Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle

by Beagle, Peter S.

Only I’d been in it, you see. Right up to me whiskers in it, year on year—grown old in it, I had. Call it regret, call it guilt, call it what you like, all I knew was I’d sleep on straw in the workhouse and live on slops and sermons before I’d knock on Henry Lee’s door again. Even to have her look at me one more time, the way she looked in me house, in me best chair. I’ve made few promises in me life, and kept less, but I made that one then, made it to meself. Suppose you could call it a vow, like, if that suits you.

  And I kept that one. It weren’t easy, whiles, what with me not finding nobbut portering to do, or might be pushing a barrow for a day or two, but I held to that vow right up to the day when one of Henry Lee’s men come to say his master were in greatest need of me—put it just like that, “greatest need”—and would I please come right away, please. Tell the truth, I mightn’t have come for Henry Lee himself, but that servant, trying to be so calm and proper, with his eyes so frantic… Goanese Konkany, he were, name of Gopi.

  I didn’t run there, like I’d last done—didn’t even ride in the carriage he’d sent for me. I walked, and I took me own time about it, too, and I thought on just what I’d say, and what he’d do when I said it, and what I’d do then. And before I knew, I were standing on the steps of that fine house, with no butler waiting but Henry Lee himself, with both hands out to drag me inside. “Ben,” he keeps saying, “ah, Ben, Ben, Ben.” Like Monkey Sucker again, saying Mr. Hazeltine, Mr. Hazeltine, over and over.

  He looked old, Henry Lee did. Hair gray as stone, all of it—face slumped in like he’d lost all his teeth at once—shoulders bent to break your heart, the way you’d think he’d been stooping in a Welsh coal mine all his life. And the blue eyes of him… I only seen such eyes one time before, on a donkey that knew it were dying, and just wanted it over with. All I could think to say were, “You shouldn’t never have left the sea, Henry Lee—not never.” But I didn’t say it.

  He turned away and started up that grand long stair up to the second floor and the bedrooms, with his footsteps sounding like clods falling on a coffin. And I followed after, wishing the stair’d never end, but keep us climbing on and on for always, never getting where we had to go, and I wished I’d never left the sea neither.

  I smelled it while we was still on the stair. It ain’t a bad smell, considering: it’s cold and clean, like the wind off Newfoundland or when you’re just entering the Kattegat, bound for Copenhagen. Aye… aye, you could say it’s a fishy smell, too, if you care to, which I don’t. I’d smelled it before that day, and I’ve smelled it since, but I don’t never smell it without thinking about her, Señora Julia Caterina Five-names Lee, Missus Henry Lee. Without seeing her there in the big bed.

  He’d drawn every curtain, so you had to stand blind and blinking for a few minutes, till your eyes got used to the dark. She were lying under a down quilt—me wedding gift to the bride, Hindoo lady up in Ponda sewed it for me—but just as we came in she shrugged it off, and you could see her bare as a babby to the waist. Henry Lee, he rushes forward to pull the quilt back up, but she turns her head to look up at him, and he stops where he stands. She makes a queer little sound—hear it outside your window at night, you’d think it were a cat wanting in.

  “She can talk still,” says Henry Lee, desperate-like, turning to me. “She was talking this morning.” I stare into Julia Caterina’s pretty brown eyes—huge now, and steady going all greeny-black—and I want to tell Henry Lee, oh, she’ll talk all right, no fear. Mermaids chatter, believe me—talk both your lugs off, they will, you give them the chance. Mermaids gets lonely.

  “She drank so little,” Henry Lee keeps saying. “She didn’t really like any wine, French or Portuguese, or… ours. She only drank it to be polite, when we had guests. Because it was our business, after all. She understood about business.” I look down at the quilt where it’s covering her lower parts, and I look back at Henry Lee, and he shakes his head. “No, not yet,” he whispers. No tail yet, is what he meant—she’s still got legs—but he couldn’t say it, no more than me. Julia Caterina reaches up for him, and he sits by her on the bed and kisses both her hands. I can just see the half-circle outlines beginning just below her boobies, very faint against the pale skin. Scales….

  “How long?” Henry Lee asks, looking down into her face, like he’s asking her, not me.

  “You’d know better than me,” I tells him straight. “I only seen one poor sailor, maybe cooked halfway. And no women.”

