Chapter 9

Singing rangout from the water as early as that same evening, as soon Alba headed to the lantern for the night. Almost as soon as Eugene Michaels took his boat back to shore and left Alba alone.

Alba stuffed cotton in his ears as he went about his work. If the merrow wanted to negotiate further, it would have to come to him. He would not be lured. He would tell himself it was only the pipes on the outside of the keeper's quarters.

He could wait for an eternity for the creature to come to him, first. He would not be forced to bend against his will.

It felt like an active rebellion to ignore the singing for one day. Then an absolute mad thrill to ignore it for two. Doing his chores out in the open all while knowing pale eyes bore into him from somewhere on the water. He never turned to look. Not once.

Not even when the faintest singing crept past the plugs in his ears and made his insides tangle sweetly. Sweetly, but not enough to lure him. Barely enough to make him tingle all over, to tempt him into touching himself while alone in the lighthouse or after retiring to bed, just to ease the rooted desire spawned by the magic of the sea.

The merrow didn't need to know that. It never would. Alba wanted the creature to believe the wickie it accosted on the shore was so unintimidated and unbothered that he forgot all about it by the time the sun rose. The thought alone was enough to make Alba smile madly and laugh under his breath all day long.

He minded his business. Minded his wounds between tasks, icing the swollen bruises on his face and body; grimacing every time he was reminded it was the skin of a fish on his shoulder, though admittedly intrigued at how what was once a gaping tear in his flesh healed over to hardly more than a faint scar in an impossibly short amount of time.

He slept with a knife under his pillow, the gun he'd stolen off that man's corpse tucked between the bed and the wall, as well as a few gulps of whiskey in his blood for the sole purpose of actually being able to drift off. Cotton remained jammed in his ears, making it impossible to think over the ringing.

He fixed the shingles on the roof without turning his eyes to the horizon, even as song beat against the cotton blocking his hearing; he attempted to trap something to eat off the side of the rocks rather than through the hatch, though caught only more warped creatures that resembled that impossible hollowed-out crab. He cleaned the cistern, washed the windows, painted the outside of the lighthouse, smoked while watching harbor seals snap teeth at laughing gulls swooping down on them.

Never once did he remove the plugs from his ears except when he bathed, which for the first time in his life, he indulged in more than once a week. Dunking his head just beneath the water, letting his ears fill with it, was a sweet respite from the scratchy fibers. More than once he nearly fell asleep in the tub's embrace, simply wishing for rest. A single moment of peace from the deluge of calling song.

He didn't know exactly when the luring magic ceased, only that a gust of wind while walking from the lantern to the house blew the cotton from one of his ears, and he didn't notice until all the way through the front door. It made his heart race in a panic, thinking of what might have happened had the merrow been out there watching, waiting to pounce—before risking another listen.

Realizing it was finally silent, except for the distinct sound of the pipes. He shakily pulled the cotton from his opposite ear, even, though stood ready to plug them back up again if a single note rang out from the sea. When nothing did, he even risked going about a few chores with reclaimed senses. Aware of every single sound that came, anticipating when the song would return.

For the rest of the early morning, it never did. Even into the afternoon, then the evening, all night long until sunrise, Alba never heard the merrow's song again.

He briefly thought it might be another sort of madness, feeling more agitated and anxious than ever with suddenly not a sound coming from the horizon. He soon searched while smoking rather than avoiding it. He stood on the edge of the rocks amongst the harbor seals and laughing gulls, staring out across the water as his hand trembled on the cigarette. Not remembering the last time he actually got a good night's rest, whether stuffed with cotton or while hearing nothing.

He swallowed back half of his bottle of whiskey that morning after finishing his post-tending chores, enough to force him to sleep. A little too much after rationing for the week prior, not realizing how quickly his tolerance had plummeted. Having to practically crawl up the stairs when it was time, laughing whenever he lost his footing and nearly tumbled back down them.

Collapsing into his cot, Alba didn't know exactly the moment he sank into the reaching hands of exhaustion, only that the dreams came quickly after.

