But now that I am here, the Shadowlands seem different than I imagined as a child, although no less macabre. The water is solid, somehow, catching in lumps at the back of my throat, while the sand has melted to a bubbling mud. Before me, there lies a thicket of trees and bushes, unlike any vegetation I have seen before, above or below the surface. Garbled stems of oily thorns blooming into snake heads, their eyes closed in slumber, grating breath through slit noses. They have arms made of congealed nettle leaves, each grasping a treasure tightly. A silver fork, broken pieces of china, clumps of human hair torn out from the roots, a tiny skull that could only have belonged to a human baby. I pray to the sea gods as I pass them, pray that they will not awake and claim me as their newest trophy.
Hidden behind them is a hunkering cottage, cobbled together out of bleached human bones and chunks of sludge. Many Salkas surround it, floating in the water, their hands clasping one another. Long, pale green hair wilting over their faces. The Salkas carry their pain in their hair; it is laced through the strands like ribbons of the thinnest anemones. And then there are their legs. I long to touch them, to count their toes and run my fingers up their inner thighs, but I know I must not do so.
Eyelids fluttering, slowly, then too fast, and I try not to scream out in fright. A flash of white, a low keening cry.
“Who are you?” the Salka asks.
“I am not a threat,” I say, trying to quieten her. “I am here to see the Sea Witch,” but she is screaming now and the other Salkas are stirring. She presses her fingers to her flat stomach. “Did you take my baby? Where is my baby? Who are you? What have you done with my baby?”
“Sadhbh.” A voice comes from inside the bone-cabin. It is like crackling wood at a beach bonfire, like oil slicking over water, a sky so black that you forget the stars exist. A shiver runs down my spine. “Settle.”
The Salka called Sadhbh falls silent, tears trickling down her cheeks, her hands still on her belly, twisting.
“The Irish girls find it the most challenging, this new life of theirs,” that voice says. “Always searching for tiny hands that were ripped off breasts the moment they gave their first cry.”
The door to the cabin has opened, and something is standing there, waiting for me. My eyes struggle to see in the dim until it becomes apparent that it is a mermaid, but a maid unlike one I have ever seen before. A tail so black that it dissolves into the gloomy sea so she looks like a floating torso. Skin pale, and so much of it – rolling into ruffs of flesh around her neck, spooling around her waist. I have never seen a woman of this size before. Every maid in court has been told that we must maintain a certain weight for the aesthetic preference of the Sea King and his mer-men. I did not know such a body was even allowed to exist. I feel faint, as if all the salt in my veins has rushed to my head.
“You are nervous,” the Sea Witch says. Her face is beautiful, something I had not expected. As mer-children, we had been told that her flesh was green, her teeth rotting, her skin covered in sores and pock marks. We were told that she was jealous of the Sea King’s powers, bitter because she was no match for his might. We were told that she did not want to bear children and if she laid eggs, she would eat them before they hatched. We were told many things, much of which is difficult to reconcile with the mermaid before me now.
“No,” I lie. “I am not.”
“Hmm.” She angles her head to one side, examining me. “Unfortunately, little mermaid, I don’t quite believe you.” She swims back into the cabin, indicating that I should follow her.
“I have been expecting you,” she says, as she settles in the one piece of furniture in the room, a large wooden chair that rocks back and forth. Her tail is vast, the black flesh punctured with (I count them quickly) thirteen oil-black pearls. Thirteen? No, it cannot be. That would mean—
“My Salka told me what you did the night of the storm,” the Sea Witch says, conjuring a tube of red lipstick from thin air, applying it carefully. My father does not allow us to wear make-up; he says it is an artifice used to trick unsuspecting men. We must be natural, he says, natural at all costs. “I suppose you are wondering why I did not seek revenge for your behaviour?” she asks.
“Y-yes,” I stammer.
“I was waiting for you to come to me,” she says. “Mermaids like you always come to me, in the end. But I have to admit, it seemed rather a foolish move – risking your father’s kingdom for the sake of a human man.”
“He would have died if I had not intervened,” I protest, and I am shocked at my own courage. “The Salkas are murderers.”
“Do not speak about my girls in such a manner.”
“I’m sorry,” I say quickly, even though what I have said is true. The carcass of my Uncle Manannán was evidence enough of that. But I cannot risk angering her. “I didn’t mean to insult them or you.” I am curious, though; my besetting sin. “You defend their attack, then?”
“I will defend them,” she says. “I will defend them until my final hour. For who else will? Not your father. He would have seen us wiped out in a pointless war, no matter what the cost. No matter how many of his own young mer-men died.” She snorted. “The Sea King would have been safe, though. He never did like putting himself in danger. Muireann was far too adventurous to be stuck with an old man like him.”
“What?” The water seems to be sucked out of the room at the mention of that name. “You knew my mother?”
“I know everything that happens in these seas.”
“Can you tell me what happened to her? Father says that my mother was captured and murdered, but we never saw a—”
“Sssh.” The Sea Witch places a finger over her lips. “You’ll upset my girls with this talk of murder. It brings up such unhappy memories for them, you know. They can be a tad self-involved. But then young people always think they are the first to experience anything. Heartbreak. Betrayal. Lust.” She scrapes the word off her tongue. “Desire. Isn’t that why you’re here, after all?”
I’ve never heard a mermaid speak about that before. Maids are not allowed to feel in such a way; it cannot be desire which has hunted me to this place. It’s love. It must be love. Love is pure, and I want to be pure again. I want Oliver to help me forget everything that Zale has done to me.
“Am I making you uneasy?” she asks me. “Is there something about me that disturbs you?” She runs her hands down her own body, caressing it with a touch that is infinitesimally tender. “I am comfortable.” She sounds out each syllable clearly. “Do you know what it feels like to be comfortable in your skin? Have you ever known?”
No, I think. No, I do not know what that would feel like. I wonder if I ever will.
“That is not why I am here, Sea Witch,” I say instead.
“My name is Ceto,” she snaps, pushing herself out of the chair until she towers above me. “It is your father who has insisted on calling me a ‘witch’. That is simply a term that men give women who are not afraid of them, women who refuse to do as they are told.”
“I’m sorry.” My voice drops weak. What does the Sea Witch do to people who anger her? Has anyone ever lived to tell the tale? “I didn’t mean to upset you. Please,” I beg her, “please forgive me.”
“Do not apologize,” she says, sitting back down as if nothing has happened and I am over-reacting. “I am not upset.”
“Sorry,” I say again, glancing at the door to the cabin. If she decides to destroy me, how fast could I swim away? But where would I even go now? I need the Sea Witch’s help. She is my only hope. “I’m sorry, honestly I am.”
“Goodness,” she says, sounding amused. “You do realize that you don’t need to apologize for your very existence, don’t you? No matter what your father has led you to believe.”
“The Sea King’s word is law,” I say, as if worried that he has followed me and is eavesdropping outside the cabin. It’s hard to tell which is greater; fear of my father or fear of the Sea Witch. I have been told that one is all-powerful, the other is evil. Which is which? What is true?
“And here you are, in the Shadowlands, disobeying him. I hardly imagined a mermaid so young would possess such daring.”
“I am almost sixteen,” I say, irritation spiking through me despite my terror. “I am not a child. I travelled through the Outerlands at night and then crossed the whirlpools into your realm, even though it is expressly forbidden.”