Secrets of Carrick: Merrow

by Ananda Braxton-Smith

  ‘Coming?’ she invited me, and disappeared entirely under the black water.

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said and the water slammed shut over my head.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Salamander

  AUNTIE USHAG’S PALE SOLES KICKED above black water for a moment and disappeared down into the pool. I followed her just in time. In a moment she’d gone, leaving only a faint trail that melted away almost as fast as I tracked it downward. A tunnel cut through the rock-wall, filled now only with bubbles and my aunt’s silvery wake. Telling my pounding heart that it would all be all right, I kicked after her.

  My bones were aching from cold and, in spite of it only being a short journey, I was tortured all its way by the thought of being buried alive inside the cliff. It was a tight fit, that tunnel, and would’ve made a chilly tomb. Wriggling, rolling, now serpentine, now otter-like, and somewhat harrowed by sharp points in the rock and the feeling I would run out of air, I pulled myself along hand-over-hand and made a beeline for the light. Near its mouth the tunnel and the rock pressed in. I was gripped at the shoulders and pinned for one panicked moment and then Ushag’s hand reached into the dark, grabbed mine, and pulled.

  I slipped from that tunnel like a hare from its coat. ‘Snug, eh?’ said my aunt. She wrung the water from her hair and shook herself like a wet dog. Her skin was like a plucked hen all over and her lips were blue.

  I stood shivering, knee-deep in another pool in another, more sizeable cave. This one was sandy-floored, and filled with greenish light from a gap in the cliff at its sea-end. Through it I could see dangling vines and a line of white sand, and the sea foaming. Waves surged back and forth through the gap, pushing halfway up into the sea-cave before pulling back. I stepped out of the pool into thick sand.

  Straightways my feet started to burn; not burn like fire but like some of Ushag’s cures. I hopped back and forth between feet a little. ‘It’s the salt,’ said my aunt, tasting the sand. I looked about. Every pinnacle and mound was shining in its cap of salt. The cliff’s insides towered above us in strips of red, pink, grey and black and everywhere my eyes met stone mounts and steeps, boulders and their shadows. It was as I fancied a castle might be, with its turrets and pillars and such, though a ruined, pock-marked sort. The walls were hived with cells; the monks could’ve moved right in. Just above my head broad rock-shelves angled back into the shadow, and the roof seemed carved out with juts and slabs like stone wings and altars.

  I went to the sea-cave’s edge where the salty burning seemed less. Where the wall met the sandy ground, a pit fell away into the deep earth and a terrible stink rose. Kneeling to see better, I soon wished I hadn’t. It was full to the brim with dead beasts; both those recently dead and those that were only bones, and some that were in-between. Gazing into that pit, I saw how a person might survive in these caves after all; somebody who was beyond caring, that is, and toughened into a hard life. Not somebody used to a warm hearth and decent food. I noticed all around me hallways leading deep into the cliff.

  It would be a cold life, and filled with hunger, but I saw how people might believe in stories of cave dwelling. It wouldn’t be impossible. You could eat from the pit if you had to.

  ‘Come and see this,’ called Auntie Ushag from the other side of the cave. I made a dash across the salt and found her by another pit. This one held quite a hoard. There were burnt timbers, old barrels and staves and rims, charcoal, blades and handles, nets and buoys; and among it all, countless old shoes that had rotted and turned green. I hopped from foot to bare, stinging foot. ‘One of life’s little jokes,’ Ushag laughed, poking at all the once-fine leathers, the toggles, the buckles and pearl buttons. They fell apart.

  ‘Funny,’ I said and pointed at it all. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s a wreck-pit,’ my aunt said picking out of it a blackened kettle.

  I knelt down. ‘And what’s that?’ I pointed at a string of bones curling away from the pit and under the sand. Auntie Ushag shrugged.

  ‘Could be anything,’ she said, still poking about in the wreck-pit for anything useful. ‘Looks like a tail-bone.’

  I followed the tail-bone with my hand; it was long and snaky and spiralled back over itself several times. Brushing the sand away as I followed its length, and fully expecting a serpent or eel or some such thing, I was taken aback to come across leg-bones and then, a pair of hips. I don’t know what I was thinking exactly but the sight of those legs, and their tail, robbed me of words. I dug now with some purpose I wouldn’t confess even to myself.

