by A. L. Knorr
We were presented with large plates of food heaping with simple fried fish, boiled potatoes, a fat slice of ham, and something that looked like a fat banana and tasted like potato, chopped up and pan-fried. I ate ravenously as Mattis chattered between bites about the look on his man’s face when he’d come running into the tavern to tell Mattis of their find. His efforts to hide the fact that they’d discovered something incredible were poor indeed. Mattis laughed heartily as he described how the fellow, by the name of Swigg, came bolting into the tavern, red-faced and nearly foaming at the mouth with excitement. He then came to a stiff and immediate halt just inside the tavern door, for Mattis had taught them, as well as he could, to be gentlemen.
Swigg had spied Mattis working on his ledgers in a corner table, and had high-stepped awkwardly across the tavern in a clear effort to slow down and take his time when it was obvious what he really wanted to do was bolt. His parody of a man who ‘knew-nothing-very-much-at-all, thank-you-good-sirs, nice-to-see-you, I’ve-no-news-whatsoever’ caught Mattis’s eye immediately, not to mention almost every other eye in the place.
Naturally, his news was enough to make Mattis put away his things and hastily join the men on the stony beach to see if their tale was true.
“When I first laid eyes on you,” Mattis said through a mouthful of potato, “I thought I’d never seen anything so beautiful.”
I swallowed down the last bit of fish and stared at him. “Me too.”
Mattis stopped chewing and stared at me, the whites of his eyes visible all around. It seemed a long time before he swallowed his mouthful, and I could follow its progress down the column of his throat.
“No human woman has ever called me beautiful,” he finally said. “Women of the sort of breeding my mother would like me to associate with do not say such things out loud.”
“They think it, though.” I took another bite of the banana-potato, and chased it with a large gulp of beer.
“I believe they assign me descriptors such as ‘eligible,’ and ‘good prospect.’” His tone sounded almost sour. “Before my company began to prosper, these same women would not look at me in the street, for I was the son of a carpenter and not a man to pay attention to. How quickly they changed their minds as the winds of fortune blew my way.”
His tone of disgust pleased me. I said, “So you are not beholden to any of them?”
He blinked that same startled expression at me again, before bellowing laughter. “You do not mince words, mermaid.”
“Why should I?”
“That’s an excellent question,” he put up a finger, “and had I the time of a wealthy philosopher, I would spend many an evening dissecting it.” Mattis then went on, as we finished our meal and our ale, about the complications of gallant life, mentioning at least once that though I looked like a woman, my attitudes were very different, for no self-respecting woman would take a private meal with him in his rooms let alone stand naked and completely shameless in front of a crowd of gawking men.
I did not pay so much attention to his words as I enjoyed the warming effect his voice had on my body.
It wasn’t until he asked me, “What will you do now that you are free?” that I gave him my own startled look. That he should even ask the question seemed so unexpected, it astonished me back into my brain.
“I’ll come with you and be your wife,” I replied, setting my now empty plate aside.
Mattis choked on his last piece of fish and began to cough and hack.
Alarmed, I got up and hit him between the shoulder blades, a bit too hard, probably. He wheezed, and his face turned red and tears streamed down his cheeks. I handed him his mug of half-finished ale and he took it, gratefully taking big gulps and breathing loudly through his nose.
“You should never make such jokes while a man has food in his mouth,” he wheezed, coughing into his fist again and then thumping it against his chest. “Or ever, in places where my mother might like to socialize.”
“I wasn’t joking.” I returned to my seat. “Are you all right?”
He’d gone quiet again, wide-eyed and watching me. “My God, you’re serious?”
I didn’t need to reply, because he could see my intent in my face. Why should I not let this human male know that I wanted him? It was better than using my voice on him. He liked me, I could feel it. The way he spoke about the women in his hometown told me enough.
Though Okeanos was not forgotten, my goal of returning to its caves and glittering pools to restore balance, respectability, and peace had already begun to lose meaning for me. A new desire took root, one which exceeded all others––make Mattis my mate, produce a child, and be with the man I had already fallen in love with.
You see, part of the siren’s curse––the most insidious part, if you ask me––is its ability to play with a mermaid’s wants and goals. In the absence of a gem, a siren is under the thumb of the Dyás. She is as subject to the effects of salt on her system as the seedling of a young tree is to the sun and the weather. A bee flies from flower to flower, never settling on just one for very long, but while it is on the flower under its feet, no other nectar ever tasted quite as sweet, indeed none of the flowers nearby or in the distance can distract the bee from its work on the current blossom, until that blossom has given up all it has.
Only then will the bee raise its head and move on to the next.
Eight
We were married in a simple ceremony on St. Croix, surrounded by Mattis’s men, people from the port village, and natives who made their life on the island. It was a happy affair, with everyone contributing something to the evening feast.
“Do you not want to be married at home, where your family can be part of it?” I asked Mattis a few days before the wedding ceremony was to take place.
“I would like that very much, but after I leave St. Croix, I am destined for South Carolina, and after that Boston, and after that Belfast. It will be autumn before I am home again.” He touched my cheek and gazed at me affectionately. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to wait that long, and my men are a little shy of having a woman on-board who is not my wife.”
