CHAPTER SIX
Eat, they tell me. You look so thin, Muirgen. You look so pale. What’s wrong, Muirgen? Tell us what’s wrong.
I smile and say that I am fine. I sit at the dining table and I pretend to eat my food. (And all I can think about is him, his tight curls and those dark eyes. How he made me feel, my insides turning soft. I need to feel like that again.) But then I remember my father, and the Salkas, and the Sea Witch’s attack which must be imminent. What are they planning? Fear grips me so tightly that I can barely breathe.
It is difficult, feeling as I do, when you are a part of my father’s court, meeting his demands that his daughters be charming at all times. Entertain me, he says. (Earn your keep, he means. Prove to me that you are not like your mother.) We must tell stories or jokes, we must dance in swirling loops, we must raise our voices to the gods and hope that we have pleased him.
I do all those things. And underneath it all, I pray. I pray that the Salkas will not attack.
“Very good, Cosima,” my father says, after she sings a song which she has composed herself.
“I am pleased you enjoyed it, Father,” she replies, her cheeks pink.
“But your youngest sister’s voice is still the sweetest,” Father says. “Do try and listen the next time Muirgen sings. You might learn something.”
He insists that I sing then, and I do as instructed, of course. But I have lost all joy in it. Singing was the one thing that made me feel content, and even that has been tainted; as if fear has scratched its nails across my vocal cords, leaving them bleeding and raw.
Zale and Marlin continue to visit, Marlin sitting by Nia silently, while Zale regales us with stories of his youth. “Such a long time ago,” he says to me after a particularly dramatic account of a battle with the Salkas during the war, “years before you were even born, little one.” His lips against my cheek, too close to my mouth. It is as if he wants to peel my skin away from my body and taste it on his tongue. Patience, Gaia, I tell myself. The nausea might subside once we are bonded. I might learn to like him, in time.
“It’s getting late,” the Sea King said one night, when he arrived to tell the men it was time for them to go home. Zale stopped mid-story, instinctively knowing that such boasting would not be appreciated by my father. Our betrotheds left, and my father gave Nia and I a long look. Does he know? Does he know what I have done? “You’re very quiet tonight,” was all he said.
Nia and I are always quiet when the men leave. “I hope you both know how fortunate you are,” my father said. “Particularly you, Muirgen. Zale could have had whichever of my daughters he wanted.”
“Thank you, Father,” I replied, wishing that Zale had chosen someone else, anyone else. Why did it have to be me? “Thank you for bestowing this gift upon me.”
I cannot stop thinking about Oliver. When I wake up, the first thing I see in my mind’s eye is his face. I wonder if he is safe. I remember the Salka, her claws spiked and her mouth screeching, and I imagine the horrors the Sea Witch is dreaming up to exact her revenge upon us. I cannot sleep for worry, circling my room, around and around.
Human men will bring you nothing but pain, the Salka told me. Does she know what they did to my mother? My mother, who was taken when I was so very young. My mother, who is dead.
My mother is dead.
Isn’t she?
Another long night of half-dreams and worry. I press my hands into my eyes, blinking back tears. Water is our life force, it runs through our veins, turning our insides to blessed salt. It should not be wasted by crying.
“In bed already?” I start, but it is only Grandmother speaking.
“You’re very jumpy at the moment, Muirgen,” she says, floating by my bed. Her grey hair is tied in a knot at the base of her neck, a necklace of seashells hanging between her breasts. How long has she been there?
“I’m fine, Grandmother.”
“Your sisters are going swimming tomorrow. Just as far as the pools, I believe, so it shouldn’t be too taxing,” she says. “I thought you might like to join them.”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I said no, didn’t I?”
“That’s a shame. You used to love going swimming before.”
Our swimming expeditions were the only time I ever felt free. My sisters and I, mer-children then, our hands gripped on to a dolphin’s fin, screaming at the speed at which we were towed through the water. The joy of it, the exhilaration. Back then, Cosima and I were best friends. A team. Just us against the world. Cosima had been promised to Zale since birth, and she talked often of the wedding, what she would wear in her hair, how adorable their mer-babies would be. That was before I turned beautiful, before I became something that Zale wanted to possess. That was before I lost her too. It seems that I am forever destined to lose the people I love.
“I’m too tired, Grandmother.”
“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?”
