Girl at the Bottom of the Sea

by Michelle Tea

  “Get it together, man!” the prince barked. “Unless you want to spend the rest of your days chained in a basement with the rest of the village’s madfolk. Compose yourself.”

  With a huff and a puff that brought tears from his eyes, the boy tried to settle his breathing and conjure up a bit of dignity. An audience with the prince, inside his very chambers! If he lived past this, if he was not carried off in chains or slayed by a pack of brutal sea witches he would have a marvelous story to tell!

  Shaking, he bowed deeply at the waist. “Your highness,” he spoke, directing his voice down at the polished wood floor.

  “Speak up—what is it?” The prince was becoming impatient.

  “Your highness,” the sailor stood upright and looked the man in the eye. “I came upon your… the… your Mermaid Princess, your Highness. She has a sister. Quite terrible and strong. I came upon her in the bay.”

  “Did you?” the prince sounded unimpressed. Perhaps he did not believe the boy.

  “Truly I did!” the sailor swore. “You must believe me, sir! She pulled me under—I thought that she would spear me! She carried a big… a sharp—”

  “A type of horn, was it?” The prince recalled, squinting upward, where the wainscoting trimmed his quarters, where swags of silk hung decoratively. “Like one stolen from the brow of a unicorn?” He smirked and raised an eyebrow.

  “No—well, yes, your highness, it was—”

  The prince came forward and clapped the boy on the back, nearly knocking him over. “You are truly in a state, lad!”

  He pushed the boy a touch harder, until he fell backward onto a tufted chair. “I am toying with you, and it is most unkind of me. Allow me to apologize.” He walked to a cabinet, and from a great hollow crystal poured a stream of clear liquid into a glass. He passed it to the boy. “That will steel you. Drink up.”

  The sailor did as the prince commanded, choking as the liquid, which looked like nothing more than a gulp of water, burned its way down his throat. He was familiar with ale and the other brews the peasants fermented in their wooden barrels, but what the prince drank was far more powerful. Already dizzy, the boy imagined it was the juice of the crystal itself. He tried to gather his wits. “Your highness, she warned of a great war if you do not return her sister to the sea. She predicted destruction, such fearful destruction! Our whole village, gone! The fish called away! Famine and fire! A race of sea witches descending upon our town!”

  “You were right to come to me,” the prince said. “I must always know of any threat to our land, no matter how weak it may be.”

  “But your highness, she is not weak, I promise you!”

  “Not weak to a drunken boy who had tumbled from his boat,” the prince allowed. “Am I right? You were clumsy and foolish that night, were you not?”

  The sailor hung his head. “I was,” he admitted, ashamed.

  “I too have seen this beast,” the prince said casually. “An ugly thing. But they’re all ugly, these sea witches.” He knocked back his own glass of crystal liquid and poured the boy another.

  “Trust me, boy. They have their magics. Beneath the water, they shimmer. But you bring them upon the land and—they’re useless.”

  “Useless, your highness?”

  “They lose their luster entirely. Their hair, for example. It becomes brittle as straw. I gave her to my maidens, told them to oil her hair, and—nothing. She is brought back to me with her hair dry as kindling, and green, all coated in oil.” The prince shuddered at the recollection. “A very painful sight.”

  “Y-yes,” the boy nodded, sipping the terrible drink. “It must have been.”

  “And the tail!” the prince exclaimed. “Marvelous in the waters, to be sure. But take a fish out of the water, and what do you have?” He tilted his empty glass toward the boy and stared at him hard. His eyes, the boy realized, seemed to be the same color as the drink. The color of no color at all.

  “A fish?” the boy offered hesitantly.

  The prince snorted a great snort of laughter. “Take a fish out of the water and yes, boy, what you have is a big, stinking fish. And who wants a big, stinking fish stinking up his home, eh? Not even a fisherman wants to live with his catch! And certainly not a prince!”

  The prince sat down in the chair opposite the boy and rubbed his flaxen head in his hands. He leaned back in his seat, his pale face made red from the stress of his story. His hands clutched the decorative fish carved onto the throne’s wooden arms.

