They never take us!
They wait, they’re meant to wait for what they’re given!
Then that voice says: But they’ve not been given their due in such a while! There have been no spare children, not since before Aoife was born. What do they care that I’m the last of a line? We’ve not paid our debts in far too long.
And I don’t know whose voice that is but I cannot fault it. The back of my head hurts and the water around my head begins to turn a reddish-purple where a cut bleeds. I tear at the clasps of my cloak and it lets go reluctantly, but now without it to add to my resistance, I’m moving faster downward. I begin to kick. Or I try. I’m strong from riding, walking, helping with the small harvests – though I avoid swimming when I can – but when I raise my knees and it’s like pulling them from sucking mud in the marshlands. I kick again and one of the hands lets go. Another kick, it connects with a head or shoulder perhaps. It can’t hurt too much with the water to cushion the blow, but it gets my other leg free.
If only I had the time to remove my boots, but I need to get away from these things. Up, up, up, and I’m being paced by them, I see faces flash in the gloom, mouths open – laughter? Are they laughing at this? – they swim like dolphins, leapfrogging each other, flashing close and away, their skins bright as the moon, their tails whipping around, so lengthy and thick! Above, I can see the hull of a boat, a small craft; I swim harder, curse my boots, my dress, keep going, break the water, hook my hands over the edge and kick and kick and kick myself into that little, little boat. Much to the surprise of the fisherman sitting in it.
As I struggle in, I’m certain I can feel those hands again, scaled and webbed and so, so strong. Were they really there? Did I imagine it? Or were they just playing?
The fisherman stares at me, and I at him. He opens his mouth but whatever he might say is lost as he points over my shoulder. I turn. Half a dozen feet away three heads break the waves. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, moon-skinned, teeth sharp in their laughing mouths, eyes hard; these creatures so seldom seen, so close. Then they duck-dive and are gone.
Yet I cannot get out of my head the mocking sounds I heard beneath the surface, other voices as clear as if they spoke in the air above, as if there was no fluid betwixt lips and ears.
When you are gone then we will be free. And it’s not lost on me that those words are quite similar to the ones I’ve thought about my grandparents.
But they could have had me, if they’d wished, could have dragged me down, all three of them. What was there to wait for?
8
‘What were you thinking?’ Aoife’s not stopped shouting at me since the fisherman delivered me to the doorstep half an hour ago. As I’ve only just finished coughing up brine, I’ve not been able to answer her. Sitting in a tub in the bathroom attached to my bedchamber, red as a lobster in ridiculously hot water, I can’t quite feel rid of the cold deep inside. As if my immersion in the harbour by the Weeping Gate lodged it in me, as if the mer’s hands transmitted it like a disease.
‘I wasn’t thinking at all,’ I lie – best not to tell her that I was thinking about how to thwart her and Aidan’s machinations, at least not until I’m safely back at the house on Hob’s Head, with the Hallow’s strong walls around me and familiar things to make me feel safe, even from Aoife. ‘I wasn’t thinking about anything, but...’
‘But what? You know the will is to be read this morning, you know we are expected there. Now we’ll be late!’ she snaps as the maidservant pours another jug of water over my hair and begins yet another scrubbing with orange-scented wash to rid me of the reek of the harbour. I fear it will never be enough, that I’ll be cold and dank-smelling forever, even though no one else might notice. The cut on the back of my head stings and the girl’s fingers make it worse every time they move over the lump.
‘Be careful!’ I snap. Then, more quietly, I say to Aoife, ‘I didn’t... fall.’
‘Slipped? Like an idiot child.’ She’s pacing now, is Aoife, a swift angry motion and I wonder if it’s care for me or fear that her plans could have gone so badly awry because of my clumsiness.
‘No,’ I say and look meaningfully at the maid.
Aoife raises a brow. ‘Girl, get you gone. I’m sure you’ve better things to do.’
And without a word, the girl drops my hair, rises, bobs a curtsey and departs, wiping her hands on her apron. Aoife takes her place, kneeling with a creaking of knees; her fingers in my hair are far more tender.
‘Now, what happened?’ She gives a gentle tug on my locks to say Be quick about it.
‘I was pulled in Grandmother.’
‘Pulled?’ Her fingers still, her tone drops.
‘By one of them.’
‘Them?’
‘If you repeat everything I say we’ll not get very far
