Page 54 of Between Salt and Serenades
“Sorry, I just… I don’t know.”She averted her gaze.“You haven’t chased me in ages. Haven’t laughed with me since?—”
She didn’t need to finish her sentence. We both knew she was talking about my father’s death. I didn’t reply; I just returned her stare and waited for the right thing to say to enter my mind. Surely, if I stared back at her long enough, something would come to me.
Zellia continued and said,“It’s nice. I’ve missed you.”
“I was only gone for a week,”I said with a half smile.
“Not really. You haven’t been here, haven’t been yourself in years. Even before Dad died, you turned into this icy version of who you once were. I’m not sure what happened on land, but I’m thankful for it. You’ve only been home for three days, and yet I’ve talked to you more than I have in years. I feel like I have my sister back.”
My mouth went dry, which was a very unusual thing to occur in the sea. If I didn’t have words for her before, I really didn’t have them now. My heart ached for her and all the time we lost. My heart ached that she probably felt like her sister had died long before her father had.
“I feel more like myself too,”I said.“With the fish being back, it’s like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. But Zellia, I have to tell you…”
“Look!”Zellia shouted, a loud sound pinging off the inside of my skull. Holding my temple, my head swung in the direction of her outstretched pointer finger.
Off in the distance, a grey figure glided gracefully through the water. My heart leapt as my immediate thought was Breena, but that hope was fleeting as the figure came closer and into focus.
“They’re back,”I whispered. I admired the magnificent creature from afar, my muscles locking up when I tried to swim closer.
“What are you waiting for? This is why I brought you down here.”
I’d always had a close relationship with the sharks. They’d been my preferred hunting companions at a time when there was enough fish to go around. They didn’t understand the competition of the sirens to hunt the most or the fastest, much like I hadn’t. We had quiet hunts where they corralled our prey,and I finished the job with my spear. We shared whatever we caught that day, and the rest went to my pod.
I hadn’t known if I had my mother’s protection symbols carved into the whale bone of my spears to thank, or if it was the sharks, but I hadn’t been injured a single time when I hunted with them. The same could not be said for hunting with Xifi and Tetwin.
I’d longed for my hunting partners to return to the Dreslee, but at this point, I feared they no longer knew who I was. Zellia took hold of my scaled back and gave me a shove through the water in their direction. I used the momentum to keep swimming, growing closer and closer to my old friend, or maybe it would be a new one. I couldn’t tell from this distance.
A low hum vibrated out of my throat, and the shark changed course and headed straight for me. As it got closer, I analyzed its markings, both the natural ones from birth and the ones it had acquired over time. When I saw the small rake marks across the left side of her dorsal fin, I knew.
“Mai,”I said, knowing the mature shark wouldn’t understand me in the traditional sense. The name slipped through my mind anyway, excited to see my old friend.
I swam right up to her, all reservations lost in the current. When I darted toward her, she matched my energy, my speed. We met in a collision of scratchy scales, but neither of us seemed to mind. I ran my hand down her as I swam in a loop around her thick body.
Zellia approached much slower than I had. Her relationship with the other predators of the sea was causal at best. Most sirens who didn’t partake in the hunt didn’t go out of their way to commune with our neighbors, but it was inevitable as a hunter. Together, we pushed the boundaries of the Dreslee border. Sometimes, Mai would trail just past the border to egg me on, but I never let her or any of the others sway me. Evenwhen the fish started disappearing and their visits became more infrequent. Even when the idea of escaping the Dreslee seemed all too tempting.
As I gripped on to Mai’s dorsal fin, she took off at maximum speed. I flicked my tail behind her to boost us even more, and the sea became a blur of blues and greens. I allowed my eyes to shut, and I rested my cheek on her back, soaking in the sensation of the water rushing through my hair and over my skin.
My heart swelled as I allowed myself to mentally slip into a time before the hunger, before the death. My heart and mind were lost to the moment, and I took one more leap toward finding myself again.
CHAPTER TWENTY
PUPPING SEASON
Breena
Four days had passed since I’d first returned home. I hadn’t realized four days would be quite so difficult without Sidra’s presence, but part of me was thankful that each day dragged on, thankful that my heart was sore in her absence, that it longed for the unique love only she’d gifted me.
Every day I was in the Selkie Cove confirmed what my heart screamed every time our eyes locked, every time her skin brushed mine, every time she whispered sweet words meant for my ears only.
I wondered how she was faring in the deep as I swam nervous, impatient circles around one of my favorite kelpies, Isobel. She nipped at my hair, and I returned the favor by tugging at her slimy, blue-green mane. I’d always wondered what it would be like to swim in my human form and ride on the back of a kelpie, like a human on a horse. Alas, I never worked up the courage to flail around butt-naked as I attempted to maneuver in the water without a tail or flippers. How humans kept their head above water at all never failed to shock me.
I’d embarrassed myself in front of my clan more than enough over the years, so I would hang onto whatever pride I had left and pass on the flailing today. Instead, I wrapped my arms around Isobel’s neck, my tail fluttering along with her as she brought me back to the shoreline.
When I hopped onto a slick stone, I thanked the kelpie by tossing her a brittlestar I peeled off the rock next to me. She caught the little treat between her teeth and offered me a muffled neigh before swimming off. Starfish didn’t have the best texture, I’d be the first to admit, but just as quickly as fish had flooded the cove only days ago, they were already disappearing. We had one day of blissful normalcy, but each day after, the fish became harder to find, as if they’d been drawn away to some distant region of the sea.
“There you are!” Niven said from a few rocks over. “I’ve been looking all over for you! The clan leaders are ready to meet with you now.”
“Thank goodness!” I grumbled. “Did it take the fish disappearing again for them to want to speak with me?”
