“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.
“Mother,” I say aloud, the word unfamiliar on my tongue. I am not supposed to say her name. I am not even supposed to think of her. “She didn’t think of any of you, did she?” my father told us time and time again. “She didn’t care enough to stay.”
Mother.
CHAPTER THREE
It is still dark when I wake, a tiny pinprick of light burrowing its way into the palace, promising the coming day. It is time, the water whispers to me.
I am strangely calm as I prepare for my journey, the journey I have been waiting to take for so long now, but I cannot help but picture my mother’s fifteenth birthday. I imagine her, wild hope caught between her teeth, her bone-knowing that she was meant for more than a life of combing her hair and singing for survival. Betrothed to a man much older than her, a man who saw her as a toy, a shiny thing that he couldn’t wait to get his hands on, and yet she married him anyway, putting aside her own needs to make others happy, because that’s what maids are supposed to do. Zale makes my skin crawl, I would tell my mother if she was still here. He looks at me like he wants to destroy me. Sometimes I wish I could hate my mother, that I could resent her for leaving us behind. But all I can do is long for her.
The darkness is collapsing into a murky grey, chasing me upwards. I swim out of the open tower, looking down at the palace beneath me. Thousands of fish surround the walls, a circle of phosphorescent skins, cowering for shelter. They can smell the storm too, can sense shattered sand. Their fear today is greater than their usual trepidation about the nets the humans cast to trap them. It is difficult for me to fathom, but up there it is said that they eat fish the way the Rusalkas eat men, teeth tearing flesh, sucking juice from bones.
We mermaids are not so easily caught. We are rare, and that makes us precious. The humans that believe we exist want to capture us and exhibit our bodies, for that is the only way they can make us real for their sceptical brethren. Most humans cannot believe anything that they cannot see with their own eyes, touch with their own hands. But we are more clever than mere fish; we know how to avoid such snares.