I must do this. I cannot lose courage before the final test. My mother would have wanted me to be brave. I reach down, shedding my shoes, a soundless scream congealing in my throat when the leather hooks into my feet, stripping flesh with them. It is as if my bones know that these feet are not real, and they are eager to fall away from me.
“Jesus,” he says, stifling a gasp. “What have you done to yourself? Do you need me to call a doctor?” No. No doctors. They cannot help me. “I can’t let you on board like that, miss,” he says. “You need medical attention.” I grab his hands in mine. Please. I need to get on this boat named after my mother. Maybe there will be clues about what happened to her, about her relationship with Oliver’s father. I need to know, I cannot die without knowing. I point at his socks then at my feet. “You want my socks?” he asks, confused, and I nod. “But your feet. Miss, that’s not normal.” I am tired of people saying I am not normal. “You should—”
I sit on the floating walkway, dipping my legs into the water, the blood sizzling-fresh on the waves. I take one clean foot out, then the other, displaying them to him. With an uneasy glance over his shoulder, he peels off his socks.
“I don’t know why I’m doing this,” he says as he gives them to me.
Maybe he too is used to doing as he is told.
The man tells me to call him “Captain”, although he bears little resemblance to the man at Eleanor’s dinner party, the one who believes in mermaids. This new Captain brings me to what he calls the “foredeck hatch”, dragging an armchair into a corner where I can curl up, feet hidden beneath my dress. The Muireann is much larger than the boat upon which I saw Oliver for the first time. I imagine my mother here. Did she dance on this gleaming deck, smile at the staff in white uniforms, circulating with trays of champagne?
The atmosphere is hectic; and overwhelming – do these humans never get tired of so much noise? I can hear the sound of broken glass, and young women are pulling dresses off over their heads so they can dive into the sea, their nubile bodies cutting through it like blades. Heads bobbing in the dark, and they look like Salkas as they wrestle their way up rope ladders, hair pushed back off their faces, dripping salt water. It’s so refreshing, they say, warm as a bath, while their teeth chatter. Girls in their soaking underwear, swaying but not falling. This would not happen in the Sea Kingdom. My father would not tolerate it, especially not for the pure women born of his flesh.
No one is interested in me, tucked away in this corner, so I am free to study them closely. Drinking, dancing. Kissing. Couples going downstairs, the girls pretending to be reluctant. “I don’t usually do this,” they say, the boys urging them to: “Come on, baby.” When they reappear, the girls are flushed, the boys buttoning up shirts with an exaggerated emphasis, looking around to see who has noticed them.
And Oliver. I have been unable to take my eyes off him, and yet I doubt he has even noticed that I am on board.
He is sitting at the back of the deck, Flora opposite him. He is bending forward, his knees touching hers but she leans away, as if there is no need to make any effort with him. Oliver looks happy, I realize. He looks the happiest I have seen him since the water claimed Viola for its own. Maybe this was what he needed, all along. Someone to talk with, rather than at. The one thing that I could not give him, indeed the one thing I gave up so that he would find me attractive. Flora stands, holding five fingers up; Oliver’s gaze following her until she disappears out of sight. He looks dazed, as if he had forgotten the rest of the world had existed until now. Then he sees me and my stomach drops, tightening with that sensation that I cannot name, the sensation that only Oliver gives me, still, still. My body is a traitor.
“Grace,” he says, walking over to me. “I didn’t notice you there. Are you having a nice time?” He takes a glass from a passing waiter, but doesn’t thank him. He rarely thanks the staff, I’ve observed. All the little things that I have ignored about this man, in order to make the narrative of true love and destiny fit. I tried to make him as perfect as I needed him to be.
“What a night this has been,” he says. “I can hardly believe it. And the band were the highlight, weren’t they? I only hired the Furies because one of the servants said that he had seen them at a fête last year. I could have so easily hired another band. And then I wouldn’t have met Flora. You know who Flora is, don’t you?” he asks me. “The girl with that extraordinary voice.” My voice. Is Oliver really trying to tell me that he’s fallen in love with a girl who has my voice? “Tall girl, short hair.” Looks like Viola, I want to add. You do remember Viola, don’t you, Oliver? “She’s wonderful, Grace. She’s so smart and interesting and she’s funny. You rarely meet girls who are funny, do you?”
Maybe because girls have been trained to laugh at boys’ jokes rather than make any of their own.
Flora is interesting and smart and funny, whereas all I have to offer is my face and my body. And if he does not want that, then what use am I? I am a shiny ornament to be displayed and admired, but not to be touched. All I have ever wanted was to be touched by someone who loved me.
“And you know what, Grace?” Oliver continues. “I have you to thank for this.”
Me?
“It’s true.” He laughs at my astonished expression. “You’ve only been here such a short time, but I feel…” He runs a hand across his jaw while he searches for the correct word. “Settled now that you are here. Does that make sense? It was as if you were left on that beach for me to find, like the heavens sent you to help me recover. You have given me back my confidence. I know that you only ever want what’s best for me.”
I clear my throat. In that moment, I do not want what is best for Oliver. I want to slit his throat with a rusty blade, watch him fall to the deck and bleed out before me.
“Hello.” Flora has returned. Up close, she is even prettier than I had thought. Perfect white teeth in a full-lipped smile, clear skin. “Apologies for taking so long, the queue for the loo was horrifying.” Her speaking voice doesn’t sound like mine, though; it is lower. More husky. Sexy, Rupert would say, if he was here. She holds out a hand to shake mine. “I’m Flora,” she says.
“Don’t expect much in the way of conversation from Grace,” Oliver says, elbowing me as if I am one of the boys. “She’s more of the silent type.”
“Grace?” Flora raises an eyebrow at me. “That’s your name now, is it?”
“That’s what we call her,” Oliver says, adding sotto voce, “she’s a mute, poor thing. My mother and I have taken her in at the estate.” My hands curl into fists at my sides. As if I am a stray dog that they have rescued. An animal that can be easily cast aside again, when they grow bored of me.
“Well,” Flora says, grazing her hand across my shoulder, an indistinct murmur of an electric current running between us. “It’s very nice to see you, Grace.”
“So,” Oliver says, angling his body towards Flora, edging me out of the conversation. That’s rude, Oliver. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners? “You were saying before that—”
“That the uprising in the islands was essential? Yes, it clearly was.”
“I disagree,” Oliver says, as if that should be enough to shut down any counter arguments. I can imagine his parents reassuring Oliver that his opinions mattered when he was a child, sitting around the dinner table and asking their young son for his thoughts on the meal or his day at school. His voice would have been valued. I wonder if I would have been so quick to relinquish my own if I had experienced the same. “I don’t think rioting is acceptable under any circumstances,” he says. “Those people were just using the protest as an excuse to smash windows and loot whatever they could get their hands on.”