The Merrow and the Rope Maer

Content warnings: reference to orphanhood.

This piece draws on Thomas Keightley's story, The Soul Cages. A fisherman makes friends with a merrow (a sort of merman) and subtly releases the souls that the creature keeps in cages. When the merrow realises what the fisherman is doing, he vanishes.

*

Fire and water.

Flames leaped and flailed from where they were tethered to a crackling heap of driftwood and broken pieces of wrecked boats. The scents of burning wood and tar hissed into the salt and ale air. The roar of flame tangled with the crash of waves. Herds of dark water stampeded towards the stretch of brass beach and dashed on the sand. It sprayed icy kisses over the flushed faces of the fisher folk dancing and drinking under the moon. The last catch of the season had been hauled in, salted and barrelled. It was the final gasp before the long winter and the yearly battle against ruin. The village gathered around the defiance of the bonfire and threw themselves between the swell of the sea and the snap of flame, dancing with abandon on the edge of defeat.

Jacob flung himself in the dance. The brazen beat of the drum kicked up his heels. The wild whip of the fiddle spun his body. He wove in and out of the other drunkards, the hoots of celebration and clap of hands shattering against his skin. He found Charlotte's hand and they knotted together and whirled apart again. Her eyes shone with glee.

Cassandra banged the drum and glared.

"What in blazes is he doing with her? The little harlot," she grumbled. She rammed her palms onto the taut skin, tremors shocking up her arm.

"Charlotte the Harlot," Sarah snorted, sawing the fiddle. "I mean, no, that's beneath you."

"I mean him!" Cassandra cast her hand at Jacob mid-strike. "I haven't seen such flirting since that accursed poet wandered through!"

Sarah eyed her friend sidelong. "Except for how Jacob flirts with you, all the time, every day, without reprieve."

She flicked her sharp eyes down and drove a wave of indignation into a roll on the drum. "He does not."

Sarah just screeched the fiddle, making her wince. She let her eyes creep back up to Jacob, laughing and gambolling like a man possessed. He was just around the edge of the bonfire. The raging heat rippled the air and gave him the look of being underwater. She felt as if she was looking into the sea, spying a merrow splashing about in a swirl of selkies. Merrows kept souls in cages, and so did Jacob. He was handsome and happy and impulsive. In a village hewn from chalk and slate, harrowed by storms, sometimes little more than the carrion left by smugglers, Jacob was the sanguine spirit of whom it was all too easy to fall into the clutches. They had been friends since childhood, real friends, close, deeply close. In the chaotic merriment of the party, a strange cold stole over Cassandra. She saw him through a veil, barred from her; under the sea while she was on the shore; among the fair folk while she was tragically mortal. It almost frightened her. A lash of anger coursed from her gut and burnt it up. She hammered the drum faster.

Sarah jumped and skipped her bow over the fiddle to keep up. She flashed Cassandra a level look. "Green is not an attractive colour on you."

"Then what is?"

She grinned, the flames painting them both in sunset. "Red. You are not one to sulk. You are a creature of passion. Show him that. Punish him with it, if you're so angry."

Cassandra raised an eyebrow in interest. That peculiar cold dissipated. She looked back to her merrow. Jacob cantered up to Charlotte and they clapped their hands with a harsh pistol sound. Her jaw set. She punched the final beats of the song into the drum. Sarah's fiddle wailed. The band let loose a bark of triumph as the dance ended. The villagers applauded. Couples broke and reformed, some stumbling away for replenishment, some partnering up for more dancing, churning the sand with their bustling about. Raucous laughter, jeering, and the glugging of beer tumbled around Cassandra as she watched Jacob vanish into the shadows behind the fire.

She shot out her hand and grabbed a passerby. Old Jim nearly toppled over on his single leg. "Lass!" he croaked. "What's th' doing?"

She stood and steadied him, then pointed at her drum lodged in the sand. "Play this for me."

He squinted under the brim of his battered hat. "Why?"

"So I can piss."

"Your mother will hear of your bad language!"

"I should think so, I say it out loud. Will you take my place?"

"I don't know how to play."

"Hear the sea? Just keep up the same rhythm."

Jim was about to protest, but she strode around him and off down the beach. The old man sighed in resignation and manoeuvred himself down to the crate she had been sitting on. Sarah greeted him with amusement, eying her friend rocket away in a flare of flame.

