The Mermaids Madness

spoke, the scorn was gone from her voice. “You learned on your own? And you didn’t kill yourself in the process?”
    “Not yet,” Snow said.
    “You might have potential after all.” She was smiling as she spoke. “Close your eyes.”
    “Why?”
    Morveren splashed her. “Do you want to learn or not?”
    Grudgingly, Snow closed her eyes. “Now what?” “Now you listen to my song.”
    Snow waited. She could hear the waves breaking against the hull. A pair of deckhands walked by, whispering about the Hiladi ship. Pulleys squeaked as the crew trimmed the sails. “You’re not singing.”
    “You’re not listening,” Morveren countered. “You’re trying too hard. You’re so tense, like a child who believes she can shit pearls if she pushes hard enough.”
    Snow opened one eye. “Undine can do that?”
    “No. But my older brothers told cruel stories when I was young. Now shut up and listen.”
    “Easy for you to say.” Snow tugged her earlobes, trying to clear the congested feeling. “You’re not the one with worm goop corking your ears.”
    “So stop using them.”
    Resting her hands on her thighs, Snow tried again. She had learned at a young age to see things that weren’t there. It was the only way to detect the spies her mother sent to watch her. Imps and minor demons, little more than flickering afterimages. They weren’t invisible, not in the traditional sense. Rather, they hid among the real, blending into their surroundings. The trick was to push the real world out of focus in order to see what lay beyond.
    She tried to do the same with the noises around her. Voices faded to a buzz. The waves melted into a steady crash of sound. She could hear the drumbeat of her own heart. Even that sound faded, the thrum of her blood becoming little more than a distant rhythm.
    For a moment, she thought she heard it. Humming, faint and fragile as a whispered breath through a flute. Snow stretched out with her senses, but the sound slipped away.
    “Subtle as an amorous squid, you are,” Morveren said. “You waste more magic searching for my song than I’ve used for the actual spell. You overwhelm it with your clumsiness.”
    Snow stuck out her tongue, keeping her eyes closed. Stillness had never come easily to her, but she did her best. Slowly, the humming returned. A simple scale in a minor key, rising and falling again and again.
    “Good. Open your eyes.”
    Snow found Stub sitting on the edge of the boat, head tilted to one side, the tip of his tongue protruding from his mouth. “How did you do that? Your song wasn’t even strong enough to command a butterfly.”
    “Lannadae told me what happened when you brought Talia and Danielle down to meet her. Lannadae was afraid, and she attacked them. Lannadae is undine. She’s stronger than any human, but Talia beat her. How?”
    “To start with, Talia carries enough weapons to arm a battalion.” Snow raised her hand before Morveren could speak. “Fine, so strength isn’t everything.”
    Morveren reached out to tickle Stub’s ear. “It only takes a single thought to direct the mind. Your job is to provide the right thought. Sing with me.”
    “What?”
    Morveren hummed out loud this time. “Sing with me.” She spoke without interrupting her song.
    Snow nodded, humming along with the mermaid. A single scale, reminding her of music lessons when she was young. That tutor’s breath had smelled like old fish too.
    Morveren sang lower. Snow matched her. Morveren changed keys in midscale, jumping to a higher pitch. Snow grinned and chased her song. Their voices grew quieter.
    “Sing to the cat,” Morveren said. “Don’t let me hear.”
    Snow did her best. She lowered her voice even more and concentrated on Stub. His ear twitched.
    “Good. Now weave a vision into the music and scare him off.”
    She imagined a troll sneaking up to yank Stub’s tail. Between one note and the next, she shoved that vision at the cat.
    Stub’s claws dug into the wood, and he scrambled away, hissing.
    “You sang louder at the moment of sending,” Morveren said. “I could see that hairy beast as clearly as the cat did.” She pointed to the aft of the ship. “They say a true master will weave a song loud enough to deafen your helmsman there, and she would sing it so precisely that the man next to him would never hear a single note.”
    Snow flexed her legs, trying to work the stiffness from her muscles. She glanced at the stumps of Morveren’s tails. “If