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“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 boat clanged . 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’s expensive 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.

Mary: Where are you?? Sam, he showed up! Everybody is going crazy!

Mary: He’s on the decking with Mom

Mary: Sam!!!

There were about twelve messages of roughly the same thing, or at least Sam assumed so. He skipped the rest. Sam finally remembered that it was his aunt’s birthday, and he should have been there hours ago. How many hours ago? Sam cursed as he saw the time – almost 10 p.m. He should have been there at 5 p.m. Great .

Sam: Running a bit late but on my way. Who showed up?

Texting at night was an exercise of extreme frustration, but he made himself do it, slow and methodical so there were no mistakes, and then put his phone away.

Sam’s feet dragged as he tidied up the rest of his supplies. He was going to hear it. From everybody. His dad this, his dad that . Sam roughly folded up the table and then the chair, slotting them back into the cabin.

Sam went to secure his daily haul and discovered an empty tub. Groaning, he looked at the darkened sky crowded with stars. He hadn’t pulled the pots yet. He’d planned to do it after studying.

He glared at Devil, intending to blame him, but the merman was so absorbed in Sam’s art that the words went unsaid. His irritation eased, a proud feeling prodding at his ribs instead. Even if it was self-absorbed, Devil was admiring something Sam made.

Sam adjusted his plan. He would do it quickly and just re-bait and toss them back. Hopefully, there would be a bit of money in it for him. He needed new textbooks for the second half of the semester, and he loathed the thought of having to ask any of his aunts for money. That always led to a conversation about Sam’s dad and everything he wasn’t doing.

Devil stayed perfectly balanced on the side of the boat as Sam started the engine and got them moving toward his pots. He had ten of them, and of the lobsters caught, only about half were worth keeping. It would net him…Sam sighed. Eighty euro, tops.

Sam could earn more money working in any of the businesses on the shoreline if he could stand to put up with the tourists. But there were a lot of recurring visitors that Sam knew would make his job hell if he tried to work on land. Not to mention his thing with reading made any job that involved writing quickly a nightmare. Becoming a server was Sam’s most frequent stress dream.

Sam re-baited the traps as he went, pushing the thought from his mind as he worked. He didn’t particularly like this job, but nobody gave him a hard time about it. The local fishmonger Archie, even if he never gave Sam a cent above the day’s going rate, also never tried to give him less either. Plus, he could do the work. It was familiar. Sam had been pulling pots with his dad since he was twelve. His dad had been an excellent teacher, safety-focused and patient. He would repeat things endlessly until Sam understood what he needed to, and never once had Oisín ever lost patience with him.

Devil huffed, pulling Sam from his thoughts. Sam turned and found golden eyes fixed on him.

“What?”

Devil showed the unfinished painting, and it niggled at Sam annoyingly. Sam frowned again. “I told you. I ran out of paint.”

Devil pointed at the blank part, where his tail was sketched but not coloured.

“Yeah, I can see it’s not done. I have no paint. Or time. Are you done looking?” Sam reached for the stack. Devil angled away from him, moving them out of reach as he sifted through the pages again.

Sam snorted in amusement but left the vain creature to his self-admiration. He took extra time admiring the ones that had his hair, touching his waves as he did. Sam watched him, entertained, as they motored inland. His local village was mostly wharf and pier, and regular yellow lamps lit the entire stretch of the village from one end to another. In the summer, every single docking space was filled with tour boats and yachts, but given that it was March, the only boats present belonged to local fishermen, with only one or two yachts moored. Sam kept an eye out for anyone working on their boat, but it was late enough that he had the place to himself. Though, even if Sam did spot someone and called a warning to Devil, he wasn’t confident the merman would even care. He didn’t seem to possess the same shyness as Adonis who hid from strangers unless he was in his human form.

Sam’s spot was on the very outskirts of the village, the furthest point on the furthest pier. Sam had moved his spot here months ago when he realised Devil would follow him right to the shoreline, regardless of whether people were around. In the distance, he could see Connor’s yacht parked right against the wharf at Sally’s pub. Technically, nobody was allowed to park there, but Sam had never seen anyone hassle Connor about it.

Sam was sorely tempted to forget Aunt Mal’s party completely. Mary might have been more like his sister than his cousin growing up, but Aunt Mal had never stepped into any sort of ‘motherly’ role. Instead of the party Sam could stop in to see Connor, where he undoubtedly had Adonis causing a riot with the locals with his oddness, and then just crash on the boat. He’d been doing that a lot lately. He’d even repurposed a pallet into a bed frame and had an extra blanket that served as a mattress. There were showers and bathrooms in Archie’s workshop, and all the local fishermen had access. Sam used to fantasise about having something like the blue-sailed yacht a few rows down. Something with an indoor section to live in. A bed.

Even if he could never afford a yacht like that, he was at least determined to be seen as more than a poor fisherman’s son.

“I’ve got to go.” Sam fetched a plastic folder from the cabin and approached Devil. The painting on top was the unfinished one. Devil ran his fingers over the edge where Sam’s paint had run out, and Sam’s fingers twitched, imagining filling in the blank space. “I’ll finish it next time,” Sam promised.

Devil met Sam’s eyes. He didn’t glare. He didn’t have to.

“Yeah, yeah. I know.” Sam reached for the sheets, but Devil angled away from him with a huff. He started to leaf through them again. “Okay, fine. Here.” Sam set the folder down next to him. “Slide it under the door when you leave. I really have to go.”

Sam locked up and hoisted his crate of lobsters with him onto the pier. He checked again there was nobody about to spot Devil. Last summer Connor said he’d seen other unusual folk like Adonis and Devil sailing toward The Tear, but soon after he’d passed through it himself, the chaos of two weather fronts from different worlds meeting had manifested. Gales and towering waves ensured nothing short of a solid vessel with an engine could get through without being blown off course. Aside from merfolk, Sam didn’t think anything else had made it through to their world. Which meant anyone coming across Devil would get quite the shock. Luckily the waterfront was deserted.

“Good night,” he called behind him.

Devil’s eyes flicked up, tracking after Sam as he walked away down the pier.