Chapter 23

Just like the day prior,Eridanys was determined to find and offer Alba any pretty thing he dredged up from the mud at the bottom of the pool. Alba, who sat on the edge of the moss and combed merrow oils through his hair until it shined, smiling every time that piece of the moon appeared beneath him again with more treasures to offer. Long strings of pearls, pieces of chipped glass mosaic, a dusty-pink scallop painted around the edge in shining gold.

When even Eridanys grew tired from all the effort, he sat against the edge of the rocks as Alba offered to comb aromatic oils through his hair, too, strangely thrilled at the opportunity to touch something so perfect. Already softer than silk and shinier than silver, the oils made hardly any difference in what was already so lovely, and Alba made sure to express it out loud every time he thought about it.

Eventually the compliments ensured Eridanys' ego got the better of him, taking Alba to kiss him. To open his shirt, then his pants, to pull him over the moss and spread his legs and devour him in exchange for all the musing over how beautiful and perfect and handsome he was.

Alba didn't complain—he even liked gripping that flawless hair in his hand as his toes curled in the loamy moss and his back arched in pleasure. Left gasping and grinning after Eridanys' tongue was finished with him, closing his eyes and listening to the waves crashing against the opposite side of the rocks, the birds seeking solace in the bowls on the wall, the sound of the siren's tail lazily waving back and forth in the water. If he could, he might stay there forever.

"When we had that mating ritual on the rocks… was it the same thing as that?" Alba asked, pointing to the depictions on the wall.

"More or less," Eridanys answered, crossing his arms over the edge of the moss to rest his chin on the backs of his hands. Alba sat up to see him better, sitting so close to one another that the siren's cheek brushed against the side of his leg. "Back then, it was an affair of everyone to come and watch. To oversee the marriage between land and sea, shore-callers and sea-callers."

Alba frowned. He absentmindedly squeezed the water from his hair as Eridanys spoke, not liking the thought of it, though he wasn't sure why at first. Was it the idea of mating with someone while a crowd of onlookers watched? Or—was it more the thought of Eridanys doing such a thing with someone else for everyone to see?

"Does it interest you that much? Merrow lore."

Alba turned back with an eyebrow raised, like his response would be obvious. Clearly not to Eridanys, however, who gazed at Alba with a blank expression, still resting his chin on overlapped arms. Waiting for an answer. It made Alba self-conscious, not sure he'd ever get used to being stared at like that. It made him ramble.

"Well… apart from simply wanting to understand what I've gotten myself into, I think learnin' things about the merrow, especially the ones who used to be here… it helps me feel closer to her. Erm, my mother. Like it gives me somethin' to look forward to, as if I'll finally have somethin' other than sailing to talk to her about when I see her again. Not so much stories about people circlin' and watching a merrow and a human mate, let alone how I ended up doing the same thing, but different, but—um, well… Her stories about mermaids and mermaid magic and them granting wishes were all I had that Josiah Warren hadn't tainted, for so long…" he trailed off, before closing his eyes and sighing. Eridanys' fingers found Alba's hair, beginning to braid it, as if he could sense the growing frustration. "I wish it had all been as sweet as that. But like you said earlier, reality is hardly as lovely as the stories told about it."

Eridanys' fingers slowed, before forming another plait and running it through again. Alba bit his lip, adding: "I'm… sorry. About what became of your home. Even if it wasn't as perfect as my mother used to describe. I imagine it was at least better than what it turned into."

"Don't be," Eridanys replied after a moment. He paused for a long time, before continuing. "I didn't know what to expect when I came back. It's not unusual for relations between merrow and humans to sour after so many generations, but—I suppose I never expected what actually happened. And I still… can't imagine how it degraded so far to become what it did…"

"Then, what we saw in the woods last night—was not a common ritual between merrow and the townspeople," Alba commented, less a question than an acknowledgement. Once again choosing his tone carefully.

Eridanys smirked, and Alba was relieved he sensed the sprinkling of sarcasm.

"No. Not that I was aware of, at least."

Alba didn't know how to say it—but couldn't hold the question back any longer, either. Eridanys would either answer, or he wouldn't. But Alba couldn't stop himself. "When you first approached your kin in the woods—they implied, erm, that it was… your fault, what happened to them. Do you know…?"

"I've been thinking about that as well," Eridanys admitted with a frown, responding more readily than Alba expected. "I'm sure they're referring to the circumstances around my banishment, but… apart from that, I don't know. Whatever lead to what we witnessed last night was their own doing. Whether they would admit it or not."

