The Underwater Ballroom Society

by Y. S. Lee

  “It doesn’t need you,” Pen says. She’s angry that the Crown should have Trevelyan in its service alongside Deveraux; as though the two were in any way like. “Not for its dirty work.”

  “I have my orders,” Trevelyan says impatiently. “Would you have me a smuggler instead? Shall I unload your tubs and crates?”

  Her night work spoken of so plainly, but Pen doesn’t bristle. Without the Revenue, Pen would not be a smuggler. For the first time, she understands the truth of this—that they hold the same equilibrium as the tides, she and Trevelyan. Each unable to be what she is, without the other.

  “We don’t know,” Pen says, after a while. “We don’t know what the boy dreams of. He could…find something there.”

  (It’s not likely. There was such fear in him, such violence born from desperation. But nevertheless he may not know where he is bound, and he may not have loved the things and places that he left behind.)

  “A new life. A new world.” Trevelyan considers it. “But even if he does. This is still what we do, with what we have.”

  Yesterday, Pen wondered if Trevelyan minds the loss of her own inheritance; that she will be the last of a particular kind of people, who have lived in this place since the sea gave it up, and thought they were to be here forever. Looking at her now, Pen knows she was foolish to wonder. Trevelyan minds it. She minds it a great deal.

  “They will all be sent far from here,” Trevelyan says. “The old ways will never return to Kernow.”

  Her voice has a bleak, awful finality. It settles in Pen’s stomach like a stone.

  As they reach the town, her attention is caught by the lights burning in the town square, the yellow glow shuttered by the bars on the windows. The old constable is about his business, lighting the lamps. In the morning, Pen will call on Goody Nanskevel, to speak of her son’s freedom. She has that comfort, cold as it is. Trevelyan does not.

  In that moment, Pen makes a decision. “Trevelyan,” she says. “If you’re not to ride tonight, you’re welcome to stay.”

  You’re a fool, Pen, Merryn says, as clearly as though she were really there. And Pen may be, but Trevelyan is not. She considers the offer, and says:

  “Yes.”

  (This is where Penhallow lives: in the town that bears her name, yes, and in a house maintained by its rents and tithes. But simple, nevertheless. It’s a fine name with much to recommend it, but its finery is not in the stripped-wood beams, the ewers and plain cloths. It is in its antiquity, and its hospitality. Because—as Penhallow will have to explain to Merryn in due course—this is not the first time the Revenue have been invited under this roof. They have taken the bread and ale due to them as an honourable foe, and come and gone in peace.

  That, Merryn will say, is quite a different thing.)

  Penhallow is climbing the wooden stairs with a lantern held in both hands. At the top, in a darkened room, Trevelyan turns from the window with a smuggler’s moon high and proud behind her.

  A hush descends, though there is no silence here that is not underscored by the sound of the sea.

  “I hear you take orders, Trevelyan,” Pen says. “Take off your coat.”

  Trevelyan steps away from the diamond panes. The brushed, heavy wool lands on the bed.

  “And your boots.”

  A thump, then another.

  Next, the undone cuffs; the shirt and the buttons; breeches; everything beneath. The dagger. Her throat and wrists are bare without the insignia of the Crown. When only moonlight remains, Pen sets the lantern by her feet so the shadows are enormous. Trevelyan stands upright, always—through this as everything.

  For a moment, Penhallow wants to make her kneel. She’s played that game with other women, women she’s liked, who would have laughed and done it. But for Trevelyan it would be an obscenity to countenance.

  (She could have saved Jackie on her own account. She could have chosen not to see what she saw, three nights ago; she could have made a promise to Pen, to make in her turn to Goody Nanskevel; and the two of them might somehow have brought the gifted boy back to his own shores, to decide for himself what might be wrought by his power. But she did not, and Pen did not ask. Trevelyan does not bend and she does not break.)

  “Get on the bed,” Penhallow says. Still crisp, to be obeyed. “And make it pretty for us.”

