To her surprise, her father’s face softened, and his eyes filled with tears. She almost gasped, it was so unexpected. For a moment she thought she’d convinced him.
“Sometimes you are so like your mother,” he said.
“I am?” She was shocked to hear him speak of her.
He smiled, and looked far away, remembering. “She was always passionate. Never afraid to speak her mind to me, even when almost no one else would. It is why I trust Gregor. I know he is never afraid to say the truth.”
She smiled at his memory. Her mother had been strong, though it was a quiet strength she’d had. It had made her a good match for him. “I can only hope to become as brave as she was,” she said.
“I have no doubt. Bravery and passion, these are not things you lack, Margrethe.”
“Thank you,” she said, feeling her own eyes fill with tears. “I miss her so much.”
“I miss her, too,” he said. “And it is for her that we must defeat the South, our enemy.”
“Wait. I don’t understand.”
“You remember when your mother fell ill? She insisted on visiting her cousin in the South. When she came back, the sickness had entered her. That was a sign from God. That land is ours, Margrethe. We should never have been divided.”
“But it happened so long ago, Father. Why can’t we just live peacefully, side by side?”
He raised his hand. “Enough, Margrethe. We are not a weak kingdom. I will not stand by and watch my enemy kill my queen, and attempt to kill my daughter.”
“But so many people will die!”
“They will die for their kingdom. It is the best reason to die.”
CHAPTER TEN
The Mermaid
LENIA TOOK HER TIME SWIMMING BACK TO THE PALACE, letting the water soothe her. A school of tiny, translucent fish drifted past, and she watched them, how the light from a nearby medusa caught them, making them flare up like stars in the night sky. Like tiny souls. Euphoria moved to sadness, and then back again. She didn’t know how she could leave her family, her world, her very own body, and yet, at the same time, how could she say no to what had now been offered to her? She wished she could bring her sisters with her, and her parents, and her sisters’ children. She wished she could bring everyone with her, every single creature in the sea, and they could all have souls that would shine together eternally.
When she returned to the palace, all the others were sleeping, tucked against rocks, inside giant shells, and among the lush sea plants that flourished at the bottom of the ocean. She swam to the royal chamber and peered in at her mother and father, twisted together upon their bed of pearls, a gift from her grandfather to her grandmother many years before. Her mother’s hair was long and white now, but she was every bit as beautiful as she’d been when Lenia’s grandmother had stepped down from the throne, as Lenia’s mother would do one day soon so that Thilla could take her place. And her father, the king: as she watched him sleep, she thought about all the swims he had taken her on when she was a child, the two of them holding hands, the way he’d tossed her through the water and then swooped down to catch her, how he’d shown her the wonders of the ocean while her mother stayed in the palace and dealt with the court.
She had already made her decision, she realized. Of course she had, the moment Sybil told her that everything she’d ever wanted was possible.
She left her parents’ doorway and drifted back through the great hall, where the mussel shells opened and closed, where all kinds of luminous sea life swam through the dark. She had never had this feeling before: of being fully present in a place she might never see again. She tried to memorize every detail. She would remember all of it in the future, she thought, and in that way it would never die. If she left, if she let Sybil take her tongue and give her a potion to split her tail into legs, she would carry all of this with her into heaven. Even the mussel shells with the pearls inside, the tiny fish scurrying through when the shells flapped open.
Slowly, she floated through the palace and the palace gardens and watched each of her sisters as they slept. She touched the eggs in which Thilla’s children were developing, glittering things hidden among the rocks and plants, and she whispered advice to them, for when they were grown, for when they left their shells and entered the sea.
THE NEXT DAY, at the palace feast, Lenia sang for her family and the court. Her voice echoed through the waves until every kind of creature appeared. The most wondrous fish, like nothing that could be imagined in the world above. Her sisters watched her, mesmerized, not one of them suspecting what was in her heart, that this would be the last time they would hear the voice that made them feel things they would never have felt otherwise, see the necklace they had found for her sparkling on her neck. Her beautiful sisters with their shining faces, like blooming flowers. Pearls fell from the ceilings, the mussel shells flapped open and shut, and the glow of a thousand ocean creatures glimmered from beyond the amber walls.
Her last hours seemed unbearable. Already she was seeing everything through the haze of time. As if she was already married to the prince, there was a web of light pulsing inside of her, and she had long forgotten how to swim and breathe through gills. She thought about how, when she was an old woman in the upper world, she would remember the other world she’d had once—the coral palace and her sisters with their shining skin and beautiful, long hair that spread about them like wild clouds in the water, the gangly, glowing creatures that had never left the very bottom of the sea. The shells and pearls and bones and brambles of sea plants that spread along the caverns and jutting rocks. How wonderful it would all seem then, to her.
AND THEN, FINALLY, she returned to the sea witch. She shot through the water, flexing her tail behind her, trying to ignore the lurching of her heart. Past the leaf statue outside, and into the witch’s cavern. Past the gem-black walls with the red flowers bursting from them, into the room full of twisting plants and vines.
