Surface Tension

by Valentine Wheeler

  Her grandmother, when she was alive, had believed every story of mermaids and fairies and other mysterious beings stealing away children and sailors. Villagers would stop by the farm to see her, to tell her half-remembered rumors from towns across the land, and Grandma Molly would vanish for weeks at a time chasing tall tales. There’d been a whole club of them, mostly women, who treated the world of magic as their life’s quest, a mystery they needed to solve. Molly was convinced her sister had been taken by the fae when they were young, convinced that’s why no one could find the little girl who’d wandered off into the forest. Sarai had always thought her strange, old-fashioned, for believing the old stories. She sent a silent apology to her grandmother’s spirit, wherever she was, for all the times she’d rolled her eyes at the warnings and precautions Molly impressed upon her. Perhaps if she’d listened, she wouldn’t be in this predicament now. She tried to remember if her grandmother had ever told her a trick to repel mermaids, but nothing came to mind. “Salt for ghosts,” she muttered. “Silver for vampires.” But she didn’t think her grandmother had given any tips on mermaids. “Except stay out of the damn water,” she muttered.

  Sarai sat there alone in the little coral dome for a long time, watching the muted shadows from the window move across the ground, kicking at the sand, and trying not to panic more than she already was. She even slept for a while, worn out from exhaustion and terror, but woke to the faint vibration of sound in the water all around her. She sat up from the seaweed she’d used as a pillow and mattress, ducked behind the big stone slab, and waited, tense. Finally, the door slid soundlessly open once more.

  She was ready: she shot forward, catching Ydri by surprise with the door still visible, knocking the book and box in her hands to the floor, and slamming her against the wall. She nearly made it out when something wrapped around her foot and dragged her back inside, the door slamming shut behind her.

  “No!” she cried, tearing at the tentacle around her foot. “You can’t keep me here!”

  Ydri rubbed her shoulder, where her skin was already darkening into a deep olive instead of its usual jade. “That hurt,” she commented. “I’m a scientist, not a brawler, you know.”

  Sarai was silent, breath heaving in her chest, adrenaline coursing through her body as she stayed between the mermaid and the door.

  “If you left the protection of the city, the water would crush you instantly.”

  Sarai crossed her arms mulishly.

  Ydri sighed and rubbed a hand over her face in a very human gesture. “I will let you leave in fourteen days,” she said. “I’ve spoken to my superiors, and they’ve granted me a special dispensation since we cannot make you forget again. If you cooperate, we will reward you with gold at the end of those fourteen days.”

  “No!” Sarai made another break for the door, but this time Ydri had her before she’d gone more than a few inches. “Let me go!”

  “I can’t.” Her voice was patient, but there was an undercurrent of frustration that made Sarai pause. “Please, it will be a great service to knowledge.”

  “The knowledge of what my insides look like?”

  “No! Knowledge about how different people live, how we can be better!”

  Sarai stilled. “You’re not going to kill me?” she asked.

  “Of course not!” Ydri looked hurt. “We never hurt our test subjects. If the council had not agreed–well. They did agree, which is good for both of us.”

  “And you’ll let me go home afterward?”

  “As I said, in fourteen days, I will personally escort you to your shore.”

  Sarai thought for a moment. Now that the terror had faded, she had to admit she was intrigued by the situation. Grandma Molly always said she would get in trouble with her smart mouth and lack of self-preservation, so the old woman wouldn’t be surprised by any of this. She didn’t have anyone waiting for her at home, no job, a distant family, and certainly no gold. Gretchen knew she was all right, wouldn’t worry until another few months went by. The mermaid seemed bizarrely sincere. Maybe she was enchanted or too curious for her own good, but the offer was strangely tempting.

