Walking on Knives

by Maya Chhabra

  "They're a gift, little girl. You don't have to trade me anything."

  She furrowed her brow, then shook her head and repeated herself. You-me-shoes, I-you-what?

  "I told you—oh." What happened from one breath to the next, she was never sure of. A glint of light off the little mermaid's honey-colored, waist-length hair, perhaps, but more likely the suppressed fear she could nearly smell. Her sister was right and she was wrong. A fine prize indeed, this determined creature.

  "You can pay me with a kiss." Playful, unserious, and how else did one bare one's throat?

  The little mermaid startled and took a step back toward the doorway. No maiden shyness in her flashing eyes, only disdain.

  No one had the right to look at her like that.

  "You're the one who wanted to pay. You're the one who couldn't leave well enough alone. Well, kiss me, then."

  She didn't need to shake her head; her whole body refused. The strange woman found she was the one shaking, while the little mermaid stood firm and lovely and infinitely above her. What foolishness had made her believe that this pure, bold girl would feel anything but disgust at a witch's proposal?

  Yet she had made a deal with the sea-witch for legs. Not so pure as all that, but someone who knew what she wanted and used her body to barter. She had no right to her scorn. She had no right to come here as though she were too proud to take a gift and then show she was too proud to pay.

  "Have it your way," the strange woman said, and turned away before her stinging eyes could betray her.

  *~*~*

  Have it your way echoed, the low, hollow pulse of a conch shell held to the ear. The little mermaid swayed and sank down. She began to unlace her slippers, fumbling, trembling. She couldn't do it. She would rather endure the sea-witch's foul lovemaking again, never mind a single kiss. A shadow of the pain to come lanced through her. She couldn't.

  She had grown proud, protected by the shoes. When she had run past the prince and cut the deer's throat, she had exulted in the hot spurt of blood. She had never felt so alive, under the sea. Here she was, human at last, having adventures her sisters would never dream of. And yet…

  Her long hair veiling her, she allowed herself to weep.

  *~*~*

  The strange woman turned back, hard and splendid, as befit a witch. She towered over the little mermaid, who lay crumpled on the packed-dirt floor as though she had already forgotten what legs were for.

  She wouldn't force herself where she wasn't wanted. Magnanimity suited her. She opened her mouth to speak, and then shut it.

  The little mermaid had one slipper off and was undoing the other. Noticing the strange woman, she flung one of the slippers at her feet, then redoubled her attack on the remaining one.

  The little mermaid would rather tread on knives than accept her gift.

  "What are you… yes, give them back to me, give them back!"

  The rest of the pair thudded down in front of her. The little mermaid remained in a heap on the ground.

  "Get out." She wanted to see what would happen.

  The little mermaid tossed her hair out of her face and jutted her chin. The strange woman noticed dry rivulets tracing the paths of silent tears. But the little mermaid was no longer crying. If she still were, the strange woman would have relented. If she still were, none of this would hurt.

  The little mermaid stood, screwed up her eyes, staggered forward, and left without a backward glance.

  *~*~*

  Triumph—over the strange woman, over herself—carried her back to the castle upright, though every step seared her inside. She had made no deals; she had not compromised herself further; and she was moving under her own power toward her love and her soul.

  She raced the long shadow cast by the noonday sun. She twirled and leapt in an ecstatic, adrenaline-fueled dance. Instead of music, pain kept up a jangling beat, blacking out her world every time her feet touched down.

  She could not feel the transition from baking cobblestones to cool marble tiles, but the rest of her sweat-soaked body rejoiced as the cavernous ceiling blocked out the sun. Her feet skimmed the floor, snatching relief in the air while they could. She envied the unbound kingfisher.

  A wide circle of spectators formed around her. This is what feet are for, she thought as she sprung into the air, landing on bent knee to push up again. And she could not understand how everyone seemed content to stand and walk and remain tied to the earth, when they could dance.

  As she twisted around, she caught sight of the prince, just a flash as she whirled past. She wanted to stop and drink him in, his straight shoulders and enraptured face and unusually elaborate brocade. But as she slowed, the light burning beat became a heavy thud and bore her downward. She finished—gracefully, she hoped—kneeling by the prince's feet.

  She looked up; the joyous expression had not changed. He raised her to her feet, and even though she could barely stay upright, she smiled.

  "My lady," he said. "I'd like you to meet the woman who saved my life when I was shipwrecked." And he gestured to a woman by his side, whose golden circlet and sumptuous dress marked her as royalty.

  The little mermaid opened her mouth to protest, but nothing came out. White-hot fire rushed from the soles of her feet to her brain, and she collapsed before the foreign princess.

  *~*~*

  She had recognized him instantly. The prince doubted it at first—her eyes were bright green, not hazel, and her voice rough and unmusical. But she recounted how she had found him unconscious on the beach, bleeding from the head, and brought him to a physician to be healed and returned to his family, whomever they might be. She offered to show him the blood-caked scarf with which she had stanched his wound.

  "Why didn't you say anything?"

  "How was I to know I would ever meet you again?"