  It takes Trevelyan a moment to understand, the instant of confusion more softening to her features than any sweet nothing would be. And then they’re awash with tiny glittering lights, like fireflies at midsummer, and for all it’s a party trick it’s the loveliest thing Pen has ever seen. More so then Trevelyan herself, whose body is bones and sharp edges against Pen’s sheets, to be investigated with care for fear of being cut.

  But this is what Pen wants. She checks again that it’s what Trevelyan wants. And it seems the firefly lights have a little extra magic in them; they brighten and dim in rhythm with their maker’s pitch of breathing, and Pen laughs with delight as they all go out.

  In the rose-red dawn, Trevelyan gathers her clothes and Pen pretends to be sleeping. With her eyelids open a crack she watches the rise and dip of Trevelyan’s feet, arched away from the ice-cold floorboards. Trevelyan pauses in the doorway, boots in hand, looks back at Pen with an indefinable sweetness about her expression, and turns to go.

  Penhallow doesn’t regret this, not at all. She couldn’t return what was taken—she couldn’t bring magic back to Kernow; but she could bring Trevelyan to this quiet, comfortable place, and she could give what was hers to give.

  What was hers to give. Pen sits bolt upright, swears at the cold, and launches herself at the door. “Trevelyan! Wait! I’ve got an idea!”

  Not quite an hour later Trevelyan is looking out over the water lapping in the harbour and saying, “Penhallow, this is not a good idea.”

  “Neither is His Majesty’s Inland Revenue. Get in the boat.”

  Trevelyan sighs and steps in, and Pen scans the horizon intently, running her internal calculations again. The delay in the tunnels the night before, together with the struggle she and Trevelyan had with Deveraux and his men, and sea’s long rise and fall at this time of year.

  “Got it,” Pen says, pointing. Trevelyan shades her eyes and follows Pen’s outstretched finger, takes in the ship still standing offshore. The crew missed the tide. If they hurry—and Pen is rowing as fast as she can—they might still have time.

  “It’s still not a good idea,” Trevelyan says, and then gives Pen a look of utter disgust. Pen has dropped a handful of soft cloth into the rowlocks, so the sound is muffled and doesn’t carry.

  “Don’t you start,” Pen says. “Have you got everything?”

  She’s just realised that she could have waited for Trevelyan to go and fetched Merryn for this errand. That this never occurred to her at the time is not something she wishes to examine too closely.

  Trevelyan inspects the inventory on the bottom of the boat. The little packet contains a knife—which one can grip with one’s teeth; Penhallow and Trevelyan both tested this—; a bag of coins; and a small green bottle containing distilled essence of peacock, or perhaps elephants. When smashed it should prove an excellent diversion.

  “What if it doesn’t break when it hits the deck?” Trevelyan asks, wrapping everything back up. Despite her griping, it’s a clever notion. These old merchantmen are all hold and barrels, with no internal partitions; the bundle only needs enough corrosive magic on its outside to eat through one layer of decking. If it doesn’t land close enough to him, the boy will need his own magic to get to it.

  “Then we wait for someone to stand on it,” Pen says. “Hush your mouth.”

  They’re close enough to be noticed now if anyone happens to be looking. It’s taking all of Pen’s professional skill to keep them as quiet as possible, letting the eddies of the water push them from side to side rather than using long strokes of the oars. But it’s early yet, the midshipmen sleepy at their posts, and though Pen is straining to hear, she can’t mak
e out the watchbells.

  “Easy,” Trevelyan breathes, and it seems they haven’t yet been spotted. Another stroke of the oars, and they’re as close as they can get.

  “Now!” Pen says.

  Trevelyan stands up and throws the packet over the side. It drops out of sight, Trevelyan drops to her knees, Pen starts rowing with no thought for discretion. They cover the distance with great alacrity but not so much so that they can’t hear someone shouting, “What the fuck?” and then a great deal of indistinct yelling.

  Pen rows furiously for a few minutes longer, until the crew couldn’t come after them even if they wanted to, and then Trevelyan throws a net astern. They come into harbour as a fishing boat, eccentrically crewed by an anonymously-dressed Revenue officer and the woman who owns most of the land she stands on, but they tie up without inciting remark, and come back up into the town as the two respectable pillars of society that they are.

