“Hello!” she called. The snarling face of some unknown beast stared out at her from the center of the door, a large brass ring clutched in its mouth. Esmerine was wondering if she was supposed to pound on it when the door swung open and a young man did a double take at her before shouting behind him, “Madam!”
He turned back to her, cheeks red. His eyes dropped to her breasts and quickly up to her face again. Esmerine flushed in return. Humans seemed to treat bodies like nasty secrets, and she felt that way when she formed legs.
“She’ll be along shortly, if you’ll wait there,” he mumbled. Esmerine hardly understood his accent. “We don’t get many lady mermen. I mean, mer ladies.”
“That’s all right,” Esmerine said, but he was already rushing off. A woman almost immediately came striding along. Her long face reminded Esmerine of a porpoise, only not so friendly. Her clothes were stiff and ruffly, and she moved accordingly.
“A mer girl,” she said, with a note of surprise that did not extend to her stern expression. “A siren, at that. How odd. Well, you can’t stand there like that. Come along. Did you bring those bracelets to trade?”
“Yes.”
“Very well.” She shot a look at the servant boy, who was standing in the hall. “Tell my husband I’m dealing with the girl and he is not to get involved.”
“Yes, madam.” He scurried off.
Esmerine followed the woman into a narrow hall that reeked of human—a thick, ripe odor of smoke and sweat and roasted meat. Her bare feet picked up a film of invisible grime from the cool tile floors. She winced at the woman’s pace but didn’t dare to slow down. Clothes and fabrics filled the small room where they stopped, some in folded piles and some hanging on hooks. There were stubby top hats, and little funny shoes with buckles, and dark coats with tails, and white linen shirts, and breeches. Men’s clothes. The woman knelt on the floor, opening a trunk full of colors pale and bright and girlish, and she rummaged through them.
“What brings you here, then?” she asked. “Not content singing on rocks, are you? You’re coming on land to steal the men now?”
“I’m looking for my sister.”
The woman held up a thin linen shift, like the one Alander used to make her wear. “Hold up your arms. Your sister? Is she a merwife? You won’t get her back.”
“I just want to see what’s become of her.”
“You want a human husband,” the woman said, tugging the shift over Esmerine’s body. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be a siren.”
“How do you know?” Esmerine couldn’t hold back her irritation.
The woman brought a stiff bodice out from the trunk. “We know all about your kind here. A few men in Sormesen have married mermaids. They come to us thinking we know what to do because we talk to the merfolk. The men are too blinded by enchantments to see they’ve married fools who hide from the fire, can’t handle the servants, and complain about every little thing.” She drew the bodice over Esmerine’s shoulders and stood behind her, tugging the laces tight.
Esmerine gasped. “I can’t breathe.” The bodice seemed to be made of slender rods sewn into the fabric that pushed her breasts up and drew her waist into an unnatural tapered shape. She’d been fascinated by Alander’s books, with their pictures of human ladies with tiny cone-shaped torsos and frilly gowns, but she had never believed real human women could resemble the drawings.
“If you truly couldn’t breathe, you wouldn’t be talking either,” the woman said. “This is what I mean. I don’t know why a mermaid would want to come here, when you complain merely at wearing stays.”
“You don’t seem to like mermaids very much.” Esmerine wondered why the woman sounded so hostile. She only wanted to rent a dress and then she would be gone.
“Why would any sensible woman like mermaids?” the woman said, incredulous. “You wreck our ships to frighten us. You run about naked with your horrid fish tails and sing all day to seduce our men.”
“We only wreck ships that don’t pay tribute, and it’s only fair when they’re taking fish from our ocean, and I certainly don’t care to seduce your men!”
The woman shot her a look of poison, giving the laces of the stays a hard tug. “Nor do you know when to hold your tongues.”