Cassandra tore through the party, like a hound after a fox. Sand flurried up her patched skirts as she pulled her feet roughly from its slowing grasp. The firelight hurtled over the villagers, forging them all into a bubbling, fused lump of molten tin, obscuring their faces and shadowing shapes. Her pulse raced as she found neither Jacob nor Charlotte. She called on her skills as a rope maker. Her long, nimble fingers were practiced in gathering straying, tangled threads and weaving them together, strong and single-minded. Rope had led Theseus through the labyrinth and kept Odysseus from the sirens, it anchored ships, it tamed wild horses. Rope makers did not let themselves get lost or fray apart. She took a deep breath of the charred air and flexed her fingers. She saw each bemusing shadow as a twizzling thread. She moved along the weave. The madness slowed around her.

There.

Her heart jarred to a halt as she spotted Jacob's narrow back by a stack of kegs. His dusty, green coat swept with the rush of people close to him, hurrying past or dancing to music not yet begun. His black hair, bundled on the back of his head, was coming loose and tousling around the nape of his neck, as if swirling in water. He leaned back and the glint of pewter appeared as he took a deep swig of beer. She grit her teeth, squared her shoulders, and marched forward.

Jacob yelped as he was seized by the back of the collar and dragged away from the crowd. He dropped his tankard, tripping backwards and staggering along with the hard tug on his coat. He wriggled like a caught cod. When he managed to wrench himself free and wheel around, he was several paces from the gathering. The firelight washed away, just a flicker in the corner of his eye. He blinked in the darkness. She melted into view in a sigh of moonlight. Tall and proud, her dark copper hair shining like oil in the glow, her face chiselled. Her eyes were stray sparks from the fire. Her mouth was usually the soft shape of a sage leaf, but it was pressed hard, her shoulders strong and her fists on her hips. Cassandra glared at him through the dimness.

"Cassie?" he hiccupped merrily. Her nostrils flared. His heart thumped. "Hello!" he continued. "Sard, it's good to see you! I thought you'd been sealed to that drum with wax. How are you enjoying the - OW!" She had prodded him in the stomach. "Why did you do that?"

Cassandra looked into his face, tinged autumnal colours, as if the alcohol had been slapping his cheeks like a nursemaid. She jutted her hip out further, his oblivious expression needling her. "Good to see me?" she snarled. "Good to see me? I have been at the party all evening, Jake, and your eye hasn't flitted my way once!"

He frowned, his thick brows knotting over his pale, blue-green eyes. "You were playing the drum."

"The invisible drum?"

"No, but..."

She cut him off sharply. He almost felt her snip the end of his tongue. "What are you doing with Charlotte Clipper?"

"With Charlotte? Nothing."

Cassandra felt hot lime pour down her spine at the flat, naïve denial. She wasn't sure what she had expected, but it certainly wasn't for him to act nonplussed. She huffed with the sound of steam shooting from a kettle, turned on her heel, and stomped up the beach. The sand was silver under the moonlight. Away from the eddying bonfire, the stars bloomed into view, a lacework of sparkling sea spray in the black. She looked up to them resolutely, trying to douse the pricking in her eyes. The picture of Charlotte's adoring, angelic glance flooded her mind. She almost broke into a run. She wished she'd just kept pummelling the drum. Now she'd seen his face - his soft, kind face - she felt like such a witch for scolding him. But she was also somehow so much angrier. Jacob pleased everyone, while she was infamously displeasing - obstinate, hot-headed, crass. They had been friends for as long as the whole village could remember, yet no one had ever asked after a wedding. It was generally understood that sweet, young Jacob ought to settle down with someone more deserving of his charms. A freezing gust lashed her insides. She choked and hastened on.

"Cassie!" His urgent voice skimmed over the cool air. She could hear his uneven gait ruffling the sand as he hurried to keep up. "I swear, nothing!"

She halted at the mouth of a cave in the tin-grey cliff face, the shadow spilling around them. She rounded on him, flinching at his flinch. "Four turns of nothing!"

He stared at her. His eyes were a little large for his face, round pools of moonlit mint green that pulled up a little at the corners in a constant, half-hidden, mischievous smile. His lips parted, softening his mouth. He was barely dressed. His boots were lightened two shades by streaks of sand, his cravat and waistcoat had been abandoned, his shirt collar lay open over his lean chest. His coat hung loosely on his shoulders. His frown was somewhere between confused and wounded, his gentle brow shadowed by his thicket of black hair. He looked pulled fresh out of a story book, ready to pour her fairy wine or challenge her to a life-changing game of cards. "Four turns?" he asked.

