by Michelle Tea
Around them, the trench was crammed with claustrophobic mermaids hugging their tails to their chests to make room for one another. The ocean around them was alive with new currents, not born of the moon and her tugging but of the terrible boats cutting up the waters that were once the mermaids’ home. Their place of safety was quickly filling up with ships en route to the fighting, their prows jammed into the thick mud, and the sailors above them howled with fury, cursing the sea devils who’d caught their mighty vessels. Some of the mermaids swam upward to try to free the boats, but their heaving was for nothing. They were great as islands, impossible to move.
“We cannot stay here!” cried an elder mermaid. “The ships are everywhere, and though they be not for us, they will show no mercy to any living creature!”
“Scatter!” hollered the toughest mermaid, the one whose tail scars were so numerous they formed a new pattern on her body. “We haven’t the time for a plan! Swim for your lives, sisters, and return when the waters are clear.” And as new cannon shot punctured the waters above them, the mermaids swam off in every direction, many of them into the very heart of the fighting, fewer of them into the unknown blue of the deep, the warrior yelling after them, “Remember your home. Do not forget!”
SO, SYRENA HAD set off alone with her sister. Griet: the word meant pearl, and Sophie could not help but imagine Griet as opalescent, a shinier, sweeter Syrena, her curls bouncy, like a mermaid in a book.
“Was she lovely?” Sophie asked the mermaid. They had hunkered down for a rest at the northernmost edge of the Atlantic.
“We are so close to the Swilkie,” Syrena mused, ignoring her question, “the whirlpool the ogresses make with their mill. If you are very, very still you can feel the water churning.” She paused. “And taste.” The mermaid swished the water around inside her mouth and swallowed. “Very more salt. Good for you, ya? Ogresses have been milling salt on giant mill since they were very little girls. Wicked king take them, think they full-grown women, ya? Because they so big! He make them work and work, and then they grow up and king like, ‘Uh-oh, giant ladies!’ They get rid of him, but they know the sea need the salt. The whole planet do. So they keep the mill going. Very good of them, ogresses very good people. The churning of the mill make a giant whirpool in the sea, the Swilkie. That how we get to the ogresses. We swim the Swilkie.”
“Syrena,” Sophie nagged. Even the story of the giantesses couldn’t shake the tale of the mermaid’s sister from her mind. “Please, tell me about Griet. Was she beautiful?”
“Oh, ya, so beautiful,” Syrena answered. “The fishes swim up and kiss her pretty cheeks and seahorses comb her long hair with their tails. She wear necklace of diamond and pearl and dolphin always clean her so never the sea mud make her dirty.”
Sophie listened, waiting for the mermaid to continue with the enchanting story. Instead, laughter bubbles rolled from Syrena’s mouth like a school of jellyfish.
“Oh, you still such girl,” the mermaid said. “You think everything, what you call, fairy story!”
“Well, yeah!” Sophie snapped defensively. “I mean, that’s what fairy tales are. Mermaids and stuff. Pardon me for being a human.”
“Griet very pretty,” Syrena said, her tone slightly teasing. “All mermaid pretty. But also—she have fangs.”
“Fangs?”
“Ya, like these,” the mermaid opened her mouth and tapped her own long canines. “But more, longer than normal. They poke out, make her funny looking. Her hair, because so light, show more algae, look more like slime. Her tail very wonderful, sort of pink, but very hurt too, from war, and sharks.”
“Sharks?”
“Ya.” For the first time, the mermaid sounded tired. “When we swim away from our village, through the ships and the fighting, there be many sharks. Drawn to the fighting, all the blood. We fight them off, we dodge ships, we dodge cannons, even the dying sailors.” Syrena twisted her tail, bringing Sophie’s attention to a long, raised scar along its back. “This from anchor chain. The chain cracked, rough, and I become tangled. I thought I would stay forever. Griet help me. Like I help her with shark.”
“What did you do?”
“Kill shark,” Syrena smiled. “Kill shark and eat shark and swim good and healthy out from the sea and all the fighting.”
