CHAPTER TEN
The three men have surrounded me, each wearing similar material on their bodies. Navy jackets crusted with sand, large gold circles running down the centre, their white shirts cut low and showing chest hair. “Fuck,” a man says. “Fuck.” Their faces are dissolving before me but I stay awake. I fight the darkness.
“Is she okay?” One of the men asks, biting his fingernails like Talia does when she’s worried.
“I don’t know.”
“How did she get here? And why is she—”
“George, I said I don’t know.” That voice again. His voice. My eyelids flutter as someone crouches beside me. “My name is Oliver,” he says. “What’s your name?”
Oliver. I am so relieved that I have found him that I reach out for him. It’s me. I am the one who saved your life, I want to tell him. But no words can come. All I can do is stare at his face, and wonder how I ever thought I would be worthy of him.
“Cat got your tongue?” the tallest man asks, pushing a swoop of dark red hair off his face. He leans against the steps as he inhales on a small stick of some sort, blowing smoke through his nose like he is a demon.
“Here,” the man with the bitten nails kneels down too. “Have some of this,” he says, offering me a glass bottle. “It’ll help.”
“George,” Oliver frowns. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“It’s medicinal, isn’t it?”
I push my hair away and drink, wincing as it burns my throat, still scalded from the witch’s potion. The tall man whose name I do not know yet starts to laugh.
“Well, well, well, look at what was hiding underneath all that hair,” he says, clapping slowly. “I wasn’t expecting a peep show. Not that I’m complaining.” And I look down in dread, and I see not a monstrous tail but two legs. I run my hands across the soft skin. The spell worked.
“Here,” George says, taking off the navy material from his body and handing it to me. “Wear my blazer.”
So it is not my legs the tall man finds amusing, but my nakedness. Everyone was naked under the sea, man and maid alike. I didn’t understand that my body was something I should be ashamed of before now. The redheaded man’s eyes are hungry, like Zale’s used to be, and I pull back in fright, crouching behind Oliver’s legs for protection.
“Oli, it looks like you have a new pet,” that man says. “What will you name her? Gingernut biscuits?”
“You’re one to talk, Rupert,” George says, ruffling the tall man’s hair.
“Fuck off, George.”
“Boys, be quiet.” Oliver says. He takes off his own … blazer, they call it, and wraps it around my shoulders. It is warm and it smells of sand and salt and musk, the smell of him, and I want to breathe it in for ever. “Up you get,” he says, and we look into each other’s eyes. Something sharp in my stomach, a drop, then unspooling slowly. How is he doing this to me? I smile and then I put my weight on these feet for the first time. The pain slashes through me, fast and true, as if it might gut my eyes.
“Shit,” he says, as my knees buckle. “Let’s get her inside. My mother will know what to do next.”
We take one step, then another, my eyes watering from the ordeal. I look down at these legs, sure that they must be bleeding. Like Makara and Ondine, the children in the nymph-tale who were left in the foreign seas by their father and their wicked stepmother, dropping seashells in their wake so they could find their way home. But all I can see is flesh, ten toes. Feet. My feet.
Oliver bursts through the arched doors of the mansion with George and Rupert close behind, calling for help. I had collapsed on the marble steps outside so Oliver carried me in his arms as if I was a child. He runs into the centre of the room, placing me on a chair made of the softest cushion. I want to pull him down, nestle on his lap and curl into his body, I want to make us one. But he steps back, staring at me with an uncertain expression on his face. Oliver. Oliver, come here. I need you to touch me. I blush. These are not thoughts that a nice young maid should be having about a man.
“My god,” a woman says, rising to her feet. She is older, her black hair twisted into thick coils wrapped into a bun at the nape of her neck. “Oli, what happened? Who is this girl?”
The room I find myself in is of considerable size, the ceiling decorated with paintings of plump, winged babies, the narrow windows covered with that same painted glass that I had seen from outside. I am entranced by the sun shining through it and dancing in vivid swirls of reds and blues, ghosts of colour on our skin. There are other humans there, men and women dressed in black like the older woman was; dark netting shadowing the women’s faces, scraps of white material pressed to bloodshot eyes. They are all staring at me, aghast.
