Her kisses were sharp with salt, her words Greek, but spoken with a lilting accent he had never heard. When they had loved, she sang a sea song to him, a lullaby about a child safe in his little rocking boat. After a time, they loved again; and he fell asleep.
The sun had set behind the bluff when the Nebraskan waded up through the surf. He found his clothes where he had hidden them and put them on again, humming the lullaby to himself.
By the time he was halfway to his inn, he had recalled a song about a mermaid who lost her morals down among the corals. He whistled it as he walked, and he was trying to remember the part about two kelp beds and only one got mussed when he opened the door of his room and saw his own bed had not been made. He found the innkeeper’s wife in the kitchen and complained, and she brought him clean sheets (he was the only guest the little inn had) and made the bed herself.
Next morning he set out along the beach, instead of the top of the bluff. He saw her while he was still some distance off, and thought at first that her body was only the sail of some unlucky fishing boat washed ashore. After another hundred steps he knew, without having to look at her face. He turned her over anyway, and tried to brush the sand from her eyes, then kicked at the little, scuttling crabs that had nibbled at her arms.
A voice behind him said, “She was the maid at your inn, Doctor.”
He spun around.
“She loved you. Perhaps you do not think it possible.”
“Thoe,” he said. And then, “Doctor Papamarkos.”
“And yet it is.” The tall woman unscrewed the top from her canteen and drank. “You, I think, cannot imagine what village life is like for such a girl, who has no money, no dowry. Then a stranger comes, and he is tall and strong, rich to her, a learned man respected by everyone. She heard the questions you asked of others, and she whispered her plan to me. I promised to help her if I could. This is all the help I can give her now, to make you understand that once you were loved. When you record love stories from the lips of old people, remember it.”
“I will,” he said. Something he could not swallow had lodged in his throat.
“Now you must go back to the inn and tell them. Not about you and her, but only that she is dead and you have recognized her, I will remain to watch.”
The path along the top of the bluff was shorter. He climbed to it, and he had gone perhaps two hundred yards along it when he realized he could not convey the news of a tragic death with any decency in his inadequate Greek. Thoe would have to tell them. He would wait until someone came.
From the top of the bluff, he saw her take off her wide belt and canteen and drop them on the sand. The khaki shirt and trousers followed. She was lean—though not so gaunt as he had imagined—when she unbound her long, dark hair and dove into the sea.
When she did not come up again, he clambered down to the beach for the last time. A sign had been traced in the wet sand beside the dead girl’s body; it might have been a cross with upswept arms, or the Greek letter ψ. There was nothing in any pockets of the khaki shirt, nothing in any pocket of the khaki trousers.
The Nebraskan opened the canteen and sniffed its contents. Then he put it to his lips and tilted it until the liquid touched his tongue.
As he expected, it was brine—sea water.
A Good Husband
Angela Slatter
The water here is sweet.
This pool is wide enough and deep enough to give me the space I crave. At the northern end a stream flows in from a larger river many miles distant; at the southern end a tributary retreats far, far away to the ocean. There the taste changes and becomes salty, the color murky. Fine enough for my cousins with their scaled tails and sharp nails, frilled gills, and tiny teeth. Well and good for the Sirens, ever more distant relatives, creatures who cannot decide between elements or even themselves, whether they are fish or fowl. Such a bitter home is not my choice though, oh no.
I love this place. It’s somewhere between a small lake and an overly large pond, a strange in-between thing, to be sure. The important point is this: it’s mine and mine alone. In some spots there are reeds, in others rocks for sitting while I comb my hair, grassy banks, and a thick screen of trees providing cover from the casual onlooker. I get visitors, oh yes, but only the women of Briarton (the town beyond the trees and over one hill, nesting in a gentle valley) come here with any kind of regularity. It’s mostly the unmarried girls. The Lake of the Mari-Morgan is a place they have claimed for themselves. They come to dance and sing and play. Before a special occasion like a wedding, they will conduct their toilettes here, washing their hair to make it shine and their skin so it glows (the water here is said to have beautifying properties—it’s true, my little kindness to them). With gifts, large and small, they beg my favor, pray, cry, give thanks, rail at fate or me (whichever pops into their heads first), yearn, and sometimes get what they want. If I can satisfy a request, I generally do. Sometimes I chose not to, simply so they do not take it for granted; on those occasions they seem to assume their wish was not worthy, or their offering even less so.
