A Wilderness of Glass Read online

  “My gods,” Brida breathed.

  Moonlight unveiled the source of the lights. Not fireflies, but eyes, bright with the animal eyeshine that shone at night in many creatures, wild and tame alike. A cluster of the glowing eyes gathered in the water directly across from the tidal pools where the merfolk were beached, and Brida caught glimpses of flukes slapping the water as their calls grew in number and volume. Two of the whistles were repeated over and over. Names. They were the two names the merman had whistled to her on a weak breath. His kinsmen were calling to him and the wee girl trapped with him.

  She resumed her sprint toward the tidal pools, splashing water as she ran. The whistles abruptly stopped, and the waves went dark. The merfolk had seen her. Brida prayed they didn’t swim away. She would need their help.

  The merman and child were black silhouettes under the shadows cast by the rocks that sheltered them. Seaweed floated over their bodies, lifted by the encroaching tide. It wasn’t enough to make them buoyant, but Brida hoped the continued rise might aid her in moving them closer to the deeper surf. If they even still lived.

  She tossed her shawl on one of the nearby rocks and crouched next to the merchild. “Please be alive, little one,” she prayed to any gods who might be listening. The bright moonlight didn’t reach here, and the darkness obscured details, but Brida noted the child’s tail had peeled even more, her small face hollowed out under the cheekbones as if she had withered in the autumn air. Her closed eyes were sunken, her lips cracked and bleeding. The child didn’t move when Brida laid a hand on her shoulder, nor did the merman beside her.

  Brida’s eyes teared as she touched cold, dry skin. She drew a shaky breath before tightening her lips to whistle the child’s name. The mergirl didn’t respond, even when Brida’s tears dripped on her throat and chest.

  Despairing, Brida scooped the child into her arms. Similar in size and maturity to a human toddler, the merchild was easily twice as heavy in Brida’s hold. She remained limp as Brida hugged her, pressing her face against her cheek, whistling softly.

  The faintest twitch made her freeze. She pulled back abruptly to stare at the mergirl’s shadowed features. Her gaze traveled the length of the small body, and she swallowed back a triumphant cry when the little fluke jerked upward in an anemic flap.

  She surged to her feet, staggering for a moment under the child’s weight, to face the Gray. Lantern flickers of eyeshine shimmered once more among the waves. The silenced calls started again, this time shrill or mournful. Sharp clicks and chirps accompanied them, reminding Brida of the merman’s vocalizations when she made the mistake of touching the merchild the first time.

  Fairy tales, told by generations of mothers, grandmothers, and old salts land-bound but still sea-ensorceled, teased her memories. Leviathans that lived in the black deep and swallowed ships whole. Ancient obludas that lured their victims with grief and ate them with teeth like daggers. And merfolk who frolicked in the waters and rode the bow waves of ships, waiting for some unfortunate sailor to fall in the water and drown in a mermaid’s seductive embrace.

  Brida had never sailed on a deep water ship or seen a leviathan, but she knew the obludas were real, and held in her arms proof that merfolk were more than myth. And all were dangerous to a land dweller like her. She had to get the merchild into the water, back to the family who watched her from the surf, but she didn’t want to die in a mermaid’s lethal arms.

  She waded calf-deep into the surf before stopping, her unconscious burden heavy against her. Her flute nestled in a satchel slung from her shoulder, so close but completely inaccessible unless Brida put the merchild down. She sank to her knees in the water, submerging the little girl from fluke to belly but careful to keep her shoulders and face clear of the rolling surf. With one hand she fished the flute out of the bag, pulling away the cloth cover with her teeth. She spat the cloth out. It floated away, rolling back with the tide toward the cluster of glittering eyes and flashes of silvery flesh.

  Twisted in a position that kept the merchild afloat in her arms, and the flute balanced in both hands, Brida raised the instrument to her mouth and blew into the end stem in a series of bursts. The sounds the flute made were sharper than those she made with just her mouth, but the tone was the same—one for the merman’s name, one for the child. He’d given her nothing else. Just their names, and she repeated them in a second burst of whistles played on the flute.

  Silence greeted her playing, though she didn’t imagine that the eyes drew closer. Fear coiled snakelike up her body. She was tempted to draw back, but the merchild’s increasing movements against her kept Brida in place. She’d brought the flute in the fragile hope she might better communicate with the merman. He was either dead or too far gone into delirium to whistle to her now, but those in the waves might do so if they were as willing to set aside their wariness of her as she was of them.

