The Water Mirror

by Kai Meyer

  “But the following night the mermaid remembered the legend of a powerful sea witch who lived far out in the Adriatic in an undersea cave. So she swam out, farther than she or any of her companions had ever swum, and found the sea witch sitting on a rock deep in the sea and watching for drowned people. For sea witches, you must know, prize dead meat, and it tastes best to them when it’s old and bloated. On the way the mermaid had passed a sunken fishing boat, and so she could bring the witch an especially juicy morsel as a tribute. This put the old one in a gracious mood. She listened to the mermaid’s story and decided, probably still intoxicated from the taste of the corpse, to help her. She said a spell and ordered the mermaid to return to the lagoon. There she should lie on a shore of the city and sleep until dawn. Then, the witch promised, she would have legs instead of a tail. ‘Only your mouth,’ she added, ‘that I cannot take from you, for without that you would be silent forever.’

  “The mermaid attached no importance to her mouth, for after all, that was part of her face, with which the merchant’s son had fallen in love. So she did as the sea witch instructed her.

  “On the morning of the next day she was found in a landing place. And in fact, she now had legs where once her fish tail had been. But the men who found her crossed themselves, spoke of the Devil’s work, and beat her, for they had recognized her by her mouth for what she really was. The men were convinced that the mermaids had found a way to become human, and they feared that soon they would take over the city, murder all the humans, and steal their wealth.

  “What foolishness! As if any mermaid ever cared anything for the riches of humans!

  “While the men were beating and kicking her, the mermaid kept whispering the name of her beloved, and so they soon sent for him. He hurried there, in the company of his father, of course, who suspected a conspiracy against him and his house. The mermaid and the young man were brought face-to-face, and both looked into each other’s eyes long and deeply. The young man wept, and the mermaid also shed tears, which mixed with the blood on her cheeks. But then her lover turned away, for he was weak and feared his father’s anger. ‘I don’t know her,’ he said. ‘I have nothing to do with this freak.’

  “The mermaid grew very still and said nothing more. She remained silent when they beat her harder, even when the merchant and his son kicked her with their boots in her face and in the ribs. Later they threw her back in the water like a dead fish. They all took her for that too: for dead.”

  Eft fell silent and for a long moment gripped the oar tightly in her hand, without dipping it in the water. The torchlight shone on her cheeks, and a single tear ran down her face. She wasn’t telling the story of some mermaid or other, she was telling her own.

  “A child found her, an apprentice in a mirror workshop, whose master had taken him from an orphanage. He took her in, hid her, gave her food and drink, and then kept giving her new spirit when she wanted to put an end to her life. The name of that boy was Arcimboldo, and the mermaid swore in gratitude to follow him her life long. Mermaids live much longer than you humans, and so the boy is an old man today and the mermaid is still young. She will still be young when he dies, and then she will be entirely alone again, a lonely person between two worlds, no longer a mermaid and also not a human.”

  When Merle looked up at her, the tears on Eft’s cheeks had dried. Now it seemed again as if she had told someone else’s story, someone whose fate was distant and unmeaning. Merle would have liked to stand up and throw her arms around her, but she knew that Eft didn’t expect it and also wouldn’t have wanted it.

  “Only a story,” whispered the mermaid. “As true and as untrue as all the others that we would rather never have heard.”

  “I’m glad you told me.”

  Eft nodded slightly, then looked up and pointed forward beyond Merle. “Look,” she said, “we’re there.”

  The torchlight around them paled, although the flame still burned. It took a moment for Merle to realize that the walls of the tunnel were behind them. The gondola had glided soundlessly into an underground hall or cave.

  Ahead of them an incline rose out of the darkness. It ascended as a steep slope out of the water and was covered with something that Merle couldn’t make out from a distance. Plants perhaps. A pale, intertwined branching. But what plant of that size could thrive here underground?

  Once, while they were crossing the dark sea that was the floor of the hall, she thought she saw movement in the water. She told herself that they were fish. Very large fish.

