The Little Mermaid

She watches them running with her unmoving eyes and she whispers don’t drown, babies, don’t drown. If their plastic soled shoes were to slip on the stones then she’d watch them drown and sing for them, without sound, as their little souls rushed up to heaven. She has no soul of her own, and never did. Her people were as sea-foam. Souls or not, she aches to hold them in her metal arms, to press them against her unbreakable heart. They call her Lille Havfrue, but her people had no names for themselves. They were loved. It was enough. They live much shorter lives, these babies with their souls that show like candle flames in their eyes. Hot blooded, their hearts go racing, and they burn up and use themselves so quickly. She could have passed three or four of their lifetimes watching the in-out of sky fire against the tops of the waves and how terrifying had it been to know that there was another sky, far above theirs? How terrifying. How wonderful. Now, she can neither raise her eyes or lower the, now, but she can see the point, far away, so far, where there’s nothing to tell between her sea and their sky.

When she was born, they sung her name through all of the cathedrals. In the deep blue cold, bells held no sound, so they rang out their hearts instead. The sound they made was all of their joy at this newly discovered treasure. Their new princess. Her.

But none of it mattered to her. Her status was her pain. The clam shells that clung to her tail to show that she was the daughter of a king pinched. She would have traded them, if she could. She would have been common, because at least the common girls could swim upwards whenever they liked, skim the surface and feel the sunlight on the tops of their heads. All of their lives, she and her sisters had dreamed of the surface.

It is the nature of cold blooded things to yearn towards the sun.

By day, now, she catches the sun, keeps the warmth stored in her smooth brown skin, but no deeper. It lingers, a little, after dark, when the babies come with their edged tools. It takes metal to beat metal and, even then, the teeth barely scratch the surface of her neck, on the first bite.

It had been the fire, in the end, which tempted her. All of her life, it had fascinated her; she planted red flowers in a circle in her father’s garden, but she could have resisted if it had only been a question of the sun. The fire in the sky, though. In flashes, it mirrored something which she felt within herself, and for which she had no name. She was so tempted, and so young; sixteen years is barely a drop in three hundred. She had wanted it badly enough to disobey her father. She had wanted it badly enough to break every rule in the world.

What was it that the witch had said to her, all of those years ago? The sound of the saw makes it harder to recall.

Oh. Yes.

Desire is pain. Desire is pain, and she had wanted so.

She had no words for what she saw, for “ship”, “sails”, “mariner”, “prince”. The words had come later, but the words had not mattered. She had not needed any words for him. There he was. It was that simple. “Ikon” was another word that she learned later. Her people had never had a need for gods, but there he was anyway, as an image of her faith.

Faith is nothing but the desire for an end to pain.

Up on the great, whale-like thing that rode upon the waves, and not below them, she watched him, up there, against the sky, which they had filled with flowers of fire, all for love of him. She couldn’t look away. It was as though she had realised, suddenly, that there were two suns in the sky. He was that alien, and beautiful. He was that bright, with the sparks falling all around him and dying away to nothing.

Later, she could not say how long she had watched him for; it could have been five minutes or an hour before the storm blew in, and stopped the singing. The wind howled, and the rain fell. The sky-fire burned, brighter than the flowers had been, and more deadly. The storm had been so terrible, but she had not feared it. She was a cold-blooded creature with water already in her lungs. There was nothing about her that could draw fire. The babies on the ship had shouted and run, pulling on ropes, furling the ship tight in against itself. They couldn’t have known. They were so focused on the danger that they could see that they never imagined that there was danger that they couldn’t. For her part, she had never thought of those rocks as hidden. For her part, they had been in plain sight all along. The noise was like nothing she had ever heard, the ship grinding and dying upon the rocks. The water had dampened the sound, her whole life.

So few of those babies ever learned to swim.

In the churning, shouting mess which came afterwards, she searched for him. The water was cold, stole his glow and made it more difficult to tell which one he was. The babies screamed and fought, pushed and clawed at each other, and at the surface of the sea. What she knew was that the sea would take them, in the end. What she knew was that the sea would love them all, equally. Not for him, though. Not for him to be eaten by sharks and bottom-feeders, sink to the bottom as bones and, in time, become sand. In the water, his hair had become darker, not the bright gold that she had seen before, under the sun, but he was still finer than the others, no hair on his face, no marks on his hands. She took him limp into her arms. Though the land was not visible, she knew which direction to swim in. She knew the sea like the back of her hand, and she knew, instinctively, where it came to an end in fingers of sand.

She took him there. With him lying in her arms, his wet head against her breast, it was easy to think of herself as held.