She ground her teeth and tore her eyes from his infuriating, innocent prettiness. "You danced with her four times. In a row."

He scoffed. "It's a small gathering, Cassie, and two of the women I know are the musicians."

Her temple ticked. "So, you aren't making a huge exhibition of flirting with her?"

His hands slid into his pockets and his shoulders bowed a little. "Not... Not a huge exhibition..."

"Then what?"

He wrinkled his nose, like an otter. "Maybe a very small, travelling circus sort of sized..."

"Oh, it's a circus, no doubt about that."

His meek face flickered. "Why are you so bothered anyway?" It was surly, but it was curious.

She froze. The sea rumbled. Its whoosh filled the foot of space between them, made it yawn cavernous. She had been charging along her anger thoughtlessly; it hadn't occurred to her she might have to explain it. No longer veiled by the fire, Jacob looked smaller, somehow more ethereal in the moonlight, stranger, but less wicked. She began to feel like the silly girls in the tales she'd always hated, who walked into the waves the minute some lord on horseback didn't return a smile. She cleared her throat and raised her chin haughtily. "Charlotte is a nice girl. She doesn't deserve to be led on a wild goose chase for your affection."

"Who says it's a wild goose chase?"

The back of her neck prickled hot.

The corner of his mouth twitched, starlight glittering in his wide pupils. "I could be a perfectly well domesticated goose."

Laughter gurgled instinctively in her belly. She swallowed it back, thanking the darkness for hiding her blush. She hated how easily he made her laugh. She didn't feel like making light of anything. "You aren't a goose," she said through her teeth. "You're a magpie, hopping about whatever catches the light."

Jacob's eyes slitted. His voice came like a low flute and whispered up her back. "Listen here, you fickle thing. I proposed to you, and you rejected me, if you recall."

"When we were 12!"

"So?" His jaw and his cheekbones stood out in the glimmer, sharpening him like etched limestone. "I meant it."

She cooled. This had always been the pattern of their friendship, her howling about like a hurricane, him absorbing it quietly and flowing at its pace, until it calmed. The night ran clammy hands up her arms, turning the hairs on her skin crisp. She shivered.

"Cassie, are you angry because I danced with Charlotte and not with you?"

She felt naked. Her cheeks burned, the rest of her iced. She folded her arms and looked away.

He was a hair shorter than her. He used it to his advantage, ducking around to make her meet his impossible eyes. His next question came in a disarmingly soothing tone. "Are you fire angry or sea angry?"

"Pardon?"

He silently slid his foot through the sand and closed the distance between them. The rhythm of the sea hushed. Her eyes wandered to the freckle on his collarbone. His voice drew around her like a shawl. "Fire angry is when you're all ferocity and brightness. All there is to do is let you burn and watch in wonder. Sea angry is when it's deep and sad. It drowns me."

Cassandra ached. She pulled her eyes back up to his. She could lightly feel the warmth of his body. Her arms unfolded unbidden, her shivers dissolving at his closeness. "Do you love Charlotte?"

His fingertips brushed hers, then furled away. He answered with no guile and no mockery. "No." His fingers extended again. This time they lingered on hers, tip to tip, lighter than mayflies meeting. "You don't catch the light. You are light."

She felt as if her body was streaming into moonbeams.

Jacob allowed levity back into his tone, his teeth showing up white in the dark. "And it might interest you to know that she asked me to dance so much with her to make Daniel Boon jealous, I didn't even think that you -"

She kissed him.

Her fists closed tight around his collar. She flung herself against his body and pressed her mouth to his. She cast away her embarrassment and envy, harnessed all the heat in her blood, and surfed on it into his arms.

Jacob was knocked back and jammed his heels into the sand to stay standing. Cassandra's powerful rush shocked the breath from his body, left him reeling, overjoyed. He wrapped her in his arms and fell delightedly under the kiss he had been chasing since he was a boy. She pulled away, still gripping his shirt, and murmured, "then it's fire angry."

His body pulsed. "I love fire angry." He fell into her again.

Holding Cassandra was like dancing by the bonfire. She was never still, never satiated, not in anything. It thrilled him. Her kiss was no different. Her tongue hooked his and duelled with it, her lips firm, her breath coming quick and gasping. She moved on him like kindling chafing to start a fire, tucking into the opening of his coat and singeing him through his shirt.