"You didn't tell the townspeople to use your kin's body parts for earrings and fishin' nets?"

Another smirk, once again to Alba's relief. "I did not. I don't think I would have been that creative."

"What…" Alba trailed off, unsure again. "What were the circumstances around your banishment?"

Eridanys' expression did not crumple into disdain or anger; it didn't smirk or chuckle, either. It remained blank, which Alba hadn't considered might be the worst sort of reaction to receive. He almost added that Eridanys didn't have to talk about it if he didn't wish to, but the siren exhaled through his nose, closing his eyes and shaking his head.

"I refused to obey a command my human partner made of me. One thing lead to another," he answered simply. Clearly not willing to talk about it in its entirety—at least, not yet. Still, Alba wouldn't take those simple words for granted. He wouldn't bother Eridanys to say more. He nodded in understanding.

"I'm sorry your last partner did not treat you well."

"Don't be," the siren muttered, reaching up to touch the side of Alba's face with his hands. "I much prefer my new partner, anyway. He's much more submissive. Both on his feet and on his back. His blood was warm and sweet, too, as a virgin."

"Oh, stop it," Alba groaned, knocking Eridanys' hands away and making him laugh. "Virgins do not have blood any different from anyone else."

"Perhaps you're just special, then," he amended. Alba rolled his eyes, throwing out his leg to shove Eridanys back into the water. The siren went with a sharp laugh cut off by the water, leaving only a ring of bubbles and a thrashing tail as he fought to right himself again beneath the surface. Hair clung to his face and down his chest when he re-emerged, still laughing. A sound Alba realized might be more powerful than any song ever would be.

Turning his eyes down as his cheeks flushed, Alba finally got back to his feet. He searched for his clothes before any needy blood could color his cheeks and inspire Eridanys to do such distracting things with his tongue again.

"Should we head back?" Alba asked while pulling his freezing-cold slacks back on.

"I have a gentler way of getting you out of here," Eridanys answered, crossing his arms over the ledge once again and watching Alba's every move. "The lagoon extends that way. Opens up at the river a little bit into the trees. We can walk back."

"A reminder I don't have my cane. Someone threw it in the grass by the lighthouse."

"It's implied I was going to carry you," Eridanys said with a sarcastic smile. "Seeing as I carried you all the way here, why wouldn't I also carry you all the way back? By sea or on land."

Alba hated how his ears went hot at the offer, not to mention the way Eridanys said it. He just focused on the buttons of his shirt, pulling on his boots, then finally returning to the water to slide back in. Eridanys swept him up the moment he did, and Alba took hold of him in return, careful not to pull his hair or bend the line of finned spines up his back as he positioned himself securely like the first time.

Eridanys carried him across the length of water in the main atrium, then ducked beneath a partially-submerged archway to emerge in a room on the other side just as tall but not nearly as wide around. Alba still gawked at the height of the spires, charmed by the sound of rain and wind through trees closer than ever.

"Did everyone in Moon Harbor know of this place?" he asked. "Or was it only other shore-callers?"

"Only merrow and their shore-callers," Eridanys confirmed. "I'm sure the townspeople knew of this place, not unlike many of our other secrets, but at least while I was here, very few were allowed inside to bathe and fuck one another."

"Oh—did they?"

"Fuck each other? Constantly. These walls used to ring out with the sounds of merrow-human orgies at almost all hours of the day."

Alba's ears burned again. "Oh," he whispered. "Sounds fun."

Eridanys hummed with a little smile, as if disappearing back into those memories. Alba didn't like the little pang of jealousy that struck him again, not wanting to think about his siren pleasuring or being pleasured by anyone else—but he pushed the thoughts away as quickly as they came.

"They would have all liked you very much, you know," Eridanys went on, as if he knew. "The way you sound. The way you taste. Whimpering and writhing under the hands and mouths of a dozen other merrow, I wonder how long you would have been able to stand it before begging for mercy…"

"And you would've let them?" Alba snapped back, blood turning his cheeks red as he pulled on Eridanys' hair. "You would've been fine with that? I don't believe it."

"Hmm," he considered, chuckling with every tug of his hair. "I would have. But only once."

"What?"

"To give them a taste. So they always thought about what they were missing while I fucked you alone in front of all of them."

"S—" Alba choked. "Stop it. No you wouldn't have."

"Guess we'll never know."

"Well, I think…" But Alba's argument trailed off when something caught his eye in the next cavern, crawling up the cave wall. A rope, fed through a series of iron loops hammered into the stone. He might not have thought anything else of it, had he not then spotted a second one. And on the other side of them, a third. A fourth. Whatever it was—they were casually swimming right into the center of where all four lines met at the ceiling.