  “I suppose we’ll never really know,” Pen says, as they settle on the harbour wall in the usual spot. The bundle may not have eaten its way belowdecks. The peacocks may not have been enough of a diversion. It wasn’t a great distance to land, for a strong swimmer, but the lad may never have seen open water before. And even if he gets so far, comes ashore at Pen’s familiar cove to the north-northwest, he may not have found the other gifts for him, the knife or the coins, and without those, have no way to evade the agents of the Crown.

  “But we tried,” Trevelyan says.

  Pen nods, slowly, and then elbows Trevelyan; she’s spotted the cloud of green sparkles, still visible against the pinks and purples of dawn. They’re both laughing a little, and they sit in companionable silence until the sun has risen entire over the water.

  “Well,” Trevelyan says, standing up. “Daylight’s burning.”

  “It is at that,” Pen agrees. “I suppose you’ve got your duties to attend to.”

  “As have you,” Trevelyan says. She tips her hat to Pen and sets off with spurs jangling, as relentlessly determined as those she serves. Penhallow watches until she’s quite out of sight, and then goes up to see Goody Nanskevel.

  Four months later, it’s a small operation, five cases of rum and another three of jenever, so it’s just Merryn, Penhallow and Ram Das stowing the crates. It would have been Jackie, too, had his mother not had another attack of the vapours and refused to allow him out of the house. But Ram Das is both willing and efficient, and Pen is thinking about letting him handle the next small job by himself.

  “But take the right-hand path, never the left,” Pen cautions, when proposing this idea to him, and Ram Das promises he won’t, not for the sake of a crate of jenever or to impress a girl. They amble back on foot, Pen and Merryn and the boy beaming like all his feast days have come at once, and they run into the Revenue just on the edge of the town.

  “Keeping late hours,” Trevelyan observes, halting in the lamplight.

  “A moonlight stroll,” Pen says, hands in her pockets. They’re empty, as are Ram Das’s. She patted him down before they left the cove.

  “Yes, of course.” Trevelyan clicks her tongue and makes to ride on, but Pen holds up her hand.

  “How’s your mum, Trevelyan?” she asks.

  “She does well, thank you for asking,” Trevelyan says. “She thinks that she would like to see London again. Perhaps at Christmas, when the fairy lights are out.”

  “That’s a long way to go alone,” Pen says.

  “I may accompany her.” Trevelyan pauses. “I might…take the opportunity.”

  Pen smiles. “Will you come back?”

  “Yes.” Trevelyan clicks her tongue again. “Good evening to you, Pen. Merryn, Ram Das.”

  She nods at them each in turn, picks up her reins and disappears into the night.

  “Pen,” Merryn says. “You’re—”

  “An idiot and a fool, I know,” Pen says. She puts her hands back in her pockets, and smiles.

  (Because this is Kernow, where she was born; this is Penhallow, for which she was named; and this is a world in its passing, from which the great things are almost gone, but still and all, are not gone yet. Perhaps those who built the ballroom under the water will one day call for its return, and perhaps they will not. It makes no difference to Penhallow. She will be here.)

  (And Trevelyan will come back.)

  About Iona Datt Sharma

  Iona is a writer, lawyer, linguaphile, and the product of more than one country. She's currently working on her first novel, a historical fantasy about spies. Her other short fiction is at www.generalist.org.uk/iona/fiction/ and she tweets as @singlecrow.

  Mermaids, Singing

  Tiffany Trent

  Mermaids, Singing

  The hound with the scarred snout knew there was something different about him, and this could be ascribed partially to the fact that when he looked up at the old show posters lining the train car walls, he could comprehend them.

  “Lord Halfang and the Wolf Queen’s Circus Spectacular!”

  “Re-enactments of Mythic Grandeur!”

  “Aquatic Enticements of a Forgotten Age!”

  “Come Be Enraptured!”

