The Merman Who Wouldn't Sing, The Tears He Saved For Me novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Three Rules

Marnie sets her rules and salves his scarred back; he admits he hums to keep from singing and hands her a second scale, and at four in the morning men break in for him.

"The difference between what?" I said. "What they sold you for and what you're worth?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll tell them it's none of their business."

"They will not ask," Lachlan said. "They will take."

He said it flatly, and I believed him, because of the seven cuts.

I set the first-aid kit on the dock and made a list out loud, because that is how I get through a bad day.

"Rule one. You stay in the slip until those cuts close. Rule two. Nobody pays me anything. Rule three. You don't owe me, not for the salt, not for the donuts, not for any of it."

"I have heard rules before," he said.

"Mine are better."

"Yes."

He said it so quickly that I looked up, and he looked away.

Aggie came back with a tin of salve that smelled like pine and a bag of saline packs, and she handed them to me and told me to do the back myself.

"He doesn't trust my hands," she said. "He's polite about it. Yours he's been watching since you walked in."

She left again, because she had a shop to run and, I think, because she wanted to.

I sat down on the edge of the slip with the salve in my lap.

"I can do it from here," I said. "I'll reach. You tell me if it hurts."

"You will fall in."

"I've fallen in before."

He turned his back to me.

It was wide, and the old brands ran down it in neat rows, and the seven new cuts crossed them.

I dipped two fingers in the salve.

"Ready?"

"Yes."

I touched the first cut.

He drew a breath through his teeth, and every muscle in his shoulders went tight and then slowly let go.

The salve was cold, and his skin under it was warm, and the water around us ran down his ribs in small lines.

I did the second cut.

The third.

By the fourth, he had leaned back, an inch at a time, until his shoulder blade rested against my hand.

He didn't seem to know he had done it.

I knew.

My hand stayed where it was.

"Does it hurt?" I said.

"No." His voice was rough. "It is the opposite of hurt."

I didn't say anything to that.

I did the fifth cut, and the sixth, and I took longer on both than I needed to.

His tail moved lazily under the surface, copper flashing, then it stopped, and I looked, and he had gone very still.

His ears were red.

I told myself it was the salve.

"Done," I said. My voice came out higher than I'd planned. "You can turn around."

He turned.

He was closer than I'd expected.

His wet hair hung against his collarbones, and his eyes were on my mouth, and then on my hands.

He hummed.

"Do you do that on purpose?" I asked.

"No."

"Why do you do it?"

"To keep from singing."

He said it simply, and I laughed, because I thought he was joking.

He wasn't.

"If I do not hum, it comes," he said. "It is in my chest. Every minute I am awake. It would come out, and a person near me would walk into the water."

"I'm near you."

"Yes."

"You're afraid you'll drown me."

"I am afraid," he said, "of what I would ask you to do."

I looked at him for a while.

"How long have you been holding it in?" I said.

"Eleven years."

I put the salve down.

My chest felt tight, so I fixed on the practical thing, which is how I always do it.

"Okay. You hum whenever you want. If I start walking toward the cove, I'll let you know."

"That is not funny."

"It's a little funny."

He didn't smile.

But the corner of his mouth moved, and the wet shine in his eyes shook, and it was the first time I thought it might spill.

It didn't.

He lifted his arm out of the water.

The scales on the inside of his forearm were dark green, and a bare patch showed where others had been pulled before.

He found another one with his thumbnail.

"Lachlan," I said. "Rule two."

"It is not payment."

"Then what is it?"

His breath caught.

"I do not know how to say it," he said, "in your language."

He held it out, palm up, and his hand shook worse than the first time.

I took it, because I'd already learned what happened when I didn't.

His face dropped, and I saw it, a little crack of hurt, and then I saw it close.

I didn't know what he had been afraid I would say.

I climbed the loft stairs, and the jar on the sill had one scale in it, and I put the second one beside it.

They clinked.

From the loft I could see him down in the slip.

He was floating on his back with his eyes shut.

He had put something down, and he did not know if I would pick it up.

I fell asleep with my boots on.

A thud woke me.

It was four in the morning, the loft was dark, and the sound came from the dock door, below.

A second thud.

Then a man's voice, low, saying, "Thirty-one. Grab the net."

The slip below me went silent, and Lachlan, who hummed every five minutes, stopped humming.

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