Sophie knew that Griet didn’t look like a Barbie princess mermaid doll any more than Syrena did, but she also knew that the mermaid must have been beautiful, just like the one in front of her. “And then what?” she asked. Syrena’s face grew dark at Sophie’s insistence, darker and suddenly older. Still beautiful, always beautiful, but it was a beauty that Sophie didn’t completely understand. A beauty that scared her a little.
“Time for sleep now,” Syrena said sternly. “No more ‘this-is-mermaid-life.’ Tomorrow we reach the Swilkie. Last time in Swilkie, almost lost fin!” The mermaid fingered the delicate scales of her hip fin gingerly. “Very athletic, Swilkie. Rest up.”
“I have a sister too,” Sophie surprised herself by saying. It was the first time she had spoken the truth out loud. I have a sister. “A twin.”
Syrena spun her head to gaze at the girl, her hair following slowly, rotating like a big, black cloud above her. “Oh, no,” she said. “You say there two of you?”
Sophie nodded.
“What her name?” Syrena asked. “Is she beautiful?” Sophie realized the mermaid was teasing her.
“She’s—she’s captured. Or something. By Kishka. She lives in Kishka’s trailer at the dump.”
“What ‘trailer’?”
“It’s like a really little space, on wheels. But it’s so weird. From the outside, the space is little, but then inside it’s big. Like, magic-big. And there’s a garden there, but there’s something wrong with it. Like the leaves are poison. When I went inside, it was like I couldn’t breathe, like the plants were stealing my breath. She’s trapped in there—she’s been living there, inside all the plants and trees. She’s so small. I think there’s something really wrong with her.” The memory of it made her feel sickened and sad. “It was supposed to be me in there. Kishka was tricked into taking her.”
“That good story,” Syrena said grimly. “That make me happy, that Kishka can be tricked.” Though as she said it the mermaid sounded anything but happy. She sounded like Sophie felt: like there was a rock where her heart should be.
“I don’t even know her name,” Sophie said. “And I don’t know if she’s beautiful. She looked sick. Her skin was green, like the leaves had rubbed off on her.”
Syrena swooped her long tail around Sophie and brought her close. They lay there, side by side but each far away with thoughts of their lost sisters.
Chapter 8
Eventually Syrena fell asleep, but Sophie couldn’t. She tried hunkering into the mud like a cat or a mermaid, but the sand felt itchy, and she was too aware of every little fish that swam by her face. After lying there in the dark for what felt like hours, she decided to explore.
How many days had she spent at the bottom of the sea, practically traversing the whole Atlantic Ocean—and had Sophie even done any exploring? Could she even say she’d seen the deep sea? Or had she just rushed through it at the urging of a tyrannical mermaid?
Following the steady blue glow of her talisman, Sophie set out cautiously, part walking, part human-style swimming. As she paddled around, she came upon a cluster of coral dotted with slumbering sea snails. Her stomach growled at the sight of them and she nearly burst out laughing. Sea snails? Maybe she truly was becoming part mermaid. Sophie swished over to the rocks and plucked a spiral snail shell from its shallow crack. Before she could even consider the creature inside, she held the shell to her mouth, slurped, and swallowed. The snail left a slime of flavor upon her tongue, and it made her curious. She pulled another from the crack and slurped it from its home. Cruel, a voice rang in Sophie’s head. It was cruel to pick the innocent snails from their resting place and end their peaceful lives so suddenly in her belly. It
was cruel, like the sunfish eating the mermaids, like Syrena eating the shark. The entire ocean was cruel, and all of the earth, and Sophie was a part of it, made to consume life the way sharks were, the way the snails themselves feasted on fish killed and abandoned by other fish.
Sophie grew dizzy with the thought. She lifted the edge of her T-shirt—once boldly striped, now faded as pale as a fish bone from her time in the salty sea. She dabbed her mouth with the hem. The food chain, or rather chains, the millions of strands of life consuming life upon the planet, was suddenly something Sophie understood, more deeply than she ever had in a classroom. She held an empty periwinkle shell, covered with something fuzzy and nutritious, up to the baby octopus still residing on her head. He grabbed it with his tentacles and went to work scraping it clean.
