Surface Tension

by Valentine Wheeler

  “It is. Although I also sometimes repair our buildings, as well.” Ydri sighed. “Officially, my main function in the community is engineering. I’ve been told I devote too much time to my research and should watch the structures more carefully instead. I would rather do this than patch coral, though.”

  “You’re a woman with many skills,” teased Sarai. “I can’t lift this one.” She stepped from the rock, breathing hard. The lack of sweat was strange, reminding her of where she was. She suppressed a shiver and tried to forget she was breathing water through magicked lungs. She would very much like to avoid another spiral of panic.

  “You sailed on a ship, before this, did you not?” asked Ydri, looking up from her notes. “I haven’t seen many women doing that particular job.”

  Sarai smiled. “I dressed as a man for it,” she confessed. “Months of close quarters, and no one guessed.” She sighed. “Women aren’t precisely forbidden from taking jobs on ships, but it’s frowned upon. And I’d always wanted to sail, you see. Ever since I was a child.”

  Ydri’s eyes were focused on her, rather than her notes. “And you enjoyed it?”

  “Incredible,” Sarai said. “The things I saw, the places I went—I could sail the ocean for the rest of my life and not see everything I wanted to see.”

  Ydri nodded, smiling slightly and showing straight white teeth between her green lips. Their gazes met and held, until Ydri blinked twice, shimmied her tail, and reached back into her bag. Her face was familiar now, no longer frightening, and when her lips curved up into a smile, Sarai grinned back. She pulled out a bundle and unwrapped it to show Sarai a carved stone, saying, “Try to remember the pattern,” and Sarai obediently stared at it, trying to memorize its whorls, before Ydri tucked it away with the rest of her equipment.

  “What about you?” Sarai asked as she traced the shape into the sand, trying to recreate the mood of moments earlier as she did her best to remember all the intricate carvings. “Have you always wanted to study us?”

  Ydri smiled. “Yes,” she replied. “My mother’s youngest sister was a scientist, and she taught me much. Her focus was more on anatomy than society, which has always been a more accepted field than mine. It’s more traditional, more measurable. I like to continue gathering data for her logs alongside my own research, but it’s been studied so long that I wanted to look into something new. Aunt has joined a new tribe, too far to visit very often, but whenever we cross paths, I update her on what I’ve found. That’s what all this is for.” She waved a hand at the pile of equipment beside them.

  “The differences in strength and speed and all the physical differences are easy to measure, aren’t they?” Sarai finished the shape and looked up at Ydri. “You’ve measured them with other subjects. And you’ve observed us enough to get a good idea of how we work. What else could be interesting about us? I mean, you have all this magic. Why do we even matter to you, beyond satisfying a curiosity?”

  “We share this world, our two species,” Ydri replied after a pause for thought. “We are the only two species who think in this particular linear fashion, as far as we know. The whales, the dolphins, they’re not creators the way we are. We’re the only ones who can reason and build.” She shrugged, a very human gesture. “Just because you don’t have magic doesn’t mean you aren’t powerful in your own way.” She gestured around at the dome and the other buildings. “We’ve assembled this, yes, but most of it is made of things we grew or found. In a thousand years, we’ve grown by six buildings and a new garden. Meanwhile, your people have spread to nearly every land in the ocean. You have no magic, but it doesn’t mean you have no power.”

  “I guess I understand,” Sarai said. “But wouldn’t it be better to ask us? Instead of kidnapping people, I mean. Send a delegation to the King. An ambassador. Then we could both learn from each other.”

  Shaking her head, Ydri said, “This is already more contact than many of my people would like for us to have. And we used to have even more, many years ago.”

  “And?”

  “It did not go well.” She didn’t elaborate, and from the look on her face, Sarai decided not to ask any further. She thought back to the tales of ancient times her grandmother had told her—of mermaids luring maidens into the sea and of heroes bringing tails back to their monarchs as proof of revenge. She shuddered and changed tack. “Well, since I’m here, can I learn about you? See where you live, how your world works?”

