Mermaids and Other Mysteries of the Deep

by Elizabeth Bear

  She said: “I think I always expected it’d come. I think I always waited for it to happen. I’m sick and tired of it. I get no thanks. All the rest of them. They don’t know when they’re well off. When did I ever have anything? Go on, then. Go on.”

  I sat on the ground, for she’d knocked the strength from me. She didn’t care, and I didn’t care.

  Someone ought to be with Daniel. Oh God, how were we going to get the wheelchair back across the sand? Perhaps we’d have to abandon it, carry him back between us. I’d have to pay for a new chair. I couldn’t afford it, I—

  I had been turning, just my head, and now I could see the wheelchair poised, an incongruous black cutout against the retreating breakers which still swam in and splintered on the lengthening beach. It was like a surrealist painting, I remember thinking that, the lost artifact, sigil of stasis, set by the wild night ocean, sigil of all things metamorphic. If the chair had been on fire, it could have been a Magritte. Initially the movement didn’t register. It seemed part of the insurge and retraction of the waves. A sort of pale glimmer, a gliding. Then the weirdness of it registered with me, and I realized it was Daniel.

  Somehow he had slipped from the chair, collapsed forward into the water, and, incredibly, the water was pulling him away with itself, away into the darkness.

  I lurched up. I screamed something, a curse or a prayer or his name or nothing at all. I took two riotous running steps before she grasped me. It was a fierce hold, undeniable, made of iron. Oh she was so strong. I should have guessed. She had been lifting and carrying a near grown man for several years.

  But I tried to go on rushing to the ocean, like those cartoon characters you see, held back by some article of elastic. And like them, when she wouldn’t let me go, I think I ran on the spot a moment, the sand cascading from under me.

  “Daniel—” I cried, “he’s fallen in the water—the tide’s dragging him out—can’t you see—”

  “I can see,” she said. “You look, and you’ll see, too.”

  And her voice stopped me from moving, just as her grip had stopped my progression. All I could do then was look, so I looked.

  We remained there, breathing, our bodies slotted together, like lovers, speechless, watching. We watched until the last pastel glimmer was extinguished. We watched until the sea had run far away into the throat of night. And after that we watched the ribbed sands, the plaster cast the waves forever leave behind them. A few things had been stranded there, pebbles, weed, a broken bottle. But Daniel was gone, gone with the sea. Gone away into the throat of night and water.

  “Best move the chair,” she said at last, and let me go.

  We walked together and hoisted the vacant wheelchair from the sand. We took it back across the beach, and at the foot of the alley we rested.

  “I always knew,” she said then. “I tried to stop it, but then I thought: Why try? What good is it?” Finally she said to me: “Frightened, are you?”

  “Yes,” I said, but it was a reflex.

  “I’m glad,” she said. “You silly little cow.”

  After that we hoisted the chair up the alley, to the gate of Number 19. She took it to the house, and inside, and shut the door without another word.

  I walked to the bus stop, and when the lighted golden bus blew like a spaceship from the shadows, I got on it. I went home, or to the place where I lived.

  I recall I looked at everything with vague astonishment, but that was all. I didn’t feel what had occurred, didn’t recognize or accept it. That came days later, and when it did I put my fist through one of my nominative aunt’s windows. The impulse came and was gone in a second. It was quite extraordinary. I didn’t know I was going to, I simply did it. My right hand, my painter’s hand. I managed to say I’d tripped and fallen, and everything was a mistake. After the stitches came out, I packed my bags and went inland for a year. It was so physically painful for a while to manipulate a brush or palette knife, it became a discipline, a penance to do it. So I learned. So I became what now I am.

  I never saw Mrs. Besmouth again. And no one, of course, ever again saw Daniel.

  You see, a secret agent is one who masquerades, one who pretends to be what he or she is not. And, if successful, is indistinguishable from the society, group, or affiliation into which he or she has been infiltrated. In the Magritte painting, you’re shown a disguise, which is that of a human girl, but the actuality also, the creature within. And oddly, while she’s more like a chess-piece horse than any human girl, her essence is of a girl, sheer girl, or rather the sheer feminine principle, don’t you think? Maybe I imagine it.

