Heart of the Fae (The Otherworld #1)(31)

The air was too still. The ocean didn’t crash against the rocks, but sluggishly avoided touching the land. Even the elements had forsaken Hy-brasil. There was more to the phantom isle than the legends sang, and Sorcha was afraid to find out what.

She braced her feet as the guardian gently set them down. The ship remained steady, bobbing as if there had never been a storm. Sorcha wished she could forget as easily as the Saorsa had.

Footsteps marked the return of the sailor who held her pack at arm’s length. He held it far out in front of him, the pack dangling from his fingers as if he didn’t want to touch her.

Sorcha recognized that expression. It was the same look her mother had been given for months before they burned her. They blamed her for every bit of bad luck. A neighbor’s cow died, a child caught a cold, the well ran dry, all were the markings of a witch who had cursed the town. Sorcha’s mother had been the one they chose to burn.

She snatched her pack out of the man’s hands with a muttered curse. “I didn’t call the storm, you moron. Give me that.”

The sailor flinched away from her.

Good riddance. He could be frightened of her if that helped him make sense of the storm, but she wasn’t about to let him treat her like a witch. Sorcha was a good person. She would have healed them all if the merrows weren't here.

She swung the pack over her shoulder and held her hand towards Manus. “The charm?”

He pulled a small bag from his pocket. The burlap was completely dry. Not even a single drop of water clung to its checkered pattern.

“This will do. Stick it in your bag and swim as fast as you can.”

“Will the charm wear off?” She stuffed the small bag in her pack between her most precious books.

“It’s unlikely to wear off. And freckles? A word of warning: where there are merrows, there are merrow-men. They’d like a pretty thing like you to stay with them, and most of their wives are here with us. No one will stop them if they get ahold of you.”

“Thank you,” she gritted through clenched teeth.

He didn’t stay to watch. Manus left to tend to his men, and she stood on the precipice of another decision. The water was another dangerous part of her journey. The ocean had yet to be kind, and its inhabitants were likely even worse.

Her eyes strayed to the haunted isle that had spawned straight from her nightmares. Hy-brasil, the phantom isle spoken of in legends and myths for centuries. Many believed it was a utopia, a place where men of highest intelligence and scholars of world renown were sent.

It looked like a ruin.

She carefully hoisted herself up on the railing and balanced with a sail rope in her hand. This was it. There was no going back once she jumped off this ship and landed in the waters below.

Papa’s eyes swam in front of hers. His painfully thin body, the grating cough that kept the others up at night, the dangers of what might happen should she fail and he die. The beetles would infect her sisters next; they were the nearest food source. The families nearby might also fall. And she wasn’t there to help prolong their lives.

Sorcha lifted her foot to hang in the salty air for a moment before she took a deep breath and leapt off the edge.

She hit the water with a stinging slap. Her skirts billowed up into her face and tangled with the long strands of her hair. The pack weighed her down, pulling her towards the bottom of the ocean with surprising ease.

Bubbles erupted from her mouth as she pumped her arms. Fabric tangled around her feet and trapped them. She couldn’t kick. She couldn’t breathe.

Frowning in concentration, she almost didn’t notice the movement in the depths. Calm yourself, she thought. Calm was the only way to deal with the Fae and it would assist her now. Panic would only lead to poor decisions.

She let her body relax although her lungs burned. Salt water stung her eyes when she opened them. Sorcha glanced down and held in a gasp when she saw red eyes staring back at her.

Deep at the bottom of the ocean, the merrow-men waited. They lacked the necessary tails to keep up with their brides. Instead, they had legs like a human man. Green scales covered their bodies which were hard with muscles. Gills and fins popped up with little rhyme or reason giving them a grotesque appearance. But it was their faces that disturbed her the most.

Large fish-like mouths gaped open as they inhaled her scent in the water. Jagged teeth lined their gums. Their eyes bulged when they realized it was a human woman in their realm. Frilled fins fanned out around their faces and evil grins spread wide.

One curled his fist around a trident and pushed off the ocean floor. He was swimming towards her, she realized. His webbed feet made him a much more effective swimmer, and her own pack was steadily dragging her to the bottom.

Sorcha wouldn’t let that happen. Determined, she reached down and ripped the bottom of her skirt. Two great, heaving pulls split the fabric down each side. It wasn’t much, but it was enough.

Her legs now freed she swam with all her might. Muscles burned, lungs screamed, eyes watered, but she eventually broke through into the sweet air.

She gasped in breaths that shocked her lungs. There wasn’t enough air in the world to satisfy her cravings, and every inhalation tasted metallic. She rolled onto her back, still sucking in air, and kicked towards the isle.

The merrow-man was still coming, she reminded herself. She couldn’t rest just because she could breathe. It was time to swim. Once she made it to the island, she could rest.