CHAPTER NINE
The sun has not yet risen when I emerge from the water, gasping in the moon-glossed air. What have I done? I scream silently to the sea gods.
After the Sea Witch had plucked my tongue out, I kept trying to speak, becoming more and more agitated with the futility of my attempts. What have you done to yourself, Gaia? She handed me the potion. “Go to Oliver’s homeland,” she told me, “and drink this when you reach the steps to his estate, not a minute before.”
I pretended to look around me, hoping to convey that I did not know where he lived, and Ceto groaned. “Gaia, Gaia, Gaia,” she said, and I wanted to ask her how she knew my true name. “How much you are prepared to give up for one you know so little.”
I was to go through the wood of snake-plants outside (“Wave the potion at them if they threaten you,” the Sea Witch advised, my terror of those creatures clearly evident. “They will not touch you once they catch sight of the bottle. They know the power it contains.”) and the swamp, pushing my way into the battering whirlpools, back past the Outerlands, and then the palace. The lights were still out there, all my family and servants asleep, and I tried to call out, to tell my sisters that I loved them. But I could not. I refused to allow myself to feel sad, it would only be a waste of energy. This was my decision and I had made it willingly. Even so, I blew a kiss and I prayed for their forgiveness.
And here I am now, staring at the house where Oliver lives. It is vast, made of grey stone and windows that are stained with colourful pictures, a large wooden door that is twice the height of any human man I can imagine. I drag myself up the beach, flopping on the steps to the estate, the marble hard against my back. I hold the draught up to my eye line, watching as it glitters in the moonlight. No return, the Sea Witch’s voice said in my head. No return.
But there is no return anyway, not since I have given my voice away. I open my mouth, attempt to speak once again, but there is only a deafening silence. It is like a phantom limb, my misplaced tongue reaching for words that are just out of its reach. I uncork the bottle, gagging at the acrid smell. As I hold it to my mouth, it chews at the skin, my lips instantly beginning to blister. I drink it in one gulp.
A halo of flames, searing across my skull and melting down my face, setting my hair on fire and dissolving my skin. Flesh peeling off in strips, drifting in the air around me like snowflakes until the sky is dusty with skin. A blade heaving through my torso, twisting and tearing down, cutting me to pieces. I need to scream, anything to release the torture, push it out of my body and away from me, but there is nothing here for me, nothing but my pain. Oh, the pain. It is all that exists and all that will ever exist.
Blades coiling in my pupils until blackness pares holes out of my eyes and everything plummets dark. A pinprick of light, expanding, trained like a spotlight upon my father, demanding my attention. He is beating the palace floor with his trident, like a heartbeat. Where is she, girls? he says. One of you must know! They plead their ignorance, Cosima a fraction too slow to be convincing. Cosima, my father says. I don’t know, she replies. I don’t know. He comes closer to her. Tell me, child. You can trust me. He pushes her back until she is lying on her bed, her hair spilling on the pillow. I don’t know, she says again, and he smiles. And he pulls his fist back, driving it into her face until I can hear her nose break with a sickening crack. I don’t like girls who lie, my father says.
I blink, and I am again on the beach by Oliver’s home and it is the night sky above me, still, and I must stay awake, I must, but I am dragged under by the knife-burn cutting through my body, my tail hewing apart, and I watch as my scales shatter. I never knew I was quite so brittle. The gushing blood seeps into the sand beneath me, and I—
And then I am falling into the relentless dark. Zale is painting stripes across his torso and over his shaved head. The time has come, he yells. He is standing on the balcony in the court room, countless mer-men staring up at him, their faces striped for war as well. We cannot allow the Sea Witch and the Salkas the freedom they have been afforded up until this point. These “women” must be controlled, and soon. I demand revenge for the loss of my maid. I will have revenge. I will have it. I will have my—
Gaia, a voice says, so soft. A woman suspended in the air, waves of red hair floating above her. Her body pale, two legs instead of a tail, and yet somehow I know that she is a mermaid rather than a Salka; that she has been born of the sea like me. Gaia, she says again. Gaia, my darling. I tried to save you. I tried to take you all with me, but I couldn’t win, not against him. I’m sorry, Gaia. I am so sorry.
“There. Over there!” a voice shouts. A man. “I definitely saw something.”
“What?” another man says, laughing. “I can’t see anything.”
“Yeah, I can’t see anything either,” a third voice says. “You’ve had too much to drink, mate. Let’s just head back to the estate.”
“No,” the first man says, and there is an expectancy there that his companions will listen and do as he says. Only men speak like that, I have found. “Look. Over there by the steps to the beach. Can’t you see?”
Footsteps and curses and: “My god, what is that?”
“It’s a girl,” the man says.