PC621: A Salt and Sterling Tongue

[Ocicat]

PodCastle 621: A Salt and Sterling Tongue

Author: Emma Osborne
Narrator: Megan Leigh
Host: Setsu Uzume
Audio Producer: Peter Behravesh

Previously published by Uncanny Magazine.

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Show Notes
Rated R.


I found my dying boy curled up in a pile of straw wet with his blood. Seamus rolled over as I entered the barn, and I saw then that he’d chewed his fingers down to the first knuckle.

I gasped.

“I can taste my King in my wet,” he said, rocking forward, naming his lost Merling lord. Seamus could barely keep himself up on what was left of his hands and his knees. I crouched and moved closer and he fell forward onto forearms thin as sticks.

Seamus’ teeth shone through the gore that coated him from nose to navel, and he’d bitten off a few of the scales that dotted the skin of his upper arms. One was stuck to his chin with blood.

“He’s stopped singing, but I can hear him in the waves and in my blood, my lord, my king.”

My youngest boy was the one of the unlucky few who’d heard the music of the Merling King while out collecting cockles, who came home the next morning shivering and soaked and vomiting up seawater, the salt crystalising in his scant beard, newborn silver scales peeping out of his skin.


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[Languorous Lass]

The scene of the singing of grief was beautifully rendered—I could feel the notes in my bones.  The romance didn’t work for me, though.  I would have preferred for the story to focus solely on the healing process.