Page 6 of The Merman's Kiss
Sadira
ItookeverychanceI could to sneak away to the beach throughout the summer.
It felt important to keep my new friend a secret. My parents had always vocally disapproved of me interacting with children who “weren’t like us”—who didn’t look like us or belong to the families that moved in my parents’ circles. My mother even had a relative who fit that description entirely, except that he’d married a mostly human woman before I was born. She still shunned them even though he seemed very wealthy and magically powerful, having some kind of important job working for the government in the defense department—exactly the type of person she would usually gravitate to.
There was something about my friend’s innocence that I wanted to protect from my parents’ judgement and disapproval, and I was afraid they would forbid me from visiting him altogether. He probably wouldn’t understand what they were saying, but I would, and it would hurt me. He was so curious and enthusiastic about everything around him. The thought ofanyone damaging the inquisitive nature that was so obviously a deep part of him grieved me.
Even now, many weeks after we’d first met, as we lay side by side in the surf and the waves rolled over his body and halfway up mine, he showed me a tarnished candlestick he’d found somewhere. I found myself using my hands as I spoke to help explain to him what fire was, wondering how much he could understand. “It burns,” I tried again. “These hold flames that are dangerous, and we can’t touch the fire. It makes light.” I pointed at the sun. “Like that, but smaller.”
He squinted at the sun and then at me with a small head tilt.
“Do you understand?” I asked, smiling at his skeptical expression.
He blinked at me in the morning light and began to give a slow nod, but then hesitated and held up his thumb and forefinger very close to each other.
“A little?” I guessed, and he nodded again. “How do you understand the common tongue if you can’t speak it?” I asked, curious.
He gestured at the shore in answer, but I didn’t understand.
I realized that if he could understand me, I could tell him my name. “I’m Sadira,” I said, placing my flat hand on my chest. “That’s my name, Sadira.” My smile felt a little brittle and sad this time because I wished I could know his name too.
He blinked at me a few more times, like he was processing what I’d said, and then it looked as though he tested the shape of my name on his lips, but no sound came out at all. A slow smile blossomed on his face, becoming so warm it changed his whole countenance. His joy shone through his eyes as he regarded me, and my own smile became more genuine in response. But then he opened and closed his mouth silently a few times as frustration overtook his features.
I sat quietly, listening to the waves wash over us as he stared at me for a beat, wondering what concerned him as his pale grey eyes drifted across my face, before he seemed to come to some kind of decision. Pushing himself up from the sand, he sat up, hauling his torso out of the waves from where he lay beside me. His chest contracted as water gushed out of the slits in his neck in a distressing way—they were gills, I supposed—and then the pink membranes clamped shut against the sides of his neck, as he heaved a deep, rasping breath that sounded like a wet sack inflating.
“Lorn.”
I was so distracted by the alarming things he’d done with his body to push all the water out that I nearly missed what he said. His voice was scratchy and quiet, and difficult to understand, but hespoke. A tight grimace crossed his face and he reached to clasp a hand around his throat, and I realized I was staring at him with my mouth hanging open.
I quickly clamped it shut.
“Your name is Lorn?” I asked, practically shouting, and then clapped my hand over my mouth and glanced toward the path that led to my summer house to make sure no one had overheard.
He nodded, and I lowered my hand—and my voice.
“How can you speak? Why haven’t you spoken to me before?” A million questions fought with each other to tumble out as my heart warred between elation—my friend could speak! He told me his name!—and wounded feelings—was I not worth speaking to before?—that were all instantly silenced by the next word out of his mouth.
“Hurt,” he said, and I realized that the grimace on his face was pain.
“It hurts when you speak?” I asked, instantly feeling sick to my stomach at the misery on his face.
He nodded, and then croaked out, “When young, it hurt,” and then his throat muscles started convulsing.
“Then stop! Don’t speak.” I almost lifted my hands toward him, my instinct to cover his mouth like I had my own, to protect him from the pain he was inflicting on himself, but I clenched them into fists in my lap. My heart pounded in my chest, and I battled the innate need I felt to put my palms on his neck. My fingers itched to touch him somewhere, anywhere, but I didn’t want to scare him or embarrass myself. I had anincredibly minisculemagical aptitude towards healing. It was my only magical inclination at all, but it didn’t really work. It was only a feeling I got in my hands sometimes when someone around me was in pain. I’d never been able to heal so much as a paper cut. My school assessor said that sometimes people’s abilities with magic increased during puberty, but I wasn’t finding that to be the case for me.
At least, not yet.
My father had been very clear that I shouldn’t bother trying, anyway.”No child of mine will work with her hands, Sadira. We never undertake anything as crass as that.”
“Please, don’t talk,” I begged him, watching in horror as a tear leaked from his eye. “You don’t need to. We got along just fine this whole summer with only me talking.” He’d told me his name—Lorn.At least I had that. It felt like a gift. “I’ll speak for both of us,” I assured him.
And I did.
Day by day, as we lolled in the surf and watched the seagulls soaring overhead, I told him about my parents—about their suffocating expectations, her career as a dignitary for the government, his job as a bank owner—and our house in the city that was never my home, because I went to boarding school like all the other children our age—at least the ones from families who could afford it. Sometimes I envied the ones who couldn’tafford it, because at least they got to live with their families, but my parents said that wasn’t respectable and that my future depended on the schooling I received.
I told him about how we came to the cottage here at Belas Shores so my parents could escape the stifling heat in the city each summer, and how it was my favorite place to be. I’d always enjoyed the fact that I got to be with my family here, even if Nan was the one who actually tended to my caring, but as I’d grown up, it had felt like my presence here was more of an annoyance than an actual part of the family. It was probably just because I wasn’t used to being with them anymore and I needed to try harder to connect with them. At least I could always count on Nan to appear relieved when I came home on breaks, even if I suspected it was because she wasn’t expected to perform as many domestic duties as the other servants, so she could attend to my needs.
I never knew how much Lorn understood of what I told him, but he appeared to listen to every word and watched me carefully as I spoke. It was nice having someone who listened so closely to what I had to say. He seemed especially interested when I told him about my collection of sea glass from this very beach and how the purple bits were my favorites. I had a small box of pieces I’d found over the years, but I loved it enough that I kept it at school with me, where I really lived, and carried any new ones I found back with me on the train when I returned to school after our summer break.