  I uncovered a bleached back-bone and then, a set of sturdy ribs. At the top of the ribs, some broken bones fell away into the sand. They were almost buried but I could see what they were. Arms. Softly, I scraped the sand away, following the bones; a neck, short and thick, appeared. Feeling light-headed, I stopped digging. The skeleton stretched before me now.

  A small split at the tail’s tip caught my eye. The tail wound itself in spirals for a good measure, then the shortish, bowed leg-bones splayed out from the hips. There was the backbone and the fine ribs and further up still, the arms and neck.

  Ushag came to my side as I sat blinking and breathing. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  I couldn’t answer her. I couldn’t talk. I reached out and scooped handfuls of sand away from the neck and head. A jaw appeared, partly broken and lost, then the rest of a broad, heavy skull with sizeable eye-holes. It had plainly been a head of singular ugliness. My aunt and I were struck both quiet and still by it.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked again.

  I still couldn’t talk. We stared. I put my hand to the jaw and it fell apart entirely. Drawing a line in the sand around the bones, I fleshed the creature out, so to speak, and when I was done we both stood back and stared some more.

  A creature with a human-like body and a long eel-like tail revealed itself. I could see where the heart might fit, and the guts, liver and lights. In my mind’s eye the bones clad themselves in shimmering scales and somewhere deep inside me a great relief shimmered also, and spread. As it did so, the relief became a calm and then, a victory. Not a proud victory, but a glad one. Ushag, meanwhile, had turned the grey of mealy flour. ‘Is it?’ she hissed.

  ‘I suppose it must be,’ I said, and she took my arm and sat down suddenly.

  ‘Salt,’ I reminded her, and she stood again. She had to lean against the cave wall, the shock had made her light-headed. I watched her struggle to make sense of what we were seeing and I’m ashamed to confess I took some pleasure from it. For once it was good not to be the only one who didn’t know what to think.

  Her face fell prey to every type of tremble, and went from red to grey and back again several times, but her eyes stayed fixed on the bones. I could see her thinking; her eyes had become all rules and measures. ‘I suppose it must be,’ she whispered to herself. Then, she covered her face and when she showed herself again she was laughing and crying at once. ‘I suppose so,’ she repeated, and she put her arm around my shoulder and pulled me to her.

  We stood quietly for a while.

  Auntie Ushag touched the merrow-bones with her toes. They clattered softly. ‘It must’ve been a male,’ she said, and it was strange to hear her talking about it like that; as if she believed. ‘Look at its tail.’

  ‘And its head,’ I whispered, somewhat disgusted. It was a very big head and from the size of the holes the eye-balls must have been as big as turnips. My aunt laughed, but high-pitched and hard and I could see she was all-of-a-heap. I rubbed her shaking hands in mine.

  ‘It’s smaller than you’d think, isn’t it?’ she said faintly. ‘Although, you know, truly how big is a merrow?’

  ‘They’re merrow-bones,’ I said. ‘They are.’

  She nodded up at me. ‘I know.’

  ‘And where there’s merrow-bones…’ I went on carefully. She nodded again, but was looking more and more worried with every moment. ‘There’s bound to be merrows.’ I thought perhaps she hadn’t put together al
l the proof; that she hadn’t seen yet what it all meant.

  ‘And if the merrows are real…’ I started, but before I could go on she butted in.

  ‘Ven could be one,’ she finished. ‘No need to go on and on about it!’

  ‘Well, that’s all I’m saying,’ I said.

  Now she was seeing what I saw. If the story was true then Mam could be still alive out there in the sea — living her fishy life and watching me grow. My Other mother, sending gifts in from the wrecks to our cove; singing to us and paying court to the kraken on our behalf. My aunt clenched her open hands onto her knees and started rocking to-and-fro. She was making a pent-up sort of noise.

  What was the matter with the woman? She never behaved like this. I’d never even seen her cry until these last few days, and she surely never moaned or groaned or any of that business, even when she had the toothache. Even when our last cow, Kecky, died of a pox she just butchered it for the eating, saying it was pointless to have a whole clutch of feelings about such things as dead cows. ‘You can howl and leak all you like,’ she’d said. ‘But when you’re done the lost thing’s still lost, and the dead are still dead.’ And she loved that cow.

