by Maya Chhabra
Table of Contents
Title Page
Book Details
Dedication
Walking on Knives
About the Author
WALKING
on
KNIVES
MAYA CHHABRA
The little mermaid has no idea that as she makes her way on land, she's being watched over by the sister of the very witch with whom she made her bargain. She has no idea that the witch's sister is falling in love with her.
When the prince decides to marry another woman, the little mermaid's secret helper offers her a chance to live. But the price may be too high...
Walking on Knives
By Maya Chhabra
Published by Less Than Three Press LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.
Edited by
Cover designed by Natasha Snow
This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.
The kingfisher poem the prince quotes is fragment 26 of the Spartan lyric poet Alcman. And the source material for the whole story comes, of course, from “The Little Mermaid” by Hans Christian Andersen.
First Edition July 2017
Copyright © 2017 by Maya Chhabra
Printed in the United States of America
Digital ISBN 9781684310272
Thanks are due first of all to Kayla Bashe, who inspired me to try my hand at this genre, and for whose support I am deeply grateful. Rosie Brown was an enthusiastic first reader. Hanna Crooks lent her expertise on theological issues; any errors are my own. Noella Handley and Sarah Brand supported my work through Patreon. My parents, Daniela Bonafede-Chhabra and Ashvin Chhabra, encouraged me throughout the writing of this story and the publication process.
At Less Than Three Press, I would like to thank Samantha Derr, Sasha Miller, Megan Derr, Natasha Snow, and Amanda Jean. Working with them has been a privilege.
WALKING
on
KNIVES
"You wanted this," the sea-witch murmured. "You made the bargain, you agreed to pay the price."
The little mermaid nodded mutely. She tried to look everywhere but at the sea-witch: at the crags carved with unconscious artistry by endless waves, at the pale moving lights cast by monsters of the deep, at the black infinity that stretched inward into the bowels of the cave. But tangled black hair and hard scales came between her and the rest of her world.
Sun-starved, chill, she submitted to the sea-witch's touch.
"Every step on land will cut like white-hot knives." Echoes flooded in, but she scarcely heard them, all her being concentrated under the sea-witch's hands and lips. She held herself still; neither of them would enjoy this.
The caresses grew more demanding until the kisses were nearly bites. The little mermaid shivered, and a long "ahhh" came from the sea witch's throat. The little mermaid tried to school herself to stiffness and failed. She couldn't breathe. A noiseless sobbing shook her.
Notes of pleasure spiked through her distress. She yearned for the clean agony promised her on land.
Land. Air. My prince. My soul. Clinging to these thoughts, she gradually reclaimed herself.
*~*~*
She burst through the surface and allowed a wave to fling her onto the gravelly beach. The little mermaid rolled onto her knees and pushed herself to stand. The tender soles of her new feet, pinched by rocks, would hardly bear her, but she could endure this pain. It was less than she had expected and less than she had just felt.
Then she took a step forward, and it was as if she had walked through the sky and trod on the sun. She collapsed, the air rushing out of her in a scream no one would ever hear. The sea splashed and tugged against her as though it meant to drag her home.
*~*~*
The prince moored his pleasure craft and walked up the pier to the so-called beach—worthless for bathing, with its heavy waves and rocky surface. But it was as good a place as any to dock his boat and take some time for himself. No one came to this barren cove, and so he had made it his own.
Something long, white, and draped with seaweed lay along the border between sea and land, something too small to be a beached whale. He moved closer, heavy boots clunking and protecting him from the rocks.
It was a woman. The seaweed was her hair, long and wavy and nearly enough to cover her, for she was naked. He would have averted his eyes, but her skin, in places unblemished as an infant's, in places scraped and sunburned, caught his attention. She didn't look like she'd been shipwrecked, nor as if—a darker thought seized him—she had been left for dead.
She was most certainly alive.
He had half-turned to run for help, but he heard her shift as she woke and knelt beside her. "Don't be afraid. I'm going to help you."
She raised her chin, a movement that began in the sinews of her neck, and her eyes met his.
He knew those eyes. In the vision he had when he had nearly drowned last summer, a creature with those hazel eyes, a siren with an entrancing voice had carried him to shore. It had not occurred to him then to fear that voice, but now he was conscious of slow thump of waves behind him, of the ease of drowning in this desolate place.
For a shame-drenched instant, he considered walking away.
As if she could read his mind, the woman touched her throat and shook her head. A mute, then. No siren, this, no dream-vision. She was real.
He offered her his hand. She staggered up, a stubborn glint in her eye, and limped with him to the boat house, where he threw her an old shirt—she seemed baffled by it. How long since she had seen civilization?
When he pulled the shirt tentatively over her head, she did not protest. Strange, he thought, wild but not skittish. Mindful of the injury to her leg—he could see nothing wrong with it, but something must have been broken inside for her to wince like that—he rowed them up to the castle.
*~*~*
Helpless, nearly unconscious as the sea took him, he had been merely beautiful, and she had loved him with a soulless sea-love, born of the eyes and fleeting passions.