I had accepted this easily. Sirens didn’t expect their relatives to attend. A mating cycle was a lonely affair, and we ourselves forgot it was a cycle that could not be ignored while we were in it. And so, at the time, I was deeply in love with Mattis, and fully intended to stay with him on land. I was happy, I was beginning a new life, and the power of the Salt was distant and unthreatening.
I journeyed to many places with Mattis and his crew, sharing his quarters and getting to know the men in his employ. They treated me with the utmost respect and deference and they let me practice speaking Polish with them while not asking me too many questions.
Unlike Mattis’s mother.
When we finally made it home to Poland, we were greeted at the dock by Mattis’s parents––who’d been alerted to our arrival while we were still distant on the horizon––Aleksandra and Emun. Aleksandra was a petite woman in a homespun dress of muted colors and a bonnet covering her silvery gray hair. Her hands were rough from a life of hard work. Mattis had told me she worked as a laundrywoman until his shipping business was making enough money for her to stop working. Emun was an older, bent version of Mattis and a man of few words. I felt accepted by him immediately.
Aleksandra, though she pulled me into an embrace and took my two hands in hers to squeeze them when Mattis told them I was now their daughter-in-law, had an uncomfortably probing gaze. She was not cold nor unkind, but neither did her scrutinous gaze or her investigative questions relent until Mattis told her to let me be.
“But what of her family? Will we not meet your in-laws?” Aleksandra asked as she squeezed Mattis’s elbow. We made our way off the docks toward a waiting carriage.
“She has no family, Mama,” Mattis responded, flicking his fingers absentmindedly at one of his men and giving some order only that man could understand.
“No family at al
l?” Aleksandra’s gaze softened and filled with pity. She turned to me. “You poor dear. What happened to your parents? Have you no siblings, no aunts or uncles, no cousins?”
“We are her family now, Mama,” Mattis answered.
“And what of her last name?”
“Her name is Novak, Mama,” Mattis answered patiently as we arrived at the carriage. A man came running up with a sheaf of papers and handed them to Mattis.
“Of course,” Aleksandra laughed, “but what was her maiden name?”
“It was Grant,” I replied, giving her the surname I had been born under.
“Grant,” Aleksandra said. “How English sounding. Are you English? Where did you learn Polish? How did you find yourself in St. Croix?”
“She was shipwrecked,” my new husband answered the last question with a quirk.
Aleksandra’s eyes widened to the size of saucers. “Shipwrecked! You poor dear!” She patted my hand as I looked over her head at Mattis, unsure of whether to laugh or to glare at him. “You must have been through a dreadful thing, simply dreadful.”
“She has, Mama.”
Mattis handed the sheaf of papers to a man in uniform passing by and then turned to help his mother up into the carriage.
“And what she needs,” he continued, as Aleksandra put a foot on the step and pulled herself up, “is some peace and quiet.”
Aleksandra sat on the navy upholstery in the carriage and smiled at her son. Putting a finger to the side of her nose, she winked. “I understand, my son.”
Mattis put his hands on my waist and helped me into the carriage. His father stepped up and settled in the seat across from me and Aleksandra.
“You’re not coming?” I asked, noting the dark circles under my husband’s eyes.
Mattis shook his head. “Not yet. Give me a few hours while I help the men with the cargo and check in at the office. I’ll see you at the house tonight for dinner.”
As the carriage door shut and we began to roll down the cobbled streets away from the port, I was blissfully unaware that goodbyes would become all too frequent and extended during our marriage.
Early in the new year, I announced my pregnancy to Mattis and his family. While it was cause for celebration in the Novak house (a small, drafty house outside of the city limits), it did not keep Mattis closer to home. His business seemed to grow faster than the twins in my belly.
Early one morning, after having fed Emun and Michal, I returned to bed where Mattis was drowsing. He watched me through mostly closed lids as I crawled between the sheets. Lifting a finger, he gestured at the ring hanging at my throat.
“Why don’t you wear that on your finger?”
Shrugging, I flopped down on the pillow on my side, looking at his face. “I suppose I’ve gotten used to it there. Feels strange when I take it off, and it would probably feel strange if I wore it somewhere different.”
“May I see it? It’s a curious thing, isn’t it?”
I crooked up on my elbow and unlatched the chain, handing him the ring and chain.
“What’s it made of? Looks a lot like gold, but there’s something a little off in the color. Too yellow, maybe.” He took the ring and inspected it. “Interesting markings.”
I frowned. “I think I knew what the metal was at one time, but now I’ve forgotten. I don’t think its gold though, something starting with…O.”
“What language is this?” He squinted at it. “It’s not one I’ve ever seen before, and I’ve traveled more than most.”
My frown deepened. “I’ve forgotten that, too. But it’ll be a language most humans wouldn’t know. That ring was given to me by a friend.” I hadn’t thought of Nike in a long time and the image of her mischievous grin and floating cloud of blue hair filled my mind. “She gave it to me for emergencies.”
“Like the emergency of being trapped inside a wreck and not having sense enough to get yourself out?” He cocked an eyebrow over the ring between us. “Didn’t do you much good, did it?”
