by Tanith Lee
“How not, seeing you keep me on a chain like your dog?”
“Have I not fed and cared for you, am I not kind and loving to you?”
“As to your dog.”
Then she stretched out her hand and tapped the harness where it circled him, and it flew off and went bounding away through the water.
“Be free,” said Trisaphee, “and not my dog.”
He thanked her.
“But what will you have?” she inquired.
“You have given it. And if you’ll let me go up now to the light and air—that is all I ask.”
“Ask for something more,” said she.
Elrahn showed her the ring on his finger. “I have this of you, which is worth money in the world. That is enough, if I can keep it.”
“Oh, keep it, keep it, sell it and forget me,” said Trisaphee.
“How can I forget you?” he angrily asked. “Do you think I am mad? You are a mermaid of the deeps.”
Then she smiled. “Then what would you have?” she asked again.
Elrahn had not been much with women, but he had been with one, the dwarf lady, and so at last, a tinkling bell rang somewhere in his brain. He widened his eyes at Trisaphee, wondering if he could be mistaken. And if he were not, whether he wished he were.
“I do not presume,” said Elrahn prudently.
Then Trisaphee left the rock and she came and wrapped him round with her arms and body and hair and tail. It was as it had been that first time when she caught him and pulled him over into the lake. Yet, much more gentle, and to say he did not care for it would be to speak falsely. Then she kissed his mouth, and it was the kiss a woman gives her lover, though her lips tasted of brine and her tongue of silver water.
And could there be any man in such an embrace who would not wonder what he must do next, seeing she was formed as she was. But before he could attempt a single thing with her, she suddenly let him go, and floated from him with a look so sad and ancient now, he believed at last she was old as the oceans and full of sorrow, and the salt in her was not only sea but unshed tears.
“I will tell you now, my Man. You may swim up to the land. And not one of us will harm you. But when you come ashore you will feel a hurt in your chest. Have no fear of it. It is only the air coming back into your body. Spit the moisture from your mouth and void it from your nose and all will be well with you. But never again will you be able to breathe in the water.”
“Very well.” said Elrahn “but—”
“I am not done,” said she. “Listen well to me. Tonight you will dream of me, and everything you might like to have of me you will have, but only in sleep. When you wake you will discover there is yet something left with you that is ours, yours and mine. And heed me now, care for it, that thing, or I will curse you. Thirteen years from this day’s night, you must come back to this water’s- edge, and prove to me you have done as I say. And on that night before that morning, distant by thirteen years, which to me are like thirteen quarters of an hour, you will see me again in a dream. But in the daybreak you will see and meet me among the reeds. And you will have with you that thing I have left with you now. Or else woe betide you.”
All the while she spoke to him in this way, Elrahn felt his skin crawl with a strange thin fear. And even as he felt the fear he felt a sort of love for her and a sadness for her, and besides, he lusted for her.
“Say yes, now,” she said. “Let me hear you say yes, so that I know I have made you understand.”
“I understand nothing, but I will say yes, to make you happy.”
“Ah,” said Trisaphee, “what is happiness? I am familiar with a joy your kind can never know, except in heaven.”
And then she turned in the water, brilliant as a star, and swift as a dart she shot away.
Elrahn hesitated only a moment or so. Then he too raced from the cave, and raising his arms, he rushed for the surface.
All the while he was diving up, with the little fishes storming off before him, he was certain others of her tribe might come and attack him. But he saw none of them, and in a space of minutes, the water turned from sable to fair and then to jade and so to gold. And then he broke the skin of the lake and swam wildly for the nearest shore. And a pain began in his chest and lungs as if he breathed in molten bronze.
When at last he fell out among the reeds, he coughed and choked and hawked and spat away the spell and the water. And then he lay a time under the sun, until he was able to get up and go on his way.
