Something Rich and Strange

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  She began to walk a little faster. From the time after the coming of the sea hare, there were her two drawings, and there was Adam’s jewelry. She hadn’t looked at either for some time; for all she knew, the sea hare had crawled back out of the picture carrying all of Adam’s things. If not, maybe there was some clue, somewhere. An inky arrow, a dotted line, a trail of earrings showing the way. Follow the yellow brick road, the path of the setting sun, take the road not taken…

  At home, she checked her drawings first. The tide pool, matted but not yet framed, still held its unexpected visitor. Her hair still floated in the tide, tangled in Dory’s hook. She went downstairs, into the shop, where Jenny was wrapping a necklace of moonstones for a customer. She went behind the counter, gazed down through the glass at the shelf where Adam’s jewelry was displayed. Jenny turned to her as the customer left.

  “He’s selling very well,” she commented. “Don’t you think we should get a few more pieces? And we have some money for him he never picked up.”

  Megan, finding no messages in the gold spirals, the penguin pin of moonstone and onyx, made a noise. She straightened, her eyes still on the fine work. “I don’t know where he is.”

  “He must have left a phone number.”

  “Not with me.”

  “An address?” Her white brows rose above her glasses. “He must have given Jonah some idea… Now where did Jonah put—” She opened a drawer or two, then lifted the phone and removed the address book beneath it. “What is his last name?”

  “Fin.” Megan slid her hands over her eyes, feeling a sudden urge to laugh. “Adam Fin.”

  Jenny ruffled pages. “Well, he’s not under Fin. Maybe Adam?”

  “I don’t think even Jonah knew. He asked me once where Adam lived.”

  “He never left a number?”

  “No.” Her voice came out unexpectedly husky; she bent over the counter again, swallowing past the burn in her throat. “He didn’t leave anything. Except these.”

  “Well,” Jenny said again, blankly. “That’s odd. He’ll be back, sooner or later, to check, I’m sure. I’ve sold at least one thing every day. And someone said she’d think about the penguin pin. Someone bought the sea otter pin just yesterday—I told Jonah to take that. And the blue whale earrings got snapped up right away.”

  Megan, chin on her palm, swiveled to look at her. “What else?” she asked dully. “Do you remember?”

  “Of course. I made a list. How else would we know what to pay him?”

  “Oh.”

  Jenny smiled a little and produced it efficiently from the drawer beneath the register. “The sea turtle pin. The cats-on-fishhooks earrings. The bracelet of silver dolphins. The rabbit-moon earrings.”

  “Which?”

  “The black rabbits running under the quarter moons.”

  “But I remember—” She moved abruptly; her elbow slid jarringly off the counter. “But Adam was wearing one when he first came.”

  Jenny shrugged. “He must like them. The gold-and-amethyst pendant—”

  “Hare.”

  “What?”

  She was staring at Jenny. “Hare. Not rabbit.”

  “Well,” Jenny said tolerantly, “whichever.” She went back to her list, while Megan, gazing at amethyst and moonstone through the glass, followed the trail of the sea hare into her life.

  Jonah, left alone for a long time under the mermaid’s smile, was driven finally, by her blind stare of pearl and wormwood, to leave her for something that could see him. He moved easily, he found, through an element that seemed to shift constantly between air and shadow, water and light. Sometimes he saw clearly how he wandered, along with whale and mackerel and jellyfish, through rooms whose walls were living coral, with ceilings of pearl and gold, or walls of giant kelp rising open to the light, jeweled fish darting among the leaves. Occasionally figures passed him, so vague he barely recognized the sudden sketch of color, the swirl of water, until he felt their eyes, their attention. Once or twice, he followed more familiar forms, humans of a dreamlike beauty, long hair bound with pearls and cowrie shells, slender feet disturbing not a grain of sand. These he would have expected, if he had ever thought about such a place. They would melt away eventually, reappear with hands of scallop shells and jet black eyes that never blinked. Sometimes they followed him; he would feel their eyes and turn, and find something part kelp, part luminous, and always with those intense, unblinking eyes. They never spoke. Once, compelled to turn, he found a tiny purple animal rippling after him, leaving a glistening trail that hardened into mother-of-pearl. He recognized the sea hare. Something that looked like a fat gray cucumber flowed up behind it and ate it. He heard Adam’s laughter.

