by Kirsty Logan
Waterproof tape, steel zips, flexible plastic: it’s not so glamorous when you know how the magic trick is done, is it? Perhaps it’s best only the magician knows.
Unless – Pearl grinned in the dark. Unless the magician only pretends it’s a trick, so you won’t know that the magic is real.
Fash
MARA WAS IN the utility room – which was a kind name for the freezing, spider-infested triangle of brick cemented onto the side of the house – transferring a load of sheets from the washer to the dryer, when she heard Signe cry out. Mara’s hands were waxy and numb from the cold, and it took a few tries to turn the door handle. Her leg muscles twitched with her need to move faster, to get to her mother. She finally flung open the door, catching her shoulder on the door frame as she ran.
‘I’m coming!’ she called. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m – Mara, I’m okay.’ Signe’s voice was tiny and shaking, but Mara could hear that it came from the kitchen. She ran in to see Signe, bent double by the back door, both hands clutched to her belly. For one awful moment Mara thought her mother was giving birth. The thought lasted less than a second – ridiculous, illogical – and she was across the room and easing Signe’s hands away from her body, up where Mara could see them. Signe’s right hand clutched her left, both smeared with bright blood.
‘I hurt myself,’ said Signe, her voice awed, as if she had just witnessed an unlikely miracle.
‘What were you doing?’
‘Fixing the latch. You know it doesn’t catch properly. I thought if I unfastened it and screwed it back to the door again at a better angle, then it would work. But my hand slipped, and the screwdriver, and I – I …’
The blood on the floor was starting to clot in the cold air, its surface puckering. Mara couldn’t look at it. Her scar twinged. She grabbed a clean cloth from the oven handle, folded it, and wrapped it around Signe’s still-bleeding hand.
‘I’ll get Dad,’ said Mara. She hoped that Signe couldn’t hear how her voice was shaking.
‘No! Don’t.’ Signe reached her hand to touch her daughter’s face, then noticed that it was blood-smeared and withdrew it. ‘It’s fine. We can sort it.’
‘You’re bleeding.’ Mara pressed the cloth into Signe’s hand, making her hold it tight. She turned her head towards the inner door and shouted: ‘Dad?’
Signe and Mara stood together in the kitchen, breathing too fast, feeling the pressure of Signe’s slowing blood.
‘Please, Mara,’ whispered Signe.
Mara let go of Signe’s hand and walked away. She ducked her head into the living room, the hall, the front garden. Nothing.
‘Dad! Dad, where are you?’ She heard her own voice echoing back at her. She waited. If she stayed very still, she could hear the sea.
She gave up. Back in the kitchen, she dragged a dining chair across the tiles and stood on it to reach up to the cupboard above the cooker. The cupboard was a graveyard for everything that had no other home: plastic bags full of other plastic bags; boxes of nails, matches, bin bags, saw blades, a cluster of keys that had never opened anything. Mara pulled down a green plastic box and opened it on the table. She selected bandages, antiseptic ointment, and paper tape. She laid a bowl of cold water beside it.
‘Come on.’ She took Signe’s elbow and led her over to the table. ‘Sit here. Put your hand out on the table – straight out, like that.’
Signe hesitated. ‘I’ll get blood on the table.’
Mara eased the cloth away from Signe’s hand and folded it, so that the bloody part was on the inside and she could use it as a pad. Old memories nudged at her, though she refused to look directly at them: the feel of her sister’s hands on her blood-slick face, the fast whine of her panic, the soothing voice of the 999 operator.
‘Stay calm,’ said Mara in the voice from her memory. ‘It’s all okay.’ When she wiped the blood away with a wet cloth, she could see that the cut wasn’t as bad as it looked – shallow and clean, its open edges easily pressing together. Nothing visible, no fat or sinew or bone. Mara spoke as she worked, explaining everything she was doing, even though Signe could see it perfectly well. ‘I’m rinsing out this cloth so I can wipe your hand again. I’m putting on antiseptic. I’m sticking on these butterfly stitches. I’m wrapping this bandage.’
Signe slumped in her chair, eyes wide, watching as her hand disappeared beneath layers of white bandages.
