Girl at the Bottom of the Sea

by Michelle Tea

  “What is it?” Syrena said to the Dola. “You have already taken my sister and destroyed my village. You have made us barren creatures and sent us scattered through the seas. What more do you want to take from me? Go on. Take it.” The being’s coldness had infected her heart, and the mermaid supposed it was for the best. She wanted to face her destiny with dignity, and if the coldness of her heart could freeze her tears of hurt and fear before they slid down her cheeks, then all the better.

  “You are mistaken,” the Dola said. “You are confusing me for your destiny, and I am not. Your destiny is quite separate from me. I am but its messenger.”

  “Never mind,” Syrena said coolly. “You are here to tell me I am to die, or to hurt someone I love. I’ve heard your legend my whole life. I’m to eat those babies I just was caring for, or I’m to fling myself into a shiver of sharks. Well, go on then. Deliver your message.”

  The seal’s whiskers twitched on its soft black nose. Syrena bristled at the insult of it, that she would have such terrible news delivered from the snout of this adorable creature. There was no end to life’s humiliations, the mermaid thought morosely.

  “My more spectacular jobs tend to precede me,” the Dola said, shrugging its slender seal shoulders. “No one ever talks about the time I make someone eat a meal they thought they were too full to eat. To take a different path to the green grocer. Such minutia makes the bulk of my work, you know, and it would bore you to tears. A thrill-seeking mermaid like you couldn’t bear the reality of my job. And what about the nice things I do? When I rescue a lover from the grip of war and return them unscathed to their beloved, who has been faithful. No one discusses those jobs. Only the ones where the gladiator succumbs to the hippo. Where the midwife arrives sick from drink to deliver the child.”

  “So what will it be?” Syrena snapped. “Am I to be speared by pirates and have my tail nailed to the side of their ship? Or am I to fall in love with a giant squid? Make it snappy, please.”

  “You are to leave Laeso Island,” the Dola said, and with that the seal spun and headed out the way it came.

  “What?” Syrena dashed after the creature, snagging its stubby tail in the hands. “I need more than that! What else? What for?”

  The Dola gazed at the mermaid, its stare hitting her like an icicle in the heart. “You have overstayed your time here, and I think you are aware of this. You took refuge, but now you hide. You must return to the waters.”

  “I was going to!” Syrena snapped, insulted. “I’m not hiding. I’m caring for the Billow Maidens. I’m helping Ran. I fully intend to return to the waters.”

  “You will return now. Your time here is ended. You know this to be true.”

  “I will leave as I please.”

  “I will inhabit the babies,” the Dola said simply. “I will hop inside them and drive you mad. First Ran will be driven mad, and she will be overtaken by anger at you for not obeying, for leaving her daughters vulnerable to me. Then you will go mad, from the love you found here being ruined by your own stubbornness.”

  The dread in Syrena’s heart swelled. Legend had it that the Dola only inhabited the form of a child in very dire circumstances, and to witness such coldness through the mouth of the babe could drive a being permanently mad. “Fine,” Syrena said. “I will do what I must do.” The mermaid bowed her head in a slight gesture of contrition.

  The seal bobbed before her. “I know,” the Dola said simply, and then was gone. And then Syrena was looking into the gentle brown eyes of a seal, nothing more. She called for the children to come and play with it.

  SYRENA STEELED HERSELF for the next phase of her journey. She steeled herself for loneliness, for traveling without a companion, without her beloved Griet, away from the cacophonous joy of the Jottnar. She braced herself for battle. She would encounter sharks and other animals that would take advantage of her solitude—human animals foremost among them. She clasped her horn. Back at Laeso Island the tusk had not been needed, had become another curiosity in an underwater palace decorated with them. But once in the Kattegat it was a weapon, a mighty one. It consoled Syrena greatly. You have the narwhal horn, she reminded herself as the channels got thinner, the boats closer. You are fearsome, a warrior. No threat will come to you.

  And for many miles, none did. The seas were teeming with life, and she feasted heartily. She had never been so close to the land, and began to enjoy navigating the bundles of rocks and small islands that clumped the waterways. Sometimes, when the moon was at its darkest, she would pull herself upon a crag and feel the air upon her, gaze up at the stars that sprinkled the sky. She would feel so small then, and it was a sweet, sad comfort. She was but a creature in the sea, no more, no less. She would find her way. Perhaps she was finding it a bit more each day.

  Little did Syrena know, she was indeed spotted by humans during this winding part of her journey. But she was so close to where her sister had perished that the villagers there knew her story, and not even the gruffest among them wished to bother her. Some were scared, as the legend of her threat of war still loomed as a possibility. Others felt their hearts grow full with shame at their own kind, that any among them would hurt such a creature. The villagers hung back from the shore, giving the mermaid her space and making sure that she would enjoy safe passage. And so it was through her own cunning maneuvers and the kindness of humans that Syrena passed easily through the Kattegat, overcome with relief as her world opened up into the great Baltic Sea.

  Chapter 21

  “I have not traveled this route since I was such young mermaid,” Syrena said as she and Sophie swam south from the Jottnar. Her deep sigh blew bubbles of air from the gills behind her ears, making her look, for one brief moment, as if she were wearing a magnificent silver headdress. “I am much glad to see Ran and her daughters before we come here. Their love make me strong. This is sad place for me.”

