by Jane Thomson
I didn’t expect to see much. This wasn’t the Big Dry – this was just an island, the same as the hundreds of islets in the Channels. Humans didn’t often come out this far from the Dry – and yet, up on the cliff, there was a cave-made-by-humans, its eyes reflecting the sun. I lay on my back, and looked at the cave on the rock, till the sun almost met the edge of the sea, and the hard water glowed red in the dying light. It was dusk and I was hungry, and then you came.
You came out of a hole in the cave, and stood on the cliff top, drinking something, your chin tipped towards the sunset. Your legs were wrapped in red, which flapped in the evening breeze, and your chest was bare and brown. You stood out there and looked at the sunset, right over the top of me, as if I wasn’t there – I wasn’t, to you. You fiddled with something and there was a glow. Then you put something in your mouth and I could see a streak of mist wisping up from your breath to join the pink clouds in the darkening sky. I’d never seen fire before. I thought you were magical, able to call the sunset down and eat it – but it seemed like a good magic, far from Grandmother’s skulls and slime and dark stories to frighten children.
You walked slowly down the cliff, picking your way, towards the beach, towards me. Your legs worked perfectly, first one, then the other, I was amazed at the power and gracefulness of you, thinking of how even dragging myself a few lengths over sand or rock was clumsy and effortful. You balanced perfectly on those two beautiful pillars of yours, you didn’t fall even once, you didn’t really even look at your feet as they found holds in the path. Instead you looked out to sea, out towards me. From the distance, your eyes were warm dark holes in your face, and your mouth a stain.
You stood with your feet in the wet sand of the tiny half-moon bay, letting the wavelets run over them, and I could have swum and touched you, reminded you of how we came together from Deep Sea and I left you almost right there, sleeping on the sand. I remembered that night and how we both almost sank with tiredness. I could have let you go easily enough but I chose not to. I remembered the warm salty tang of your lips when I kissed them, licked them clean of sand with mine, explored your frail eyelids. I held my breath.
I watched you. You held the mist-stick in your mouth, blew out more cloud over the still water, scratched behind your ear and said something to yourself in your strange deep human words – I guess there wasn’t anyone else to talk to. Then you leaned and slapped your leg, near the foot, and said the same word, and turned, and walked back up the cliff, to your white cave. I watched you as you walked inside, and suddenly the cave-that-humans-made lit up, as if you’d brought down the midday sun to sit inside it, just for you. I could see your long, lean shape lit up in the entrance hole, a shadow against the light, and then you walked further in, until I couldn’t see you any more.
I swam back in the night, the silver phosphorus rippling around my arms as I flowed through the water. As I swam, I thought of you, and your sunset-bright stick-in-the-mouth, and your magic cave-that-humans-made, and your silvery hair, and your long, strong legs – and of Grandmother, with her grey spit and her human hair nets, and Father, bulky and pale-eyed, and my sisters, happy just to mate and plait their hair and push out pups till their time came to lie on the sand for the last time.
In the dawn, I went to Grandmother’s cave. She was sleeping, mouth hanging open, dribble escaping down the rivulets of her chin. I waited till she woke.
“Are the spirits real?”
She dug the crust from beneath her eyelids.
“As real as I am.”
“If I ask them, can they make me legs, like a human?”
Grandmother lifted a skinny arm and scratched underneath. I held my breath.
“For a price.”
“What price?”
She blinked, hawked.
“The spirits don’t give anything for nothing. They will ask their own price.”
“Will it hurt?”
“Of course it’ll hurt.”
“They can really give me legs?”
“If it’s legs you want - but don’t ask them to take them away again. How many do you want? Eight, like the octopus? Four, like a seal?”
“Only two.”
I helped her sit, skin crawling at the touch of her loose, damp skin.
“Get me the bag with the urchins. It’s there somewhere. I can’t see things as I used to.”
Grandmother playing helpless. I poked through the piles of rubbish surrounding her, till I found it.
