by Tod Davies
This would have amused my grandmother no end. She would have been doubly amused to see Lily’s struggle go across her face. Lily, who felt the justice of a claim Livia did not really feel, was incapable of feeling. It would have cost Lily much to hold out in silence.
“And if I’d known you were in the offing, granddaughter,” Livia said to me much later with a nasty look in her eye, “I would have denied safe passage to you.” In fact, she tried then to claim my mother had tricked her, all those years ago, and that by right, she could keep me with her as long as she liked. But I am not Livia’s grandchild for nothing, and like, in that case, won out over like.
My mother, while just as strong a spirit as either of us, was a more loving one. She hated to interfere with love of any kind, even power that masquerades as love, only meaning to win more for itself. So it must have cost her much to hold her ground. But hold her ground she did. Until Livia, histrionically, pathetically, gave one broken sob and nodded her head, hiding the gleam in her eye.
Lily turned back and returned to her friends. Livia and her soldiers watched as the girls conferred. Phoebe stood with her arms folded, serene. Kim bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, nodding furiously. Then the three girls linked arms—there was just enough space on the path for the three of them, standing abreast, to pass—and walked toward the sea.
Livia jumped up, alarmed. “No!” she shouted, scrambling from her seat onto the strand. “Stop them! That’s not the way it’s written! It’s written that she goes alone! Stop them! Stop those girls!”
But the soldiers had no orders to stop Lily, only to force her into the sea. So they watched in silence as she walked, arms linked with those of her friends, into the dank cold water. Of the three girls, Lily was the smallest, and after her disappeared Kim’s yellow-brown ponytail, and Phoebe’s white-gold hair.
“NO!” Livia yelled, and she stomped her foot on the strand. But she was too late. All three girls had gone into the sea.
Twenty-Two
Under the sea, everything was changed. To their surprise, none of the girls felt frightened, my mother told me, but rather “felt just exactly the way things were meant to be, Snow.”
(For this was my favorite story as a child, one I had from my mother, and from Kim, and even from Star.)
There is a lot you see under the sea, my mother told me. Kim, too, told me “there’s ever so much more than you see on land, Soph,” as she tucked me into the huge bed I’d inherited from Lily. “I think it musta been cuz of how dead quiet it is there.” There under the sea, she said, noise is not constantly pushing and pulling at you. You can just move in one direction and see, quite clearly and plainly, where you’re headed.
I’ve never been there myself. But I have imagined.
And then, they weren’t alone. (How I loved this part of the Story of Going Under the Sea!) Almost immediately, as the three followed the slope of a hill down under the clear blue water, they attracted a crowd. Now there were three dolphins swimming alongside, their bottlenoses and their silver bellies showing as they twisted and rolled along. There was a wedge-shaped formation of rays complete with teeth and whipping tails. There was a line of green eels. And, overhead, as the girls looked up, there were hundreds, “maybe thousands, Soph, just imagine it! You never saw such a thing,” of tiny, eager fish. They were all the colors of the rainbow, Kim said: “red and white and yellow and purple.”
The girls laughed but they made no sound. They smiled at each other and held hands. And they walked on.
The farther they went, the more company they had, underwater creatures of all kinds: shrimps, and squids, and swimming sponges; sharks and soles, and red and orange snappers; rainbow-colored mackerel, and marlin…
And then…there was a Manatee. Big and bulky and with a strangely ill formed back tail. They only caught a glimpse of him at first. They were so overwhelmed by all the show around them, by the welcome they were getting from the Sea, it was hard to take it all in. Hard to take in any detail past the larger feeling of joy that came on them now.
The more company the girls had, the happier the girls felt. This was a particular feeling that all three recognized as the same that had swept them, together, into the sea. They had not been driven to it, as Livia wanted (which must have frustrated her utterly, if I know my grandmother). They had gone together. None of them could say why they had done so, but I can tell you that they had gone together for love.
And so the company that joined them now joined them for love. They didn’t know it, any more than a fish knows it swims in water. They accepted it as natural, and they just walked on.
