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His mark was there. Some wealthy travelling noble, packed without the slightest bit of street smarts, flaunting his boundless wealth out on a dingy market, still haggling with the Mrs Birddle fruit vendor for apples.
Just one pinch of that gold could feed him for months. All he needed to do was to get it.
He took a deep breath, and emerged from his hiding place, looking casual. His mark was distracted. Jason walked past, reaching his hand out as the man got particularly animated in his arguing. His fingers found a gold coin. He deftly withdrew it out, snaking out of the prized leather and gold-trimmed zipper teeth.
A thick, callused hand gripped his wrist, squeezing it tight enough to hurt. Jason suppressed a shout.
“Oy! This urchin was trying to fleece ya!” called out the snitch. Jason grunted in frustration at the huge man who had caught him.
The nobleman turned around in an instant, his eyes filled with accusation. “What?!”
“Look, sir!” the huge man said. His other hand forced Jason’s fingers open. Jason cried out with pain as the gold coin was revealed.
“You thief!” the rich man exclaimed, brows pinching with anger. “How dare you lay your filthy hands upon my person.
“Wasn’t your person, just your purse,” Jason said through gritted teeth, his struggles to escape fruitless.
“Hold still, you rat!”
“Just let me go! You have your gold back. I won’t bother you again,” Jason said, desperate to get out of the painful grip his wrist was in, but the rich man was not to be placated.
“I ought to have you flayed for this!” he threatened. “That purse costs more than your entire life and you have dirtied it!”
“I have one better,” the huge man said. “We’ve been looking for a sacrifice to the sea gods this year. Normally we fling some cattle or whatever, but ain’t nobody’s gonna mourn this street rat. The sea god might leave us alone for years to come!”
Jason’s heart clenched. His eyes widened. His skin went clammy with sweat. “No! No! No! Wait, please! I-I’m sorry! I’ll p-pay back the purse. I’ll clean it till’s shiny and new!”
“Street rats are good for nothing,” the nobleman said spitefully. “I believe your proposal is the best option for this one. Perhaps he’ll find redemption in the afterlife for his misdeeds.”
“Bullshit!” Jason cried out, tears brimming in his eye. “I haven’t done nothing to deserve this. I’ve just been hungry and cold. None of you shits want to help me, so I’ve had to help myself!”
“Why, whatever the matter is going on?” asked a curious woman.
The nobleman turned to her with the sweep of his cloak, gesturing to him as if declaring a profane artefact. “This thief tried to rob me. And this good man has proposed we toss him off the cliff, so that the sea god may decide his punishment.”
“Really?” The woman asked. Then her eyes drifted to Jason, and her face turned spiteful. “Oh, it’s Jason. Son of a whore and a drunk.”
Jason reacted instinctively. “You keep my mom out of your mouth! You’re worse than a whore. At least she had a lick of kindness!”
The woman gasped, affronted. Suddenly a crowd was gathering, and whispers of accusation flew through the air. Mentions of Jason stealing from them, money, food, clothes and firewood. Suddenly the fight in Jason melted away as the chants for his sacrifice gained, and he felt very, very small.
“W-wait, I take it back! I’m sorry, it w-was just a slip of the tongue!”
“That horrible boy. I saw my daughter talking to him the other week. What horrible things is he putting in her ears?”
“He stole from a nobleman? He’s lucky it wasn’t the governor, or else we’d all be in for it.”
“Nothing good ever came of that Catherine, and certainly not the wretch she adopted.”
Jason was sobbing, his hiccups interrupting his pleas as hands approached him. He kicked and scratched and screamed, begging all the way. “S-stop! I didn’t do half that shit! I’ve just been hungry! I-,” Jason choked. “I don’t wanna die!”
But the mob was swift in its justice, and soon Jason was bound, tied up at the hands and feet, carried on by the mob as they marched to the cliffside at the edge of the village. “What do you think the priest would say of this?!” he pleaded. “Aren’t we all s-supposed to be kind and forgiving? Please.”
The boy was unable to speak coherently, voice shattered under the shaking of his body, of his weeping as the horror of his fate became clear, as was how inevitable it was.
The cliffside welcomed him as the villagers gathered a circle. They threw him to the grass, in the middle of a large circle drawn out for the sacrifices. For a long time it was gold, animals, and food. For the first time it would be a person.