Sybil was waiting. She had a large, smoking cauldron in front of her. When she looked up at Lenia, her face was even more heavy and sad than it had been the day before. Her long lashes drooped down to her cheeks. Her eyes sparkled as if they held tears. “You have made your decision,” she said.
“Yes,” Lenia said, nodding. “I am ready.”
“You do not need to do this today, you know,” Sybil said. “You can take more time. This is not a decision to be made lightly.”
“I know,” Lenia whispered, fear coursing through her. “But I am ready.”
“Very well,” Sybil said, sighing, swimming out from behind the cauldron to where Lenia was floating.
“So what will I do … after?”
“You will go to the southernmost part of the land. There you will find the castle where he lives. You will feel him. Go there, and when you get to land, wait till nighttime, when no one is about. Then leave the water. Be sure that no one sees you. And then, only then, drink this potion. If you grow legs while you are in the water, you will not be able to swim, and you will drown the way a human drowns. As I warned, it will hurt, your tail transforming to legs, but when it is done you will be as they are, and no one will know otherwise.”
Lenia nodded, unable to speak. Inside of her, deep down, there was a faint voice, a tiny niggling feeling that she should leave, now, go back to the palace, go to Falke, her sisters, forget all of this. She closed her eyes and willed the voice silent. She wished she could skip over what would happen next, blink and wake up in his arms.
“I am ready,” she said, more loudly now, trying to keep her voice from quivering. The thought shocked her that these could be the last words she would ever speak.
“Then I must take your payment now.”
“Wait!”
Sybil’s eyes widened, hopeful.
“Can you tell my sisters what I did? They will come here, at least Vela will. Tell her, please, that I chose this, and that I am happy.”
Sybil nodded. “Of course.”
“And that
I love them all. Please.”
“Yes.”
“I am ready.” Lenia swallowed and made herself very still. Sybil reached out to the plant next to her and withdrew a long silver knife. Lenia opened her mouth. Involuntarily, she cried out. She was shaking, she realized.
“You are sure?” Sybil whispered.
Lenia nodded. Closed her eyes and imagined webs of light.
Sybil’s voice was gentle, loving, like a hand stroking her hair. “Open your mouth as wide as you can.”
Lenia opened her mouth, keeping her eyes closed, every part of her body tensing in anticipation. And then she felt Sybil’s fingers clutching her tongue, moving her head back farther, and Lenia could feel all the witch’s sadness, as if it were that grief and not the knife about to slice into her. But as she felt the sharpness of the blade, Lenia thought only of the man’s soft skin, his heart beating under her palm, the heaven they would go to after death.
She felt pain, real, searing, physical pain, in a way she never had before, as the blade sliced through her tongue. She clenched her fists and screamed, yanking her head back involuntarily, but Sybil kept hold of her tongue, and then, a moment later, Lenia was free, falling back in the water, opening her eyes to see Sybil floating there with a bloody tongue in her hand. Lenia reeled with pain, falling until she hit the black wall. She could feel the pain all the way down her spine, to the tips of her tail. Her mouth became a wound, and she clamped her lips shut, swallowed blood. Pressing herself against the wall as if she could disappear into it.
The walls changed to a deep, smoky gray. As if from a great distance, through slitted eyes, Lenia watched Sybil take the tongue—red, like a bleeding, pulpy fish—and drop it into the cauldron. After, Sybil took the knife to her own palm and cut into it, squeezing her own blood into the pot.
“What are you—?” Lenia began to ask, but no sound came out. She clamped a hand over her mouth, then pulled it away, saw it was covered in blood.
Sybil looked at her. “It always costs me something as well. But my blood is the least of it.”
Lenia knew then—she was not sure how—that Sybil had once been in the upper world, and that it had brought her only pain and grief. Somehow, in the magic between them, their mingled blood, she could see it. But Sybil had not fallen in love with the prince, she thought, had not saved him in the middle of a nighttime storm and brought him to land. It would be different for her.
Sybil brought out a small bottle and dipped it into the cauldron, filling it with potion. Small bubbles swirled up from the bottle, through the water. As Lenia watched her, the pain began to lessen, mute down to a throbbing ache.
She could do this, she thought.
“I hope you find what you are looking for,” Sybil said, capping the bottle and handing it to Lenia. Lenia took it, and the witch leaned forward and touched Lenia’s face, her eyes brimming with feeling. “Remember everything I’ve told you.”
Lenia nodded, swallowing blood. It was all starting. There was no way to go back now.
“Now go,” Sybil said, “to the other world, to him.”
CLUTCHING THE BOTTLE in her hand, Lenia left the sea witch’s cavern and began to swim. The pain made her numb, and she just flexed her body, racing through the water, trying not to think or feel anything at all.
She had a long way to go, and eventually, as her body calmed, she let herself relax into it. She knew more what to expect now, the pain she would have to endure. Soon her legs would hurt her the way her mouth did, but right now, at this moment, her body was strong, perfect. She stretched her tail behind her, held out her arms, and brushed past fish and whales and sharks, squid and manta rays.
This was the last time she would ever swim like this. She reveled in the power of her tail, the ease with which she moved through the water, the pleasure that came from deep inside of her, despite the pain in her mouth.