  Ydri shook her head. “That’s forbidden, I’m afraid.”

  “Why? Can’t I watch from the side somewhere, see how daily life is here?” Her voice was wheedling, and Ydri looked torn. “Like the garden you mentioned. I’d love to see what you grow, what you eat. Or what you do for fun. Do you have games or art or music?” Sarai grinned, getting into the topic. “Are there children around? At home, I used to care for my neighbors’ daughters when they needed to work late. I bet your little ones are very cute with their tiny tails. Do they have tentacles too? Can I meet them?”

  “I wish I could bring you to every corner of our settlement, Sarai, but I would be punished for it if you saw something you shouldn’t or learned any of our magic, even incidentally.”

  “I won’t! I promise. Come on, why not? I’ve seen you do magic: the air thing, the disappearing door. What’s the difference if I see more?”

  “The difference is it’s forbidden, Sarai.” There was a warning in Ydri’s voice.

  Sarai ignored it. “But why? What could happen? It’s not like I could use your magic, right? I only want to see what you can do!”

  Ydri shook her head. “No, Sarai. This is one rule you cannot make me bend. If the Council knew I’d even shown you one spell to help you sleep—” Her tail thrashed, showing her agitation. “Please do not ask me again.” Her voice turned pleading. “For the sake of the friendship, I feel we have begun to form, do not ask this of me.”

  “Friendship? How can we be friends if you’re in control of everything? That’s not a friendship, Ydri. You need to give me something, something to hold on to, to make this seem worthwhile.”

  Ydri’s mouth pursed, her shoulders tensing, and Sarai marveled at how a being so inhuman could still have expressions exactly like a human’s. “You’ll have your gold,” she said. “I’m sorry, I cannot do more.”

  Sarai groaned. “It’s not about the gold. I’m losing my mind trapped in this room, Ydri. You said you loved to study us. Why can’t I do the same to you? At least let me see more of your city.”

  “No, Sarai. Now come. It is late. I need to return you to your room before the guards make their rounds.” She started towards the dome without another word, turning at the door to watch Sarai. Reluctantly, Sarai swam inside. The door closed behind Ydri. “I wish I could show you more,” said Ydri quietly as she set the bubble of air around Sarai’s head. “I really do want that. But it’s against the rules. Surely you have rules on the land.”

  “Of course, we have rules.” Sarai sighed. “But they’re not so one-sided. How can it be right for your people to learn everything about us when we can’t do the same?”

  Ydri sighed. “It’s the way it’s always been. Good night, Sarai.” The door closed behind her, and Sarai was left alone.

  THE MORNING CAME with thin rays of light trickling in through the tiny bubbles in the walls of the dome, and Sarai sat up and rubbed a hand over her face. She was sore all over from two days of intense physical work at Ydri’s behest, and she wasn’t looking forward to another day of giving with nothing in return. When the door slid open, Sarai stayed put on her pile of seaweed.

  “Good morning,” said Ydri.

  Sarai didn’t reply. Ydri drifted closer, the currents from her tailfin pushing at Sarai and making her sway in the water.

  “I’m going to end the spell.” The air bubble popped and Ydri’s voice was suddenly much clearer. “I have a bargain for you.”

  At this, Sarai turned. “A bargain? What do you mean?”

  “I will allow yo
u in our library,” said Ydri. “You may read what we’ve learned about your people, and about our history. But nothing more.” Her face was stern—or trying to be. After four days together, Sarai could see the spark of hopeful tension lurking behind Ydri’s pursed lips.

  Sarai grinned, earlier mood forgotten. “That sounds pretty good to me,” she said, pushing off from the wall and immediately heading to the door. “What are you waiting for? I need out of this building. I need to see the sunlight for real.”

  “Wouldn’t you like your meal first?”

  Sarai groaned. “No! Breakfast can wait.”

  Ydri tried to hide a smile as she stroked a panel beside the door with a long, green finger, but Sarai saw the twitch of her lips as the mermaid closed her eyes. The door slid open and Sarai dashed through, Ydri on her heels. “This way,” she said, glancing around for any observers. “We must be quiet. This is not exactly authorized.”