  Now here she was, moaning and rocking, leaking like an old bucket.

  ‘It’s not Mam!’ I said, thinking this might be why she was so troubled. ‘It’s male — and it’s too small. Mam was a fully-grown woman and would’ve made a fully grown merrow.’ Auntie Ushag kept right on weeping.

  After awhile she started to ruin my victory. I felt it dribbling out of me.

  ‘All right?’ I asked her, at last.

  ‘Oh, well,’ she sniffed. ‘You know.’

  I waited.

  ‘The thing is…’ she started. ‘The thing is, you know how the southerners tormented your mam and drove her back up here to us?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Well, the thing is, Neen…’ She swallowed heavily. ‘The thing is the southerners weren’t the only ones.’ She covered her face. ‘I did it too. I said things. Things such as a sister should never say.’

  So what? I thought at the time. What’s a bit of fighting between sisters? I’d seen enough of brothers and sisters in Shipton to know they weren’t always a shining dream of kinship.

  ‘When they drove her out of town we should’ve been kind, but I was…I was so angry when she’d gone off down south and come back with Colm,’ she told me and hung her head. ‘I was nothing to her after he came. She only wanted him then, and her games and stories were all for them. My father saw and made me treat her Scale without him. He said it was the sort of thing a sister did best, and could prove to be the cure for my anger, too. But I’d tell her there wasn’t much could be done for her and, in time, her Scale would most likely spread. I told her that Colm would most likely not stay with her, not like that; not with a woman with fish-skin all over her body. That’s what I said, and I said it calm like I knew what I was talking about. But I didn’t know anything yet. I was just jealous.’

  I should have felt sorry for Mam, but Ushag had shrunk and her face was blotched and sad and she was there; so I felt sorry for her instead.

  ‘It was cruel because she believed me, being her sister and trained as I was to heal. Then Colm disappeared, and even when they brought his woollen back she never believed he was dead. I think she thought he’d deserted her. Then I saw her walk into the sea… and I thought…’ My aunt looked at me with eyes like Bo’s when I told her to go back home. ‘Well, you know what I thought.’

  I just knew my mam would never have drowned herself over a little teasing. ‘All right,’ I pointed out. ‘But she didn’t, did she?’ I nodded toward the merrow-bones. ‘She still lives.’

  ‘But now I don’t know which is worse,’ she wailed at me, giving up all self-control. I felt like reminding her of her own rules about what was worth having feelings over.

  ‘How can you not know whether it’s worse for Mam to be dead or alive?’ It seemed to me a simple choice.

  ‘If she’s dead, she’s just dead. If she’s alive — she’s a live merrow.’ My aunt rubbed at her face. ‘With scales. Merrow-scales that I treated her for as if she was sick. And tormented her over. Oh, I was so cruel.’ She sat down hard with no care for the salt-burn or anything else. ‘And if she lives, she’d want revenge.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ My aunt’s story of her and Ven had such dark twists.

  She shrugged. ‘How could anybody forgive such things?’

  I thought for a moment. ‘Well, Ven Marrey might start by remembering all the good years of plays and games. The trees and wells and servants you played while she was being a princess. She might remember all the healings before Colm came. Anyway,’ I said, ‘it doesn’t matter now. She’s forgiven you, hasn’t she?’ Truly, she could be dense as thickets.

  ‘How can you know that?’ Ushag wiped her nose.

  ‘Well, if you could just open your mind a bit,’ I told her, rolling my eyes. ‘She sent Ulf for you, didn’t she? She saved him and put him in your gillnet.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said and slowly, slowly her face cleared. Over this one afternoon she’d heard the merrow-song and seen the webbed marks in the cave of hands. Now she was face-to-face with the merrow-bones. My aunt’s rules about what could and couldn’t be were crumbling and finally they just collapsed. Her mind opened. I saw it happen. It was like watching the sun rise in her face. ‘All right, then. I suppose it must be real,’ she said, and that was that. I’d proved it.

  I’d thought it would feel better than it did.

