CHAPTER EIGHT
It is dark that night when I leave the palace, the kind of dark that suggests that, above the surface, the moon has been smothered by clouds. I had waited until the palace had fallen silent, only leaving my bedroom when I could be sure that everyone was asleep. Tracing my fingertips over my comb and mirror, murmuring goodbye to my marble statue. I won’t need them where I’m going.
Down the stairs of my tower, past my sisters’ dormitory. Pausing outside the door, wishing I could say goodbye. But they would make me stay. Stay here and marry Zale. They would have me spend my life dreaming of Oliver. Dreaming of my mother. Dreaming until I dream no more. I can’t do it but still, I wish I could tell them that I love them. That, like my mother before me, I must leave them.
Creeping through the foyer, the floor smooth in diamond-shapes of gold and pearl. Holding my breath in case I wake the servants, wretched fear paralysing my thoughts, stuttering them into words rather than sentences.
What if… Father… Zale… Oliver…
My mother. My mother. My mother.
Winding through the narrow streets of sand, daisies of red and purple lining the paths, seashell houses crammed together. They are all closed at this time of night, the lips of the cockles pushed up to meet one another. I imagine the mer-folk nestled inside, and I wonder what their dreams are made up of. Have they ever dreamed of the escape of an open sky the way that I do?
As I swim away from the kingdom and into the Outerlands, the darkness thickens and although the path ahead is clear, it feels like I am wading through tangled sea weeds. The water is dryer here, a desert wasting on my tongue, the sea grass and flowers withering, as if diseased. The shantytowns, made from shattered grey shells and a prayer, seem to sway with the pull of the tide. I have never been here before. I refused to accompany Sophia on her charitable visits, certain I would say the wrong thing or be caught staring at the Outerlands mer-folk.
They are different, those who live here. Not different like the humans or the Salkas, they are still mer-folk, but the Sea King does not wish them to live within palace grounds. The ones who pray to the forbidden gods, those whose bodies were hatched misshapen, maids who did not adhere to the standards of beauty my father prefers, those who were sterile or barren. “I’m not going to exterminate them,” my father said, when I asked why the Outerlands even existed if he found the people living within so objectionable. “It’s just better that they live amongst their kind. They’ll be more comfortable that way.”
No one stirs as I move through the shanties but I stop anyway when I come to the whirlpools that separate our world from that of the Sea Witch; a wall of pounding, swirling water twisting from sea-bed to the surface. I look back, my breath uneven. Half expecting to see an army of men led by Zale, charging towards me. I have never been this far from the palace before, not once in my near sixteen years. And to move past the whirlpools, to swim through the chewing currents and allow myself to be spat out on the other side, is strictly forbidden by Sea-King Law. His people are not permitted to travel beyond the Outerlands, especially not to the Shadowlands. If I do this, I remind myself, there is no going back.
“If I do what you’re suggesting, there is no going back,” I had said to Cosima tonight.
A knock on the door. Grandmother had just left and I assumed it was her again. I knew it was not Zale; he never knocks.
“Come in,” I had called. It was Cosima.
“Crying, sister?” she asked.
“What are you doing here, Cosima?”
She sat next to me, adjusting her tail in line with mine, and I knew she was comparing them, my dark green against her royal blue, searching for a flaw in my scales that would mean she had won, for once.
“I heard you,” she said in a strange sing-song manner. “I heard you talking to Grandmother.” My chest tightened, squeezing all the air out of my lungs. What had she heard? And, if she had heard the worst of it, what would she do?
“So, that was you earlier,” I said, as nonchalantly as I could manage. “I knew it wasn’t just a fish, no matter what Grandmother thought.”
Cosima picked up a mirror from the squat wooden cabinet beside my bed. A relic from a storm seven years ago. Vicious winds, a starving sea, Salkas screaming for flesh-revenge with wild, unfettered abandon. Calling the names of men who were long dead, men who broke their hearts or their bodies, and sometimes both. Corpse after corpse after corpse. It was raining humans for months afterwards.
Cosima gazed at her reflection in the mirror, tousling her golden hair. “Don’t try and deny it,” she said. “I heard everything you said to Grandmother. You love him. You love a human man.” I thought of Oliver, spewing sea-water out of his mouth, as if it was something poisonous. How beautiful his face was, even when pallid and cold. And then I thought of him calling her name, Viola? Viola?