"Eridanys, wait?—"

Something clicked overhead—followed by the rapid hissing of ropes through metal eyelets. Like the mouth of a beast from below, the seabed suddenly rushed up to meet them, finding the bottom of Eridanys' tail and crushing it into Alba's legs, before slamming into them from all sides. Water spilled in a deafening torrent as the net tore them from the water and hoisted them impossibly fast into the air, momentum nearly slamming them into the ceiling where the hoist was nailed into the stone.

Crashing down again into the apex of the hanging net, Alba was crushed beneath the weight of Eridanys' body and writhing tail. He clawed at Eridanys' scales in a desperate attempt to pull himself free and take a breath, even only a small one, just enough that he might not suffocate so quickly.

Eridanys fought to right himself in the awkward grounding, finally managing to grab Alba under the arm and wrench him upward. Alba clawed after him, finally pulling himself free, wiping his sore nose from where the siren's tail had smashed and made it bleed. He was relieved to find Eridanys equally unharmed—until his hands smeared through dark blood staining moonlit scales. He gasped at the lacerations criss-crossing Eridanys' tail, cut by the rough fibers of the rope.

He turned quickly back to Eridanys, looking him over one more time. Worried he might have missed something else. Eridanys just looked at him with the same intensity as always, as if on the verge of asking if Alba had planned it, if he was behind their sudden capture—but Alba's clear concern must have kept the words at bay.

Another click rang out through the cave, and both froze. Alba held his breath, searching in every direction, trying to anticipate what else could possibly leap out to get them when they were already twenty feet in the air—and then he saw it. A lantern unwinding like a lighthouse counterweight from another mechanical hoist on the ceiling, descending until it bobbed on the rope at their eye-level. Already illuminated, it smelled of freshly-struck kerosene soaking a wick. He and Eridanys both stared in silent apprehension, Alba's mind racing trying to figure out what, to figure out why, who. Eridanys had once mentioned traps laid around the harbor—could that have been one of them? But why didn't Eridanys notice it?

Alba turned his eyes to search the ceiling, then to examine the rope netting up close. The woven fibers couldn't have been any older than a few years. They lacked the same silvery fibers as all the others he'd seen used for fishing. New alarms pricked the back of his mind, making the hairs on his arms stand on end.

"Alba," Eridanys whispered. Alba snapped back to look at him, breath catching when he saw a faint glow forming in the backs of the siren's eyes.

He followed where they stared, finding the dangling lantern again—just as the heat of the wick warmed a metal plate encased inside, beginning to turn. Encircling the light, gradually, then slightly faster as the metal softened and relaxed. Around, around, around—occulting the glow.

Alba had come to memorize the exact pattern of Moon Harbor's lighthouse characteristic—and it took only a handful of rotations for him to know, the pattern was exactly the same.

He moved before realizing, snapping around and smashing his hand over Eridanys' eyes before they could gaze a moment longer. Eridanys' own hands flew up to claw at Alba's on instinct, hissing like an animal in warning, but Alba just shoved his hand back and pinned the siren against the netting.

"Stop!" he exclaimed, voice cracking. "Please, just—it's alright. It's alright, Eridanys. It's—it's like the lantern in the lighthouse. I don't want it to hypnotize you. Not again. Alright? That's all. Just trust me."

Eridanys went silent, though his attempts to tear Alba's hand away diminished. Breathing heavily, Alba swallowed back on the nervous lump in his throat, forcing himself to ask: "Are you alright? Are—are you still with me?"

"Y-yes," Eridanys answered. His voice trembled in a way Alba didn't expect, a way that pulled on the frayed edges of his soul like the sound of a frightened animal might. He held Eridanys' face a moment longer, before gently sliding the pads of his thumbs down from Eridanys' eyebrows, over his eyelids, trailing off his lashes onto his cheeks.

"Keep your eyes closed for now, alright?" he said. "Just in case."

Eridanys' hands grasped at Alba's wrists, as if Alba was his only anchor. As if a reminder of the nightmare of being hypnotized was enough to petrify him the moment he realized the risk of it happening again. Alba's mouth dangled open with want to say something, something comforting, but he didn't know.

"It's…" he tried, anyway. "It's gonna be alright. I'm gonna get you down, so don't worry. Just trust me, alright? These ropes aren't anythin' special, I just need a way to cut them… Ah, hold on."

He patted around his clothes, sighing in relief when he found the gold-painted clamshell brought to him from the bottom of the pool was still in the pocket of his slacks. He turned it over in his palm until it nestled as comfortably as any other gutting rib ever had on the deck of a tilting ship.