Sophie moved deeper into the reef, running her hands over the ruffled lids of giant clams furred with pink algae. She was mesmerized by the pulsing, colorful mantle peeking out from the shell’s wide curves. Even more mesmerizing was a giant oyster nestled among them, flatter and wider than the clams, its ridged shell sprawling in all directions. Sophie had never heard of giant oysters, but what did that matter? She hadn’t heard of mermaid-eating sunfish, either. As she moved closer to the oyster, its shell began to lift open in greeting. The shiny sea plants and elegant sea fans fluttered with the giant oyster’s movement, and gazing at it with apprehension and wonder, Sophie could see the gleam of something dazzling on the oyster’s fleshy lip. A pearl! As the oyster cranked its shell ever wider, the pearl caught the scant light available at such depths—the blue of Sophie’s talisman, the luminescence of a passing worm, the sparkles of phosphorescence among the algae—and glowed, majestic and ghostly.
Griet! Sophie thought again of Syrena’s sister, not that the creature had really left her mind. In fact, wasn’t she somehow seeking Griet in her solo outing? With the mysterious mermaid haunting her mind, didn’t she set out to find something—some proof of her left behind in this, her undersea queendom? And here it was, a giant ball of beauty in the plush body of the huge oyster. It was for this thing that Syrena’s sister had been named; such a creature had to be dazzling. What must it be like to have a sister lovely as a pearl?
For lovely as a pearl Sophie’s sister was not. Dumb as a plant, more like, stuck inside her grandmother’s trailer, the toxic greenery binding her like roots clutching soil. Sophie shook the thought from her mind. The memory of that glimpse of her sister was truly haunting—spooky. All alone in the dark, she’d much rather imagine Syrena’s sister, the beautiful Griet.
Sophie swam toward the pearl. She could gather it in her arms and carry it back to Syrena and perhaps it would comfort her. Not that the mermaid needed comfort, exactly—she seemed beyond it. But maybe in the giant pearl Syrena would see an unusual beauty, and understand for a moment the way her stories had captured Sophie’s heart.
As Sophie approached its lip, it was as if the oyster inhaled, took a deep and terrible breath, pulling Sophie into its shell, sliding her across the smooth surface of the giant pearl. Sophie tried to swim against the strong current, but she was pulled completely inside the giant oyster almost immediately. And then the shell slammed shut.
Chapter 9
Sophie had never even eaten an oyster, so she didn’t understand what this particular enormous one could have against her. Inside the chamber of its clamped shell, lit blue with the glow of her talisman, she tried not to panic. Which was hard, because not only was she trapped, but the oyster itself, its phlegmy body, was sticking to her in a rather disgusting way. It was like its goo was trying to cuddle with her. Wherever Sophie’s body was in contact with the gooey bivalve it began sliming itself up her. It felt like living glue, impossible to peel away. She struggled against it, the groans of her effort echoing off the shell.
“Syrena!” she cried to the mermaid. Surely Syrena wouldn’t be scared of a deranged oyster, even a supersized one. Syrena had battled sharks! She would rescue her. “Syrena!” she cried again—and the oyster slid a stretch of slime into her mouth, grasping and steadying her tongue.
“No use hollering,” Kishka said. “You’re just going to give me a headache. The acoustics in this place, oy vey.”
Sophie struggled to raise her head, and she could just make out the outline of her grandmother. Kishka ashed her cigarette from atop her perch on the great pearl. Sophie grasped the terrible tentacle that was lassoing her tongue, and with all her might she tugged it free. She gagged on the taste the thing left behind, alarmed at how quickly the oyster had wrapped itself around her wrists, binding them.
“Nana!” Sophie gasped.
“Oh, don’t ‘Nana’ me,” Kishka snapped. The oyster shell was filling with the smoke from her cigarette, and Sophie choked a little on it.
“You had your chance to be a granddaughter,” Kishka continued, taking a long drag off the long cigarette. In the smoky haze, Sophie squinted. The cigarette looked like it was half a foot long. Half a foot long and growing by the second. With every inhalation, the evil thing stretched further toward Sophie. Its nauseous stink and glowing orange tip slid so close Sophie could feel its heat on her face.
