Page 23 of Fae Tithe

Helena followed with goggles on her head and fins in her arms. She raked her eyes over him and her face split into a grin. “I really like the tail,” she teased, “perhaps a little too much.”

Lance hummed a tenor song in his chest. It was a sound that Helena had come to understand was the Merman’s laugh in his true form, not so different from his chuckle when he was human-shaped. He whipped his teal tail around and soaked her still-dry torso. Lance closed the distance in between them as Helena pushed her dripping hair from her eyes. The Merman pushed the net baskets to his elbows, reaching out to her.

Helena quivered as he ran the back of his claw down the edge of her cotton covered breast. She wore similar swimming clothes to the day before, but in blue.

“Different ones?” he asked, hands moving quickly to form signs.

“Yes, different ones. Someone shredded the black ones I wore yesterday. Know anything about that?” Helena retorted, quick hand movements matching her words. She knew he could hear her, but habit meant her hands would sign whenever they were in the water together.

The Merman sung his laugh in response. Helena felt Lance’s eyes continue to watch her as she slipped on her goggles and kicked on her flippers. She tried to take the net baskets from his arms. He pulled them away from her reach and shook his head.

Helena sighed and surrendered to him. She knew Lance could be just as stubborn as she was. More than once in their relationship they had butted heads over doing things for each other, each thinking the other did too much. They swam together in a familiar rhythm.

Lance began to serenade her in a language of the Seafolk. She had no idea what he was singing, but the melody was sweet and light, and Helena was grateful to have music to accompany the hard, tedious work.

She dived again and again to different areas of her pearl farm. She picked up large oysters woven into their holding nets by carefully untying them. Helena would then pass them to Lance, who would store them in the net’s baskets, looped onto his arms, for safekeeping.

Between each collection, Helena would burst to the surface and take a deep breath, filling her starved lungs. At the twentieth oyster she surfaced, chest heaving.

“Let me catch my breath…” Helena panted while treading water. “…then we will go back to the shore.”

She looked back to the beach. They were some distance away, and she knew she would have to rest a moment before she could make the swim. Lance crooned a reply. He blinked at her with a fang-filled grin on his face. Suddenly, he disappeared from her sight beneath the waves. Before she knew it, he had slipped his strong body beneath her and positioned Helena on top of his back. He reached behind him, grabbing her wrists with his fingers and setting them on his toned shoulders.

“You don’t have to—”

She watched the back of his head shake from side to side as he angled his webbed hands high out of the water. The full baskets had been shoved to his elbows, so she could see the movements of his hands as she peeked over his shoulder.

“I know I don’t have to, but I want to,” he signed.

“Okay, okay…” Helena relented. She rolled her eyes at him through her goggles, but was touched by his concern.

Helena could tell he was smug that he had convinced her to let him help again. She felt Lance begin to work his teal tail up and down, setting a gentle pace back to shore. Helena pushed her goggles to her hair and rested the side of her face on the back of Lance’s neck as he swam. She breathed slowly in and out, the ache of the swim leaving her muscles. Lance began to sing again, a different melody from the one before, quieter and more soothing. The tune sent a relaxing vibration through her chest as she pressed up against him.

“Thank you,” Helena whispered into his long black curls.

Once they were near the shore, she slipped from Lance’s back, kicking off her fins as she made her way onto the beach. The Merman followed close behind, waiting for the shift to complete.

Helena ran a hungry eye over him as he stood. He’s perfect.

Long, lean and muscular, his black hair curled around his face, almost glowing in the spring sunshine overhead. She watched as Lance pulled on his cotton shorts that he had abandoned by the shoreline.

“Let’s get to work?” he asked with a gentle smile on his lips.

Helena grinned in return. “Absolutely.”

They made their way into the wooden shed. Helena and Lance dried themselves, then together lit the lamps, illuminating the dim space. She submerged the oysters into several wooden buckets of seawater that Lance had hefted up the beach for her. Helena clamped the first huge oyster into the iron clamp on her workbench and positioned the glass magnifier arm over the top of the lip.

Sliding on her spectacles, she then inserted a flat iron tool in the joins of the oyster’s shell and turned it with a sharp crack, prying the mouth open. Helena felt Lance watching over her shoulder as she carefully eased a pair of metal tweezers past the narrow opening and into the soft flesh. She fiddled around inside and eventually fished out a large violet pearl.

“Beautiful,” Lance murmured. His warm breath on her neck gave Helena goosebumps.

She dropped the first pearl into a wooden bowl next to her elbow. Helena took her tweezers and selected a glass bead from another container behind the clamp. She pushed it into the oyster’s mouth, embedding it into the flesh. She had inoculated it so that another pearl would form there in the next year or so. She unclamped it, placing it into one of the ‘return’ buckets to her right. Her great aunt had taught her the technique before the elderly woman quit the ocean for good, as a way of harvesting the pearls without killing the oyster.

Lance took up the space beside her, a matching magnifying glass and workstation, assisting her in the harvest and reseeding of the shellfish. By the time they were done, her fingers ached and her back cramped from having repeated the process again and again. Eventually, Helena and Lance had twenty beautiful pearls in the bowl between them.

She took off her spectacles and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Her eyes felt strained, and a headache scratched at her temples. “We need to put them back,” she sighed.

“Is it not enough for today?” Lance ventured, placing a hand on her shoulder and squeezing gently. “They will be alright in the buckets overnight. We could put them back tomorrow when we go out for more… I am guessing there are more?”