  “I gave her to my personal fisherman,” he recalled. “You must—everyone must understand that I did my best. I sent my doctor to her as well. Is she a fish, is she a girl—well, the mystery of it all becomes quite tedious when she’s rotting away in your bathtub, I tell you!”

  “Certainly, your highness,” mumbled the boy, feeling chill.

  “I said, get rid of the fish of her, and return her to me as a woman! I can’t have that smell in my palace, and I can’t have a bride that can’t dance! They can’t dance, boy! I hadn’t thought of that when I grabbed her from the shore. That a woman would need legs to dance, proper girl legs. What sort of bride is a bride that can’t dance with her husband on her wedding day? And what kind of queen cannot walk among her people? I ask you, boy. What sort of queen smells like rotting fish and can’t dance?”

  “Surely no sort of queen for you, your highness,” the boy said numbly, his mind reeling at the story. He remembered the iron grip of the mermaid’s sister. If he brought his hand to his throat he could feel the rough spot where her sword had scratched his skin.

  “Ah, it’s all no good,” the prince sighed, rising from his seat. “She came back from the fisherman even worse than before. My doctor swears he did his best, but he’d never worked on a mermaid; it was a terrible mess, just awful. No one’s fault, of course—”

  “Of course,” the boy said quietly.

  “She still can’t walk, and now she can’t seem to swim either. She’s ruined. So fine, go, take her back to her sister in the bay. Maybe she can do something with her.”

  “She—she’s here?” The boy stumbled to his feet and felt the blood rush from his face down to his feet. He swayed with the drink and the prince’s words. He watched, rooted to the spot, as the prince pulled back the long curtain that obscured his private bath. There, alone in the large stone tub, lay the Mermaid Princess. It was true that her hair was green; it tumbled down onto the floor, where it bunched on the tiles like a heap of moss. Her skin was nearly green as well, a pale, pale green, and in the dim light it looked even more sickly, mottled with splotches of pink and yellow. Her eyes were closed and her quick breaths sounded like wind through dry grass. Her full lips were cracked and white.

  In his horror at the sight of the mermaid, the sailor forgot the power of the man he addressed. “Your highness, but—she’s your princess, your highness. You were to marry her, were you not? Maybe if you were good to her, her sister will not bring a war—”

  “Oh, fear not.” The prince swatted his hand, glittering with rings, at the boy, sweeping away his concern. “There will be no war from that wench. She’s alone out there. They have no nation, mermaids. They are odd fish, solitary swimmers.” The prince regarded the boy. “I thought you came to collect this thing, bring it back to the bay? Was I wrong?”

  “No, your highness, I was delivering the mermaid’s message. I would have taken the princess back to the bay, but—”

  “But now that you see what’s become of her you’re afraid the sea witch will have your head? Is that it?”

  The boy swallowed. There were so many things to be afraid of—the powerful prince, the vicious mermaid, the wan princess, grisly in the bath. “Yes, your highness.”

  “She gave you a good scare, I know. But she can’t harm you. Stupid things can’t manage outside of the sea. Go on,” he motioned the boy toward the bath. “I can’t keep her in here another moment. Can’t you smell her?”

  The boy nodded his head. He could indeed smell the
Mermaid Princess. The smell of gutted fish, and something saltier. The smell of tears.

  “Take her!” The prince had lost his patience with the lot of it. “Bring her back to the bay, leave her there for the sister. I don’t want to see her again. And you, if I see you again, if I hear of you again, babbling about a war, I’ll have you chained up with the other idiots. You understand?”

  “Yes, your highness.”

  THE BOY’S WALK to the bay took him from the castle down the village’s main road, lined with shops and cottages, houses that opened into public kitchens, ateliers where artisans brought boughs from the woods and fashioned them into things useful and handsome. Alehouses, a school, a church. His walk took him through the heart of the village, and as he walked, the truth slid quick as fire through every building, and the villagers knew that the rumor had been true.

