I reach out for something to steady myself, shooting stars bursting bright in my chest. But not yours, Ceto? Your powers remained.
She laughs, showing perfect teeth. “No, not mine. I was too stubborn for that.”
And my mother? I feel a growing sense of pride, something I have never associated with my mother. My mother didn’t give up either?
“Muireann was stubborn too, but she was better at hiding it than I was. No one even knew about her powers, especially not the Sea King. He would never have married her if he had been aware. But she only had enough powers for herself; she couldn’t ensure the safety of all you six girls as well. That’s why she came to me, begging for help again. She wanted to flee from your father and take you with her, onto land. But I could not perform that spell without extracting a price, like I did with you,” Ceto says. “The magic is too deep for that. Muireann would not allow my blade to touch your flesh, nor that of your sisters. And so, she let Alexander go. And she returned to the kingdom. She wanted to be home in time for her baby’s birthday, she said.”
But we were told that—
“I see your sisters brought you the blade,” she interrupts my thoughts. The knife is still clasped in my right hand. I hadn’t even noticed. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to do what was needed of you. You are too soft.”
If you thought I was soft, why did you perform the magic? If you were so keen to appease my mother’s memory, why did you do the one thing to me that she didn’t want you to do?
“Your mother did not realize how desperate her youngest daughter would become.” The Sea Witch bends her neck to one side, then the other, and I listen to the cracking joints. “I believe she would have approved of my decision, or understood it, at the very least. And I hoped that Oliver would fall for you, I really did, but I told myself that if he did not, I would come back for you. I would offer you another way.”
Another way? I am too tired to do more than stare at her sullenly. I will die when the sun rises. You have doomed me to my death.
“No,” she says. “You have a choice.”
What choice? I am not used to choices.
“You can go to the deck,” she says, brightening at my flicker of interest, however reluctant. “As the sun begins to rise – and it will rise very soon, little mermaid, do not be mistaken, my powers cannot stop the day from turning over – you can take the dagger and pierce your own heart with it.”
No. I feel winded, as if she has sucked all the breath out of me and left me panting for air.
“Your body will fall into the sea,” she says. “Where my Salkas will be waiting for you. They will take you to the Shadowlands. I will make the necessary preparations there.” She bends down to where I am sitting on the floor and puts a hand on my hair with such tenderness that something unspools inside of me, softly. “I will confess that it seems a shame to see this red hair turned green.”
I shove her away from me. I could never be a Salka.
“And why not?”
(The Salkas are different to you and I, my father said, they are not of royal birth. Do not mistake them for anything less than pathetic and vicious creatures that must be controlled at all costs. My sisters and I nodding in agreement.)
I look at her directly to emphasize my argument. The Salkas are ugly and angry and—
“And don’t they have something to be angry about?” Ceto says, her lip curling in disgust. “You think your life has been difficult, Princess Muirgen. You don’t know the meaning of the word.”
I try and stand, my hand reached out to her. Begging for leniency. But the Salkas—
“The Salkas are the jilted, the victims, the orphans, and the abused.” Ceto’s eyes flash in irritation. “They deserve your sympathy. It is a hard thing to be a woman in this world, whether beneath the sea or if you break the surface. You had a taste of that tonight, did you not?” (Rupert’s hand around my throat, the other pulling at my undergarments, seeking his pleasure without permission. I don’t think he would have enjoyed it as much if I hadn’t struggled.) “The Salkas have endured much worse than that,” Ceto continues. “There was no one there to hear them scream no. Or maybe there was; but that no wasn’t deemed worthy of being heard. Maybe they heard it and they didn’t care. A woman’s no can so easily be turned into a yes by men who do not want to listen.”
I picture myself up on the deck, raising the knife, stabbing it deep, vomiting blood through my teeth. My sisters screaming. I can’t do that to my own body. I cannot inflict any more harm upon myself.