  He began seeing odd human things: bits of time frozen on the ocean floor. Some he expected: the pirate’s chest sagging open, spilling coins and diamonds; the marble head of a warrior gazing pensively at a brain coral; a gold goblet; a steel buckler lost in some sea battle; cannonballs, like the eggs of some huge sea turtle, scattered in the sand. These lay where they had fallen, in the midst of gardens blown of glass, in hallways, on tables, in fountains that spilled air instead of water. In one of the gardens, where colorless roses glistened like ice around him, and he walked a path of darkly gleaming fish scales, he heard the faint, gentle song that haunted him.

  He stopped. It came from everywhere. The light changed, or his vision became unearthly for a moment: The shining towers of light and gold, the gardens spun of glass, the windows of every fish’s color, were of such loveliness he knew he had stepped beyond his world. A pearl fell from his eye. And then the vision was gone, leaving him alone, neither of one world or another. But the song, stealing like rapture into his blood, was unchanged, and it beckoned now from one fixed place in the sea.

  He moved again, more quickly. The sea itself lured him: A leaf traced his lips with its fine edge as he pushed through a stand of kelp; others clung briefly, intimately, like hands. He found a path of soft white sand or crushed pearl beyond the kelp; the song, flowing on its own warm current, grew stronger. He followed the path, tripped over a wooden mast with a rotting sail, then climbed over a cargo of burst oak barrels. Within the slats of one barrel, he saw the mad, bald, old-man’s face of an eel; it chilled him, but did not notice him. Something nibbled delicately at his ear: a tiny fish grazing as through the inner whorls of a shell. The path vanished under a huge tangle of cable; he climbed it, and then what looked like a jungle of plumbing pipes, scarcely noticing what he picked his way over, intent only on finding the path again. He found it, meandering like the song into a garden whose walls of coral and anemone and stone rose higher than his head, lining the path. Pale anemones opened slowly as he passed, showing him their hungry mouths. The path veered sharply, ended at a wall. He stopped; the song beckoned on the other side. He retraced his steps, turned a corner, another, and was stopped again, by a solid mass of crimson coral. The song, stronger now, came from beyond it. He stood a moment, bewildered, while small fish darted through his floating hair. And then he recognized the maze.

  He gave a cry of frustration and longing; all around him coral polyps snapped shut. But the singing, deep, languorous, soothed him, coaxed him to turn, try again, turn down the next branch, where the singer would be, pale as pearl, sleek and naked as a fish, her long black hair jeweled with bright anemone; there, she would be, not there, but there, not this turning, but that, or most certainly that. She would be there, singing, her long fingers gently sliding over, under an oyster, feeling for its pearl.

  He reached the end, found not a mermaid, but a little ivory door set in a vast black wall that cut across the center of the maze. There were no more choices to make, there was only the closed door, and the singing on the other side of the wall. He opened it, resigned to finding the other half of the maze. The singing drifted over him, through him, murmuring, enticing.

  What lay before him stunned him.

  He closed the door after a long time, stood with his face against it, t
rembling. Still the singer called to him, the haunting voice of the siren, with her hair of drifting kelp and her icy fingers of foam: Come to me. Come. I am all the beauty in the sea, leave your mortal world and come…

  He felt someone beside him, knew without looking who it was. He whispered, “That’s death in there.”

  Adam leaned beside the door, his own face carved of ivory, as colorless and hard. “You see.”

  She was still singing, still pulling at his heart, his bones. “Why? Why there?”