“I found her on the beach, Mother,” Oliver explains. “She was, well. She wasn’t wearing any clothes.”
His mother takes a step back. “You found her on the beach?” Her voice is hushed but I can sense the sharp-edged apprehension in it. “Unclothed? And you carried her?”
“She couldn’t walk, Mother. She was too weak, from the shock no doubt.”
The woman comes over to me. “Who are you?” she says, and she visibly flinches when she sees my face. “Who are you?” she says again, something else in her voice now, a hand covering her mouth, as if she doesn’t want to breathe the same air as me. “Answer me immediately.” She grabs my shoulders and shakes me savagely, the crown of my head hammering against the back of the chair.
“Mother!” Oliver says, pushing between the two of us. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Why doesn’t she answer me?” Her face is contorting, but not in anger. She can barely contain her fear, I realized. Why would she be afraid of me? She weaves around her son, trying to grab at me. “Answer me, girl!” she shouts. “Where are you from? Who sent you here?”
“What is wrong with you?” Oliver says again. “You’re acting like a total lunatic.”
“Don’t disrespect me. Don’t you dare.”
“Or what? What are you going to do? Throw me out? That would leave you pretty much alone, wouldn’t it, Mother?”
“Okay,” George says, one hand on Oliver’s shoulder, smiling awkwardly at Oliver’s mother who ignores him, her eyes unfocused. “Eleanor, Oli – let’s all calm down. The poor girl is exhausted.” He crouches before me. “Can you not speak? Is that it?”
Limp with relief, I nod. Thin sheets of something they called paper are brought before me, a utensil (a pencil) pressed into my hand. I have seen such items in the remains of wrecked ships but I had never understood their use before now.
“What is your name?” Oliver asks me. “Write your name down so we know what to call you.” I stare at him, and then the “pencil”, in uncertainty. “She cannot write either,” someone murmurs. “The poor child, she must be illiterate.”
The others are dismissed (I’m sorry, Oli’s mother – Eleanor – says to her departing friends. Please tell the Guptas… tell them I sent my sympathies. Oliver’s body tensing at the word Guptas, and I try to remember where I had heard that name before.) until it was only me and Oliver and Eleanor left behind. A doctor is called, an older man with a grey beard who directs all of his attention to Eleanor. He proclaims that I am suffering from “shock” and “possibly amnesia”.
“Did you hit your head?” the doctor man asks me, holding a metal circle to my chest, and I wince at the cold. “Was there an accident? Did your boat sink?”
“Boats, boats,” Eleanor says under her breath. “This family has never had any luck with boats.”
“I never thought I would hear a Carlisle complain about a ship,” the doctor jokes, his smile sliding off his mouth at Eleanor and Oliver’s shocked faces. “Oh,” he says. “I’m so sorry, that was utterly unforgiveable. I forgot myself. Please accept my apology.”
“And she is mute?” Eleanor asks him, brushing his excuses aside.
“I’m not sure,” he replies, before asking me to stick my tongue out. I do not move. I don’t want to do this in front of Oliver. I don’t want him to think I am unsatisfactory in any way.
“Are you deaf as well?” the doctor asks. “Show me your tongue.”
And I open my mouth, averting my eyes so I won’t have to witness his disgust.
There are horrified gasps and, “Bloody hell!” and, “What kind of barbarian would do this?” and, “We must take care of her, mustn’t we, Mother?”
“Mother,” Oliver repeats when the woman doesn’t reply. Her lips are in a thin line, compressing white. “We must take care of her. It is our moral duty.”
“Moral duty?” Eleanor says. “Oh, Oliver – you’re still recovering after the accident. It’s probably best if we get her the best help and allow the professionals to take care of it.”
“I have seen what happens to people when you get the ‘best help’ for them,” he says. “I haven’t forgotten. I will never forget.”
“Oliver, we—”
“We what? We don’t have the space? We don’t have enough servants? What other excuses are you going to come up with, Mother?” He turns to me and I try to hide my shock that he would speak to a parent in such a way, even if she is only a woman. “You have nothing to be afraid of. You’re safe now.”
