Girl at the Bottom of the Sea

by Michelle Tea

  “We are so glad you enjoy it,” said Fenja or Menja. The two Ogresses gazed down at Sophie, their hazel eyes catching the luminescence of the creatures swimming in the jar. “We have been waiting, like so many others, for you to come and stop the Invisible. We have watched humans descend in their submarines, trying to understand it. They are not able to stay long, and any equipment they leave gets destroyed. But they are just humans, anyway. They could only study the Invisible. They could not stop it. Only magic can stop it.”

  “Um… yeah,” Sophie nodded, stifling a burp. She knew that in some cultures a burp was a compliment to the chef. She didn’t know if this was true here, in the culture of the Sea-Ogresses. But then again, she hadn’t been aware that she had a job to do here at the Ogresses’. What was this about the Invisible? She looked at Syrena, but the mermaid was busy stuffing her face, so Sophie tried to look attentive and hide her confusion.

  “We have been tending the salt mill for so many years,” said Menja, or Fenja. “Perhaps you can see our calluses?” She turned her palm down to Sophie, spreading her fingers. It was like looking at a topographic map, the tough hills and tender valleys running down the giant’s hand.

  “We’re making more salt than ever now,” said the other sister. “And it’s not good for the ocean. The coral doesn’t like it; many of the creatures don’t. But the salt absorbs some of the Invisible, so we must keep making it.”

  The other giantess nodded, the end of her braid brushing the table and scattering fish bones onto the floor. “In fact, though we have been so excited to visit with you, it makes me nervous how long the mill has been left unattended. We get it going very quickly so that we’re able to leave it for a bit as it slows down, but we always need to return. Perhaps Syrena can take you to the Invisible.”

  “That would be great,” Sophie said, scrambling to her feet. She pretended she was not in extreme discomfort from her gorging, and she pretended she knew anything about what the giants were talking about. “I’ve been, like, dying to see the Invisible.”

  The giants exchanged looks across the table. Sophie could see the flicker of their eyelashes, wide as palm leaves. “Please, don’t try to do anything heroic,” said Fenja or Menja. “We know of all you’ve done, even the latest, when you shape-shifted into a shark! But the Invisible is far too powerful, and you still have much to learn.”

  “You’ve been a hero before and you will be a hero again, the hero of us all,” smiled the other sister. “But please, keep your distance from the Invisible for now. Today you are to relax. Observe, and relax.”

  “Go only as close as Syrena allows,” said the other Ogress. “We will see you after.”

  And with that, the Ogresses pushed back their chairs, stirring up clouds of sea mud that billowed all the way up to the tabletop and settled back down in a layer of sediment. When they stood up tall inside the cathedral of the cave, their heads became lost in the darkness of the ceiling, and all Sophie could see of them were their long white togas, billowing around them like undersea sails. Their footprints left huge craters in the floor as they left, and Sophie watched as a school of blobular fishes, their bodies like mounds of pale pudding, began flitting back and forth across the ground, refilling the craters. They had giant lumpy noses that slid down their faces, and mouths that pulled down in a permanent grimace. Their bodies looked like they were being squashed by some unseen foot, their bottom halves deflating into the seafloor, and their small, black eyes set like buttons in their chubby cheeks. They looked profoundly upset.

  “Syrena,” Sophie breathed. “What are those things?”

  “Blobfish, your people call them,” the mermaid said. “Blobfish be down here billions of years, before humans, before mermaids. They born so far down the pressure crush any bone out of them till they just blobs. Good fish, blobs. How you say, ‘salt of the earth.’”

  “We’re really deep down here, aren’t we?” Sophie asked the mermaid.

  “Oh, ya,” the mermaid replied. “So deep, it would normally make us very, how you say, depressed, but for the good salt all around. Not good to go so deep. Must be big like Ogress to handle it. Otherwise, pressure get you. Make you cuckoo.” Syrena twirled a long, elegant finger near her temple. “Now we must go to Invisible. Is big reason why I take you here.”