  “There’s no mountain around here,” she said, voicing her thoughts. “So how can there be a cave in the middle of Venice?” She knew enough about the behavior of reflections to be sure that they could not be under the sea. Whatever this hall was, it was located in the city, among splendid palazzi and elegant building facades—and it had been artificially constructed.

  “Who built this?” she asked.

  “A friend of the mermaids.” Eft’s tone indicated that she didn’t intend to speak about it.

  Such a place in the middle of the city! If it actually was located above ground it must have an outside. What was it camouflaged as? A decaying palazzo of a long-forgotten noble family? A huge warehouse? There were no windows to give access to the outside, and in the darkness neither the ceiling nor the side walls were discernible, only the strange incline, which came closer and closer.

  Merle realized now that her first doubts had been right. There were no plants growing on the incline. The branching structure was something else.

  Her heart suddenly missed a beat as she realized the truth.

  It was bones. The bones of hundreds of mermaids. Twining over and under and into one another, forged together by death, aslant and in a jumble. With racing heart she saw that the upper bodies looked like human ribs, while the fish tail resembled a supergigantic fish bone. The sight was as absurd as it was shocking.

  “They all came here to die?”

  “Of their own free will, yes,” said Eft as she steered the gondola to the left so that the starboard side faced the mountain of bones.

  The torchlight gave the illusion of movement in the branched bones where none was. The thin shadows twitched and trembled, they moved like spider legs that had been detached from their bodies and now were flitting among one another on their own.

  “The mermaids’ cemetery,” Merle whispered. Everyone knew the old legend. The cemetery had been thought to be far out on the edge of the lagoon or on the high sea. Treasure-seekers and knights of fortune had tried to track it down, for the bones of a mermaid were more precious than elephant tusk, harder, and in olden days they were feared as weapons in the battles of man against man. That the cemetery lay in the city, under the eyes of all the inhabitants, was hard to grasp—and in addition, that a human must have helped to establish it. What had prompted him to do it? And who had he been?

  “I wanted you to see this place.” Eft bowed slightly, and only after a moment was it clear to Merle that the gesture was meant for her. “Secret for secret. Silence for all time. And the oath upon it of one who has been touched.”

  “I should swear?”

  Eft nodded.

  Merle didn’t know how else to do it, so she raised a hand and said solemnly, “I swear an oath on my life that I will never tell anyone of the mermaids’ cemetery.”

  “The oath as one who has been touched,” Eft demanded.

  “I, Merle, who was touched by the Flowing Queen, swear this oath.”

  Eft nodded, satisfied, and Merle gave a sigh of relief.

  The hull of the gondola scraped over something that lay under the surface of the water.

  “Still more bones,” Eft explained. “Thousands.” She turned the gondola and sculled back in the direction of the tunnel entrance.

  “Eft?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You really think I’m something special, don’t you?”

  The mermaid smiled mysteriously. “That you certainly are. Something very sp
ecial.”

  Much later, in the dark, in bed, Merle slipped her arm into the water mirror under the bedclothes, enjoyed the comfortable warmth, and felt for the hand on the other side. It took a while, but then something touched her fingers, very gentle, very reassuring. Merle sighed softly and fell into a restless half sleep.

  Outside the window the evening star rose. Its twinkling was reflected in Junipa’s open mirror eyes, which stared, cold and glassy, across the dark room.

  4

  “HAVE YOU EVER LOOKED INTO IT?” JUNIPA ASKED NEXT morning, after they’d awakened to the sound of Eft’s ringing the gong in the hallway.

  Merle rubbed the sleep from her eyes with the knuckle of her index finger. “Into what?”

  “Into your water mirror.”

  “Oh, sure. All the time.”

  Junipa swung her legs over the edge of the bed and looked at Merle. Her mirror fragments flared golden from the sunrise behind the roofs.

  “I don’t mean just looked in.”

  “Behind the water surface?”

  Junipa nodded. “Have you?”

  “Two or three times,” Merle said. “I’ve pushed my face in as far as possible. The frame is pretty narrow, but it worked. My eyes were underwater.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing. Just darkness.”