  A small part of her screamed in horror at the idea of letting these creatures have her again, letting them do whatever they wanted with her body and mind, but the larger part of her was fascinated. Her grandmother’s stories had intrigued her, more than terrified her. Grandma Molly meant to scare her away from the ocean with her tales, meant to keep her safely contained on the land, but they’d done the opposite. She always wondered about the deep waters: it’s why she ended up sailing, after all. And this was an opportunity to explore a part of the ocean she never imagined she’d see. Her father always said she was too inquisitive for her own good, but stuck down here, she had to learn more. It couldn’t be worse than a life in the pigpen.

  She’d taken stock of her body since returning to the land and found no aftereffects from her last time underwater, just the typical bruises from falling off a ship and being tossed by the waves onto the beach. What did she have to lose?

  She relaxed a fraction. “Fine.”

  Ydri’s mouth dropped open for a moment, shock in her eyes, then her face broke into a smile. Sarai felt a grim smile of her own spread across her face. She’d surprised the creature. She wondered if Ydri had expected her to put up more of a fight.

  “Wonderful!” Ydri swam along the sand and picked up the book she’d dropped, along with her pen. “Now, let’s start with your history. I have a few questions.”

  Sarai blinked at the quick change of pace. The mermaid actually reminded her of Grandma Molly, in an odd way—hungry for knowledge about creatures she knew little about. She was pretty sure her grandmother would be less than thrilled by the comparison.

  The questions were all sort of boring, and Sarai answered them as best she could. They were: “What was your first memory, and why do you keep pets, and who is responsible for patrolling the bay?” Most she could answer, but once they’d gotten into the particulars of the palace and the governing structure of the realm, she had to admit some ignorance. The conversation was enjoyable, though, and after a while, she almost forgot she was the semi-prisoner of a creature out of myth and nighttime horror stories.

  “Why do you want to know all this, anyway? It’s not as if you’re impacted by which ministers are appointed and which are elected,” asked Sarai, drawing shapes idly in the soft white sand. The texture was almost the same as the sand on the beach, but even finer. “If you were asking about our defenses, or about our sewage tunnels or something, I’d get it, but all this nonsense? Most of my people don’t even understand it.”

  Ydri looked up from her notes. “Don’t you want to learn things? To know how different people live their lives?”

  “I want to know how to make a cake or build a house or see someplace no one’s been; of course I do, but how people run a country?” She shook her head. “No thank you. I’ll leave that to the nobles.”

  Ydri laughed. “Your systems change so frequently, Sarai. It’s very interesting to chart the differences,” she explained. “For instance, did you know that until about 200 years ago, your kings had an advisor from the common people as well? The Minister of City Affairs, he was called, and he had an equal vote in the council.”

  Sarai stared at her. “Really?”

  “Really,” Ydri confirmed. “And there’s another good reason for us to study you. An outside history is free from bias and from internal changes.”

  “Unless the writer is biased,” said Sarai. “Don’t your historians have their own opinions about us?”

  Blinking, Ydri was silent for a moment. “I suppose they do,” she said, finally. “I’ve never thought about it in those terms.”

  Sarai smiled, pleased.

  “I’ve kept you up longer than your people are meant to be awake,” said Ydri, glancing out the window at the shafts of light cutting through the clear water. “You need to rest.”

  Sarai thought about objecting,
but it did seem like it’d been a long time since she’d slept more than a few minutes—her little nap earlier hadn’t done much except make her groggy. The water and the strange, steady light, not to mention the magic keeping her breathing and not crushed by the water pressure, were affecting her sense of time. She had no idea of the time of day. She nodded, curling up on the seaweed waving gently where she’d slept earlier. Ydri floated above a lounging couch shaped more like a cradle than anything else, the back and sides high enough to gently keep her in place as the currents nudged her side to side. She looked comfortable, back bouncing against the couch as she organized the things she’d brought in her bag. Sarai watched her curiously, trying to see what a mermaid could possibly need to carry in a satchel the size of a goat.

