The Surface Breaks(60)
“We had to give her our hair, though,” Cosima mutters.
“I don’t know why you’re the one complaining,” Talia says. “It was your idea to go to the Sea Witch in the first place. You said that she was the only one who could help us, that no one else would know how to save Muirgen.” Cosima meets my gaze shamefacedly, and I feel as if she is trying to tell me something. An explanation of sorts. An apology. An image of the two of us as small children, hand in hand, flashes in my mind; sparkling with a beautiful intensity. I look away, allowing it to shatter. Too much has happened now. There is too much to forgive and I am afraid I do not know where to begin.
“So, yes, we went to the Sea Witch,” Talia continues. “What an expedition! I don’t know how you went alone. It was very brave of you.” She looks at me with something akin to admiration, an expression I am unused to seeing on my sisters’ faces. “But Ceto wasn’t as terrifying as we thought,” she says, the rest of my sisters nodding in agreement. “It seemed like she wanted to help us, actually. We had to sacrifice our hair, of course. But she granted us this in return.” She lifts her hand out of the water, her fingers grasped tightly around the hilt of a dagger, steel glittering in the growing morning light. It is the same weapon that I saw in the Sea Witch’s cabin, the one she used to stir the magic potion with. “This is going to save you.”
How?
“You must go to this man,” Sophia tells me, as if reading my mind. “Immediately.”
And what should I do when I find him?
I am so tired.
“Muirgen. Muirgen, listen to me. When you find him…” Sophia says, demanding my attention. “Gaia, you have to…”
“You must take the blade,” Arianna says with relish. She is our father’s daughter, that one; she’s always enjoyed a story with gore. “And rip the human’s chest apart with it, using the tip of the blade to spear his beating heart. The blood that spills must drip on to those human feet of yours, and your scales will reappear, and then your tail. Like magic.”
“Like magic,” Talia repeats.
I picture myself doing as they have suggested, Oliver’s eyes opening when the blade pierces his flesh, screaming for mercy. I take a step back from them, a hand over my mouth in case I am sick.
“This is the only way, Muirgen,” Talia says.
“She will not be able to do it,” Cosima says as I stare down at them in shock.
“You must,” Sophia says urgently. “Muirgen, you must. This isn’t about you any longer. Zale is gathering the troops, placing spears in the hand of every mer-man; child and grandfather alike. You…” Something crosses her face that I cannot decipher, but which leaves me chilled. “You don’t understand what things have been like for us since you left.”
“Zale is only doing what he thinks is necessary,” Cosima says, but her usual defiance has been markedly dampened. “We are bonded now, Zale and I,” she says to me, a quiver in her voice. What will Zale do to you when he sees your bald skull? She is thin and pale, like the others, but there is a light sprinkling of bruises down her arms. Nothing too conspicuous. Nothing that would draw attention. But I see it. And I know. Oh, Cosima.
“Forty-five minutes…” Nia says, still counting the seconds in the sky.
Talia swims closer to the boat, her hand holding the blade out towards me. I cannot do this. You cannot expect me to commit such a deed.
“Muirgen,” Sophia says again when I bend over, hands pushed into my stomach as if I’m trying to prevent my body from falling apart. “Muirgen. We cannot return without you. Father has, he has…”
“Father has been very angry,” Cosima says. They stare up at me, their eyes flat. And I wonder what the Sea King has done to them. Cosima grabs the blade from Talia and reaches as high as she can. “You must do this, Gaia.”
“Forty-four minutes,” Nia says.
I take the blade. The handle is made of onyx, encrusted with ink-black jewels which resemble octopus eyes. It would be easy to tear someone apart with this, follow the route of their spine. The weight of it in my hands is shocking, somehow; the power it suggests. I like it, I am surprised to find. I want more of it.
“We are sisters,” Sophia says. “We need each other, Muirgen. We always have.”
Yes. I am ready to do what must be done.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The stairs creak as I steal downstairs, a shrieking wail in the silence. I inhale sharply in the rushing fear that I have failed already, that my footsteps will rouse the crew from their slumber; that they will rush out to find me with this blade in my hands. But nobody stirs. I take the rest of the steps gingerly. Toes to heel, toes to heel, the bones peeling away from one another, bursting through the flesh. The pain is so agonizing that for the first time since I became human, or whatever it is that I am now, I am glad that I have lost my voice. I would not be able to stop myself from screaming.
There is a small kitchen to the left, two bathrooms straight ahead, and then four other doors. The door to one of the rooms is open, showing rows of empty bunk beds. Snoring is coming from another, so I presume this is where the crew reside. Two other rooms. I try one handle and it is locked. I silently curse. What will I do if Oliver has bolted his door shut to ensure privacy for him and Flora?