Walking on Knives

by Maya Chhabra

  *~*~*

  The light salt breeze played across her burning face as she stooped to snatch up the knife. She looked up at the strange woman and her thoughts rearranged themselves. The strange woman stood lit by the fire she carried and her once-haughty face was naked in its relief. The realization started imperceptibly and then burst out, like sunrise.

  So this is what it is to be loved.

  A shiver took her whole body. The sea-witch never failed to extract something in return. What had the strange woman promised away, in return for this unlooked-for salvation?

  Her grip on the knife tightened. She had misjudged her situation utterly. The strange woman hadn't wanted a kiss as payment. And the little mermaid had thrown her gifts in her face, chasing after a man who would never, never love her as much as he loved that human princess, that girl with a soul.

  This time, she would not discard the gift.

  The strange woman smiled at her. The little mermaid spilled over inside, full of all she could not say. She missed words, felt fettered by the simplicity of gestures.

  A gesture might be adequate. She pushed herself up, put one foot in front of the other, trembling all over, knives of pain shooting up from her soles to her chest, her heart, and leaned in till she could feel the heat of the strange woman's body. She had to stand on tiptoe to reach her lips—

  —and slid onto the deck, skinning her knees, repelled by an unseen current.

  The knife clattered down a few feet away from her. Reflexively, her hands curled into futile fists.

  *~*~*

  "That was the price." She didn't look at the little mermaid; she looked straight ahead into the moonless night. But every nerve in her body stood sentinel for the slightest movement, the least intake of breath.

  "I can't touch you. Ever." Her voice wobbled. She pushed past the moment of self-pity. You made the bargain, you agreed to pay the price. "You're going to live. That's what matters. You're going to live."

  The strange woman felt movement by her side, twisted to see cold fire sweeping away shadows and revealing a slow shake of the head from side to side.

  *~*~*

  She remembered the gush of blood from the deer's throat, the great sweep of power she had felt, the high tide of her confidence. She pictured doing the same to the prince. She would steal in while he was sleeping, small wincing steps, and she would cradle his head as she had done during the storm, when she had saved him.

  He would wake at her touch. And here her imagining collapsed, because she refused to see again the terror she had sensed as he drowned, eyes screwed up, limbs thrashing. He had betrayed her to her death, true. But all unknowing.

  She had said, I couldn't make that decision for you. It had been her decision, hadn't it? She had known the risks, known that love couldn't be forced and grace didn't appear on demand.

  The waves grew choppier and washed over the deck of the barge. The knife slid back and forth, now toward her and now toward the sea. She grabbed it.

  But no. She had sacrificed her innocence, but she would not sacrifice an innocent. She would die in the dignity of her choice, dragging no one to the depths with her.

  The little mermaid flung the knife into the sea.

  "What have you—?" The strange woman knelt over the edge, her flames lighting up the sea. The blood-red sea. Or so it seemed, for an instant, while the little mermaid felt a volcano inside her, lava in her blood. And then everything was normal again, except the look on the strange woman's face.

  She'd done it again.

  The little mermaid tried to make her eyes speak for her, to tell the strange woman that she had not meant to devalue her gift or the cost of it. But she knew she would fail—if eyes were the windows to the soul (what soul? she would never have one) the strange woman's would not be shuttered and unreadable as they were.

  "You stupid fool, I loved you."

  She took a desperate step forward, and darkness slammed back down. She was alone.

  *~*~*

  The prince had not realized he was holding his breath. Lightheaded, he heard the silvery splash of the knife falling into the sea, and the strange woman's harrowed voice. Then the light vanished, and he began to breathe again. It wasn't every day that you overheard your own murder being plotted.

  It wasn't every day you saw someone choose your life over her own.

  A dazed figure stumbled past him; he knew that limping gait. Without thinking, he stretched to put a hand on her shoulder. She froze under his touch, stone still. He withdrew as if her skin burned, and cursed his impulsiveness.

  She turned slowly. In the dark, he sensed rather than saw her. Just below the hollow sound of the wind, he heard her quick and shallow breaths.

  "I owe you my life." He couldn't see her face. "And you're in danger. Let me help you."

  Her hands tangled in his, and then she drew him in close enough that he could feel her body's heat. As abruptly as she had reached for him, she let go. There was an empty, cold space where she had been.

  He stumbled to where he thought her room was. She had barred the door to her cabin. He thought, she doesn't want me here; there's nothing I can do for her. It had the easy comfort of a lie.

  Mad thoughts raced through his head. They ranged from the obviously wrong to the morally disastrous. He leaned against the wall, clutched at the wooden frame of the door.

  In the end, it was very simple. There was only one way he could live with himself afterward.

  "Will you marry me?"

  *~*~*

  She threw the bolt aside and flung open the door, motioning for him to come in. He stepped into her candle-lit cabin, and she slammed to bolt back down.

  "I heard everything," he said. "Including that I would let you die rather than marry you. Is that what you need, to free you from your bargain with the sea-witch?"

  She nodded. A few days ago, this would have been everything. He was still the same, solicitous and generous and genuinely good. It was she who had changed.