I do quite like them, humans, with their funny hearts and minds, their queerer souls. If I am honest, I find them amusing. If I am even more honest, the company they offer is worth the expenditure of magic to give them their heart’s desire. I am a solitary creature but sometimes isolation makes me ache.
Seldom do I show myself nowadays. Not that I am less beautiful or less vain, but I am infinitely more tired. If they see the weariness in my face, then what prospect for them? If an ageless being looks to have lost her spark, then . . . ? I speak only when I choose and it seems to work best as a disembodied voice—perhaps it’s the god-like quality. When I do appear it’s to make a point, a scene, a statement. Sometimes a clever girl will express, in front of her companions, disbelief that I exist. She might stand on my favorite rocky seat, the one a long step from the shore, and declaim her cynicism. What better way to prove her wrong than to be seen, gliding over the lake, all a-glimmer?
Their mothers stop coming after they wed. I have often wondered if their hope dies then, or marriage was simply what they wanted. Having achieved it, they are content to chew on that same meat. But they pass the faith on to their daughters.
This one, this tall thin woman who comes all hesitating through the trees, is different though. This one I am fascinated by, oh yes.
She leans down close to the liquid mirror of the lake. She has visited here since she was a little girl, always bringing a tiny offering of some kind: flowers, sweetmeats, salted fish, embroidered pieces of rag made beautiful with her cunning stitches. She has never asked for anything in return, not ever, not even before her own wedding. The name the other girls call to her is “Kitty”; she sews for them. They have attired themselves in marriage and ball gowns of her making after bathing here. I have seen those very dresses wrapped in sheets and draped carefully over bushes and branches until the moment they are required. I’ve watched Kitty sewing them by the water’s edge, smiling gently as her companions laugh and dance around her while she toils on their behalf.
This day, this hour, the scars on her face are still fresh, the reddish-brown of dried, scabbed blood. Two parallel lines run across the bridge of her nose before dropping down her left cheek. She will never be pretty again—and she was pretty, I will tell you that. Large blue eyes, a doll’s pouting mouth and hair that was most glorious—is most glorious still, yet looks like a joke now perched on the mess of her countenance.
When first it happened, she came here to weep. Blood flowed and mixed with her tears to drip into the water. That got my attention: grief and blood. Sacrifices very few ever make, although she did not know it for a sacrifice and there was no one to tell her.
Her friends urged her to wash her injuries in the lake and it did some good, made the healing faster, but in truth the scars will never be gone. There was too much force behind them and too much spite—that’s what makes them so deep, the spite. It bites not merely the fle
sh, but also the soul.
Kitty stares at her reflection, her features set in a determined way. She peers intently as if she might be able to see me through sheer force of will—she cannot although I lie right beneath her, studying her through the pane of water. The wounded woman opens her mouth and says, “Help me.”
Her tears start again and I can taste their salt as they drop down, forming ripples in my home.
“Help me,” she repeats. “Mari-Morgan, please help me.”
I kick away but make no disturbance in the glassy stillness. Blood and tears she gave me already, all unknowing. For this reason alone I must make answer to her summons. She will ask something great of me, something I may not be able to deliver. I can only throw out an obstacle for her and hope she will give up.
Rising, I become visible, walking across the surface as if it is solid. I know how I must look to her when she’s so ruined. I can see my reflection in her large eyes: silver-green hair, silver-peach skin, eyes like a deep lake that cannot decide between blue or green or black, and a not-quite-stable outline. I ripple, I shimmer, my element is also my essence—in a bright light you might even see through me. I defy the eye to focus properly.