I didn’t say anything. It was too dangerous a thing to admit, especially to Cosima. I just focused on catching my breath, one in (You’ll be fine, Gaia), breathe out (Stay calm, Gaia). “What’s wrong with you, Muirgen?” she said when I remained silent. “It’s not fair to Zale. You are to be bonded in two months and this is how you repay him for that honour? He should be with someone who loves him, who understands him. Someone more suited to the rigours of ruling the kingdom. Someone who…” she trailed off. “Anyway,” she said. “Someone else.”
“I never wanted any of this to happen.” I went to take her hand, but she snatched it back. “Cosima, please. You know this isn’t my fault.”
“What’s not your fault? That you stole Zale from me?”
“I didn’t steal him. You and I were such good friends – we loved each other, didn’t we?” There was a lump caught in my throat. “I miss you.”
“Zale was mine,” she said. “Everything was perfect before. Perhaps if you hadn’t been born then our mother wouldn’t have lost her mind and deserted us.” I drew back as if she had slapped me, but she didn’t stop there. “And you don’t even appreciate Zale. You’re so ungrateful that you fall in love with the first human man you set your eyes on. I couldn’t believe it when I heard you admit it to Grandmother tonight. The humans took our mother, Muirgen.”
“You’re always saying that she abandoned us, now you’re saying it’s the humans’ fault. Make up your mind, Cosima.”
“Don’t get smart. Those creatures murdered her for sport. Have you forgotten that?”
I had taken a deep breath. “We don’t know that for sure, do we?”
“What?” She was astonished at this. She obviously hadn’t heard everything I said to Grandmother tonight. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, we don’t know what happened to her after she was captured. We only know what Father has told us.”
“And that is enough. His word is law, you foolish girl. Have you completely lost your senses?”
“I just want the truth. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“And you’re prepared to do anything to get ‘this truth’?” she snarled, her face fierce.
“Well.” I don’t know. I don’t know. “I think so.”
“It’s going to take more than ‘I think so’ to do what needs to be done, Muirgen. Don’t be pathetic.”
She didn’t think I was brave enough, I realized, and I felt something smouldering inside me. “Don’t talk to me as if I’m a child, Cosima. Yes, I am prepared to do anything to find out what happened to her.”
“Okay,” she said, and her features fell clean, as if she had never known anger in her life. “Okay, Muirgen.” A brief smile. “I understand.”
“You do?” I grabbed her hand again, the relief at finally being heard almost overwhelming. This time she didn’t let go.
“You’ve always been such a curious mermaid, haven’t you, Muirgen?” Cosima was the only one who ever called me that. “Even when we were children.” She shifted closer to me, cuddling into my side. “Do you remember?”
Cosima and I, exploring shipwrecks. I’m tired, she would complain at the end of the day, let’s go back to the palace. I would wave her off, happy to stay by myself. “We used to be such good friends before Zale got in the way,” Cosima continued, wrapping a ringlet of hair around her finger. “I miss you, Muirgen. And I want you to be happy. And you’re not happy down here, are you?”
I thought of my father, lining his daughters up in order of their beauty, his satisfaction in my face and my body. His inevitable disgust when I would begin to age and lose my bloom. Zale, his hands and his tongue, and wanting to scour myself afterwards, excavate my bones to make myself clean again. And then Oliver, and that heat running through me when I remembered his dark eyes, and I wanted to feel like that again and again and again. And I thought of my mother. I will never stop thinking of my mother.
“No,” I whispered to Cosima then. “I’m not happy. I will never be happy under the sea.”
“There is a way,” she whispered back. “A way to escape. To have your questions answered. To walk on land, even. But you must go to the Shadowlands. You must go to her.”
“No, no,” I said, when it dawned on me what she was proposing. “The Sea Witch? Are you crazy? She will kill me if I even cross the whirlpools.”
“You need legs, do you not? If you want this man to reciprocate your feelings?”
“Yes, but—”
“Your birthday is approaching rapidly, sister, and by then it will be too late. How much do you love this human?” she asked, and I could not answer her. There were no words. Maybe there would never be enough words to encapsulate the true love I feel for Oliver. “That much?” she asked. “A human man whom you haven’t even had a conversation with?”
“You don’t understand,” I said, and she smiled again.
“Well, then,” she said. “The Sea Witch has the power to help you. You must go to her.”
“But Father is the only person in the kingdom with powers,” I said, confused.