  "I know witches," he said. "The one you spoke to on the deck, I've known her a long time. Their world is like pitch—it's dark, and it rubs off on you." Low laughter, abruptly cut off. "You must have been desperate, to make such a bargain."

  She stared him down. She was saved, and yet her heart still had the grim resolution of despair. She was saved, and she could not believe it.

  "I'll bribe the priest," he said, as if he read her doubts. "We'll need to consummate it, I think, or else it won't count either in law or in… the other ways. And then tomorrow I'll…" He trailed off, a pensive crease appearing on his brow. "And tomorrow I'll stand up and lie my way through another set of vows, because who would ever believe this? That I had to marry a mute stranger to save her from the sea-witch, and that's why I got cold feet about the princess at the last minute? The alliance would fall apart, and besides I lo… and besides, I don't want to hurt her." His eyes sought out every corner of the room, anything that wasn't her. She knew what he had meant to say.

  This was pity, not love. But she no longer felt like a fish paralyzed by an electric eel. The tension drained out of her.

  "Shall I go fetch the priest?"

  She nodded. He rushed out, and it was just her and a flicker of light.

  *~*~*

  After the hurried whispers of the priest, the prince's answers and her own emphatic nods, the strange weight of the communion wafer on her silent tongue, after all that, they lay down together. Not in absolute darkness, for that would have made her mute indeed, but in a soft spill of candlelight, so they could see each other's faces. They pressed against each other, skin to skin, and the little mermaid remembered trying to kiss the sea-witch's sister and sliding away from her, as though they were separated by one of those strange layers of glass wealthy humans used to let daylight in.

  "May I?" It cracked through her, that soft question, brought her back to her own body, intertwined with his. His hands hovered over her breasts. She guided them with her own hands. The sensation w
as mildly pleasant. Entirely different from the sea-witch's touch.

  She hadn't meant to think of that, now.

  She wanted to weep, because she had been such a fool. She had the prince, and she would soon have a soul, and she had beaten the sea-witch, and here she was, still that girl who had sold her body because she wanted what she could never, never have.

  "What's wrong? Am I hurting you?"

  She dragged his head closer to hers, their lips colliding. The little mermaid straddled him, and rolled them over. She pulled his hand down between her legs. He hid his face on her chest, just above her breasts, near her jutting collarbones, and stroked her till she began to shake.

  She remembered the last time she had felt this. She knew this would save her life, and that she had wanted it for so long, and yet… every pleasurable wave rocking her body felt like a little treason. To her new self, and also to—

  The little mermaid wriggled away from his touch. He barely seemed to notice; he didn't try to touch her again, but his face remained buried in her chest, drops of sweat rolling on to her.

  No. Those were tears.

  She cupped his face and tried to pull him up. He clung to her, hiding his shame. Fear poked through her concern for him: what if he had decided not to? What if he was weeping for her? Her hands moved of their own accord, stroking his hair, framing his cheekbones. The rest of her waited for her fate to be decided.

  He spoke into her, muffled. Her tensed shoulders ached.

  "I'm weak. It's not your fault. I'm just weak."

  She pushed herself out and down to meet his eyes, but he rolled away.

  "We have a word for this: simony. The buying and selling of holy things," he said simply. "And tomorrow I'll commit sacrilege, willful sacrilege, because I'm too weak to give her up. So I'll betray her into a sham marriage instead…"

  Her pulse thumped in her ears. In giving her a soul, was he sacrificing his own? She pulled him close; his warmth bled into her. For the first time in her life, she began to pray, knowing she would not be heard. He lay shivering against her breast; he was so easy to love, and even now, no longer desiring him, she loved him and wanted to save him.

  But he was saving her. When he had pulled himself together, he asked, "Now?" and she hesitated, but she was weak as well. Terrified, she nodded.

  *~*~*

  They lay clinging to each other, the way she remembered him clinging to a splintering plank during the shipwreck.

  *~*~*

  "I'd better go," he said at last. "Before she realizes I'm missing." He swung away from her, put his feet down on the floor; she imitated without thinking. In the split second between action and sensation, she cursed her carelessness.

  She felt only the texture of the planks, the tiny gaps between them. Her relieved sigh splashed into the silence. The prince froze.

  "Your voice…"

  She nodded.

  He still had that stricken expression. "Sing to me."

  She tried to remember the unearthly melodies of the sea, the songs she had sung with her sisters. They hovered out of reach. All she had was a scrap of verse the prince had repeated to her once, the lilting tune of which had got stuck in her.

  "'His heart fearless, the holy sea-blue bird'."

  Her own voice astonished her. Nothing tentative, soaring like the kingfisher she sang of, there and gone, miraculous.

  "You saved my life," they said together.

  "Will you forgive me for not recognizing you?" he asked. "It might all have been different…"

  But she waved away the world he conjured up. "You love her," she said, and somehow her eyes were wet. "Don't think on what might have been. Be happy."

  When she looked up again, he was gone.

  *~*~*

  The high tide crept ever higher, felt rather than seen, chasing the strange woman up the beach until she lay down half in the water and let the waves beat against her. It wasn't as if she would drown.