“What would you have of me?” I ask in a voice that sounds like a rushing flood. She shakes her head at this hoped-for appearance and I can see that she did not quite believe it would happen. All these years she has brought offerings to a creature she was not sure existed. I am both touched and vaguely annoyed.
“Make him kind. Make him love me. Make him a good husband. Make my life better.” Her long hands move to her scarred visage even though she seems not to notice. She doesn’t quite touch the wounds and they must ache still, stretching tight and itching as they dry and knit. Kitty knows how much she asks.
“What will you give me?” I demand, as if the dripping blood and flowing grief were not enough. “Nothing can be granted without something in return, oh no.”
“What will you have? Ask anything,” she says unwisely.
A long time ago when I loved to be seen, when I was younger, less tired, more arrogant, then, for a time, I asked for dresses. I wanted, silly conceited thing, to wear the pretty clothes the human girls did, to adorn myself like the colorful birds that nest in the trees along the banks. And the maidens brought them to me, exquisite things, almost works of art and oftentimes more than the girls could afford—I’m fairly sure some of them dropped their own wedding dresses in. I marveled over them as they were held above the surface, watched as the sun glinted on buttons and silken bows, crystals and beads and velvet ribbons. They looked so lovely out there in the light when they were dry. Their owners would throw these glorious gowns into my lake and they would grow heavy and sink. I would scoop them up and struggle into the saturated frippery and find the garment, bereft of air and sun, had somehow died. Swimming in wet clothing is difficult to say the least. Shimmering and shimmying, floating and darting through water and lake weeds is neither easy nor pleasant when attired in a sodden drape of fabric. So I stopped asking for this particular kind of gift. I gave up and embraced my watery nakedness, my uncertain outline, and the translucent nature of my body.
But now here is a clever, clever girl with brilliant, cunning fingers who sews the way my sea cousins create storms, with the same aplomb and passion.
I make my request and see her heart sink. My unkindness will save her further distress, I tell myself. If she cannot fulfill my price, then both our lives will be easier. One should not ask for what one thinks one wants, it is never the same as it seems when you are not in possession of it; like those dresses, so lovely in the sunshine, so disappointing in my hands.
I do not expect to see her again, certainly not a week later when blood covers the moon and casts a curious light upon everything. Moonlight is ordinarily strange enough, but this moon, this night, this light . . . there is both a weird clarity and a distinct gloom, shapes at once sharp and blurred. It is through this odd illumination that I see Kitty slip, nervous as a cat. A leather satchel hangs at her side, the thick strap angling across her chest, dark against her pale dress.
When she reaches the edge of the lake, she kneels down, heedless of grass and dirt stains on her skirts. She removes the satchel and opens it, the metal clasp giving a snick that sounds shockingly loud in the stillness. She takes out a book, its ancient leather cover corrugated like a toad’s skin. I can see gold lettering on the spine, a large elaborate script. Murcianus it reads. Murcianus’ Little-known Lore.
I feel unaccountably excited.
Next she pulls forth a pair of large shears such as you might use to cut a thick or stubborn material. Then a small patchworked hedgehog of a ball stuck full with pins and needles. Finally, a spool of fine thread—it gleams and I know it cannot be mere silk. Oh, there is silk in the mix certainly, but there’s also flax and spider’s web among other things, fused and bound together by sheer dint of sorcery. Someone else has created it—this girl is not that kind. I will be surprised if she manages her task for I don’t sense any great magic in her.
Kitty takes the great scissors and leans out over the water. Tonight it shines like quicksilver. She has propped the Murcianus open on a flat rock and checks over the spell before proceeding to cut as if something lies just above the surface.
I think I can see it, the fabric of night and fluid at which she snips. I can see it ruche and crumple and fray, but I’m not sure how much she can see. Still and all, as her confidence grows and her fingers become steadier, as she begins to believe, the panels take on a dark form, shimmering like rogue satin.
