Page 37 of Between Salt and Serenades
I tried to free myself from her, but that damned dress took hold of my legs like kelp, keeping me close to her. I tore the skirt of her dress as I pulled away once more, pressing my back against the opposite side of the tub. I threw up a shield of water between us, not taking the risk again that our skin would come into contact.
“He has it.” The words broke through Breena’s sobs, and I threw myself against the shield between us. My spread hand pressed up against it, desperate to hold her, desperate to comfort her tormented heart. “He has my pelt.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AND WEDNESDAY IT IS
“What’s this?” Breena’s curious fingers left the grass we sat upon and reached toward me. Her warm skin met my cool chest as the tips of her fingers trailed along the glass hanging around my neck. As she did, she zapped me and pulled back just as fast as the pain sank into my skin. My stomach jumped, and Breena cradled her hand as if she was protecting her own child.
The two of us exchanged a look of confusion and hurt before I averted my gaze and focused on where the rocky cliffs dropped off into the sea. Neither of us wanted to think about what had happened last night and all that had followed. We definitely didn’t want to speak about it, because if we spoke it into existence, we were acknowledging that the truth we’d been avoiding was already our reality.
The two of us wouldn’t be able to touch without pain until her pelt was in her possession once more. This fact was more telling than either of us wanted to admit, because Breena had no problem brushing up against the man who served us breakfast this morning, or the kind stranger who gave her an encouraging shoulder pat during our walk to the cliffs. I watched as others touched her, waiting with bated breath to see if they wouldwither in pain, but they never did. Only I was affected by this fisherman captain claiming Breena, and it took longer than I liked to admit to understand why.
“Sidra?” Breena asked, keeping her hands away from me this time. She twisted them in her green cotton-covered lap, a look of worry passing over her face. As much as she tried to mask her emotions with an unconvincing smile, I could see right through her wobbling façade.
“Oh!” I lifted the necklace off my chest so she could see my creation in all its glory. I wanted her to see the way the sun hit the opalescent glass and sent shards of light dancing across my skin, to see if it awakened something in her as it did for me. “I, um, needed to clear my head last night, so I made it with my grandfather while you rested. Took a few tries, but I think I finally got the droplet design right.”
“You made this?” Breena’s eyes lit up, and her fingers twitched, as if she was eager to run her fingers over the glass again. “It’s magnificent and… familiar.”
The corner of her lip curled into a smile. Not a façade, but a real, genuine smile.
“Well, when he’d asked me what I wanted to make, maybe the image of a little droplet came to mind,” I admitted, releasing an embarrassed chuckle. My face burned with each word I spoke, but Breena’s eyes only wandered over my face with shrouded amusement.
She cleared her throat and stretched her tempted hand over her head before leaning back on it against the blanket. The top of her hand hung off into the grass, and she tickled the blades with her ever-moving fingers. “I’m sure you had all sorts of pieces like it that you left behind. Sirens can be quite creative in that way.”
“Not quite.” Stretching back on my own corner of the tartan blanket, I rolled my ankles. My feet were sore from our walk up the hilly landscape to find this place—a hidden slice of peace. “Asa child, I used to make all sorts of stuff from the random odds and ends I found in the sea, but it doesn’t make sense to do all that now. It hasn’t for a while.”
“What changed?” she asked. Her eyes flicked back down to my chest as she awaited a response.
“My dad started spending more time on land when my sister, Zellia, and I grew a little older. I planned on being a tinker forever, making things for my pod to trade, but I had to become my family’s hunter in his absence.” My lungs took in a deep breath full of the salty, seaside air, and I relished in the power of the scent and its ability to calm me.
“You had to?” When her eyes met mine once more, they were clouded with confusion.
“Every family in the pod needs to contribute to the bounty. You don’t just feed your family, you feed all the families,” I explained, realizing I hadn’t spoken much about my people since being here on land with Breena. Was it bad that there was a reason for that? Was it bad that I was able to breathe easier each time they slipped my mind?
“And your father wasn’t around to contribute enough?” She caught on quickly. Shade from a passing cloud afforded her brief relief from the sun, allowing her to relax her furrowed brow.
“Something like that. The elders put pressure on my mother, but I could see the weight his absence had on her, and I wasn’t about to let her go off with a spear. She wasn’t meant to be a hunter.”
“Were you?” Breena asked yet another question, probing further into the things I’d rather keep buried in the safety of my mind.
“I’m good at it,” I said with a shrug. My gaze drifted from her face and got lost somewhere along the horizon where the sea washed the sky.
“That wasn’t my question.” The string of words uttered from her mouth sent a wave of bumps down my arms. I may have hidden my truths from my pod, my family, and myself for so long, but Breena wouldn’t let me do the same to her. She demanded my truth and all the painful thoughts I never wanted to face.
“I don’t know anymore,” I whispered, letting the air fill with nothing but the sound of waves crashing upon rock before I spoke again. “It doesn’t matter, though.”
“It should be allowed to matter,” she said. “You don’t allow yourself to dream of a different life, do you? You’ve simply accepted your fate.”
I may have wanted to scream from the top of this cliff that I didn’t want to pick up a spear again for the rest of my life, but what good would that do? If I didn’t, my mother or Zellia would have to. Zellia was meant to save lives, not take them. And ever since my father’s death, my mother had been far too fragile, of both the body and the mind.
“My grandfather’s shop will be opening soon. We should get over there.” I began gathering my things from the blanket, shoving them into the cloth bag I’d taken from my dad’s old home.
Breena threw a corner of the blanket over my hands then took a deep breath and pressed her hands on top of the tartan fabric. I stilled, feeling the pressure from her body through the thin wool, even if I couldn’t feel her skin on mine. She forced me to be still and sit with these feelings ravaging my gut. I closed my eyes, a prick of emotion stinging the corners of them.
Depths, when was the last time I let myself cry? When was the last time I allowed the flood of emotion to consume me instead of holding it back like the fish trapped on the other side of the humans’ merciless net?
“What you want matters.” Breena’s firm tone, reconfirming and healing, made my walls crumble to dust. Silent tears tracked down my face, taking with them the notion that I had to sacrifice all my happiness for those I loved.