  Henry Lee closes his eyes. “I never….” I can’t hardly hear him. He says, “I never… only that one time on the river, in the dark. I never saw.”

  “Aye, made sure of that didn’t you?” I says. “You’ll know next time.”

  He does look at me then, and his mouth makes one silent word—don’t. After a bit he gets so he can breathe out, “Aren’t I being punished enough?”

  “Not nearly,” I says. But Julia Caterina makes that sound again, and all on a sudden I’m so rotten sorry for her and Henry Lee I can’t barely speak words meself. Nowt to do but rest me hand on his shoulder, while he sits there by his wife, and her turning under his own hands. Time we leave that sea-smelling room, it’s dark outside, same as in.

  And I didn’t stir out of that house for the next nineteen days. Seems longer to me betimes, remembering—shorter too, other times, short as loving a wall and a barmaid—but nineteen days it were, with all the curtains drawn, every servant long fled, bar Gopi, him who’d come for me. That one, he stayed right along, went on shopping and cooking and sweeping; and if the smell and the closed rooms and us whispering up and down the stair—aye, and Henry Lee weeping in the night—if it all ever frighted him, he never said. A good man.

  Like I figured, she never lost speech. I’d hear them talking hours on end, her and Henry Lee—always in the Portygee, of course, so’s I couldn’t make out none of it, which was good. Weren’t for me to know what Henry Lee was saying to his wife, and her changing into a mermaid along of him getting rich. He tried to tell me some of their talk, but I didn’t want to hear it then, and I’ve forgot it all now—made bleeding sure of that. I already know enough as I shouldn’t, ta ever so.

  Nineteen days. Nineteen mornings rising with me head so full of that sea-smell—stronger every day—I couldn’t hardly swallow nowt but maybe porridge, couldn’t never drink nowt but water. Nineteen nights lying awake hour on hour in one of the servants’ garrets—I put meself there, ’acos I don’t dream in them little cubbies the way I do in big echoey rooms such as Henry Lee had for his guests. I don’t like dreaming, to this day I don’t, and I liked it less then. Never closed me eyes until I had to, in that dark house.

  Seventeenth night… seventeenth night, I’ve just finally gotten to sleep when Henry Lee wakes me, shaking me like the house is afire. I come up fighting and cursing—can’t help it, always been that way—and I welt him a rouser on the earhole, but he drags me out of the bed and bundles me down to their room with a blanket around me shoulders. I keep pulling away from him, ’acos I know what I’m going to see, but he won’t let go. His blue eyes look like he’s been crying blood.

  He’d covered her with every damp towel and rag in the house, but she’d thrown them all off… and there it is, there, laying out on the sheets that Henry Lee changes with his own hands every day, and Gopi takes to the dhobi-wallah for washing. There it is.

  Everything’s gone. Legs, feet, belly, all of it, everything, gone as though there’d never been nothing below her waist but that tail, scales flickering and glittering like wet emeralds in the candlelight. Look at it one way, it’s a wonderful thing, that tail. It’s the longest part of a mermaid or a merrow, and even when it’s not moving at all, like hers wasn’t just then, I swear you can see it breathing by itself, if you stand still and look close. In and out, slow, only a little, but you can see. It’s them and it’s not them, and that’s all I’m going to say.

  Now and then she’d twitch it a bit, flip the finny end some—getting used to it, like, having a tail. Ea
ch time she did that, Henry Lee’d draw his breath sharp, but all he said to me as we stood by the bed, he said, “It’s made her beautiful, Ben, hasn’t it?” And it had that. She’d always had a good face, Julia Caterina, but the change had shaped it over, same as it had shaped her body. There was a wildness mixed in with the old sweetness now—mermaids is animals, some ways—and it had turned her, whetted her, into summat didn’t have no end to how beautiful it could be. I told you early on, they ain’t all beautiful, but even the ugly ones… see now, people got ends, people got limits—mermaids don’t. Mermaids got no limits, except the sea.

  She said his name, and her voice were different too—higher, yes, but mainly clearer, like all the clouds had blown off it. If that voice called for you, even soft, you’d hear it a long way. Henry Lee picked her up in his arms and put his cheek against hers, and she held onto him, and that tail tried to hold him too, bumping hard against his legs. I thought to slip out of there unnoticed, me and me blanket, but then Henry Lee said, quiet-like, “We could… I suppose we could put her in the water tonight, couldn’t we, Ben?”