‘Mara,’ she said, when her daughter was finally tucking in the end of the bandage. ‘Thank you.’
Mara smiled. ‘It’s okay. If it was me, then you would’ve done –’
The broken latch clicked, the back door opened, and Peter walked into the kitchen. He moved slowly, jerkily, like a marionette. His feet scraped on the tiles. It seemed he might tip over at any moment.
‘I’m here, Mara,’ he said. ‘What’s wrong?’
Distracted, Mara dropped the roll of bandage. It unwound itself as it rolled off the end of the table. ‘Where were you?’
‘In the garden,’ said Peter. ‘Just by the trees. I heard you shout. I came right away.’
‘But that was ten minutes –’ Mara stopped. She looked at her father. She saw the slow-motion tremble of his hands. She saw his tentative steps. She saw the way his chest rose and fell slowly, so slowly, one breath to every ten of hers. Finally, properly, she saw him. And then she could not bear to see, so she looked back down instead. She picked up the bandage and wound it into a tight roll. She packed it into the first-aid box and clicked the lid shut and put the box in the cupboard above the cooker. When she pulled away the chair, the oven door fell open with a crash. She made herself take three deep breaths before easing the oven door closed.
‘Thanks, Dad,’ she said. ‘Thanks for helping.’
Later, when Signe and Peter had gone to bed, Mara picked up the phone. She knew that everything she was doing with Pearl was leading her to one place: away. But the thought of her parents, clattering around alone in this huge empty house, tightened her throat. If she was ever going to leave the island, she needed someone to take her place.
She paused, finger hovering over the numbers. Against her ear, the phone held its breath. She imagined explaining about all that had happened in the past few months. That she loved a mermaid, that she wanted to run away with a mermaid, that she wanted to be a mermaid. Clunky, awkward Mara, with her scarred face and her gawky limbs, who would never have a boat named after her.
She imagined saying the word mermaid, imagined confusion turning to understanding turning to pity. She hung up the phone and walked away.
But it didn’t matter if she was a joke. It didn’t matter if she was mocked or pitied or scorned. There was only one person who’d be willing to come to this strange little island and help a man who was turning to stone. She walked back to the phone and dialled.
‘Islay?’ she whispered into the receiver.
Greet
ISLAY SPENT HER days in empty beds and full baths, in soft-lit restaurants and Formica-tabled cafes. In Paris and Chicago and Sydney. She leeched from men who liked old wine and young women. She talked too much, drank too much, danced too much. Too much hair tumbled down her back. The milky skin of her back showed too much in her dress. Her dress sparkled too much in the coloured lights. The lights reflected too much in her eyes.
She didn’t like to hold anything in her hands for long. She hated clutch bags. If she had to bring shopping home from the market, she’d carry it in a backpack. When driving, she kept only one hand on the wheel. She had to be ready to grab things – something, anything, whatever happened to come along. She didn’t want to miss it. Sometimes she woke in the night and her palms felt clammy, smeared with something reddish and hot, and her sister’s split-open face flickered in the dark, and she heard the steady lash of the waves, and she had to get up and rinse her wrists under the cold tap until her blood cooled.
When she had first left the island, she cut her hair. ‘Short,’ she said to the hairdresser. ‘I w
ant it all gone.’ The hairdresser trimmed it close to her head, cutting out her curls to a smooth cap. He called it a pixie cut, and at first that irritated Islay. She was a city girl now; she’d left behind her childhood island world, magic and fairy tales and fucking pixies everywhere. She thought of her hair as a crop, as something that grew like a plant and had to be removed for practical reasons. But as time passed, and she kept her hair short, she began to ask hairdressers for a pixie cut instead of a crop. Maybe it wasn’t so bad to be brought closer to that other world, even only in name. No matter how much she tried to cut herself off from the island, it was still there. The further away she got, the closer she grew to it – its narrow edge of reality, its flirtation with the other side. Its attempt to build bridges. There was no use pretending that it was not there.
Islay had always known she would have to go home eventually. This wasn’t a fairy tale, and home wasn’t an enchanted tower: one girl taking another’s place to break a curse. But the days passed, and passed, and passed, and still she didn’t go – until the phone rang, and she heard her little sister say please.