  She went limp, and the sea scoured her. Salt in her open eyes, the grit of sand on skin and scalp—it was too impure to be named cleansing, but nonetheless she lost herself in the ocean's harsh rhythms and resurfaced red-eyed and gasping, as if she had been weeping.

  The pull of the water tangled like fingers in her knotted hair. No, those were fingers, and her head rested not on the beach, but in her sister's lap. She did not protest.

  The sea-witch lowered her head to whisper something, her hair falling like a curtain between the strange woman and the mocking, distant stars. The words arrived in a warm puff of air, sickly-warm in that confined space.

  "Forget her, sister. Shh. She goes her way, we go ours." Humming, the sea-witch extracted her fingers and began to move her hands soothingly over her sister's face and shoulders. The strange woman relaxed into the darkness, the low music of her sister's voice blending with the endless rise and fall of the sea. She blinked closed battered eyes and curled up like a child in its mother's womb.

  "Don't try to make gifts to humans—or to mermaids either." They were the same age, but her sister's voice felt ancient. "Don't give them anything without getting something in return. They understand deals. Anything more confuses them. Anything more, and you'll only lose."

  The strange woman's heart beat in time to her sister's words. She was reawakening from the nightmare of the last day into ties older and truer than her infatuation with the little mermaid. Reawakening into the safety of night, of obscurity, of invulnerability. To want was to allow yourself to be understood. Desire was a jess that left you tethered to the falconer's hand, and the falconer was clumsy, earthbound, while you were a mystery of the air.

  Day began to paint the sky. The little mermaid's last day.

  The strange woman drew in a full and heavy breath, and then another.

  *~*~*

  She had won.

  The little mermaid stood looking out of the porthole. It had begun in a storm, with the ruin of a proud ship, and it ended on the royal barge, floating on placid waters. She was a human now. She had left the sea forever.

  But it wasn't the call of the sea that made her stare out the window plaintively. It was the loss of something else, something she hadn't realized she wanted, needed until it was already slipping out of reach.

  The sound of horns roused her from her trance. The wedding would soon begin.

  She had meant to dance a burning offering, to sanctify their marriage with her pain. Now she and her new-minted soul stood between the prince and salvation.

  She wondered if she had been worth the saving. She could no longer remember the eagerness with which she had explored everything new and wondrous on land. She had seen it all with a lover's eyes.

  An endless future spread before her, an eternity alone, where before there had been nothing but oblivion and foam.

  *~*~*

  He caught sight of her as she came on deck, dull-eyed with exhaustion. She flashed him a smile, his lawfully wedded wife, and disappeared into the throng.

  The princess squeezed his hand.

  "Not long now."

  He could not help shuddering; she took it for excitement, he hoped. Her short hair was ruffled by the breeze, and sunlight glinted in her sea-colored eyes, catching on her coronet. She leaned forward slightly. He did not see the slightest trace of nervousness in her.

  Even now he could call it off. He pictured it to himself, the crowd's bafflement, his father's look of betrayal, and what he could not face, the heartbroken rage in his fiancée's eyes.

  He looked at her, and knew her to be infinitely stronger than he was. She deserved the truth, but he could not give it to her.

  The murmur around them died, the bribed priest beckoned, the whole fatal snare closed around them. Without thinking, he sought out the little mermaid's face. He couldn't find it.

  *~*~*

  The bride and groom sealed their vows with a kiss. They framed each other perfectly. But she wasn't looking at them.

  The strange woman lay on her belly on the roof of t
he cabins, above it all. Showing herself might distress… someone. The person she had come to watch. The person dancing in the corner, seeming like she might tip backward off the barge at any moment. Except she never did; from one twirling leap to another, she landed sure-footed, toes hugging the deck.

  Except for the lost look on her face, she could not tell the little mermaid was in pain.

  She wrenched her gaze away, focusing instead on the happy couple. They were staring at each other as if they could not quite believe their luck. Rage rose in her at their blithe joy. She'd poison that, at least, let them know they thrived on another's death. The little mermaid might be too soft, too kind, too proud to interfere, but she wasn't.

  At last the deck began to clear and the guests returned to their cabins. She wondered whether the little mermaid would be content to spend her last hours cramped in one of them, or whether she would reemerge to commune with sea and stars. She still didn't know what she meant to do, to bid her farewell or to watch silently so as not to distress her.

  The sea-witch had told her to stop thinking about the little mermaid. It was good advice, on the face of it, if her priority was not getting hurt. But the sea-witch had put them in this position, had set the conditions for the little mermaid's failure. And even though the wrenching taste of pain reminded her how important a priority shielding oneself could be, there had to be more to life and to love than that.

  In her daze, she had missed the little mermaid's exit. The prince and his new wife lingered alone on the dance floor, swaying back and forth. Far off, a tiny sliver of the moon glowed.

  She came down between them and the light.

  *~*~*

  He saw her backlit silhouette and knew there was nothing more to hope for. This was the woman who had offered the little mermaid the knife, who had connived at his death for her sake. She must have come to avenge what she could not save, and only one confession could stop her.

  "Stop. Wait."

  "Wait for what?" The words she breathed seemed fire. "Does your lovely princess know what your marriage cost? Do you?"