"Keep your eyes closed," he reiterated, flexing the shell in one hand and ghosting his fingers over Eridanys' eyes with the other. "The shell you brought me, I think I can use it to cut the ropes. If it breaks, will you go down and get me another one sometime?"

Despite everything, Eridanys smiled wearily. "Of course."

Alba's grasp trembled with having to balance on wavering legs while pulling himself up to where the net dangled from the hoist. Gritting his teeth, he summoned everything he had, stretching his arm through one of the gaps in the netting and gliding the scalloped edge of the shell up and down the thinnest frayed fiber he could find. It was a grueling, miserably slow task, enough that he had to stop and catch his breath more than once. Each time, Eridanys' hands lifted to clutch him around the waist and support him upright, and Alba's heart raced with determination to keep his siren out of harm's way.

He worked the scallop over the ever-fraying rope again and again, back and forth, fingers going numb the harder he pressed with every slice—until eventually, the weight on the thinning rope made it groan, then creak, and Alba barely yanked his arm back before it snapped.

Crashing back to the water, it knocked the air from Alba's lungs, and he was grateful for the haste with which Eridanys wrapped him in strong arms to draw him right back to the surface again. Gasping and coughing, Alba managed a pathetic ‘thank you' as Eridanys searched him all over—but both of them fell instantly silent at the faint sound of approaching footsteps.

Eridanys barely glanced over his shoulder, before sweeping Alba toward a dark corner of the pool behind a cluster of rocks. Alba kept his mouth clamped shut, attempting to silence his sporadic coughing, swallowing back every twitch of the muscles at the back of his throat. He didn't care if there was a mouthful of water still in his lungs—he knew he didn't want to be found by whoever set that trap.

Four men stepped from the shadowy passageway at the end of the cavern. Alba recognized them all to be people from the town—but the one at the front he knew best of all. Eugene Michaels, with his cotton hat and a cigarette hanging from his mouth. Looking perturbed at the sight of an empty net floating lifelessly on the surface of the pool, lacking whatever prey it originally snagged. The others drew the failed trap to the shore, and Eridanys' breaths stopped just as Alba's did.

The men knelt down alongside the netting, picking it up and observing it all over. With the slightest flicker of light through a gap in the ceiling, Alba realized with a terrified thud of his heart—there were white scales from Eridanys' tail embedded in the fibers.

"Knew there was at least one more," Eugene grunted, pulling a handkerchief from the inner pocket of his coat to pluck up each individual one, like gathering coins from a web. "Knew the marks on that wickie were merrow-stains, too, goddamnit. Actin' like he didn't know nothin' about them in this harbor. Goddamn lyin' Warren sailors."

Alba's heart slammed harder in his chest. Eridanys' arm around him tightened.

"You think it's that one who did in Dawson?" Another man asked as Eugene finished gathering his collection of scales, twisting off the kerchief into a makeshift pouch and tucking it back into his coat. "Sure he's the only one left, isn't'e?

Eugene didn't answer. He just stared, silent and motionless, at the water. Alba had never seen such an intense look on that man's face—one no different than a captain staring down a storm on the horizon. Certain he could outsmart it.

"Dawson say anythin' to you ‘bout where he might be?" Another man asked. Eridanys' held breath faltered, cold against the back of Alba's neck. Eugene closed his eyes and pressed the handkerchief containing the scales to his forehead.

"Dawson still hasn't said a thing," he muttered. The rest of the men shifted uncomfortably, before one offered apprehensive apologies.

"Sorry to hear that, Gene. Maybe next time. He's lookin' more like ‘imself every month, can't need much more now."

"Should we check the other nets around town?" another asked, lighting his own cigarette with the stiff movements of someone irritated to the brink of their sanity. "Might've caught ‘im somewhere else. Clearly he's not gettin' far if this one cut him up bad enough to graze scales."

Eugene considered it for a long time, before nodding.

"Yeah. You and the boys go check the other traps."

"What about you?"

The man turned back to the water. Gazing across it as Alba, even from that distance, watched the thoughts turn behind his eyes. Contemplating a storm on the horizon, one only he could see, one only he knew.

"Think I might go pay that wickie a visit."

"The one stayin' with you?"

Alba's heart pounded faster. Eugene flicked his cigarette into the water, finally turning to leave.

"Haven't seen ‘im since last night. Must be back at the lighthouse," he answered. "Better go check on him—and see if I can jog his memory ‘bout how he got those bloodstains."