  The prince had taken the beautiful creature and turned her into a monster. What he had tried wasn’t right for any human, not even a nobleman. The rumor had spread, whispered from house to house, that the fisherman who had made the first cut did so through a veil of tears. That the doctor had been threatened with death if he refused. And so as the fisherman had cut, the doctor had stitched. They worked together, both men weeping, their ears stuffed with cotton and wax so as not to be driven mad by the cries of the mermaid.

  The villagers stood in their doorways as the boy walked past in a funeral parade of one. They clutched the things that were holy to them—woven branches or the shed antler of a stag, a precious stone or lock of hair. They prayed to their goddess that she be forgiving, show mercy to the villagers who lived under the rule of a man who would do such a thing. They asked that she bless the dirt the Mermaid Princess bled upon. They begged that she forgive the doctor and the fisherman. They prayed even that she forgive the prince, though none of them were certain they could do the same. To be as forgiving as a goddess: what powerful and mysterious being could have created them all, the simple villagers and the innocent sea girl and the monstrous prince? They could never understand her ways, but still they lit candles and let them burn into the morning. They scattered salt in the streets and in the corners of their homes, hoping to bring purity. But many of them felt that they would never again know such a thing as purity after watching the boy pass them by, his face covered in salt and tears, the dead mermaid in his arms, her terrible legs made of stitching and scales dangling, swaying against his own, her tangled green hair dragging in the dirt.

  When the boy reached the shore, he got to work. The long walk through the village had fortified and sobered him. He no longer felt the icy-hot liquor of the prince, nor the chill of the man’s colorless eyes upon him. He felt the strength and soul of his village in his heart, the presence of all who had come out to bear witness to the great tragedy. He could feel them with him as he marched. He could feel the warmth of their candles; he could feel the pain in their eyes; he could feel their strength in his chest, where his heart thumped. He knew it was as a village that they would return the mermaid to her sister, though he alone would face her.

  With his bare hands the boy peeled sheets of bark from the trees that lined the shore. He laid them out, one on top of another, pounding flat their curl with stones. He scoured the shore for the sharpest rock he could find and cut holes around the edges of the bark. He gathered fistfuls of seaweed and laced them through the holes, tying them tightly. Then he laid the mermaid princess on the raft, covering her body with a swath of her long hair, already softened by being closer to the sea. Tenderly he curled her horrible patchwork legs beneath her. Scales scraped off into his hand, and he sprinkled the dust into the sea. What was once a tail, fat and healthy, had been sawed in half; the devastation of the tools upon the mermaid’s flesh was visible, the scaled skin red and swollen with infection.

  Looking away, the boy tore young boughs from the tree and covered the mermaid with great and leafy branches; he piled them upon her body until she was obscured, the terrible legs hidden. Her head lay upon her great bundle of hair as if on a pillow.

  And then the boy lifted the raft, bringing the mermaid to the edge of the farthest rock, the one that jutted deep into the bay; he placed her upon the water, and with a gentle push he returned her to her home.

  His fists, when he brought them to his face, smelled of her. It was not the rank smell the prince had complained of. It was the scent of the sea itself. Salty and sweet. The smell of birth and the smell of death. He caught his tears in his fists and wiped them on his pants. He watched the mermaid move deeper into the bay until he could no longer see her. The sun had set, and the water was darkness.

  Chapter 17

  “How strange,” Syrena said, her voice soft, almost mesmerized. “How strange to be here, now. At this point in our story.”

  The travelers floated a mile or so away from what appeared to be a great golden glow emanating from the waters. It was as if the sea turned to honey, lit with the dancing of a hundred thousand bees. Such a glittering vision—the opposite, thought Sophie, of the Invisible. The light called to her, called to them all, dancing luminous inside their eyes. Even the Dola looked more soulful as it gazed in the direction of Laeso Island.

  “Isn’t it interesting,” the Dola spoke, “how long our stories are? That now, so many years later, it would still seem as if it were only just beginning.”

  The mermaid looked at the Dola with tears in her eyes.

  “I come here,” Syrena said to Sophie, and paused, collecting her thoughts. Her tears were a delicate blue, lighter than the blue of the sea, like a bit of sky falling into the ocean. “I come here after I lose Griet.”

  “Did you… did you see her when they brought her back?” Sophie asked, though she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.