Bright shallows to the depths she sensed now.
As yet, she had seen his shell, but in his solicitousness, in his averted eyes, the little mermaid could glimpse a shielded inner tenderness. With time, he might open to her.
And then they would have eternity.
*~*~*
Noon light bathed the interior of the cottage. The strange woman who sat with her embroidery, legs folded under her, needed no candle to guide her needle as it traced a border of daffodils along satin slippers. She looked to the open window often; it gave out onto the lonely sea.
She tied a final knot triumphantly just as a rowboat clarified from a smudge on the horizon. Carrying a loose white shift and the slippers, she slipped out of the cottage in the shadow of the wood and made her way down to the castle gates to wait.
*~*~*
The little mermaid hesitated to step out of the boat. She had thought herself the bravest of her sisters, but every nerve in her body strained against the prospect of taking another step.
The prince pantomimed leaning and patted his shoulder. She had saved his life; she could not appear before him weak and a coward. She remembered how in her innocence—was it only a few hours ago?— she had thought this pain preferable to the sea-witch's touch.
The prince made to cradle her in his arms, to carry her. Once she had dreamed of this. Now she wriggled out of his grasp. She was out of the boat before she had fully formed the intention.
She began to run, touch
ing the earth hardly at all, racing the slicing fire in her feet, leaving the prince baffled by his rowboat. The fine, hot sand gave way to parched grass; she felt rather than saw the difference.
"Wait, my lady! Wait!"
It clanged in her ear as so many meaningless syllables next to the gong that beat anew every time the ball of her foot came down. She thought, Pain and freedom are the same thing, perhaps. She did not stop.
*~*~*
About ten yards in front of the little mermaid, a woman alit. The little mermaid did not wonder at her sudden appearance. She had noticed almost nothing in her flight. But the strange woman held out her hand for her to halt, and something about her inclined the little mermaid to listen. She skidded to a stop and sat down. Her mind had floated somewhere high above, and with the absence of pain, rationality began to return.
The strange woman seized her feet and slipped them into soft coverings. Was this to stop her from running away again? Whatever in her had defied the prince shrank in the presence of this stranger. Resistless, she surrendered to the current. Off with the prince's garment, on with this strange flowy fabric that billowed in the wind. Humans attached great importance to these things, and she was almost a human now.
"There, now stand up."
She did as she was told. When she registered that the wave she had steeled herself against had not overwhelmed her, had not come at all, she was alone again.
Unhurried, she walked back to her prince, who awaited her.
*~*~*
The slight flush from exertion was all that betrayed her. Her regal steps seemed to belong to another woman, not to the limping, frightened, irresistibly stubborn creature he'd found. He offered her his arm and escorted her into the castle.
She didn't gape at the ornamentation. He doubted she was the rustic he'd been told she was. The fluted ceiling above them, the marble sculpture of a water nymph, the bright mosaic floors—none of this impressed her. Instead her gaze clung to him, as though he were the most fascinating object in the room.
He shoved down the thought. She was alone and vulnerable, with only him for a protector, and that was what he daydreamed of?
"My lady," he said. "You may stay as my guest at court for as long as you like."
*~*~*
Dimension—she missed that most. Darting up into sunlight and down to the cool deeps, playing tag with her sisters among coral reefs and palaces, twisting around and diagonal, breeching like a dolphin. The world she had chosen was flatter, its movements less expressive.
But she followed every crease of the prince's brow, every slight motion of his restless hands, puzzling him out. She felt him doing the same to her. Who are you? he asked silently. She had become very good at reading silence now, as she struggled to make her will clear without a voice. Where do you come from? And she burned to tell him.
She thought that had she her voice, he would have believed her.
*~*~*
The strange woman lay flat on the beach in the sunset coolness. The evening star flamed white amidst the gaudy colors left by the sinking sun. Low tide lapped at her pointed toes, and wet sand worked its way into her thick hair, so like her sister's.
Her sister seemed to bring the night in her train; the orange and pink cloud-banners faded, and the surrounding blue deepened. New stars poked out. Two drifted close, and the sea-witch emerged, a black outline beaching itself, glittering eyes the only feature visible.
"You're infatuated." It was as if the whisperings of the sea breeze had become distinct. She didn't turn her head to look.
"I'm jealous of your toy."
They shared a laugh.
"Tell me, why did you give her those slippers?"
"Do I need a reason for interfering with your designs? Perhaps not being in pain the entire time will give her a fighting chance with the prince,” the sea-witch's sister replied.
"Ah, livening up the game, are you? A fair fight is more entertaining, it's true, but I don't specialize in fair. Just don't assist her any further, will you? She's a fine prize."
"I don't think so. Stubborn enough at first, but then surprisingly docile. She doesn't stand a chance, unless our prince likes his women silent and… well… malleable."
"Do I have your word not to interfere further?" the sea-witch asked.
