I own nothing.

Ever since her father died, Isma had woken in daylight or darkness to the same sound. It was the sound that anyone living on a small, remote island was doomed to hear, day in and day out. There could be no silence, so close to the ocean, and it was such an omnipresent sound that Isma had never so much as imagined a day without it. She woke and slept by the sound of the waves hitting the great, slippery rocks, of their echoing boom against the cliffs.

Anyone Isma met in the village who would talk to her all said the same thing: 'You must live such a quiet life.' It always made Isma want to laugh. Quiet? Her life was anything but quiet.

But it was, maybe… Just a little empty.

Isma had never had anyone but her father—to everyone else, she was someone who was to be pitied at best (what use did she have for pity?) or whispered against, 'freak' and 'monster' and 'abomination' (What used had she for people like that?). Well, Dad was gone now, and she was by herself. She gardened a little away from the shore—even Isma, much as she loved fish, didn't want to eat it day in and day out. She chattered to herself over the stewpot when the absence of another voice started to feel like a wound instead of just an absence.

Why do the gulls always sound so sad? she would wonder to herself sometimes. At least they can fly around in flocks. At least they can leave.

Sometimes the sea she loved so much looked like a fence.

Everyone said that Isma had merrow blood. The villagers muttered behind their hands on occasion; the kids who were wise to it didn't mutter but shouted. Dad talked about the merrow he had courted, when he had talked. Isma understood the merrow to have been her mother, though whoever the woman was, she was long gone now, so it wasn't like she'd ever know for sure. It might explain the odd bluish color of her hair, her affinity for the water, which was unusual even for a fisherman on a small island.

But that didn't make any sense to Isma. She had spent whole days in the shallows, ignoring her growling stomach and blistering skin, but she'd never sprouted a tale or gills. She'd never seen flashing silver scales glitter on her legs the way the sun flashed on the water. She was no merrow. If she was a merrow, she could have swum away from this island, and gone somewhere she would actually belong, instead of staying in this place.

(Sometimes, Isma would just stare out at the endless tracks of sea. Of deep blue waters and the little white caps of the waves. It was like a fence or a moat, but it also seemed like a living thing. It had moods, the water turning to stormy gray or glassy black. Sometimes, she thought she could hear it talking to her. Not like the like the entrance to the cave of the sea god, which moaned and howled in high winds. It just… talked.)

Something was changing on the island. The gulls came less frequently, and Isma thought their cries had a peculiar timbre (It was fear, though she'd have to think about it for a while to realize that). She had a harder time finding fish, and half the time the ones she found were so sick-looking that she had to throw them back, only to watch them writhe in the water and die.

Where before Isma would have readily ventured into the village, regardless of the scorn she was shown, lately, she stayed away. She didn't want to admit that she was afraid, but there it was. The last time she went, the little streets were deserted. Fish that had been left out to dry had rotted in the sun, but the reek in the air didn't just come from them, or the middens. The shrine to the sea god was awash with blood; Isma remembered the faint outline of tentacles in the water on the night of the full moon and shuddered. Wherever she went, the people stood behind their cracked doors and shutters, but they were silent, and they stared at her with glassy gimlet eyes.

When she dove beneath the waves, Isma heard voices. It was not the ocean talking to her, it was not that one rough, rolling voice. These were a multitude of voices, voices like music, though they did not sing. Some were high and others low. Some spoke with joy, others with sorrow. There were those that spoke with malice, and others with such overwhelming, endless longing that Isma barely remembered at times where or even who she was. She felt as though they spoke within her blood as well within the brine.

In the shadows of the cave of the sea god, something scuttled and writhed and hissed against the light.

She sat alone in her house at night. The wind battered at the door and the shutters; the wind screamed in the cave of the sea god. The sea crashed against the cliffs and echoed all along the course of the island. Isma felt as though she was being pressed in on all sides. The borders of her world shrank from the stretches of the island to the outer walls of her home, and beyond that there was only the dark and what had come to lurk in the dark's embrace.

When she dreamt, she dreamt of merrows singing.