I swim away from Zale, floating up towards the surface. My breath feels leaden, as if it wants to break my ribs. I wish Oliver was here to rescue me, take me away. I wish my mother was still alive. I wish someone would ask me what I want, just once. I wish for so many things, and I know that none of them are possible for girls like me.
“Always looking up,” Zale says, floating easily beside me. “Tell me, what is it about up there that fascinates you so much, Muirgen? Is there anything you would like to tell me?”
“What do you mean by that?” (Does he know? How could he know?)
“Nothing,” he says. “I was just wondering.”
Zale has never even been to the surface; it is a point of pride for him. Why would I? he says. Why would I even want to be near those disgusting creatures?
“And all of this nonsense,” he says now, pointing to the statue and the precious things on my table. “This human rubbish. I don’t know why your father indulges this obsession of yours.”
“It’s not an obsession.” And my father does not know anything about me. “I just think they’re pretty.”
“Typical girl,” Zale says. “Distracted by shiny trinkets, regardless of their provenance. Things will change when we are bonded. These visits to the surface will come to a stop, for one. It’s too dangerous, your risk of capture increases with each return. Perhaps you should heed what happened to your mother. There’s a lesson in that, isn’t there? A lesson I’m sure you would do well to remember, especially when you belong to me.”
What he says is true; I will be his. I belong to my father, and my father has chosen Zale for me. I shall be passed from one man to the next, ownership transferred with the ease of a handshake, and I will be expected to smile as the deal is done.
“Do you mind being bethrothed to Marlin?” I had asked Nia a few months before my last birthday. The others had gone on a rare trip to the surface to watch a lightning storm (Don’t tell Father, Talia warned me. You know how he would get if he heard we were going up there.) and I had to watch jealously as they swam away from the palace. Bored of sitting in the tower for them to return, I found Nia in the dormitory, staring out the window.
“Do you mind?” I asked her again when she didn’t answer me. I couldn’t stop thinking about that conversation between her and Grandmother that I had stumbled upon; Nia’s despair, her pleas that our grandmother do something to help her. Both of us remained still then, listening to each other’s breathing. We were waiting for the other to be the first one to tell the truth. “Do you love Marlin?”
Nia was quiet for a long time. “Muirgen,” she said eventually, “you can’t always get what you want. We should know that better than anyone else.”
“Zale?” I ask now. “Do you…” I am unsure of how to phrase this. He moves through the water until he is floating in front of me, reaching out to caress my hair. Something heavy pulses in my throat.
“Delicious,” he murmurs, examining each bare inch of flesh and scale. Next he will ask me to show him my teeth so he can check for cavities. “What were you asking? Do I what?”
“Do you love me?” I need to ask him this. If Zale feels the same way about that me that I do about Oliver, if he dreams about me, if he can spend hours thinking about holding my hand, maybe it will all be okay. He will treat me with kindness when we are bonded. I could learn to be content if I was treated kindly.
“Love you?” he says. “What has ‘love’ got to do with anything? This isn’t one of those nymph-tales your grandmother has filled your head with, Muirgen.”
“I don’t think it’s the most absurd question in the kingdom,” I say, anger rising in me. “Considering we are to be bonded on my next birthday.”
“Don’t be such a child,” he says. “You are the Sea King’s favourite daughter. Your beauty is unrivalled and therefore you are the correct choice for a man like me. He has no sons, so once we are bonded, the Sea King will have to honour me as rightful heir to the throne. I shall make certain improvements that need to be enforced around here.”
He has never spoken so freely about his ambitions for the future before. There has always been a chaperone present, an elder there to safeguard my purity. But in a few short months, there will be no one there to protect me from this man. I will be alone with him, for ever.
“But I am the youngest,” I say, ignoring the pain in my chest, my lungs feeling as if they are too big for this body to contain. “If this is what you want, surely Talia would be a better match. She is the first-born. Or Cosima, the way it was supposed to be. Zale, she still adores you, she would—”
“You’re being ridiculous,” he says, his mouth tightening at the mention of Cosima’s name. “You are just girls. Your looks are the only thing that distinguishes you from one another, and I want the best.” He touches my face, as if testing my beauty to ensure it is worthy of acquisition. “You remind me of your mother,” he says. “I wanted Muireann myself, you know – every mer-man did at that time – but the Sea King had first priority.” He smiles at me. “But you’re the next best thing, little Muirgen. With you by my side and the Sea King’s trident in my hand,” he closes his eyes, as if imagining the power flooding through him, “the kingdom will be mine. All of it. I will make sure of that.”