“Oh, you had your chance,” Kishka half sang. “You could have been my little duckling, my little helper. You could have been just a sweet girl who minded her own business. Or you could have been mine. My special assistant. Sophie, the things we could have done together!” Kishka tapped the end of her cigarette, and a wall of ash fell inches away from Sophie’s lap, sizzling in the wetness of the oyster. “Instead, I’m stuck with your sister. Dumb as a post, less of a pet than a goldfish.”
It was exhausting to struggle against the sticky meat of the oyster, but every time she tried to rest, the thing increased its hold on her. She could feel it tugging at the pouch on her hip, knotted to her belt loop and full of charms from her aunt Hennie. Hennie the Winter Witch, Hennie the good. But Hennie would be no help to her here, at the bottom of the sea, a place without seasons. Sophie twisted her hips, thwarting the thing’s grasp. She took a gulp of air and sputtered into a cough.
“Oh, is this bothering you, my dear?’ Kishka looked at her cigarette with a bemused expression. “You know, I really should quit. A terrible habit. Here.” The cigarette shrank back to normal size with Kishka’s final drag, and Sophie watched with horror as her grandmother stubbed the burning tip out on the palm of her hand and tossed it behind her. She clapped her hands together, brushing the ash away.
“Things don’t hurt me, Sophie. Something you should think about.” Kishka looked down at Sophie, smirking. The oyster muck, whatever it was—for by now Sophie knew she’d been terribly tricked, and that of course oysters did not grow to such sizes, nor produce such majestic pearls—had attached itself to her talisman, blotting out the blue light as it slimed over the sea glass. Sophie should have known from the start that this was her grandmother. A glamour, a treacherous illusion.
“You know, I used to beat myself up, Sophie,” the woman began. “For years, for years, I’ve been furious with myself about this. To be so powerful, and still, goodness escapes me. I just can’t seem to see it. It’s my giant blind spot. Now, evil, I see. Evil, I understand. Give me a war, give me a famine, give me that any day. I see it, I feed it, it feeds me. I’m happy. But goodness—it’s like it doesn’t exist. So I hope. I make my best guesses. Take your mother. You remember her?”
“Of course,” Sophie sputtered. The oyster was climbing the cord of her talisman like a vine climbing a trellis.
“‘Of course.’ The woman who raised you! Well, I couldn’t be sure, the way you just abandoned her in Chelsea, with so many terrible things happening. I thought you were maybe trying to put her out of your mind.”
“Of course not! I love my mother!”
“‘Love.’” Kishka chuckled. “Now, sometimes I don’t see love because I’m too hateful, but sometimes, Sophia, I don’t see love because it isn’t there. You do not love your mother. Nor do you love your sister,
that wasteling. You love nothing.”
“I do!” Sophie cried, twitching her whole body in a vain attempt to shake the crawling slime from her talisman. It was wrapped around the whole cord now, and slowly climbing up her neck, as if it would lift it off her body. “No!” Sophie shouted, both at the oyster and at her grandmother, whose movements she could feel within her, deep in her heart, the place where all her feelings lived, the good and the bad. The place where her love for her mother was, and the place where her anger and disappointment lived, too. The place where a long-lost, primal love for her sister lived, a love formed in the womb but stolen soon after. She could feel Kishka’s mind scraping at it, like she was trying to pick a lock. “No!” she cried, and brought the hard wall inside her up around her heart. If only she had such a mechanism to protect her body from the oyster. As her talisman floated above her face she opened her mouth and clamped her teeth around it.
“Well, if you think your mother disappointed you, imagine how I feel!” Kishka scoffed. “So much magic I have, eons of it, and not a bit gets passed on to her. I can’t help but feel that it’s her own fault. There’s something wrong with a creature who can’t glean even a bit of magic from one so powerful as myself.” Kishka sighed. “And then you came along. You, and that other one. I couldn’t tell you apart, but then all humans look the same to me. You were just little squirming things, all squirmed up together. Sucking each other’s fingers, doing all those grotesque things babies do.” Kishka shuddered, and Sophie felt tears spring to her eyes. She bit down harder on the oyster-covered cord of her talisman, biting against the sadness. Her sister. Once they had loved each other, in the simple way only twin baby sisters could. They had been created together, two from one. Was that sad ache she had lived with for so long, so constant she had almost ceased to feel it, the feeling of her twin torn from her heart?