  SOPHIE FOLLOWED SYRENA through the labyrinth of caves that was the Ogresses’ home until they were spit out into the open sea. It was darker than anything Sophie had ever seen, darker even than the dark of the mountains that rose up in the center of the Atlantic, spitting fire and birthing islands. This dark was so heavy it weighed on Sophie’s eyelids. It hurt her eyes like a bright light. She squinted against it and felt a current of doom enter her heart. “Syrena,” she said, “I don’t like it here.”

  As her eyes adjusted, Sophie could begin to make out the faint glow of creatures that had been forced though the millennia to create their own light down in the depths. The gaping anglerfish, lamps growing out of their heads. The lantern fish, lit from within as if they’d all swallowed light bulbs. A grisly-jawed thing with the long body of an eel slunk by, sparks of light running across its skin like an electrical storm. A fish with a mouth like an open umbrella pulsed by, staring at Sophie with glowing red eyes. And everywhere were jellyfish, their tentacles like glowing ghosts trailing behind them. Soon it didn’t seem quite as dark, not with all these creatures lighting the place up like a disco. But the other darkness, the one that had dug inside her heart, didn’t go away.

  Chapter 13

  “Come with me.” Syrena said, and held out her hand to Sophie, who was glad to take it. Together they swam, the colorful creatures becoming sparser and sparser until again they were in blackness. Sophie knew that somewhere above her, pods of smiling minke whales glided through the water, slapping their tails joyfully. Chubby seals honked and slid their bodies onto rocks while puffins stuck their neon-orange beaks into the sea. But not down here. Though she tried to hold back her tears, Sophie couldn’t help it. She let go of the mermaid’s hand and started to cry.

  “I’m sorry, Syrena.” She faced the mermaid with embarrassment. “I just—this place is terrible.”

  Syrena, too, looked pained, her face taut above the dim glow of her talisman. “Is too much to be down here, outside the salt cave,” she agreed. Sophie clutched her own glowing necklace, grateful that the darkness hid her crying. She was trying to be more heroic, but this horrible feeling of the deep was like nothing she’d experienced.

  “Partly it is the deep, ya? It takes very long time to make light down here. Girl like you would be down here for a billion years, having baby after baby, until maybe one of them come out with a light on their head, ya? A bit of happiness.”

  “They’re happy, the creatures?” Sophie asked. “They’re not sad down here?”

  “Is all they know,” the mermaid shrugged. “They do okay. Making light helps. But is not just the deep, the darkness and the pressure.” Syrena took a deep breath, the gills behind her ears quivering, her expression serious. “Is also the Invisible we feeling. We here now.”

  Sophie could barely make out the mermaid pointing into the darkness. She tried to look where Syrena was pointing, but it just looked like more nothing.

  “I can’t see anything,” Sophie said. “Am I looking for something invisible?”

  “You just wait. You be patient and watch. Is invisible, but it shows itself, too.”

  They hung in the dark of the deep, deep sea, an unfathomable amount of water pressing down on top of them. Sophie’s mind returned to the strange shape of the blobfish, and she could feel a bit of a headache throbbing behind her eyes. What if she got crushed down here? It felt as if her spirit was already being flattened, but what about her body, her bones and her muscles? What if she turned back into the beanbag girl Syrena had had to rescue from the Boston Harbor?

  As if her eyes were playing tricks on her, Sophie saw a flicker in the distance. She lifted her talisman from her chest and aimed it
outward as if it were a flashlight.

  “You see?” Syrena asked.

  “I think I saw something,” Sophie said. “Or maybe it’s just my eyes getting weird in the dark.” But as she kept staring, a patch of the darkness seemed to shimmer, flickering in and out of her vision. It was like a piece of glass in the blackness, but alive. Sophie could detect its upward movement.

  “Is it a spring?” Sophie asked. “Is it more water, coming up from the earth?”

  The mermaid shook her head, her eyes searching.

  “Not is water,” Syrena said. “Is something more. Feel it. Water does not feel like that.”

  And Sophie could feel it; when she concentrated, she could feel it hurting her heart. “Syrena,” she gulped, “why are you showing this to me?”

