by Michelle Tea
“You’re not the boss of me, Syrena,” Sophie said. Jeez, weren’t they just in love with each other down at the Ogress cave? Now they were back to their bickering. Maybe if Sophie were Syrena’s equal, a mermaid too, things would be smoother between them.
“I sort of boss of you,” Syrena said, her eyes glinting. “This my world, down here. You my charge.”
“But if I’m a mermaid it’s my world, too. We can both be the boss.”
Syrena snorted with frustration, tiny glinting bubbles trailing out from her nostrils like a sea-bull. “Sophie! You not mermaid. You in your magic now, and I tell you, not good. Not good to be in magic for so long.”
“Which way to the party?” Sophie asked Syrena.
“We go when you girl again.”
Sophie turned to the pod of dolphins. “Which way to Laeso Island?”
The dolphins answered in a peal of unintelligible squeaks.
“God! Well, I guess I’ll just figure it out on my own!” And Sophie took off.
Her speed took her own breath away. With her two tails, how fast she could cut through the waters! She turned only to make sure the rest of her party had not been blown away by her powerful wake, but there was Syrena just behind her, followed by the pod of dolphins, frolicking as they traveled, as dolphins will.
“Wrong way,” Syrena said grimly, pulling up alongside Sophie and grabbing her by a fin. “This way.” The mermaid made a sharp turn, practically slapping Sophie with her tail. Sophie, too, made a quick swerve and was soon on the path to Laeso.
Syrena swam just ahead of the girl-mermaid, and no matter how hard Sophie worked the waters she could not catch up with her. Fine, she thought. Show off. Syrena’s been in the water for hundreds of years. I think I’m doing pretty awesome for my first day as a mermaid.
Breaking from the pod, a single dolphin shot ahead to swim beside Sophie. Its head was covered in an intricately braided harness fashioned from seaweed, and giant chunks of salt were threaded through the headdress like beads. Sophie slowed for a moment and gave the creature a warm smile, reaching out to pet its flank. It was smooth, smooth like Syrena’s skin. The creature was darker gray on top, fading to white at the front of its body and to a dusky light gray at the back. In the center, the colors met in a dip like an hourglass. Sophie traced the pattern lightly, smiling. The creature’s dark eye met hers and its chittering beak opened.
“Hello, Sophie.” It was not the undecipherable trill of a dolphin. It was the flat monotone of the Dola.
“No!” Sophie wailed, in exactly the voice she kept trying not to use. She used it again. “No!” She kicked her tails like a baby mermaid having a tantrum. Up ahead, Syrena turned around to see what was the matter. A glimpse at the dolphin told her everything. She broke out into a smile so big you could see her baleen.
“Dola! Tak dobre cie widziec!” The mermaid waved her hand above her head in a happy hello.
“This isn’t fair,” Sophie said, the fight already half gone from her. She had debated with the Dola before, when she had turned her back on the wisdom and kindness of her Aunt Hennie, when she had used her magic in the service of her own stubborn self, instead of what it was meant to serve. But what was that, even? Humanity? The world?
“Nie ma problemu.” The Dola spoke Polish through the dolphin’s mouth, the flat, monotonous sound of its voice giving Sophie instant creeps.
“Give me a break!” Sophie pleaded with the dolphin Dola “I have to do all this horrible, hard work, and I get all these amazing powers and I can’t even have a little fun with them? This is totally not fair.”
The Dola shrugged its dorsal fin. “No such thing as ‘fair.’ Only what is, and what is not. You are not to use your shape-shifting like this. Not for such prolonged period of time. It’s not good for your body. You are not meant to do it.”
“And yet here I am, doing it!” Sophie yelled. “God, don’t you get tired of these arguments?”
“Yes, always,” the Dola replied calmly. Even the calm and acquiescent timbre of its voice made Sophie want to die. It was like nails on the chalkboard of her soul.
“You have a tremendous gift, this ability to shape-shift. And it is tremendously taxing on your body, on your magic.”
“But I feel great,” Sophie insisted, and did a mermaid leap to prove her point, breaking the water’s surface and gracefully returning, slapping at the waves with her lush flukes for effect.