  He took in the foreign princess's tanned skin, her sun-bleached blond hair, the incongruous calluses on her hands. A fellow sailor, someone who loved the ocean as he did. Someone who could save a life and go on with her day as though it were nothing.

  The singing must have been a water-logged, concussed dream.

  "Would you like to see my new boat?" he had asked. "I promise I'm not as poor a sailor as you think."

  "Prove it," she had said with a most unregal grin. So he had.

  After their return, when they had changed out of their saltwater-sprayed clothes into formalwear for the state luncheon, they found in the entrance hall a knot of people gaping at something. The prince knew who they were looking at before he saw her—or rather, saw the blur of hair and dress and loose limbs that must be her. His wild foundling.

  She seemed to fly.

  She ended her dance at his feet. He had watched a thing of magic and it had ended in homage to him; he felt the wrongness of so graceful a creature kneeling and raised her up to tell her the good news.

  Her mouth opened in a mute scream. He caught her as she plummeted, suddenly shorn of her wings.

  *~*~*

  She had sung with her body. She had felt music in her again. Now she lay in a sickbed, and she might as well have been manacled; she knew she could not stand. Under the tangling sheets, her body was calm and painless, as though all feeling had been burned out of it.

  Numb, she listened to the voices at the foot of her bed.

  "What's ailing her? Sometimes she seems fine, and other times she limps as though she were walking on broken legs, and now she just… fell."

  "There's nothing wrong with her legs, nothing that my art can fix. The trouble lies in her mind. Maybe you can persuade her to answer my questions. I've had no luck."

  "She can't talk."

  "She won't even nod or shake her head, or point to where it hurts. There's nothing I can do for a patient who's locked herself up so tightly."

  "She will recover, won't she?" The voice rose in concern.

  "Why don't you ask her yourself?"

  They must have left; she heard the click of a door. She floated in the
silence. She was going to die, to melt into sea foam long before her allotted three hundred years were up, and without having gained an immortal soul. Without having gained love, for the prince loved another.

  If she had had her voice, she could have explained who had saved him.

  She became aware of a breathing besides her own. The prince's. She knew it without opening her eyes.

  "I don't know what to call you. I don't know who you are or where you're from. All I know is… I hope you walk again. I hope you dance at my wedding."

  Her last night on earth. She would dissolve with the dawn.

  Her eyes snapped open. She would do it. She would give him this. And she would not let one silent sigh escape her. She would regret nothing.

  *~*~*

  This time, the sea-witch's sister visited her in her own domain, in her cavern in the freezing black depths. Unfamiliar territory; they usually met at borders, in liminal spaces, at the edges of low and high tide. Between them was truce rather than peace.

  But this time the strange woman came as a supplicant.

  "Not so malleable, after all," said the sea-witch, light and malignant, as they descended past the bioluminescent fish until they were in a place with no light at all. "You didn't anticipate she'd reject you."

  "So you set a trap to catch her, and ensnared me as well. I admit it. I've come to bargain for her."

  "Go bargain with her, then. I am not in the business of selling flesh."

  "No, only buying it. I know what payment the little mermaid offered." Her laughter was as dark as the lightless cave, but the sea-witch cowed her with a look. "I'm sorry. I meant to say, I came here because it's something only you can do," said the strange woman.

  "That I do not doubt."

  The strange woman knew she exuded all the vulnerability of need. She was not yet used to it. "Release her from her bargain."

  The sea-witch drew back, her massy black hair hiding her face. "You were wrong. I cannot do that."

  "What do you mean?"

  "What I mean," said the sea-witch, emerging from her smoke-cloud of hair, "is this. You want this creature—this half-mermaid, half-woman, with her provisional existence and her apparent disdain for you. Very well. But now you wish to release her from her bargain with me. The trouble is, she does not wish to be released."

  "What do you mean?" she repeated, feeling slow and woozy as a human would from lack of air. She had the feeling she was missing something important. "The prince will be married in a few days, wed to the princess he believes his sole rescuer. The little mermaid must know all is lost now."

  "The little mermaid has perhaps a better understanding of these dealings than you. A better understanding of the prices of our desires. She has not said a word against our bargain."

  "Because you took her voice!"

  "I think she can communicate effectively without it. She made herself quite clear to you."

  "Enough about my stupid, foolish advances to her. I want to save her life, not possess her as a lover." The sea-witch's fathomless gray eyes pierced her, and she modified her declaration. "Well, that too, true, but her life comes first."

  "Do you know, I might just take you at your word?"

  "I'm not one of your merfolk to be taken in by your rigged deals, sister."

  "You said you came to bargain, sister. And bargain we will. But first you have to understand something. I will not do anything to anyone against their will."

  The strange woman stared at the sea-witch. "Don't be sanctimonious. Do you really mean to say that all your victims willed their gruesome ends?"

  "They wanted whatever I could give them badly enough to pay the price. I could not give the little mermaid a soul, you see. Souls are from God, and beyond our gifts to supply. But when two humans are joined in marriage, they are joined in the soul as well. Therefore, the little mermaid could hope. But I did not promise her the prince would love her. I could make him do so… but I won't."

  "Is that what you meant by taking me at my word?" She welcomed this new shade of darkness as though it were light. "Make him love her. Let them be happy. Save her, and with time I'll forget this… infatuation, as you called it."

