Mermaids and Other Mysteries of the Deep

by Elizabeth Bear

  The second letter appears as the first, the paper damp and smelling of current-stirred weeds. Kit resists the urge to put paper to tongue and taste squid ink, shells crushed to particulate dust, and black, volcanic sand. What if the paper tastes of nothing?

  Kit reads.

  There are myths about the sea. It is hungry, greedy. It takes everything, and gives nothing in return. It cannot be reasoned with, or prayed to; it cannot be bribed. What it is owed, it will claim. What it is not owed, it will take anyway.

  The sea is contradictory. It is generous. It is a lover, a mother with boundless children. It is a bridge that will carry you beyond the horizon. Its depths hold wonder and terror in equal parts. It is a song, a harmony for many voices. Listen.

  Once upon a time, Kit was short for Katherine, and she ran away from home. The ship she crewed on was caught in a terrible storm; everyone on board drowned. Once upon a time, Kit was the nickname of Jonathan Kitterage, first mate on a crew seeking passage to India. The ship was beset by pirates, and finding it empty of valuables, they scuttled it, sinking it with all hands aboard. Once upon a many times, Kit was only Kit—a child who could breathe underwater, a drowned man risen up from the waves, a woman standing behind lighthouse rails overlooking the sea.

  All of these things are a lie. Every one of them is true.

  One night, when Kit couldn’t bear the lives crowded inside his skin, he took a knife to the invisible stitches binding them within and tried to set them free. So now she is here, her suitcase packed with pill bottles, taking a journey the doctors promise will liberate her. If only he can learn to face his fears.

  But Kit is more fearful than ever, knowing deep in his bones that the only thing the journey will teach her is how to drown.

  The third letter is an envelope thick with water-swollen pages. This one smells of blood—an iron tang, washed by the waves. Kit considers throwing it overboard, refusing to read, but in the end, her curiosity is too strong. She returns to the netting around the bowsprit, stretching out under the watchful eyes of the ship-woman. The carved wooden face reminds him of someone—that quirk of the mouth, the sadness in her eyes, her arms spread as if to gather him in. If only he could remember. With a sigh, Kit turns her attention to the pages, and reads.

  The Mermaid’s Tale

  The sea is a patient lover, compared to the land. It would have loved me as I was, asking nothing in return. But I could not love the sea as my sisters do. Only half my heart was saltwater; the rest was made of longing.

  My eldest sister loved the hot currents best. There is a place where a fissure splits the rock and curls of warm water rise from the ocean floor. My sister’s tail would flicker, tongue-light, over this cleft, teasing forth ribbons of heat to twine around her from skin to scales. Oh, her song.

  My second eldest sister prefers dead men’s bones, ocean-stripped and pearlescent, cradled in the wrecks of sea-warped ships. Once their flesh has fed the fish who feed us, they are ready for her. Her long fingers caress empty eyeholes, gathering the memory of dreams and sucking it down like caviar. She traces the curve of cheek, spine, rib, and hip. Only her hands move as she drifts near-motionless, her tail stilled until the end when she bares sharp teeth to sing. And oh, her song!

  My third eldest sister loves lightless things. Her play is secret, but she comes home with eyes wide and light-starved. She slips after blind eels and fish, playing games of touch and taste. She does not see her lovers, and they do not see her. They know each other as frond brushes scale, tentacle caresses skin, and tongue traces a shell’s whorling curves. Oh, her song!

  But I do not love as my sisters do. All that they are is in the waves, as if they belonged only in one world. They think with the hunger below their waists, as if love was small enough to encompass only either or and never both.

  Oh, my song! It is vast and wide. It contains multitudes—fish and deep, green things, yes, but sand and the sharp cry of birds; ships, un-drowned and creatures who sip life straight from unfiltered sunlight and bright air.

  My sisters begged me to stay. It sorrowed me to leave, but I could not live as they do. My tail thrust hard against the waves, my head broke the surface, and I breathed dry air.