“Pop it in. You won’t feel a thing, I promise.”
I hesitated. We know what things are poison.
She snorted, spat.
Shrinking, I put it in my mouth, spat it out again. It tasted bitter.
“Doesn’t taste nice, does it. Maybe you want me to cut you some legs without having to eat the nasty creature. Well, give me your tail then!”
I looked down at my strong tail.
“I’ll chew it. What does it do?”
“Makes you sleep. Kills you, maybe? “
I shrugged. “I don’t mind.” I shivered.
I shoved a mouthful of the thing in between my teeth, retched and pushed the feeling down. But if this was the worst thing I had to endure to get my legs, I’d endure it. I chewed, thinking of you. When I had legs, I’d walk up the cliff path towards you. With my legs, I’d walk into your cave-that-humans-make and you’d come to meet me, amazed at my beauty and grace. I’d wrap my legs around yours and you’d fuck me as you fuck human women. You’d say, what beautiful legs you have. Let’s walk together. I wondered if the Dry – I mean the real Dry - was a big place, as big as Deep Sea.
“Now what?”
I stared around at the cave. The skulls stared back at me. Among them I saw the face of the drowned human woman, eyeless, salt-pickled. So that’s where she’d gone. As I looked at her, her mouth opened wide, and she had teeth like a lizard fish. She slid forward, and clamped the sharp rows deep into my hip. I screamed and tried to push her away. I tried to thrash my tail to throw her off but it wouldn’t move, so I tried to use my arms, and they, too, were useless.
Grandmother had said I wouldn’t feel a thing. She lied, as always. I screamed and screamed as she cut into me, sneering at my cowardice. She paid no attention. I tried to slide back into the water but for all the effort I put into it, I didn’t move an inch. My muscles didn’t hear me. I thought I would die of pain. I didn’t. I felt the knife weaving its hard magic around me, and then the net of hair, pulled tight over my head and body, suffocating and drowning me. I saw Grandmother’s spirits laughing down at me, their rows of teeth pointed backwards like sharks, their faces hanging in the dark mists. They too had knives, sharp ones made of coral and fishbone, with carved handles in the shape of strange creatures I’d never seen. As I lay on the rock they carved me up, tracing patterns in blood on my belly, my arms, my teats, slicing here and gouging there, and floating back to admire the effect while I struggled without moving and cried without tears. I thought I would die, and asked for it, with my voice silent as still air.
I don’t know how long it took. It could have been a day, from dawn to dusk. I felt the stone beneath me slippery with warm blood. In the end, I lost consciousness.
And woke. To see Grandmother sitting as she always did, weaving her nets, staring at nothing with her rotting saw-toothed smile and white eyes.
I didn’t dare to look at my body. I was in pain so great I cried out and moaned with it. It was the kind of pain that makes you feel you’re being torn apart, slowly, from the inside. I shut my eyes and tried to run away inside, again. I slept.
When I woke, I heard her hissing to herself as she wove. Like all old people, she talked to herself, because she spent most of her time alone. I smelt my blood all around me, felt it dried and sticky under my spread hands.
“You make too much noise,” Grandmother hissed, “for a little fish. Here, have this.”
She shoved some more weed in my mouth. This time I chewed it eagerly and swallowed it do
wn, hoping not to wake again. Days went past. The ache lessened. With fear, my hand crept down and felt the place where my tail had been.
On my flanks, the blue-green skin was as it had been. Someone had washed off the blood when I’d been sleeping. I moved my hand over my skin, felt my hips, felt the part where I divided into two. Legs. I tried to sit up, fell back, nauseous and dizzy with pain.
“I’ve got legs?”
“Oh yes, you’ve got your legs.” Grandmother hissed. “Two nice little human legs. Say thank you.”
I dragged my head up, looked down at myself. They were like no legs I’d ever seen. On the outside, the pale blueish skin all mer have, reflecting the colours of the water. It helps us in the hunt, and makes us harder for predators to see. On the inside, pinkish human skin, tapering down to five toed feet. A red line of new-made scar ran down the centre of each leg.
