Page 1 of Goldilocks
Chapter One
“I’m busy,” Sam told the splashing at the side of his boat. Anchored in Curlew Bay on his dad’s fishing boat was the only place in the world where he could actually get a bit of studying done. Read in peace without interruption, without getting distracted, without worrying if the person sitting next to him noticed how long it took him to read one page.
The splashing grew more insistent, but Sam ignored it.
The side of his boatclanged. Sam felt a vibration through the boards beneath his feet and through his boots. He jolted.
“You little—” Sam scrambled to the side, textbooks spilling across the decking. He leaned out over the railing to find Devil with his arm cocked back, stone in hand, ready to strike the side of his boat again. “Did you chip my painting? Do you realise how expensive that was?” Sam snatched the rock out of his hand, ignored Devil’s vicious snarl, and bent to look for damage.
The mural of tentacles and fish, a painting Sam poured his soul into last summer, was intact. It had held up surprisingly well the past few months, fading some but not chipping.
There was, however, a new dent in the ladder.
Sam repressed a curse as Devil lowered until his shoulders were beneath the gently lapping waves and it was just his face out of the water, head tilted back as he peered up at Sam. No. Not peered.Glared. Out of the corner of his eye, Sam saw that full top lip curled back.
“That’sexpensive too,” Sam said, keeping his voice harsh. He tried to pretend he wasn’t relieved that his painting had been spared. He’d invested a lot of time and effort into it, and he was proud of how it had turned out. And he knew this particular merman liked it too; Devil examined it for weeks until he’d seen Sam drawing one day and apparently realised the source of the artwork.
Golden fluffy hair framed that vicious face, and Sam finally looked at the blasted devil who, for his own peace and quiet, he should have ignored from the very beginning. His irises were golden, and then there was a metallic dark sheen of grey and blue where the whites of a human’s eyes would be. His face was astonishingly beautiful, and from Sam’s first proper look at the merman, his fingers had itched. Itched to draw and to paint. Sam didn’t normally like drawing people, and Devil was a distinct exception to his usual tastes.
“I’m busy,” Sam said.
Devil snarled. Sam purposefully dropped the stone next to his face so the ocean water splashed on his hair. Devil lunged, smacking his palms flat to the broadside of the hull. Water sprinkled on Sam, a hint of the salty Atlantic hitting his lip, while a mini tidal wave of his own making came back on Devil, drenching those fluffy curls until they were weighed down in long waves.
Sam grinned as Devil realised what he’d done.
“I can’t paint you with your hair like that, now can I? You’ll have to wait for it to dry,” Sam said.
Devil’s eyes flicked up, watching Sam’s mouth. He did that often. Watched Sam’s lips when he talked. His snarl faded as he raised a hand to feel his wet hair. He deflated with an irritated scoff and twisted away from Sam. He circled the boat, keeping his hair above the waves. Sam cast an eye to the horizon line. He could see a lone yacht, white canvas sails a mere blip in the far distance. He sometimes found himself looking for the small vessels Connor told him tried to get through The Tear, but nothing bar mermen seemed capable of passing through. Sam wasn’t surprised. Connor said when it first opened the waters were calm at The Tear, but that certainly wasn’t the case now. Sam had seen the waves from a distance, and he knew his boat wouldn’t make it through without capsizing, never mind a wooden vessel relying on sails.
Sam turned away from the open ocean. The other direction, where waves broke against a rocky shoreline, was equally deserted; Curlew Bay was disliked by swimmers, and the rocky terrain lacked walking routes, which meant even on land, there was rarely anyone. Roosting gulls populated the fissures and crannies found in the rocks with nests, but they tended not to care about Devil and his tail.
Satisfied he still had the bay to himself, Sam returned to his books, getting comfortable as he forced himself to focus on the words that had an annoying tendency to dance around the page.
He took notes, focused on the point of the assignment, and after what felt like hours of study – likely thirty minutes, tops – there was a splash.
Sam pressed his lips together, pretending he didn’t hear it.
A low growl started, something humming from deep in a throat, and Sam peeked up to see Devil watching him over the lip of the deck and between two wooden rails.
“It’s dry already?” Sam asked. Devil flashed his signature snarl, top lip curled back, and Sam shut his book with a feeling of guilty relief. His head ached, and honestly, he was just going to get pestered until he gave in anyway. Besides, Devil could be entertaining.
“Alright then.” Sam tidied his schoolbooks into his backpack and stashed them in the cabin. He grabbed an identical backpack that hung on the back of the door, and Devil’s snarl finally vanished as his face lit up. He dropped into the water, and the boat obscured him from view, but Sam heard happy chirps as he circled to the other side of the boat.
Sam dragged his table to the middle of the deck and laid out his pencils with an array of paints that he may or may not get to tonight. It was evening, after all. Sam only had fading light to work with. Sam sat as Devil gripped the railing and, in one fluid movement, lifted himself. The wood groaned, but like it had all the other times Devil sat there, it held firm under the weight of that glorious golden tail. Sam marvelled over the fact that lean muscles could lift such a weight. His biceps and shoulders bulged out, but there was no struggle in Devil’s expression at any point of the manoeuvre.
Sam rested his sketchbook on his knee and waited patiently as Devil arranged himself. Draped his tail so the crook rested over coiled rope and the finned end disappeared into the water below. Leaned his weight back on one palm, arranged his waves delicately around his face, and parted his lips softly. He arched his back slightly, then set his hand down on the boundary where skin became scale. Devil finished the same way he always did. He tilted up his chin, exposing a soft throat and delicate pink gills, and fixed his gaze on Sam. Sam waited an extra moment in case Devil wanted to adjust his pose, but he remained still.
Sam lifted his sketchbook. Set pencil to paper.
And the hours melted away into nothing, feeling like mere minutes. Devil didn’t complain when Sam switched on the lamps to keep him illuminated as the light in the sky faded to night. Sam opened his paints and bent over his sketch as he tried to capture that illustrious gold on the page. He could never quite do Devil justice; there was more life in the merman before him than Sam could ever mimic on page.
His neck had a bad crick and his phone buzzed incessantly, but Sam found it very easy to ignore both. It wasn’t until a headache formed again and Sam’s stomach rumbled its objection that he leaned back, analysing what he’d done. What he’d done was several things, actually, most laid out at his feet fully dried. The last piece he’d been working on – a close-up of Devil’s hand resting on his golden scales – was only half completed. Sam dug through his tub of paints and frowned. He’d wrung out every last smear of the colours used to create gold. He had nothing left to mix. Dissatisfied to leave the work uncompleted, he set down the paintbrush, the white of the page in his lap an annoying jeer.
Devil chuffed, jutting his chin at Sam, questioning.Are you done? It was the first movement out of him in hours.
“I’m out of paint,” Sam explained. He stretched out his spine with a groan and then gathered up the sheets scattered around the deck. He checked they were dry before stacking them and then offered the pile to Devil for his usual inspection before he tidied up. The first time he’d handed over his drawings for inspection, he’d been afraid Devil would drop into the ocean and ruin them. Now, he knew they were safer in his hands than anyone else’s. Not once was he anything but extremely careful with the pages.
Sam dug out his buzzing phone from his pocket.