Chapter 12: The Price

Tilda left before midnight.

She said she would bring the Rook house up the coast by the next tide.

Then she put her hand flat on the water, looked at me, and said, "Don't die. He'd be unbearable."

The slip closed over her silver hair, and the boathouse went quiet.

I sat at the top of the loft stairs with a blanket around me.

Lachlan stood at the bottom, in my father's work pants, with his hands open at his sides.

"Ask me," he said.

"Ask you what?"

"Whatever you want. I will tell you all of it."

I looked at him for a long time.

"Why was a Rook sold for four hundred dollars?" I said.

"A merman who keeps his song for a wife is worth a fortune. Why would Garrick price him like trash?"

"Because he wanted him bought."

"By anyone?"

"By someone kind."

He took a breath.

"I heard him in the yard, three nights before the sale. He was talking to the man with the hood."

"He said, I'll sell the stubborn one to the softest girl on the dock. A girl who can't pass a dying thing."

"She'll nurse him, she'll cry over him, and he'll give her the scales himself."

My stomach turned over.

"The scales can't be taken," I said slowly.

"No. They can only be given. Garrick has known that for twenty years."

"He tried for my song first, with the hook, because a song sells for twenty thousand. When I gave him nothing, he turned to the scales."

"He needed me to give them to someone who would keep them. Then he would take them from her."

"And I'm the girl."

"Yes."

"The softest girl on the dock."

"That is what he said."

I wanted to hit something.

I had walked into that yard on a Saturday thinking I was a smart shopper.

I had been the bargain.

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