  “You couldn’t see anything at all?”

  “I just said that.”

  Thoughtfully Junipa ran her fingers through her hair. “If you want, I’ll try it.”

  Merle, who was just about to yawn, snapped her mouth shut again. “You?”

  “With the mirror eyes I can see in the dark.”

  Merle raised her eyebrows. “You didn’t tell me about that at all.” She hastily considered whether she’d done anything at night to be ashamed of.

  “It just began three days ago. But now it’s getting stronger from night to night. I see the same as by daylight. Sometimes I can’t sleep because the brightness even penetrates my eyelids. Then everything gets red, as if you were looking at the bright sun with your eyes closed.”

  “You have to talk with Arcimboldo about that.”

  Junipa looked unhappy. “And what if he takes the mirrors away from me?”

  “He would never do that.” Concerned, Merle tried to imagine what it would be like to be surrounded by light day and night. What if it got worse? Could Junipa sleep at all then?

  “So,” Junipa quickly changed the subject, “how about it? Shall I try it?”

  Merle pulled the hand mirror out from under the covers, weighed it in her hand for a moment, then shrugged her shoulders. “Why not?”

  Junipa climbed up beside her on the bed. They sat opposite each other, cross-legged. Their nightshirts stretched across their knees and both were still tousle-headed from sleep.

  “Let me try it first,” Merle said.

  Junipa watched as Merle brought the mirror right up to her eyes. Carefully she dipped her nose in, then—as far as possible—the rest of her face. Soon the frame was pressed against her cheekbones. She could go no deeper.

  Merle opened her eyes underwater. She knew what to expect, so she wasn’t disappointed. It was the same as always. Nothing but darkness.

  She removed the mirror from her face. The water remained trapped in the frame, not the finest trace of dampness gleaming on her skin.

  “And?” Junipa asked excitedly.

  “Nothing at all.” Merle handed her the mirror. “As usual.”

  Junipa gripped the handle in her narrow hand. She looked at the reflecting surface and studied her new eyes. “Do you really think they’re pretty?” she asked suddenly.

  Merle hesitated. “Unusual.”

  “That’s no answer to my question.”

  “I’m sorry.” Merle wished that Junipa had spared herself the truth. “Sometimes I get goose bumps when I look at you. Not because your eyes are ugly,” she added quickly. “They are just so . . . so . . .”

  “They feel cold,” said Junipa softly, as if she were deep in thought. “Sometimes I feel cold, even when the sun is shining.”

  Brightness at night, cold in the sunshine.

  “Do you really want to do it?” Merle asked. She remembered how reluctant Junipa had been to put her hand in the mirror; how the water had felt ice-cold to her.

  “Really, I don’t want to, I know that already,” Junipa said. “But if you say so, I’ll try it for you.” She looked at Merle. “Wouldn’t you like to know what’s back there, where the hand comes from?”

  Merle only nodded mutely.

  Junipa pushed the mirror up to her face and dipped it in. Her head was smaller than Merle’s—as all of her was more petite, slender, vulnerable—and so it vanished up to the temples in the water.

  Merle waited. She observed Junipa’s thin body under the much-too-large nightshirt, the way her shoulders stuck out underneath it and her collarbones protruded over the edge of the neckline, outlined as sharply as if they lay over the skin instead of under it.

  The sight was strange, almost a little mad, now that for the first time she was seeing another person working with the mirror. Mad things could be quite normal, so long as you were doing them yourself. Watching someone else doing them, you wrinkled your nose, turned around quickly, and walked away.

  But Merle kept on watching, and she wondered what it was that Junipa was seeing at that moment.

  Finally she couldn’t stand it any longer and asked, “Junipa? Can you hear me?”

  Of course she could. Her ears were above the surface of the water. But all the same, she didn’t answer.

  “Junipa?”

