I pinched my eyes closed again, but in my mind, I could still see him.
He was young; maybe a year or two older than me. He had thick black hair with a soft, perfect wave, and just a couple of loose curls framing his face. His skin was pale, touched with silver, and his eyes were dark, and they twinkled in the shade of two black brows. His cheekbones were high and sharp; his jaw was square and strong; and most of all, his lips were perfect; shapely and full, and parted in an easy smile.
I had never seen anyone like him before.
The lady called to him, and he answered. Out of his mouth, their shared language was different. Rich, calm, and reassuring; like the sound of the wind outside at night when you're safe and warm and in your bed.
I kept my eyes closed, but I heard him coming towards me, his footsteps crunching on the stones. He must have climbed up onto the Harbour Arm, because a moment later I felt his presence looming over me.
His breath was on my skin; he was kneeling beside me.
The scent of vanilla filled my nostrils.
He touched my face.
A small tremble passed through me, and I hoped I hadn't given myself away. But surely it was too late. He had already noticed me. He knew that I was faking.
His fingers brushed my neck, and he drew back with a sharp hiss. He'd found my birthmark; a brown sliver of rough, rust-coloured skin that ran from my chin to my chest like a wound. An ugly, disgusting thing.
He leaned in closer.
"Do not speak."
I held my breath.
"Do not move. Do not open your eyes."
I opened my mouth just a little to whisper back, to ask who he was. He put a finger to my lips.
"If you speak, or move, or open your eyes, you will die."
I repressed a whimper.
"This will all be over soon, and no-one will be hurt."
The lady called out again, and he answered with an indifferent air. He did not respond to orders the way a soldier should.
I heard him jump down onto the beach.
Whatever was happening here, he wasn't going to give me away.
I wouldn't give myself away either. I would not speak. I would not move. I would not open my eyes. This was too strange and scary for me to play any part in.
The horn-blower on the hill blasted a fanfare of curling, swirling, heart-stopping howls. This was followed at once by a low murmur from the beach, and the sounds of the churning sea.
I would not speak. I would not move.
I would open my eyes only a little.
The lady stood at the edge of the shoreline, the tide sweeping back and forth across her feet, her arms stretched wide. She was chanting in the same strange language, her words fighting against the wind. The soldier was at her side, holding the reins of the horses, and the man was a few feet behind them, with his arms folded.
The surface of the water rippled in a way I had never seen before. A spiral was forming.
The lady's voice rose higher, punching against the sky, and as she spoke, the water squirmed, like snakes, or tentacles, writhing just beneath the surface.
The lady was shouting now, and the tendrils thrashed up out of the water, and I saw that they were not snakes, nor tentacles, but the water itself, forming into lashing limbs that stretched and reached and danced out of the sea.
The lady weaved her hands in the air, as if pulling these serpentine strands together, and they formed first into a spout, and then into a more definite shape. A woman.
The figure was at least twenty feet high, and she continued to take form in front of me. Her arms slipped free of her body, water coursing down from her fingertips, and her head rose up from her chest and tilted back, and she opened her mouth.
She screamed.
It was no human sound. It was a roar from the depths of the ocean; the pained, reverberating howl of a great beast in terrible pain. The roar passed through my bones.
The lady wailed in alarm at the creature's cries. She shouted to each of her two companions in desperation, and neither of them offered any answer. Finally, she shouted to the creature itself, trying to draw its attention to her, and she gestured. With a stab of her arm, the lady pointed to the Harbour Arm, where my brother and half a dozen others lay sleeping, and where I pretended to do the same.
And the creature turned to face us.
Even though I was only looking through the narrow slit of my lashes, I saw much more than I wanted to.
Her hair was a writhing mass, her face a distortion of swirls and eddies, with haunted hollow eyes as dark as the sunless depths.
The man spoke up urgently; the soldier put her arm in front of him and held him back.
The creature rolled her body forward onto the beach, scattering stones as she slithered forward. I grit my teeth and tried to stop shaking.
A monster. A sea monster. Real, and here, and horrible beyond all measure.
She pulled herself up onto the Harbour Arm and loomed over the helpless sleeping bodies. She was a woman from the waist up, and a serpent below, and within her undulating body I saw an impossible sight. Chains reached far beneath her skin, and ancient ships hung at their ends like baubles, with the bodies of drowned sailors bobbing between the ships.
I knew what these men must be; the souls of men she had devoured.
The creature needed to eat.
She came down low to inspect the sleepers on the concrete, water drip-dripping from her body like steady rain. She studied their faces; a father with his young twins; a couple of kids my age. They did not stir from their sleep. With one of her long, icicle fingers she swept the hair from the face of a girl, whose hand rested on top of a tackle box. When the creature flicked her cheek with a dart of her long, slender tongue, she didn't flinch.
The girl was not what she wanted. The creature ate sailors, and this girl was no older than fourteen. Not enough to sate her appetite.
The creature looked up and around, and I thought her attention fell on me. I wondered if she could tell that my eyes were partly open, and if she would try to punish me for it.
But she wasn't looking at me. Her attention was on the body beside me.
She was looking at my brother.
He wasn't a sailor, but he was the next best thing she might find; an Army recruit. Strong enough to make a decent meal.
The creature placed her hands on my brother's chest and slid her tongue across his cheek. Water splashed his skin, and he didn't move.
She opened her mouth wide, and I heard a low and distant roar swell up from somewhere inside her. She slipped a fingertip between his lips, and water flowed from her body into his mouth. He spluttered, but he still did not wake.
"Stop!"
I was on my knees before I knew what I was doing.
"Stop, please! Don't hurt him!"
The monster turned on me with a shriek. To my amazement, she seemed as terrified of me as I was of her. She drew away from my brother, drawing the water back out of him.
Her mouth peeled back from her toothless maw, and her eyeless sockets grew wide as sinkholes. Her jaw, already stretched wide as a snake's, now distended and warped and collapsed into her chest. Her face unravelled as the tendrils that made up her body retreated, curling back into an angrily churning sea.
All the while, the screaming continued, and I realised it wasn't coming from the creature, but from the lady on the beach. As the last strands of the sea creature disappeared into the water with a slithering splash, she bore her teeth in a grimace, and held out her hand.
Her woman-at-arms placed a spear in her grip.
She was going to kill me. And I was an easy target, standing on a raised concrete block on the beach surrounded by sleeping bodies. She couldn't miss.
"Please," I said.
The warrior threw her spear.
* * *