Home / Three Days Until I Become Foam / Chapter 1 - Chapter 9

All Chapters of Three Days Until I Become Foam: Chapter 1 - Chapter 9

9 Chapters

Chapter 1

The hatch slammed against the wall as I lay over a leaking plank, trying to lick seawater from the crack. A sailor hauled me up by my hair. “Lady Blackwood's sick again, and you're down here sleeping?”He meant Vivian. They weren't married yet, but everyone aboard the Black Sail already knew what to call her.I tried to tell him I hadn't been asleep. All that came out was a rasp. He slapped me, impatient with the effort of listening, then caught the chain around my ankle and dragged me out. The old wounds on my back scraped over the ladder until my vision went black. By the time he threw me into the captain's cabin, I'd left a broken trail of blood across the oak floor.Ronan sat beside the bed, warming Vivian's hands between his own. His black night-watch shirt hung open, exposing the old scar beneath his collarbone. I'd stitched that wound myself, out on the reef. He'd been so worried about my cold hands that he'd enclosed them in his palms, needle, thread, and all.“Reef venom,” he

Chapter 2

The first morning bell rang as I finally wiped away the last stain. When Ronan opened the cabin door, I was trying to hide the bloody sailcloth beneath my skirt. His boots stopped in front of me. “Where's all that blood coming from?”I drew my shoulders in, afraid of staining his trousers. He crouched and grabbed my wrist, then immediately loosened his grip. “I asked you a question.”“It's clean now.” I clutched the cloth. “I'll go.”He watched me with something almost wounded in his eyes. Time after time, I'd let that look make me forget who'd taught me to be afraid of him.Meg's voice carried across the deck. “She traded me a tear pearl for a needle yesterday. Said she wanted to mend the captain's old wristband. Anything to get back in his good books.”Another woman laughed. “She picked up that little trick fast enough. His parents don't even have graves, thanks to her, and she's still trying to get into his bed?”I closed my eyes. Ronan's fingers tightened around my wrist again.He

Chapter 3

Once, I woke to Ronan holding me. The bathwater had been changed. His shirt was soaked.“I never meant to kill you. You know I can't bear to lose them.”He took my hand and held it to his cheek. I eased it out of his grasp and pressed it over the wound in my chest.When I next woke, he was gone. Sailors dragged me up to the quarterdeck, where the noon sun had baked the boards hot. My tideheart throbbed sluggishly. Every breath felt like swallowing a mouthful of salt.Ronan sat beneath the awning with Vivian beside his knee, tying a new wristband around his arm. The old one I'd mended had been thrown down by the table leg.“I saved you some lunch.” Vivian looked up with a welcoming smile. “You're so thin. It breaks my heart to see you like this.”I couldn't answer quickly enough. Meg kicked me in the waist, sending me sprawling in front of them. Ronan caught her ankle and shoved it away. “Did I say you could touch her?”The maid went white. Vivian immediately doubled over, clutching her

Chapter 4

She pulled back another tarpaulin. The boy in the glass tank lifted his head and pressed his small palms against the pane. “Lila!”It was my ten-year-old brother, Noah. When I'd left White Reef three years ago, he still hadn't learned to fold his tail into legs. I'd promised that when the next Blue Tide came, I'd take him to see the candy shops by the harbor. Now hunting hooks pinned his tail to the bottom of a tank, and his blood had turned the water pink. “Take me home, Lila.”I threw myself toward him, but someone stepped on my chain from behind. Vivian laughed. “Your brother? Well, that saves us looking any further.”Two sailors lifted him out. He was too little to put up much of a fight. When they pinned him to the table, his tail kept searching for water. I dropped to my knees in front of Vivian and caught her knife hand. “Take mine. I won't fight you. You can have all the blood and scales you want. Please, just leave him alone.”She looked down at me and stroked her belly. “But