The three girls held hands now and walked straight forward, catching sight, from time to time, of the Manatee as it swam shyly along, first behind a dolphin, then beside an anemone. It was as if the huge, clumsy creature wanted them to see him, to notice him in some particular way, but was too bashful to call attention to himself.
Lily gave him a closer look. He had flipper-like hands, which he used in a precise, almost dainty way. His tailfin was almost round, and flat, and propelled him more gracefully through the water than you could imagine, if you looked first at his enormous brown and wrinkled bulk. All the more surprisingly since the tail was lopsided, as if he’d been injured somewhere. If he had been able to walk, he would have limped.
This reminded Lily of something. But she couldn’t quite remember what.
Then there was his face. Lily could see that it was long and silly, but with a kind of noble nose topping the whole. The Manatee was very silly-looking indeed, and wistful, too. Lily pondered this. It seemed to her that she had seen this expression before, that somewhere she had once known someone very like the Manatee. But the moment she thought this, that thought washed away in the water around her and was gone.
As she looked over at the Manatee, trying to puzzle some sort of sense out of him, she saw him duck his head, putting one flipper over his eye and peering out back at her from under it. Then the huge unwieldy creature drew himself up to his full length—he was, indeed, very long; I used to laugh and clap my hands at this point in the story when Kim would describe how long—and swam ponderously forward. He swam beside the girls and then, with a churning of the water, gave a bow that was courteous in the extreme. Lily, observing him close up now, gave a start. The Manatee looked at her intently from his tiny gray-brown eyes. There was something about those eyes that was very familiar indeed. They were silly, and, tiny as they were, they bugged out a little. Lily knew that she had looked into those eyes many times before, and in many places, too.
But how could that be? She puzzled to herself. How could that be so?
The Manatee turned with the girls now, and swam along beside them, his tail flapping comfortably as they went. Lily watched him, but for now he kept his silly muzzle pointing straight ahead. Just for now he didn’t meet her eye.
Down and down they walked, deeper into the sea. Or rather, they didn’t walk down—they walked, no matter how far, as if on even land. It was a long, flat plain the girls walked along with the fish swimming beside, one that stretched out farther than you could see.
It was the sea above them that got deeper and deeper as they walked. Deeper and deeper and deeper, until, when they looked up, they could see nothing but water overhead for miles. And to their further surprise, the farther they went, the lighter the seawater became around them. First it was a shiny blue-green, then turquoise, and then, as they neared their destination (“though how we knew we had a destination, much less that we were near it, none of us could have said,” my mother told me later), a pale gold-blue shimmered all around them, turning any other color it surrounded into a deeper, realer version of itself.
All of this Lily saw. “I could see quite clearly, Snow, there under the Sea.”
The Manatee, as he swam, courteously holding Lily’s arm on one of his oval-shaped, velvety fins, looked more and more to Lily, as they went on, like the most comfortable armchair by the warmest fire you coul
d imagine. His dark gray pelt took on a burnished look, as if reflecting the cheerful flames there. And his eyes, though tiny, shone deeper and brighter, too.
And then there was Kim. She changed too. “Ooooh, I did and all, Soph. I were never the same again, no never.” Her blonde hair turned golden as they went on in that blue-gold light. Here and there it escaped the black plastic clasp she used to hold it back, and floated in tendrils around her face. The fish, swimming with them, teased her by nipping at the floating ends. “Oooh, they made me smile, them fish!” But she never said a word.
As for quiet Phoebe, her face changed, too—it became whiter and whiter as they went on, until it glowed like the Moon Itself, and the more her skin glowed, the quieter she became. The quieter she became, the more her smile shone like a sharp silver crescent on her face. And Lily, seeing this, realized that, since they’d come together under the sea, her silver-haired friend hadn’t said a single word.
It was only then, when Lily marveled to herself at this, that she realized that she, too, was silent. She opened her mouth, experimentally, just to say one word, and she found, not that she couldn’t, but that she wouldn’t. Although why she wouldn’t she could not have said. And Lily, as she walked along the golden sand that showed their footprints for only an instant before the sea washed them away, pondered this.