  I heard some rumor or other at the time, just before the window incident. The atrocious Ray was supposed to have laced my drink. With what, I don’t know, nor do I truly credit it. It’s too neat. It accounts for everything too well. But my own explanations then were exotic, to say the least. I became convinced at one point that Daniel had communicated with me telepathically, pleaded, coerced, engineered everything. I’d merely been a tool of his escape, like a file hidden in a cake. His mother had wanted it too. Afraid to let go, trying to let go. Letting go.

  Obviously, you think we murdered him, she and I. A helpless, retarded, crippled young man, drowned in Ship Bay one late autumn night, two women standing by in a horrific complicity, watching his satin head go under the black waters, not stirring to save him.

  Now I ask myself, I often ask myself, if that’s what took place. Maybe it did. Shall I tell you what I saw? I kept it till the end, coup de grâce, or cherry, whichever you prefer.

  It was a dark clear night, with not much illumination, that slender moon, those pulsing stars, a glint of phosphorous, perhaps, gilding the sea. But naked, and so pale, so flawless, his body glowed with its own incandescence, and his hair was water-fire, colorless, and brilliant.

  I don’t know how he got free of his clothes. They were in the chair with the rug—jeans, trunks, pullover, shirt—no socks, I remember, and no shoes. I truly don’t think he could walk, but somehow, as he slid forward those three or four yards into the sea, the sight of the waves must have aided him, their hypnotism drawing off his garments, sloughing them like a dead skin.

  I saw him, just for a moment. His Apollo’s head, modeled sleek with brine, shone from the breakers.

  He made a strong swimmer’s movement. Naturally, many victims of paralysis find sudden coordination of their limbs in the weightless medium of fluid . . . Certainly Daniel was swimming, and certainly his movements were both spontaneous and voluntary.

  And now I have the choice as to whether I tell you this or not. It’s not that I’m afraid, or nervous of telling you. I’m not even anxious as to whether or not you believe me. Perhaps I should be. But I shan’t try to convince you. I’ll state it, once. Recollect, the story about Ray and the drinks may be true, or possibly the quirk was only in me, the desire for miracles in my world of Then, where nothing happened, nothing was rich or strange.

  For half a minute I saw the shape of a man spearing fishlike through the water. And then came one of those deep lacunas, when the outgoing tide abruptly collects itself, seems to swallow, pauses. And there in the trough, the beautiful leaping of something, white as salt crystal, smoky green as glass. The hair rose on my head, just as they say it does. Not terror, but a feeling so close to it as to be untranslatable—a terror, yet without fear. I saw a shining horse, a stallion, with a mane like opals and unraveling foam, his forefeet raised, heraldic, his belly a craven bow, the curve of the moon, the rest a silken fish, a great greenish sheen of fish, like the tail of a dolphin, but scaled over in a waterfall of liquid armor, like a shower of silver coins. I saw it, and I knew it. And then it was gone.

  The woman with me said nothing. She had barricaded her windows, built up her wall against such an advent. And I said nothing because it is a dream we have, haven’t we, the grossest of us, something that with childhood begins to perish; to tear the veil, to see. Just for a moment, a split second in all of life. And t
he split second was all I had, and it was enough. How could one bear more?

  But I sometimes wonder if Magritte, whose pictures are so full of those clear moments of terror, but not fear, moment on moment on moment—I sometimes wonder—

  Then again, when you look at the sea, or when I look at it, especially at night, anything at all seems possible.

  About the Authors

  Christopher Barzak’s fiction includes the award-winning adult novel, One for Sorrow—which was recently made into the major motion picture, Jamie Marks is Dead—the Nebula Award finalist The Love We Share Without Knowing, and the short story collection Before and Afterlives, which won the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Collection. Christopher grew up in rural Ohio, has lived in a Southern California beach town, the capital of Michigan, and has taught English outside of Tokyo, Japan. His latest novel is Wonders of the Invisible World. Currently he teaches fiction writing in the Northeast Ohio MFA program at Youngstown State University. Learn more about Chris at christopherbarzak.com.

  Thanks to classic works such as The Last Unicorn, Tamsin, and The Innkeeper’s Song, Peter S. Beagle is acknowledged as a fantasy icon. He was honored with the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2011. The recipient of the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards, Beagle has written numerous teleplays and screenplays including the animated versions of The Lord of the Rings and The Last Unicorn, plus the fan-favorite “Sarek” episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. His non-fiction book, I See by My Outfit, which recounts a 1963 journey across America on motor scooter, is considered a classic of American travel writing. Already a famous book and movie, in 2011 The Last Unicorn also became a bestselling graphic novel from IDW Publishing.

