Harbor Candy

The cargo boat only took them to the outer harbor of the neighboring town.

The captain pocketed one of Lu Wenchao's old silver buttons but kept cursing the whole way, saying there were two things he hated most in this life: hunters and passengers who brought hunters along. After listening, Shanhu politely asked, "Then do you like goldfish?"

The captain looked at the bucket in her arms and was silent for a long time before finally kicking them off the boat.

By daybreak, the rain had stopped. The harbor looked like it had been scrubbed clean. Half a pane of glass was broken in the abandoned waiting room, expired flight schedules were plastered on the walls, paint was peeling off the benches, and in the corner stood a vending machine that would never light up again. Shanhu sat on a bench, earnestly studying a piece of fruit candy.

The wrapper was crumpled from her peeling. She sniffed it first, then licked it, and finally took a careful bite.

"Lu Wenchao."

"What now?"

"My mouth is having a tide surge."

Lu Wenchao was tending to the scrapes on his shoulder. He looked up at that. "That's called sweet."

"Sweet." She held the candy in her mouth, pronouncing the word very slowly. "Why do humans hide sweetness away? Can't you just tell people directly?"

"Candy can't talk."

Shanhu broke off half and handed it to him. "Then I'll speak for it. Here."

Lu Wenchao looked at the half piece she had bitten. "No need."

"Don't you want a tide surge?"

"No."

Disappointed, she withdrew her hand, then thought for a moment before pressing the candy into his palm. "In the sea, when we share food, it means I want you to live a little longer."

Lu Wenchao held the candy, his fingers frozen still.

Footsteps came from outside the waiting room. He immediately pushed Shanhu behind the bench. Two hunters came in to search, their raincoats still dripping.

"Lady Bai's bounty went up again."

"Alive?"

"No kidding. Live scales, live song—dead ones go for half. I hear when the Tidekeepers are pushed to their limit, the song escapes on its own."

"Then let's try peeling off one scale first."

Shanhu crouched behind the bench, her face slowly turning pale.

After the hunters left, she didn't come out right away.

Lu Wenchao crouched down. "Scared?"

Shanhu shook her head, but her voice was very soft. "So they do know I can feel pain."

Lu Wenchao's heart felt like something was tightening around it.

"Don't listen to them."

"But they said it very clearly. Doesn't sound like a misunderstanding." She looked up. "Have you caught mermaids before?"

The question had finally come.

Lu Wenchao didn't lie. "I've caught leads, never caught one alive."

"Do leads feel pain?"

"No."

"But mermaids do."

"I know."

"So catching me—this is your first time?"

"Yeah."

Shanhu thought for a long time, then suddenly said, "Then you made a mistake on your first try and corrected it. That's pretty fast."

Lu Wenchao was rendered speechless.

She smiled, then looked down at her own tail scales. A small patch of scale-glow at her ankle had faded, as if rubbed out by an eraser. Where the silver algae had burrowed through last night, the blue light had grown very thin.

"It's lost some of its blue."

Lu Wenchao's expression changed. He reached out and touched it. The patch was abnormally cold. Shanhu flinched but didn't pull away.

"Does it hurt?"

"Not like pain." She struggled to describe it. "It's like the sea is forgetting me."

Just then, Jiang Yue's call came through, her voice broken and fragmented by the sea wind. "If she stays away from the sea too long, she'll lose her voice. First the scale-glow goes, then the song, and finally her heartbeat will fall out of sync with the tide."

Shanhu understood losing the song, but not the heartbeat.

She only asked, "If I can't sing, can I still go home?"

Silence on the other end of the line.

Lu Wenchao gripped the phone tight. "Say something."

Jiang Yue sighed. "She can, but it has to be fast. Get to the open sea outside the Lantern Array before the next high tide. If she's too late, even if she makes it back, she might not be able to find the door to Tide Cove Bay."

The waiting room fell silent. The vending machine's glass reflected Shanhu's face—pale, damp and cold, but with a stubborn flicker of curiosity still alive in her eyes. She looked at the half piece of candy, then at the wound on Lu Wenchao's shoulder.

"Eat it."

"I said no need."

"You need to live longer, so you can get me there."

Lu Wenchao looked at the candy, then finally put it in his mouth.

The sweetness was cheap, the artificial fruit flavor so strong it was almost bitter. But he remembered her saying her mouth was having a tide surge. And suddenly that cheap sweetness became hard to swallow, like something stuck in his throat.

Shanhu watched him. "Having a tide surge?"

"No."

"You humans have very stubborn mouths."

Lu Wenchao tightened his bandage. "Your description is just too weird."

"But you didn't spit it out."

He paused mid-motion.

Outside the window, the first ferry's horn sounded.

But out on the sea, a row of hunter Lantern Arrays had already lit up. Red light pierced through the fog, one after another, lining up like a path that forbade return.

Shanhu stood by the window and asked softly, "Do the lights bite too?"

Lu Wenchao tucked the silver hook into his sleeve. "They do."

"Then do we bite back?"

He looked at her.

She was very serious, with a little smear of candy at the corner of her mouth.

Lu Wenchao let out a faint smile—very brief.

"First learn to run."

"I'm better at running than yesterday."

"Yesterday you almost crashed into a trash can."

"It stood up too suddenly."

Lu Wenchao pushed open the back door of the waiting room. Outside, the tide was close, the Lantern Array was bright, and the pursuers wouldn't be far behind. Shanhu folded the candy wrapper neatly and put it in her pocket, as if keeping a tiny sun.

When she followed him, the scale-glow at her ankle dimmed a little more.