by Rachel Caine
Nothing thrives where it isn’t meant to be. That’s why we’re so careful with our classes, no matter how useless they are. Fail the tests and the government takes you away from the carnival, to suffocate in airless rooms that never move. Being found by the water didn’t make Mama a sea-baby, but they should have been more careful. They shouldn’t have taken her.
“They did as right by her as they could; I don’t want you to think otherwise,” says Uncle Chester. “She was happy, and she was dry, mostly. She hated to be wet when I met her. Took showers instead of baths, wouldn’t go outside when it was raining. Said the water made her head fuzzy. That was at the start of the summer.” His gaze is far away. He isn’t with me. Oh, he’s still here, but it’s a here that happened eighteen years ago, before I even existed. “She asked if we’d come back when the leaves turned, give them a proper autumn carnival. Maybe it was wrong of me—you shouldn’t change the schedule to suit your own whims; I knew that then, and I know it even better now—but you didn’t see her. She was perfect. Smart as a con and pretty as a midway morning. I said I’d see her in August.”
“And you did,” I say. I don’t want to hear the rest of this story. It doesn’t belong here, in my small dry room where mermaids are myths and mothers, not bright-eyed teenage girls who ask friendly carnies if they’ll be coming back through town. “You came back, and she came away with you, and everything was happy ever after.”
Uncle Chester eyes me sternly. “Ada Miller. Does this look like ‘happy ever after’ to you?”
I don’t have an answer for that.
“You’re right about one thing: we did come back. I was new to running this show, and everyone was a little slow to listen, but my daddy taught me well, and my brothers vouched for me before they split off with their own shows, and eventually, everyone listened. We turned around, and we came rolling back into Huntsville, looking for profits, looking for marks . . . and looking for that teenage girl who’d smiled at me so bright when she was standing in the shadows of the midway.” He sighs again. For the first time in my life, I realize that Uncle Chester is getting old. “I found her. She came to the carnival the first night we were open, and her stomach was already starting to swell up under the dress she wore, and the scales . . . the first time I saw her, I thought she was wearing body glitter. They’d been so small, and so easy to overlook. Not that time. They were the size of my pinkie nail, and they were all along her collarbone. ‘I can’t stay out of the water anymore, Mr. Miller, and I don’t know who I am when I go under,’ that’s what she said. She asked if we’d take her with us. She didn’t want her baby born here.”
“But what about—”
“We’ve never talked about your father, Ada, and I know you’ve wanted to. I know you’ve guessed at who it might be.”
I blush, feeling my cheeks turn hot and red. “I thought it might be one of the cousins,” I say.
“I wish it were. But your mama was pregnant when she came to us, and whoever got her that way . . .” He takes a breath before he says, as slow and measured as a man pulling nails out of a board, “The Marti I met on the midway would have done almost anything to stay out of the water, and the Marti who was waiting for me when I brought the carnival back around had gone to the water of her own free will. That tells me she had some things she wanted to forget, and she’d already figured out what the rest of us had yet to learn: to a mermaid, every body of water is the River Lethe. All she had to do was go under and she’d forget whatever happened to her. Only, once she started drowning, she couldn’t stop. You pulled her out of it for a few years. She tried so hard for you. In the end, I suppose she was too tired to keep swimming.”
He stops speaking. I don’t say anything. I’m trying to wrap my mind around the size of what he’s said, and I can’t, I can’t. I can’t be here, thinking these things; I can’t be the reason Mama chose to go into the water and forget the girl she’d been, the one who was sweet enough to pull the carnival off schedule and back to Huntsville. I can’t.
Uncle Chester puts an arm around my shoulders. “Stop it,” he says sternly. “I can see what you’re thinking, and you need to stop right now. Whatever happened, it wasn’t your fault. We just have to deal with what we have to deal with now.”
“And what’s that?” I ask bitterly.