“Yes, you are doing very well here in the ocean. But you’re getting a constant salt infusion. Being with the Ogresses healed you, and the salt at Laeso Island is particularly replenishing. But you will not be down here forever. You must conserve your energy. There will be a time of recovery, and it will be hard on you. Don’t make it harder.”
“And what if I don’t?” Sophie sulked, but she already knew the answer.
“I will stay beside you until you obey me or become mad from my presence,” the dolphin Dola said.
“I bet I can outswim you.”
“I will hop into whatever vessel I need to. Shark, fish, octopus. Dolphin. Syrena.”
“You wouldn’t take over Syrena!”
“I will do whatever I must. And Syrena understands. She would let me occupy her. She cares about you. She does not want you doing this.”
“She just wants to be the only mermaid,” Sophie said. “She’s just mad that I can become like her in a snap.”
“She thinks you act like a child,” the Dola said, “and you do. It is her job to protect you, and she takes it seriously. Now become yourself again and I will carry you to Laeso.”
“I’d rather you just go away,” Sophie said. “I’ll make my own way to the island.”
“I am traveling there, too,” the Dola explained. “I have a meeting with Ran about a ship.”
“Who is Ran?”
If a dolphin or a Dola could make an expression of surprise, the dolphin Dola would have shot such a look at Sophie.
“You do not know Ran? You are going to her island.”
“I don’t know anything,” Sophie said. “Because Syrena doesn’t tell me anything.”
“Yes. Because you act like a child. It is hard for her to level with you. To treat you as equal. You should act different.”
“I know,” Sophie said. “I keep trying and it doesn’t work.”
“It will,” said the Dola. “It is your destiny to grow up. To become mature.”
“And it’s not my destiny to be a mermaid for a while?” the girl asked, with just a little bit of begging at the edge of her voice.
“Nope. So, become a girl again and hop on the dolphin’s back, please.”
With a zawolanie that sounded like the loudest, worst, most annoyed and petulant sigh ever uttered by a teenager, Sophie sulked her tails away and was a girl again. Her legs felt bare and naked in the cold water, ungainly and ungraceful. Their kicks were goofy, as if she were trying to find the pedals to an invisible bike.
Syrena was beside her. “Ride the dolphin.”
“It’s not a dolphin, it’s the Dola.”
“Either way. Will take you. Relax. Fun to ride dolphin!”
“More fun to be a mermaid.”
“And you were.” Syrena looked deeply at Sophie. “You were a mermaid for a moment. How magic for you. How many girl want to be mermaid, huh? And for moment, you feel it.”
“My legs feel dumb now.”
“Ya. No help down here.” Syrena reached out and slapped Sophie’s legs good-naturedly. “It almost sweet,” she said, “to have another to swim with. Not swim with another mermaid since Griet. I wish it could be allowed, Sophie. But law is law, is bigger than me.”
“Is it bigger than you, Dola?” Sophie kicked her heels into the dolphin’s flank, like a cowgirl on an ornery horse.
“Of course. I don’t write destiny. I only enforce it.”
“Don’t you enjoy the Dola?” Syrena smiled.
“No, not at all! Doesn’t its voice just go right through you?”
The mer
maid shrugged. “Not so much. I think it worse if it you she come for.”
“How do you two even know each other? Do you just end up meeting everyone if you live for hundreds of years?”
“Dola very close with Ran, who run island we going to. And Ran take me in when I was young. After losing Griet. I had nowhere to go, and Ran and her daughters very kind to me. Dola come often to sink ships.”
“Figures. You’re like the Grim Reaper or something.”
“Actually, Ran is more of the Grim Reaper,” the Dola interjected. “I just tell her what needs to happen. She carries it out.”
“So we’re on our way to a party at the home of some lady who sinks ships?”
“It sounds awful when you say it like that,” Syrena said. “You just no understand all.”
“Do you?” Sophie asked. “Do you understand it all?”
“I understand my part,” the mermaid said. “And you should make more effort to understand yours.”
“She will,” the dolphin Dola predicted, the words escaping its smiling beak in a trail of tiny bubbles that shimmered like silver sequins.
