The Surface Breaks(16)

“In bed already?” I start, but it is only Grandmother speaking.

“You’re very jumpy at the moment, Muirgen,” she says, floating by my bed. Her grey hair is tied in a knot at the base of her neck, a necklace of seashells hanging between her breasts. How long has she been there?

“I’m fine, Grandmother.”

“Your sisters are going swimming tomorrow. Just as far as the pools, I believe, so it shouldn’t be too taxing,” she says. “I thought you might like to join them.”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“I said no, didn’t I?”

“That’s a shame. You used to love going swimming before.”

Our swimming expeditions were the only time I ever felt free. My sisters and I, mer-children then, our hands gripped on to a dolphin’s fin, screaming at the speed at which we were towed through the water. The joy of it, the exhilaration. Back then, Cosima and I were best friends. A team. Just us against the world. Cosima had been promised to Zale since birth, and she talked often of the wedding, what she would wear in her hair, how adorable their mer-babies would be. That was before I turned beautiful, before I became something that Zale wanted to possess. That was before I lost her too. It seems that I am forever destined to lose the people I love.

“I’m too tired, Grandmother.”

“You’re always tired these days,” she says as she strokes my hair. I close my eyes and pretend that it is Oliver’s hand on my hair, his voice whispering to me. I pretend that I am just a girl, not a mermaid or a monster. “Can’t you sleep, Muirgen?”

I sleep a little but I do not rest. How can I? I am holding my breath until I hear the Salkas’ battle cry, the clash of metal as blades are sharpened in anticipation of tender throats to be slit. My dreams fracturing into splinters every night, breaking me apart from the inside out. I dream of brown eyes and skin, of long legs, and a perfume made of a flower that I cannot name.

I dream of my mother, chains looping her tail, binding her wrists together. Roll up, roll up, see the mermaid! See the freak! Genuine article, or your money back guaranteed! In some dreams, all I see is my mother’s heart, torn from her chest and placed under a magnifying glass for inspection, still beating. In others, she is contained in a large tank, trapped, begging for someone to rescue her. I’m coming, Mother, I say but I make no sound. Wait for me.

And I dream of walking on two legs, walking towards Oliver, my steps sure. You are beautiful, he says, and he is not looking at my face, but at the legs that have grown from my body. You are so beautiful. I awake gasping, fumbling down my body to see if it’s true, if I am free, but no. All I feel beneath my fingertips is scales of oil, not human flesh. Then I remember what I have done in order to save the boy. I lie in bed for hours, awaiting my destiny.

“Shall I call the healer?” Grandmother asks now. “She will brew a tonic for you.”

“I’m fine.” The healer is said to have mind-reading abilities, and I am afraid of what she might see in me, in the murky depths of my subconscious. We are not allowed to describe her skills as “powers”, not when the Sea King is in hearing distance. He despises the healer, but he must tolerate her. His need for her services is too great to banish her to the Outerlands with the rest of the misfits.

“I don’t think you are fine, actually,” Grandmother says. “Please talk to me.”

What can I say? I cannot tell her about Oliver, about what I have done. I turn over on the bed, a wasteland of loneliness spreading infinite in my chest, hoping my grandmother will get the hint and go. A girl, he said. I thought I saw a girl. And even though we are in the depths of the kingdom, the same heat ripples through me, starting at the base of my stomach and radiating out through my arms and tail. I have never felt anything like this before. I don’t understand what it is.

I look out of the tower when Grandmother has left my room. The water is still tonight, so clear that a counterfeit moon is hovering near the surface. When I was a child, I would have thought it remarkable. I would have assumed that this weak reflection was all the world had to offer. But I know the truth now. I have seen how much more there is to experience than what I have been told to be satisfied with.

I cannot resist climbing out of the tower again tonight, aiming for the true moon. I should not be doing this. I rise and I rise until I reach the same place that I go every day. An inlet. Yellow flesh-flowers on the trees, cutting sharp. A white building, a steeple, a bell calling time. But no Oliver. I try to come at different times of the day and occasionally at night, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. I see other humans but never him; it is never him. I keep my distance as I watch them, attempting to learn them by heart. The girls that pour out of that building once the bell rings, they argue and laugh and sulk; they whisper secrets to one another, promising to never tell, cross my heart and hope to die. They sigh over how pretty one another is, proclaiming themselves ugly in comparison. I am struck by the similarities between them and my sisters, the same games that we play, despite everything we have been told about the humans and how barbaric they are. It is cold up here tonight, the air tight with frost. Winter is near, the water whispers to me, the stars forming constellations of ice on the horizon. I hear no voices and see no one, but I wait until the last light has been turned off in the white building (Is he inside there still? Those full lips and laughing eyes, a man more perfect looking than I ever thought possible? Is he calling out her name in his sleep? Viola, Viola.) before I force myself to dive back to the kingdom.