  Ydri finally pulled open a pad of thick, yellowish paper and began taking notes. “Sleep,” she reminded Sarai when Sarai pushed upright to try to get a glance at what she was writing. Sarai noted the steel beneath Ydri’s voice and meekly settled on the slab and closed her eyes. She probably wouldn’t be able to read it anyway, she thought. There was no reason to assume a mermaid would take notes in English, after all. She hadn’t previously considered Ydri speaking English was strange, but that was another bizarre piece of information to add to her very disjointed picture of what actually went on down here under the waves.

  Earlier she’d simply passed out, exhausted from her struggle in the water and the shock of realizing all the abduction legends had been true. And she’d been bone tired earlier in the evening after the barrage of questions, but now thoughts couldn’t stop rushing through her head.

  “I’m not sure I can sleep here,” Sarai admitted, sitting up and looking around at the bare laboratory. The stone slab with its kelp bed loomed in the faint glow of the dimmed bioluminescent ceiling, and most unnerving of all, the thousands of gallons of water, somehow magicked to be breathable, pressed in on her from all sides.

  “You must sleep,” said Ydri, her brow furrowed. “Your people need it to function.”

  “I know.” Sarai looked around the room. “But I’m under a mile of water. It’s not exactly how I’m used to sleeping.” She shuddered. “And what if the magic stops working? What if I wake up, and I can’t breathe the water anymore?”

  “Nothing of the sort has ever happened to any of our test subjects,” said Ydri soothingly. “Not in hundreds of years.”

  “That isn’t particularly reassuring,” countered Sarai. She was very aware of her breathing, which suddenly sped up now as her anxiety spiked, and of the unnaturally thick feeling of the water in her lungs. “There’s a first time for everything.”

  Ydri swam closer, and Sarai pressed backward, the mermaid’s dark shadow suddenly threatening once more, huge in the enclosed, unfamiliar space. “Are you all right?” Ydri asked, a frown on her curved green lips. “Your heartbeat and breathing have sped up considerably.”

  Sarai squeezed her eyes shut, opening and closing her fists in time with her breathing and forcing herself to hold it for a count of four between inhale and exhale. “I’m fine,” she said when she could speak. “I’m fine. Just—if you would back up a little?”

  Ydri complied instantly, propelling herself back with a flick of her tentacles until she was nearly pressed against the wall. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then shut it again as Sarai shook her head.

  Her heartbeat was slowing, no longer thundering in her ears, and she’d managed to get the panic somewhat under control. “I can’t sleep like this,” she said. “I can’t. I feel like I’m about to be opened up with knives at any moment. It’s not you—I know you wouldn’t, but what if someone else comes in?”

  Ydri glanced at the door, then back at Sarai and sighed. “All right. Do not tell anyone I did this.”

  “Who would I tell?” asked Sarai, still struggling to breathe normally, but she sat up and followed Ydri through a smaller, side door into a cozy, cylindrical room with a floor covered in soft-looking plants over clean white sand.

  “Is this better?” asked Ydri. She closed the door with a swipe of her fingers and settled on the sand.

  “What’s this room for?” Sarai asked, curious.

  Ydri smiled. “It’s where I rest when I have too much work to make it to my home, or when a storm makes the waters too rough to travel far.” She gestured to the sand, soft and white with a person-sized divot in the center of the room. “Now, please, lie down. You’ve been awake many hours, having a very new experience. I believe I have a way to make you sleep more comfortably.” She hummed, a low note that resonated through the water, building as it bounced around, and Sarai felt the pressure rising against her eardrums. She swallowed, closing her eyes, and when she opened them, there was a different quality to the view, something wavy and a little hazy between the two of them. She reached a hand up and gasped as it broke the surface into the air bubble Ydri had created around Sarai’s head and shoulders. The air was chilled and her hair, loosened from its braid, stuck to the sides of her face.

  She decided not to wonder what had happened to all the water she’d breathed in. Instead, she took a deep breath, then another, coughing a little as her lungs readjusted.

  “It will stay with you until you wake,” said Ydri. Her voice was strange, hollow and distant through the barrier of air between them. “Although if you move quickly enough, it may take a moment to catch up with you. The water will remain breathable too.”