Elrahn did not walk towards the inn, nor did he really recognize the place where he had beached, to find that inn. He walked away from the reedlands, and up into the hills, and everything he saw was a great marvel to him, from the tall trees to the little sparrows, and the grey hares that sprang along in the fields. As for the sky, he could hardly bear to look at it, it was so mighty and so lighted up, so blue. When night came on, the stars made him weep. It seemed, even by starshine, he had never seen such colours.
How long had he been in the lake? A week or two, a month or two. But he might have been gone a lifetime.
And he resolved he would tell no one the story of what had befallen him, for who would believe it but for the people of the inn, or the people from the wagons who would blame him for the death of their master?
Last of all he thought he might not sleep, but keep himself awake, and he was hungry enough he fancied that would not be so difficult. Truth to tell, he was frightened now by what she had said to him, the mermaid, about the dream and that something would be left between them, and he must care for it and show her, in thirteen years, he had, or be cursed. He was afraid at last, if all the truth be told, of everything that had happened.
But in the end, sitting up staring under the burning stars, he slept.
And he dreamed what many a man would, things being as they were. He dreamed of Trisaphee, and that he lay in the reeds above the lake with her, and she had wrapped him in her reedy hair and her fish’s tail, caressing him while he caressed her, and without possessing her, yet he possessed her. And so vast was the pleasure that he cried out loud. And in a while he looked her in her fiery eyes, and he said, “Yes, there is one other joy, under heaven, that I know.”
But waking a second later, he was aware that he had not possessed her in any way, but only given his seed to the grass. And with a bitter sigh, he moved his sleeping place. And after that he slumbered dreamless till the morning.
The sun was over the trees by the time he roused again. The birds were singing, and he lay in rapture to hear them, after all those shadow days of the mournful, heartless songs of the mermaid kind.
When he got up, he saw how in parts the dew still sparkled on the grass. And then he saw that one bead of dew was larger than all the rest. And when he went to see, he found a big gleaming pearl that lay in the lap of the earth. But even as he stood there watching it, the pearl swelled larger and greater and soon it was the size of a thumbnail, and then the head of a spoon and then of a cup and then of a plate, and then it cracked open, and out fell a tiny child, white and translucent as an asphodel.
This child, a girl, lay in the grass with her dreamy eyes gazing at him. Next she seemed to harden over, her flesh losing its fairy look of flowers. Soon she was opaque, and big nearly as a baby two months old. She breathed, and she hiccupped, and then she cried.
“What on God’s earth shall I do with this?” said Elrahn. But anyway he picked her up, and took her where they could both find food and shelter. And here he told the people a tale not the facts. Such fact he told to her alone, to the child from the pearl, that in a while he called Elaidh, his daughter, through a kind of birth, by the mermaid Trisaphee.
Now, as they sat on the shore of the morning lake, to which they had come back in her thirteenth spring, Elaidh looked up when again her father spoke.
“These have been good years together, child.”
“Yes, dadda.”
“I have loved you, Elaidh. But you were never more than half mine, an
d this I have told you often, from as soon as you might hear.”
“I am a mermaid’s daughter,” said Elaidh.
She was solemn as the quietness of the lake, and her long hair was the pale brown of a duck’s wing, but her eyes were green.
“Now and then,” said Elrahn, as if idly, but not looking at her at all, “I thought I would see you grow to be a woman, and I should dance at your wedding when the fiddler played his best tunes.”
Elaidh said “I would like that, dadda. But now I love you first.”
“Do not be loving me,” said Elrahn, “and I must not love you, for it’s your mother loves you best. She made you with me, which is how all her clan make their children, by a sort of magic, and they are always daughters. Last night I saw her again in a dream, only the second dream I ever had of her. I never saw her all these years till then. But it was as she promised or she warned me. She told me this, Elaidh. And she told me she will swim up in a while today, out of the lake. And when you see her, she is that lovely, Elaidh, and young still as when I met her last. She will never grow old, and not for an age will she die. Her kind live for centuries, perhaps they do for ever. And this too she said I must say to you: How they roam all the waters, the fresh and the salt, the endless oceans that lead one into another, and the rivers and the lakes that pierce and cross the land. How they own vast treasures, huge rubies and diamonds and hoards of golden coins that have gone down with ships, and pearls that grow in the shells of creatures in the sea. How they play on sands miles under water, lit at night by a moon so vigorous its light is as the summer at midday. And how they sing and make music. And how they are free as the tides. And their beauty, Elaidh, and I should know it, is like a secret of the heart.”