“Muirgen,” she replied, kissing me on the forehead as if anointing me. “You really are naive sometimes.” She lifted the mirror, capturing our faces in the glass. Her blonde hair against my red, identical blue eyes and rosebud lips. But when I looked at my reflection, all I could see was what Zale had done to me, what I had allowed him to do, and I pushed the mirror away.
“You are beautiful, Muirgen,” my sister said. “Even when you have been crying, it’s quite astonishing.” She tilted the mirror so only her face was shown. “But you have not spent years crying, as I have.”
Cosima left me then, to wait for the palace to fall silent. To wait for my chance to escape.
Now, the whirlpool separating me from the Shadowlands churns before me. After everything I have heard of the Sea Witch, everything that we have been told since birth, the idea of being in her presence is almost unendurable. This is the woman whose Salka warriors killed my uncle, who scored a shadow so deep into my mother’s heart that she handed it over as dowry to a man she could never love. And here I am, come to beg a favour from her. But what other choice do I have?
I think of my mother and I ask the gods for a millimetre of her courage. Mother, mother, I pray as I push my way through the whirlpool. For a moment I am suspended in that in-between space, momentarily held safe in the deafening void. (I wish I could stay there for ever, safe in the nothingness.) However, I make myself keep swimming until I am in the Shadowlands, the Shadowlands and it feels both impossible and somehow inevitable that I am here. Here, the setting for my childhood nightmares, the place that we mer-babies whispered about when the adults were out of earshot.
My mother says the Salkas take bold mer-boys and mer-girls to the Shadowlands and they break their skulls as punishment.
My mother says that the air in the Shadowlands is poison, that only the Sea Witch and her Salkas can breathe there for their lungs are made of electric rays, and can withstand death itself.
No, no! My father says there are traps made of quicksand, so if you cross through the whirlpools, you are sucked into the sea-bed and buried alive and you will never see your family ever again and it’ll be all your own fault because you didn’t do as you were told.
For time immemorial, children have made up games where some of us were the Salkas and others were mer-folk and we fought long battles for control of the kingdom. The mer-folk always won, of course, due to the bravery and genius of the Sea King. Blessed be us who are born in the time of the Sea King. Long live the Sea King, we said when we finished. The kingdom has been made great again.
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.”
“I am quite aware of the route you took, dear,” she says, yawning. “No need for the traffic update.”
“Yes, well.” Frustration gives me courage. “I am in the Shadowlands, am I not? Where no other mer-folk, maid nor man, has ever dared to venture before. I am the first to brave these lands, and I am here because I need your help so—”
“The first?” the Sea Witch says, mockery in her voice. “Little mermaid, do not be absurd. Many maids pass this way, more than you could conceive of.” Did my mother come here before she was taken? Did she need your help too? “Some come to Ceto to seek revenge. Sometimes they need help with wounds too deep for your healer to understand, wounds the Sea King refuses to even acknowledge. He never was a fan of ‘emotions’, particularly in women. Hysteria, he called it.” Her jaw tightens every time she mentions my father, it’s unsettling. “Some come to me because they’re afraid of being cast into the Outerlands for failing to breed,” she continues. “Help with virility too. There are so many mer-men who are afraid to be gentle. They are made afraid of their true selves, it is a tragedy. For what happens to men who are not allowed to be afraid? They become angry. Vicious. Feral. I believe you may have some experience with such men, do you not?”
(My father, raising his voice or his trident or his hand; blows raining down upon us, but we deserved it; we were too loud and too demanding. Too much. We would be better next time. Next time, he would find no reason to punish us. We would have to be perfect.)
“This can’t be true,” I say.
“And yet it is, little mermaid. But most who come to the Shadowlands are searching for something a little more…” she flashes her teeth at me. “Primal?”
Primal. She can’t mean… “But it’s forbidden for us to enter the Shadowlands.” I say. “If mer-folk have come here, then—”
Something cold winds around my tail and I look down to find two fat-bellied snakes leering at me. I scream, and the Sea Witch calls them to her side.
“My darling,” she says, as one twists around her waist, “and my baby,” she coos, as the other settles around her neck. “Oh, little mermaid. You would be surprised by how many mer-men come to the Shadowlands, and how frequently too.”
“But why would they?”
“So many questions. I’m surprised your father hasn’t beaten it out of you, he never did like chatty women.”
Was my mother chatty? There is an ache in my chest at the thought of her, and I wonder at how I can miss someone so much when I never even knew them. “They want me. A woman with power. Can you believe it?”
