Page 37 of The Merman's Betrothal
‘Try this.’ Fionn crouched next to him and passed over a polished clam shell. A knife, like the one he’d gifted Rory.
‘Thanks.’
Fionn pulled another item out of his harness, a leaf shaped cutting stone that put Rory in mind of Neolithic tools. Together, they worked in silence to slice away the detritus.
The leatherback grunted occasionally, flinching when they accidentally caused a cord to strangle her more tightly, and also when it finally released, freeing a flipper with a trickle of bright red blood from the lacerations it had left in her flesh.
It was painstaking work. Acha watched from a nearby rock, sensibly avoiding the polluted surf. The drizzling rain cleared up and pale sunlight soon penetrated the hanging clouds. When Rory realised he was feeling thirsty, he recognised the leatherback must be suffering even more.
‘We need to work faster,’ he said, moving around to the other side of her body. ‘She’ll dehydrate if she’s here for too long.’
‘I know,’ Fionn answered quietly. He hadn’t looked up once from his work, but now he did in order to fix Rory with a calm stare. ‘She will be all right, Rory. I promise.’
Rory found himself trying to speak around a lump in his throat. ‘She’s fucking torn to shreds.’
‘She will be looked after once she is in the water. I shall arrange an escort.’
Rory shook his head, forcing out an incredulous laugh simply to hide the tears in his eyes. ‘You can do that? Perks of being a prince. You really ought to put an end to all of us, you know.’
The last part just slipped out, dark and bitter. He’d been thinking it the whole time. How disgusting humans were. How careless. How fucking worthless, just like him.
Without warning, Fionn’s hand shot out to grasp Rory’s. His voice was low and intense. ‘This is not your fault, Rory.’
‘Isn’t it?’ Rory blinked back grief and fury. ‘What have I done tostopthis? I can recycle and buy my fruit without packaging and treasure my stupid fucking bag for life all I want, but deep down we all know it’s a scam. I still throw my rubbish in the bin like everyone else. I still eat instant meals and fish that have been caught fucking oceans away. I still throw carbon into the air like its fucking confetti.’
From the confused and vaguely distressed look on Fionn’s face, he knew the merman was struggling to keep up. Even Rory wasn’t sure where his rant was going, but he continued anyway, letting the words and the anger pour out of him like poison from a wound.
‘No, I’m out here talking about sustainable lobster populations as if that’ll do shit for the wider ocean climate. This turtle shouldn’t evenbehere. She should be out in the Atlantic—’
‘They come here for the jellyfish,’ Fionn tried to interject.
‘It’s not jellyfish season until the summer,’ Rory railed back. ‘It shouldn’t be warm enough yet, but it is! I’ll bet she’s been fooled into coming here early. Marine temperatures arefucked. The whole ecosystem’s in danger of collapsing. The ecosystem that humans rely on, by the way—not that you’d know it, by the way we treat it! And here I am wasting my time laying creels just so an old man doesn’t look at me like I’m worth even less than what he already sees…’
He came to a stuttering stop, drawing in a deep breath.
It’s him,Rory thought, trying not to look Fionn in the eye.It’s being alone with him between the sky and the waves. It opens me somehow.
‘We should get back to work,’ he said.
Wisely, Fionn didn’t argue. But after letting a few minutes of silence pass, he did say, ‘I feel I can perhaps relate to your sense of needing to do more. That there are more important duties out there than the one I find ascribed to me.’
Fuck. Rory wasn’t in the mood to have some kind of touchy-feely talk. Definitely nothing that threatened to bring his dad into the conversation. So he just nodded and kept his eyes down.
Within the next hour, they finished extricating the exhausted turtle. Her carapace was criss-crossed with cuts and abrasions from the garbage. Rory hoped she would survive the trauma. Shock could be just as dangerous to her as any snarled fishing nets.
He wondered how they would get her back into the ocean. He guessed she must weigh at least half a ton.
To Fionn, this was a non-issue. He slid his arms underneath the turtle and then—admittedly with a grunt of effort—simply picked her up.
Rory tried not to gawk as he watched Fionn wade into the waves with his precious cargo. A few moments later he returned for Rory.
‘Acha will stay with her until I return,’ Fionn told him. ‘Now I will take you back to your boat.’
‘I—’ Rory caught himself, desperate to argue against going home just yet, but unable to push himself over the precipice.
‘Yes?’ Fionn was so very close. His eyes so very piercing.
‘How do I do more?’ Rory asked, finally meeting his stare full-on. ‘I want to help in a way that’s meaningful.’