“Yes, dadda?” asked the child, all attention.
“You and I,” said he, “have had our life together. A chancy travelling existence. Doing this and that, mending, fetching, or pulling trick birds from a scarf to tickle crowds. I have taught you the little I know, little enough it could fit inside an acorn. That was all I could do, but it was given to me to do it. And at first it seemed too much for me, the task. And then it was only simple as to breathe. And now, it’s done. For when she comes from the lake, your mother Trisaphee, she will offer another life to you. She will offer to take you among her own kind, half of which kind you are. By her spell, your hair will turn to the colour of the reeds, and you will have a tail like a fish, strong as a leopard. And water and air will be alike to your lungs. You will live for centuries never growing old. You will journey through the oceans, free as the tides, playing with rubies and pearls. You will be a mermaid, if so you wish it.’’
The child stared. She said, “But if not?”
Elrahn said. “Then you’ll stay with me and be my daughter. You will wed a man and bear his children, not as she and I bore you, but in pain and labour. You will likely be poor, and certainly hard-worked, and you will wither with the years, a piece of time which to a mermaid is like an afternoon. Then you will die and be dust. Unless, as the priest said, you have a soul. We have been good friends—but oh, a mermaid—you would be a fool to refuse this chance.”
Then all at once Elaidh had turned from him and Elrahn knew why. He heard the murmur of the water, the flutter of it as if a great fish swam just under the surface. Then came a dash of light and water-drops.
Turning himself, he saw Trisaphee standing there, as in the second dream he had, lifted on her tail in the reeds, a girl dressed all in green.
And she held out her smiling arms, not to him, but to Elaidh, and Elaidh jumped to her feet and ran towards her mother and the lake, the centuries and the shadows, to sing and laugh, and to bite the bones of men.
Elaidh had her foot even on the water’s hem. She had let her hand almost into the hand of the tall green girl, her mother, who seemed only five or seven years her older. Already Elaidh felt the coolness of the lake, the freedom of a fish, she smelled the ocean and the opening of infinity.
But then, she glanced back.
There he stood, her father, straight and scaled and calm, no longer young. And he raised his hand in farewell. “Elaidh, my love, I wish you well and happy.”
But she saw his eyes, they were full of salty water, full of tears.
Elaidh took her foot out of the lake’s edge, and put down her hands. She stood on the lakeshore and looked at her wonderful mother, the mermaid.
“Mother,” said Elaidh, “thank you so kindly for your queenly offer. But I will stay here with mankind. I’ll stay with my da.”
And Trisaphee made a sound, that might have been the human word Why?
“Oh,” said Elaidh, “because they kept me when you let me go, and he lets me go when I would go and you would take me. Because they can cry salt water. Tears—that is ocean enough for me. I will stay with my da.”
And turning, Elaidh walked back along the shore, into the land.
Behind her came a splash they say, as if every mirror in the world had been smashed in fragments. No more but that, and the reeds again were empty, green, and silent as the moon.
Magritte’s Secret Agent
You asked me about it before, didn’t you, the picture? And I never told you. But tonight, tonight I think I will. Why not? The wine was very nice, and there’s still the other bottle. The autumn dusk is warm, clear and beautiful, and the stars are blazing over the bay. It’s so quiet; when the tide starts to come back, we’ll hear it. You’re absolutely right. I’m obsessive about the sea. And that picture, the Magritte.