Eleanor calls a servant then, a young girl by the name of Daisy, who is ordered to take care of me. “Watch her closely,” she mutters to the girl.
A male servant is ordered to transfer me to a bedroom as I am still too frail to walk, and as he carries me out of the room, I can feel Eleanor’s eyes following me. The room I have been brought to is beautiful, and I am told that it is my own for as long as is required. A bed draped in gold silk, an antique dresser with ornate moulding, a large box (a wardrobe, Daisy says) filled with material (dresses, Daisy says) so plush that I shiver at their feel.
“They are all black, because we are in mourning,” Daisy tells me as she shows me into an adjacent alcove made of cream tiles that are cool to touch. I want to touch everything, make sense of this world through my fingertips, but I am conscious that I cannot behave strangely in front of this girl.
“Do you need to use the toilet?” she asks, pointing at a clay seat in the corner, helping me to sit upon it. Liquid runs between my legs, a warm release from that strange tightness in my abdomen that I was unable to explain until now, and I gaze at it in shock. What is this?
“Come on,” Daisy says as she fills the container in the centre full of water. It comes surging down from silver knobs she called taps, and she helps me to climb into this bath. The relief as I lie down is dizzying, and I duck my head underneath. For a moment I can pretend that I am lying in my room in the palace, staring at the hazy night sky above the surface. For a moment, I can pretend that nothing has changed. Then I have to come up for air, panting, my human lungs burning with need.
When I am alone, I find a hand mirror on the bedside table and I hold it to my face, opening my mouth to see Ceto’s handiwork for myself. I see a brutal wound, not even a half-stump left behind, just a raw, jagged lesion. I put the mirror away, my hand shaking as the enormity of what I have done begins to fully register. Remember, Gaia. Remember why you are here. I stretch my feet out before me, pulling up the nightgown for a better view. I touch one thigh, then the other, running my hands up along the insides until I reach the centre, the place where Daisy told me was for the “toilet”, and I feel an unaccountable pleasure. Here is something the Sea Witch failed to mention when she said human men preferred legs that were easy to spread.
“Hello?” There is someone at the door. “It’s me,” he says. “Oliver. Oli, I mean. I was hoping to speak with you before you retire.”
I clap my hands. Oliver. Excitement courses through me, fizzing rich in my stomach.
“Is that a signal that I can come in?” he says from the other side.
I clap again, and the door opens. His curls are damp, and he smells of those trees that hung ripe with sharp-smelling yellow fruit on the beach where I left him. He is wearing a coat of soft, black material wrapped around him, the same on his feet.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he says, as he sits on the bed, and I am light-headed being this near to him. Why did no one ever tell me that it was possible to feel like this? “I wanted to say hello.” There is silence, a silence I try to fill up with my prettiness. For what else do I have now? “Your eyes are so blue,” he says. “I don’t think I have ever seen a girl with eyes that shade before.”
It feels odd to be complimented on something that was so commonplace under the sea. The mer-folk would comment on the flame-red of my hair, or the sweetness of my song. No one would think to say my eyes were blue because what other colour would they be? There is another awkward pause. The Sea Witch told me that men like the sound of their own voices, that Oliver would present his opinions to me as if they were a gift; she said all I would have to do in return is smile and nod. Why is Oliver remaining quiet? Have I done something wrong, already?
He stares at his hands, the energy leaching out of him until he hunches over, like an old man. “I don’t know why I came,” he says, his voice bleak. “I don’t know why I do anything these days.” He stands up, his fingers brushing against mine as he does so. A shiver of heat runs through me and I am torn between pulling away and reaching forward and grabbing his hand, moving it to where I need it to be, to this new place that I have just discovered. Is this what the Sea Witch meant when she talked about desire?
“Goodnight,” Oliver says, with a wave.
Come back. I want to say. I am on fire. I am on fire because of you.
I turn the light off as I saw the maid do earlier. I lie there in the darkness, in my soft bed, and I do not think about my mother. I do not think of my father, and what punishments he has devised to ensure that the rest of his daughters do not dare to misbehave as I have done. All I can think about is Oliver.
Oliver and the way he might touch me.