  Well, I turned round on that like a shot, telling him, “Not near!” I pointed at the three double lines on both sides of her neck, so faint they were, still barely visible in her skin. “The gill slits ain’t opened yet—drop her in a bathtub, she’d likely drown. Happen they might never open, I don’t know. I’m telling you straight, I never seen this—I don’t know!”

  She looked at me then, and she smiled a little, but it weren’t her smile. I leaned closer, and she said in English, so softly Henry Lee didn’t hear, “Unbind my hair.”

  They don’t all have long golden hair, that’s just nursery talk. I seen one off Porto Rico had a mane red as sunset clouds, and I seen a fair old lot with thick dark hair like Julia Caterina’s. But I never touched none of them before. It weren’t me place to touch her neither, and Henry Lee standing by, too, but I done it anyway, like it were the hair asking me to do it, and not her. First twitch, it all come right down over me hands, ripe and heavy and hot—hot like I’d spilled cooking oil on meself, the way it clings and keeps burning, and water makes it worse. Truth, for a minute I thought me hands was ablaze—seemed like I could see them burning like fireships through that black swirly tangle wouldn’t let them go. I yelled out then—I ain’t shamed none to admit it, I know what I felt—and I snatched me hands right back, and of course there weren’t a mark on them. And I looked into her eyes, and they was green and gray and green again, like the salt wine, and she laughed. She knew I were frighted and hurting, and she laughed and laughed.

  I thought there were nothing left of her then—all gone, the little Portygee woman who’d sat in me chair and said something nobody else never said to me before. But then the eyes was hers again, all wide with fear and love, and she reached out for Henry Lee like she really were drowning. Aye, that were the worst of it, some way, those last two days, ’acos of one minute she’d be hissing like a cat, did he try to touch her or pet her, flopping away from him, the way you’d have thought he were her worst enemy in the world. Next minute, curled small in his arms, trembling all over, weeping dry-eyed, the way mermaids do, and him singing low to her in Portygee, sounded like nursery rhymes. Never saw him blubbing himself, not one tear.

  She didn’t stay in the bed much no more, but managed to get around the room using her arms and her tail—practicing-like, you see. Wouldn’t eat nothing, no matter Henry Lee cozened her with the freshest fish and crab, mussels just out of the sea. Sometimes at first she’d take a little water, but by and by she’d show her teeth and knock the cup out of his hand. Mermaids don’t drink, no more nor fish do.

  They don’t sleep, neither—not what you’d call sleeping—so there’d be one of us always by her, him or me, for fear she’d do herself a mischief. We wasn’t doing much sleeping then ourselves, by then, so often enough we’d find ourselves side by side, not talking, just watching her while she watched the sea through the window and the moon ripened in the trees. The one time we ever did talk about it, he said to me, “You were right, Ben. I haven’t been punished nearly enough for what I’ve done.”

  “Some get punished too much,” I says, “and some not at all. Don’t seem to make much difference, near as I can tell.”

  Henry Lee shakes his head. “You got out the moment you knew we might have harmed even one person. I stayed on. I’ll never be quits for this, Ben.”

  I don’t have no answer, except to tell him about a thing I did long ago that I’m still being punished for meself. I’d never told nobody before, and I’m not about to tell you now. I just did it to maybe help Henry Lee a little, which it didn’t. He patted me back and squeezed me shoulder a little bit, but he didn’t say no more, and nor did I. We sat together and watched Julia Caterina in the moonlight.

  Come that nineteenth night, the moon rose full to bursting, big and bright and yellow as day, with one or two red streaks, like an egg gone bad, laying down a wrinkly-gold path you could have walked on to the horizon… or swum down, as the case might be. Julia Caterina went wild at the sight, beating at the window the way you’d have thought she were a moth trying to get to the candle. It come to me, she’d waited for this moon the same way the turtles wait to come ashore and lay their eggs in the light—the way those tiny fish I disremember flood over the beaches at high tide, millions of them, got to get those eggs buried fast, before the next wave sweeps them back out to sea. Now it were like the moon were waiting for her, and she knew the way there.