On the sand, she lay with him. His skin was cool and moist to the touch. His heart had slowed to within an inch of its life, a slow thump-thump that echoes hers. He mirrored her, so how could she held but love him? She lay with him until she was gasping for air.

Don’t drown, baby. Don’t drown.

Before she left him, she bent, awkward and out of her element, to press a pale blue kiss to his cheek. It was all that she had to leave for him. The storm had swept away everything above the water, even the red flowers in her hair. It had swept everything except her, and, because of her, him.

He wasn’t dead when she left him. She was as sure as she could be. She was only young. He wasn’t dead.

The babies work hard, but it’s slow going. Her skin is thicker, now, and it holds on to the cold. In the winter, it can get cold, so cold by the water. Her and her sisters used to swim below the shadows of floating ice. She almost wishes that the babies would succeed, and separate her head cleanly from her shoulders. Maybe then there’d be a new one, maybe not, but, either way, it might take a long time remember everything she’s ever known, so it would be a while before she remembered how to hurt. Every movement of the baby’s saw sends a vibration through her right through her, so, she pretends that she’s humming, and she remembers what it felt like to make her last concious sound.

Please, she’d said. Please, and I’ll do anything. That was her first mistake. There should always have been something that she wouldn’t have done for him. There should always have been a limit. She was so very young. She hadn’t yet learned the value of silence. She didn’t yet know the danger of words. When she was younger, she’d had no word for “witch”. That came later. Back then, when all of this was happening, she’d seen her life only in terms of rules and suffering. Her and her sisters had whispered about a creature who lived a way away, in a cave before the drop-off, before the deep, dark water. She should have known not to go there. She had spent her seventeen years fearful of the vapour trails left by slowly circling sharks. She’d been told not to go there before.

She went anyway.

Desire is pain, remember. It is difficult to think clearly when you are in so much pain. Now, she feels no pain, only quiver and quake as the baby leans his whole weight onto the saw. The rasping vibrations make it difficult to concentrate, and all that she can think is witch witch witch witch witch.

But she hadn’t known that word, then. She’d gone there with her pleases and her promises, and the woman was there with her hands that moved like ghosts in the dark. Please, she said. Please and I’ll do anything. And it wasn’t until the witch smiled that she saw that every one of her teeth were small and sharp and white.

It never occurred to her to wonder what she was doing, not for a second, not even when the witch had told her about the price of love, and the cost of getting what you want.

Love made her stupid. The pain of wanting him made it hard to think. It must have, for her to go through what she did for him. The witch broke every bone in her tail. She would have screamed, but the witch had already taken her voice. She gave up her voice so that the witch would break every bone in her tail and give her legs. She couldn’t scream. Her voice was in a glass jar on the shelf.

The baby’s saw makes a deep cut in her throat, and she, she who hasn’t spoken in a hundred years, imagines her voice leaking out to him.

Be careful what you wish for, baby. Be careful what you do for love.

She doesn’t remember much of what came straight afterwards. She could feel her heartbeat in her ankles, and the tips of her new toes. The Witch conjured up a storm to blow her to the beach, but she nearly drowned, just struggling to the surface. The sea had no love for her. She had left the sea behind for a man, and the sea wouldn’t easily forgive her.

I’m sorry, she mouthed, but the water got into her mouth and tried to choke her.

No love, no love.

Folded up small behind her teeth to keep it safe, the witch had written the definition of a soul. Her people had no souls, and, without one, her human body wouldn’t last for long. Her bones would collapse in on themselves. Her heart would run dry and empty. She was dry and empty without the sea. On the sand, she stood naked and watched the waves come and go. The witch had told her that a soul was where two people touched. The sea had been in her her whole life. She missed it so much.

On reflection, she should have known. There she was, chafed and sore, red raw with love. Inside, where all of her life the sea had been, there was a gaping sort of emptiness. The bones that had been broken to make her new legs ached in her cracks. The new wound between her legs throbbed like a beating heart. She was an agony of wanting. She struggled to stand. A mammal is born knowing how to stand beside its mother, but she had been born knowing how to swim without sinking, and how to breathe the air in water. She had never known her mother.

‘Metamorphosis’ is a word for how much it hurts to change.

She heard the shout before she saw him. She had still been staring out to see, unable to quite tear herself away. She had been rocking, mimicking the motion of the waves. Heel-toe, heel-toe, and every movement the agony of broken bone. Now, she ever moves, but what she learned then was this: when in fear of dying, a creature would crawl on bloody stumps and jagged bones to get to where it thinks it needs to be to save its life. She had see the prince and fallen forward, crawled towards him on her hands and knees like an animal. She did not know the word for ’shame’.