Chapter 5

“Don't move.” Ronan's voice was beside my ear. He wrapped his coat around me, but his hand passed through my shoulder and struck the wall. I felt no pain. I only heard him suck in a breath before pulling the coat tighter. “Lila, look at me. Where's the medicine? Get the tide elixir!”A bottle touched my lips, and I flinched away on instinct. The medicine spilled down my neck, passed through the skin that was disappearing, and dripped into my clothes. Evelyn knocked the bottle out of his hand. “That isn't what she needs!” She caught my ankle and held the chain up in front of him, the iron worn deep into my flesh. “I asked you to take care of her. Is this how you did it?”Ronan kept saying my name. Gareth pushed him aside and knelt beside me. He fitted the key into the shackle and turned it. The clasp opened with a small click. I'd waited three years to hear that sound.My ankle felt so strangely light that I reached for the weight that wasn't there anymore. Gareth lifted me and carried

Chapter 6

There were three pieces of sea glass in Noah's pocket. As I straightened his clothes, they slipped through a tear in the fabric and rolled together with a soft clink. He'd always said he was saving treasure for my wedding.He must have handled them so often that their edges had worn smooth. I closed my fingers around them and kept my other hand against his forehead. For a long time, I couldn't bring myself to move it.Gareth told me they'd found Noah in Locke's warehouse, piled with the bodies left over from making paint. I pulled the sailcloth higher over my brother's chest. “Were any of them alive?”“Some. We've taken the survivors off the Black Sail.” He set an old sharkskin case in front of me. Six tidehearts remained inside. Their light was weak, but it hadn't gone out.I reached toward them. The pearl nearest the edge brightened a little at my touch. I remembered its owner. She'd taught Noah how to hold a sea urchin on his tail without pricking his hands. I bent over my brother a

Chapter 7

The next day, I took Noah home to White Reef. All that remained of our home was coral sheared off by cannon fire. The survivors hid in crevices. When they recognized me, they drew their children behind them before coming any closer.One woman saw the tidehearts in my hands and swam toward me. Her husband was among the six. I'd expected them to ask why I'd brought back so few, but she only took his pearl, touched her forehead to mine, and asked if I was still in pain. I nearly lost my grip on Noah.We laid him in the reef hollow where our mother used to plant anemones. There was no tideheart for the current to wake. All I could do was close the entrance with stones so the little fish couldn't pick at his wounds. I'd never be able to take him to the candy shops now.I put the three pieces of sea glass beside him. He'd spent so long saving them. He should get to keep them.When I came out, I gave the six tidehearts to my people. The woman holding her husband took me to a warm current they

Chapter 8

As I approached the Salt Crow, I heard a child crying. The sound was faint, coming from below the waterline. I followed the hull until I found the wooden plug. I'd barely eased it out when metal scraped my skin. Locke had added another layer of mesh behind the intake. Shed mermaid scales clung to the wire. Someone had already tried to escape this way.I put my face to the opening and told everyone inside to move back. A girl so thin I could count her bones swam up. She saw the silver light in my chest and covered her mouth. “Princess Lila,” she whispered, then turned to push the younger children away from the grate.I wedged the wooden plug under a rusted fastening at the edge of the mesh. It took several tries before it gave, tearing the skin over my wrist as the gap opened. The girl reached for my hand. I shook my head and gestured for her to send the children first.One small tail squeezed through, then a second, then a third. They drifted, then seemed to remember how to swim. The W

Chapter 9

They held the trial at Grayhaven's old dry dock, where I could come and go as I pleased. The survivors of White Reef waited in the channel, and the human captains sat along the bank beneath the harbor charter signed by the first pirates.Ronan had once told me that, under that charter, a captain couldn't treat his crew as cargo. This time, Evelyn had the clerk extend that protection to merfolk.Locke and his daughter were brought to the long table. The mortar containing broken tidehearts, the pigment records, the sale lists were laid before them one by one. Meg identified the names. Sailors rescued from the warehouse identified Locke's buyers. The doctor opened his medicine chest in front of everyone and produced the recipe Vivian had given him herself.She stared at Ronan. He sat among the accused, his left arm in a sling, old blood still on his clothes. After a long time, she began to cry. “You promised you'd protect me and our baby.”He looked up. “Our daughter will grow up safe. Th

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