I smiled. “I guess not for that kind of emergency.”
Mattis slid it over his finger but the ring wouldn’t go over his knuckle. He pulled it off and switched to his pinky, where it fit at the base perfectly.
A rainbow of light filled the space above the bed and we both gasped and looked up, eyes wide.
Mattis cursed, but his expression was amazed rather than upset.
“What is this?” His voice was hushed.
We sat up and leaned against the headboard to get a better look at the light streaming from the top of the cylinder.
A confusion of colored lines, bright with angles and curves, each of them––sprayed outward from the tiny opening. Four colors traced lines and shapes in a three-dimensional mess of indiscernible imagery.
Mattis got it before I did. Squinting at the magical hologram floating above our heads, and holding the ring now very still between his fingers, he exclaimed, “Maps!”
He was right, and the word shook something loose from my memory. Maps to gemstones.
If I trained my eye on one color only, I could make out the distinct shape of markings which could only belong to a map. “But how are you supposed to read them? It’s too difficult to make out.” My eye fell on the tiny hole at the top of the cylinder. “May I see it?”
The maps jostled and jumped around in the air as Mattis handed me the ring. Placing my thumbnail over three-quarters of the tiny hole I was able to shut out three colors almost completely. Shifting my nail just a fraction made the yellow, blue, and red maps completely disappear.
Mattis and I looked up at the now much more distinct green map. Mattis laughed. “You are fully within your wits, my love! What do you suppose it leads to?”
He reached a hand through the projection and pointed to its center, marked by a small green circle with a ring around it––like a bullseye.
“Gems,” I answered, marveling again at Nike’s magic. “Clever siren.”
“A siren made this?”
I nodded. “Not just any siren, a sorceress who likes to keep her powers a secret. She gave it to me when I left…”
My words faded away as I searched through a foggy past for images of where I’d come from. All I could conjure up was a mountain jutting from the ocean and reaching high into the sky.
“For what emergency?” Mattis asked.
“In case I should be close to salt-flush and too far from home to save myself. She planted these gems for herself but gave me the means to find them.”
“What’s salt-flush?”
Although Mattis had found me in a salt-flush state and was well acquainted with what salt-flush looked like, we’d never actually talked about in specific terms. He listened quietly as I explained the role of salt in a siren’s life. His expression, understandably, grew worried when I haltingly explained that many sirens experienced a drive to return to the ocean.
I kissed him, wanting to erase the concern. “I won’t leave you and the boys if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“How do you know?” He turned his hazel eyes to me, clouded and disturbed.
“I just won’t,” I said, stoutly, confident in the control I had over my emotions. I was determined not be like ‘weaker’ sirens. Mattis and I had a love that was strong and true and I felt good here on land. I hadn’t had a girl child, and while initially this had upset me, I had rationalized it into joy. I would stay with my human husband and my human boys until the end of my life or theirs, whichever came first.
How foolish we sirens are when we are in love. All sirens are deceived while at the height of their mating cycle, with their child in infancy and the love they feel for their mate at its most powerful, their human logic and reason the strongest it will ever be.
The curse makes fools of us all.
Nevertheless, I felt resolute. I kissed away Mattis’s concern and we continued to talk languidly that morning. We bonded with Michal and Emun Jr, our tiny beautiful twins, and we bonded with one another. For m
e, it was the apex of happiness in terms of what I could remember of my life at that time.
Emun, Targa, and Antoni were listening quietly with dark expressions now, for they all knew how this particular part of the story ended.
My gaze fell on my son, the remaining twin and the precious gift that had somehow been returned to me. He was the reminder of Mattis and the love I had for him, and the joy we’d shared when the twins were born. But in Emun’s face, nothing of Mattis could be seen. He had all of his features and coloring from me, even his gestures and movements were Mer, in the same way Targa had very little of her father in her.
“But you bring in a piece of the story at this time, don’t you?” I said quietly to Emun. “It wasn’t until a few years later that Nike’s gift went missing. You were growing up and had passed the point at which most female children have their salt-birth… and I was descending into madness in my efforts to fight the Salt. In my previous Dyás, I had given in to the pull of the ocean quickly, and didn’t know the difficulty that lay ahead.”
Emun rubbed a palm over his face but he couldn’t wipe away the troubled look in his eyes, the regret.
“Poor Papa,” he said, his voice a little hoarse. “It was such a close thing.”
Antoni spoke up from where he and Targa were seated together on the couch closest the fireplace. “What am I missing?”
“Mattis took the ring and gave it to Rainer Veigel,” Targa explained. “He commissioned him to find the gems.”
“Or at least one,” Emun added. “One is all that was needed. Given the complexity of finding such a small thing––even with a magical map––who knows how long it took Rainer to find it. I don’t know when father made the commission.”
“It would have been when you were three or so,” I surmised. “That was around the time the ring went missing.” My brow creased. “Although I was so lost in my own suffering that it could have disappeared earlier.”
“So, years,” Targa said, scooting closer to Antoni, who lifted an arm and put it over the back of the sofa behind her. “It took him years to find it.”