Esmerine did hold her tongue as the woman trussed her from head to toe—a padded roll around her hips, a striped cloth overbodice that fitted against the stays, a pale green underskirt and carefully draped overskirt of darker green, stockings, shoes with heels that made Esmerine’s pained feet wobble, and a bonnet trimmed with black ribbon and still more lace that tied under Esmerine’s neck with a choking knot. Esmerine still felt her siren’s belt beneath her clothes, reminding her she was still a free mermaid at heart. It was hard to think that Dosia might wear these clothes forever.
“For payment, your bracelets will do,” the woman said.
“All of them?” Esmerine had a strong sense she was being cheated.
“Yes, they’re nothing too fine. What is that you have there?”
Esmerine had put down the statue of the winged figure, but now she snatched it up again. She didn’t want to sell it to this woman who hated mermaids. “Nothing.”
The woman peered closer at it. “Ugh. One of those winged folk. One of them snatched my aunt’s hat right off her head with his horrible long toes. I never thought much of them since. Well, let me see your beads. I imagine you’ll want to trade something for a ride into town.”
The servant boy took Esmerine into town. Esmerine sat next to him on the wooden seat, but the sides of her bonnet concealed him from her view unless she made a point to turn her head toward him. She could see his hands holding the reins. Large, tanned hands with a cut along the back of the left. She’d never been so close to a human man, and she could feel him looking at her and could smell his sweat. The sun beat on her arms and the back of her neck, exposed between bonnet and collar, and she felt her own sweat trickling between her breasts.
The cart bumped along, rattling and jarring over the road and in Esmerine’s ears. Except for the lovely sharp sounds of porpoises and the bark of seals, sounds underwater were softer and fluid. Everything here seemed loud and sped up. Esmerine gripped the side of the cart, but pulled back at the way it vibrated under her hand. She reminded herself not to be afraid. This was the human world she’d always longed to see. These were the horses—certainly larger than she envisioned—that she swore she wouldn’t be frightened of.
The cart jolted suddenly, and the boy grabbed her shoulder. She looked at him, and he took his hand back. “All right, miss?” His dark brows furrowed with concern.
“Of—of course.”
He kept looking at her, and he grinned just a little, and then he seemed shy again. “Tell me if you need anything.”
“All right.” She turned her head away again. The clothes made her feel very fragile, like some human-made thing that would break apart and dissolve underwater, and now this human boy was looking at her like mermen never did. It was like a curious kind of game.
Along the path to Sormesen, the sea glittered between buildings of two and three stories that were topped with red tile roofs. The breezes blew a fresh scent across the city, but even so, the aromas of dung and urine crept into Esmerine’s nose. They had to stop as a leathery old woman herded sheep across the road. Men, women, children, dogs, horses, and chickens all contributed to the traffic that grew thicker in the city. She heard someone shout over the din, “Spare a coin! Spare a coin!” She turned to see a man, so grimy that she couldn’t guess at his age, waving stumps of arms in the air. “Spare a coin!”
She gasped and looked away, meeting the eyes of the boy driving the carriage again. He patted her arm. “Beggars, miss. You don’t have beggars below seas?”
“Not in my village. The elders take care of people who are sick or maimed if their families can’t, but I’ve—I’ve never seen anyone so … hurt.”
“Poor thing,” he said. Esmerine thought he meant the beggar un
til he said, “Your world must be wonderful to produce such a kind and beautiful creature.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. What would Dosia have said? Would she flirt, or scold him for such a comment? Or would even Dosia be tongue-tied here?
The moment to respond came and went, but he didn’t seem to mind. He began to whistle over the clamor of people shouting the merits of their hot rolls or dried fish or pamphlets, the woman standing in her doorway pounding the dust from a rug, the grunts and whines of animals. Esmerine had never realized just how many humans lived in Sormesen. There seemed as many people in view as lived in her entire village, and the spires and towers she had seen distantly from the water loomed impossibly high in person. Her mind scrambled through her memories, trying to connect the things before her eyes with the pictures and stories in Alander’s books. Could she ever find Alander or Dosia among so many people?
“Um … excuse me.”