She looked up at the infinity of stars, felt herself falling off the face of the earth into their killing embrace.
"You have my word."
*~*~*
The chase. It brought to mind an orca pod shredding a whale as she and her sisters watched transfixed. Sleek, massive glory setting its mind to the butchery it was created for.
The prince had asked her if she would join the chase. A hunger woke in her racing blood. Yes, she would. Certainly.
Their party lingered in the shadow of the wood, just outside the trees. The muted palette of the forest made her long for rainbow coral reefs. Whether she won love and a soul or melted into sea-foam, she would never see them again.
"My lady, listen." The prince held a finger to his lips. She didn't know what she was meant to be hearing, as everything here was hushed, the still air, the carpet of old twigs and leaves. Slowly patterns emerged: squeaks like the gabbling of dolphins and every now and then a long high rattle. She revolved, seeing only the trees on one side and the path to the beach, with a cottage beside it, on the other.
She could feel the prince's gaze on her. Her eyes had widened, and her hands came up in excited gesticulation. He understood her without words.
"Look up," he whispered, pointing at the branches that interwove above them. Something blue and impossible streaked through the air. "A kingfisher," he said, and sang a line or two of verse. "His heart fearless, the holy sea-blue bird. You're not from around here, are you?"
She scarcely registered the question. Head tilted back, she scanned the obstructed sky for more of the creatures. Air suddenly took on the complexity, the bounty of the sea.
A little brown meteor flew past; it came to rest on a low branch, and she examined its squid-like beak and mysterious texture—a thousand soft, elongated scales covered its breast and its… fins? Arms? A miracle, in this gravity-bound, depthless world.
Unconsciously, she had been jumping, trying to ride the currents of the wind like the kingfisher. She realized this when the prince laughed. She grabbed his hands and ran them breathless in a circle, staring up up up all the while. Her slipper snagged on a root and brought them both to the ground.
Sunlight filtering through the canopy. His weight on her, breathing against her. Evenly, not like he'd coughed and sputtered, lost at sea.
"My lady—"
"Well, well, well. Your chaperone's here, Your Grace."
The prince jerked away and stood up. She sat bolt upright, her arms cradling empty space. Something dark and moving eclipsed the sun.
And the little mermaid was ashamed to shrink from it, but who could fault her, when the sea-witch's face came into focus above?
*~*~*
She watched the little mermaid flinch and then jut out her chin, prideful even as she quivered. Perhaps she had underestimated her.
The little mermaid looked her up and down, and upon seeing her bare feet—evidence she was not the sea-witch after all—let out a held breath. She scrambled up, blushing.
"Come, let's get on with the hunt."
The little mermaid's head bobbed in agreement. She reached out to the prince, but he swerved away from her touch.
The strange woman tracked deer with a huntress's practiced ease. The prince kept her between himself and the little mermaid. He was a good enough man in his way, thought the strange woman, but conventional in every thought. When they neared their quarry, he offered the bow to the little mermaid, who stared at the contraption for a minute, then snatched it and ran after the deer, trying to slip it around its neck and strangle it with the cord. Baffled in her quest, she brought the bow back, head hung low.
The strange woman shook her head and followed the
deer's tracks. They came upon it in a glen by the riverbank, where a weeping willow trailed its branches in the water. The prince nocked an arrow, waited for the deer to emerge from behind the willow's curtain, and loosed.
The deer circled its injured haunch and stumbled. It lay on its side, kicking wildly. The prince pulled out another arrow, took aim, and then dropped the arrow, cursing. A fleet shadow was darting to the thrashing deer, deftly avoiding its hooves. The strange woman saw the prince rummage at his belt for his dagger and find nothing.
The little mermaid knelt by the deer's head, blood pooling in the grass in front of them, flowing from the deer's slit throat.
*~*~*
She wasn't from anywhere along the river delta—she'd never seen a kingfisher. She had never hunted before, or even seen a bow and arrow. She was mad or foolish, or perhaps both.
But as he watched her wash her stained hands in the river, he thought she wasn't the only one.
*~*~*
They walked back in silence, the little mermaid, the prince, and the strange woman whom he allowed to speak to him familiarly, who so resembled the sea-witch, and who, she remembered now, had given her— forced on her, really— the saving slippers.
With witches, everything had a price.
They left their chaperone at the cottage by the edge of the woods. They had no real need of one. The prince would not look at her.
*~*~*
She had been waiting for the rap on the door. You never have to go to people, to lure them in; they come to you.
The little mermaid hovered on the threshold like a bride waiting to be carried over. Framed in the doorway, a study in grace and spontaneity and nervous anticipation. Or perhaps the nerves were her own.
"Come in."
Biting her lower lip, the little mermaid stepped into the cottage. She pointed at her shoes.
"What about them? Haven't come to complain, have you? That's all I can do for you."
The little mermaid pointed to the strange woman, then to herself, then to her feet again. Then she repeated the gestures in reverse: herself, the strange woman, and a shrug. You-me-shoes. I-you-what?
