Page 56 of The Neverfear

(Thorny. Attractive to bees and other pollinators.)

My love is like a melody

That’s sweetly played in tune.

(I am not musical, but if it pleased you I would learn.

The traditional Berserker instrument is

Bagpipes and

Screaming.)

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

No. That would be absurd.

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

And also thou art a woman, not a moment on the space-time continuum.

Irian: I love you

And ever shall

And ever will

If you allow

My ever, ever

Ever.

Chains

The tide, at its highest, came up to Irian’s chest. The water had flooded in through the cage at the speed of a running horse. She gripped the bars so as not to be swept off her feet, watching the level rise up her body.

Koo perched on her head, and chirped at the tide. ‘Back! Back!’

‘That famously doesn’t work, Koo,’ said Irian drily. Her nereid blood had given the tips of her fingers a silver sheen where the sea touched them, but it did not protect her from the cold onslaught of the water.

At last the tide receded, and she sat shivering on the iron floor of the cage. She was soaking wet, and she was so hungry that the bars of the cage were beginning to spin around her if she stood too quickly. But Koo was very young and she refused to show misery in front of him.

‘We’re going to try again. You’re going to fetch something for me. Fetch – do you understand? You’re going fly to those stones, over there, and pull off a mussel, and bring it to me.’

In the course of the next hours, Koo fetched her a host of things that were definitively not mussels: three shells, six stones, a clam, a crab, many scraps of driftwood and what might have been the partial remains of a mouse’s skull.

‘The clam I’m keeping,’ said Irian. ‘But we’ll share the crab.’

Koo crunched on the skull with obvious enjoyment. ‘Mine.’

‘Very much yours. Ready to try again? Do you see those black dots, in the distance? Those are mussels. Yes? Fetch them, Koo.’

‘Yes,’ croaked Koo. ‘Yup. Fetch, yup.’ Koo took off again – but he had gone only a few yards when he gave a sudden shriek of terror. He came flying back to Irian, shrieking, ‘Mine! Irian! Mine!’

Irian did not need to look up at the sky to know what had happened.

The stymphalian bird swept in to land on the stony beach, and Carla kicked at it as she dismounted.