  She repeated the names twice more before changing tactics. Five years earlier, she had stood on this very beach and wailed her grief over the loss of her husband to a deaf sky. The moon didn’t answer, nor did the stars, but something in the Gray did—the four-note whistle she still played on her flute. A reply from the black waves, so full of sorrow and sympathy that Brida had fallen to her knees and sobbed until she retched.

  A mysterious reply from an unseen source then. Possibly a mystery no longer. Brida braced the merchild against her knees as she swayed with the surf’s infinite purling. She licked her lips before pressing them to the flute’s mouthpiece again, fingertips perched on the playing holes, and played the four-note tune.

  Had she lobbed a live, starving shark into the water, the reaction to the tune couldn’t have been more vehement, much like the wounded merman’s when she whistled it earlier. A frenzy of splashing heralded a cacophony of whistles and clicks that shrieked above the Gray’s dull roar. Multiple wakes of frothing water raced toward the shore. Brida almost dropped flute and merchild as she struggled to her feet, nearly falling face first into the water amidst a tangle of soggy skirts.

  A deeper, sharper whistle rose above the rest, and as one body, the merfolk splashed to a halt, their eyes shimmering green coins in the darkness. Flukes slapped impatiently at the waves, and Brida got her first clear view of the sea people who had come to claim their own.

  Like the merman on the beach, and the merchild in her arms, their kinsmen possessed the tails and flukes of dolphins instead of fish, and their skin glowed shades of silver in the moonlight. Seaweed hair spilled down their backs and shoulders, some woven with bits of shell. Like her merman, the males were muscular, with broad shoulders and powerful arms. The females in the group were smaller than the males, sleek and arresting, their long hair at times revealing or obscuring their bare breasts.

  One female swam through the center of the group, moving slowly as if all the time in the world lay before them. She entered the shallows just shy of any danger of beaching herself and stared at Brida with a puzzling combination of wariness and recognition. She parted her lips and whistled the four-note tune in clear, perfect mimicry.

  Brida’s throat closed against an involuntary sob, and new tears coursed down her cheeks. She swallowed several times in an effort to speak. “You,” she told the merwoman. “I heard you once. Long ago.”

  The merwoman didn’t reply with either words or whistles, only watched Brida for a moment before her gaze slid to the mechild. She raised a webbed hand in an unmistakable command for Brida to bring the girl to her.

  Brida’s feet moved of their own accord, or at the will of a sea spell cast silently by one of its denizens. She clutched her flute in one hand and waded deeper, closer and closer until she stood directly in front of the mermaid, and stared down into a pair of sea glass eyes full of ancient secrets. She dropped to her knees and held out her arms, her muscles quivering with the effort to hold the heavy merchild.

  “She lives,” she told the merwoman. “For now.”

  Slender hands lifted the girl from Brida’s embrace. Th
e merwoman spoke in a series of soft clicks, and the child’s eyes opened for just a moment before closing once more. The merfolk surrounding them trilled as the merwoman passed her to a mermaid who snatched her away before disappearing into the deep. Three more merfolk followed, but the rest stayed behind, their regard unwavering as they watched Brida.

  She braced a hand in the sand to keep the waves from knocking her over. She considered standing, but something warned her to stay put, at least for now. The merwoman whose voice had haunted her all these years whistled again, a single note ending on a question, and Brida recognized it as the merman’s name.

  Her shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I don’t know. I can’t know, and I can’t help unless I go back ashore.”

  The two stared at each other for long moments before the merwoman nodded as if she understood what Brida said. Careful to act as if negotiating with merfolk was an everyday event, Brida stood and waded steadily back to the beach where the water glossed the sand like a thin shield of glass. Here she was safe from a drowning. Here she could gather her sodden skirts in her hands and bolt for the safety of the salt grasses, leave behind a beached merman and the danger of being drowned by angry merfolk if she delivered their kinsman back to them, dead. The thought crossed her mind, brief as a candle flame flicker, before she cast it aside.

  She was scared, terrified even, but she wasn’t a coward. She returned to the tidal pools.

