Page 62 of Blood of the Sirens
The mer flinched for a moment, then kept swimming. I raced after him.
Merrick wasn’t so keen on trusting Calypso, but we didn’t have a choice. We needed somewhere safe where sharks or other predators wouldn’t follow the blood trail, and he needed medical attention, which I couldn’t give.
I prayed she’d help us.
“Darling,you’ve returned! And brought our wayward siren back to us. What’s happened?”
The sea witch’s voice was laden with sympathy, twisting with alarm as she took in Merrick’s bloody and beaten form. I coughed and hacked as I broke through the surface of the water to ascend into her cave, my lung expelling small bits of water as my body struggled to adjust from gills to lungs.
Merrick’s body seized as it broke the surface, the odd-looking mer struggling with the transition from water to air. It was awful watching Merrick’s body contort and hack as he switched to lung breathing while unconscious.
Hopefully it was something that got better the more you did it.
“The mers attacked him. I don’t know why. I—”
“My dear, sweet child. I tried to warn you. But I understand you wanted to hold out hope.”
Calypso’s tentacles stretched out before her, guiding her down off her self-styled throne and down to me at the water’s edge. One tentacle reached out and wrapped around my shoulder in what I guessed was an attempt at comfort. Instead, it just felt cold and constricting, the texture of her suckers abrasive and slimy.
“Can you heal him? He was only trying to protect me!”
I didn’t care about who was right and wrong. I needed Merrick to be OK.
Calypso hummed, using her tentacles to turn this way and that. “It’s been quite a while since I’ve healed anything, but something could be arranged.”
The odd mer growled beside me and I jumped, forgetting he was there.
Six of Calypso’s tentacles raised in the air, questioning. “Is that so? Well, well, well …”
“What?” I demanded, a bit tense since Merrick continued to bleed in front of me. “Are you going to heal him or not?”
The tentacle around me tightened for just a moment before releasing me and slithering back to Calypso.
“Caspian seems a bit off balance. Go take a rest, dear.” Calypso watched fondly as the strange mer huffed and dove beneath water, disappearing into its inky depths.
“Of course I will heal him, my dear. Magick doesn’t come free, though. Using so much will weaken me and leave me unprotected.”
I jerked. “Oh. I … Well, I don’t really have anything. What would you like?” I thought of the necklace I’d found back at the siren shrine, wondering if she would have wanted that. Part of me had hoped she’d be able to heal him, but I guess it made sense she wouldn’t do it for free. No one would do it out of the goodness of their heart where I lived either.
Calypso’s eyes brightened as if Christmas had come early. “Don’t have anything? Don’t be ridiculous! The first siren in nearly a thousand years only needs to bring herself!”
She stared at me expectantly.
“Uh, so what exactly does that entail?” I asked.
Her tentacles were reaching out toward me, but she held them back. “Oh, nothing too serious. I wish to study your magicks, and to do that I’ll need to keep you by my side. Together we will learn about what has been lost, and do your foremothers justice by learning all we can.”
That didn’t sound too bad. In fact, it was very close to what I wanted to do anyway. Except for one part.
“So by ‘keep you by my side,’ I’d have to stay here. I can’t go back home?”
Her face twisted in disgust. “Home?Thisis home my dear. You are a siren, not some filthy human. Why would you want to go back there, with all their garbage and disease and trash that litters our oceans and slowly poisons them as well as us?”
It wasn’t a false argument, but it was clear I wouldn’t be changing her views on humans anytime soon.
And Merrick was still bleeding.
“Yes, fine, you can study me, just fix him!” I acquiesced, desperate to get her to finally shift her attention to Merrick.