She had thought the boy wasn’t paying attention to her anymore, but the moment she spoke, he turned alert eyes her way. “Yes?”
“Do you know where the winged folk gather around here?”
The boy glanced at the statue on her lap. “Winged folk?” He squinted doubtfully.
“Yes.”
“The messenger station, I guess.”
“Could you take me there?”
He frowned slightly but squinted ahead like he was thinking of how to change his route to get her there. The cart continued forging through the crowds and turned down a street hemmed by walls of tan stone with climbing vines that seemed to give up halfway. Esmerine thought it couldn’t possibly get any more crowded but it did. People didn’t even try to get out of the way of the horses; there was nowhere else to go.
“Is it always like this?” she asked.
“We’re nearing the market,” he said. “It’s that time of day when everyone’s rushing about.”
They finally made it into a rectangular clearing paved with flat stones, surrounded by buildings of four and five stories, even one with a bell tower. A colossal pillar rose from the center of the square. Following the line of the pillar, a winged figure suddenly shot into the air with papers gripped in his toes, one of which slipped free and fluttered into the crowd below. He hovered in the air a moment before dropping back to the ground again, like a gull swooping upon its prey.
Esmerine clutched her heart through the rigid stays. For a moment, she thought it was Alander, and resisted an urge to leap from the carriage. But no, Alander had been taller even when she last saw him.
“Can we stop here? I want to speak to him, just for a moment,” Esmerine said, putting down the winged statue and turning toward the side of the cart.
“Of course,” the boy said. “I’ll help you down.”
He hopped from the cart and ran around to her side, where he placed his strong hands around her waist and whisked her down like she was still near-weightless underwater. She braced herself for the pain of her feet hitting the ground and managed not to wince, but she limped as she approached the winged boy.
The boy looked around Tormy’s age—twelve or thirteen—with hair to his chin and scruffier clothes than she recalled Alander wearing. He shouted to the passing crowd, “The newest pamphlet from Hauzdeen! Hauzdeen’s views on royalty! Sir? Madam?” He waved a wing at a passing couple who were overdressed for the heat. They shook their heads.
Alander had always depised nicknames like “bird-boy,” for the winged folk looked nothing like birds. The boy’s wings resembled a leather cape draped over slender arms, but he had no hands, only a thumb and finger. What might have been his other three fingers stretched to form the framework of his wings. The thin skin of his wings attached at his sides, down to his knees, and his blue vest and brown knickers seemed to fit around him like magic, but she knew from Alander that the winged folk customarily pierced their skin in three places where their wings met their torsos, eventually forming holes just large enough for a fastener to slip through and hold the fronts and backs of clothing together. She had always found the idea clever yet disgusting.
The winged boy perked up when he noticed her studying him. “Say, you look like an intelligent young lady. Surely you’d like to read Hauzdeen’s views of royalty?” He thrust a pamphlet her way.
“No, thank you, I—”
“I don’t blame you. I don’t understand a word in this pamphlet,” the boy said, fanning himself with the papers. “But maybe you’d like to buy one to use as a fan yourself?”
“No, I just wanted to ask if you happened to know a boy—man—” she stammered, reminding herself Alander would have aged just as she had. “Someone named Alander.”
“If you mean Alan, sure. He works at the bookshop.”
“Is he a Fandarsee too?” The winged folk called themselves Fandarsee—which, Alander once explained, meant “winged folk” in the Fandarsee trade tongue.
“That he is, miss. And if you’re interested in him, you’ll certainly want to purchase this pamphlet because he loves to discuss it. Say, isn’t that your husband driving off?”
Esmerine whirled just in time to see the cart and the boy and the winged statue trotting off into the throng. “He’s certainly not my husband!” she exclaimed. “Oh no.” She tried going after the cart, but her shoes pinched her toes and her heels wobbled. She should never have left the statue alone, even for a moment.
The winged boy hurried up to her. “Wait, stop! Who is he, then?”