“Gaia,” she says, using my real name for the first time. “I am not sure a return to your father’s kingdom is a good idea. I told Muireann the same, when she came to me on your birthday. I warned her. Go to Alexander, I said, and I will find a way of getting the children to you afterwards. I promised her that I would find a way, and yet she went back to the kingdom’s nursery anyway. She couldn’t bear the thought of missing your birthday, I would wager. That was her mistake.” Ceto takes a deep breath. “It was her last mistake. My brother made sure of that.”
What do you—
Wait. Wait.
My father, his spear finding the nearest fish. Watching as it squirmed to death on a splinter-point. Do you know what I do to little mermaids who fall in love with humans?
“Yes,” Ceto says, as I curl into the foetal position on the floor. I don’t want this to be true, and yet somehow, deep within me, I think I had always known this was the case but I couldn’t admit it. It was too dangerous to do so. “Your father is a proud man.” Ceto says. “He would have rather seen her dead than in love with someone else.”
Did my… did my grandmother know?
“Your grandmother is afraid,” Ceto says gently. “She has always been afraid. She suspects that the Sea King might have played a hand in it, just as she suspects that Manannán’s death might have been more complicated than was presented to her. But she doesn’t ask too many questions, or seek to know too much. It is safer for her that way.”
Stop talking. I can’t listen any more. My hope breaks inside me, blistering, setting me on flame. I am bent double with the grief, my body heaving with silent sobs. My mother is dead and at the hands of my father. My mother, and everything she sacrificed for us. My mother, who only wanted to protect us. She came back for my birthday. She came back for me. And my father told us she didn’t love us. He said that she was a bad mother, that she abandoned us. He let us believe that we were easy to abandon, because that kept us small. Scared. Easy to control. Something hardens inside me, and I allow it to happen. Nay, I welcome it. I will be hard. I will be made of ice. He allowed us to believe that it was our fault. I raise my head, and meet the Sea Witch’s gaze.
I am angry, Ceto. I have never felt so much anger. Are you happy now?
“Tick tock, little mermaid,” she says. “Time is running out.” She takes my hands in hers. “Like all women, you have the power within you, no matter what your father has led you to believe. Do you trust that power, Gaia?”
I have never had autonomy before. Besides going to the Sea Witch, I have always just done what I was told to do. It seemed easier that way. Safer. Maybe I was like my grandmother, looking away to remain comfortable.
“You will be safe with us,” Ceto says, “Join us, I implore you. Join the true sisterhood in your mother’s name. You can help us achieve peace, once and for all, by ridding the kingdom of your father and his army of rapacious mer-men. We can show the women how to reclaim their powers. They’re still there, in every one of them, just buried so deep that they think they are lost for ever. But we can teach them. That can be your legacy, Gaia.”
If I join the Salkas, what does that mean? I am Muirgen, daughter of the Sea King. I am Gaia, the mermaid who wanted so much and who looked up and who fell in love with a boy. And I am Grace, the girl dancing on shattered toes, smiling through the pain as if it was nothing.
Who am I now?
“Who are you?” Ceto repeats my thoughts. “I would wager the more
important question is – who will you be? Who are you free to be now?” She sniffs the air, her head snapping up. She smiles. “Right on time.”
What? I look up too, as I have always done, but I don’t know what I am searching for now.
“A storm is brewing,” she says. “Are you ready to sing, little mermaid?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The blazing sky bounces off the flat sea, rolling it purple. It is beautiful, this world. Why did I never fully acknowledge just how beautiful it was? I was so anxious to make Oliver fall in love with me so that my “real” life could begin, I forgot to stay still and appreciate what was around me. Just for a second, I breathe in the burning air, tasting the hint of coming sunshine on my tongue. I can hear my sisters talking amongst themselves.
“Where is she?”
“There is little time left.”
“I told you that she wouldn’t be able to do it.”
“Do be quiet, Cosima.”
“Don’t tell me to be quiet, Talia.”
“Sisters, please. This is not the time nor the place for these petty arguments.”
