Home From The Sea: The Elemental Masters, Book Seven (13 page)

She heard the bubbling of water as she wept into the moss. And she heard a soft little voice nearby.

Please don’t cry.

With difficulty, she raised her head. It was another of the Tylwyth Teg, one of the little water-girls dressed only in her hair. “And why shouldn’t I?” she asked bitterly. “And why should you care?”

The little thing looked distressed.
Don’t you remember what we told you? Didn’t you hear what your father said? Why do you think the Selch wanted the first of the Protheros?

It was hard to think through the fog of emotion, but think she did. Had her father said something about… that first man having power?

“The—magic?” she said, hesitantly.

The tiny thing nodded.
It’s strong in you, Mari. Strong, strong, strong. You can’t escape the net, but you can make conditions. Bargain, Mari, bargain. Don’t be tame, like a sheep. Be strong, like a master!
The little thing looked about her quickly.
I have said all that I dare. Remember! Remember!

And with that, she flipped over and vanished beneath the water of the stream.

W
HEN
Mari returned to the cottage, her father was gone. The beads he had bought her were laid on the table, and the kitchen had been straightened. She clenched her jaw. If he thought that was going to mollify her.…

She was thinking hard about what she had learned as she set things to rights. It was hard to think, she was so very angry, but doing things that required a good bit of main strength helped her wear some of that temper away. Although she was minded to give herself a holiday, she did the usual chores—all except for the cooking. He could just make do with cold rabbit from last night. The words of that helpful Tylwyth Teg kept going around in her head.
Bargain. Well, and what can I bargain with? And what would I bargain for?
She couldn’t bargain away the business of being handed off; not without her da paying a price she really didn’t want him to pay—no matter how angry she was with him. So where, in this trap, was there something that would give her some sort of relief and freedom? And what could she offer to get it?

All the stories she knew that involved bargains with the folk cautioned that you had to be very careful… and why would they
bargain with her, anyway, when they already had a bargain and a pledge?

Unless…

The water-creature had implied that she was different from all those other Prothero girls. Very different.
Well, and I am speaking up for myself, and not being a silly ewe-lamb about this!
But that couldn’t be all of it. There’d been that talk of magic, as if she herself had it.

Wait… she didn’t actually know that much about her family, come to think of it.

She sat herself down with a cup of tea as a treat and pondered that. There might not have been that many Prothero
girls
, come to think of it, since the Prothero name had come down from the old times intact. Which meant that most, maybe all, of these bargains had involved a Prothero lad and a Selch lass, rather than the other way around.
I rather doubt there’s many men in the world that would balk at taking a random girl into his bed provided she’s comely enough.
She had no illusions on that score about her father—who
had
been known to tumble the odd girl in a haystack during harvest or the occasional Traveler wench that seemed willing. She had always assumed that his reticence in talking about her mother was due to grief but now… now she began to wonder if it was because he simply didn’t know that much about her, hadn’t really cared that much about her, and really didn’t miss her. It wasn’t as if she was actually dead, after all. She’d simply paired up with him, done her duty, and off she was back to her own people. So he wouldn’t even really have guilt over her loss. Presumably, she was happier where she was now than she had been with him.

I wonder why she took my brother and not me?

It certainly would have been easier all the way around if she had.

Maybe he was more Selch than me?
Or maybe she’d been told to bring the boy with her.

Or maybe—maybe this magic that had been hinted at made her dangerous to take to the sea.

She shook her head. No point in speculating; she was wasting
her time doing that when what she needed was to figure out what the Tylwyth Teg had meant.

It was more than just that she had magic in her. That trait was possibly very desirable to the Selch, but hardly of any use to
her
if all it meant was that she could see the Tylwyth Teg.

Ah, but if she could learn to use it, that might well be a different story altogether.

How did you go about learning the magic, anyway? There were no Druids anymore, nor Bards, who also were supposed to know the ways of magic. She couldn’t exactly march up to some university, even if she could
get
to one, and demand to be educated in it.

The more she thought about it, though, she realized it would be very, very useful if she had the knowledge of it. Just seeing what the Tylwyth Teg had done convinced her of that.
I could use it to make that cursed constable leave us be, for one
, she thought sourly. She didn’t entertain any notion of jewels and princes and castles; even in the tales that sort of thinking generally bought you more trouble than it was worth. But little things, like making Constable Ewynnog take his bothering self elsewhere, or calming the storms so that the Clogwyn fisherman came home safe.… now that would be magic worth having.

Bargain, bargain, bargain. The Tylwyth Teg, both the good one and the naughty one, had implied the Selch were interested in her magic. And obviously they had some sort of magic of their own, or else how could they become seals and all? Could the Selch have teachers of such things?

It seemed possible. So… could she bargain for such a teacher? How would they take to that?

She drummed her fingers on the table-top, contemplating that notion for a good long while. Was that what the good Tylwyth Teg had meant for her to do? Possibly, but that was not all that it was; she felt that deep in her bones. There was another bargain she could make, or at least, another that the Tylwyth Teg had seen.

Then something new occurred to her. The vow was that she was bound to take a Selch to husband, but unless her father misremembered,
it wasn’t that
the Selch
could force
their
choice of man on her… it was she had to take the Selch husband. But the choice of who that would be.…

Now that was an interesting thought.

Hmm. The old tales all say that if a man mistreats his Selch-wife, her bond is free and she can go back to the sea. Does something like that work for us, I wonder?
Not that her father was the sort to mistreat any woman. And the prospect of irritating an unknown man until he raised his hand to her did not appeal.