“I think you know what that is. Someone recognized you; someone was asking after your mama.” Uncle Chester shakes his head. “We have to tread careful, that’s all. We don’t want someone getting clever and deciding they have a right to you just because they want you.”
“Why can’t we leave?”
He looks at me calmly, and I know he knows I eavesdropped on them, just as surely as I know he’ll never call me on it. I’m expected to do things like that. If I can’t sneak around on my family, how am I supposed to sneak around on a bunch of strangers? Still, even as I’m expected to do my share of spying, he’s expected to pretend I’d never stoop so low. “We can’t afford it,” he says, and there’s something bone-dry and adult about those words. They’re bleaker than they were when he said the same thing to Duncan. There it was a secret; here it’s a confession. “We’re at the end of the season, and we still have some bills to cover. The big coaster needs repairs, and the Haunted House has to be completely rebuilt before spring. Your mama’s tank . . . the cost of the water alone is something that has to be thought of whenever we set a route. We’re here because we can’t afford to cross the South without stopping, and we can’t afford to pull up stakes and head out. Not without making some gate. If it were almost any other reason, we’d already be rumors and dust, and damn what it would do to our reputation.”
Numbers don’t lie. People lie—townies, especially, to us, and us, especially, to townies—but numbers are the faith by which a carnival lives and dies. I swallow and force myself to nod. “I understand, Uncle,” I say. “I’ll be careful.”
“Good girl.” He leans forward and kisses the crown of my head, the way he’s been doing since I was just a ticket stub of a child. “You’ve always been a good girl.”
Then he stands and leaves me alone in the hot dry air of my trailer. I watch him go, and wonder if being good isn’t its own punishment as much as it’s supposed to be its own reward.
When I sleep, I dream of mermaids.
I wake up screaming.
—
I DON’T HAVE time to dwell over the next three days; they pass in a dizzy whirl of preparations, posters, and a thousand small, half-forgotten tasks that seem to build up in corners, waiting to spring. The rides are assembled and tested; the sideshows are set up, and the attractions are brought, grumbling, to take their places. Mama has the best tent, of course. She’s not the show’s only genuine “biological impossibility”—the modern-day way of saying “freak” without offending anybody—but she’s definitely our high-ticket item, or has been, these last few years. I have to wonder how much longer that’s going to last, with her slipping a little further away from human every season.
Duncan turns on the Ferris wheel while I’m screwing the safety bars into place, and he laughs at me when I shout at him. Classes are canceled for all the cousins young enough to be in schooling, and we swarm like monkeys across the forming landscape of the midway. There’s always so much to do, and we race the bell to opening day.
When it comes, it’s perfect. No place in the world does autumn like the American South, and nothing suits the autumn like a carnival. Even the air tastes like harvest. The sun is neither too hot nor too cold, and the humidity is low enough that I can smear body glitter on my arms and legs and go out in a tank top and shorts, pretending my scales are just a part of the show I’m putting on for the townies.
And oh, the townies. They come by the dozens; they come by the hundreds, flocking to see what wonders we have to offer. I spend the morning shilling for the midway games, sometimes alone, carrying teddy bears three times my size and laughing about how easy they were to win, and sometimes with Duncan, letting h
im “prove his skill” over and over. Everyone knows the booths are rigged. Everyone plays all the same—and a certain number of people do get prizes, even if almost none of them actually win anything. We want Huntsville to remember us fondly, after all. Towns that remember us fondly tell their friends to watch for our banners, and that can make the difference between a lean year and one where we’re rolling in the clover.
When the sun dips low on the horizon, the tenor of the carnival changes. The families pack it in, heading home with sunburns and sticky fingers and heads full of memories. Some of the younger cousins wait by the gate for the sole purpose of waving and cajoling them to come back before we leave. It’s a fun duty, as long as you can endure a few nasty comments from the townie kids. The cousins aren’t allowed to throw rocks at them. I’ve always considered that unfair.