  “Not yet,” Henry Lee says, desperate-like, “not yet—they’ve not….” He didn’t finish, but I knew he were talking about the pale lines on her neck, darker every day, but still not opened into proper gill slits. But right as he spoke, right then, those same lines swelled and split and flared red, and that sudden, they was there, making her more a fish than the tail ever could, because now she didn’t need the land at all, or the air. Aye, now she could stay under water all the time, if she wanted. She were ready for the sea, and she knew it, no more to say.

  Henry Lee carried her in his arms all the way down from his grand house—their house until two nights ago—to the water’s edge, nobody to see nowt, just a couple of fishing boats anchored offshore. A dugout canoe, too, which you still used to see in them days. She wriggled out of his arms there, turning in the air like a cat, and a little wave splashed up in her face as she landed, making her laugh and splash back with her tail. Henry Lee were drenched right off, top to toe, but you could see he didn’t know. Julia Caterina—her as had been Julia Caterina—she swam round and round, rolling and diving and admiring all she could do in the water. There’s nothing fits the sea like a mermaid—not fish, not seals, dolphins, whales, nothing. There in the moonlight, the sea looked happy to be with her.

  I can’t swim, like I told you—I just waded in a few steps to watch her playing so. All on a sudden—for all the world like she’d heard a call from somewhere—she did a kind of a swirling cartwheel, gave a couple of hard kicks with that tail, and like that, she’s away, no goodbye, clear of the shore, leaving her own foxfire trail down the middle of that moonlight path. I thought she were gone then, gone forever, and I didn’t waste no time in gawping, but turned to see to Henry Lee. He were standing up to his knees in the water, taking his shirt off.

  “Henry Lee,” I says. “Henry Lee, what the Christ you doing?” He don’t even look over at me, but throws the shirt back toward the shore and starts unbuttoning his trews. Bought from the only bespoke gentlemen’s tailor in Velha Goa, those pants, still cost you half what you’d pay in Lisbon. Henry Lee just drops them in the water. Goes to work getting rid of his smallclothes, kicking off his soaked shoes, while I’m yapping at him about catching cold, pneumonia. Henry Lee smiles at me. Still got most all his teeth, which even the Portygee nobs can’t say they do, most of them. He says, “She’ll be lonely out there.”

  I said summat, must have. I don’t recall what it were. Standing there naked, Henry Lee says, “She’l
l need me, Ben.”

  “She’s got all she needs,” I says. “You can’t go after her.”

  “I promised I’d make it up to her,” he says. “What I did. But there’s no way, Ben, there’s no way.”

  He moves on past me, walking straight ahead, water rising steady. I stumble and scramble in front of him, afeared as I can be, but he’s not getting by. “You can’t make it up,” I tells him. “Some things, you can’t ever make up—you live with them, that’s all. That’s the best you can do.” He’s taller by a head, but I’m bigger, wider. He’s not getting by.

  Henry Lee stops walking out toward the deep. Confused-like, shaking his head some, starts to say me name… then he looks over me shoulder and his eyes go wide, with the moon in them. “She’s there,” he whispers, “she came back for me. There, right there.” And he points, straining on his toes like a nipper sees the Dutch-biscuit man coming down the street.

  I turn me head, just for an instant, just to see where he’s pointing. Summat glimmers in the shadow of the dugout, diving in and out of the moonlight, and maybe it’s a dolphin, and maybe it’s Henry Lee’s wife, turning for one last look at her poor husband who’d driven both of their lives on the rocks. Didn’t know then, don’t know now. All I’m sure of is, the next minute I’m sitting on me arse in water up to me chin, and Henry Lee’s past me and swimming straight for that glimmer—long, raking Devonshire strokes, looking like he could go on forever if he had to. And bright as the night was, I lost sight of him—and her too, it, whatever it were—before he’d reached that boat. Bawled for him till me voice went—even tried to go after him in the dugout—but he were gone. They were gone.

  His body floated in next afternoon. Gopi found it, sloshing about in the shallows.

  Her family turned over every bit of ground around that house of Henry Lee’s, looking for where he’d buried her. I’m dead sure they believe to this day that he killed Julia Caterina and then drowned himself, out of remorse or some such. They was polite as pie whenever we met, no matter they couldn’t never stand one solitary thing about me—but after she disappeared only times I saw them was at a feria, where they’d always cut me dead. I didn’t take it personal.