  All with dates and places that were smears in his memory.

  The spiked iron hoops of the show routine spun in his mind; he dreamed constantly of leaping through them when he twitched in his cage at night.

  The show this evening had been particularly cruel. The Wolf Queen, or Switchblade Sally, as the Ringmaster affectionately called her, had driven the hounds relentlessly through their paces with her whip, sending them through rings of fire, forcing them to dance on their hind legs until their hearts nearly burst. At the end, as was customary, the lights were dimmed and modesty screens brought to the center of the ring where he had collapsed in exhaustion.

  The hound had seen her do this many times to his comrades, but this was a first for him. She advanced, her crystal-blue eyes gloating over his powerlessness. From the ruffles at her bosom, she withdrew a phial of glimmering green dust. He knew the name of it, though he did not know how he knew.

  Myth.

  “Behold!” the Ringmaster called from the darkness. “The true form of the Wolf Queen’s servant!”

  She flicked the dust with gloved fingers and the sparkling net settled over him, digging into his fur like tiny shards of glass. His howl of agony ripped and stretched into a gasp as he rose, naked and shivering, on human legs. None could see his nakedness save her; only his silhouette was visible to the audience through the modesty screens.

  She smirked at how he tried to hide himself, and memory knifed him—of sitting above this woman, as on a throne, watching her perform an acrobatic routine for him. How her final bow had been accompanied by this selfsame smirk and how, even then, though he had struggled not to show it, he’d been vastly discomfited by her.

  In that moment he realized several things:

  He was not entirely a hound.

  He was also not entirely human.

  He and his comrades were being held against their will.

  He was from another world.

  He had known the Ringmaster and Switchblade Sally in that other world, and they were dangerous.

  Then he’d crashed to the dirt again amid shouts and fainting in the stands.

  The show was over now, and he was a hound again, bound by the rough magic the Ringmaster and Switchblade Sally used to keep all their mythical acts under control. The other hounds were busy licking savaged flanks or seared paws, some whining at the pain.

  The scarred hound alone was silent. He did not know who he was or how he’d come here, but he knew two things: he had to escape. And he needed to help the others escape as well.

  His opportunity came sooner than he expected. When the train rolled to a stop and the doors were thrown open, Switchblade Sally entered. Her spiked collar fanned about her like the predatory frill of some ancient lizard, and her black hair was piled in an elaborate tower from which people and animals leaped on tiny golden chai
ns.

  “The parade commences in five minutes,” she said. “You will surround me and walk with me as loyal subjects should. Anyone who defies me will live to regret it.”

  She carried jeweled collars in her hands which probably looked unremarkable to the circus crowds, but the green jewels inset in the collars glowed in the dim train car, promising pain if any of the hounds attempted to break ranks in the parade.

  The scarred hound growled softly as she approached him, but when her icy gaze fell on him, he went silent. His muzzle bore the lash of her whip, and he knew she would not hesitate to use it again. She hurried through getting the collar on him, barely fastening the buckle. He smelled fear and apprehension on her. Something was wrong.

  When the last hound was collared, she turned toward the platform, waiting for the signal from the goons for them all to disembark.

  As he walked stiffly down the gangplank, the scarred hound looked beyond his mistress’s shoulder to the plaque on the wall.

  London: Paddington Station, the sign said.

  London. London. The name echoed in his skull and brought with it images of himself and an auburn-haired girl and…a tiny sprite running through gloomy streets like these. Only they were not quite these streets, were they?

  He followed the grand parade as it circled off the platform, through the station, and out onto the street. Bobbies used their billy clubs with aplomb, cursing as they were forced to stop carriages and carts and hold back the crowd that formed quickly along either side of the thoroughfare.

  The hound was used to the shouts and pointing, the wild waving of children in awe of the elephants lumbering through the damp chill of their city streets. None of this frightened or agitated him now as it once had. But the feel of the loose collar, knowing it would easily come apart if he could just dig it off with a paw, was maddening. He wondered what Switchblade Sally feared so much that she had been this careless—surely not him.