The Merrow and the Rope Maker

This piece draws on Thomas Keightley's story, The Soul Cages, published a little after the Regency period. It's about a fisherman who makes friends with a merrow (a sort of merman) and subtly releases the souls he keeps in cages, as they drink together. 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, broken pieces of wrecked boats, and frayed rope. The scents of burning wood and tar hissed into the salt and ale air. The roar of flame tangled with the crash of waves, as herds of dark water stampeded towards the stretch of brass beach and dashed upon the sand. It sprayed icy kisses over the flushed faces of the fisher folk dancing and drinking under the moon. It was a bracing October night and 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 kicking up his heels and the wild whip of the fiddle spinning his body. He wove in and out of the other drunkards, the hoots of celebration and the 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, ramming her palms onto the taut skin and feeling the tremors shock up her arm.

"While I admit that Charlotte The Harlot is worthy of the stage," Sarah said blithely, sawing at the fiddle and speaking with a closed mouth to keep her chin pinning it to her shoulder, "It is beneath you."

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

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

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

Sarah did not dignify that with a response, she just screeched the fiddle, making Cassandra wince. Cassandra 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 appearing 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."

Cassandra kept her eyes on the fire. "Then what is?"

Sarah grinned, the flames painting them both in sloshing 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 glanced at Sarah, an eyebrow raised in interest. Sarah's face was impish, goading her. Cassandra felt the peculiar cold dissipate. She looked back to her merrow. Jacob cantered up to Charlotte and they clapped their hands with a harsh pistol sound. Cassandra's jaw set. She punched the final beats of the song into the drum. Sarah's fiddle wailed and 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 and 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 passer by. Old Jim nearly toppled over on his single leg.

"Lass!" he rasped, "What's th' doing?"

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

Jim 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?"

Jim snorted. "I don't know how to play."

"Hear the sea?" Cassandra asked.

Jim nodded, confused.

"Just keep up the same rhythm."

Jim was about to protest, but Cassandra strode around him and off down the beach. The old man leaned on his crutch, cocked his head, 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 of ale. 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.

Cassandra grit her teeth, squared her shoulders, and marched herself forward.

Jacob yelped, as he was seized by the back of the collar and dragged away from the crowd. His ears flushed, 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 escaping its bonds and shining like oil in the glow, her face chiselled, her eyes stray sparks from the fire, her mouth the soft shape of a sage leaf but pressed hard, her shoulders strong, and her fists on her hips, Cassandra glared at him through the dimness.

"Cassie?" he hiccupped merrily. Cassandra's 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!"

Cassandra had prodded him in the stomach.

"Why did you do that?" he demanded.

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!"

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

Cassandra clucked her tongue. "The invisible drum?"

"No, but..."

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

Jacob looked baffled. "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 felt such a fool. 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 of air 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!"

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

Jacob 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 were slightly parted, catching his breath, 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.

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

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

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

Jacob's hands slid into his pockets and his shoulders bowed a little. He looked at her with what she could have sworn was guilt. "Not... Not a huge exhibition..."

"Then what?"

Jacob wrinkled his nose, like an otter, and rubbed the back of his neck. "Maybe a very small, travelling circus sort of sized..."

Cassandra swiped the air. "Oh, it's a circus, no doubt about that."

Jacob's meek face flickered, his brows lowered and shadowed his eerie, pale eyes. "Why are you so bothered anyway?" It was surly, but it was curious.

Cassandra froze. The sea rolled. Its whoosh filled the foot of space between them, made it yawn cavernous. Cassandra 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, more strange, 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 and she doesn't deserve to be led on a wild goose chase for your affection."

The corner of Jacob's mouth twitched, starlight glittered in his wide pupils. "Who says it's a wild goose chase?"

The back of Cassandra's neck prickled hot.

Jacob slouched into his pockets a little and looked at her under his hair. "I could be a perfectly well domesticated goose."

Laughter gurgled instinctively in Cassandra's 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 lower lip jutted out, his 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."

Cassandra's anger spiked. "When we were 12!"

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

Cassandra's stomach somersaulted. Fury stamped on the sudden nervousness. She levelled a daggering glare into his deep, liquid eyes. He held her gaze, but he softened again. It cooled her. 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 October night ran clammy hands up her arms, turning the hairs on her skin crisp and making her shiver.

Jacob took a steady breath and looked into her carefully. "Cassie, are you angry because I danced with Charlotte and not with you?"

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

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

Cassandra frowned. "Pardon?"

He silently slid his foot through the sand and closed the distance between them. The rhythmic rolling of the sea hushed. Her eyes wandered to the freckle on his collarbone.

Jacob's 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 just lightly feel the warmth of his body. Her arms unfolded unbidden, her shivers dissolving at his closeness. "Do you love Charlotte?" She hated herself for asking.

His mouth slipped into a tender smile that unravelled the knots in her gut. His fingertips brushed hers, then furled away.

He answered with no guile and no mockery. "No."

She exhaled through her nose. Her shoulders dropped.

Jacob's fingers extended again, and this time they lingered on hers, tip to tip, lighter than mayflies meeting. "You don't catch the light, Cassie. You are light."

She blinked. She stared. 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 -"

Cassandra kissed him.

Her fists closed tight around his collar and 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."

Jacob's 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, 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 singing 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 and roasted him. Her pelvis lined to his. His pulse kicked. His breath stopped. 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 and a deeper, mature sweetness, almost melancholic in its longing. He smelled overpoweringly of wood smoke. It made her hungry. His fingers moved slowly on her back, teasing just above her rump, sending enticing ribbons up her spine. His hardness nudged her through her skirts. It was summoning. She rocked her hips without thinking. A quiet sound leaked from his throat, the ale bubbles sprang up in his eyes. 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 heard herself say, her voice ringing delicately on the rock, "Or probably even fair, but..." She splayed her hands on his chest, starlight glancing on the weals and callouses 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."

His chest rose and his arms curled around her. 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, stopping her heart, intensifying her ache, "We've always belonged to each other, Cassie."

His hand stroked over her waist, as he slipped it from her 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 yawning 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 horde by a rockpool, but put the best treasure in her pocket. She scurried over to the lad.