Page 17 of Fletcher

“The lass told me she’s a jinks.” He still couldn’t fathom what she had meant by that. “You ken ’twould mean anything more than a drinking frolic?”

“Jinks? ‘Twas what we called Shaw as a wee lad. Ever jumped when he ran, like a hare escaping a trapper.” The cook sighed as if the memory pained him, which it likely did. “The maids claim she’s sweet as honey, but timid as a vole surrounded by a flock of kestrels. You’ll need a soft, kindly trap if you wish snare that lass, Seneschal.”

Upon approaching the cove Brochan made one last baleful sound before he headed toward the shallows beside the quiet spot, where he swore softly as he waded into one of the tidal pools. Water from the cove immediately flowed toward him, as did the incoming tide, which gradually emptied the rock-strewn bottom. Fletcher stepped down and walked at the fringe, noting that many of the rocks matched those from a nearby quarry, likely Nyall’s work. That he saw no ruts didn’t surprise him, either, as the rising tide would have erased them. Then he stopped and bent down to pick up a splintered piece of bone, and found more around it. He gathered what he could hold in his hands before returning to shore and calling out to Brochan to leave the shallows.

The cook waded out of the currents swirling around him, cursing softly as they formed a long cape and tried to follow him. Finally he sprinted a long distance away, and the pursuing sea water fell flat and flowed back into the shallows. Fletcher tucked the bones into a pouch before he went to join him.

“Why couldnae a harvest prince sire me?” Brochan complained as he shook off the way a large, wet hound might. “I’d walk through orchards and every ripe fruit, they’d drop in my hands.”

Fletcher handed him his tartan. “’Tis no such order among the Fae. Imagine possessing Shaw’s weakness, and you’ll be grateful for yours.”

“A pity he’s no desire for kitchen work,” the cook said. “Lighting the ovens in winter takes near forever. What found you?”

Fletcher showed him one of the splintered bones he’d collected. “What make you of such marks? ’Twas from a great fall against stone, or butchery?”

The cook turned the bone over to examine both sides. “Butchery, aye, but no’ as you reckon. See you here?” He pointed to three deep punctures on the surface. “Teeth marks. ’Twas gnawed, and no’ by Finfolk.”

He took back the fragment. “What, then?”

“I’ve seen before the like.” Brochan jerked his thumb toward the north end of the bay. “A patroller found a severed hand wedged in some rocks with the same marks. The laird reckoned ’twas a white-mouth.”

Chapter Six

The creature that had once been Erskin of Aberdeen swam along the islet reefs, keeping sure to remain out of sight. Most of the light filtering down through the sea during the day did not reach the bottom currents he inhabited, and after nightfall he could swim almost anywhere he wished. He saw perfectly in the darkness, just as the bottom-dwelling water creatures that avoided him as if he were some great ravenous beast. It had taken weeks and weeks for him to accept that, in one sense, he was. As he waited now on his master’s summons, he yet again mourned the calamity that had changed him from a simple fisherman into a monstrous, misshapen thing that was neither human or shark, but somehow both.

I’m yet a man. Ever and always shall I think and act as a man.

Erskin wished rather than knew that to be true, but often repeated the declaration to himself. To blame his hideous transformation on someone else might have aided his belief, but the fault could only be his own. Since boyhood he’d hated being cold and wet, and refused to learn how to swim, something his da had warned him would bring him to a bad end while working at sea. When the boat upon which he toiled had wrecked and sank, he knew he would drown, and still fought wildly in the cold waters swallowing him alive. The Gods had then shown him mercy by sending a strange, sleek man to save him, but a white-mouth had seized him by the arm, shearing off his hand.

Now he glanced down at the stump, instantly healed during the terrible melding, and a wave of hunger passed through his gut.

Somehow the strange man had combined Erskin with the shark that tried to devour him, transforming him into a creature with parts of both. The white-mouth’s gills now flared on the sides of his shortened neck, permitting him to breathe water. He had shed all of his hair during the change, and only gray and white sharkhide covered his body. His new, powerful muscles gave him not only the ability to swim faster than anything in the sea, but the massive strength and fluid agility to strike and kill swiftly.

Still a man, but also a shark.

Since his rebirth Erskin had pledged to serve Duxor, the immortal who had saved him from death twice, although part of him always struggled with keeping that vow. The shark wished but to swim, kill and feed, and spent all of its time thinking about such. It had only changed its wonts when the wee begowned wench had appeared in the bay. Now it wished to find the tiny female, but not to devour.

Erskin skirted the last reef before reaching the islet that smelled of death, and there deliberately swam up to the fringe of white sand on the side away from the larger island. That terrified the white-mouth inside him, for stranding meant death by slow suffocation. He could no longer breathe air as ordinary men did, but he’d gradually learned to fill his chest with water and hold it to allow him to surface and hold himself in the air above for a brief time. His tail thrashed as the shark tried to seize command of their shared body, but Erskin had also learned how to tame the simple-minded beast.

Be still, or I shall end us.

Brandishing the rusting dagger he’d found on the ocean bottom rendered the white-mouth docile and silent, and allowed Erskin to crawl a short distance onto the sand. For many nights now he had been guarding his master during the hours he spent on the islet. He never said what he did, and Erskin knew better than to ask. Duxor came back to the water at sunrise in a foul mood, with nothing but sand and debris covering him, as if he’d also been crawling about the land.

Although his insides burned with the water he held in his chest, Erskin managed to reach the top of the shore, and from there spied his master on his knees a short distance away. He appeared to be filling in a hole in the ground with dirt, and from the grimy condition of his hands and arms it had been one he had first dug.

He seeks something buried, like raider’s spoils.

Erskin crawled backward, slipping back into the cold embrace of the buffeting waves, and quickly swam out of sight. His belly ached with hunger now, but the master had forbidden him to hunt in the waters surrounding the island. He suspected if the others like Duxor saw him, they would try to capture or kill him.

He dove down deep, sliding through the current channels until he found the one leading to a sea cave near the hidden cove on the big island. There he concealed himself and watched for a long time, but saw no one come near the tree-shrouded shallows. He could taste the strangeness the men of the big island left in the water, which filled his head with the shark’s swelling, mindless hunger. Even raw and bloody, the lambs he had caught on the banks and dragged under to devour had been delicious. Catching them permitted him to feed and appease the shark while still obeying his master, although they had not been enough. Since attacking Erskin the white-mouth inside him craved the taste of human flesh more than anything.

The need swelled so much he had to press the dagger’s tip against his gills, and spill his own blood in the water. Cease your torment, or we both die.

For a moment he wasn’t sure the shark would be capable of calming with so much of the men tainting the currents, but then at last the familiar sullen silence filled his head. The need to hunt and kill and devour yet lingered, as always, but to that Erskin had become accustomed. If he killed and ate everything that lived in the sea, the white-mouth would still want more. Sometimes he wondered if it wished to tear apart the whole of the world.

Think on the wee lass, he told his other half.

Seeing the beautiful female appear in the bay had astonished Erskin, for he saw no boat in the water, nor spotted any fresh wrecks beneath the surface. She seemed to have appeared out of the very air itself, like some magical being falling from the sky. Since his master’s people now worked all day gathering kelp on the edge of the depths no one else had seen her, either. The way her flowery gown and long red locks had swirled around her had made him wonder if she had been some kind of spirit, at least until he tasted her blood in the water.