With the children gone, the midway belongs to the teenagers and the sideshows belong to the adults, all of them looking for an adventure. That’s part of what makes autumn so perfect for carnivals: just the right balance between darkness and daylight.
Uncle Chester sees me heading for the Ferris wheel and waves me over, a mercenary glint in his eyes. “You up for barking?” he asks.
I’m a good barker. One of the show’s best, especially when it comes to the “biological impossibilities.” Maybe it’s my resemblance to Mama, or maybe it’s that I enjoy yelling at townies until they pony up for another ticket. “I’d need to change,” I say.
“That’s fine. I’ve got Eglantine and her girls warming up the crowd, but that just gets the people to the tents. I’m counting on your fine turn of phrase to get the people in the tents.”
I smile. “Happy to.”
“Good girl. Just let me call one of the cousins to walk you to your trailer.”
“I don’t need that,” I say. “This is home, remember?” I turn and run out of the neon brilliance of the carnival, heading into the bone yard before he can tell me to stop. My trailer isn’t far, and it won’t take me long to change—all I’ll need is a sequined jacket, some better shorts, maybe a hat—
I’m so busy thinking about the possibilities that I don’t realize someone is stepping out of the shadows before they’re grabbing me, arms locking around my shoulders in something that feels obscenely like affection. I take a breath to scream for help. A cloth is forced over my nose and mouth, and it’s too late, the inhale has begun and I can’t stop it in time.
The last thing I see before I lose consciousness is the light from the midway, reflecting off the window of my trailer like the ghost of some impossibly distant harbor.
And then even that is gone.
—
WHEN I WAKE up, the room is wrong.
Everything else is wrong, too—the air is too wet, the bed I’m on is too soft, and unlike the contortionists, I don’t usually fall asleep with my wrists and ankles tied. But it’s the room that’s the worst. The walls are wood paneled, the sort of thing you see in townie houses. The ceiling is the same, and the light is too bright, the sort of electric glare you only get when you’re hooked to the city power grid instead of running off an honest gennie.
My breathing must have changed. The woman from the convenience store is suddenly leaning over me. The sorrow in her eyes is gone, replaced by a bright glare that almost hurts to see. “Hello, sweetheart,” she says, and touches my cheek. I jerk away from her hand as best as I can. The ropes they’ve used to tie me down haven’t left much room.
If my movement bothers her, she doesn’t show it. She just smiles, looking away from me as she calls, “She’s awake.” Then she focuses back on my face. She looks hungry. I don’t want to be the thing that fills her up. “I’m sorry about before. We had to get you away from those people, and we didn’t think you’d come willingly. They’ve had too long to twist your mind around.”
“It only took a season with our Marti.” The voice is bitter, and I don’t need to look to know that it belongs to the old man from the convenience store, the one with the bad toupee and the bone-thin arms. “Look at me, girl. You’ve been kept away too long.”
“ ‘Those people’ are my family,” I say, turning to face him. “Untie me. I want to go home.”
“A carnival’s no place for a young girl, and you’ve got no business running around like a barefoot slut in the company of carnies,” says the man, with perfect calm. This is the truth as he knows it. There is no room for anything else in his world. He leans forward, studying me. “You look too much like your mother” is his final verdict. “We’ll have to keep an eye on you.”
“Who are you?” I demand.
His hand lashes toward my face. I expect a blow, but it turns into a caress at the last minute, fingers light against my cheek. I shudder. “I’m your grandfather,” he says. “Mind me, now, and everything will be all right. Patricia?”
“Yes, sir?” asks the woman.
“See she doesn’t go anywhere. She needs to learn to hold her tongue when she’s speaking with her elders.” He pulls his hand away from my face and turns, leaving the room.
As soon as the door closes, I start to demand, “What is wrong with you people? I am not—”
The woman—Patricia—doesn’t pull her blow the way the man did. Her palm strikes my cheek, rocking my head to the side. “Don’t talk back,” she says. There’s no anger in her voice. I almost wish there was. Anger, I could understand. “We tried to save your poor lost mama’s soul, and we failed her. We’ll save you. We won’t fail again.”