  “Do you sleep?” The question popped out without passing her brain first. She winced slightly, expecting some sort of reprimand. She wasn’t the one in control here.

  Ydri smiled. “Rarely. We need far less than your people do, and we never sleep as deeply. We’re more like our dolphin cousins in many ways, with a little of our minds always awake.” She shifted a little, then said, “If it would make you more comfortable, I could stay here and watch over you, make certain you didn’t lose your air in your sleep. I have work that can be done here.”

  Sarai nodded, surprised at the sweet offer, one she hadn’t expected. “I’d like that.” Ydri hummed again, muted through the bubble, and the air expanded to hold Sarai’s body from head to toe. She settled on the sand, feeling it shift under her, enjoying the feeling of gravity holding her firmly to the ground for the first time all day, no water to buoy her. She didn’t even mind the water trickling from her hair and slip as she curled up.

  Ydri settled beside her, floating just outside the bubble, consumed in her writing, and Sarai found herself drifting quickly to sleep.

  THE TESTING CONTINUED, Ydri doling out tasks and tiny, tantalizing bits of information as Sarai followed her instructions. Two days later, they’d moved outside for a different set of testing.

  “Why is this interesting to you?” asked Sarai as she picked up the first boulder. “I mean, how is the number of rocks I can carry important to your research?”

  Ydri pointed at the next rock. “It’s not only what we learn about your abilities that’s interesting,” said Ydri, and Sarai grinned at the scholarly tone creeping into Ydri’s voice when she got excited about a topic.

  She’d heard it a number of times already, and it never failed to amuse her. This strange creature, this being that had pulled her to the depths, this tentacled beast her grandmother would have tried to kill with a shovel, was as excited about her studies as Sarai’s little brother had been about tales of dragons when he was five. The enthusiasm was almost cute, in a terrifying way. Sarai found herself sometimes forgetting that Ydri was a monster from the depths of the sea who’d abducted her for experimentation. If Sarai didn’t look too closely, Ydri looked just like one of Sarai’s schoolmates, or one of the sailors back on the Blessed Angeline. Of course, none of the sailors she’d sailed alongside had looked anything like Ydri, no sleek muscles under smooth bulk and no powerful tentacles. They’d been men, most of them smelly and hairy and occasionally shockingly sweet. She pushed the thoughts of them from her mind, sobering. They were all gone now, all dead, if the figurehead sh
e’d seen in the water was any indication. She doubted any of the others had been lucky enough to be captured. David and Lee, Johnny and Patrick, Captain Rogers and Mr. Khalaf—they were in the belly of a shark or washed up as refuse on some island somewhere. They were gone.

  “It’s what it tells us about the differences between our people,” Ydri continued, oblivious to Sarai’s mental digression. “Your bodies are similar to ours in many ways, more than any animal, and yet so unlike ours in others.” She held up her hand, so like Sarai’s own, despite the green shade and translucent webbing between the digits.

  Sarai swallowed the sadness and huffed as she lifted a huge piece of stone. “How often do you do this?”

  Ydri gestured for her to set the stone back down, eyes flicking from Sarai’s shoulders to the rock to where Sarai felt the flush of exertion rising on her cheeks. Ydri made a questioning noise, startled from whatever thoughts had distracted her.

  Sarai crossed her arms, feeling a bit laid bare by Ydri’s gaze, and tried to continue her thought through the distraction. “Take people and study them.”

  “Only a few every year,” Ydri replied, gaze finding its way back to Sarai. “And I only keep your people a few days at most. The next one, please.” She pointed at an even larger piece of stone, and Sarai eyed it dubiously. “The rest of the time is spent analyzing the data and reporting it back to our other researchers.”

  “So, what, that’s your whole job? Abducting people and making them run around?” Sarai squatted, tensing her shoulders and taking a deep breath of water before curling her arms around the part of the boulder she could reach. On the surface, she wouldn’t have even tried to move it, but below the sea, the water took some of the weight. The novelty of the extra power hadn’t worn off yet.