Page 22

In my dreams, I burn alive.

There is little to see beyond the blinding conflagration that surrounds me and licks at my face. The heat curls my scales, blackens my fins, and boils my blood right from my wounds. I feel as though my body has run ashore on the smoldering surface of a red-tide sun, the Currents’ call reduced to a whisper on the arid wind.

With waning strength, I try to raise my fluke to shield myself, but my tail is restrained. I realize then that I am moving. Through parched eyes, I force myself to look.

Human feet?

My eyes fly open. Heavy footsteps beyond the curtained room have stirred me from my fitful sleep. I flee to the furthest edge of my cage, grip the walls, and wait.

The Shark has come back to circle.

“Sovereign of the Seas,” he says, his voice sluggish and low. “Heard me coming, did you?”

He places the lantern at his feet. A shiny vessel—swishing with a dark liquid I do not recognize as water—swings from his fist as he approaches. I sink farther into shadow.

“You look a good deal larger than that mermaid that tried to capsize us when I was young. With that mineral tint in your skin, you’d have the aspect of a prehistoric porpoise if you weren’t so sssymmetrical ,” he slurs. “If my father could only see you for himself; the simpleton was so sure your species was just a myth.”

Lifting a finger into the air, the Shark’s posture contorts in mockery. “‘You’re a nuisance and a maniac, Samuel T. Dixon! You’ll not squander another dime of my money on this ludicrous fairy tale, now get out of my sight!’ If that pompous bastard weren’t already six feet under the ground, he’d drop dead at the sight of you.”

Every scale on my body raises with the serrated sound of his bitterness, but I dare not react. His whistle is gone—Benigno disabled it himself—but the Shark knows that, in the absence of metal armaments, his voice is his deadliest weapon. Alone with him in this moonless room, his sweat-sheened face fills me with a wild fear I cannot let him see lest he use it to unravel me.

Instead, I bore my loathing into his glistening forehead with my eyes.

He sees it and frowns. “Sitting there, staring daggers at me all day long... Isn’t it tiring, pretending you can’t hear or understand a word I say when I know you have better ears than every cur on the Eastern Seaboard?”

Lifting the vessel to his lips, he drinks, then wipes his mouth upon his hand. “That’s right, I know everything about you. I’ve collected lore from every region on Earth that has something to say about the infestation of sea creatures whose humanlike appearance exists solely to lure us toward our undoing. Years of study and travel tend to make one an expert on the subject.”

He leans his forearm against the pane and stares at me from beneath it.

“Although it seems I’m still learning a thing or two about your kind,” he says softly. “For instance, did you know dead mermaids leave no bodies behind after you fire a bullet through their hearts? I didn’t. Turned out to be quite the convenient trait,” he mumbles. “Beast didn’t even scream.”

The scorching blaze from my nightmares erupts in my heart. I fly at the glass with strength insufficient to break it, but the human stumbles backward and falls on his seat, washing his sleeve in the dark drink he has been soaking his tongue in since before he set foot behind the curtain.

The Shark laughs—a sound so unlike the bright, glittering noise I have heard Benigno make when something I have said amuses him. His cheerful laughter is as warm and light and colorful as the Tropics.

The sound of the Shark’s mirth sends a glacial chill through my fins.

“Well, what do you know,” he exclaims. “It understands me after all!”

Cursing at his stained garments, he staggers to his feet and leaves me, though not in peace. A tremor—sudden and sinister—vibrates beneath my scales, and though I quiet my thoughts enough to invite the water to heal it, it seems to take an age. This water is not Ocean, and the Shark’s leering face, twisted in cruelty, pushes into my mind against my volition.

Relief comes only when I force my thoughts away from his ugliness and toward something else...

A shy, lamplit smile. Kind night-sky eyes. Webless fingers that dance upon lyre’s strings as his mossy singing voice sets the water rippling around me.

I cling to Benigno’s seashells until the tremors cease, and sleep carries me to oblivion.