The Surface Breaks(29)

“You want my voice?”

“Why so surprised?” she asks. “Did you presume that I would ask for your face or that magnificent mane of hair? No, it is your voice that I value. You should not underestimate its worth, little mermaid.” She swims back from me. “I shall give you legs and you shall give me your tongue.”

“How?” I ask, pressing my lips together, as if afraid she will reach her hand into my mouth and pluck it out with her fingers.

“I shall cut it out, my dear. Don’t worry.” The Sea Witch smiles when I recoil. “It won’t take long.”

“But, but…” I imagine the pain of such an act, the violence. “Won’t that hurt?”

“Love is supposed to hurt. I thought you would have realized that by now,” she says. She means my mother, of course. That void in the centre of me which her disappearance has scraped clean, widening into an abyss with every new day.

“But without my voice, what do I have left?” I ask her. “How will I make Oliver fall in love with me before the next full moon?”

The Sea Witch shrugs, her hair floating up in the water and exposing her generous breasts. “You will still have your form, won’t you? Men have always been told that slimness is the most important attribute a woman can possess; more important than intelligence or wit or ambition, apparently. Although nowhere near as useful, if you ask me.”

“But if I can’t talk—”

“What has your father told you, since you were a hatchling?” she says. “Men don’t like women who talk too much, do they? Better to be silent.”

Viola wasn’t silent. Viola was loud and demanding, dismissing her brother with an imperious toss of her head, and Oliver looked at her as if she was mesmerizing, as if he could have spent the rest of his life listening to her voice and never tire of it.

“So,” she says to me. “A decision must be made, little mermaid. What is it to be?”

“Yes?” I say, the doubt turning the word into a question, but what else can I say? Either I am silent above the surface, or I spend the rest of my life screaming for mercy down here, the water muffling my cries. “My answer is yes. I am ready, Ceto.”

“I thought it might be,” she says, shaking her head. “But so be it.”

The Sea Witch places her hand over her mouth, making a retching noise as if trying to dislodge something caught low in her throat. A lump blossoms, pulsating as it dances up her oesophagus, until a flame spills past her painted lips and dances in the palm of her hands. I stare, fascinated. No mer-man is able to conjure flames, not under the sea. This is magic like nothing I have ever seen before, something my father could only dream of.

She crouches down beside a large copper cauldron in the corner of the room, pouring the fire underneath it as if it was liquid. She picks up a jewel-encrusted blade from the ground and uses it to stir whatever concoction has begun to bubble inside the cauldron. She raises the knife to the surface – a few murmured words, words I do not recognise – and she pulls its edge across her breast, cleavage to black nipple, dripping tar-blood into the mixture. It hisses as it lands, the steam curdling into shapes of cloud so unspeakably eerie that I shiver. What have I done? I think as every muscle in my body tenses in shock. What have I done, what have I done?

“You have done what needed to be done,” Ceto tells me, once again seeming to read my mind. “Isn’t that all any of us can do?”

“Wait,” I say. “I have one last question for you.”

“Tick tock.” She wags a finger back and forth. “Time is running out.”

“Do you know if my mother is alive?” I ask, wishing I didn’t sound so forlorn. “Could she be?”

“The Sea King said Muireann was dead, did he not?”

“Yes, but—”

“Yes, but what? You doubt his word?”

“No,” I say automatically. “The Sea King only tells the truth. He wants the best for us. We are lucky to have been born his daughters.”

“Then why do you ask?”

“I…” I don’t know. “Wait. Did my mother come to you in search of legs too?”

The Sea Witch runs her fingertips down the smooth side of her blade. “Your mother did not need my aid in such a matter.”

“But she came to you for help? Ceto, did my mother come here?”

“There was no one who could help Muireann of the Green Sea,” she says. “Not in the end.” Before I can ask what she means by that, she holds out the knife before me. “Now, show me your tongue.”

And I do as she tells me.

The blade sinks into the flesh, slashing it in two, and I try and scream with the brutality of it, at how fast it happened, my head thrown back in scorching agony. She saws at my tongue, hacking at the sinews, the flesh obstinate; refusing to let go. I gulp, my hands reaching out in desperation as if to say come back, I made a mistake. I have changed my mind. But I cannot say it. I have no words.

It is done and I am silent.

It is done and there is no return.





CHAPTER NINE

The sun has not yet risen when I emerge from the water, gasping in the moon-glossed air. What have I done? I scream silently to the sea gods.

After the Sea Witch had plucked my tongue out, I kept trying to speak, becoming more and more agitated with the futility of my attempts. What have you done to yourself, Gaia? She handed me the potion. “Go to Oliver’s homeland,” she told me, “and drink this when you reach the steps to his estate, not a minute before.”