  Merle was uneasy, but she still didn’t interfere. Very slowly visions welled up in her, pictures of beasts that were gnawing on her friend’s face on the other side. Now, when she pulled her head back, it would just be a hollow shell of bone and hair, like the helmets of the tribes that Professor Burbridge had discovered during his expedition to Hell.

  “Junipa?” she asked again, this time a bit more sharply. She grasped her friend’s free hand. Her skin was warm. Merle could feel the pulse.

  Junipa returned. It was just exactly that: a return. Her face had the expression of a person who has been very far away, in distant, inconceivable lands, which perhaps existed on the other side of the globe or only in her imagination.

  “What was there?” Merle asked uneasily. “What did you see?”

  She would have given a lot if Junipa at this moment had had the eyes of a human. Eyes in which a person could read something—sometimes things you might rather not have known, but always the truth.

  But Junipa’s eyes remained blank and hard and without any feeling.

  Can she still cry? ran through Merle’s mind, and at the moment the question seemed more important than any other.

  However, Junipa was not crying. Only the corners of her mouth twitched. But it didn’t look as though she wanted to smile.

  Merle bent toward her, took the mirror out of her hand, laid it on the covers, and gently grasped her by the shoulders. “What is in the mirror?”

  Junipa was silent for a moment, then silvery glass turned in Merle’s direction. “It’s dark over there.”

  I know that, Merle wanted to say, before it became clear to her that Junipa meant a different darkness from the one Merle had seen.

  “Tell me about it,” she demanded.

  Junipa shook her head. “No. You can’t ask me about it.”

  “What?” Merle cried.

  Junipa shrugged Merle off and stood up. “Never ask me what I saw there,” she said tonelessly. “Never.”

  “But Junipa—”

  “Please.”

  “It can’t be anything bad!” cried Merle. Defiance and despair welled up in her. “I’ve felt the hand. The hand, Junipa!”

  Outside the window a cloud moved in front of the morning sun, and Junipa’s mirror eyes also darkened. “Let it be, Merle. Forget the hand. Best forget the mirror altogether.” With these words she turned, ope
ned the door, and walked out into the hall.

  Merle sat transfixed on the bed, incapable of thinking clearly. She heard the door slam, and then she felt herself very alone.

  That same day, Arcimboldo sent his two girl students on the hunt for mirror phantoms.

  “I want to show you something quite unusual today,” he said in the afternoon. Out of the corner of her eye Merle saw Dario and the other two boys exchange looks and grin.

  The master mirror maker pointed to the door that led to the storeroom behind the workshop. “You haven’t been in there yet,” he said. “And for good reason.”

  Merle had assumed he was afraid for his finished magic mirrors, which were stored there.

  “The handling of the mirrors as I produce them is not entirely without danger.” Arcimboldo leaned with both hands on the workbench behind him. “Now and again one must clear them of certain”—he hesitated—“of certain elements.”

  Again the three boys grinned, and Merle slowly became angry. She hated it when Dario knew more than she did.

  “Dario and the others stay here in the workshop,” said Arcimboldo. “Junipa and Merle, you come with me.”

  Then he turned and went to the door of the storeroom. Merle and Junipa exchanged looks, then followed him.

  “Good luck,” said Boro. It sounded sincere.

  “Good luck,” mimicked Dario and murmured something after it that Merle didn’t catch.

  Arcimboldo let the girls in and then closed the door after them. “Welcome into the heart of my house,” he said.

  The sight he presented to them warranted the ceremony of his words.

  It was hard to say how big the room was. Its walls were covered over and over with mirrors, and rows of mirrors also stretched down its center, placed behind one another like dominoes just before they are knocked down. Sunlight shone in through a glass ceiling—the workshop was in an addition that wasn’t nearly so high as the rest of the house.

  The mirrors were secured with braces and chains that anchored them to the walls. Nothing would topple here, if Venice were to be struck by an earthquake or if Hell itself were to open under the city—as it was said to have done under Marrakesh, a city in North Africa. But that had been more than thirty years before, right after the outbreak of the war. Today no one talked about Marrakesh. It had vanished from the maps and the language of men.