by Sarah Ockler
I try to speak, try to reach out, but hands tighten on my shoulders, hold me down.
I think I see it—my soul.
Shimmery and pale as it drifts out through the searing hot gash in my throat, floats over the water.
It vanishes.
My sister’s face hovers suddenly before me, a dark moon streaked with panic and tears. “Elyse! Fucking breathe, you hear me! You fucking breathe!”
I gasp, choke, my breath a blade that rips through flesh and bone to find me.
“You got her,” a boy says. Julien, his name returns, lands on my tongue. Julien who plays the steel pan. Julien who loves me.
But he can’t hear me when I call.
“You got her,” Julien says, again and again and again. “You got her. She all right. She all right. She gonna be all right.” He’s shouting into the shortwave radio, something about an ambulance on shore.
I can’t be sure, but I think his cheeks are streaked with moonlight.
“Shh, shh, shhhh,” Natalie says, her breath tickling my sticky throat. My sister holds my hands at my sides, though I struggle to pull away. Her hands are coated in blood. There’s something trying to choke me, I’m certain, to carve out my throat. But she tells me I’m okay, that I’m okay, that I must lie still.
This is what my sister says.
But then I don’t know if it’s really my sister or the sea, or maybe the last sound I’ll ever make, and everything goes dark anew.
And then bright. Impossibly, silver-white bright. Sterile-light bright.
A hospital, a doctor with a downturned mouth, pity in his eyes.
“You’re lucky to be alive, gyal,” he says. “Lucky to breathe.”
I think I must be having one of those out-of-body experiences. Like I’m in a coma, and my family is all watching over me, waiting for me to wake up.
Julien Natalie Juliette Martine Gabrielle Hazel Dad Granna.
Granna Dad Hazel Gabrielle Martine Juliette Natalie Julien.
I have to be dead, or near dead, because why else would everyone be here? Why else would everyone look so sad?
In and out of my body, hours turn to days to centuries and eons, back to days. On one of them the doctor says this:
“Your sister saved your life.”
He lets that sink in, then continues in the tight, uncomfortable tone reserved for bad news. “You hit your head, slipped underwater. Natalie eventually pulled you out, but she says you weren’t breathing.”
Natalie is there, her moon face grim. She takes my hand in hers and it’s warm, and I think that it’s a good sign, because if I were dead, I wouldn’t feel warmth.
Would I?
I try to smile to show my relief, but there’s tape across my mouth, holding the tubes in place, and it pulls and pinches my skin.
“You were blue, gyal,” Natalie says. “Not even alive. We tried everything—bang on your chest, breathe into your mouth, pray, everything.” She’s shaking with upset, words choppy and raw as the sea. “On the radio Julien called for help, and they ask him, is there a first aid kit on the boat? Yes. Then they tell me what to do and I do it, anything to bring you back.” She smears her nose with the back of her hand. “You were . . . you were dead, Elyse.”
She’s sobbing, sobbing. I can’t understand her. There was blood on her hands that night, I remember. So why isn’t she the one in the hospital bed? I want to tell her to slow down, to breathe, to say what she means, but I can’t.
The doctor puts a steady hand on my sister’s shoulder, quieting her. To me, he says, “Natalie had to perform an emergency tracheotomy. When you went under, your larynx contracted. You were drowning.” He wraps a hand around his throat, closes his eyes. “You could not breathe on your own. Natalie had to make a new way for the air.”
With his finger he slices delicately across his neck, makes an invisible gash.
My sister cannot stop trembling.
“I’m so sorry, Elyse,” the doctor says again. “Natalie . . . the procedure . . . it saved your life. But it nicked your vocal cords. Damaged the nerves. Badly.”
There is more jargon, medical terms that I don’t understand. In and out of my body, hours turn to days to centuries and eons, back to days. On one of them I ask for paper, for pen.
Granna hands me my notebook, where Natalie and I write all of our songs and dreams and secrets. It’s wrinkly and warped, like someone got it wet.
I scrawl quickly, my writing barely legible for the shake in my hand.
Are we postponing the tour? When I’m better, we’ll go, right?
Natalie sits on the other side of the bed, her face streaked with tears. “I did this to you,” she says. “Your vocal cords are permanently damaged. There is no cure, baby. No getting better. Not better enough, anyway.”
The rest of her words fall on me one by one, like drops of rain.
“You
can’t
sing
anymore.
Gyal,
you
can’t
even
speak.”
Chapter 37
I suppose I thought it was a dream at first, whatever called me out of Christian’s embrace, luring me to the sea. The kind where you know it’s a dream, and you just settle in for the ride and see what your wild subconscious might invent. Flying, perhaps. Or breathing underwater. Or time traveling, back to the past.
But by the time I realized what had happened—that I’d slipped beneath the Queen of Cups in the middle of the night, left Christian sleeping soundly in the berth—I was wide awake.
The sea had finally come to make good on its promise.
To claim me.
Not to ruin the story, but if you’ve come this far, you should know how it happens.
The end begins, as all things must, in the water. Now.
Ropes of black hair twist before my eyes, swaying like reeds. One by one, red clips loosen from the braids, tiny jeweled starfish that
drip-drip-drop
into the deep.