  It was even colder going back through the tunnel than it had been coming and this time my aunt pushed me through from behind. On the other side she grabbed the eel-bag I’d left behind the day of the earthshake. ‘Waste not, want not,’ she said in spite of having just met a merrow if not in the flesh then surely in bones. Honour Bright, sometimes I think she just doesn’t know what’s important.

  We ran all the way down the gorge full of some kind of wild humour. The wind had dropped, the sun was setting and the cove seemed an entirely new place. Back at the house Ulf was sleeping but woke to see what we’d bagged up at the pool. Auntie Ushag untied the wriggling bag and tipped our catch onto the floor. It wasn’t an eel, after all.

  It was a salamander.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Trembles

  THAT NIGHT MAM CAME TO ME. She knelt by my bed and put her cool cheek to my hot one. Her fingertips pushed back the hair sticking to my face and gently pinched my ear-lobe to wake me. I heard her whispering but the words were lost in fitful winds, and though I could hear her I could neither move nor answer. Then, as in my dream, I heard her calling my name again. ‘Daughter,’ she called and her voice was full of laughter. ‘It’s time. Come away.’ She gave me a pearl to swallow. It was filled with bubbles. ‘Wait for me,’ she said and then she was gone. I was alone in my bed, clammy from the touch of her wet hand.

  So I went down into the moonlit cove and waited. The seal pup came to watch me waiting; an owl too, came on silent wings and joined me for a time. I waited for Mam and the Others all night. I was ready.

  A swarm of glowing jellies drifted into the cove. It was a swarm such as had never been seen before on the island. Folk talked of it for years after but I, who’d been sitting right on the beach where they came closest to land, could never tell a story of them. They were just a wall between Mam and me, and I paced the waterline troubled that she wouldn’t be able to pass through the siege. Were merrows pained by the jellies’ stings, or did their scales protect them? I wondered. Over that night our cove filled with a mile or more of their glowing wash, and then emptied as they flowed out again into the open sea. I was relieved when they were gone. Now Mam could come.

  All night I expected her at any moment. The pearl she’d given me bubbled in my belly, ready to feed me air until I grew my gills. Mam would teach me how to sink and rise; my human shape would change and the deep world would grow me into sea-dwelling thing. I didn’t ev
en mind if it hurt. I would never need the stone-sack again.

  When Mam came I’d grow webs between my fingers and toes, and my Scale would spread and cover me. Most likely I’d ride on her back and we’d swim out and float spreadeagled like starfish under the sky together, and we’d talk and we’d sing and the stories would grow in us. We’d dive deeper than otters, deeper than seals, deeper even than whales and down there we’d play hide and seek. I’d be able to fold myself into some gap in the rocks like a crab or spider, but she’d always find me. Down there where the kraken lives I’d find my real life. It waited for me.

  In our undersea house made from grit and merrow-spit, Mam and I would sleep together on a bed of sponges and covered with a rug of featherstars. We’d tend the jewel anemone gardens. She’d teach me to sing high and wild; every now and then we’d come and sing to Auntie Ushag and leave her presents from the deepest wrecks. Now that Ulf had come and she’d seen the merrow-bones, my aunt would be all right without me.

  I waited on.

  The sky quickened, but she didn’t come.

  As the sun broke free of the horizon the earth gave a groan, and somewhere faraway, a rumble started up. Like the lowest voice in the most monstrous throat of the deepest-dwelling rock beast, it rumbled. My heart sank as if it knew something I didn’t, and my skin crept on me like it would desert my trembling bones. The shore pitched once and the sand about me shivered. I heard a low, protesting moan and I looked about for whoever had made the sound, but it had been me. I stood up.

  Dust, then rubble, then rocks fell from the cliffs, some into the water and some onto the beach. There was no hiding place. The earth was alive. Down by the water I was safe from falling rock, but the shifting sand meant I had to crawl if I was to move at all. I couldn’t take my eyes off the dropping cliff and so I crawled backwards into the sea, as Marrey Cove groaned all around me.

  Boulders rolled and pinnacles broke; all was grating and thundering. On the northern point, slabs of the cliff slid away and fell right into the sea without a sound, taking vines and gulls and nests with them. Some of the sea-caves were blocked by the falling rock, and others were opened. It was becoming a new world. My fear drove me back further into the water until I had to stop or fall off the drop. I could feel the tow just behind me, and that’s when I thought of it.