I tried to move one heavy limb, but it was as if the thing had nothing to do with me, as if you’d cut off my tail and sewed it on with the needles you used for making pouches out of fish skin. My beautiful, dead human legs.
I cried, not caring if she heard me, retching sobs.
“Be quiet,” Grandmother spat, high-pitched over my wails. “You asked for legs, you have legs.”
“Why don’t they move?”
“You wanted legs. You didn’t say you wanted to walk.”
If I’d been able to use those legs, I would have snatched a knife and cut my own gullet open with it. After I had no more crying in me, I looked at her with hate.
“Why did you let me do this?”
She grinned.
“Me? The spirits did it, not me. You saw them. You asked them to do it – they gave you what you wanted. You should be grateful.”
I wailed, biting at my fingers. Grandmother slapped the stone, cackling at her own joke.
“Besides, you don’t belong here.”
She reached out, and touched my thigh, leaving a long scratch. I didn’t feel it.
“I can’t even stand up.”
“The feeling will grow, you’ll see. When it does, you’ll wish it hadn’t. Nothing can be had without suffering, little fish.”
I turned my back to her, and swallowed my crying, and sang myself to sleep with a sort of tuneless humming as my mother used to do, before she went to the sands to die. I wondered, how can life hurt so much, and yet, still be life.
Chapter 10
I lay for three suns on the dank floor of Grandmother’s cave, fed and cleaned by my sisters as they came in to spend their time with her. My father’s mate Casih stroked my head and combed my hair out, and poured cool seawater over my body, which she said would help soothe the pain. None of them but Dayang could hide their disgust– and contempt for me too, though they didn’t say anything. I could tell they were thinking, how stupid could she be, to tempt the spirits with such a question. To ask Grandmother to take her tail and give her useless legs instead! They didn’t dare say anything, because Grandmother sat there with her long knife beside her, and if Grandmother had done this to me, then perhaps I deserved it. Still – to live without a tail for the rest of my life. She’d be much better dead, muttered Azura, until Casih slapped her and hissed quiet.
I could move. I couldn’t walk or swim. The most I could do was drag my new legs, painfully and slowly, over the rock and down to the pool. The feeling was coming back, slowly. Grandmother had been right. The pain was so much less at the beginning, when I had no feeling below the waist. Now, it grew like a tumour.
“When will she be able to walk like a human?” Dayang asked, watching me pull myself over to the water to piss. At first she tried to help me, but I shoved her away. I had to learn to do these things myself – or stay in the cave with Grandmother till I died or she decided to end me for good.
“Walk like a human? What, on those?”
Grandmother laughed her high, hissing laugh. Dayang pulled her hair over her face with embarrassment, not looking towards me.
Grandmother popped another oyster between her grey lips, from a shell-full which Dayang had brought her. She sucked on it noisily, and swallowed. I could see the lump travelling down her skinny, folded throat.
“She’ll never be able to walk on them. She’ll crawl, perhaps – like a bottom feeder. If she’s lucky.”
“But you said I would have legs like a human! You lied!“ I burst out, raising my face, rageful, to her.
“I told you the spirits don’t give you something for nothing. What do you think I am to get in the way of what they choose? The great sea-witch herself? Do you think I can just draw you legs like the ones on your back, stir the mud, and then pouf? You’re more stupid than you look, little fish with legs.”
Have you ever felt rage so strong that you feel as if you were a wave the size of an island, about to crash down on the thing that hurt you and crush it like an eggshell into the sea. If she and I had been alone then, perhaps I would have wrapped my strong young arms around her throat and throttled her until her shrivelled tongue stuck out. If I could have reached her.
So I had my legs, but I’d never be able to use them. What use would I be to you, with these ugly, useless legs? My silly dreams of walking down to the sand, of climbing the cliff like a human would, of mating like a human would – all these dreams died then.