She stepped backwards. He stumbled with her, staying locked to her so he didn't have to break the kiss. The light snuffed out. They tripped together into the cave and out of sight. His heart beat faster than her furious drumming. The scents of damp tar and seaweed gushed over them. But underneath it, he was lost in her fragrance, flax and beeswax, homey and warm. He began to wonder if he had ever been warm before, he felt like he was discovering the sensation.

She took control of their stumbling. She steered him, he surrendered to it instantly. She pushed him back against the cave wall, the uneven rock digging into his fine layer of muscle and sending a shudder through him. Cold licked his spine as she crushed herself against him. Her pelvis lined to his. His pulse kicked. He pulled back and fought for breath, curling his fingers on her back to keep her close.

How had he never kissed her until now? How had he survived?

Cassandra gazed into Jacob's face. The cave shrouded them in shadow, but his eyes were startling in what little pearly light sneaked in. He was looking at her with boyish excitement and surprise, but a deeper, mature sweetness, almost melancholic in its longing. He smelled overpoweringly of wood smoke. It made her hungry. She rocked her hips without thinking. A quiet sound leaked from his throat. Ale bubbles sprang up in his pupils. Something whispered in the back of her mind to be wary of sin, that the song of sirens drowned sailors. But this was Jake. Her Jake. Hadn't he always been hers, in some small, undeniable, insurmountable way?

"I know it isn't sensible," she said, her voice ringing delicately on the rock, "or probably even fair, but..." She splayed her hands on his chest, starlight glancing on the wheals and calluses from her work. She leaned deeper into him, pinning him to the rock wall, like a sea eagle pinning a gull with its talons. "I can't shake a feeling that you belong to me."

He dipped forward and sucked a kiss from her open mouth. He tasted of beer, heady and comforting. "I do," he whispered against her lips. It stopped her heart, intensified her ache. "Always."

His hand stroked over her waist and into his pocket. He fished something out and unfurled his palm beside them. Cassandra looked down at a small shell, a thread of light spiralling on it like a spindle. Her eyebrows floated up. His heart thrummed under her fingers. She recognised the shell, she was sure, even in the dark. Her mind whisked back thirteen years to the mouth of this very cave.

Cassie picked her way along the beach, turning her pinny into a hammock for shells and pebbles and other treasures. She reached the wide opening in the towering cliff without realising how far she'd wandered. Mama would be cross. She turned to hurry back, when she heard a sputtering echo from the shadows. She tip-toed forward. Just out of the light, knees drawn up to his forehead and shoulders quivering, was a boy with messy, black hair. His face was buried in his crossed arms on his knobbly knees. He was crying. Cassie dropped her hoard by a rockpool but put the best treasure in her pocket. She scurried over to the lad.

"I know you," she said brashly. "You're Mister Smith's new ward." The boy's face shot up. His eyes were enormous, even larger when filled with tears, and the same colour as the sea outside. "Crikey!" she exclaimed. "You look like the merrow in a picture in my house!" The boy cocked his head, like a pigeon. "They're very beautiful," she went on, then felt all warm and silly. She hastily ferreted in her pinny for the shell and held it out to him. "Here," she said quickly.

The boy sniffed, rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand, and hesitantly took the shell. He held it like precious glass and stared. Cassie stared at him. "Thank you," he said in a small voice. Then he glanced up and shrank into his arms. "Please, don't look at me. Boys aren't meant to cry."

She snorted. "What nonsense. You cry all you like." She plonked herself next to him and fixed him with a goggling gaze. "I'll stay here 'til you feel better, and I'll look at you the whole time, so you know you don't have nothing to be ashamed of."

The boy looked confused. Then he smiled so bright that he outshone the sea.

"What's this still doing in your pocket?" Cassandra asked softly.

Jacob's mouth twitched shyly. He shrugged and popped the shell back into its safe place. His arm looped around her again. "I think it reminds me I have someone who likes me at my lowest." He puffed out through his nose. "I'm the town jester..."

"Village idiot."

He tickled her, releasing the laugh she'd reined back before. He grinned puckishly, then sobered. "I am a fool and a tumbler to everyone here, smiling through the long winters, telling stories in the dark." He faltered. His fingers stirred anxiously on her back. "Sometimes I'm afraid that if I stop smiling... stop dancing..." He trailed off and looked at her with the same hesitant shame she remembered from their first meeting, the emotion he so rarely showed, only to her.