“He just gave me a ride into town, and he has a statue I brought to trade. I don’t have many more things left!”
“Wait here.” The boy leaped into the sky, spreading his wings. Years had not dulled the thrill that ran through Esmerine when she saw one of the winged folk break free of the world’s pull. They could not take flight on the power of their wings alone, Alander had told her. They were built for gliding, but they cultivated magic for lifting themselves off the ground, harnessing the wind, defying the laws that held everything in place.
The horse cart had vanished around a building, but the winged boy would be able to see it from his vantage point in the sky, and he hovered a moment before he dove, disappearing beneath the rooftops.
Alander. Alan. Did this boy work for Alander? Her Alander—it must be so. Unless it was a common name. She shouldn’t get her hopes up.
The boy appeared above the building again, clutching something in his toes. He swept over her, scattering leaves across the stones with the rush of his wings, bowing as he landed, passing the statue from foot to wing. He brought it over to her, beaming. “There you go, miss.”
Tears hovered perilously close to her eyes, both from gratitude and from the sheer wonder of seeing a flying boy again. “Thank you.”
“If you’d like to see Alan, he’s probably at the bookshop. It’s down Cerona Street.” The boy pointed across the square. The distance looked eternal, and now she had no moony-eyed boy and horse cart. Damn her feet.
“How far?” she asked.
“You’re a mermaid, aren’t you?”
“Is it that obvious?” Esmerine didn’t like to think everyone who saw her knew she was a mermaid.
“Somewhat, but especially to me, because a mermaid runs the bookshop.” He frowned. “Mermaid? Maybe mercrone would be better.”
An older mermaid? Running a human bookshop? Esmerine was surprised she’d never heard of it before, and she wasn’t sure Alander would be working for a mermaid.
“It’d be too far for you, I think.” The boy gave her the briefest sympathetic look.
“I want to try. This Alan you work with … is he young? Eighteen or nineteen?”
The boy made a face. “Oh, he’s young, but he acts like he might as well be some old uncle.”
That sounded like Alander all right. “Tell me how to get there.”
The boy gave her directions and wished her luck. If she could just make it … Alander would surely help her find Dosia. He’d understand. He’d played with Dosia too.
> She must not think of her feet. She had to learn to ignore pain. She just had to put one foot in front of the other. Hundreds of times.
Chapter Seven
Cerona Street angled upward, and every step dragged at her feet until they burned with pain. Behind panes of rippled glass, shops displayed watches and little jeweled boxes and bonnets like the one she wore, only nicer, by the looks of it. She tugged at the ribbon under her neck again, loosening it. If only she could do the same for her stays. She wasn’t used to wearing anything, and now she couldn’t so much as wiggle. Sweat trickled under her arms. If only she could duck under the water and free herself of her trappings, but there was no water in sight, only dusty streets that made her thirsty just to look at.
She only had to make it to the bookshop. To Alander.
She found herself thinking back again to his departure. Father doesn’t know I come to see you, and he’d be mad if he found out. Did his father have anything to do with the bookshop? Would he still be mad?
Up ahead, a wooden sign displayed a picture of a book. It spurred her on, and she reached the building rather quickly, only to encounter a scrawled note posted on the door that said Be back at half past.
Esmerine tried to remember exactly what that meant, when she hadn’t heard Alan speak of measuring time in years. Half past an hour? Yes. And an hour wasn’t all that long.
Even so, she knocked on the door and pressed her face to the windows. A wooden counter and shelves sat in the shadows along the far walls. Were those shelves all full of books?
No one came. Her feet hurt too badly to think of taking another step. She sunk onto the worn stones beneath her to wait.
So tired … She couldn’t think about how tired she was. She pulled off her slippers with a groan and rubbed her aching soles. She couldn’t wonder what she would do if Alander never came, if Alan wasn’t Alander. She couldn’t imagine walking all the way back to the square and starting her search for Dosia now. She put her hand to the siren’s belt at her waist, murmuring songs under her breath, hoping to draw a little strength.
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