The Surface Breaks(9)
“And tomorrow,” Grandmother says, “it will be your time, Muirgen. And I hope you too will see that the world up there is charming, but it has not been designed for the likes of us. It is not safe for our kind.”
Then why show it to us? Why risk our mother’s fate? But I stay silent, for fear that such questions will result in my being unable to travel to the surface; and I must see it for myself. I must.
“Of course it is not safe for us,” Cosima says. “Not after what they did to our mother.”
“Your mother,” Grandmother says slowly, “was so young. Only fifteen when she promised her hand in marriage, sixteen when your father took her as his bride.” I am only fifteen too, I feel like reminding her, and I am to be wed next year; but it will be of no use. “And at the time of their bonding ceremony, your parents seemed…”
“Happy?” Talia asks hopefully.
“They seemed settled,” Grandmother says. “They had you girls so quickly, one after the other.” So many girls, and all my father wanted was a son. Another way in which Muireann of the Green Sea failed him. “And your mother was fine. I thought she was fine.”
“She was fine until you were born, Muirgen,” Cosima mutters.
“Stop that,” Grandmother says. “Your mother always loved the human world; she visited there often after her fifteenth birthday. She would regale your grandfather and me with the sights she had seen, the things she had witnessed. Your grandfather, the sea gods bless his memory, he warned her to be careful. He warned her that the humans were not to be trusted. But she didn’t listen. She was so tempestuous, that girl. There was no controlling her.”
“Our mother started to visit the surface more often.” Talia picks up the story for Grandmother Thalassa. We know it well. “She stopped eating. She complained that she was tired all the time.”
“And the Sea King thought she had fallen sick,” Arianna joins in. “And he got the healer to brew potions for her, but nothing worked.”
“And then on the day of my first birthday party…” I start, but I cannot continue. My grandmother squeezes my hand.
“We were all gathered for the celebration,” she says, so I don’t have to. “But we were waiting on your mother and the Sea King to arrive. There was no sign of either.” She takes a deep breath. “And then the Sea King burst through the palace doors, looking as if he had been struck by lightning. And he told us.”
He told the mer-folk how he had followed my mother to the surface that afternoon, and had seen her become ensnared in the human nets. Her body thrashing, the men on the boat jeering, touching her tail without permission, screaming with laughter at my mother’s cries for mercy. He could have stopped them, the Sea King told those congregated at my crib; he was the most powerful man in the kingdom after all. But if he did, then the humans would know there were more creatures like my mother to be found. They might come looking for us, hunting us. And while the Sea king could have protected himself easily, he didn’t want to risk the lives of every other mer-man or maid under the sea in order to save just one of our kind. So, he watched as they took our mother away. And then he told us that she was dead. Which she was, probably; she would not have survived outside of the water for that long. She is dead. Of course she is, it is the only logical conclusion to the story. And yet… We never closed lids over frozen eyes, nor rested tiny pearls upon her lips. We never sang hymns by her lifeless body, nor prayed to the gods to dissolve her soul to sea foam and scatter it on the waves. We were just told that our mother was selfish, that she had abanonded her six daughters to see the wonders that the world above the surface had to offer. And then we were told that she was dead, and we were expected to believe it.
“We are blessed to be where we are, living in this kingdom,” my grandmother says now, and she kisses my head, murmuring love into my skull. “It is time for bed now, little mermaid.”
I wish my family goodnight as I leave, swimming the long corridor from their room until I reach the spiral staircase to my tower. The steps are cut out of packed sand, the walls a mosaic of sea-glass and broken shells, like the bones of fallen sailors that the Salkas steal to make their homes in the Shadowlands, that realm far away from here that the Sea Witch has made her own.
Two maids pass me on the winding path, pushing their backs into the wall. “Apologies, Princess Muirgen. We did not mean to disturb you.” I recognize the prettier girl immediately; Lorelai, whose husband had abandoned her and the children. She had been banished to the Outerlands for a time but she was allowed to return to the palace as a member of the chorus when the Sea King decided he missed her perfect falsetto. No one ever calls her husband “unnatural” for abandoning his children; no, instead they whisper that Lorelai must have failed to satisfy him. Her former husband is re-bonded now, but no mer-man will take on Lorelai. No matter how pretty she is, the weight of a tainted maid with a reputation is beyond endurance.
“Don’t worry,” I say, allowing them to pass without further objection.
I close my bedroom door, leaning against the heavy coral with a sigh. Gaia, I whisper, as if summoning her from deep within, telling her that it’s safe to come out now. I have left Muirgen on the stairs outside; I could not bear her for much longer. I am alone, so I can be true again.
I look up.
The tower opens to the roiling black sea, waves stirring as shoals of fish twist past, a glimmer of metal in the darkness. Moving to the sea-bed for safety, it seems. Storm, the water whispers to me, its voice as familiar as my own. The gods must be angry. A shape passes over the palace; a whale, perhaps, or one of the ships from the human world that my grandmother warns my sisters to be wary of when they go swimming. Not that she need worry; my sisters have broken the surface only once since their respective birthdays. They say it is safer that way, they are reducing the risk of being spotted and imprisoned – we don’t want to end up like our mother, are the words that are left unsaid. I wonder what it must be like to be one of them, to have their curiosity so easily sated. I reach my hands up the surface, as if to touch the ship or the whale, but it is too far away. We are buried alive down here.