He hadn't dreamt in so long, he nearly forgot he could—not expecting the eroticism that greeted him on the other side of closed eyes. Swirling with panting moans and roaming hands, pale merrow eyes bright like the moon while holding his gaze, smiling gently, handsomely, the softest hum emerging from the back of its throat as Alba leaned over the rocks to try and get a closer look. Hands that touched his chest, between his legs, until he was naked on his back in the grass, spread for ocean waves to lap against. Joined by a tongue, warm and slippery, against the inner parts of his thighs. He rolled his hips against the sensation, throwing his head back and tangling his fingers in silver-white hair upon groping for whatever it was eating him alive?—

Alba's eyes snapped open, finding that very creature looming over him in the dim late-morning light.

Despite the alcohol still hooked in his muscles, he managed to lash out his arm, slamming a closed fist into the creature's perfect nose.

The merrow stumbled back with a snarl, giving Alba just enough time to reach for the knife under his pillow. He prepared to gut it open, but the merrow was faster, lunging and twisting the knife from Alba's grasp, both of them tumbling from the bed and crashing to the floor.

Alba braced to be crushed beneath the weight of a monstrous tail, straining his tired eyes to see where it coiled, only to be met with two naked, human legs, instead. It caught him off guard enough that the merrow managed to grab and slam him to the floor, making Alba wheeze, colors popping in his eyes as he flattened back with a gasp.

"What did you tell them, you little rat!" It hissed, voice deep but smooth, lacking the same honeyed enchantment of what Alba remembered from the first time they crossed paths. Still, Alba's insides fluttered, only for a moment, as if tousled by singing magic just through spoken word—but the lure wasn't strong enough to make his mind spin. The creature's fury poisoned its own charm. "There are traps all over this harbor now—tell me what you said to them!"

Alba couldn't help staring drunkenly at the moon-kissed face hanging over him, contorted in such rage there was practically icy fire burning in its eyes—and he suddenly burst out laughing. He didn't know why—perhaps if he wasn't so drunk, he would not have found any humor in being pinned beneath the same hands and mouth that already once tore his throat out—but he couldn't stop. It only made the merrow angrier, baring its teeth, but Alba just laughed more.

"You left your mark on me!" He finally said, thrusting out his stained arms to illustrate. "I didn't say a thing about you! But you left your mark on me! Took a bite out of me! You think they wouldn't notice?" He attempted to shove the merrow off, but the creature was stronger, heavier, and Alba was drunk, so his palms just smacked against clammy bare skin. "You wanted me to ask them about the rest of you—you mermaids, as if they would be expectin' you—yet you're surprised they've put out traps? Have you been feastin' on their fishermen? Or are you the reason all their wickies keep vanishing?"

"I was not the one dumping a body into the harbor only a few nights ago," the creature snarled back, taking a handful of Alba's hair, making Alba yelp before chuckling again. "If there is anyone they should be laying traps for, it should be you!"

Alba's evident lack-of-intimidation clearly bothered the merrow enough that its jaw never loosened, hissing every word through clenched teeth. Never realizing its poor timing as Alba would have been far more rattled any other time he didn't have half a bottle of whiskey in his stomach. Alba also didn't know how to say that he'd hoped the merrow would come, and had even been waiting impatiently for that very moment—though soon forgot all of that at the sight of a cock waving around between the mer-man's two legs. Far less intimidating than the tail from their first meeting. In his warm, floaty haze, Alba even reached down, nearly grabbing it and making the merrow pull back in surprise.

"You clearly have two strong, workin' legs," Alba said with a sarcastic smile, slurring his words slightly. "More than I've got. Why not go into town yourself and stop botherin' me?"

"You think I wouldn't have done that already if I could?" The mer-man hissed back. "You have no idea what will come if you make an enemy of me, so I suggest?—"

Alba burst out laughing again. It took him a moment to gather his bearings back, shaking his head.

"An enemy of you! The likes of you! Please—I've met arctic seals more frightening than you. Erk—" he wheezed when a hand found his throat, pressing down, but the smile never left his face. "This—doesn't frighten me—either. You ever been—mast-headed? That's how I—broke my hip in the—first place. What about salted—after a floggin'?"

The merrow stared at him with a look of—disbelief. Like he truly could not fathom how Alba showed not a single flicker of terror even when pinned beneath him.

The merrow's handsome lips hung slightly parted as if on the verge of asking what the fuck was wrong with him—but instead, he just sat back. Straddling Alba's hips, he kept his hand on Alba's throat, the weight making Alba flinch for the first time as his bones shifted uncomfortably.

"What do you want?"