  At first, it was like drowning—what I imagine humans feel in the moments before they become fit for my second sister’s tender ministrations. I forced myself to stay until black stars burst before my eyes and I had to plunge once more beneath the waves and let the current smooth away what was not quite pain. Returning, the water’s touch was sharper against my newly roused skin. This was the sensation I had been missing, tracing my length from crown to tail. Oh, how I sang.

  While my sisters left the grotto to seek their pleasures, I dove again and again for the surface. I learned to breathe, longer each time. I delayed gratification, prolonged ecstasy, but still, I hungered for more. I needed to taste the sand with the soles of feet I did not have, but could feel like phantoms beneath my scales.

  At first, I despaired of being trapped inside the ocean’s skin, only half alive, subsisting on stolen pleasures, fleeting as the life of krill before a whale. I sang my sorrow to the waves, soft and low. But oh, my song! It came back to me, and I learned I was not alone. There were others who loved as I did and knew how to change.

  They were legends, ancient beings with split tails; stitched creatures of fish scales and monkey bones. They were creatures mad by standards of sea and land, but wholly themselves, comfortable in their skin.

  I sang, and they sang back to me. They pressed shells, honed razor-sharp, into my hands. They traced maps for transformation onto my flesh and poured new songs into the whorls of my ears. They kissed my lips, my cheeks, and my eyes, just to be sure they were free of tears. Then they bade me well.

  I took their blades and swam harder and faster than ever before. My pulse beat my skin, my tail beat the waves. With a final spasm of my entire body, shocking me from the sea, I came, foam-flecked, to lie upon the shore. And there, with my honed shells, I opened myself. Blood ran as I slit myself wide.

  I wept, and oh my song was so like my sisters’ in their ecstasy. I planted new feet firm in the sand, pressed down until I could feel the thrum of the ocean buried beneath the shore. Hot, wet, and salty, the ocean rushed between my new legs and slicked my new skin. I let the world of dry air and sunlight fill me, pounding the echo-chamber of my heart until I could breathe again. This new lover demanded everything of me, but it was nothing I wouldn’t give willingly.

  Kit folds arms around a body both hollow and full. Could the letter in her hand truly be written by a mermaid? It is any stranger a thought than forgetting your face from one moment to the next, never knowing who you are? For a moment, he almost remembers a story of his own—one of drowned lives, stolen from the sea and stitched beneath his skin, a witch’s gift and curse, allowing him to change. She can almost remember how the story begins. Once upon a time . . . But it slips from his hands.

  In the morning, there is another letter. The cries of seabirds fill the small cabin. The ship rocks softly. They’ve put down anchor at another port, another sunny island Kit will not see.

  The other passengers have already left the ship in their floppy hats, overlarge sunglasses, and flip flops, wearing loose-fitting T-shirts over burned and peeling skin. Kit doesn’t belong among them. Even with the fear of drowning, Kit feels safer onboard than setting foot on dry land.

  This new letter is crisp. Fine grains of sand linger in its folds and cling to sweat-damp fingertips as Kit sits on the narrow bed and reads.

  The Selkie’s Tale

  Then, I knew nothing of human men. I only saw the small boat abandoned by the larger one. I saw a man blister his palms rowing to shore, to the tiny island where my brothers, sisters, and I used to play. He beached the boat, flung curses at it as though it was at fault, then flopped down on the sand. Marooned.

  I watched him try to light a fire. It smoked and sparked, but wouldn’t catch. I was curious and I pitied him, so
I left my skin on the rock I’d watched from, and dove deep, filling my hands before coming ashore.

  He reacted first with fear, calling me a demon. Next, his eyes traced me with desire, seeing the water beaded on my skin, the dark waves of my hair, my limbs smooth and strong from swimming. Last, a look of cunning came into his eyes, lit by the light of his sputtering fire.

  But what reason did I have to fear? I knew nothing of men, but I hungered to know more.

  “There’s driftwood along the shore. It will burn well, and your fire won’t keep dying.”

