Page 11 of The Merman's Kiss
“You just… you eat it just like this? You don’t cook it?” I asked, which was a silly question, because I’d just watched him do exactly that. He didn’t even bother to nod at me, simply raised an eyebrow instead.
“Right,” I said, taking a nibble of the plant so as not to offend him. It was bold and briny with a slightly sour note, and the texture was crisp and crunchy. It was interesting! I put the rest of the ring in my mouth and chewed, and he nodded approvingly.
Lorn released the water from his gills and took in air before asking, “What is cook?”
I was ready with a trickle of my fledgling healing magic, reaching out to touch his neck without a second thought now, the prickle of heat leaving my arm and through my fingers. He leaned into my touch as if this interaction between us had always been a part of our routine, swallowing convulsively to soothe his aching throat before taking another bite of kelp.
“Oh,” I responded to his question. Yeah, I guess he didn’t cook his food. So then I had to explain that we heat our food over fire—which he still seemed to have a difficult time understanding the concept of—to make it hot and make it safe to eat. He stared at me skeptically while crunching on his briny kelp rings, likelytrying to decide if I were teasing him by making something up again. I’d only done that a few times.
In the spirit of reciprocation, I tore off the corner of my bread and passed it to him, and he took it with an even more doubtful expression than I had when taking the seaweed. I laughed. “It’s just bread,” I reassured him, but he squinted at me from the corner of his eye and set his seaweed ‘tube’ down to poke at the bread with his other hand. “You eat it like this,” I explained, and took a bite of my sandwich, chewing and swallowing so he could see it was like any other food.
He still seemed dubious but tapped it against his lower lip and then his tongue, scrunching his features like it was terrible. He actually wiped his tongue off with the back of his hand and then made a face like I’d tricked him, which made me laugh even harder.
“It’s bread!” I said again. “We eat it at almost every meal. You don’t like bread?” I took another bite to show him I wasn’t tricking him.
Lorn watched me out of the corner of his eye as he then took the bread anddunked it in the ocean, all while maintaining eye contact as he popped the whole bite into his mouth and chewed with a grimace. A huge grin spread across his face as I howled about howof courseit was gross now, since he’druinedit by soaking it inseawater.
I got to hear areallaugh from him this time, with actual air in his lungs, and then he simply said, “Too dry,” before taking another grinning bite of his kelp.
I was so dazzled by the sound of his laughter and the feel of his throat skin moving under my fingers as he laughed when I touched him again that I forgot to eat again until he offered me one of his clams. The shell was shiny and black with smooth ridges along the length of it, but I didn’t know how to open it. He held his hand out for me to return it and then pressed a claw intothe seam of the shell, cracking it open with a quick, practiced twist of his wrist, barely glancing at it as if he did it every day. I picked up one myself to see if I could do what he had done, but I had no clue how he’d managed to do that. He gave me the opened clam, so I returned his closed one. I stared at the little pink muscle on the half shell, a little afraid of it. I’d eaten lots of cooked clams in chowders and steamed dishes, butneverraw. He was watching me though, and held up a newly opened clam of his own, tapped his shell against mine the way the grownups sometimes do with their glasses when they propose a toast, and then lifted his shell to his lips and poured its contents into his mouth as though drinking from a cup. I mimicked his motion, pouring the clam into my mouth, and tried not to think about the texture too much. It was very different from a cooked one, both the taste and the texture. It carried the same briny punch that the kelp had, but there was a sweetness too, with a hint of a fishy aftertaste. The texture was firmer than its cooked version, which was the opposite of what I had expected.
“I like it,” I said, sounding as surprised as I felt, and he passed me another one. He didn’t want any more of my bread though, and when I offered, he dodged away from it with another laugh and made a ‘yuck’ face. I smiled at him, already plotting what else I could ‘trick’ him into eating. But then I thought better of it, knowing he could probably prank me far worse.
Picnic lunches became a regular occurrence for us, sharing food and learning about how the other ate without many words. He brought all kinds of different foods with him, from fish to tiny octopuses to different kinds of seaweed and algae—always raw and fresh. But no matter what he brought, he tried to bring me a few of the little black clams I’d decided tasted like heaven. He opened them dutifully with his long claws, but one day I decided I was going to try to open them myself. Since I did not come so equipped, I resorted to smashing them open withrocks, causing Lorn to laugh so uproariously that he choked on seawater and then quickly took the rest of the clams from me to slice open himself.
I shared my food with him too, noticing he was intrigued by the fresh fruit, with a preference for the very tart or sour ones. All breads and baked goods were an immediate no. Vegetables were tolerable if they were thoroughly doused in seawater first—Lorn liked his salt. I tried to sneak him some raw meat one day, but Cook was havingnone of itand cooked meats only got a lukewarm reaction from him. Overall he was very brave and tried almost everything I brought him—as long as it wasn’t bread. I’d never met anyone who didn’t have at least a little bit of a sweet tooth, but unless it was the very mild sweetness found in fish meat or clams, he was entirely uninterested. Cookies may as well have been garbage. Ice cream? Poison. He stared in abject horror one day as I laughingly licked the remaining ice cream from my spoon, far more interested in the spoon itself than the food it carried.
One day he brought a very thin, flat clam that I enjoyed almost as much as the black ones, and he tried to explain to me that unlike the black ones, these were clams I could find on the shore and he could show me how. But even with miming and the few words he could speak, I couldn’t understand the map that he drew in the sand of our hidden beach. I really wanted to find clams with him, because it seemed just like a real treasure hunt, but forfood. So after thinking about it for a moment, he told me he would take me swimming tomorrow.