  “It is part of it, part of the bigger mystery,” the mermaid said. “It have to do with Kishka. It attracted to her, the Invisible. There is legend of her down here, all the animals know her name. But recently humans start to come here, too. Scientists.”

  “People come all the way down here?” Sophie marveled.

  “No, no. They send what you call, robot? Metal, thinking thing. It make picture of the Invisible. The Ogresses find one, take it apart to find out what it did. Is some kind of human tool.” Syrena paused, turned to Sophie. “So you know what this is?”

  “The Invisible?” Sophie shook her head, and she could feel tears coursing down her cheeks. She didn’t bother to try to wipe them away. “No. I’m sorry. Maybe this means I’m not the right girl, but I don’t know anything about this place.”

  Sophie turned her back, looking away from that creepy fountain of nothingness. She had no idea what it was, but she knew she hated it. And she knew she couldn’t stay there another second. She paddled back toward the glowing creatures, feeling a wallop of gratitude at their shifting, neon colors. Syrena followed her, and in the new light, Sophie was surprised to see that the mermaid, too, was crying.

  “Syrena!” Sophie gasped. She wished she could hide her surprise, but she felt so raw that she couldn’t. She hadn’t known the mermaid could cry. Like, maybe she had when she was a baby, but it seemed like whatever made tears had long since dried up like seaweed on a rock, or perhaps became calcified, coated in hardness like a pearl. A pearl. Griet. Now Sophie knew why Syrena had broken down. She reached out toward the mermaid to try to comfort her.

  “Stop,” the mermaid swatted at her. “I—it must be place. The deep. I miss my sister. I miss Griet.” The mermaid’s name came out on a choke, loosening a fresh spill of tears from Syrena’s face. “Is like I never truly missed her. Never, not until now.”

  Feeling the mermaid’s sadness, Sophie began to cry harder, her sadness for Syrena’s loss mingling with that of her own. Livia, lost forever. And the others—her mother, Angel, Ella. Perhaps they were only lost for now, but down here, now was beginning to feel like forever. Finally, the two of them, mermaid and girl, wound themselves together and let loose their sorrows into one another’s tangles. In this clutch they half swam, half stumbled back through the glowing creatures and into the cave of the giants.

  As soon as they entered the cave, the heavy salt walls brought relief, like they were stepping from hot sun into shade. They collapsed against the nearest one and slid down into the sand, finally able to catch their breath and slow their tears, but they continued to clasp each other’s hands. For Syrena, it was like holding Griet’s hand once more, but of course it was also not, and so she cried a bit more. Sophie was shocked to witness the mermaid so vulnerable, and honored to bring her some comfort. She never wanted to let go of her hand; she never wanted Syrena to stop needing her closeness as she did in this moment, no matter how sad they felt. For a time they were content to simply lie there in the mouth of the cave, exhausted by what they’d been through, looking out at the flashes of creatures beyond like they were stargazing.

  “Syrena, have you ever seen the stars at night, in the sky above the ocean?” Sophie asked.

  Syrena had—and the memory made her cry all the harder.

  “Oh, Syrena, I’m sorry,” Sophie said, clutching the mermaid’s other hand, bringing both of her hands up to her face like a bouquet of flowers. And at that, Syrena looked at Sophie and the flash of her eyes was like lightning in the cave and before Sophie knew what she was doing she was going into Syrena, into the mermaid’s head and heart, and the mermaid was not fighting her. Inside Syrena’s heart. Sophie felt a great hardness all around, hardness, hardship, hardness, hardship, these words looped in her head as she breathed in a wave of the mermaid’s dense sadness. Griet was gone, Griet was gone forever: this knowledge was alive so deep inside the mermaid, so far down, that it felt to Sophie like she was digging, like she was getting her hands dirty, even though all she was doing was staring into Syrena’s eyes while the two of them sat, perfectly still. She dug up Griet’s memory, buried like something beautiful deep in the sludge, and the memory shone so brightly that it hurt, it really hurt Syrena as it was unearthed. As the mermaid buckled over in pain it hurt Sophie, too, and it kept hurting. Because when she pulled Griet from the mermaid’s depths she pulled up other things, too, things she didn’t know anything about—a winged lion with the face of an eagle reared up, roaring. A monstrous object filled the sky and dropped bombs that burned the city, made the river boil. Bodies fell on the banks. It was as if the mermaid’s heart was a hive and Sophie had whacked it and out poured the bees, a thousand memories pricking and stinging: a cold so cruel the river had frozen, people staggering to and fro with blocks of ice, Syrena’s fingers bleeding when she held them up before her face. Sophie batted away the images but as one was banished another surged forth. The loss was like a river, a current pushing through Sophie’s heart. All the death the mermaid had seen! Something in Syrena was trying to resist her, but Sophie pushed through it, she pushed and she pulled, and she pulled all of that loss into her own heart.

