Page 10 of The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire
The river looks languid, but when I kneel to dip my hand into its waters, the current rushes beneath the surface, like it has somewhere important to be. I am a strong swimmer, but even I would struggle with such a force. After running and shouting, my throat suddenly feels dry as sandpaper. I cup my hand and lap water from the river. It’s sweet and cold, almost addictive, and I keep going back for more.
Until a webbed grip latches on to my hand.
I shriek and tear it from the water, freeing my fingers from the grasp of some…thing.
A malformed, oversized frog lands on the bank with a wet slap.It lets out a bleat that sounds oddly like a sheep’s; its eyes point in different directions and blink out of time. Where front legs should be, there are green bat wings, and a tail like a scorpion’s beats at the water. I scramble back away from it, not caring that I muddy my nightgown further. Everything feels wrong with the creature—like it was born to be a wet specimen kept on a professor’s shelf.
The creature snaps its tongue at me and lets out a grumbling croak when it cannot reach. As I stare at it, wide-eyed, I realize what it is.Llamhigyn y Dwr. The water leaper. Llamhigyn y Dwr drag those too close to the water’s edge to their deaths. If they find a sheep, they eat it whole, and the farmer discovers the fleece downstream several days later. When Dad told us tales about them, he would pretend to bite us until Ceridwen and I were giggling messes on the floor. He’d only stop when Gran tutted and left the room.
And now here it is: a rank creature beached on the bank, its tongue lashing at me over and over again, too stupid to know it can’t reach.
“You’re uglier than I expected,” I tell it, at a loss for what to say.
It blinks, then licks its own eye with that absurdly long tongue.
Suddenly, bubbles appear behind it, and a pair of pale, webbed hands seize it around the middle. It lets out a garbled cry as two pearly arms lined with iridescent scales emerge from the water, holding the creature aloft before punting it halfway across the river, where it crashes through the water with a bleat.
A girl surfaces, her dark-blue hair slicked back to her skull—long enough to pool beneath her even as she heaves her upper half onto the grass and braces her chin upon scaled arms. She stares at me with wide, unnaturally pale eyes ringed with dark, spiked lashes and grins as she cocks her head to the side. She’s pretty in the way that poisonous flowers are pretty, luring you closer, tempting you to touch. Her torso is bare but for the irregular patches of pearly scalesthat dot her shoulders, breasts and stomach. As she smiles, a long tail arcs into the air behind her, sending water flying everywhere.
I shriek and lurch back further, colliding with a fallen tree.
“Sorry about Dwp,” she says in a voice that’s far too warm, far too ordinary. “I told him we would be having a guest. But his memory!” She taps a pointed finger to her temple. “Forgets everything but how hungry he is, Dwp does. Duw, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes!”
My mouth flaps at the mermaid’s casual tone. She uses human idioms with ease.
“You’re a—” I point at her tail.
She glances back, like she’s forgotten all about it, and laughs. “She said you didn’t know anything.”
“—mermaid,” I finally manage.
The mermaid beams. Her teeth are a little sharper than they ought to be. I can only blink at her, and the most useless question tumbles from my mouth.
“Do we have the same God?”
She tilts her head to the side. “What?”
“Duw.It means ‘God.’ You said Duw.”
Her brow furrows. “I didn’t know that. I thought it was just something people said when they were surprised. Ceridwen says it all the time.”
I practically leap to my feet. This could be a trick, but Ceridwen does have a bad habit of mutteringDuw, Duw, Duwwhen bothered—Gran can’t stand it.
“You know my sister?”
“’Course!” The mermaid shrugs. “How else would I know that you’re Ceridwen’s sister? Or that yesterday you went to Cardiff to say goodbye to your dad, which is why Ceridwen—”
“What are you talking about?” I interject. “How do you know Ceridwen?”
She rolls her eyes. “I was getting to that. Anyway, we talked about leaving last week but she wanted to say goodbye—”
I twitch, which stops her rapid stream of speech.
“Ceridwen doesn’t do that!” she declares. “Do it again!”
“I can’t do it on demand,” I snap, but twitch nonetheless. She claps delightedly. “Never mind that! What do you mean ‘leaving’”
“Well, it’s when someone gets up and walks away and—”