I smile, despite myself. They never change, my sisters. Will they continue to fight in such a manner as the years pass? When Nia marries Marlin and the rest are sold off to the highest bidders? After their mer-babies are born, children I will never meet? Children that I will never bear. Maybe becoming a mother would have made up for being motherless. Maybe it would have made me happy. But, in the end, I can only wish that my sisters will be happy in my stead.
I wish for them only sons.
I close my eyes and I think of my mother. How she tried to save us, she came back for us, and was killed for her efforts. And I think of my father.
He waited for her by the rocks that are closest to the human world, slippy with seamoss and mussels, the Sea Witch told me. My mother had tried to conceal her fright when she saw him. I was just going for a swim before Gaia’s birthday, she told him.
I know what you did, he replied, and he kept saying it until she admitted the truth.
But I can change, she said, I’ve learned my lesson. My mother would have started to beg then, for mercy. For her children. It’s too late, the Sea King said as he took his trident. And he broke her spine with it.
I can hear screaming now, my sisters’ voices reaming the air apart. The shrieking obscures any semblance of intelligible sentences, it is but a jumble of words, made up of no and please and sorry and don’t hurt us. And Father. Father. Father.
The Sea King has come for us. That man does not deserve the name of Father, he who fastened strings into our hands, made us dance like marionettes. He murdered our mother and made us believe that she chose to leave us behind.
“What is the meaning of this insubordination?” the Sea King asks, and even now, the sound of his voice causes me to cast my eyes down, crouch my shoulders inwards, trying to show him that I am not a threat.
No more. I force myself to stand up straight. I will not cower before this man for a moment longer.
“We’re sorry—”
“We didn’t mean to—”
“But we just thought that maybe if—”
“Silence,” the Sea King roars from the water. “What kind of maids are you, to disobey your father in such a way? Have you no loyalty? No gratitude for all that I have done for you?”
My sisters whimper in response. Someone is weeping hysterically, Cosima, I do believe, and I hear the sound of flesh meeting flesh, a savage clap, and a cry. How dare he hurt another one of us? “I told you to be quiet,” he says. “Don’t say that I didn’t warn you.”
I creep closer, making sure that I am still hidden from sight. I sit at the edge of the boat’s hatch deck where the Captain brought me earlier, peeking around the wooden bow. My father is there, with my sisters, and he looks smaller than I remembered somehow, his tail submerged in the water, his hair more grey than I have ever seen it.
“What have you done to yourselves?” he says, rapping his knuckles against Talia’s bald head. She recoils, then that learned blankness paints her face, stripping away any fear or hurt. Making her pretty again, the way our father prefers. “Where is your hair? Is this some sort of joke?”
“We wanted to save Gaia—”
“Do not call her by that name. It is cursed,” he says. “That’s what your mother wanted to call her. And look how she ended up.”
I watch them, each face in turn, and I see reflected in them what I know to be true in myself. They try and hide it, but I can see it in their eyes. If my mother didn’t love me, they wonder, then is there something wrong with me? I am broken. My fault. My fault.
We blamed ourselves. We hated our mother. And none of it was true.
“All I’ve ever asked from you is that you look pretty,” my father says, “and you smile when asked to. Is that so hard? Is it? Why must you all be so useless?”
Leave them alone, I think, my hands curling into fists. I am spoiling for a fight.
“What was that?” the Sea King says, turning around to look at the boat. “Who said that?”
Leave. My. Sisters. Alone, I think again and the words are seeping out of me, booming, reverberating in the wood of this yacht and soaring into the morning air. It is my voice.
“Muirgen,” my father says, looking around to find me. “Muirgen, where are you?”
I do not move, my fingers at my throat. My voice has come back to me. My feet don’t hurt any more either, I realize. Has Ceto cast another spell, unbeknownst to me?
“Muirgen,” the Sea King says, and his voice drops dangerously low. “If you don’t show yourself immediately, I am going to scalp your sisters, one by one.”
