Maris Calderon's Arc

Chapter 2 of 14

The last rope fell away. Maris pulled his tail free of the net and lay in the shallows, breathing hard. The girl still knelt in the mud, the pearl closed in her fist. She watched him with wide violet eyes. The sky behind the willow had begun to gray. Dawn was coming. His skin already felt tight, and he knew he could not swim far like this. "You're bleeding," she said. She pointed at his left arm, where the barb had torn the old scar open. Maris looked at the wound. Blood ran down to his elbow. "I need water," he said. "Deep water. Before the sun." "You won't make it." She stood and looked at the graying sky, then back at him. "Not like that." She slid the pearl into her pocket. Then she took his arm and pulled. He should have refused her. A land-born girl could not hide a siren. But his legs would not carry him alone, and the tide had pulled back too far. He leaned on her pale shoulder and let her drag him up the bank. She brought him to a weathered shack near the water. One room, gray boards, a single crooked door. Inside she lowered him onto a mat by the wall. She filled a bucket at the cove and poured it over his skin. The cool water eased the tightness. He breathed slower. "Hold still," she said. She tore a strip from an old cloth, already stained from other hurts, and wrapped it tight around his arm. Her fingers were quick and sure. She did not flinch at his skin, or his tail, or the gills at his ribs. She only worked. "Why are you helping me?" Maris asked. "You have the pearl. Our bargain is done." She tied off the bandage. "My name is Elara," she said. "You gave me the finest thing I have ever held. I don't leave a debt half paid." She sat back on her heels. "And I want to know what you are." Maris said nothing. He watched her honey hair fall across her face as she rinsed the blood from her hands. She had cut him free. She had hidden him. By land custom he did not understand, and by siren custom he understood too well, the pearl had done more than pay her. Among his kind, a man gave his pearl to one woman only. He had bound himself to her without meaning to. He could take it back. He could drown her, as he had drowned the hunter, and slip into the cove alone. His kingdom did not wait for a man tied to a land girl. Instead he lay still and let her tend him. "You keep that pearl," he said. "It's yours now. It means more than you know." Elara smiled and did not ask what he meant. Outside, the sun climbed. Maris was bound, hidden, and alive. He had a new problem now, and her name was Elara.