the seaweed from the shallows. The last had never required their unique assistance before. The horses and villagers harvested the kelp, wildweed, featherweed, sea whip, and pepper fern from the rocks or in the surf where the water was too shallow for predator fish to lurk. These days, however, the Imres’ talent was in high demand. No one dipped a toe in the waves without their signal that all was well. Brida could only imagine the reactions if she showed them the two merfolk trapped in the tidal pools behind her.

  Laylam waved to her not far away, his gelding standing patiently beside him, cage rake attached to the traces behind him, as the pair waited for the signal it was safe to harvest. “All right there, Brida?” he shouted.

  The wind caught his question, whirling it toward her. She waved back. “Fine.” She pointed to Moot who finally let go of her skirts. “Moot’s battling crabs, and they’re winning!” she shouted back to him.

  He nodded and returned his attention to the Imres who stood together and gave a tandem nod. It was safe to enter the water. Like racers perched on a starting line, the harvesters guided their horses into the surf with a snap of the lead lines. Around them, women and children with baskets hoisted on their backs or strapped to their hips waded into the shallows, bending to pick the Gray’s gifts washed in by the storm.

  Brida strode back to the beached merfolk. They lay as she left them, the merman’s webbed hand still resting on the child’s small body. The pool under the adult’s tail had turned a dark pink, evicting resident starfish from its tainted waters.

  The merman watched her with that strange double-lidded gaze, his face a study in suffering. Discounting the most obvious physical differences, he looked mostly human. His nose was like any other she’d seen, neither too long or too broad, but his nostrils were smaller. They flared in rapid bursts as he struggled to breathe. In contrast to his nostrils, his eyes were large, sunk a little deeper in their sockets than a human’s. He didn’t have eyelashes, and his eyebrows were arches of rippled flesh instead
of short hairs along his brow ridge. No hint of beard shadowed the sharp line of his jaw or his chin, and his partially open mouth hid his teeth from her view.

  Beside him, the merchild breathed just as hard, though seemed in less pain than the adult. From the waist up, it looked much like a human child of two or three, with tiny webbed hands, rounded belly, and features still plump with baby fat. Brida couldn’t tell the child’s gender by the appearance of its face or torso, but there were differences between the pair on the exposed undersides of their tails not far from the flukes. The merman possessed two slits in the flesh, one long, the other much shorter and just below it. In the child, there was only the one long slit. If her assumption was right, the merchild was a girl.

  Brida stared at the surf and then the distressed pair so far from it. The merman was much too big for her to move. She could see that in a glance, but if she was quick enough, she might be able to sneak the merchild into the water without the harvesters noticing.

  Then what? Leave her in the water to drown? That inner voice, with its merciless reason, made her curse under her breath. She had no idea, no true plan for how she might possibly save these two on her own, and asking for help from the villagers wasn’t an option.

  Moot’s ears pricked forward when Brida turned to her and shook her finger. “No barking, Moot. Understand? Hush.” The dog cocked her head to the side as if considering, her tail wagging. Satisfied, Brida shrugged off her baskets.

  She pushed one to the side and used the other as a pail to scoop water from the pools. Liquid streamed from the basket’s holes, but enough stayed in for Brida to gently pour it over the merman. He gasped, a convulsive shiver rippling along his tail and up his torso. The muscles in his arms, chest, and midriff flexed, and blood streamed off his skin in pink ribbons. Still, he didn’t let go of the merchild.