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It is still hours from dawn when Silco’s footsteps sound across the floor of his threadbare flat. The thumping sound he registers as being made by his own waterlogged boots means he’s not dead—not yet, at least—but he doesn’t quite remember how he got home.
Another slip in his fugue state, and he’s huddled on the floor against the wall. Like pressing the fleshy heel of one’s palm over a cut, Silco cannot fight the instinct to cover himself, cram his body into the corner. He’s still soaking wet; his hair drips, his eyes drip, his flayed cheek drips and drips and drips. Silco is no longer a person, but a living wound.
A warm glint flashes beneath his eyelids. He knows he’s dreaming because it looks just like sunlight.
Hope eventually calcifies into denial and crumbles more with each passing day. Silco doesn’t need a mirror to tell him how bad his face looks. He breaks it throws the jagged pieces away before he can get any stupid ideas.
It’s just his luck that the healer that happens to come to him is lovely beyond words. Pin-straight, jet-black hair is gathered in a loose braid down her back. Silco can’t stop his eyes from flicking to her mouth, along the dark skin of her throat. Startling, almond-shaped eyes as bright as the gold canine that gleams when she smiles at him.
Pathetically, he blushes when she holds his face in her hands to inspect the damage. She speaks to him in an accent so strange that it sounds like no language he’s ever heard—yet he understands her perfectly. Without flinching away her thumb trails along the worst of it, the ugly ridge under his eye, and he burns.
Silco asks her name. She laughs and tells him he wouldn’t be able to pronounce it.
The following night, the healer returns. She asks Silco to sit back on his small couch, and he chokes in surprise when she straddles him. She produces a small bottle of opalescent liquid and dabs a bead of it on her slender fingers. Silco’s good eye drifts shut when she makes contact with his scar, gently rubbing in the viscous fluid.
Silco can’t tell whether the instant relief it brings is more from the strange potion or from the delicate fingertips stroking his face with such unfathomable gentleness. The constant pain of the past weeks, quieted. She is so intentional with each movement, as if she already knows which parts are still swollen and tender, and which are ready to split into fresh wounds.
The healer finally draws her hand away, signaling the end of the treatment, and Silco is horrified to feel tears threatening to spring to his eyes. If she notices his distress, she doesn’t show it—instead, she remains in his lap and softly threads her fingers through his hair. Maybe she doesn’t want to leave, either, Silco thinks before he can stop himself.
She comes to him every evening, and each evening Silco gives her ten coins. Yet, somehow, the money is back in his coin purse as soon as she’s out the door. When he mentions it, she tells him with a twinkle of mirth in her eyes that the infection is likely spreading to his brain and that they should extend each session by half.
The only story she tells Silco about herself is a legend from her homeland, about sea-folk who could walk amongst men after tasting only a drop of blood from a sailor’s wound. She says that it was believed human blood could heal injuries, even grant special powers for a time. Like saltwater, she whispers, but much stronger.
You believe such stories? Silco asks her, a rare playfulness blooming in his chest. I didn’t used to, she murmurs, but now I do.
The first winter is hard. The frigid winds that funnel down into the fissures bite at Silco’s face and lidless eye, even when he’s able to cover them with a hood. He’s even more thankful that his healer has never looked upon him with pity now that the sensitive skin is even more blemished with angry red scales and welts. She simply climbs into his lap and hums softly as she rubs the potion into his cracked skin.
While she seems comfortable pressed into him, Silco has never gotten used to the intimacy of their arrangement. Keeping his composure is a daily trial; so far, he’s been able to will his mind away from baser thoughts when she occasionally grinds against him. When she bites her lip in concentration, he tries to focus on the molten gleam of her gold tooth.
He’s caught off guard when she traces his lower lip and murmurs that it’s chapped. It’s not until she tells him to relax his mouth that he realizes he’d been pressing his lips together in restraint. She dabs a bead of her potion on the broken skin, delicate as a butterfly’s wing, and looks at him with unbridled adoration in her huge, golden eyes.
No one has ever looked at Silco like that before. Not the brief flings he had in his youth when he still had a shot at growing into his sharp features, and certainly not the whore who told him that face-to-face would cost extra. The tips of his ears are growing warm under her scrutiny. Everything from his heart down to his cock feels swollen and aching , like he might burst at a single touch.
I can’t stay, she says, apologetic and earnest, but think of me.
And he does.
Silco’s nervousness grows as the following evening approaches. He thought that by now he’d be purged of any residual vanity, but he nonetheless finds himself tugging on a slightly better-fitting shirt that (he hopes) makes him look less thin and decrepit. He even combs his hair away from his face in an effort to look marginally more presentable.
Filtered afternoon light fades into a murky evening glow. Dusk falls.
She never comes.
She doesn’t come the following night, nor any night after.
Silco awakes with a cry of pain and brings his hand to his face. There’s no blood when he pulls away, but it hurts. And then, fingertips meet the exposed line of his crooked teeth. Confused panic floods him as he frantically feels around his cheeks and jawline.
He hasn’t looked at his reflection in months, so peering at his visage in the dark windowpane is a shock. The first thing he sees is the corner of his mouth, disturbingly stretched and warped compared to the other. Then, what looks like a tear forming in his cheek, dangerously close to the eroded edge of his mouth. Even with his lips pressed shut as far as he can muster, the white of his teeth are still visible.
Silco turns away from the window, unable to bear the sight of his face any longer. His heart is hammering and nausea climbs up his throat. How had it gotten so much worse in the few days since—
No. He won’t think of her.
