You get one shot, the bluebird had said. Breathe deep.
Verralee wanted to—don’t make your Mamma’s mistakes—but she was afraid her heart might have left the room with Simon. Still, she didn’t want to be slapped to the ground like those three—those four—girls. She wasn’t strong enough for that disappointment. She couldn’t bear to let Kaylene down.
This pageant was hers to win.
Just breathe.
She turned a slow pirouette, showed off the muscles in her thighs and upper back. Her arms grew heavy, her head throbbed, her lungs nose eyes veins guts blood screamed for air. Breathe! Her neck split and burned, sprouted opercula. Breathe! Spots darted in front of her eyes: tadpoles turned frogs turned eels and, finally, turned into a legion of indigo-crimson betta splendens. Verralee heard the crowd cheer in delight as around her swam iridescent flashes of joy.
She tilted her head in gratitude, glugged out a prayer.
At last, she inhaled.
Pure Tapekwa water filtered through her new gills. The pressure in her head subsided as she drank in each fluid breath. She exhaled words of binding, phrases of change, and other spells that could only be formed by liquid voices. Delight buoyed her up as the veiled fish latched onto her legs. At her command, the bettas multiplied; tripled and quadrupled; burrowed into her flesh; dug into sinew and bone. They gnawed and knitted, knitted and gnawed; transferring their scales, their long silken fins, to create the pageant queen’s unique double-tail.
Now Verralee wanted to call out for Simon; now she wished he’d return. What a sight he’d have seen through his white-glaring glasses; his girl earning a crown the bluebird always knew she deserved. It doesn’t hurt, she’d have told him, turning perfect.
Painless, her legs blended, her feet flattened, her toes splayed into transparent cartilage. Cold, she lost what made her Simon’s, and Kaylene’s little girl, and Johnny’s natural beauty. Calm, she buried her humanity beneath a school of clammy skins and gained hips most women would kill for. Blank, she preserved her good looks and became, forever, Miss Tapekwa County.
One last pang, before her blood chilled, at the thought of another girl kissing her Simon’s lips. Marrying him. Bearing his children. Maybe he’d sneak over to Town Hall when his wife wrinkled, grew inevitably heavy, sagged beneath gravity and the burden of her husband’s heartbroken neglect. Maybe he’d come to stare at Verralee as he’d done today. Silently. Forlornly.
Maybe.
The judges lowered the crown-lid onto her tank. It slid easily into place, glass and silver threading together like frozen fingers clasped.
Verralee looked through clouded glass as the audience applauded. As they gathered purses, jackets, hats and filed out of the hall. As her parents approached, their footsteps inaudible. Black hair wreathed her head, tangled seastrands that caught her kin in its web. She saw her parents, distorted, through the lather of her exhalations. They looked to her like happy, irrelevant dreams, caught and preserved in bubbles from her past. One by one they popped, disappeared, returned to the world from whence such dreams came. She watched the bluebird quiver as Kaylene slowly left, cheeks shining with tears, trailing an ink-smudge of useless advice. In response, Verralee flapped her tail, turned a somersault. As a choir of bettas taught her their flooded songs, she bid her land family a water-winged farewell.
Spun another somersault, and they were gone.
Broken glass and fishwater had been mopped up to let the stage’s wooden boards dry. Drained tanks had been wheeled away, loaded onto trucks. One only remained, on display for an empty auditorium. Filled to the brim, dusted with a sprinkling of bloodworms in case of hunger, the winner’s vessel sat and waited for morning. The stage lights had dimmed, singling her out, but Miss Tapekwa County was not alone.
A transparent, crimson-finned mermaid had appeared right in front of her!
She turned a gleeful forward roll.
So did the mermaid!
Pretty, the pageant queen thought, waving at the glass.
The glass waved back.
So pretty, she giggled, sidling up to her own reflection.
The strange mermaid’s smile, when it came, was honest azure.
A lovely, forgetful shade of blue.
Acknowledgements
“Commonplace Sacrifices,” was originally published in On Spec magazine, 2009.
About The Author
Lisa L. Hannett has had over 70 short stories appear in venues including Clarkesworld, Weird Tales, Apex, The Dark and Year’s Best anthologies in Australia, Canada, and the U.S. She has won four Aurealis Awards, including Best Collection for Bluegrass Symphony, which was also nominated for a World Fantasy Award. Her first novel, Lament for the Afterlife, was published by CZP in 2015. A new collection of short stories, Little Digs, is coming out in March 2020. You can find her online at www.lisahannett.com and on Twitter @LisaLHannett.
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