Midnight stands before me, her body ebony and deep blue, half woman, half moon. Long black hair tipped with moonlight spills down over her breasts and hips, and with one eye open she watches me, imploring.
I nod, and she turns to lead the way, enticing me to follow.
Every step sends knives through my limbs, so tight is my dress, so restrictive. My mouth tastes of blood, my lungs burn with red-hot pain.
But still, I follow.
Finally Midnight turns, one finger pressed to her lips.
Before her a pale soldier appears, dressed in a red coat with golden buttons, loose but well-appointed over bone-white breeches. Tattered bandages hang from his head and limbs; in the water they sway and shift, wrapping around Midnight’s ankles.
He wears no skin, only bones. Death.
Death bows his head, hiding from me the sunken black caves of his eyes. Midnight’s legs run red with blood.
Behind them a new figure emerges from the darkness.
The mermaid queen. She’s been expecting me.
I am Atargatis. I am the First. Her scarlet lips don’t move; I hear her voice inside me. Her eyes shine with yellow flame, the same light emanating—impossibly—from double-ended wands she holds in each hand. Her breasts are pale and bare, save for a tiny golden crab in the center of each, and at her throat a starfish clings to her skin. Witch queen of the watery realm.
At my nod, her beauty turns to rot and ruin. I dare not look away, dare not flinch.
“But I am Atargatis,” I say. The sound of my own voice is shocking to my ears.
Her laughter drifts like soap bubbles, each landing and bursting against my lips. Do you not see? For I am you, she says. From the blackness behind her a serpent slithers forth, coiling around her waist. The sn
ake consumes its tail, vanishing when it reaches the end. And you are me.
The serpent reappears, encircles her, consumes itself again.
Again. Again.
The yellow flames extinguish.
A flash of silver, and her knife is in my mouth, her fingers cold and slippery between my lips. Blade against my tongue.
I don’t fear her. There’s peace in knowing it will finally end, that I will exit as I arrived, last breath as my first. Salt water. The sea.
I’m ready.
But as my heartbeat stalls, as my limbs give their final tremble, as all around me turns to darkness, I can’t help but wonder. . . .
If the sea had offered me one last chance—if I could’ve bargained with Death to make this broken wing mine, a soul with all its beautiful imperfections—would I have taken it?
Even after everything I’d lost?
Blackness envelops. . . .
No, child. Her voice is a painful hiss inside, fingers digging into my jaw. I’ve not yet released you from the realm.
At the crush of her hand, ice rushes through my veins, and I open my eyes again.
This is not the first time our paths have crossed, Atargatis says. But you had much to learn then.
She regards me for another long moment, then releases my jaw. The knife is still in my mouth, though, sharp and bloody.
Oddly, my final thoughts are not of Christian, but of his brother, Sebastian. Of his words that day on the Vega, just after I’d signed on as first mate.
I read a story about a mermaid who couldn’t talk because the sea witch cut out her tongue. . . .
I’d stuck out my tongue then, shown him it was still intact. But I was wrong. I did let the witch cut out my tongue. Not now, with the blade of Atargatis pressed against me. But then.
In March.
In a hospital in Port of Spain.
The accident took my voice—my physical voice—the ability to make sounds emanate from my mouth.
I’d given up the rest all on my own. My voice. The inner power that comes from neither sound nor form, but from soul, from truth, from one’s deepest self. That’s what I’d let the witch cut out.
And ever since, she’s been stalking me, haunting my steps and shadows. My dreams. My future.
Now Atargatis’s voice is in my head again. Do not trouble yourself with such things, Elyse. I want only your tongue. In exchange, you will be free to love whom you wish, live as you wish.
She slips the blade out from my mouth so that I might answer.
Lips closed tight, I hesitate.
Love requires great sacrifice, she presses, a warning slithering beneath her cool tone. You must give something up to get something in return. It is the way of all things, Elyse. Life, death, life again.
I consider her words. My words. My voice.
I think of Christian, our first meeting and our last, our naked bodies entwined above.
Love has its own costs, its own sacrifices, yes. But in its true form, love is borne of neither spell nor bargain.
I won’t take it through trickery.
“I will give you what you ask,” I tell the sea witch, and my voice is strong and clear, vibrating across my tongue. “But only because you ask, and I have come to your domain. It is a gift, as it must be. I’ll take nothing in return.”
As you wish, she says.
I open my mouth against her silver blade. Her cool fingers again hold my chin as the knife does its work, cold and quick. Copper and salt fill my mouth. The pain I’d been expecting, though . . . it doesn’t come.
In its place instead I feel a lightness, a freedom.
Atargatis cut out my tongue, with my permission, yet a veil falls from my eyes, my heart suddenly unburdened.
Death, who’d been silent thus far, bows to the queen.
And then he is gone.
At once the ocean warms.
You’ve asked for neither love nor life in return, Atargatis says, but I will freely grant you one thing. An answer, child. If you’ve a question. Consider it my gift to you.