She baby is getting tired now. She can tell. In the periphery of her vision, she studies him. He’s not so different from her prince, with his flaxen hair and his blue eyes so pale that they are almost colourless. The ocean is only blue because, very long ago, it learned how to mimic the sky. All of these babies look the same to her anyway.

The cruellest part as that the prince could not remember drowning. He had no memory of her at all, but he thought that she was close to drowning and he had been told that he had been close to drowning once, too. He covered her new skin with a cloak, and, mistaking the agony in her eyes for something physical, he lifted her up into his arms. If she had known the pain that would follow, she’d have clawed his eyes out then and there. She was young and hopefully. She had no idea how much love can hurt, and she did not know that it is possible to die and yet go on living at the same time. She could not know how many people do that every single day of their lives.

When he asked her name, she could not tell him. The Prince was a learned man, and he named her after a spirit of the air and sea from a play that he had read, once. He was learned, which does not mean that he was not also foolish. He could not read the longing in her eyes, which was in plain sight all along.

There was a temple on the hill, he told her. The woman that he loved was there, and would provide aid. The woman that he loved, and who he was going to marry. The woman that he loved, and who he was going to marry, and who had saved him from a death which he could not remember. She had found him lying on the beach.

Until then, the Mermaid hadn’t known that a heart could break as surely as a bone. The sound echoed around the place behind her ribs where the babies kept their souls, so loudly that she was sure that he must have heard it. It was then that she knew that the witch had been right. He would never love her. He could never. She had been cold blooded, and he was hot. She would have frozen him to death and now he would burn her alive.

To be different is painful, sometimes too painful to be borne.

Behind them, the sea crashed against the rocks like the pounding of fists. When she was born, they sang her name through the cathedrals and now it was like the cathedrals were falling for want of her. In his arms, she cried piteously and he assumed that it was because she was grateful to be saved.

There is a reason that no creature on the face of the earth or under the sea is born with the knowledge of the day that they will die, but she knew. The Prince would share his soul with the temple girl, the one who had had the luck to stumble across his, already saved. The mermaid would have stayed longer, but she was a water-creature then and the sand had clogged her gills. He would marry the temple girl, and the mermaid would dissolve into foam on a wave and be seen no more by those who had always had the grave to love her. The witch had warned her, but it had never occurred to her that it might actually happen. She was young.

At least the girl at the temple had been beautiful. The mermaid had fainted clean away, to save herself the heartache of watching them look at each other.

That night, adrift in a strange white bed, wrapped in sheets as wide as a ships sails, she dreamed of her eldest sister. Her eldest sister was the most lovely of the sea kings daughters, with hair as long and curling as kelp strands, the pale gold blush of the first sun in winter. Her hair was gone, all gone. The new bare skin was delicately veined with blue, the sea under her skin. Unused to dreaming, the mermaid had reached out to touch her sister, but her sister had put up her hands.

The mermaid had asked her why she’d come, and, in the dream, her beautiful sister had smiled behind her raised hands. She told the mermaid how she missed her. They had all missed her so. The mermaid couldn’t help it; the tears rolled down her cheeks. She knew that she was seeing her beautiful sister for the last time. When she died, she would dissolve into seafoam, and she could wash against her sister’s skin forever, and never know her.

It hurts to imagining the things that you stand to lose.

In the dream, her sister held out something made in wood and metal, like the wreck of a ship. At the time, the mermaid hadn’t known the world for ‘knife’. The baby uses a ’saw’. His work is slow. She just wants it to be over, again.

It hurts to wait.

What she knows now is this: there is nothing you can do that cannot later be undone, but back then the knife had been bought with the long length of her sister’s hair. The witch drove a hard bargain, and it had taken a whole head of hair to buy a simple promise. Her sister had bent close to her and whispered to her what the witch had said; if she killed him with the knife, she could become a mermaid again. She could go back.

In the dream, her sister had kissed her, gently, her lips against hers. The mermaid had tasted salt. Tears are salty because the ocean was there first.

She woke up and the knife was beside her on the pillow. She lay and looked at it for a long time. She was afraid to touch it. It looked like an evil sort of thing.

It was an evil sort of thing. These are the things that people are drive to do for love, and loss of it. And all of this sacrifice for a man who had been in love with the wrong girl along. She couldn’t blame him. He was only a baby. But almost any creature on the face of the earth or under the water will fight to save itself from dying.

Every step was agony. The soles of her feet felt full of broken glass. Splinters of it had found their way into the centre of her heart. She kept going. It was her life or his; him in the ground, or her on the crest of a wave forever. If she killed him, she could go back. She kept walking. She cried and she didn’t notice it. She had to get there. The knife was heavy, so heavy, in her hand. She carried it. She had to. She looked back, once, to make sure that she wasn’t leaving bloody footprints on the white marble.