Alba gave the merrow a look, rubbing his sore neck, scales from the bandage on his shoulder flaking off under his fingers.

"What?"

"I said—" the man's jaw clenched in and out, muscles flexing in his cheek. "What do you want?"

Ah—that was what Alba had been waiting for. What he wanted. That shift in the tide, ebbing toward him rather than out of reach. That merrow, despite everything to say otherwise—was no different than any man.

"Lift your curse on me."

"No."

Alba expected that.

"You only want me to ask about them? Your missin' merrow kin? What makes you think they'll tell me anything? I've only been here a week. They'll answer me like any other tourist who's heard the stories—if they don't kill me for tryin', first."

"What stories?" the merrow snapped. "Don't tell me you yourself know where they've all gone?—!"

"What? No!" Alba groaned, finally writhing as the hand returned to his throat. "Of course not. I only—know anythin' because my mother grew up here. Told me lots of things about the lot of you. God, you're heavy?—"

"And what sort of things were those?" the merrow's eyes widened, a wicked, exasperated grin spreading over his face. "Clearly not enough, ‘else you wouldn't be tempting me like this, wickie."

"Told me you were beautiful and stupid!" Alba snapped back. "Seems at least one of those things is right!"

The merrow's smile stretched as his hand tightened around Alba's neck again. Alba managed to thrust a knee up, smashing the bare cock between the creature's legs and making him wheeze. He nearly managed to kick the mer-man off entirely, but he recovered quickly, grabbing and shoving Alba back to the floor again.

"Why don't you tell me where she is too, hm? I'll give her a story to tell."

"If I knew where she was—I wouldn't still be here!" Alba shouted, flooded with emotion he didn't realize was tucked away so tightly. The words burst from him like igniting kerosene in a lantern too small to contain the heat. "Fucker—! If I knew where she was I wouldn't still be rottin' away in this shithole, would I!"

The merrow smirked, dark and satisfied with Alba's outburst—before it twitched, slightly. His hand remained pinning Alba on his back, for the first time pausing to look him up and down. From his red hair, to the tattoos on his skin, to the front of his shirt pulled open in the quarrel and exposing his chest. Clammy, sharp fingers trailed down the center of it, before his pale eyes flickered back up again.

"Then perhaps we share some common ground," he said. Calmly. Even a little bit tempting without so many words, but Alba knew, even in his inebriation, that there was merrow-magic at play when he spoke. Singing to him without song; luring him to listen. He did. He was too overwhelmed with other emotions to defend against it. "Were you supposed to find your mother here?"

Alba tried to keep his mouth shut—but the temptation to answer was too strong. Tugging at the back of his throat with the same luring draw as the tongue in his dream.

"Y-yes."

"Are you sure she didn't send you as a sacrificial lamb instead?"

"Yes!" Alba lurched up, but the merrow shoved him back down again.

"Well, then," he purred. Alba's heart raced at the sound, staring unblinking up at him. At his long silvery hair draped with pearls on strings, more adornments hanging down the front of his humanesque chest and back. In such a form, wearing such magic, he looked as human as any other man Alba had ever seen—but still breathtaking. Unsettlingly handsome. A beauty sailors crooned songs about, a creature to avoid lest they be tempted into drowning, even with two legs.

"If—Maybe if I can find out about your kin—will you help me find out where she is?" The words rushed out of Alba before the merrow could speak first. The merrow shoved a hand to Alba's mouth, silencing him before he could utter anything else.

"And how am I supposed to do that?" He asked. "I don't know anything about you or your mother."

"But—one of your kin might," Alba insisted against the pressure muffling his voice. "You could ask them—for me."

The merrow furrowed his brows like he had something to say to that, but didn't. His lips parted slightly like the sentiment sat right there on the tip of his tongue, but it was another long moment before he finally spoke. Still keeping his hand pressed to Alba's mouth.

"Perhaps."

Alba groaned, collapsing back to the floor in frustration. The merrow grit his teeth in annoyance, like he'd expected Alba to cry and rain gratitude down upon him with such a simple agreement. He added in a bitter tone:

"There are many things I don't know about this place any longer—but who knows who or what information will be found once someone starts digging. Me in the water and you on land. Be it my kin, or your mother who claims to know so much about us. Perhaps one of us may be able to find something for the other."