  “Is this—this is—”

  “This where Griet lay, yes. Where she taken from me, where she die. Where she pushed out to the sea. Griet is all through the waters but here, here she is most strong. So I must be most strong too, ya?” Syrena looked at her charge and smiled at the girl. “You help make me strong, Sophia. You clean my heart, and you be here with me, you give me someone more to love. And love makes heart strong.”

  From atop her platform of ocean, Sophie could hardly believe her ears. Did Syrena just say she loved her? A rush of emotion—excitement or anxiety, she couldn’t tell—swept the girl’s heart and she was speechless. Had she felt any such love back at the Ogresses’, when she pried inside the mermaid? She could not remember—all she dug at was the grief, the sorrow, feelings so mammoth they knocked her out. Without hesitation, Sophie plunged into the mermaid. She wasn’t looking for sadness now, but love—and love she found. Syrena’s interior was awash with it, completely flooded. A sea inside a sea maiden, it twinkled with salt and held currents of tragedy, tidal pulls of fearsome moods, but all of it within the liquid body of love. And Sophie found herself there, the tenderness the mermaid felt for her, the lessons she’d learned tugging her willful charge from the new world to the old. What was the flavor of this love? Pride, it was flavored with pride. Syrena was proud of her, and proud of herself, for the highs and lows of their unfinished journey. Their journey. Syrena’s love for her was tied to her love for herself, much the way her love for Griet had existed during their time together. She and Syrena were a team, a pair. They were partners now, sisters. And Sophie realized she did not need to push and pull against the mermaid for her respect and concern. The mermaid held her in highest regard.

  She pulled away as they sailed through the water. “I didn’t know,” Sophie said.

  “Well, has been complicated.” Syrena shrugged. “Love a living thing. Grows and changes. But we have arrived in this place, ya? We have arrived together, and we are good.”

  “Yes,” Sophie nodded. She didn’t want to ruin the moment by, like, bursting into tears or gushing, I love you, too! The m
ermaid’s love was a noble love, and Sophie wanted to be worthy of it. “Yes,” the girl agreed. “We have arrived together.”

  AS THEY MOVED toward the Baltic Sea, the water around them grew an icy shade of blue, and in the distance Sophie could see pods of beluga whales, white as ghosts, swirling together, creating whirls and currents. A school of cod came upon them, making their world momentarily silver, and Sophie, suddenly hungry, reached out her hand and snagged one. Like any other animal of the sea, she bared her teeth and ate.

  She awaited the rest of the mermaid’s story. It seemed to Sophie then the most precious gift anyone could give another, their story. In a world where everything can be stripped away by the whims of fortune, it was all that remained, stuck inside your body like an organ. To offer someone your story was like offering them your heart, Sophie realized, and she wondered if she was beginning to think like a poet, and if Syrena would be pleased. She watched the mermaid regard the sea around them with recognition and wonder, reaching out her hands so that the waters streamed through her elegant fingers, twirling through her rings of shell and coral. It was as if Syrena was reading the sea, as if she could feel the difference between these waters and all the waters in their wake.

  As she watched the mermaid, Sophie had a chilling feeling of someone watching her, watching them both as they made their way out from the Kattegat and into the sea that would bring them, finally, to Poland. She knew it was her grandmother, and that the eye had been upon her all the while.

  I know you see me, Sophie thought fiercely inside her heart. And when you come for me, I’ll be ready for you, Nana. I may even come for you first. My heart is so strong, filled with stories and love. And whatever you might have to use against me, I know you don’t have that.

  A chorus of squeals and coos broke Sophie from her thoughts of her grandmother, and she looked up to see Syrena beating her tail, swimming joyfully into the pod of beluga whales who welcomed her. The water of the Baltic seemed thinner, as if more of the sun could get through; the light lit up Sophie’s world in a heavenly blue, light as the sky. Flat-bodied flounders lay in the sand beneath her, looking upward with goofy eyes. A school of metallic silver fish shimmered past, momentarily blinding her. When her eyes adjusted, she could see the mermaid, one hand on the flank of a whale, the other beckoning her into the deep.

  Acknowledgments

  The author would like to thank Andi Winnette, her tireless editor at McSweeney’s, as well as Sam Riley and Gabrielle Gantz for their work on the book, and everyone else at McS HQ who has helped to get this book out into the world. Thank you to her agent Lindsay Edgecombe for being so great all the time, and to those whose strong support of Mermaid in Chelsea Creek has made continuing the series a reality. Finally, an enormous thank you to illustrator Amanda Verwey for imagining the world of this book with such fantastic skill and creativity.

  About the Author

  Michelle Tea is the author of 4 ½ memoirs, 1 ½ novels, and a collection of poetry. Her memoir Valencia is an underground classic and has been made into a feature film by 21 different filmmakers. She is the founder and executive director of RADAR Productions, a literary nonprofit which hosts the monthly RADAR Reading Series (voted Best Literary Series by SF Bay Guardian readers), the infamous Sister Spit Literary Performance tours, an annual poetry chapbook contest, and the Radar LAB Writers’ Retreat in Akumal, Mexico. She is a former writer of horoscopes and a current reader of tarot cards.

  About the Illustrator

  Amanda Verwey is an illustrator and cartoonist based in Los Angeles. She has published four comic books, has a short story in the Qu33r anthology, and her illustrations are featured in the opening credits of the Valencia movie. She is a graduate of the Mills College Book Art Program. You can see more of her work at amandamakescomics.com.