“You don’t mean—”
“Yes, I do,” he says, opening his eyes again. “It is time to be rid of the Salkas for good. We were so close to victory the last time; if your father had remained resolute instead of allowing a mermaid to persuade him to concede. We had nearly destroyed them when he agreed to this joke of an armistice.”
The armistice that my mother was so anxious to achieve. A crown of white lilies in her hair, my father’s hand on hers. Peace, that was what Muireann of the Green Sea wanted, the stories go. She wanted peace so badly that she gave her body to a man old enough to be her father. I would not see that legacy so carelessly dismantled.
“That ‘joke of an armistice’, as you put it, has worked for so long,” I say. “No one wants a return to the times of war, Zale. The mer-folk nearly died of starvation before. Why would you want such a thing to happen again?”
“It won’t happen like that this time. This time, we shall be the victors.”
There are no victors in war. “But why would you want to take such a risk? When things are peaceful now…” We have heard the stories of the Sea Witch, and the atrocities that she is capable of. If provoked she will eat our young, she will send her Salkas to scalp our women, shave our hair and wear it as their own. And they will kill every last mer-man they find in the kingdom. There is no guarantee of our victory, no matter what Zale might think. He is so blinded by prejudice that he cannot see his own foolishness.
“It is not a risk,” he says. “The Salkas are an abomination and must be destroyed.”
“But—”
“Enough back talk, girl. I am a man, not a fish,” he says. “And men go to war.”
“Why do you hate them so much?” I ask him. “What did they ever do to you?”
“Muirgen. They came from the world above, from the human world.” I am silent; that is all he needs to hate, I think. A human touch is enough to make him venomous.
“Besides,” he says, and there is an amused smile on his face, “a war should make you happy. Are you not afraid that they will come for you? They must have been most displeased at your little … intervention.”
“What?” I say, and the water is ice suddenly, frost chipping into my bones. “What are you talking about?”
He tilts his head to one side, a smirk playing on his lips. “You know exactly what I’m talking about, don’t you? I saw you. I saw you the night of the storm.”
“But, but you never go to the—”
“—dragging that human away from the Salka.”
My hands are trembling so I clasp them together to make them stop, as if in prayer. “That isn’t true. I don’t know what you think you saw, Zale, but—”
“Don’t lie to me,” he barks, and I shut up. “I wanted to keep an eye on you, little one, your mother’s blood is in you. I wanted to make sure that, along with her red hair and her—” he stares at my breasts and I resist the urge to shudder “—form, you had not also inherited other, more displeasing traits. It was such a disappointment to discover the truth, but don’t worry,” he says, and he rubs his tongue against his top teeth as if he’s sharpening it. “I can purify you. I can purify you in ways that you have never imagined. It would be my pleasure.”
“Zale,” I say. I begin to drop down into my room, too weak to stay afloat, and he follows closely. “Zale, I beg you. Please don’t tell my father. There hasn’t been any word from the Sea Witch, no hint of a reprisal. No one need know. This could be forgotten—”
“Oh, I don’t think I’ll be forgetting this in a hurry.”
“What do you want from me?” I say, sinking on to the bed, fear spinning me dizzy.
“Well,” he says, tapping his fingers against his jaw line in an exaggerated pose of thoughtfulness, “there is one thing you could do.”
“What?” I’ll do anything he wants. Anything. So long as my father does not find out.
“You think I don’t see how you flinch when I look at you? How you pull away when I touch you?”
“I don’t—”
“Yes, you do,” he says matter-of-factly. “I don’t mind a bit of reluctance. That can be fun, actually. But in public? It won’t do, not any more. I won’t be made into a laughing stock.” He places his hands on my waist, leaning in to whisper in my ear. “You will be mine soon, little one; you had better get used to it.”
“Are you going to tell my father?”
“I haven’t decided yet. But what fun I am going to have with you in the meantime.” He tightens his grip and claims my lips with his, his cold tongue invading my mouth like a greasy sea slug. “Goodnight.”
As the door closes behind him, I can feel my stomach clenching, propelling something up through my chest and my throat, spewing out of my lips. A dark yellow cloud, a shadow on the waves, floating away from me. And I watch it dance.
That was my first kiss.