Without knowing it, Lily and the others had passed through the Sea Change that happens along the long walk to the Mermaids’ Deep—for it was to that very place, known to all the girls from the stories of their earliest childhoods (known to all of us from all of ours, as well), that they walked now. After this, none of them would be the same. Each changed in her own way, which, of course, is the way it is with change.
THE MERMAIDS’ DEEP
Twenty-Three
What can I tell about the Mermaids and the Mermaids’ Deep? Everyone knows the nursery tales. Or should. On the other hand, it occurs to me that so many true and useful things have been forgotten here in Arcadia, that it’s worth repeating the old, established facts about the Mermaids and their Deep. There are so many things that need to be known and remembered and so many things that are, instead, unknown and forgotten. We believe in preserving memory, Wilder and I. And of all the memories worth preserving, there are few worth more than those of Mermaids and the Mermaids’ Deep.
There are a lot of stories about Mermaids, in Arcadia and Megalopolis, and a lot of fakery, especially on the False Moon. A mermaid to most people these days is nothing more than a pretty device. And the reason for this is not because Mermaids themselves are frivolous or vain, but because they are not. They keep themselves to themselves and don’t much care about the outside world. They have enough work to do where they are, in the Mermaids’ Deep, tending the Mermaids’ Well. Too much to do without worrying about publicity, too.
Mermaids existed before just about everything that we know in our world. They lived under the sea even in the days before the world had risen out of it. From the beginning, they have been a happy people, and a conservative one, and—though you might not think it—highly mobile, travelling here and there, powered by their great curiosity. The pictures that show Mermaids with a mere fish’s tail are ill-informed, for each Mermaid has two strong legs, of varying colors depending on her age and her ancestry (some iron blue, some fish-scale green, some iridescent rose or violet, some turquoise and silver, some gold or bronze). A Mermaid is born knowing how to put those legs together to form a single propelling rudder that moves her through the water with incredible speed.
But she can walk on the bottom of the ocean when she has to. And on the surfaces of the world, too. Many has been the time in human history when a curious Mermaid has ventured out onto land. But in all those many times, she was never seen for what she was. She was never recognized. Most of the Mermaids who tried this hopeful experiment were driven by this lack of recognition, grieving, back into the Sea.
I’ve always thought this was a terrible shame. And all because no one could see the Mermaids for what they are.
The only way for a human to recognize a Mermaid is to meet her under the Sea. It’s easy, Lily told me, to see clearly there.
“But wait!” I can hear my dear subjects cry. “If we can recognize a Mermaid under the Sea, and there are as many of them there as you say, and if they have been there for so long, how is it that we have never heard of anyone who has seen them? How is it that they are unknown to Science? How is it that no scientist in Megalopolis has ever caught them on camera or in nets, and how is it that no people have ever ventured underwater to capture and enslave them, as you would think would be natural?”
In fact, I can hear Aspern Grayling say something like this. He is always saying things like this, whenever such topics arise.
Here are the facts. The Mermaids are a peaceful people—but they are warlike in their peacefulness, and in this, they are unlike any other species ever seen by Man. By this I mean that they aggressively pursue their right to be passive, to be ornamental, to be helpful and nurturing and kind. There is nothing a Mermaid likes more than to sit on a rock, gazing into a mirror and combing her long hair (again of a color depending on her age and ancestry—roan, or metallic green, or bronze, or pure and dazzling white). She likes to sit like this for hours, combing and contemplating herself and her thoughts. There must be something in it, too, because a Mermaid will, in a flash, turn into the fiercest of beings if disturbed at this occupation. She will never strike the first blow, but woe to the Man who does—for that Man will never return to his home above the Sea. A Mermaid will not allow herself to be interrupted at what she does. And the reason we have not heard much of Mermaids (and the little we have untrue) is because there are few men (women, it seems, are differently made in this respect) who can look at a Mermaid without an overwhelming urge to capture her, chain her up, and drag her to where she doesn’t want to go. A Mermaid will never allow this. And what’s more, she has the strength to back it up.