As she traveled south, the waters began to change, become more green than blue. She swam up from the deep and stayed near the surface now, so that she could watch, fascinated, as the landscape went from icy white to brown to a deep, lush green. Even with her thick skin and scales, she could sense how the air was changing, going from cold to warm. She’d become accustomed to thinking of the upper world as white and gray and silver, all ice and snow, but here, now, it was as bright and lush as the ocean. The flowers were as varied as they were in the sea, the grass and water and beaches the colors of deepwater fish. And the sun! It poured down, full and complete, soaking everything in a light so rich she was surprised the world was not in flames.
She snacked on fish, reaching out to grab one or two as whole schools of them swept by. Small ones that she could push down her throat, in an attempt to avoid irritating her healing mouth. But eating made the pain flare back to life. A few times she wanted to rest, to swim down to a coral reef or a cave and curl into herself. But she forced herself to keep going. She did not like this in-between state, the unbearable loneliness of it. No longer part of the sea and yet still immersed in it, not yet fit for land. She clutched the potion in her palm, terrified to lose it and be stuck in this state forever.
She could sense him, as Sybil had said she would—the prince, his soul. That she was drawing closer to him.
And then, finally, after two days and nights had passed, she reached the castle of the Southern king.
It loomed in front of her, above the water, at the end of pathways that ran from the harbor. Jutting up into the sky, a mass of stone whirls and towers. It looked like something from the deepest sea, a structure carved from rock and water over thousands of years. Green and gold flags waved over it. Great big flowers burst from the windows, above golden railings and trees heavy with fruit. Ships and boats hovered in the harbor, like giant whales come to the surface of the ocean. And all of it, so alive and bright with color, laid out before her like a great feast.
She forgot all her pain.
Slowly, she swam toward shore, keeping her head and body under the surface. Watching the castle through the water. As the waves rushed forward, she gathered the sea foam and veiled her face with it. She was careful to stay out of view as she pushed her head above the water.
People strolled about, up and down the beach. Soldiers were on patrol, coming on and off one great ship at rest, its prow rising into the air like it was about to take flight. Men hauled nets full of gleaming fish from small boats tethered to the docks. A few groups sat around tables. There was music, sounds she’d never heard before splitting the air. Above, soaring in the sky, was a white bird with wide-spanning wings.
The sun was only just starting to drop, and she knew she must wait until nightfall to leave the water. She lifted the potion to the light, watched as it turned a strange reddish hue, watched as the sun reflected against her own skin. She closed her eyes, trying to remember this feeling, right now, at the end of one world and the beginning of another. Her last moments in this mermaid body, with this tail that stretched out behind her, ready to propel her to the bottom of the sea. Would she one day remember these moments and regret what came next? It was impossible to know what the future held for her here the way she knew it in the sea.
She turned back and watched the humans as they went about their work and pleasures. Soon she would walk among them, on legs of her own. Maybe she would know that woman there, with hair piled about her head and strung through with flowers, standing by a group of soldiers with her hands on her hips. Lenia watched as the woman stood on her toes and whispered in one of the men’s ears, almost letting her cheek and bare neck graze against his. She imagined herself, standing like that, dressed as these woman were dressed, her own wild, wet hair dried out and twisted atop her head.
What if they rejected her? How would she live, then? What if she couldn’t get near the prince? Lenia touched the necklace around her neck as if it were a talisman as she searched the faces of those standing before her, trying to focus and imagine what it would be like to be one of them. She would know soon enough.
/> She tried to see past the harbor, past the gates, into the castle. He was there. She could feel it. And from behind the windows, she could see lights coming on one by one, illuminating the life inside. She had never before seen fire except in the sky, and now there were small blazes everywhere, and the people were illuminated by them as they laughed and moved.
Such beautiful ladies and men she saw, or imagined she could see, within. Like something in a story she might have heard once, from her grandmother. Behind some of the windows, she was sure she saw dancing. Men twirling women around, pulling the women close and then releasing them. Would she dance like that? Would she be one of those ladies, smiling, stepping forward and back, forward and back, across the floor, in and out of her beloved’s arms?
She held on to the potion, closed her eyes, and tried, for the first time, to pray.
LATE THAT NIGHT, when the harbor was almost empty and the lights from within the castle had gone out, she pulled herself onto the shore. Away from the docks, farther from the castle, where a clutch of trees swayed in the light wind. Just shielding her from the guards who stood by the castle gates.
Above, a giant moon shone down, and the sky sparkled and glittered, completely clear. She lay back and watched. Let the breeze ripple through her, over her hair. It carried a faint tinge of flowers, though she did not yet recognize what it was. Scent. Strange and wonderful.
She stared up at the stars. Here she was, above the water, and then there, above her, was someplace else still.
She set the potion on the ground beside her.
This was it. She took a deep breath. This was, she knew, the most important moment of her life. The moment when she made a choice. All her life she’d been Lenia, the daughter of the sea queen. She had a beautiful tail, a beautiful voice, hair the color of the moon … She looked at her tail, watched the scales gleam and glitter in the moonlight. Stretched out her arm and looked at her own skin. Like diamonds.