Morag met my gaze and took a deep breath before continuing. “It would seem you know the truth of her dreams, then.”
My hands clenched around my mug, but I ignored the sting of the hot porcelain against my palms.
I thought of the selkies and mermaids wrapped in garlands of pearls. Gooseflesh rose on my arms and legs. “Why haven’t you warned the town? Think of the lives you could’ve saved!”
Morag’s reply was almost too soft to hear. “Don’t you think I’ve tried? Why do you think they mock me so?”
I bit my lip, knowing all too well how that felt. “One of us has to tell Mam about her dreams, at least!”
“No, girl. It’s much kinder not to.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mureal isn’t strong like us.” Morag smiled sadly. “Strong like you, rather.” She bowed her head and sighed. “She has an ability few possess, a bond with the sea not unlike the connection some have with the spirit world. But it makes her delicate. To learn that her visions are more than dreams would surely undo her. You, on the other hand, won’t fall to pieces just because there’s a grindylow in the harbor or a fossegrim on the beach. You have a great ability to acknowledge the hidden and carry on living.”
I shook my head. Morag made it sound as though I were the type who could see the boy she’d kissed turn into a sea monster, shrug, and go fix supper. Silence settled over the cottage, thick and stale as the air around us.
Finally, I cleared my throat. “Why did the serpent attack you? Is there more than one? Does it eat people, or just kill for pleasure?”
A muscle jumped in Morag’s cheek, but she continued staring into her tea. “This is why I didn’t wish to talk about the monsters with you. I gave you the book. That should be enough to satisfy your curiosity.” She drained the rest of her mug before settling her unfocused gaze on me. “I don’t have the answers you seek and I can’t help you. All I know about the serpent is that its bite will make you plead for a swift death.”
“Then, can you tell me how to find and kill a fossegrim?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never gone looking for one.” Morag’s foot knocked rhythmically against the table leg.
I gritted my teeth. I was wasting time here, time I could have spent searching for Fynn. If Morag couldn’t answer my next question, I would leave. “Tell me about glashtyns, then. Are they dangerous? What do they do, besides drowning lasses?”
“Glashtyns are rare creatures native to the waters around the Isle,” Morag said flatly. It sounded as though she was quoting her monster book. “They aren’t related to horses, despite their looks. When they come on land, they take the form of dark-haired boys with blue eyes. They like to hunt fish when they aren’t smuggling girls into the sea, but drowning lasses is their favorite sport.”
Morag continued to level her probing gaze at me, and I stared back. “What interests me about your glashtyn is why he hasn’t tried to drown you.”
“I’d like to know that, too. Could it be … because he cares for—?”
“No. A predator doesn’t love its victims. Your friend didn’t just abandon his desire to hunt women, no more than a stoat can stop hunting rabbits. Not without help, anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
Morag reached for her mug again, and blinked upon finding it empty. “If he feels anything for you, it’s because something changed him, took away his compulsion to kill. Was there anything unusual about him on the day you met, aside from his injuries?”
Heat crept up my neck as I recalled that first meeting with Fynn. “He was naked. Not a scrap on him.”
“There’s nothing abnormal about that. I eat my breakfast in the nude. Think, girl!”
I looked down at my hands in my lap, trying to focus on the details of Fynn’s rescue instead of dwelling on the image Morag’s words had conjured. That day, I had kneeled beside Fynn’s motionless form, so petrified I hadn’t even thought to check his breathing. I ran my fingers between his wounds, probing for the heat of infection, and—
“When I touched his cuts, it felt like I’d stuck my hand in a beehive.”
Morag cracked a rare smile. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Was there anything on your hand when this happened?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. My fingers just tingled for a minute.”
Morag pursed her lips, tracing a groove in the table with her index finger.
Dropping my gaze to my hands, I examined a bright pink welt on the right one. A thorn from the raspberry bramble must have nicked me when I was foraging earlier. I hadn’t injured that hand since the day I met Fynn, when the shard of glass had sliced my thumb. The wound had still been fresh when I touched him.
I thrust my right hand across the table, and Morag frowned as though I’d offered her a piece of rotten fish. “This is the hand that felt strange when I touched Fynn. I slashed my thumb on a broken bottle.”
Morag’s eyes went from whiskey dreaming to alert in a flash. “And were you still bleeding when you found him?”