A low cry, swallowed back. My sisters are afraid, exactly as he wants them to be. He only feels like a true king when we are scared of him. “You wouldn’t want that on your conscience, now would you, my sweet?” he says, the sound of the trident banging against the side of the boat, once, twice.
My father is getting impatient. He is so accustomed to us obeying him instantly; he does not know what it means to wait. “Which one is your favourite, Muirgen?” I peek again and see him grabbing Sophia by the neck, twisting her against him so he has the trident at her heart. She doesn’t whimper, like my other sisters would have, but simply stares at the sky as if praying for divine intervention. “Beg her to come out, Sophia,” the Sea King says. He is whispering into her ear, and yet somehow I can hear him perfectly, despite my distance from them and Cosima’s relentless sobbing. “Tell your baby sister exactly how afraid you are right now.”
Release her. I stride to the side of the boat, staring down at the Sea King and my sisters. I am not afraid, and my father can see that; it is as if he has a sixth instinct for our fear. This is not what he has been expecting. Release her, I said.
“Sister,” Talia says, her eyes huge. “Sister, how are you talking without moving your lips?”
“Shut up, Talia,” my father says, and Talia’s face pinches. “No wonder no man has asked for your hand yet, you never do anything but yap.”
Do not talk to my sisters like that. My voice is louder, and I find that I like the sound of it. Did you hear me, old man?
“Muirgen?” my father says, “Muirgen, how dare you tell me to—”
How dare I what? I thought I told you to shut up.
My sisters stare up at me, open-mouthed. This is not how we have been trained to behave.
Cosima. She is still wailing, her hand covering her crushed face. Cosima, it will be okay.
“Stop that nonsense,” my father turns and roars at her, ignoring me. “All you’re good for is your pretty face, do you want to ruin that too?”
We’re all worth more than that.
“Excuse me? You’re worth more than what?” the Sea King asks, his face flushed with rage.
Worth more than our pretty faces. (I remember Eleanor’s warning about beauty fading, and how she would have made her daughter strong and I knew my mother would have
done the same, if she had been given the chance.) You needed us to stay quiet, and scared, didn’t you, Father? You pitted us against one another, forced us to compete with each other – and for what? Because you were afraid of what would happen if we worked together? Of how strong we could be?
“Strong?” he spits. “You? Daughters are not meant to be strong.”
Our mother wanted us to be more than your pawns, didn’t she? We meant so much to her that she was willing to sacrifice her freedom to be with us. My whole life, all I have had is my hope that maybe my mother was still alive, that maybe she was waiting for me to find her and rescue her. That hope is gone, but truth is mushrooming in its place, spreading its hands out to feel the sides of my body. I could climb on to the side of the boat, balance on the railing with my hands to the sky. Take me, gods, I would shout, for I am no longer afraid. Take me and do what you will with me.
“How dare you?” my father says, his left eye is beginning to twitch, I’m making him nervous. “And do not mention that woman in my presence again. She was a slut. She deserved her fate.”
Her fate? What fate would that be, Father?
“Oh,” he says, sneering at me. A flash of anger spikes through me. He will regret that. He will regret all of this. “Have you forgotten about what the humans did to her? The humans you love so much, the humans that you have abandoned your sisters for.” He brandishes his trident at them and they grovel. “The humans took your mother. They destroyed her.”
I laugh, a humming sound vibrating at the base of my throat until it explodes out of my mouth. It blasts against the water, charging waves like a tsunami against my father. He is left spluttering, wiping salt from his eyes, attempting to battle the water away from him with his trident. He should know at this stage that the sea always wins.
“How are you doing this?” he says. He is frightened. For the first time in my life, I have made my father frightened.
Looks like you’re not the only one with powers.
“Gaia,” Sophia asks, ashen. “Gaia, what’s—”
Don’t be afraid, sisters. I hold my hands up, so they will see that I am no threat to them. I want to protect them, to empower them. We are women. And women are warriors, after all.