  “Even better,” said Sarai, following her.

  Ydri led her quickly through the narrow corridors, the buildings leaning at awkward angles around them. Now that Sarai was looking more closely, she realized many of what she thought were buildings were, in fact, the battered hulls of sunken ships turned on their ends, or rough enclosures built of piled stone without ceilings. She supposed that underwater there was less to worry about in the form of weather. No need to keep the rain out when your buildings were already filled with water.

  The library was different, carved from a massive block of coral. Or at least Sarai thought it was carved until she came closer and saw there were no chisel or tool marks on it. No, it looked completely organic rather than constructed. She remembered Ydri mentioning something earlier about growing new buildings: this must be what she’d meant. Massive and perfectly round, a dome covered in different-sized openings that allowed fish and merpeople free access from every side. Schools of small silver fish flitted through the gaps, while a turtle made its slow way across what passed for its roof. Sarai followed Ydri through a wide gap near the base.

  Inside, the walls were lined with shelves, and thousands of books stretched out on thin planks of coral arranged in a starburst pattern from the center of the room. Sarai leaned in close to a pile of books bound in what looked to be sharkskin, squinting at the spines, and her heart sank. “I can’t understand this,” she said.

  Ydri smiled. “I can fix that.” She pressed a hand to Sarai’s forehead, chanted a few notes, and the titles all around them swam before Sarai’s eyes until they appeared to be in English.

  “You may read anything in this section,” said Ydri, pointing at a huge pink-orange bookcase stretching dozens of feet back to the wall. “I trust that will be enough to keep you occupied for a while? I need to do some work while we’re here.”

  Sarai was already reaching out to the shelves and pulling out a book, running her fingers over the thick, gilded letters on the spine. A text on currents, she flipped through before replacing it to pull out another.

  It was incredible how similar the stories of the merpeople’s history were to those of her own. Sarai marveled at tales of good rulers and bad, of natural disasters and wars, and tried to line them up in her mind with the events on land. She’d missed this, the feeling of soaking in information from books rather than learning it on the fly on a ship. Reading was something her father and Sarai had shared, exchanging volumes with traveling peddlers and always looking for new ones in markets and shops. Her brothers hadn’t understood, but she’d always loved the thirst for learning she’d shared with her taciturn, businesslike father. Of course, books hadn’t held enough excitement for her in the end. Her father had been content with his placid life, only broken by escapes of the literary kind. She’d needed more.

  She’d gotten plenty of excitement on the Blessed Angeline, though she’d occasionally missed her quiet afternoons with a book. At sea—riding on the surface of the sea, anyway—books weren’t the best cargo.

  These books were somehow pristine despite the water. She wondered what they were printed on, or whether they had some sort of enchantment. She figured enchantments would definitely fall under the category of things she couldn’t ask about. That was all right, though, because she had plenty to feed her curiosity. Sarai was fascinated by the legends, especially, their tales of creation and the beginnings of her people and theirs, and she settled into a comfortable chair of coral to read, alternating between an old book of myths and a recent history of the sea.

  The myths were like nothing she’d ever heard on land, stories of huge monsters and magic and eggs that hatched every living thing on the land and in the sea. Her favorite was the story of the seasons, governed by warmth-bringing fish who were chased by a shark farther south every fall. Some were frightening, and after a particularly scary tale of a massive serpent, she went back to the dry history.

  “I remember this storm,” she commented, pointing at a drawing of a spiral of dark clouds. “I remember how the clouds had this break in the center, where we thought the storm had passed. This was only a few years ago, wasn’t it? I’m still figuring out your numbering system, but it seems right to me. It destroyed a dozen ships out in the bay.”

  Ydri nodded. “That one was particularly destructive for us, as well. Every ten years or so they come across the ocean, wreaking havoc. Sometimes they make it to land near your people, but usually they land farther south.” She leaned over Sarai’s shoulder. “This was only the third I’ve seen strike a populated part of the land.”