“But why would the men come to you for that?” I ask. “You’re fat.” I regret the words the minute they fall out of my mouth. “I’m so sorry,” I say in a panic. “I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Why would I be offended? Being called fat is not an insult, little mermaid. It is as meaningless as being called thin. They are just descriptions. It is your father who has deemed it to be a negative word, and a negative state of being.” She looks down at herself with obvious pleasure. “I like my body. And while I value my own opinion over those of men, it might surprise you to know that some prefer a woman of more plentiful flesh. It is nothing to be ashamed of – we all have our preferences – but they have been forced to feel ashamed even so.” She sighs. “And I am a fallen woman because of that shame. It is their desire and yet I am cast out as a result.”
I can sense the beginnings of a headache, as if my brain is struggling to absorb all this new information. We have been told since we were mer-children that extra weight is revolting. There have been mer-men who gained in stature as they aged, but the men were not born to please the eye, as we were. Maids have been told that being slim is as important as being beautiful, as necessary as being obedient, as desirable as remaining quiet. We must stay thin or we will die sad and alone, spin-maids of the kingdom, cast to the Outerlands because we are a drain on the palace resources. Such maids are neither mothers nor sirens and therefore are of no use to anyone.
Ceto wheezes as the snake around her neck tightens its grip. “Ah, my pretty,” she says, stroking its blistered head until it releases its hold. “It is not a punishment to be here with you. I am content with my lot. Which is more than can be said for you, little mermaid. What dissatisfied women the Sea King produces. You are not the first of your sisters to visit me, you know.”
I stare at her in shock. Who could have come here? Talia, to find a husband? Cosima? She wouldn’t have asked the Sea Witch to curse me, surely? I think of her coming to my room, her insistence that Ceto would be the only one to help me, and dread grits my teeth. Was this just a trap, after all?
“Which one?” I ask.
“Names, names,” she waves me off. “The girl was quite distressed. She had come of age and realized her nursery-crushes weren’t merely confined to the nursery. Unnatural desires, as the Sea King would put it. Really, he is most intolerant, he always has been. I sent her away, the poor thing. I have heard of witches who will perform such rituals as she begged me to do but I am not one of them. Burning. Cutting. The girls will feel relentless pain afterwards, but they will not be burdened with desire either.” She chuckles at the expression on my face. “Yes, little one, women can experience both. You will see, in time.” She smoothes down her hair and I shrink back at the sudden motion. “Pretty maid, she was,” she continues. “A tail of the palest blue. About bonding age, I would wager. The Sapphic girls always come to me when it is time to take their vows.”
“Nia,” I whimper. “But that is impossible; she is betrothed to Marlin. She will have a natural marriage.” I have heard of girls with unnatural urges, cured, of course, by bonding and by having children of their own. But never a princess. Never a daughter of the Sea King.
“Natural? And what is natural? Your father deems my Salkas to be ‘unnatural’ too, and what are they but drowning girls? He believes that he is all that is natural and right, and anyone with differing inclinations must be deemed perverted in order to prove his point.”
“But Nia is a princess.” A princess who never joined in when my sisters and I were discussing which mer-man we found the most handsome, I realize. A princess who is always looking out of the window, searching for something she cannot name.
“And you think such things cannot exist within the palace walls?”
“But—” I am unable to continue for fear that I will cry. Nia. What will my father do to her if he finds out?
“Don’t worry,” the Sea Witch says, as if she can hear my thoughts. “Nia will accept her fate, marry the man your father has chosen for her. She will be… well, she will be fine. Nia does not have your restlessness.” She smiles. “Speaking of which, is it time that we should come to the heart of the matter?”
“What?”
“You are here to relinquish your tail, yes? You want to make yourself suitable for the desires of a man?” Not just any man. Oliver. “You desire two stumps of flesh to walk upon, stumps that can be spread open in a manner that no sea-tail will permit.” Her head drops as she whispers to the snake around her waist. “All this to satisfy a human who isn’t even aware of her existence.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I knew this was to be your fate from the moment my Salka told me what happened the night of the storm. I could taste your need.”
“It’s not just about Oliver,” I say. “Yes, it’s true that I love him.” The Sea Witch laughs at this, and I ignore her. “But this is about my mother too… She went up there, and she was captured and we don’t know what happened to her, not really. My father says she abandoned us—”
“A mother wanting a life of her own is not the same thing as abandoning her children. You would do well to remember that.”