Do mermaids even have souls? “I don’t need saving,” I say.
Patricia’s smile is hard, a knife for me to impale myself against. “That’s what all the lost ones say.” She stands, following the man out of the room. She turns the lights out before she exits, and leaves me in the sudden and absolute dark.
No one does dark like city people. They have too much light, and they have walls that are thicker than walls need to be. It’s like they cultivate the darkness even as they try to beat it back. I close my eyes and wait, holding my breath to make it easier to listen for the sound of receding footsteps. Once I’m sure that I’m alone, I start to pull against the rope that holds me to the bed.
That sort of thing only works in the movies. After what feels like an hour, I’m bleeding and sore, and the ropes are still holding me fast. Alone and afraid, I start to cry.
I’m still crying when I fall asleep.
—
DAWN WAKES ME, coming through windows I didn’t know were there. I open my eyes and the old man is waiting for me, standing framed against the window.
“Marti was a gift from God,” he says, no hesitation, no preamble. “She was a test and a challenge, and we failed her. We will not fail you.”
“Let me go,” I say. “This isn’t legal. You can’t just kidnap me.”
“We’re your kin. We can do whatever we like with you.”
I want to protest, to tell him Mama was found, and that means they’re no more my blood kin than the carnival is. Less, even, since I grew up with the carnival. I know those people. I love them. I don’t know this old man at all.
But his eyes are the color of deep water, and my mother chose the water over remembering why she ran away, and I don’t say anything at all.
He seems to take that as agreement, because he smiles, and nods, and says, “I knew you’d be a better girl than she was.”
“Where are we?” It’s barely a whisper. It’s all I can manage.
“We’re home. That’s all you need to know.”
He steps away from the window, walking toward the bed, and behind him I see the sun glinting off a sheet of water that seems to stretch on forever. It reminds me of the few glimpses I’ve had of the ocean, when the carnival was close and I felt daring. My heart lurches, longing and terror tangling around me in a net I can’t shake off. I tear my eyes from the water, and there he is, my grandfather, standing close and looking at me.
“Are you my father?” The question is out before I can ca
ll it back.
His expression hardens. “No,” he says, biting the word in half between his teeth. “That would be a sin. You’ll meet your papa later, when you learn how to mind your tongue.”
The other man in the store, the one who asked about Mama first. It has to be. I want to laugh. I want to cry. Of all the places we could have gone, we had to pick the shop owned by the people who’d driven my mother out of Alabama. “Please,” I say. “Please, I want to go home.”
“This is your home, Ada,” he says. “The faster you come to realize that, the faster we can all make our peace with this.”
He doesn’t wait for me to say anything.
He just leaves.
—
THE SOUND OF voices raised in anger wakes me from another unintentional nap. I try to sit up, and the ropes pull me short, keeping me in place. Someone shouts. Someone else shouts back. There are words in that second cry: “They found us!”
And someone—Duncan, I think—is calling my name.
I yank against the ropes. There’s no give to them. I don’t have any other ideas, and so I take a breath, and yell, “Back here! I’m back here! Help! Help!”
The door bangs open and Patricia rushes in, a knife in her hand and the man who’s probably my father close behind her. “Shut your mouth,” she snarls, and grabs my wrist.
This is it: this has to be the end.
But the knife bites into the rope and not my flesh, and the man is ripping the ropes away from my ankles. I’m too weak to walk, and I don’t have the chance to try: he grabs me and slings me over his shoulder, running alongside Patricia for the door.
He carries me down a hall and out another door onto what I presume is the back lawn. The sun is too bright after being inside so long, but I force my eyes to stay open. I’m looking behind myself, my head bouncing hard against his back as he runs, and I can see Duncan’s pickup in front of the house, parked at a diagonal, alongside a dozen other cars from the carnival. They found me, they found me, and all I have to do is get away.