Of course, it’s a print, nothing more, though that was quite difficult to obtain. I saw it first in a book, when I was eighteen or so. I felt a strangeness about it even then. Naturally, most of Magritte is bizarre. If you respond to him, you get special sensations, special inner stirrings over any or all of what he did, regardless even of whether you care for it or not. But this one – this one.... He had a sort of game whereby he’d often call a picture by a name that had no connection—or no apparent connection—with its subject matter. The idea, I believe, was to throw out prior conception. I mean, generally you’re told you’re looking at a picture called ‘Basket of Apples’, and it’s apples in a basket. But Magritte calls a painting ‘The Pleasure Principle’, and it’s a man with a kind of white nova taking place where his head should be. Except that makes a sort of sense, doesn’t it? Think of orgasm, for example, or someone who’s crazy over Prokofiev, listening to the third piano concerto. This picture, though. It’s called ‘The Secret Agent’.
It’s one of the strangest pictures in the world to me, partly because it’s beautiful and it shocks, but the shock doesn’t depend on revulsion or fear. There’s another one, a real stinger—a fish lying on a beach, but it has the loins and legs of a girl: a mermaid, but inverted. That has shock value all right, but it’s different. This one.... The head, neck, breast of a white horse, which is also a chess piece, which is also a girl. A girl’s eye, and hair that’s a mane, and yet still hair. And she—it—is lovely. She’s in a room, by a window that faces out over heathland under a crescent moon, but she doesn’t look at it. There are a few of the inevitable Magritte tricks—for example, the curtain hanging outside the window-frame, instead of in, that type of thing. But there’s also this other thing. I don’t know how I can quite explain it. I think I sensed it from the first, or maybe I only read it into the picture afterwards. Or it’s just the idea of white horses and the foam that comes in on a breaker: white horses, or mythological kelpies that can take the shape of a horse. Somehow, the window ought to show the sea and it doesn’t. It shows the land under the horned moon, not a trace of water anywhere. And her face that’s a woman’s, even though it’s the face of a chess-piece horse. And the title. ‘The Secret Agent’, which maybe isn’t meant to mean anything. And yet—sometimes I wonder if Magritte—if he ever—
I was about twenty-three at the time, and it was before I’d got anything settled, my life, my ambitions, anything. I was rooming with a nominative aunt, abou
t five miles along the coast from here, at Ship Bay. I’d come out of art school without much hope of a job, and was using up my time working behind a lingerie counter in the local chain store, which, if you’re female, is where any sort of diploma frequently gets you. I sorted packets of bras, stopped little kids putting the frilly knickers on their heads, and averted my eyes from gargantuan ladies who were jamming themselves into cubicles, corsets and complementary heart-attacks in that order.
Thursday was cinema day at the Bay, when the movie palace showed its big matinee of the week. I don’t know if there truly is a link between buyers of body linen and the matinee performance, but from two to four-thirty on Thursday afternoons, you could count visitors to our department on two or less fingers.
A slender girl named Jill, ostentatiously braless, was haughtily pricing B cups for those of us unlucky enough to require them. I was refolding trays of black lace slips, thinking about my own black, but quite laceless, depression, when sounds along the carpet told me one of our one or two non-film-buff customers had arrived. There was something a little odd about the sounds. Since Jill was trapped at the counter by her pricing activities, I felt safe to turn and look.
I got the guilty, nervous, flinching-away reaction one tends to on sight of a wheelchair. An oh-God-I-mustn’t-let-them-think-I’m-staring feeling. Plus, of course, the unworthy survival-trait which manifests in the urge to stay uninvolved with anything that might need help, embarrass, or take time. Actually, there was someone with the wheelchair, who had guided it to a stop. An escort normally makes it worse, since it implies total dependence. I was already looking away before I saw. Let’s face it, what you do see is usually fairly bad. Paralysis, imbecility, encroaching death. I do know I’m most filthily in the wrong, and I thank God there are others who can think differently than I do.
You know how, when you’re glancing from one thing to another, a sudden light, or colour, or movement snags the eye somewhere in between—you look away then irresistibly back again. The visual centre has registered something ahead of the brain, and the message got through so many seconds late. This is what happened as I glanced hurriedly aside from the wheelchair. I didn’t know what had registered to make me look back, but I did. Then I found out.