“And,” I carry on, “he said it was my mother’s fault and we shouldn’t care about her but—”
“Your father says a lot of things.” Her expression is unreadable.
“I need to know the truth.” I am pleading with her now. “I have always needed to know.”
“You will find no answers up there, little mermaid.” Ceto’s shoulders sag. “None that you want to hear, anyway.”
“You don’t understand,” I say, fighting the urge to scream at her.
“You seem to be under the illusion that I understand very little,” she says. She fishes a small bone from the floor and feeds it to the snake on her lap. “That is a mistake, I can assure you.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, swimming back so I am out of her reach. “But I can’t stay there, I can’t be bonded to Zale, I just can’t. He, he…” I gag on the acid-burn words that could explain what he does to me at night, what he’s promised to do once I turn sixteen. Only two months left. “I’m begging you,” I whisper. “Please help me. I don’t know what I will be forced to do if you don’t help me.”
The Sea Witch softens. “I am sorry that it has come to this for you.” Her gaze falls in the middle-distance, as if deciding something. She sighs. “But very well. I shall brew a potion that will slice your tail in two, casing each part with human flesh.” She says it as if it’s easy, mundane. “I will give you legs. That is what you desire, is it not?”
“Thank you, Ceto.” The relief is swift, and sure, as if I didn’t realize how tense I was until she said those words. You will have legs. “Thank you so much.”
“There is no need to thank me just yet. Your legs will be admired by all who see them, as will your unusually graceful movements, but there will be a price. There always is. A sacrifice, and one that you will remember for the rest of your life.” She purses her lips. “You will be unable to forget, I’m afraid.”
“Why not?” I ask, my palms starting to oil. Somehow, I know that I’m not going to like her answer.
“Every step you take shall be one of torture,” she explains. “As if a blade of sharpest metal has shorn through the soles of your foot and broken the bones of your thighs, twisting into your stomach and chafing your organs. I wish I could make it otherwise, but it is a penalty that the laws of magic demand and as such, it is beyond my control. Are you ready for that?”
I don’t reply. I am too afraid, or perhaps, simply, I do not know what can even be said to something so horrifying.
“And, of course, once you have taken the potion there is no turning back,” she says, an uncanny echo of Cosima’s words to me last night. “The kingdom will be lost to you for ever; your sisters, your beloved grandmother. You will never see them again.”
“I knew as much,” I say, determined not to think of my grandmother, how she will feel when she discovers she has lost another girl to the human world. “I am not a fool.”
“My most sincere apologies, Princess Muirgen; I would hate to make you feel like a fool. Did you also know that the potion will only last for a month? Did you know that if this Oliver does not profess his undying love for you by the time the sun begins to rise on that morning after the next full moon – well…”
“What?” I ask. “What will happen then?”
“You will not see your sixteenth year,” she says, looking at me with something akin to sympathy. “Your heart will shatter, cutting your lungs to shreds, carving your brain to pieces. And your body will disintegrate, the waves taking you for their own. It is Sea Law. There is no return.”
The Sea Witch doesn’t understand that if I do not see Oliver again, my heart will crack in half anyway. I will live my broken life with my broken heart, never knowing what became of my mother; forced to smile while I sing upon my father’s request; becoming a respectable wife for Zale. Any fate is better than that.
“And if Oliver does fall in love with me?” I ask, pretending to be unconcerned about any other eventuality.
“You will live happily ever after,” she says.
“And the pain?” I ask. “Will that go away?”
“Oh no,” she replies. “But women are meant to suffer. And you will have a husband and a child and a kitchen to call your own. Isn’t that what every little maid wants?”
“Yes. That is what I want,” I say, and the Sea Witch looks away from me, as though disappointed. “I am prepared to take the risk,” I add. Oliver will love me; I know he will.
He has to.
“Very well,” she says, sighing. “There is more, though. That is the price that must be paid according to Sea Law. But I must extract my own.”
“What?”
The Sea Witch narrows her eyes. “You thought such a potion would come for free? This is powerful magic,” she says. “And not something that can be undertaken lightly. I will have to use my own blood to create the potion. You must see that I need a sacrifice in return?”
“What kind of sacrifice?”
The Sea Witch pushes herself up from the chair, the snakes shedding from her and wriggling through holes in the uneven floorboards. She moves towards me, her skin as luminous as a pearl. She touches my cheek, her fingers silk-smooth, tracing them down my throat.