  “She is waiting for you,” Adam said shortly. “That is where she chooses to wait. You followed her between earth and water to find her. You wanted her that badly.”

  He stared at the door, as if he could see through it across the dark and terrible waste, to the luminous tower at its heart. “I can’t.” He swallowed; there was a pearl caught in his throat, pearls trapped behind his eyes. “I can’t fight my way across that.”

  “Then find your own way back to your world,” Adam said. His eyes were deadly as the eel’s eyes; his voice colder than the abyss. “This is her price: You will find her in that tower. This is mine: If you refuse, you will stay here forever, between earth and water, neither of one world or another; you will never die, and you will never cease to hear her sing.

  “Choose.”

  Six

  Megan gazed into the tide pool, looking for the sea hare. She had brought her drawing pad, to try to coax it back into the world. The anemones were still there; the starfish had crawled away; the chiton, nibbling pink algae, had turned pinker. She dipped her hand into the pool, stirred the bottom. Nothing popped to the surface; nothing shifted itself beneath the sand into her hand. She dried her hand on her knee, leaning over to watch the water still. It reflected the blank morning mists, the shadow of her face.

  She whispered, “Adam.”

  And he was there, looking up at her, through her dark reflection.

  She jerked back, with a cry. He lifted his hand above the surface of the water, seized her wrist. He didn’t pull her, just held her: an arm coming out of a circle of rocks holding eight inches of water. She felt like a shrimp grabbed by an anemone.

  He said nothing; his face, colorless, expressionless, beautiful, seemed hardly human. He wore something that looked like fish scales; a tiny sand dollar, like the one in her box, clung to his hair. A basket starfish, its intricate arms weaving and branching, spread itself across his chest.

  She was shaking with shock, with his sudden unfamiliarity. She found her voice finally. “I was—I’m looking for Jonah.” Still he said nothing, his face underwater rippling a little, as the wind brushed the pool. She heard her heart pound, in his silence. “Can you help me?”

  He spoke finally. “There is a price.”

  She nodded, hardly hearing, so relieved that he still spoke, and in a language she understood. “I’ll pay it. I just want Jonah back.”

  “He does not know his own way back.”

  She nodded again, jerkily. “So. Then I’ll come for him.” She paused, her eyes on the unblinking, sea green eyes. “But will he—will he come with me?”

  She got no answer for a moment. Then, in a swift, graceful seal’s movement, he had slid out of the pool to the rocks beside her, so effortlessly she never felt his weight, just the altered position of his hand. He seemed camouflaged against the rocks, almost in visible; his scaly garment had changed color to suit his background.

  “I don’t know,” he said. He shrugged lightly. “He’s drifting like a ghost between worlds, neither here nor there, enchanted by a song, afraid to reach the singer. When he cries, he cries pearls; sea mosses drift against him and cling. He won’t die there, but it’s not much of a life.”

  Her eyes were huge behind her glasses. She opened her mouth; words stuck, burning. “Pearls?”

  “It’s pointless, crying tears in the sea.”

  “Jonah—Jonah doesn’t cry.”

  He looked at her; something behind his eyes—ice, a smile—made her shift. “He learned.”

  She drew breath through her open mouth. She said somberly, her eyes on the line where the pale mists touched the sea, “I’d better go and get him.”

  “If you want him. Why would you? He left you.”

  “You took him,” she said, and glanced at his fingers on her wrist. “You wanted him. I don’t know why. That little sea hare in my drawing—that was you. You make the rules.”

  “Still,” he answered softly, “he may not want to return I can’t promise that he will.”

  “Well.” She withheld tears stubbornly, turning her face to let the wind hide it beneath her hair. “What if he does want to come back and he doesn’t know how? I can’t just let him float around like a kelp leaf, dropping pearls and wishing he had something to read.”

  He smiled slightly. “You still love him? In spite of her?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know. But I can’t leave him there with nothing human to talk to.” She lifted her head, shook hair out of her face. “How do I get down there? How did he find his way down?”