  Syrena shook her head. The glow of Laeso Island lit the tears like gems suspended in the water. Sophie wished she could reach out, take one, and slide it into her pocket, or weave it into her hair with Livia’s feather.

  “I did not want to see. The silver fish, they come to me. They wrap me in a cloud, spinning and spinning around me. They tell me what happen to my sister.” She shook her head, and her tears swirled like miniature Swilkies. “I could not see her like that. I—I frightened, to have such picture in my head. Perhaps coward. But I could not. I summon dolphin to visit the boy, to tell him I will not come for him. He try. He show respect to Griet.”

  “But Griet,” Sophie said urgently. “She—she just, she sank, and…”

  “She return to the ocean,” Syrena said simply. “She fall to the sand, she feed the creatures. Like every creature in the sea. We pass away, we fall to the bottom. We feed the creatures. The creatures, they pass on, feed more creatures. Always been such. Since beginning of earth, beginning of sea.”

  Sophie nodded. It seemed sad to her that there wasn’t anything to commemorate Griet’s life. A stone at the bottom of the sea, a piece of coral, something she could visit. It was silly, she knew. Griet was gone, and Sophie had never known her. But still.

  She could feel Syrena reading her feelings in her gentle, mermaid way. “You are beside her,” Syrena said. “She all around us. She the water, she the fish. Griet, the sand in our hair. Bless her.”

  “Bless her,” Sophie echoed in a whisper.

  “I so lost after she gone,” Syrena said. “I did not know where to be, where to go. When we were together, anywhere we travel good, because we together. Anyplace we travel the right place. Without her, was like I did not know direction anymore. I swim in circles. Sharks come close, they see I have a sickness about me. They wait for me to be weaker and weaker. But then, I see light.” Syrena pointed toward the golden mirage. “Ran and her daughters come for me. They hear my story, traveling before me on the fishes. They come for me and bring me back to their cave beneath the island. And I live with them for many years. Like family.”

  “Are they mermaids too?” Sophie asked.

  “They are Jottnar, magic people. Like Odmieńce. They live in sea an
d earth. Very, very old. Not giant like Ogresses, but bigger people. Very strong. Can do most anything. Big muscle, big hearts.”

  And as if she had summoned them with her praise, two women were suddenly upon them in the water, one embracing Syrena, the other grabbing Sophie by her hips, surging her forward at a great, wild speed.

  “Whoa!” Sophie hollered, her mouth filling with water. “Whoa, there!” Being hugged by a Jottnar was like being carried on a powerful current. The woman’s hands, large as Sophie’s head, gripped her waist, but the woman did not seem to move. It was if they were flying. Beside her, Syrena and the other woman tumbled in circles, like puppies. They hugged and rolled and their laughter flew past Sophie’s head in big bubbles.

  “I am Bara!” Sophie heard the woman introduce herself, shouting into her ear. “Daughter of Ran and Aegir! That’s Unnr, my sister! We couldn’t wait, it’s been taking you forever to get here!” Alongside them the dolphins leapt and dove through the wakes they generated. Even the Dola seemed to be having fun. Sophie burst out laughing.

  “Aren’t they fun!” Syrena called as she swirled by. “The Billow Maidens! Oh, Sophie—it is so good to be here. Unnr, that’s Sophie!”

  Unnr, who Sophie sometimes saw as a lovely, strong woman with tumbling hair and sometimes saw as the surge of the current that carried them, howled a hello at the girl.

  “We know all about you,” Bara shouted from behind. “Famous Sophia!” Her voice was teasing, but not unkind. With a final surge the current shoved them through the mouth of the cave, where they came to a short stop in a kind of grotto, sputtering and splashing. Syrena, still tumbling, bumped her head against the cave’s wall, coming to a stop.

  “Oh!” she cried. “Pesky maiden! Lucky I have much hair to save my noggin!” Unnr rose from the water with the mermaid in her arms, twisting with happiness, spinning Syrena to and fro, her great tail flapping wildly. Bara was much gentler with Sophie, bringing her to a stop that sent up a spray of water onto a raised stone where an assembly of very tall, very attractive people looked at them.