She ran down the stairs, hugging the cloak tight against the surprised glances of the servants. They were not used to seeing members of court an hour before dawn. For some courtiers, the hour before dawn was the only time they ever slept.
Beyond the terrace, the gravel cut her feet. She dreamed herself on Zachi’s back. She dreamed herself a pair of stout shoes. Nothing happened. The gravel felt sharper. She ran down the stairs and stepped onto the Green Carpet. The grass was cold and wet, but it did not cut her. The candles verging the Carpet had burned to puddles of wax and smoking wicks.
The radiant sea monsters led her to the tent. The guard slept, lulled by the sea monster’s song.
Inside the tent, inside the cage, inside the fountain, the sea monster splashed furiously with both her tails. A waterfall of luminescence erupted around her.
She sang.
Marie-Josèphe sat on the rim of the Fountain.
“If this were my dream,” she said, “if this were your dream, you wouldn’t be imprisoned.”
The sea monster cried. A male sea monster — the sea monster whose body Yves was dissecting, brought back to life by the song — swam around the ceiling of the tent.
Marie-Josèphe closed her eyes, but the image remained, fashioned in her mind by the singing, swimming in front of her as plain as anything real.
“I see your songs,” Marie-Josèphe said. “And you understand what I say. Don’t you? Do you speak? Do you speak in words?”
“Fishhh,” the sea monster said, and then she sang.
A tiny fish, its edges made harsh by the rasp of the sea monster’s voice, flitted across her vision. The song described the fish itself, and its surroundings, the sound of its swimming, the taste of its flesh. The sea monsters spoke not in words, but in images, interconnections, associations.
Marie-Josèphe hummed the fish’s melody. An indistinct image wavered before her and vanished. “Oh, sea monster, my song must be only a blur in your ears. I’ll do better, I promise. Sea monster, what’s your name?”
The sea monster sang a complicated melody. The song described the sea monster, and it hinted, as well, at joy, and brashness, and youthful wisdom.
“How beautiful! It’s perfect.”
The sea monster swam to her. She trailed a glowing wake. The luminescence flowed down her shoulders and along her hair. The sea monster rested her elbows on the lowest step and gazed at Marie-Josèphe. Her whispered song formed shapes and scenes.
Marie-Josèphe ran to the laboratory, snatched scraps of paper and charcoal, and hurried back to the sea monster. She sketched the songs, not in words or notes but rough scribbled pictures. Her eyes filled with tears; sometimes her tears smudged the paper.
But the scenes remained clear, for she heard them.
In her song, the sea monster swam alone. Filth and algae dimmed the fountain’s clarity. Litter and coins covered the bottom of the fountain.
The sea monster’s song turned the water sapphire. The trash and the coins transmuted to white sand and living shells. Bright iridescent fish flitted past, changing color all together from blue to silver as they turned.
A strange sea monster swam through the tropical sea. She was older than the captured creature, her skin a darker mahogany, her hair a lighter green, her tails dappled with silver. She was pregnant.
She swam through swiftly shoaling water to a white beach, an isolated island in the expanse of the ocean. The sea monster struggled onto the sand, rolling in the warmth of it, nesting in it, pillowing her belly.
Marie-Josèphe’s sea monster writhed onto the beach beside the pregnant monster.
The male sea monster followed, and another. They surrounded the mother sea monster, grooming her hair, rubbing her back, stroking her belly.
The mother sea monster moaned, and wailed, and her body tensed; the aunt and uncle sea monsters supported her so she lay reclining. Marie-Josèphe watched the birth with dread and fascination. It was difficult, painful for the mother, more like the birth of a baby than like the easy births of animals. But finally the wizened baby sea monster lay against its mother’s breast. She held it, crooned to it, and let it suckle while her family washed it with warm sea water and unfolded its wrinkled, webbed toes.
Days passed; it grew; in the shallows of the island, it splashed and played with its mother and its aunts and their friends. Its mother nursed it; Marie-Josèphe’s and Yves’
sea monsters fed the mother with fish and beche-de-mer, clams and whelks and bits of seaweed for garnish.