  I held out my hands, full of kelp and good weeds, cockles and mussels, salty and waiting to be sucked from their shells. When he didn’t answer, I laid my gifts on the sand. After a moment, he darted as hermit crabs will from shell to shell, seizing food with both hands and retreating to the other side of his fire.

  I left him to his feast, walking the shore and filling my strong arms with sun-bleached wood. When I returned, he’d eaten everything, bloodying his fingers on the sharp edges of the shells. Unasked, I built up his fire and sat beside him, then took his hands to examine his wounds.

  “What are you?” His full belly made him bold.

  I knew nothing; what reason did I have to lie?

  “Selkie.”

  His bloodied fingers were chilled. I took them into my mouth, sucking the blood clean and warming them.

  Desire is not so different in selkies and in human men. Despite my walk along the beach, water still beaded my skin. The fire, rather than drying me, only warmed the moisture and made it gleam. The man’s gaze was as sure as a touch.

  And still, what reason did I have to be afraid? I laid my hand along his sunburned and unshaven jaw to feel his skin.

  “You’re like this all the time?” I asked, wondering at a being that could live its whole life inside only one skin.

  Misunderstanding, he said, “I was a captain. My brother stole my ship, roused my crew to mutiny, and left me to die.”

  I could see talking would do little to let us understand each other. I pressed my lips to his instead, tasting weed and fish. His eager roughness brought no more pain than I’d known abrading my back and belly against rocks with my selkie mates. His hunger and need were almost refreshing—his speed and insistence so unlike the languor I knew. I let him take all he would in a rush.

  While he recovered, he asked me about the ocean and my skin. I told him all with aims of my own, getting him drunk on my voice. Lulled, I did not let him run ahead the second time. I showed him the way of selkies, satisfying my curiosity in a slow, unhurried way. I tasted his salt-dried skin and urged him to taste mine, sea-slick and so different from his own. I pressed him against the sand and moved over him like the tide, building to a crest. When my curiosity was satisfied, I let the wave break.

  When he slept, I swam back to my skin. I returned to the waves and forgot the man. Underwater, the rush of salt becomes the rhythm of blood; the flow of tide becomes the measure of days. It surprised me when I next surfaced and heard the man cursing and weeping.

  I slipped my skin and swam to him. His eyes were red and wild.

  “I thought you’d abandoned me. I nearly starved.” He bared his teeth in fury or grief, then buried his head in the crook of my sea-damp shoulder. I could feel the bones beneath his skin, smell the ripeness of his sun-baked flesh. His matted hair and the growth of his beard rasped against me.

  Pitying, I brought him food and helped him build his fire. He ate ravenously, never taking his eyes from me.

  When he was done, he rinsed the sweat from his skin and the taste of fish from his mouth in the sea and came to me smelling like home. Though my curiosity had been sated, I didn’t object when he wrapped me in his arms. I liked the way the ocean smelled on him. I had claimed him, changed him; he was my private treasure, washed ashore.

  Tracing his lips over my throat, slicking his hands over my skin, he said, “I want to watch you change.”

  There was a strange light in his eyes, but curiosity I understood. He had sated mine. What harm could it do sating his in return?

  I swam to my rock, returning with my skin. The surf washed around my ankles; I pulled my skin over my head, showing him one form then the other. His eyes widened, and when I turned human again, he seized me with renewed hunger, spending himself in me with fierce urgency as we rolled over and over on the shore.

  Afterward, as I bent to collect my skin, a sharp pain struck behind my ear. My knees buckled. I hit the sand. Saltwater rushed into my mouth. Another blow, and in the pain, I lost sight of the world.

  When I came to, I had been dragged near the fire. My wrists and ankles were bound with strips torn from the man’s shirt, and a final strip fit into my mouth for silence. My skin lay across the man’s lap, gleaming slick and black as spilled oil in the firelight. With a splinter of wood, and a hair pulled from my scalp, he stitched it into a new shape.

  I could feel the needle going in and out, each time he pushed the sharp point through my skin. He looked at me as he worked. Once, there even seemed to be sorrow in his gaze.

  When he was done, he placed a sharpened shell within my reach, a means to cut my bonds. He was pitiless, but not without mercy.