Alba sighed, but nodded. Realizing—perhaps that was all he'd be able to get without exchanging his life for more. And despite how thin that promise of help was—it was, at least, a promise of help. No matter how small, Alba was willing to accept anything he was given by that point of hopelessness.

"I'll even keep the drowned from bothering you any longer if it means you won't look so… wild the next time you go into town," the merrow went on. "If it'll help you earn the trust of the people there."

Alba should have argued the real reason he'd looked wild when last carried bleeding into the doctor's office—but something else caught his attention, first.

"The—what?" he asked breathlessly, a line of spittle trailing off his lips as the hand was finally pulled away. Though even as he asked, he thought he knew. He recalled that corpselike thing that'd attacked the merrow the first night they met, which then swept Alba into its arms and dragged him all the way back to shore. "Do you mean—those people in the water?"

"People, yes and no," the merrow muttered. He finally stepped off of Alba's body, and Alba reckoned with the height and size of him.

Broad, carved with distinct muscle over every inch of his anatomy, legs and torso and shoulders and arms all flexing with every movement. Had he not been so enamored by the merrow's face and hair and physique, Alba's gaze may have even lingered on the prominent length dangling between his legs, eyes only flicking back up again as the mer-man went on:

"Humans who die at sea take on many forms—sometimes sea birds, sometimes wailing spirits, sometimes drowned corpses. By the sailor art on your skin, I would've thought you knew that already."

"How do you intend on keepin' them away?" Alba asked while sitting up, losing his train of thought as he scrambled for anywhere else but the man's body to look. Still tempted to scour every inch further out of curiosity. He was definitely too drunk to manage such a thing with grace. He was definitely too drunk to think he was capable of averting his eyes in the first place.

His face flushed again with inebriation and hot blood once fully upright, room briefly whirling around him and making him press a hand to his eyes to keep from being sick. He only glanced over his shoulder again at the sound of a heavy weight collapsing onto the squeaky bed where he himself had just been sleeping.

"I stay here, with you."

"Oh—absolutely not."

But the reclining merrow-man was already making himself comfortable, leg crossing over a knee, arms bending behind his head. Closing his eyes and relaxing naked on the blankets, hair spilling in a halo over the pillow and long enough to drape off the edge to curl on the floor.

"Do you have a name, at least?" Alba tried again. Wanting to maintain whatever grasp of control he had on that arrangement quickly slipping through his fingers again. The merrow sucked on his teeth, as if in consideration, eyes cracking open to gaze at the ceiling.

"Eridanys."

"Like the stars?"

Eridanys looked at him with a slight twitch in his brow, like it was impressive for Alba to know. Alba rolled his eyes, suddenly wondering how little a merrow could possibly know about the life of a sailor.

"Yes," he answered nonetheless. "The river, specifically."

"Well, I'm Alba," Alba answered. Eridanys pressed his lips together, parted them, then closed them again as if he wanted to argue, but then thought better of the effort. Perhaps by the way Alba looked at him with tempered annoyance. Still trying to digest exactly everything that'd come to pass since being forced awake by a naked stranger in his house.

Eridanys, the merrow who could sprout legs, but could not cross onto Moon Harbor's shores, perhaps because of the traps placed for him. Who might be able to learn information about Edythe Marsh's whereabouts if Alba was able to find where the other merrow who'd once lived in that harbor had gone. It was a long shot—but Alba didn't have much choice. He didn't have any allies, he didn't have any other leads or clues of where else to look.

None of that taking into consideration how the same merrow making himself at home in Alba's own bed had cursed him to remain in Moon Harbor until he did as he was asked.

"Eager to start?" Eridanys asked as Alba collected his work pants and shirt from where they were folded at the foot of the bed, braiding his hair over one shoulder and grabbing his cane.

"I'm not goin' back to town for a few days," he said. "You can stay until then if you really want to. For now, I might as well get to work for the day. I'll be in the lighthouse once the sun goes down later. Please don't eat any of my provisions in the pantry."

"What do you mean, won't be going into town for another few—! Come back here!"

But Alba was already hobbling down the stairs. No longer listening. Flushed with lingering whiskey and relief and silent gratitude to his mother for all the times she insisted patience would lure what he wanted to come to him. Perhaps the merrow Eridanys thought he'd caught Alba off guard—but Alba was just thrilled to finally have even a sliver of hope to cling to.