  Elizabeth Bear was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different year. When coupled with a childhood tendency to read the dictionary for fun, this led her inevitably to penury, intransigence, and the writing of speculative fiction. She is the Hugo, Sturgeon, Locus, and Campbell Award-winning author of twenty-seven novels (including the acclaimed Eternal Sky series and her latest novel, Karen Memory), and around a hundred short stories. Her dog lives in Massachusetts; her partner, writer Scott Lynch, lives in Wisconsin. She spends a lot of time on planes.

  Samuel R. Delany is the winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula awards and one of science fiction’s most celebrated authors. His science fiction novels include Babel-17, The Einstein Intersection (both winners of the Nebula Award), Nova, Dhalgren, Triton, the Return to Nevèrÿon series, and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand. Delany was inducted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2002. Since January 2001 he has been a professor of English and Creative Writing at Temple University in Philadelphia, where he is Director of the Graduate Creative Writing Program. In 2010 he won the third J. Lloyd Eaton Lifetime Achievement Award in Science Fiction from the academic Eaton Science Fiction Conference at UCR Libraries. The Science Fiction Writers of America named him its thirtieth Grand Master in 2013. Non-fiction books include The Motion of Light and Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village, 1957-65 and Times Square Red, Times Square Blue.

  Amanda Downum lives in a garret in Austin, Texas, where she drinks absinthe but tries not to die of consumption. Her day job involves silverfish, scorpions, and the rare snake. Sometimes she gets to dress up as a giant worm. She is the author of the Necromancer Chronicles—The Drowning City, The Bone Palace, and Kingdoms of Dust—published by Orbit Books. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, and in the anthologies Lovecraft Unbound, Brave New Love, and A Fantasy Medley 2. Her novel Dreams of Shreds & Tatters was published in May 2015 by Solaris.

  Neil Gaiman is a New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books for adults and children, including the novels Neverwhere, Stardust, American Gods, Anansi Boys, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book; and the Sandman series of graphic novels. The Ocean at the End of the Lane is his most recent novel for adults and, for younger readers, Fortunately, the Milk. Gaiman’s latest collection of short fiction, Trigger Warning, was published earlier this year. The View from the Cheap Seats: A Collection of Introductions, Essays, and Assorted Writings will be published this fall. He is the recipient of numerous literary honors, including the Locus and Hugo Awards and the Newbery and Carnegie Medals. Born and raised in England, Gaiman now lives in a house in some woods somewhere in New York State.

  Lisa L. Hannett has had over fifty-five short stories appear in venues including Clarkesworld, Fantasy, Weird Tales, ChiZine, The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror (2010, 2011, and 2012), and Imaginarium: Best Canadian Speculative Writing (2012 and 2013). She has won three Aurealis Awards, including Best Collection 2011 for her first book, Bluegrass Symphony, which was also nominated for a World Fantasy Award. Her first novel, Lament for the Afterlife, is being published by CZP in 2015. You can find her online at lisahannett.com and on Twitter @LisaLHannett.

  In his spare time, software engineer Chris Howard has created—in words and art—the underwater realm of the Thalassogenêis, the Seaborn. Although fantasy, Howard has used extensive science (you can find out more at saltwaterwitch.com) in his world-building. Author of the Seaborn Trilogy—Saltwater Witch, Seaborn, and Sea Throne—as well as related novels Mermaid, Teller, Nanowhere, and Salvage, his short stories have appeared in venues such as Fantasy Magazine and anthology Pen-Ultimate. He writes and illustrates the comics Saltwater Witch and Salvage. Howard’s art has appeared on dozens of book covers, in magazines, various RPGs, and on the pages of books, blogs, and other interesting places.

