The Sea Remembers Us — Episode 6

luring me back so he could eat me. The next day, I found a grouper on the dock, alongside a speaker that had been painstakingly pieced back together. Opal hovered a hundred meters out, neither approaching nor leaving, just watching me. I might have overreacted yesterday.

Research consistently showed merfolk were among the friendliest species known. He'd probably just been startled that the speaker could produce mersal. I waved him over. He drifted ten meters closer, waited, and when I didn't run, cautiously closed another ten meters.

Several minutes passed before he was just a few meters away. You don't like the speaker? What if I teach you myself? Could he actually understand human speech?

beach? I'd been listening to the Colony's courtship songs through underwater equipment for I knew them by heart. I sang the first line, ready to sprint the instant his claws came from my head the way they'd come for the speaker. When Opal heard me sing, his eyes lit up. He repeated the line back. I sang the full courtship song, and he echoed it perfectly. I'd expected to need a dozen

repetitions, but he reproduced the entire song flawlessly on the first try. His eyes never left me. He didn't even blink. It made me uneasy. Opal, you're incredibly smart. When you meet a murmur you fancy someday you may sing this tune for her. Consider it tuition. That night deep in sleep I was jolted awake by a familiar melody. Furious I