  “Wait.” Sarai looked up from the book at Ydri, who floated a few feet behind her. “How many of these have you seen?”

  “As I said, they’re approximately every ten years. They have to do with the movement of the stars, though I’m not exactly sure how.” Ydri looked confused. “I’ve lost count of how many.”

  “So you’re—how old are you, anyway?”

  Ydri’s mouth snapped shut. “Perhaps you would be interested in seeing some of our animal exhibits?”

  “Is this another of your secrets, then?” Sarai closed the book with more force than was necessary. “I don’t understand, Ydri. I’ve told you everything you want to know about me, about my people, and still you won’t share anything about yourself. This place is incredible, but it’s all just facts and figures. I want to know about your people. I want to know about you.” She set the book back on the shelf. “I understand the magic and technology piece of it: you don’t want competition, or to arm us against you, or to reveal your power. But it’s not that. I like you, Ydri, for all you kidnapped me. I want to get to know you. I think we’re becoming friends, a little, but we can’t be friends if I’m constantly at a disadvantage. I want to understand what all this means to you and to your people. And I want to know more about your story, not only the stories of all these people in books.”

  Ydri curled into herself, tail pulling up and shoulders slumping as Sarai spoke. She looked miserable. Finally, she said, “It’s how it has always been. Forgive me, Sarai— I do enjoy your company, and I understand your frustration.” She sighed. “Our lives are so entangled with our magic that it’s hard to tell anything personal without explaining things you are not allowed to hear.” She came a little closer, sensing Sarai’s focus on her. “And it is forbidden, so forbidden, to tell you anything of our magic beyond what I must use to keep you safe. If I broke our primary law relating to humans—well. I will not break it. But I will try to separate the two, for you.”

  Sarai tried to smile. She knew she wasn’t likely to get much more from Ydri, and she knew the mermaid was trying. “That’s all I can ask, I guess. So then, tell me, how old are you?”

  Ydri paused for a moment, emotions flickering across her face too fast for Sarai to register. Then she sighed and shifted closer. “I’m not sure,” she said, settling beside Sarai on the cool sand, elbows touching as they leaned against the wall. “At least three hundred years, but perhaps much older. We didn’t keep track of the passage of time as rigorously as you do on the surface
until more recently.”

  “Three hundred years?” gasped Sarai. “That’s incredible! You were alive when the earliest ships passed through here to bring the first settlers to our land, then.”

  “I remember,” said Ydri. “Quite an event for our people as well.” She lay back on the sand, staring up into the water at the faint shine of the sun far up above the surface. Sarai lay beside her, watching her face as she thought back nearly three centuries. “We had never seen such a sight, ships traveling so far, with such delicate equipment, braving storms and currents. We had seen the occasional small ship traveling out to the deep water, but mostly your ancestors stayed on the other continent. We had heard of them mostly from the tales of our cousins to the east. But these bold humans—they barely had sails, mostly relying on oarsmen, and still, most of them made it across the ocean, though three vessels were blown onto a different course.”

  “The Corona, the Saint Peter, and– I don’t remember the other,” said Sarai. “We learned them in school when we learned our history. There are so many songs and stories about them, about what would have happened had they survived. It’s one of the great tragedies of our kingdom.”

  “The Wolf was the third,” said Ydri. “But why a tragedy?”

  “Because they all died,” said Sarai, shrugging. “Trying to find a new home, one we made it to when they didn’t. Of course it’s a tragedy. It’s the most popular setting of stories and plays, these days, all those separated lovers, missing brothers and sisters, all the people we lost. They all died following their dreams.”

  Ydri turned her head to stare at Sarai. “No, they didn’t.”

  Sarai sat up. “What?”

  “They didn’t die.” Ydri pushed herself up on her elbows, brows drawing together. “You all believed they’d perished?”

  Sarai nodded, mouth hanging open. This would change everything back home. So much of the history of Holbrook, and of all the cities and towns on the coast, was predicated on their great old loss.