  "You still don't see it." The sea-witch's voice never rose when she was angry; it deepened. The strange woman felt the reverberations inside her like a tremor of the earth. "I won't do anything against their wills. I won't make him love her, I won't release her from the bargain, and I won't make her love you."

  "What would it take, from her, for you to repudiate the deal and all its consequences?"

  "From her…" The sea-witch trailed off. She swam out of sight—not that the strange woman could see far in this darkness. That she could see at all was one of the benefits of magic. Her disembodied voice continued, "Very well. If she proves to my satisfaction that she is in earnest, she may return and live out her three hundred years underwater."

  "How does she prove it?"

  The sea-witch drifted back into view, holding something. The strange woman took a moment to recognize metal without its characteristic shine; no light to reflect, here.

  The sea-witch held out the knife to her sister. "Of course, there's a price."

  *~*~*

  The prince could hardly believe now that he'd once fancied himself in love with the girl he had found in the cove. She was lovely and unpredictable, and he worried about her and cared for her, and was glad she was walking again, albeit haltingly and in obvious pain. But all that was so, so little next to what he felt for the foreign princess.

  The debt of gratitude he owed her did not make things awkward; she laughed off his attempts at thanks and thenceforth he did his best to be natural with her. And it was so easy to be natural with her, to while away his free hours in a boat with her, or to exchange mocking glances with her as their fathers droned on at dull state dinners, hammering out the tariff on the manufactured goods the foreign princess's state exported or debating what should be done about fisherman straying across the maritime border.

  When they petitioned the kings to bless their marriage, no one was surprised. But the young couple could not keep from being surprised anew each day at how wonderfully they filled each other's empty places.

  *~*~*

  The two kings had decided to celebrate the wedding after the state visit. A magnificent barge was appointed for the festivities.

  How fitting. She would die, as she had been born, at sea. She had failed entirely to escape.

  The little mermaid found her vow not to regret easier to make in bravado than to carry out in despair.

  They boarded the barge the night before the wedding. Soon enough the soft roll of the waves had lulled most everyone to sleep. The little mermaid did not dare shut her eyes. She had so little time left.

  Go to sleep or you won't be in any shape to dance at the wedding, she told herself. But she felt trapped in this close, dark cabin; had it not been for the slight starlight peeking through the porthole, she would have thought herself again in the sea-witch's cave, fingers scuttling over her like crab-feet.

  She let herself out of the cabin and lay down on the deck, feeling the waves pass under her. The new moon dragged at the water; spring tides must be eating away at the land, covering the cove where the prince had found her. The longer she looked up, the more densely stars crowded the sky. Who lived in this endless ocean? Did they, too, long for the life they could not have? Were even souls in paradise unhappy?

  "Don't run away."

  Recognizing the voice, the little mermaid sprang to her feet and spun around, looking for its source. Without moonlight, it was hard to see anything.

  "I'm right here," said the strange woman, a touch impatiently. The little mermaid made out a solid silhouette against the formless night.

  She had beaten the strange woman once before. She could do it again. But fear crawled up her spine, clammy and urgent. In the dark, she could not communicate without her voice.

  As though she had read her thoughts, the strang
e woman conjured blue flames, which seemed to grow out of her bare left hand. With the other, she beckoned her closer. The little mermaid shook her head and stood at the very edge of the illuminated circle, glaring.

  "Don't look at me like that. I'm here to save your life."

  *~*~*

  As if in deliberate mockery the little mermaid made the same series of gestures as on the day she had returned the enchanted shoes. I-you-what?

  But the strange woman understood this better now. Having herself bargained with the sea-witch for her heart's desire, she could scarcely believe anymore in gifts, in grace, in anything save transaction.

  The sea-witch had exacted a high price.

  She knelt and placed the glittering knife on the deck between them. The little mermaid craned her neck to see what it was, but did not move to take it.

  "The sea-witch gave it to me. She said she would undo everything, let you come back to the sea and live out your life, if only you proved that you wanted it. She said… she said I couldn't make that decision for you. Only you could break the bargain."

  The little mermaid flinched as a particularly large wave tilted the barge and she had to take a step to keep from falling. She raised her hands to balance herself, and then they fell back to her sides, silent. The strange woman wondered what it would take to gain her trust. To gain more than that…

  Not much was impossible to her. She could breathe beneath the waves and walk upon the air, but she could not unlock this fiercely defended girl, who in her mistrust subdued the hope that surely leapt inside her. The eager forward thrust of her neck betrayed her. The firelight caught in her hair and in her wide and wary eyes.

  "Take this knife, love. Take it and live."

  The little mermaid's face crinkled up, and then her hands spread empty in front of her. The spell of the moment broke; the strange woman could breathe properly again. Why had she said "love" when nothing could come of it? Her sister had made sure of that.

  "He'll never marry you. He'll let you die," she continued savagely. "Here's what you have to do. Stab the prince as he lies in his wedding bed tomorrow. Let the blood drip onto your feet, and they will become fins, your legs a tail, your life your own once more." She took a step toward the little mermaid, who did not step back. "Or die."