Chapter 16
For a while Syrena stayed, alone, ducking along the rocky shore of Kattegat Bay. It was not easy, and it was not safe. When the story of the captured mermaid spread through the village, many townspeople came to the banks for a glimpse of the second one, the one who stayed in the water, screaming a terrible scream as her sister was carried away by the prince. Carried away. It sounded romantic, the way the people spoke of it, but they hadn’t been there. Syrena had been there, had watched her sister being dragged along the ground by the man, like a stag he had killed in the woods and was bringing home for supper.
Children and mothers often came to the banks of the Kattegat. The children patted the surface of the water with their tiny, chubby hands, and the mothers scanned the depths with fear and excitement. They didn’t really believe that mermaids stole babies, but who could be sure? Courting couples came to steal a glimpse of the creature, and if they were lucky a kiss as well. Old fishermen, bitter at the catches these creatures had stolen from their boats, hung around smoking tobacco and waiting to give the mermaid a piece of their minds. Old women came, for a peek at the beast, they said, but really to claim a moment’s peace along the rocky shore, breathing in the salty night air. The presence of mermaids, in the town and in the bay, had shaken up the villagers’ daily routines. Who could be expected to stick to their ironwork or roofing or washing or cooking when such legendary creatures were near? It gave the town a feeling of a festival, a carnival.
Another group came to the bay, too, clambering into boats and searching beyond the shallows for the prince’s mermaid’s sister. Young men, unmarried and unattached, harboring the ambitions of a prince despite their lowly status as shopkeepers, or blacksmiths, or fish curers. They had seen the drawings of the prince’s mermaid in the newspaper, with her cascading hair and pearly teeth popping over her pouty lips. And that tail! It was said that the prince kept her in a great glass tub so that her tail would shine and her hair become soft, and that soon he would marry her. The king and queen were upset, of course, that their son hadn’t selected a neighboring royal, for it was no benefit to their land to bring a mermaid into court; indeed, the superstitious among them whispered that such an act would anger the sea gods. To them, the occasional howls from the creature in the bay, as haunting as a nightmare, seemed a grim portent.
Staying close to the seafloor, Syrena could look up and see the hulls of the men’s boats sliding by overhead, hear the men calling for her in great, drunken cries. As awful as a single man could be, a pack of them was more awful still. Syrena hugged her narwhal horn, wondering what good it was if it couldn’t bring back her sister. How she wished she could storm the land! She would weave a lasso of shark teeth and bind the prince with the flick of her wrist. She would not be a merciful avenger, oh no! She would spit on the prince as the shark teeth bit into him. With her sister on one shoulder and her horn held in the other she would slay whoever stood between her and the sea. Griet on her back, she would haul them both into deeper waters and they would sound their siren calls below the waves and rejoin their family. Surely, the warring must be over by now.
“Here, fishy, fishy, fishy!” the boys called out from their boats. Like a stargazer fish, Syrena dug a trench with her tail and burrowed into the sand, her face peeking out to observe the motion of the vessels.
“Marry me, mermaid!” the boys shouted. “No, me!” they shouted. “No, me!” “Me!” “Me!”
Syrena knew that it was only a matter of time before one of these ruffians tumbled from his boat. Their slurs grew thicker, and their bumbling movements echoed down to Syrena’s hiding place. And when it happened, Syrena did not feel the cruel glee she imagined she would feel. She felt annoyed. Deeply, thoroughly annoyed.
So much for being an avenging sea beastess, she scolded herself as she flung off the mud and swam up to where the boy kicked desperately, his soaked boots and knickers weighing him down. The cacophony of his helpless mates was an additional annoyance. Humans were such fools. They had barely a moment on earth, and they wasted it drinking poison and behaving terribly to everything. How easy it would be to pull this one down by his foot, to drag him into the depths with her. You’d like to marry a mermaid, would you? She would bare her fangs. Well, I’ve been looking for a husband to live down here with me. But Syrena couldn’t do it. It was not her way.
Syrena did seize the boy’s leg, and a newly hysterical sound burst from him mouth. She brought him beneath the waves, dodging the desperate swats and grabs of his hands, his frightened kicking. “Don’t panic!” Syrena yelled at him. Despite the roar of his struggle, he heard her. “Panicking is the fastest way to drown. Surely, a sailor like you must know that!”