  The mermaid’s face contorted as she pulled away from Sophie, wrapping her arms around her chest. Her fin pounded the floor of the cave, drawing a shroud of sand around them. The mermaid’s gaze flashed back to Sophie, and for a moment, a weightless moment, Sophie could feel Syrena lift up inside. It was as if she were nothing, a bright, blissful nothing.

  As the full weight of what she’d taken on hit her, Sophie fell back into the heavy mud of the seafloor, Syrena reaching toward her the last thing she remembered before darkness enveloped her.

  IN HER DREAM, Sophie watched as a man lifted a mermaid from the water. Like a river rock taken from its home, her tail became instantly dull as the drops of seawater fell away. Her hair, lustrous and tempered by the faint blue of the sea, became lank and sticky, the tangles heavy on her head out here on land, where gravity weighed everything down. The mermaid shook her head, trying to toss her hair like she could in the water, but it just fell messily across her face. The algae that clung to her locks looked suddenly scuzzy, like mold blooming on an old plate of food. She turned back, and Sophie could see the twin fangs poking over her dry lips. When she opened her mouth, a bristle of baleen showed.

  “I’ll be back!” hollered Griet. “I’ll be right back, please, don’t cry!”

  Sophie hadn’t known she was crying, but when she brought her hand to her face she felt the tears. Her other hand was wrapped around something—a weapon. She tried to follow after the mermaid, but she tripped over her tail, bulky and clumsy beneath her. She opened her mouth and unleashed her zawolanie, watching as the man dropped Griet onto the rocks, bringing his hands up over his ears. The mermaid twisted, lifting herself up on her arms and turning her face to the sea.

  “Stop it! Stop it! You’re hurting him!” Griet shouted, alarmed. And Sophie watched as the man, his face red with pain, reached down and gruffly grabbed Griet by the tail, dragging her across the land. Sophie let her zawolanie sound again, and again the man let go of Griet, now even farther from the banks of the sea.

  “Please, I just want to see how they live. He’ll b
ring me right back!”

  “Just leave her!” Sophie cried, and the man, in his madness, struck out with his boot, kicking Griet’s tail, so dry now that the scales were brittle and crushed, the scars she bore from her journey standing out in stark relief. Griet cried out, ducking her head, and the man lifted her tail again and dragged her away, and Sophie could do nothing more than watch them go. Her eyes locked with her sister’s as she was tugged away across the earth, her face turned back to her home.

  Chapter 14

  Sophie awoke choking on her zawolanie like it was caught in her throat. With a burning sputter she swallowed it back down. As she came to her senses, she found that she was looking into the pale, bulbous face of a giant octopus. A tentacle, slinky and long, was curved around her brow; she could feel the slight tingle of its cups across her skin. Another tentacle lay on her chest, across her heart. She followed the outstretched arms of the many-armed beast and traced them to Syrena, lying beside her. The octopus cupped the mermaid’s head as well, and lay upon her breast.

  “Is it working?” A voice emanated from a long swath of linen that rose like a curtain toward the ceiling. Somewhere high in the darkness, the Ogress spoke. The octopus didn’t respond, but bobbed its head. Beneath its translucent skin Sophie could see pulses of light.