  “He was seduced by the sea.”

  She blinked. Then she met his eyes and felt the blood burn in her face. “That’s how.”

  “That’s one way.”

  “Well.” She licked her lips. “What are the other ways?”

  His smile deepened. “I could take you there. Why don’t you let me? It is the simplest way. Like falling into a dream. You take me in, I take you in. Simple.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Why? Jonah was unfaithful to you. He can’t expect you to be faithful to him.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Am I so unattractive to you?”

  “You’re beautiful, but you frighten me. Jonah, I know. And you’d make it easy for me to get into your world, but how easy would it be for me to get back? Nobody told Jonah how to get back.”

  He made a soft sound, and loosed her wrist finally. “Shrewd. You want to get there and back again.”

  “With Jonah.”

  “If he chooses. It will cost you,” he reminded her.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  “Yes, whatever it will cost.”

  “Not so shrewd.”

  “No,” she sighed, “but I don’t know how to bargain for Jonah. I don’t know how to say, you can have this for him, but not this. I don’t know what he’s not worth because right now he’s costing me everything. So take what’s left. What do you want?”

  “I’ll tell you when you find me again.”

  “Where—” She reached out then, to hold him, but he was sliding back down into the tide pool. “Wait! Adam!” She plunged her hand in after him, caught his hair; it turned into sea moss and left a tiny sand dollar in her fingers. She flung it in despair back into the pool. “Adam!”

  Three bubbles surfaced, floated a moment, and then popped, one after another, sending words into the air. “Draw,” they said, “the stairs.”

  So she opened her drawing pad and sat there, drawing the stairs she remembered from her dream. They began in the tide, each ebbing wave revealing another step, and then another. As she drew, the mists overhead blew inland and sunlight streaked the water. She made the steps out of pearls and kelp leaf, coral, scallop shells, the first step visible where the first wave broke, and the others sloping down, while the waves scrolled above them. As they descended into deep water, she drew kelp forests and seals and perch, sharks, the great winged rays, the whales that swam along her path. On the top step, she drew the sea hare.

  She looked up then, and saw the light glistening, breaking, glistening on something that the waves, stroke by stroke, were excavating like a lost city from the sand. She dropped paper and pen and ran, leaping off the rocks into the shallow surf, splashing through the tide, deeper and deeper until she reached the first white step. She looked down and saw them unfolding endlessly down, so far that the creatures of the deep swam, as she had drawn them, in vast cliffs of water along the stairs
. She went down one step, a second, a third. Just before the walls broke and flooded together over her head, she saw the gold towers shining at the bottom of the sea.

  Jonah, left alone, stayed for a long time beside the door, sitting on the pearl path, his ear to the ivory, as close as he could get to the ancient and beautiful face of the singer. Twice, he rose and opened the door. Twice, he closed it, sat back down, unable to enter, unable to turn away from the woman for whom he had swallowed the sea. Finally he rose, drifted through the coral maze as if he were following the halting, incoherent pattern of his thoughts. He turned a corner at random and found Dory unexpectedly, pruning coral with a parrotfish.

  She wore a long, flowing pale green garment; but for the fish in her hand, she might have been some Victorian dowager tidying her garden. Her wild gray hair was being tidied by tinier fish, who picked the bubbles and dead plankton out of it as she worked. She glanced at Jonah before he could back out; he passed her, his shoulders hunched a little, against the hooked barbel of her derision.

  But she said only, “You’re not the first.”

  He stopped. “The first what?”

  “The first to look at that and turn away.” She gestured with the fish. “Sit.”

  Hoe did, on a ledge of dead coral, grateful beyond words that she deigned to speak. He asked uneasily, “What happened to the others?”

  “Adam keeps his word. They’ve faded by now, overgrown with mosses, barnacles. They haunt the pilings of rotting piers; they fling themselves into every tide, hoping to be cast ashore.”