After many tries at capturing a Mermaid, Man has simply given up. Because of the many defeats he has suffered, to protect himself from the knowledge of his own violence and foolishness, he now pretends that Mermaids never existed at all.
It’s simpler that way, for some people—Aspern Grayling and all his followers—are of this kind. But just because you say something to feel better about yourself doesn’t mean that the thing is so. Just because you say you are just and wise and good doesn’t mean you are. I recommend that even when you keep silent about this kind of foolishness out of loyalty (and loyalty is a good thing, never doubt that), you never allow yourself to be fooled. In the silence of your own heart, always remember that Mermaids exist, in huge congregations, and if no one else around believes this is so, well, too bad for them.
If you understand this truly, and hold onto it hard, it might even be that, one day, when a Mermaid comes out of the Sea, you will know her for what she is.
Lily and Kim and Phoebe met with a tremendous welcome in the Mermaids’ Deep. Lily had never felt so warmly received in any place, not even in Arcadia where there was always a warm welcome for anyone, friend or stranger. The Mermaids crowded around the girls, each one more beautiful than the next, each one with a round, jewel-colored face, like the fish that had acted as their escort—faces that shone with delicate scales of ruby, or sapphire, or topaz, or amethyst, or emerald, or diamond. Their legs, of course, were covered with scales, and because this was early in the Mermaids’ Spring, with the planting just begun, the colors of these scales were just turning brighter from those of the Mermaids’ Winter. So they were quieter in color than they would be later in the year, now pale gray-green, or purplish black, or the color of a newly budding plant. And their many-colored hair waved in tendrils about their round moon faces.
Kim put her hand up to her own escaped locks and gave a silent laugh. “I looked like ’em, didn’t I, Soph?” she said to me later, merrily. Lily told me the same. Kim did indeed look, as they walked on, more and more like a Mermaid.
And Phoebe had turned so much like this new company now that Lily had a hard time in picking her out from the crowd.
On each Mermaid’s face was a crescent smile as sharp and distinct as Phoebe’s had become, though each differed from its fellows in color. Some smiles were silver, like Phoebe’s own, and some were copper; some were brass, and some were gold. But the smiles, welcoming as they were, stayed fixed, never moving into words.
There are no words with Mermaids, except in their songs, because words are for use in talking about the past or dreaming about the future. And in the Mermaids’ Deep, it is only ever Now.
Now was time for the Mermaids’ Feast. The guests gladly sat at the enormous round table where the Feast was held. Lily sat next to the Manatee who, his shyness conquered, stared at her with a strangely expectant look. On her other side was a Mermaid—an emerald-faced Mermaid with golden hair and purple-black legs colored like winter seaweed—who courteously poured from a pale pink jug made of a single seashell a pale green wine that tasted of the spring breezes in the mountains of Arcadia. Then when the wine was finished, the Mermaid would give a nod and, putting her legs together, would stand, give them a flick like a tail, and disappear, only to return moments later bearing some new delicacy.
All through the meal—which was course after course of the finest, best chosen, most well-portioned of foods—Lily noticed that the Mermaids would frequently get up from the table and disappear, returning, after a moment or two, with another course of food, or with golden instruments on which they would play a wordless song, or with a carafe of an even finer wine than had gone before, or with a new set of plates with pictures painted on them. And what pictures! Kim tried to describe them to me. “Phoenixes and unicorns and lions and salamanders, Soph!” Lily traced a unicorn horn on her plate with one finger, simultaneously scooping up the final bits of a briny sauce and putting this in her mouth. She had seen it was a habit of the Mermaids to wipe their plates in this fashion, a pure expression of pleasure. So Lily courteously did the same. As she ate and drank, she found she could understand all that was going on around her, even though no words were spoken. So Lily understood that after the Feast, they were to go to the Mermaids’ Well.