  The merman was as she’d left him, sprawled across the filling pools, tangled in bloodstained seaweed. His wounds still trickled blood and a small cluster of sand fleas gathered around the jagged line of flesh that marked where sharp teeth had torn into his tail. Brida approached him far more cautiously than she did the merchild, whistling his name in a steady repetition in case he lived and could hear her. His neck, under her palm, burned hot instead of cold, and a pulse beat in a thready rhythm just below his skin.

  “Thank you,” Brida said, not dwelling on whether she thanked the merman for not dying on her or the gods for being merciful in keeping him alive this long.

  His oddly handsome face tightened for a moment, his breathing growing louder. He convulsed, one hand digging into the seaweed beside him.

  Brida stroked his smooth cheek. “Shh, your daughter is returned to your kinsmen. They’re waiting for you now.” His eyelids lifted a fraction, giving her a glimpse of his eyes, no longer pale, but glowing with the same eyeshine she’d seen from the merfolk in the water. She offered him a smile and whistled the merchild’s name before pointing to the water.

  Her heart jumped in her chest when his eyes rolled back and his body collapsed, as if her words offered not only succor but permission for him to die.

  “No you don’t,” she snapped, her gentle caress on his cheek changing to a pair of quick slaps that made his eyelids flicker.

  Inquiring whistles sounded behind her. The merwoman and her people were growing impatient. And concerned.

  Brida stared at the merman. Now what? She couldn’t wait for the tide to move farther inland. It would be at least two more hours before it had filled the pools enough for her to float him into the deeper surf, and by then it would be too late. He was far too heavy for her to lift, much less carry.

  There was nothing for it. She’d have to drag him across the sand, risking more injury to his already battered body, and no doubt a terrible amount of pain. Brida prayed the gods would remain merciful and keep the merman unconscious through the ordeal.

  Her soaked skirt impeded her movements. She stripped down to her shift, shivering hard in the cold breeze that blew off the equally cold water. The flute joined her shawl on the rocks. Her teeth clacked together as she maneuvered behind the merman and bent to slide her hands under his shoulders.

  “Mother’s mercy,” she said between grunts. “You are heavy!”

  He was dead weight in her grip as she she slowly turned his body. Her discarded skirt became a useful tool when she wove the material under his armpits, and gripped the excess to tow him toward the surf and the waiting merfolk. His head lolled, and more than once she stepped on his trailing hair, jerking his head back so hard, she feared she’d broken his neck.

  Brida laid him down and straightened, pressing her hands to the screaming muscles of her lower back. Her exertions made her forget the cold, and she swiped a forearm across her sweating brow. The whistles from the surf grew demanding and ever more impatient. She spun to frown at the figures patrolling the surf. “You’ll kindly hold down that racket and keep your flukes in the water, mind. This is even harder than it looks.”

  A sharp click followed and the whistles stopped. Brida lifted the merman’s head and gathered his hair to drape it across his chest where she quickly wove it into a loose braid and tied it into a knot. That done, she resumed her task, leaving a trail of blood in their wake.

  This time the merfolk didn’t wait for her to wade deeper into the surf. A half dozen mermen suddenly surrounded her, and she fell back on her haunches in the water as they lifted their brother’s limp body and floated him into the waves. The rest followed, their excited whistles and clicks resuming once more.

  Short of breath and exhausted, Brida watched them go, both relieved the merman and merchild were no longer her responsibility and happy that she’d done all she could to save them. What a story she had to tell to her nieces and nephews, even if they thought it only an imaginative yarn spun by their eccentric aunt. Only she would know the truth of her tale or how the memory of the merman’s face would haunt her for many days to come.

  She was thoroughly drenched in salt water, as was everything she wore. If she didn’t develop a cold after this, it would be a blessing. Dark memories of the now dead obluda motivated her to hurry out of the surf even more than the cold did. The merfolk hadn’t tried to drown her, but that didn’t mean she was safe from some other lurking danger that swam along the Gray’s shores at night.

  Sand slid beneath her feet as she trekked to the rocks where she’d left her skirts, shawl, and flute. A clear whistle made her turn.

  The merwoman who’d approached her directly bobbed in the waves, moonlight plating her skin in dappled argentum. She raised a hand, in thanks, farewell, or both. Enchanted, Brida offered a nod and returned the gesture, watching as the merwoman turned and dove, disappearing beneath a rising hillock of water.

  “You’re welcome,” Brida said softly, with only the wind and the moon to hear her.

  It was time to go home.

  Chapter Three

  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.”