I nod in thanks. There’s so much I wish to know—how long she’s lived here, whether she’s still looking for her lost shepherd, what other great mysteries dwell in the deepest places of the world. But as the words form on my lips, I sense danger, the trouble that comes from being too greedy for sacred knowledge.
Instead, I ask only, “How is it that you’ve taken my tongue, yet I can still speak?”
Atargatis raises her arms. Twin serpents—eels, sleek and black—slither from her wrists. I’m not afraid. They circle me, twine around my ankles, and still I don’t move.
Before my eyes, the serpents turn to words.
My words.
My scribbled-on-the-wall words, scrawled-in-my-journal words, whispered-into-the-wind words. My summer words. They wrap around me gently, limb to limb, toes to curls. All the poems, the fairy tales I’d told Sebastian, the boat lists I’d made for Christian, all the raw and heartfelt things I’d written on his body without a single utterance passing my lips.
My dreams. My stories.
My voice.
A warmth pulses behind my scar, a golden-blue glow I can feel more than see, and in an instant the haze lifts. The word-serpents release me, slithering back into Atargatis’s sleeves.
From her pocket Atargatis pulls forth a net of stars, scattering them before us. Hundreds, thousands, millions twinkle, lighting a path from the sea to the moon.
You are ready.
With no further wisdom or warning, Atargatis vanishes.
My body convulses with the desire to breath, but I fight it, focusing on the path of stars and the bright white moon overhead. With all the strength left in me, I scissor kick my way to the surface.
Rising.
Rising.
Rising.
Chapter 38
When I finally broke through, everything was calm. Everything was clear. I’d journeyed to the witch’s watery realm beneath Thor’s Well, but here above the water it seemed that only a moment had passed. The moon cut the same silver-white path across the Pacific, the Queen of Cups floating gently beside it. Just as it was when I’d gone under.
My mouth was whole, unbloodied.
Deeply I drank in the cool night air, but though I’d risen out of the water, I still couldn’t fully breathe. Something was pressing against my lungs, squeezing. Restricting.
I felt my body, pressed my hands against my chest.
The dress.
The dress that once held the memories of the best day of my life, the promise of an entire future. Now it was only the past.
I slipped the straps from my shoulders, slid my arms out.
I hesitated only a moment, heard Atargatis’s words again.
You are ready.
Sometimes life’s most important moments are quiet, a decision made quick and calm. Still bathed in the sea, I slipped the dress from my torso. There was no struggle, no herculean, adrenaline-fueled tearing of fabric and lace. Just a simple shiver, a loosening, one last shimmy.
I slipped the dress.
Set myself free.
Naked, I pulled myself up the safety ladder with exhausted but triumphant limbs, floating in a state of suspended wonder. The instant my feet touched the deck, Christian emerged from the companionway, wrapped in a blanket, his eyes glossy in their half sleep. When he noticed me, they narrowed, then widened.
“Elyse?” It was a whisper first, laced with grogginess. I waited for the fog to lift, for it was still clouding my memories too, and when it finally passed he burst through the companionway, launching himself at me, at my wet nakedness. “What are you doing? What happened? What—”
I pressed a finger to his lips, smiled to let him know I was okay.
“Okay, okay . . . you’re okay.” He
was stammering, shaking his head as if it really might’ve been a dream. His arms closed around me, pressing our bodies together beneath the blanket “You’re freezing. God, Elyse. I woke up and you weren’t here, and . . . Come inside.”
I turned my head then, glanced at a point in the water just beyond the stern where a slip of blue silk twisted and floated in the gentle waves. Beneath the glitter moon, it lingered only a moment longer before the sea, finally claiming the life it’d been promised all those months ago, dissolved it into foam.
The most beautiful dress in the world—all that I was and all that I could’ve been—was gone, the old life shed to make way for the new.
I followed Christian into the saloon, where he wrapped me up alone in the blanket, clicked on the lantern, and quickly tugged on a pair of sweatpants. He sat me on one of the benches, frantically rubbing heat into my arms and legs. Once I stopped shivering, he leaned me over the small sink to wring out my hair, then gently wrapped my head in a towel.
“Were you sleepwalking?” he whispered. I shook my head. “Did you fall in? What happened?”
I shrugged. Don’t remember.
He narrowed his eyes, waiting for me to explain, but that was the truth. One minute I’d been counting stars, my heart heavy with the weight of our loss, of all we still had to lose.
And then I was underwater.
Weightless.
I shivered again, the whole thing fading before my eyes like a dream not quite remembered. If not for the water pooled at my feet and the chill in my bones, I might have been able to convince us both it really had been a dream.
It didn’t matter.
Despite the worry in Christian’s eyes and the tremble in my limbs, I was practically giddy, light with life. Christian didn’t return my smile, though; he was still frantic, concern giving him speed and purpose. He was on his knees before I could stop him, rubbing my feet between his strong, determined hands.
“I need to get you warm,” he said. “Fast.”
I watched in silence as he boiled water on the hot plate, poured most of it into the bilge bucket with some fresh water from the tap. With the rest of the hot stuff, he made a mug of tea, then placed the steaming bucket on the floor and instructed me to put my feet inside. The feeling was utter heaven.