The baby stands back and looks at his work. Her head is nowhere near coming off her shoulders. She can feel the night-wind off of the sea in the deep, ridged groove that the saw has left in her neck. He rubs his thumb against the raw edges and, with her unblinking eyes, she begs him not to leave her, to stay and finish the job. He leaves her. They always do. Sometimes, they kiss her, but then they always leave her on her own. She just wants one to stay. The sky and the sea are the same shade of black, but she can still make out the white caps on the waves. Her sisters. Her beautiful sisters. The grief is always with her.

The end, when it came, should have come quickly.

The knife had made no sound when it slipped into the water and sank. She had heard herself make a little sound, a whimper, but she must have imagined it. The witch had taken her voice, and, now, she would keep it. She had slipped the nightgown from her shoulders. She had not waited. She had not given herself time to go back; she couldn’t kill the prince, which left her with no choice. She jumped. She had no choice at all. The water was so cold it hurt her, and, when she hit the surface, she broke into a thousand pieces, and those pieces broke into a thousand more, and their pieces too. The water was so cold that it smashed her into vapour and blew her back the way that she’d come. Something had caught her. It was like being held in a loosely curled fist.

Not seafoam, little one. Not yet.

For a long time, she waited. She was not a creature of the land, or a creature of the sea. She was of the air. She was the soft south wind and the ice on the surface of the water. She came to understand. Not always, but, sometimes, a soul is earned, not given. She had died, rather than kill him and, if she could not wish the Prince and the temple girl happiness then, at least, she wished them peace. It wasn’t a soul, not quite, but it was a flicker of light to draw herself in around. It was enough until they built the statue in the harbour, right where she had stood and jumped. It was made of metal and stone, like one of the new ships washed up on a rock. The wind swept her back the way that she’d come, all of those years before. There was a moment of impact, and then she looked out through those unmoving eyes for the very first time. She never expected to be this heavy.

And now she never changes. The babies come and take their pictures and the sea changes from blue to green and grey and back again. An American girl-baby with long red hair and layers bundling her up against the winter cold clambers up onto the rock with her. For a moment, they are eye to eye, and then the baby tugs off a glove with her teeth so that she can rub her bare fingers against the cut that the saw left in her neck. Eye to eye, the mermaid remembers that tomorrow is the shortest day. Somebody takes a photograph and the baby kisses her forehead before she jumps down off the rock and goes on her way. With her unmoving eyes, the mermaid watches her go.

And don’t drown, baby. Don’t drown.

Scheherazade

Here it is: he killed the girls because he couldn’t trust his wife. Three thousand girls who went to his bed virgins and left in the morning both married and dead. Because of a kiss given to another man. Because of a kiss.

Those are the facts. The rest is the story.

Here it is: I’m telling you the story of the story of how you save your own life.

It’s harder than you think to tell a good story.

You have a few minutes, so make yourself beautiful. Take care, you who have carried water and swept dirt floors. Now is your time for dancing, dancing girl. Now is your time to paint your palms with henna and bind your hair with ruby for royalty, pearl for wisdom, and both of them protect. Be straight backed and downward gazing. You can learn to be a wife. You were your poor father’s poor daughter and here you are, veiled like a bride, enough gold for a King’s ransom. Just remember: even in the dark, the moon and stars know where they are. Know where you are. Do not lose sight of what must happen here. Go carefully. You know this palace like the back of your hand. They cannot touch you. They cannot know you. You are promised to a king, and you have been promised before, all of these one thousand nights.

Your body will recognise him by now. There is a place for his head in the crease of your thigh. Look how your body is already mimicking that of an honest wife. His beard is soft like a boy’s. His eyelids are heavy and smoky with kohl. A story, he’ll say. Scheherazade, you tell the most beautiful stories in all of the world.

Your stories are what they are. Open your eyes wide, so that they reflect his marrying eyes right back at him. He has to want you. He has to need you. You’ve lasted two years and seven months and nine nights and three hours longer than any of the others. Tonight, tell him the story of the woman who knew her duty, and the king with marrying eyes…of the poor man’s daughter who told stories so beautifully that she broke men’s hearts and saved the world.

And married a king.

Tell him that one. Save your own skin, and let them go, the three thousand girls that you loved so well, sight unseen…the ones who came before you. Release them, so that, one day, they can come creeping back to him in the reproachful eyes of his daughters.

Make it count. This one is your killing stroke. This is your story, as well as his.

Nobody else must die here, daughter. Nobody else must die.