But this might mean she could make them give her the choice of husbands, especially if they wanted the magic in her blood that much…

I see it now, aye. I do believe I can make them give me the choice.

She actually got a little thrill out of that notion. She’d never had the illusion that she was a great beauty; certainly the lads of Clogwyn didn’t go trailing about after her the way they did after Braith. Somewhere, vaguely in the back of her mind, she had always supposed that she would marry some fisher lad or other, probably as much because he had his eye on the Prothero cottage as because he wanted her, but as long as he was a good lad and gave her da help on the water, that would have been all right. But to
force
the Selch to send her their comeliest lads, and to have them vying with each other, each courting her harder than the last, well… that would give any girl a bit of a thrill. And it would ensure she’d get herself a temporary husband who would be pleasing and wouldn’t try to force himself on her.

Even as those thoughts crossed her mind, movement at the beach caught her eye; she turned to look out the window and she saw her da laboring up the shore with a burden, and it didn’t look like fish.

As he neared, she saw that it was his nets, all of them.
Now why would he bring them up here, wet, instead of spreading them to dry?

Soon enough she had the answer to that question, as he bumped the door open. His face was weary, and for the first time, ever, she saw fear in his eyes. When he cast the nets down on the floor, she saw that every one of them had been cut up.

“Not a fish,” he said, heavily. “Not so much as a minnow. And every net in ribbons. They know. And they’re punishing us, just as they threatened. They have the whip-hand, Mari. They can ruin us without thinking twice about it.”

He didn’t have to say anything more. They had that money put by under the stone, of course, but when that was gone, they’d starve. Fishing was all Daffyd Prothero knew. Could they even go shellfishing in the tidal pools? Would they even dare, knowing they could be slashed by something they couldn’t see? And what about winter? You couldn’t wade in the freezing winter water without losing your feet.

Now she was in a rage all over again, but not at her father, but at the Selch. Cruel, nasty things they must be, to start on this before she’d even had time to get used to the idea!

Well, two can play the nasty game
, she thought angrily. Before her father could say another word, she pushed past him and out the door, and if she hadn’t been stepping on sand, for certain her footsteps would have been less “steps” and more “stomps” as she made her way down to the sea.

She had no idea how to make herself known, magically, so she settled for working up her anger into a mighty storm inside her. She waded ankle-deep into the surf, ignoring the chill that bit into her feet, and flung furious words out over the water.

“Oh, so you want me so badly that you’ll cut up my da’s nets and threaten to starve us, will you?” she shouted. “And what if I say I’ll be selling myself in the streets of Cardiff before I let you force me to do anything that’s not to my liking, eh? What then? What’ll that be doing to my magic that you want so badly?”

She really had not expected an answer, but to her shock, before the last echo of her voice ebbed, a great grey bulk heaved itself up out of the surf in front of her.

She took a few alarmed steps back, as the bulk resolved itself into an enormous bull-seal, which snorted and bellowed at her. For a moment she felt a chill of fear, but her anger took it away again.

“Oh, so you don’t like that, do you?” she spat, standing her
ground. “Well, too bad for you! Tisn’t Merlin’s world no more; I’ll make it known to you! I can be taking Da to Cardiff. I can be getting him a job in the shipyard, aye, I can!” A memory flitted through her mind about the Tylwyth Teg being unable to come near iron or blessed things. “I can be getting him a job on a great iron ship, and then you can froth and fume all you like and you’ll not be able to touch him! I can be making myself Roman and taking myself to a convent, that I can! Then where will you be? Hmm?”

The bull-seal bellowed again, heaved itself taller, and then it wasn’t a seal there in the surf, but a gray-haired, gray-bearded man standing up with a sealskin cloak about his shoulders. There was an angry fire in his eyes and a sour twist to his mouth. “Oh, you will do that then, will you, Mari Prothero? You think that will be the saving of you?”

“I’d like to see you be arguing with God over who’s to have me, Selch,” she challenged him. “If you want me, if you want the magic in my blood, ’twill be on
my
terms, and you’ll be bargaining with
me
and not my da.”

The Selch went cold as the sea in winter and as still as a glassy calm. There was still anger in him, but he had leashed it and brought it to heel. “Someone’s been talking out of turn,” he mumbled.

So the Tylwyth Teg had been right!

“What, I call it a friendly word,” she countered, hands on her hips, and chin stuck out belligerently. “And so it is. For once, you won’t be the one making all the rules, Selch. If you want me, you’ll be bargaining with me.”

“And for what?” the Selch scoffed, pulling himself up and staring her down. “Treasures? Ah, you mortal wenches, so greedy for gold and gauds! This isn’t Merlin’s day, as you said yourself, and the Selch can’t be pulling great treasures out of the sea just on your say-so.”

“Not treasures. Choices,” she replied firmly. “This isn’t the day of Merlin, that’s true as true, and a maid doesn’t go meekly to whatever man she’s thrown to.”

His eyes widened with surprise, then narrowed with
speculation. “I’m thinking your father might have something to say about this.”

“I’m thinking Daffyd Prothero has
nothing
to say about this, so long as the letter of the bond is kept. This is between me and thee. You’ll be giving me two things, Selch. You’ll be giving me a teacher for this magic, and you’ll be sending a pod of your young men to proper
court
me.” She tossed her head, and looked him in the eye. “I’m not a slave for your taking. On land, I have a choice of who I’ll go with and who I won’t, and I’ll be having that self-same right on the here and now. I won’t be bred like a sheep. I’ll be proper courted and won. Or it’s Cardiff and the iron ship and the convent, and an end to your nonsense. Forever. The bond and the bargain will end with me.”