With a scarf wrapped securely over the lower portion of his face and his hood pulled low, Silco makes his way to the only other doctor he knows of. Then to the doctor the first refers him to. Another, and another.
None will touch the darkening chasm cleaving across his face. Like nothing I’ve ever seen, they say in hushed voices. Silco sees the fear in their eyes, they way they won’t touch his skin even with gloves. Finally, he’s given a name not familiar to him and directions to seek out his office by the docks. It takes him nearly an hour to get there; his feet are chafing and his face throbs. Once he sees the name, he nearly walks straight in without ringing the bell before his eye catches the words below it on the sign.
Palliative and Hospice Apothecary.
Mechanically, he turns around and starts to walk back the way he came. He feels numb. His feet carry him like they did last he was here, the night where Vander—
Silco’s wrists hit the rocky, pebbly sand and despair crashes over him, like a delayed reaction, long bottled up since the first day he’d spent without his healer. His face is getting worse, sure, but he’s not dying, is he? He’s not ready to die.
But for a second he wants to, because the grimace he makes upon hitting the ground is enough to snap that final thread of skin in his cheek. He hisses in agony and presses the cloth wrapping against the gaping wound. He wishes it would bleed, give some sign of still being a human face, but the puckered flesh makes no response as he clutches it.
Pulling himself up, Silco staggers over to the edge of a tidepool. The rocks are freezing cold against his skin, and he thinks that a fever may now be blooming in his useless, rotting body. Against his better judgment, he tugs off his shoes and slides waist-deep into the water, leaning against the smooth stones that border it. What was it that his healer had said about the sea-folk?
Silco, says a voice that sounds both alien and familiar.
He looks up to see a figure floating in the water before him. Perhaps it’s the fever responsible for the strange tranquility that envelops him—that is, if he’s not hallucinating entirely. The creature has a lithe, feminine body with wispy fins cascading down its (her?) neck and shoulders. Her skin is rosy and translucent like a pink diamond under Silco’s half-lidded gaze as his eyes move up to hers.
The creature’s face is a pretty oval, bordered by mauve scales that fade into black hair. Her slitted nose offsets a strangely plush, human mouth. Huge golden eyes, with pupils blown wide, stare unblinking into Silco’s. Smaller, secondary eyes blink open at her temples, focused heatedly on him alongside their primaries.
I know you, he thinks. I cannot be afraid of what I know.
She reaches for him with long, webbed fingers, just barely grazing the bundled side of his face. Suddenly, her head drops in supplication.
I’m so sorry, she whispers, brokenly. I tried to come back. Your blood ran out.
Like an out-of-body experience, a dream-within-a-dream, Silco looks back on the night he nearly drowned with fresh eyes. He sees the gory slash of his cuts through the murky water, the warm lifeblood succumbing to the cool depths until a drop lands on the pale tongue of a water nymph. She could have stoked the ember of that power for years in her own domain. Instead, she chose to burn it fast and bright in order to come to Silco, to soothe his wounds and cradle his broken heart.
It works both ways, she continues. I couldn’t do this as a land-walker. But now I can try.
She motions for Silco to remove the wrappings, but he turns his head away. He can’t let her see what’s become of his face. He can’t relinquish the look in her eyes on that last night for even a flash of disgust in her expression.
Don’t be afraid of me. Please.
Any resolve he had melts at her one plea, and he nods his assent for her to begin unwinding the cloth. Once he’s bare before her, the weight of her gaze is almost unbearable.
Oh, my Silco, she soothes, running those inhuman fingers down his ruined cheek. I can help you. I can’t mend all of the scars, but I can make your flesh whole again, take your pain away. Slowly, Silco meets her eyes and finds them brimming with devotion and unshed tears. No revulsion; no pity. The good corner of his mouth trembles and a sob tears from his throat.
She moves closer and embraces him, her slippery skin warm and alive against his. I’m here, my love. I’ve got you. And then, she raises her mouth to his.
Silco’s mouth is too destroyed for him to properly kiss her back, but she doesn’t seem to mind his grotesque, ragged lips. When she pulls away, color is high in her cheeks, and her broad smile reveals her sharp little gold canine. Quick as a dart, she pricks her middle finger on the tooth and squeezes a shimmering bead of blood to the surface. Hypnotized, Silco lets her dab the blood on his lower lip and he reflexively licks it away.
It happens in a blink: there’s a flash of itchy heat, and on impulse, Silco pokes his tongue along his now-restored cheek. He brings his hand up to touch the skin; it’s still scarred, but it feels stronger, less brittle.
It’s the best I can do, she says, as if by way of apology, but it will no longer spread.
And he can’t help himself—he winds her arms around her waist and squeezes her, wildly happy, almost hysterical in his feeling of wonder for her. I love you, he whispers hoarsely. I will love you even when there’s nothing left of me.
She looks up at him tenderly, stroking his still-scarred—but mended—face.
My beautiful boy, she says. Beautiful then. Beautiful now. She kisses him again, a chaste press of lips against his, and he knows it’s a goodbye.
I’ll see you again, is the last thing she says before she disappears beneath the water.
Years later, Silco gazes out to the emerald-blue of the deep through a great glass expanse, the rose window of his cathedral. He leans forward, rests his forehead and open hand against the cool surface. It’s become a meditative ritual for him, especially when his mind becomes clouded with the things he’s done, the things he’s become.
Beautiful then. Beautiful now.
Unbidden, the words echo in his ears. He looks up just in time to see a brief flash of gold before it winks back into the dark.