“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.
Every time I return, I am struck by how small our world is. How insignificant it seems, and by extension, how insignificant we are. I bite my lip at what my father would do if he heard such traitorous thoughts. I bite so hard that I taste tin-blood.
In my bedroom, I run my hand across the statue, pretending that it’s Oliver and that he has reached my tower; that he has somehow found a way to breathe in water, his ears morphing into gills. I imagine the two of us, and a life on-the-swim, always trying to stay out of tails-length of my father, but happy because we have each other, and that’s all we need. I sit in front of my mirror, folding my hair under until it resembles her neat bob, imagining my skin as brown as hers. Viola.
“It doesn’t suit you like that.”
I start, allowing my hair to fall around my shoulders. And then I see him, in the shadows by my door, his eyes hungry. He always seems to be watching me, ever since I was a small child.
“How long have you been there?” I ask.
“I’ve been waiting for you. Where have you been?”
“Zale, you shouldn’t be in my bedroom,” I say, my mouth dry. “The Sea King would be furious if he knew you were here.”
“The Sea King approves of me, little one. We have been the closest of friends for decades now,” Zale says, moving behind me and resting his hands on my shoulders, forcing me towards the mirror again. I look so young next to him, as if posing for a portrait with my grandfather. “And we are betrothed, are we not?”
“We are betrothed, Zale, but we are not yet bonded.” I do not want him touching me. Ever since he decided that it was the sixth daughter of the Sea King he wanted rather than the fifth, I have felt his fingers on my skin. Just a light touch to the waist or the cheek, trailing across the small of my back. Nothing that he could be reprimanded for. Just enough to remind me who I belong to.
“We shall be bonded on your sixteenth birthday,” he says, and I look away. I do not want him to see my fear. “So soon, little one.” It is tradition in the kingdom that maids are not to be bonded before their twentieth birthday, but it seems that rules can always be broken by powerful men. They created the laws, after all, and they uphold them, therefore they can shape them to their own desires.
“Regardless of that fact,” I say. “It is an invasion of my privacy to come into my room like this. And at such an hour.”
“Oh, I do apologize, young Muirgen.”
“Zale, I’m serious. My father—”
“Your father? I’m sure your father would be interested to hear about how often his youngest daughter has been travelling to the surface.”
How does he know that? “I am fifteen now,” I say, trying to ignore my uneasiness. “I will have you remember that.”
“Yes,” Zale says, and his eyes drift down my body. My heart beats too quickly, like a song made up of broken chords. “You most certainly are.”
Watch the fish, my grandmother had told me when I came of age and I began to ask questions of an intimate nature. Watch the fish and you will understand. And so I did. The male fish chasing the female fish around and around, biting her fins, nipping at her tail, waiting for her to fall down in exhaustion so he could claim her as his own. I could not tell if they were fighting or making love. Perhaps it is all the same, in the end.
“Fifteen,” he says. “And I have been so patient these past three years. I feel like I deserve a small reward, don’t you agree?”