Chapter 9
Lorn
Sadirawasaboutasadept in the water as I was on land. We spent much of our time together in the margin between our worlds—the frothy surf, or the very shallow cove, sometimes on the rocks or sandy beach right on the edge of the water. Butmyworld could be fatal to her much more quickly than her world would be for me. Even the deeper parts of the cove where she couldn’t touch bottom made me nervous for her when we played together in the water, and now she wanted me to take her to another beach that entailed passing through the crosscurrent outside the mouth of the jetty.
There was a short period a few times a day when the chaotic dance of the many tides caused by our two moons made the current wash back the other direction. She might be able to swim across it herself when that happened, but I couldn’t predict the timing accurately and it wasn’t worth the risk. I decided it would be safest for me to simply hold on to her and brute-force our way through the powerful currents to get to the other beach. When I approached her cove, I usually swam along the bottom to get under the current, since the water was calmer there, but I knewshe could never hold her breath that long. I’d swum through the crosscurrent a few times before. Just never while trying to keep another person afloat.
The waves in Sadira’s cove were gentle, and she was already waiting for me when I arrived, just finishing eating the strangely sweet, crunchy apples she often used to break her fast. The soft, sunshine yellow of her tightly fitted outfit she called her “swimming suit” always set off the dark color of her bare arms and legs so beautifully. She abandoned the last of her fruit to the loud gulls that hovered nearby and splashed out into the water with a smile on her face. The warmer water was much more inviting to her now that the summer had passed its zenith.
“You said you’d take me swimming,” she said happily as she joined me, both a reminder and an accusation, as far as I could tell.As if I could have forgotten.
I rolled my eyes at her but couldn’t help the grin that spread across my face in response. Giving her a single nod in affirmation, I motioned her farther out into the water with me and then watched her slowly paddle along beside me, amused by her excitement to do something I did every day: swim. We swam alongside each other in the quiet cove—or at least as quiet as the rolling waves and squabbling gulls can be—until I knew she couldn’t touch the bottom any longer. The currents didn’t start until beyond the jetty, but my nerves still made me go in front of her to make sure it wasn’t too strong yet. I stopped her at the end of the rocks before she reached the rougher waters.
As we paused before crossing, I realized my heart was already racing just thinking about taking her out into the crosscurrent. I would never let anything bad happen to her, but even the mere chance of it made me desperately uneasy, so I motioned for her hand. At first, I took it in my own, before changing my mind and gripping her wrist while gently tugging her closer to me. I didn’t want to risk her grip not being strong enough to hold onto me. Her expression told me she was nervous, too, but at least her focus was on the swiftly moving water and not my grip on her. She wasn’t afraid ofme. I released the water from my gills and filled my lungs with the hot, dry air that would allow me to speak the mouth-words she could understand. I needed to make something very clear before we continued.
“Sadira,” I said, wanting her full attention. The pain of speaking made me choke as my throat convulsed, but her attention had snapped to me the moment I spoke and her hand was on my throat in an instant. The familiar warm sensation swept down my vocal cords and wiped away the worst of the pain. I took a deep breath in relief, grateful for whatever magic she contained that allowed me to communicate like this with her. Resting my palm on the back of her hand to keep it against my throat and holding her other wrist carefully in my other hand, I studied her apprehensive expression before continuing. “No alone,” I said with emphasis, unsure how to phrase exactly what I meant to say in her language. I removed my hand from the one she kept on my neck and pointed to the current outside of the jetty to make myself clearer. The waves on the surface looked deceptively calm, like all the others along the shore here, but beneath the surface, the currents were strong enough to pull her out into the open ocean in a blink. “No swim alone,” I tried again, pointing as I spoke.
The last thing I wanted was for her to gain some confidence in the water with me today and end up pulled underwater without me nearby to help.
Her magic flowed into my throat as her gaze darted across my face, disquiet and concern written across her wide blue eyes and delicate features. Her cheeks and tiny, turned-up nose had a smattering of adorable freckles after all the time we’d spent in the sun this summer. Had I thought the flatness of her teethstrange? She was pretty, I decided, just as she nodded at me and whispered, “Okay, I won’t.” She understood.
I turned and led her out into the current, and it jerked her away from me immediately, my tight grip on her wrist the only thing that kept us together. Quickly pulling her to my side, I held her close and wrapped my arm around her so that the flow could not pull her away again. She wrapped her arms around my shoulders and neck, clutching at me more tightly than the octopus that had once attacked me in my youth. Her skin was so much softer and thinner than mine, I realized as I held her like this. It was no wonder the colder water was so much more objectionable to her.
Even having her touch my throat with her fingertips wastechnicallyforbidden, or at least incredibly frowned upon, because mermen bonded to our mates so much more quickly with physical contact. Having her pressed against me like this was a far worse infraction, and yet when I pulled back just enough to check her expression, she tightened her arms and clutched me harder. There was fear in her eyes, and I couldn’t find it in me to object. I adjusted my grip so that she was more secure and then turned our bodies to point us on a diagonal path into the current and pumped my tail. “Safe,” I told her gently, before we were even free of the current, patting her back to comfort her.
I would never let anything happen to her.
But Sadira’s muscles didn’t relax until we finally made it to the calmer waters of the bay, and when she tried to release her grip she had a hard time letting go. “Where are we?” she asked breathlessly, shaking out her arm muscles when I delivered her to the tidal flats where the knife-clams lived. I didn’t know how to answer her question—we werehere—but she didn’t seem to expect an answer as she stared at the unique beach in awe. The silty beach stretched on and on from the edge of the water atlow tide, and the smell of the ocean was especially strong here, with thick, rope-like kelp washed up in small piles all over the flats. Little ripples decorated the surface of the sand just like miniature ocean waves, and tiny, long-legged shorebirds raced to and fro as the waves rolled in. I’d only seen landwalkers here digging for clams on rare occasions, and my people only harvested on the flats during the highest tides.