“You stinking old woman,” said Che, sliding up beside me. “Someone should have strangled you and pushed you out to the Deep Sea for the sharks to eat.”
It took a lot of guts for him to say that. I hadn’t even known he was there. Dayang looked around and put her hands over her ears. Nobody had ever said such a thing to Grandmother before.
Grandmother’s eel head swivelled, and her few teeth bared in angry response. I don’t think she could believe her ears either.
“Did someone ask you to speak, cripple? It’s you that should have been put out in the Deep, when you were born with that twisted tail of yours. Why don’t you come over here and I’ll cut it off for you.”
Grandmother picked up the knife and lunged with it aimlessly. Suddenly, I saw her through new eyes. It almost made me laugh to look at her, skinny, blind, evil old woman, strong only in her own head.
Che slid towards her.
“I can hear you, cripple-boy. Come closer and I’ll cut you.”
She swiped the air with the knife. I realised she was actually scared, for once in her life. I’d never before heard fear in Grandmother’s cracked old voice – I could have almost felt sorry for her, if I hadn’t hated her so much.
Che sat quiet just out of reach, and waited – then shot out his strong arm and took the knife out of her hand, fast enough that he drew a long cut over the wrinkled palm. She screeched and clawed for him.
“What are you doing?” Casih hissed, shocked. She wriggled towards Grandmother, and got a tail flick for her trouble.
“Nothing.”
Che flung the knife down the dark gap at the back at the cave, where the females threw the old rotten food, when Grandmother would let them. Even my sisters couldn’t wriggle down and get it back from there. “Go and get it, old witch. It’s waiting for you.”
He slid to the pool, and let himself fall in.
“Don’t leave me here.” I called, thinking, she’ll surely kill me now.
Che turned back, his rough-haired head sticking out of the dim water.
“Come on then.”
I slid towards him, dragging my legs after me.
“I can’t swim.”
“You can swim with your hands. I’ll help, anyway.”
“Don’t go with him, Melur. You’ll starve. You won’t be able to find fish on your own, and he can’t help you,” Dayang said, looking after me in panic.
“There’s nothing else I can do.”
She looked in appeal to Casih.
“Stop her. She can’t do this.”
Dayang’s comfortable world, falling apart in front of her.
“If you stay, Father will kill you,” Casih said. Dayang
pulled at her hair nervously, shaking her head. She hadn’t wanted me to know that, but it was the truth.
I felt sorry for Casih. She loved me, but she wouldn’t fight Father for me. I was making things very painful for her by my stubborn-ness. I stroked her plump, anxious face.
“I’ll be alright.”
Casih opened her mouth to say something, but I didn’t hear it. I was below the dark waters of the pool, holding Che by the waist as he swept out through the entrance. My new legs trailed behind me like the threads of a stinger. In the lagoon, I let go. It was surprisingly hard to pull myself through the water by my arms alone, but Che swam beside me, his chubby body suddenly full of comfort.
We came out into the sun-dappled water, and Che and I turned away from home.
Chapter 11
One thing Grandmother was right about. We couldn’t live out there, without the pod. Che, alone, could do it. He’d been living around the edges of the Deep for months now, ever since he’d got too old to be classified a child, too old to be tolerated by the adult males, and with no female of his own. The island he beached on was windswept and faced out to ocean.
“You could be my female..”
Even with these stumps, he still wanted me. I reached out to touch his shoulder, but shook my head.
“I wouldn’t be any use to you. I’d draw the others down on you, anyway. They’d never leave us alone.”
Father would come, with the other males, and drive us away. In the mer world, outliers aren’t tolerated.
“I’m going to swim to the Dry. I look like a human now, they’ll help me.”
Che scratched his chin.
“What if they don’t. What if they drag you away and cut you up?”
He shivered.
“That’s just a story Grandmother tells to scare us. Humans aren’t really like that.”
“How do you know?”
I remembered the downy touch of your lips, the tenderness of your sleeping eyelids.
“I just know. I’m only afraid he’ll see these and..”