“We gather here to proclaim our utmost reverence and fealty to the gods,” the village mayor announced. The sky turned dark from clouds. The air turned as cold as Jason’s blood.
“P-please, you’re making a mistake,” Jason begged one last time.
“Silence! We have given away precious valuables to the god of the sea. Our livestock. Our food. Our gold. But nothing is more precious than the innocent life of a child. This sacrifice is a noble one made by this child and this village. May it forever bring peace to us!”
The villagers cheered. Jason felt like he was going to be sick. He could not have possibly heard those words right.
However, he was in no position to question them as two large men hoisted him up by the arms and marched to the edge of the cliff.
“I-I’ll do anything,” he whispered, spirit broken. “I don’t have much to live for, but I don’t deserve to die.”
His pleas went on deaf ears.
His stomach turned upside down. Then he fell. And Jason screamed. The water was approaching him fast. His body crashed into the cold sea, and Jason passed out, thanking the gods he would not suffer the pain of drowning, at least.
And then he woke up again.
His eyes fluttered open drowsily. His limbs all felt sleepy. His mind felt in a haze. It was cold, but not uncomfortable. He felt warmth coming from somewhere. There was a huge weight on top of him, but it wasn’t crushing him. It was like a blanket, impossibly heavy, and yet comforting in a way he hadn’t felt since he lost his mother, and became alone in the world.
Jason wiggled, chirping. What was that sound he made? It felt natural, like speaking. He wiggled out from underneath the weight, and saw a cave bathed in warm light. Now that his head had popped out from his prison, he could feel the texture of what he was lying on. It was sand, soft sand. And the heavy blanket thing, it felt like scales?
He felt a rumble, and Jason shrunk in fear. The thing above him shifted, and then it bent around in a circle, and suddenly Jason was face to face with a yellow with a pure dark pupil and sclera.
“A-are you the sea god?” Jason whimpered.
“No,” the being rumbled. “I’m no god. Just a siren.”
Sirens, magical creatures that lured children to the sea to be taken away, never to be seen again. “W-what are you going to do to me?” he asked fearfully.
“You need to eat,” the siren told him. “Here.”
A huge hand, covered in black scales, with fingers tipped with razor sharp claws came closer. Jason squeaked in terror, only for the hand to open, and drop a handful of oysters in front of him, freshly shucked.
“Eat.”
The siren’s huge body slid off of him, and that strangely comforting, warm weight was gone. Jason missed it somehow.
“Is this for me?” Jason asked him, too scared to make a move that would offend the siren, resulting in him being ripped to pieces.
“Yes. Guppies need to eat.”
Jason hadn’t eaten all day, hadn’t eaten anything yesterday except for a few seeds, so he reached out for the oysters.
And saw his own hand, covered end to end in shimmering orange and red scales that shifted in a fiery pattern. He froze, staring at the appendage, at the webbing that connected his fingers and the fins that emerged from his forearm and upper arm, at the way he could feel the water shift around it.
Oh shit. He was underwater, wasn’t he?
“W-what happened to me?”
“You died,” the siren told him. And it was then Jason realised he wasn’t hearing words, but long croons, warbling notes and high chirps, which would sound to a human like incessant animal noises. To his ears… no. To his ear fins, they were a language all to their own. “I saved you. But you can never return to the land. I am sorry.”
Jason warbled, picking up the oyster. He didn’t eat it, not yet. Instead he marveled at the way the hard shell touched the scales of his hand. How strange it was to have your skin be millions of tiny little segments, instead of one continuous exterior. How strange was it to blink, and yet see through a second pair of eyelids that were never there before. He felt the sand underneath his belly, and when his eyes trailed down, there were more scales and fins below his waist. He had no legs, only a tail, just like his savior.
“That’s ok,” he said at last. “There’s nothing left there for me.”
“Eat, guppy,” the huge siren urged. “And rest.”
Jason indulged himself in the oysters, lapping them up, finding them strangely appetising. When his stomach was a little heavier, and his eyelids too, the siren laid itself over him again. The weight of his body smushed down his fins, and the heat of his new caretaker, new father warmed him to his core. Jason’s chest thrummed with a soft purr.