  The New York Times recently hailed Caitlín R. Kiernan as “one of our essential writers of dark fiction.” Her novels include The Red Tree (nominated for the Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy awards) and The Drowning Girl: A Memoir (winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award and the Bram Stoker Award, nominated for the Nebula, Locus, Shirley Jackson, World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Mythopoeic awards). In 2014 she was honored with the Locus Award for short fiction (“The Road of Needles”), the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story (“The Prayer of Ninety Cats”), and a second World Fantasy Award for Best Collection 2014 (The Ape’s Wife and Other Stories). To date, her short fiction has been collected in thirteen volumes. Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea: The Best of Caitlin R. Kiernan (Volume Two) is forthcoming in 2015. Currently, she’s writing the graphic novel series Alabaster for Dark Horse.

  Margo Lanagan has won four World Fantasy Awards—including one for Best Novella for “Sea-Hearts.” She has published five collections of short fiction (White Time, Black Juice, Red Spikes, Yellowcake, and Cracklescape) and two novels, Tender Morsels and The Brides of Rollrock Island. This latter is an expanded version of “Sea-Hearts” the novella. Margo lives in Sydney, Australia.

  Tanith Lee was born in the UK. After school she worked at a number of jobs, and at age twenty-five had one year at art college. Then DAW Books published her novel The Birthgrave. Since then she has been a professional full-time writer. Publications so far total approximately ninety novels and collections and well over three hundred short stories. She has also written for television and radio. Lee has won several awards; in 2009 she was made a Grand Master of Horror and honored with the World Fantasy Convention Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013. She is married to the writer/artist John Kaiine. Other mermaid fiction by Lee includes “The Mermaid,” “Doll Re Mi,” and “Where Does the Town Go at Night?”, as well as the selkie story “Because Our Skins Are Finer.”

  Seanan McGuire’s October “Toby” Daye novels were her first New York Times best-selling fantasy series and the InCryptid novels were her second. McGuire was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer; Rosemary and Rue, the first novel in the October Daye series, was named one of the Top Twenty Paranormal Fantasy Novels of the Past Decade; and her novel Feed, written under the name Mira Grant—the first book of her Newsflesh trilogy—was named as one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2010. She al
so won a Hugo for her podcast, and is the first person to be nominated for five Hugo Awards in a single year. The ninth installment in McGuire’s October Daye series will be published this fall. Mira Grant’s novella, Rolling in the Deep—which involves mermaids!—has just been published by Subterranean Press.

  Sarah Monette lives in a house more than a century old in the Upper Midwest with a great many books, two cats, one grand piano, and one husband. She has published more than fifty short stories and has two short story collections The Bone Key and Somewhere Beneath Those Waves. She has written two novels (A Companion to Wolves and The Tempering of Men) and four short stories with Elizabeth Bear, and hopes to write more. Her first four novels (Melusine, The Virtu, The Mirador, Corambis) were published by Ace. Her latest novel, The Goblin Emperor, published under the pen name Katherine Addison, came out from Tor in April 2014 and was nominated for a Nebula Award. Visit her online at sarahmonette.com or katherineaddison.com.

  Cat Rambo lives, writes, and teaches by the shores of an eagle-haunted lake in the Pacific Northwest. Her over 150 fiction publications include stories in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, and Tor.com. Her short story, “Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain,” from her story collection Near + Far (Hydra House Books), was a 2012 Nebula nominee. Her editorship of Fantasy magazine earned her a World Fantasy Award nomination. She’s written of mermaids in stories like “All the Pretty Little Mermaids,” “Heart in a Box,” and “Foam on the Water”; “Of Selkies, Disco Balls, and Anna Plane,” not surprisingly, involves a selkie. For more about her, see kittywumpus.net.

  Delia Sherman was born in Japan and raised in New York City. After earning a PhD in Renaissance Studies, she taught expository writing at Boston University while she learned to write fiction herself. Her three novels for adults are Through a Brazen Mirror, The Porcelain Dove (a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award winner), and The Fall of the Kings (with Ellen Kushner). Her most recent novel, The Freedom Maze—winner of the Prometheus and Andre Norton Awards—is ostensibly aimed at young-adult readers, but has been enjoyed by many adults. Earlier novels for younger readers are Changeling and The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen. Her short fiction has appeared most recently in the anthologies Under My Hat, Steampunk!, and Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells. “The Selkie Speaks,” published in The Beastly Bride and Other Tales of the Animal People (2010) may be of particular interest to readers of this anthology. Her collection, Young Woman in a Garden, was published last year by Small Beer Press.