Canny
EVERY NIGHT THAT she fell asleep beside Pearl, Mara woke convinced that she wouldn’t be there. That she was wrong about the ending of the selkie story: that her love would have found her true skin and slipped back into the sea. But every night she reached out her hand and Pearl’s hands were there, waiting. In sleep, her skin was cool and still as stone. Mara waited to make sure Pearl wouldn’t wake, then pressed her fingertips to the pulse in Pearl’s throat. Just to check, gently, just once.
The next night she woke, sure she was alone, and reached out for Pearl’s hand. There it was – but it wasn’t enough. Before she knew what she was doing, her hands had moved to Pearl’s throat, searching out her pulse. There it was. She felt it throb, steady, sleep-slow.
She pulled her hands away and lay back down. But was she sure? Had she checked for long enough? Was that really Pearl’s pulse, or Mara’s own heartbeat in her fingers? She put her hands back to the vein and pressed harder. Just to check. Just once more. And again the next night, and the one after, again and again, pressing harder and harder, pressing so hard she felt the gristle and sinew shift in Pearl’s throat, pressing so hard her hand shook, stopping the blood so she could make sure it started again, and again, and again.
One night, Mara reached for Pearl’s throat as usual, and glanced up. Moonlight caught Pearl’s eyes as she blinked. Mara snatched her hand away. She fumbled, pretended she was reaching for the clock, a glass of water, anything.
‘It’s okay,’ said Pearl.
She took Mara’s hand and put it back on her throat. She pressed on the throb.
‘I trust you,’ said Pearl. ‘Do what you need to do.’
And Mara kissed her, softly, gently, and she kept her hand on her throat, and pressed.
Cannae
THE SEA AT night was cold as death, full of secrets, nothing but a mass grave that can’t be marked. Mara and Pearl stood on the shore. Under her wetsuit, Mara’s skin prickled with goosebumps. The water was so still that the moon’s reflection made a road, leading far out to sea.
‘Mara, are you sure about this? When you called, I thought you wanted to – come over, you know. I didn’t think you wanted to crawl into the sea in the middle of the night.’
‘I’m sure,’ said Mara.
‘But it’s late. It’s dark. I can’t see a bloody thing.’
‘We don’t need to see. We only need to breathe.’
‘It’s not that simple! The sea is dark, and I – I don’t know if I can keep you safe.’
Pearl took Mara’s hand, ready to lead her back to the house. Mara pulled her the other way, into the water.
‘No,’ said Mara. ‘You don’t understand. I want to do it now. It has to be now.’ She took another step into the water, letting it chill up her calves. ‘When I spoke to Islay again, it reminded me – when we were younger, we used to do this thing, and I’d forgotten. It used to make me feel better. I can’t explain. Just let me try.’
‘Fine,’ said Pearl, matching Mara’s pace into the shallow waves. ‘But I want my objection – my strong objection – to be noted for the record.’
‘Noted,’ said Mara. Another step, and she disappeared off the edge of the sandbank. She dropped into nothing, the water rushed up to her throat, and her body spasmed in the cold water, and she was breathing water, and she was drowning – and then Pearl’s arms were around her, pulling her to the surface. Mara emerged with a gasp, held safe in Pearl’s arms.
‘Is this part of your big plan?’ Pearl’s voice was sharp through the darkness. ‘Thank fuck I’m here, Mara, or you’d be at the bottom of the sea.’
‘I forgot,’ choked Mara through a mouth of seawater. ‘I forgot it was like that.’
‘Fine,’ said Pearl. ‘Fine. But I don’t like this at all. Just so you know.’
Pearl trod water until Mara had caught her breath. Freezing water lapped at their shoulders. Mara felt the undertow tug at her feet, grasping for her. Sharp things skittered around her ankles; she was sure she could feel the slippery grasp of seaweed around her thighs. She pulled Pearl close and kissed her. Pearl hesitated, but kissed Mara back. Mara took all the strength she could from that kiss before speaking.