The boy became still in the water, staring at the mermaid with widened eyes. He could not see her as well as she could see him, but he knew what she was. And now he knew that the story was true, that the Mermaid Princess did have a sister in the waters, and he quickly understood that she was not at all interested in a human husband.
“You tell that prince of yours that if he does not return my sister the whole of the mermaid queendom will go to war upon your village. We will wipe you out as if you never existed. We will take your pine, your deer; we will tell the fish to abandon your bay. You will starve, and your homes will be nothing more than charred, smoking stumps. Do you hear me?”
With one fist Syrena gripped the young sailor by his collar; with her other she clutched her narwhal horn, poking it into the boy’s soft throat. Unable to speak, conserving his breath, the boy could only nod—but nod he did, jerking his head in urgent, trembling motions, his eyes huge to show her he saw her, he understood her. He brought his hands together in a gesture of prayer and she released him, flinging him to the surface, where he broke the water with a hoarse gasp of terror and relief. Syrena darted away, swimming all the way to the outskirts of the bay, far from the men and their ships. She would pass a day here, allowing the word of her threat to spread. Then she would return to the banks to rescue her sister.
Far out in the bay, the mermaid lay upon her back, floating on the sweet little waves on the bay’s surface, gazing up at the sky full of stars. Weren’t these things supposed to grant wishes? Syrena wished upon each one—Griet, Griet, Griet. The hope in her chest grew heavier with every plea, and she let herself sink beneath the waters. Perhaps the stars only granted the wishes of humans.
“I REMEMBER ALL this as if it was yesterday,” the Dola said. Sophie’s octopus had scurried down from her head and was now splayed across the dolphin’s bulbous brow like another festive decoration.
“Did you go to Syrena then?” Sophie asked the creature. “Had she acted against her destiny?”
“Not at all,” the Dola said smoothly. It was true that since Sophie had obeyed her destiny, the Dola’s voice did not weigh so heavily upon her soul. “It was meant to be, all that happen
ed to Griet and to Syrena.”
“Well, it sounds terrible,” Sophie said quickly, glancing at Syrena. She would never get used to how insensitive the Dola was. Syrena had lost her sister, and the Dola shrugged it off like it was just another day on earth.
“Is okay.” Syrena reached out and patted Sophie. “I accustomed to Dola. And everything so long ago.”
“But it’s in you still,” Sophie said. “I felt it.”
“In me like my bones, girl,” the mermaid smiled.
“It’s just not okay,” Sophie insisted. “None of what happened is okay.”
“You right, is not okay,” the mermaid agreed. “But still meant to happen.”
“Was it the work of Kishka?” Sophie asked, and Syrena nodded slowly.
“In part, yes. The prince had evil in his heart. He had been hurt, too, very young. And so his hurt turned to that darkness that Kishka feeds upon. She grow very strong from men like prince. And men like him grow strong from Kishka.”
“Like mutually beneficial parasites,” the Dola suggested.
“Well, I don’t see any benefit!” Sophie snapped, and gently bonked the dolphin on the head. She lifted her octopus and nestled him back in her tangle. She’d become accustomed to the small weight of him on her head and felt strange without him. She turned back to Syrena, flying through the water beside her.
“Then what happened?”
“Well, you know, all the things I say to sailor, they mostly lies. There no mermaid queendom. We all split apart. No one to help anyone anymore. But I mean what I say, also. Feel like could burn down his village. Me, a baby mermaid, can’t go onto land, even! Me, to destroy village! But I feel I could.” The mermaid touched her heart.
“I want to burn down their village, too!” Sophie said hotly. “So they didn’t bring Griet back to you?”
“They did,” Syrena said sadly. “They did.”
THE SPUTTERING SAILOR had gotten his audience with the prince, though it pained the man to allow the bug-eyed, hysterical man trembling into his chambers. The sight of him gave the prince shudders and he brought his hand—clad in the softest leather from the softest baby lamb ever to have been born in the village—across the sailor’s face in a bracing slap.