Page 41 of Between Salt and Serenades
Great waves.
Breena slid the black wool sleeves up her arms to the crease of her elbows, a bead of sweat forming on her temple as she focused.
“Do you see anything?” I whispered as she pressed her face closer to the warped glass trimmed with hammered iron.
“No, nothing yet,” she grunted as she tried to reposition herself, squatting on a windowsill between two planters.
“Well, do youfeelanything?” I asked, hoping to get something out of her. I waited in the dewy grass, shadowed from the glow of the waning gibbous moon by a large rowan tree. The fisherman’s cottage was nestled between rolling hills, the sea far from view, a surprising location, given his occupation. There were several homes scattered across the wild grasses and sporadic blooming flowers, the soft orange flicker of candlelight emanating from the one closest to us.
“No, it looks like he’s not home. If he was anywhere in this cottage, I’d be able to sense his presence,” Breena said. She waved me over, causing the lump in my throat that I had been trying to ignore to become unbearable. I knew what would come next, and I’d told Breena she would have to wait for the very last second before I caved and used my song against her. It was finally time.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I said as I approached her, leaning against a planter and rubbing a waxy green leaf between my thumb and forefinger. She stilled my movement with her stare, bringing attention to my anxious fiddling. I glanced up at her, and my gaze immediately landed on her reflective eyes, sending the moon’s light right back into the sky.
“Your eyes. They’re beautiful.” It was all I could manage, all I could think to say when this woman dripping with beauty stared back at me. She was crouched on the rocky windowsill, leaning against the window, one of her sharp teeth poking over her bottom lip, her eyes reflecting the night sky like a feral animal. Those teeth. I wanted to feel them against my skin, scraping and carving her claim on me. But she belonged to another, and the mere thought of it made me want to climb out of my skin.
This view of her reminded me of her seal form, her primal form, and something about seeing her like this finally gave methe courage I needed to do what I had to. She would get her pelt back. Tonight.
“Yes, I’m ready.”
I pushed myself off the planter and positioned myself in front of her. Her bent knees were on either side of my chest, never touching me. I stretched my arm up toward her face but flinched back. My palm itched to nestle itself against her warm cheek despite my healing burn. All I could do was stare at the spot right beside her ear that I imagined I held.
“Are you?” I asked, delaying the inevitable so I had a few more moments to find the right hypnotic words. We needed to make sure she didn’t go after the fisherman, but to do that, I needed to steal her freedom.
Breena nodded, but that wasn’t good enough for me.
“I need you to say it,” I demanded, and my jaw clicked like it always did when my tone dropped to my most serious.
“I’m ready,” Breena whispered, not an ounce of fear or hesitation in her voice. When she noticed my hesitancy, she sighed and let her head fall to the side. “I know you can’t touch me, but will you sing to me, siren? I want to feel you, and your songs touch my very soul.”
I didn’t respond, too lost to blatant shock, so she continued and said, “I remember it from the boat, you know? That day we first met. It wasn’t meant for me then, but I want it to be for me now, like it was the other night. I want your song to wrap itself around me, weaving through me like you are undoubtedly already weaved into my heart.”
My mouth went dry, and the only words my mind could fathom came in the way of music, an ancient language of song lost to all but the sirens. I wove myself into it, taking pieces of my heart, my soul, and transmuting them into pure energy.
The song started low in my belly as a mass of untapped energy. As it traveled through my body and up into my throat, sodid that stubborn lump. When the sound of my song pierced the air, the hypnotic melody focused in on Breena and slithered into her ears, touching her in the only way I could. The second it did, Breena stilled.
“Close your eyes.” My voice came out in long, mournful strokes, like black paint on a pristine canvas. Breena slowly blinked, and those big brown eyes of hers didn’t open again.
When I knew she was well under my spell, those eerily melodic words of mine slipped out once more. “Your focus is on your pelt. Should the fisherman come home, you will not go to him. You will feel no pull from the link between you and the captain,” I uttered.
Breena didn’t move except for the slow tracing of her eyes behind her lids, back and forth, back and forth. I brushed a wayward curl out of her face, careful not to touch her skin, and let out a belly-emptying sigh.
“You will maintain your autonomy. Do you understand me?” I asked. Breena dipped her head, and when she straightened her neck, her glassy eyes stared back at me.
“That’s good, my little droplet. Let’s reclaim your freedom.”
“You told me to maintain my autonomy,” she whispered, her voice distant and hollow. “That wasn’t the deal. What if?—”
“What if nothing. This will work, I promise you,” I said. I may have slipped in that little sentence, but those words didn’t erase the ones before it. “Where to next?”
I nodded my chin forward, signaling it was time to move on. Breena squinted her eyes for all of one second before they softened, and her lashes fluttered. “We can go in through the back door.”
My eyes flicked to the door that led to the stone patio. The space was beautifully illuminated by the moon, the wild, winding gardens surrounding the patio a satisfyingjuxtaposition to perfectly trimmed hedges. I could only imagine the beauty of the garden lit by the waking sun.
“After you.” I motioned her forward, knowing the selkie didn’t need my help getting off the window ledge. She’d jumped out of a window with me in her arms and a pack on her back, sticking the landing, no less.
Breena hopped down from the window’s ledge then made her way up the stone patio steps. She was careful not to step on the moss growing out of the cracks until she was standing in front of the rear entrance of the quaint cottage. She placed her hand on the nob, and with one quick jerk, she broke the lock of the wooden door. With a satisfied smile, she pushed open the door and stepped into the home of the man who had stolen her pelt.
I followed shortly after her, lighting candles in her wake. I started with the stout beeswax candles clustered on a copper tray in the middle of a wooden dining table. When the orange glow lit up the space, Breena and I both glanced at each other. Her eyes were glazed over, but the confusion in them was clear as day.