‘I lied,’ she said, her voice shivering in gasps. ‘I lied – I told my mum I had tried to fix the latch – on the back door but I – just didn’t want to. And then she hurt herself – and I felt bad but I – was still glad it wasn’t me. Let the sea – take it!’
They waited, Pearl holding them both afloat in the cold night sea. Silence. It began to rain, a light skiff pattering the sea’s surface. With each falling drop, seawater splashed up into Mara’s face. She tried to blink the salt away, her eyes burning. She didn’t feel any better.
‘I don’t understand this,’ said Pearl. Mara felt something burn through Pearl: impatience, confusion. ‘Are you done? You’re freezing. Can we please go back now?’
‘No, it – just let me try again.’ Mara’s shivering had settled to a deep shudder, low in her body. She could only feel her hands and feet when she moved them. ‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘sometimes …’ And she didn’t want to say it, not in front of Pearl, but there was no way to say it to the sea and not to Pearl. She had to say it, and she had to say it loud. She turned her back to the island and faced the endless sea. ‘I think it’s better,’ she shouted into the dark, ‘that Bee is gone. It’s better that he’s gone from this world because it wasn’t right for him. It was too big and too loud and too cruel. I think it’s better, but I still want him to come back.’ Her words fell heavy on the water. ‘Let the sea –’ Mara’s throat ached tight, and her eyes were sore and wet from the salt water, and her breath came in hitches. She tried again. ‘Let the sea take it!’
Silence. Rain. The black and endless sea.
‘Mara. Seriously. What are we doing here?’ Pearl’s voice had turned velvet, warm. She kissed the tears from Mara’s cheek. ‘You gave it a shot. But let’s go back, okay?’ Pearl held Mara close, ready to pull them both ashore.
‘No!’ Mara stretched out her limbs in the water, stopping Pearl from pulling her. ‘The sea is still against me. I need to give it more.’
‘The sea isn’t against you. And no matter what you do, it will never be for you, either. The sea just is.’
‘But it wants –’
‘It doesn’t want anything! You can’t bargain with it and you can’t convince it and you can’t show it that you’re worthy.’
The rain slowed, then stopped. The waves calmed. The undertow stopped tugging at Mara’s feet.
‘You see?’ said Mara, her voice triumphant, even though she was half drowned and red-eyed. ‘You see!’
The clouds slipped away, revealing the bright moon and a sky full of stars. The air seemed warmer. Behind them, the island sighed.
‘Mara, that’s not why.’ Pearl’s grip on Mara relaxed; now they could both floa
t without effort. The stars reflected on the black sea, and they were swimming between the constellations. ‘The sea does what it wants.’
‘You’re wrong. I made this happen. Now you can show me again.’
‘Show you what?’
‘How to breathe.’
In the calm and sleeping sea, Pearl pulled Mara underwater. It wasn’t as easy as they hoped: no matter how much Mara tried to relax, her body rebelled. As soon as the water closed over her head, she thrashed her limbs, kicking out at Pearl in an effort to get back to the air. Each time, Pearl pulled her to the surface, her hands hooked under Mara’s arms so her head was clear of the surface, seawater streaming down her chin. Pearl could go down into the dark, strong under the water’s pressure, and come back up. But Mara knew if she went down there, she would never come back.
‘Mara! Calm, calm. Don’t fight. You have to let go and trust me. If you try to save yourself, we’ll both drown.’
Mara tried her best. She forced her limbs to relax. She counted her breaths, deep into her belly. She let Pearl pull her into the dark of the sea.
Down under the water, she didn’t dare open her eyes. What if she saw a distant gleam, hair twisting in the current? What if she saw a tiny hand reaching out to her?
Instead she let the sea soothe her: the dark behind her eyes, the pressure of Pearl’s hands on her forearms, the slow pound of water against her ears. It was okay. She was okay.
And just when she ran out of breath, when her lungs began to burn, when she felt the cold trickles of panic behind her eyes – there was Pearl, pressing her lips to Mara’s, breathing into her mouth. Mara inhaled Pearl’s breath and pushed bubbles out through her nose. Pearl waited a moment, then pressed their lips together again, breathing into Mara’s mouth. She squeezed Mara’s hand to check she was okay, and Mara squeezed back.