  He walked to the water’s edge and pulled my skin over his head. I felt the touch of saltwater as he slipped beneath the waves. I felt the ocean close over his head, felt him fight to breathe before surrendering to my skin. Long powerful strokes, stolen from me and worn over his wasted frame, carried him sleek and fast away from shore.

  I cut myself free, but I was trapped. How do humans bear living life in only one skin? It is so small.

  My sisters and brothers visit, bringing me gifts from the ocean and running their fingers through my hair. We talk of revenge. When they leave, they swim far and wide, searching for the man who stole my skin. I can be patient as no mere human can. One day, they will find him. They will drag him down and press their lips to his until they have drunk every last breath. Then they will peel my skin from his bones, and bring it back to me. The ocean will welcome me back, and I will be whole again.

  At night, Kit walks the deck, breathes sea air, leans over the rail, and tries to get used to the sea. There are moments when the salt in Kit’s body yearns toward the salt in the sea, and it terrifies him. She has been here before. She will be here again. What if the Kit standing upon the deck becomes yet another ghost trapped in unfamiliar skin? If only he could remember.

  The ocean is not terrible, the letters seem to say. But there will a price; there will be pain.

  The next letter smells like clean wind, like seal blubber and whale oil—things Kit has never touched in this lifetime, but knows just the same. The paper is chill beneath his fingers, like bright ice and colors staining the sky. The ink is not ink; it is infinity, closed within a space of paper (as she is infinity, closed within a space of skin) speaking of the vastness of the world. He almost remembers.

  Kit takes the letter back to the netting, less afraid now. Waves break against the ship’s hull; the wooden ship-woman stretched above him is almost an old friend.

  He reads.

  The Goddess’s Tale

  They will say I drowned. They will say I was stolen, sold, given away. They will call me mother of monsters and mistress of the deep. All and none of this is true.

  The world ever expects a rift between fathers and daughters, between husbands and wives, between self and other. I will tell you the truth before you drown.

  In the beginning, the ocean was lonely. It caressed the earth, loving it desperately, but they could not make a child.

  I lived with my father in a small hut by the shore—wood built upon a stony beach with thatched grasses over our heads, singing in the wind. Every day, I worked my fingers numb, weaving nets to cast upon the waves.

  “Why do you do this thing?” my father asked me.

  “I do it because one day there will be fish in the sea, and our people will be hungry. You will use these nets to catch the
ocean’s children when I am gone.”

  “How do you know these things, Daughter?”

  “I know because I have seen them in a dream.”

  “And where will you go, Daughter, when you leave me?” was my father’s last question.

  “Into sky and into sea, Father. I will not be what I am. I will be multitudes and feed the hungry world.”

  As satisfied as he could be, my father went back into his house to think upon my words.

  From dawn until dusk, I wove my nets. From dusk until dawn, I cast them over the empty waves. Every day at noon, I let the waves taste my bloodied fingers and warm them.

  One day, the sea spoke, asking, “Who are you to put your blood in my mouth?”

  “I am Sedna,” I replied.

  “Sedna. I have tasted your blood, and I know you are strong. Tell me, what do you dream?”

  “I dream the ocean teeming with fish and whales, seals, squid, and eels.”

  The ocean’s icy tears lapped my feet.

  “Ah, I have wished for these things,” the ocean said. “But I cannot bear a single child, let alone multitudes.”

  “I will help you,” I said. “But in return, you must make a promise. When my people are starving, you must give them your children to eat. They will cast the nets I have made, and pull your children from the waves so their own children might fill their bellies.”

  “Will it hurt?” the ocean asked.

  “Every time,” I replied.

  The ocean thought a moment and said, “It is agreed.”

  “I will return in seven days and give you all the children I have dreamed for you.”

  I returned to my father’s house, and found him warming his fingers by the fire.

  “Father, you must find me a husband,” I said. “He must be wicked and strong. Will you do this thing?”

  “Ah, Sedna, my child. I will do this thing if you ask it, but I will mourn.”