She lays the pieces on the grass beside her as she finishes each one. Next she reaches into the lake and pulls up handfuls of water plant, long ribbons of it, green and slippery with algae. Carefully she washes it off and lines it up next to the water-fabric. At last she begins to sew. It takes her hours but the strange luminescence of the sky remains strong. She refers occasionally to the pages of the book and I wonder idly where she got it.
She hardly seems the type to own such a tome, but they’ve been floating around for years, various volumes and guides to the arcane. I have a vague memory of the author himself, or someone claiming to be him, visiting here and begging me to make myself appear so he could sketch me. Now that I think about it, my quite-passable-likeness graces the frontispiece of Murcianus’ Mythical Creatures. Mythical! How a man who sat there drawing me when I’d very nicely solidified for him could call me mythical is beyond me.
But I digress. I’ve watched her all this time and become so fascinated that I’ve risen out of the water and gradually, very gradually forgotten to concentrate on not being seen. She notices me, but we don’t speak. By the time the dawn is almost here I’m perched on a rock near the bank, avidly willing her to finish, oh yes. She places the last stitch, bites the eldritch thread and holds the dress up for me to inspect.
It has long, long skirts, a scooped neckline, a tight bodice and fitted sleeves to the elbow. It is embroidered with a design of silvery fish and flowers, and bows made of lake-weed decorate the sleeves and waist. It’s the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen. It is the color of my eyes, green and black and blue and all shades in between.
I move to the bank and stand still while she slips it over my head, laces the stays tight. The touch of it is cold and damp and it feels like a second skin. It moves ever so slightly, with the same gentle current as the water in my lake.
I’m so happy I could shout. Kitty stands back to survey her handiwork. Her eyes are red and there are dark smudges beneath them. The red-brown lines are vivid against her pallor but she smiles, seeing what she has done. For a time, I do believe she has forgotten her misery.
The sun comes up and strikes us both. She becomes a silhouette against the burning dawn and I a shining patch of liquid and light that must surely hurt my seamstress’s eyes.
The moment passes, the sun lifts and I am as I am. I smile at Kitty.
“Thank you,” I say, marveling that she has suc
ceeded where so many would have failed. Joyful, even though I know that fulfilling my part of the bargain will not be easy on either of us, but that I am obliged to fulfill it.
“Make him love me. Make him be kind. Make him a better man.”
I am silent for a moment and she seems to stop breathing in that space of time. “Bring him here this evening and I will make your life better.”
I turn and dive then wink out of sight just before I hit the glassy face of the lake.
My new dress does not hamper me; it flows and floats, part of the water and yet still separate from it. Not impeding my progress, it’s nothing like those gowns of old. There is no drag, no gentle sluggish sensation of being wrapped in a wet winding sheet and of thinking, “So this is how they feel when they drown.”
I dart off into the depths, down to the cave where I keep things that have caught my eye.
I do not sleep here—I prefer any number of rocky shelves, sometimes on the very bottom, cocooned in weeds. But I rest here, with these few things, these trophies.
There is a mirror, demanded long ago for I do-not-remember-what favor. The gilt frame is chipped and peeling, the silver beneath the glass is pitted with black circles as if diseased. A few stacks of bones that belonged once to lovely-looking men. They drowned and I kept them for as long as I could while they still retained a hint of their beauty. I should throw the skeletal refuse out but I like its bright white.
I curl up on a pile of discarded, wetly crumbling dresses. The smell of mold and dank drifts up from them. I nestle there content in my fine and perfect attire—I feel, however irrationally, that I have conquered this stinking heap of disappointments. I run my hands over the flow of my new skirts and think of how to reward its maker.
He’s not a handsome man, but he’s big and strong. Too big to be hitting a woman; too big to be harming a wife who loves him; too big to be treating someone so kind so badly.
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