Page 12 of The Merman's Kiss
“It goes on forever,” Sadira breathed, and it really did look that way with the low reeds blurring the line where the wet, silty flats turned into firmer ground. “Where are the clams?” she asked, immediately refocusing on the task at hand as usual. She turned to look at me as she pulled herself from the waves with her pale, wet hair sticking to her shoulders and back.
I smiled at her and pointed toward her feet.
She frowned at me. “Do I just start digging randomly?” She dropped to her knees and began digging into the sand with her hands.
I laughed and swatted at her hands. That was a good way to get a bristle worm embedded in her fingers. Or worse, if she actually managed to find one of the sharp-edged clams. Scanning the sand around us, I found one of the telltale divots in the sediment that showed where a knife-clam had dug in. I scooted closer to be able to show her the circular mark in the sand but stopped her once again from digging with her hands. These particular clams had such a sharp, cutting edge on them that they could slice you to the bone before you even realized what had happened. It was something many merlings—myself included—had unfortunately learned the hard way.
“Sharp,” I told her emphatically. “Bleed.”
Every time I spoke now, she reached out to deliver magic into me without hesitation. I tried to keep my speech to a minimum because her magic was a gift, and I could tell that giving it upcaused her to tire. But speaking alsohurt, even if that pain was quickly removed.
“What?” she asked with a laugh. “You said we were going to dig for them! What if I use a stick? Or a shell?” Her excitement was palpable and so amusing.
I pointed out a decently sized conch shell lying farther up the beach, clearly empty from the battered state of it. She ran to collect it for us and turned it over in her hands to study it as she returned. Her next errand was going to be a little more complicated. I held up two fingers, and the “game of charades” as she called it, began.
“Two things,” she said, dropping to her knees next to where I lay in the surf, our game now familiar and comfortable.
I nodded and pointed to the tide pools farther up the beach and then made a scooping motion in the ocean water with the conch before handing it back to her.
“You want water from that pool?”
I nodded in affirmation.
“Because… that water is different than this water?” she asked with mildly entertained sarcasm.
I tried to hide my grin at her tone, nodded again, and then held up my two fingers a second time.
“Second thing,” she said.
I gestured to the clumps of reeds that dotted the far side of the beach, beyond the tide pools, and held up some of my fingers before pretending to ‘pluck’ one.
“You want the plant?”
Close enough.
“Got it.” She took off at a jog and quickly scooped some water from the isolated pool but then spilled it when she tried to set the conch down to collect the reed stem. There was a considerable amount of growling and fussing and angry shouting as she tried to pull the entire plant up by its very deep and well-connectedroots, and I had my face in my hands to try to hide my laughter by the time she finally broke off one of the stems and refilled her shell from the pool.
“That wasdifficult!” she grumped as she stomped back with her items, which only served to make me lose myself to laughter completely. Reeds were tenacious plants, growing from thick rhizomes that joined whole networks of their clumping stems together. Watching her attack the stubborn plant with all the effectiveness of a furious seahorse was a memory that would stay with me for a long time.
I did try to make myself look properly contrite as she returned, but achieving proper contrition while laughing uncontrollably was difficult. When we gather reed stems, we simply slice through the base of the one with a claw, and she didn’t have any. But it never crossed my mind that she might try to pull up theentireplant. My landwalker was so helpless that even an ornery shore plant had nearly bested her. It hadn’t though. She had returned with a single stem, victorious. I tried so hard to fight back my grin.
After huffily handing me the conch and her hard-won stem, she threw herself down onto the sand in a pique, fully prepared to pout about it for several more minutes. I patted the back of her hand to console her and finally managed to gain control of my mirth. She refused to remove her glare from the reed stem I held in my claws, so I decided to show her what to do with it. After stripping the leaves away and trimming it to an appropriate length, I dipped the bottom of the hollow reed into the water she’d brought. I placed my finger over the top of the stem to create a vacuum and then shoved the stem deep into the sand where the knife-clam was hiding. Tides only reached those far pools when the moons aligned to pull the water all the way across the flats, which didn’t happen every day, so the water there had time to evaporate. This created pools of highersalinity than the ocean water it originally came from. Removing my finger from the top of the stem released the excess salt into the burrow, and after a few seconds of waiting, the clam pushed up to the surface, eager to escape the irritating fluid.
Her excited exclamation was too fast for me to follow, but it was clear that all was forgiven. I opened and cleaned the first clam for her while she scuttled about on the beach like a delighted little sand crab, searching for more divots like the one I’d shown her.
It was hard to tell how many we collected, because we ate them as fast as we found them, and their empty shells washed away beneath the surface of the water. But eventually, the sun rose high enough to feel uncomfortable on my skin and the brightness began to make my head throb. I delivered her back through the current with a full tummy and a smile on her face and a promise to meet her at our secret beach tomorrow.
I stopped to give Sir Chunk a pat and toss him a treat on my way home, wondering what he’d thought of me passing over his home carrying a landwalker in my arms. Thankfully, he was the only one around to notice.
Chapter 10
Sadira
Mymotherwastakingher tea on the patio when I entered the garden from the wooded trail that led from the beach. I joined her at the wrought-iron table, and she frowned at my favorite buttercup-yellow swimsuit as I dripped on the chair cushions.
“Sorry,” I apologized, standing quickly.
“Esme,” she turned and called to the waitstaff. “A towel, please, and some tea for Sadira.”