“We have heard tell of your gift here in the Shadowlands,” she says. “My Salkas inform me that yours is the loveliest voice in all the kingdom.” She presses harder on my neck, and I cough. “In order to make this magic work, I would require your most important asset in exchange.”
“You want my voice?”
“Why so surprised?” she asks. “Did you presume that I would ask for your face or that magnificent mane of hair? No, it is your voice that I value. You should not underestimate its worth, little mermaid.” She swims back from me. “I shall give you legs and you shall give me your tongue.”
“How?” I ask, pressing my lips together, as if afraid she will reach her hand into my mouth and pluck it out with her fingers.
“I shall cut it out, my dear. Don’t worry.” The Sea Witch smiles when I recoil. “It won’t take long.”
“But, but…” I imagine the pain of such an act, the violence. “Won’t that hurt?”
“Love is supposed to hurt. I thought you would have realized that by now,” she says. She means my mother, of course. That void in the centre of me which her disappearance has scraped clean, widening into an abyss with every new day.
“But without my voice, what do I have left?” I ask her. “How will I make Oliver fall in love with me before the next full moon?”
The Sea Witch shrugs, her hair floating up in the water and exposing her generous breasts. “You will still have your form, won’t you? Men have always been told that slimness is the most important attribute a woman can possess; more important than intelligence or wit or ambition, apparently. Although nowhere near as useful, if you ask me.”
“But if I can’t talk—”
“What has your father told you, since you were a hatchling?” she says. “Men don’t like women who talk too much, do they? Better to be silent.”
Viola wasn’t silent. Viola was loud and demanding, dismissing her brother with an imperious toss of her head, and Oliver looked at her as if she was mesmerizing, as if he could have spent the rest of his life listening to her voice and never tire of it.
“So,” she says to me. “A decision must be made, little mermaid. What is it to be?”
“Yes?” I say, the doubt turning the word into a question, but what else can I say? Either I am silent above the surface, or I spend the rest of my life screaming for mercy down here, the water muffling my cries. “My answer is yes. I am ready, Ceto.”
“I thought it might be,” she says, shaking her head. “But so be it.”
The Sea Witch places her hand over her mouth, making a retching noise as if trying to dislodge something caught low in her throat. A lump blossoms, pulsating as it dances up her oesophagus, until a flame spills past her painted lips and dances in the palm of her hands. I stare, fascinated. No mer-man is able to conjure flames, not under the sea. This is magic like nothing I have ever seen before, something my father could only dream of.
She crouches down beside a large copper cauldron in the corner of the room, pouring the fire underneath it as if it was liquid. She picks up a jewel-encrusted blade from the ground and uses it to stir whatever concoction has begun to bubble inside the cauldron. She raises the knife to the surface – a few murmured words, words I do not recognise – and she pulls its edge across her breast, cleavage to black nipple, dripping tar-blood into the mixture. It hisses as it lands, the steam curdling into shapes of cloud so unspeakably eerie that I shiver. What have I done? I think as every muscle in my body tenses in shock. What have I done, what have I done?
“You have done what needed to be done,” Ceto tells me, once again seeming to read my mind. “Isn’t that all any of us can do?”
“Wait,” I say. “I have one last question for you.”
“Tick tock.” She wags a finger back and forth. “Time is running out.”
“Do you know if my mother is alive?” I ask, wishing I didn’t sound so forlorn. “Could she be?”
“The Sea King said Muireann was dead, did he not?”
“Yes, but—”
“Yes, but what? You doubt his word?”
“No,” I say automatically. “The Sea King only tells the truth. He wants the best for us. We are lucky to have been born his daughters.”
“Then why do you ask?”
“I…” I don’t know. “Wait. Did my mother come to you in search of legs too?”
The Sea Witch runs her fingertips down the smooth side of her blade. “Your mother did not need my aid in such a matter.”
“But she came to you for help? Ceto, did my mother come here?”
“There was no one who could help Muireann of the Green Sea,” she says. “Not in the end.” Before I can ask what she means by that, she holds out the knife before me. “Now, show me your tongue.”
And I do as she tells me.
The blade sinks into the flesh, slashing it in two, and I try and scream with the brutality of it, at how fast it happened, my head thrown back in scorching agony. She saws at my tongue, hacking at the sinews, the flesh obstinate; refusing to let go. I gulp, my hands reaching out in desperation as if to say come back, I made a mistake. I have changed my mind. But I cannot say it. I have no words.
It is done and I am silent.
It is done and there is no return.