Between the Sea and Sky

by Jaclyn Dolamore

  People passed, most of them paying her no attention even as she watched them—girls in dirtied aprons and leather shoes, old men with bent backs, travelers with paper-pale skin burned by the sun. She had yet to see the same person twice. Maybe she never would. How did you get to know anyone, among so many people?

  She’d know Alander, though. Years had passed, but not so many years. She remembered his fleeting, flashing smiles, the dark gleam of his eyes. They’d share old memories, talk of old times.

  A man. Alander would be practically a man now. She’d known it, but suddenly she realized he’d look different, not just taller. He might have sideburns and a hat like the passing humans; he had a job, for all she knew he could be married—

  Gods knew who he might be now.

  When he finally came, it seemed like a dream. He wore the brim of his short beaver-felt hat tugged low over his eyes against the sun. He had an open book between his fingers, reading as he walked, just like old times, but he was not the fourteen-year-old boy she remembered at all. He had grown tall and graceful—at least as graceful as one could be dodging a pile of horse droppings while one’s nose was buried in a book—and he looked quite good with sideburns.

  He peered at her above the book cover some moments after she noticed him. He quickly snapped the book shut and shoved it within his vest, leaving an awkward rectangular shape there. “Good afternoon, miss—” He doffed his hat. She’d almost forgotten his accent, clipped, like he was in a hurry to get the words out and go. “I’m sorry. I just had a brief errand to run. What are you looking for today?”

  He didn’t even recognize her!

  She rose to her feet, pushing her hair back behind her ears, waiting for it to dawn on him.

  He stepped closer. His eyes filled with sudden shock. Oh, thank the waters!

  “Esmerine?” he said, slowly replacing his hat on the back of his head.

  “Yes. It’s me.” A flutter rushed from her stomach to her throat. Oh dear oh dear. Alander. He was real. She didn’t know what else to say. She hadn’t realized how different they’d be now. Of course she hadn’t really expected to find a boy, but she also hadn’t realized she’d find a man of Sormesen with a hat to doff and a necktie. His cropped bangs clung to his forehead in the heat. He was taller than her by a good half a fin, where they had once been nearly the same height. He came very close to her, close enough that she smelled the smoke and fire of the human world on his clothes.

  “You—you …” His lips moved a moment without any words coming out, like he spoke only to himself. “You didn’t come to … to find me, did you?”

  “No. I’m looking for my sister.”

  He breathed, his surprise slipping away, replaced by the old Alander she knew, drawn up and proper. “Dosia? Here? Well, why don’t we go in and have a drink and you can tell me the whole story. There must be a story.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He took a ring of keys from inside his vest and let them in. The shelves, she saw now, were indeed full of books—hundreds, thousands. Esmerine had only ever seen one book at a time before. Of course all those books Alan brought had to come from somewhere, but she never realized …

  Alan hung his hat on a peg, atop a black cloak already hanging there. He scratched his back on the door frame. He straightened out a few books on a display table. She watched all this without a word, wondering if he’d ever stop moving. It was almost like he was avoiding her.

  Finally. He nudged a chair toward her and sank into the other himself, taking the book out from his vest.

  He watched her limp to the chair, a funny expression in his eyes, like pity—or guilt …? She didn’t want Alan to pity her, like she pitied the beggars on the street. He had seen her walk before, on the islands, and even work her way up trees, and he hadn’t pitied her then. She suddenly felt stupid.

  He looked out the windows, fixating on a girl trying to urge a pig down the street with little success. “What happened to your sister?”

  She had long imagined this moment, when she would see Alander again. They would tell each other everything, say things like:

  I’ve never forgotten you.

  Nor I you.

  Her memories of him had been so different. Maybe he just wasn’t suited to the city, she decided. It seemed like he had something else on his mind.

  She didn’t really want to tell him anything now. She instantly sensed that she would only be a burden to him. Yet, something had to be said. “Yes, Dosia … well, we think she’s been taken by a human man. She was a siren.”

  “And you came after her?” he said, turning back to her sharply. “If she’s bound to a human man, you can’t do anything for her.”

  “At the very least I need to bring word of her back home.”

  “Would you really be content just to bring word?” Alander asked, in the snappish tone she remembered all too well when something irritated him. She wondered suddenly why she ever wanted to see him again.

  “Look, Alander, it’s Dosia. I have to try. If I never even tried … She’d do the same for me.”

  Alander looked restless sitting down. “Well.” He tapped his thumbs together. “I understand …”

  “Do you?” She tried not to sound especially hopeful.

  “Where are you staying? For how long?”

  “Nowhere … yet.” She tried to smile, like she had it all planned. “I have this statue to trade for lodgings.”

  He squinted. “Let me see.”

  She passed it to him, and he frowned. “It’s one of us.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “It looks … rather like it’s from the Second Imperial period. My father collects these. Strange thing for a mermaid to have.”

  “I don’t know. Dosia gave it to me.”

  He put it down, still regarding it. “You’ll have to take it to market and trade for coins, then make your way to an inn, and then go who knows where looking for your sister.”

  “I can walk,” she said, sounding much more capable than she felt.

  “In a manner of speaking.” He looked up as two girls stepped inside the shop. “How can I help you ladies?”

  They turned their bonneted heads to one another, giggling. One shook her head.

  “We have a new pamphlet by Hauzdeen,” Alander said.

  “Hauzdeen?” one of the girls said, fluttering dark eyelashes. “I don’t think I’ve read anything he’s written.”

  “It’s a bit controversial, but his arguments are very well posed, and I think any reasonable person will see he considers both sides,” he said, thankfully unmoved, Esmerine thought, by the plump and healthy girl whose big blue eyes matched her dress. “I’m sure you’ll find it enriching.”

  “I have all the enriching I need,” the other girl said. “Do you have any new Verrougian novels? Along the lines of A Courtesan and a Gentleman?”

  He sighed, not at all imperceptibly or good-naturedly, and moved to one of the shelves, taking down a book with a deep-red cover. “Lousan’s latest. Isabella. I’ve heard it is very much like A Courtesan and a Gentleman.”

  “Then that is exactly what we want,” the girl in blue said, taking coins from her purse. Alander wrapped the book in paper, and with one last giggle, they left, swinging their little purses.

  Alander sank back in his chair, tapping the cover of his book with a finger. He glanced at the counter, where a piece of paper lay, Alan written quite clearly at the top. Esmerine noticed it said, between ink spatters, “Sweep the floors” and “Fix mess in poetry.” He snatched it up, frowned, and put it down again.

  “People are so tedious,” he said. He turned back to her. “You won’t get very far on your own. But I’m very busy working here at the shop.”

  It didn’t seem the best idea to ask for his help just now, but she needed him. “Could I do anything in the shop? In exchange for your help?” Her eyes roamed back to the books lining the walls. They enticed her with their spines—some tall and promising pictures, some crumbling
and requiring a delicate touch, some just the right size to hold in a hand, with pretty gilt titles.

  He waved an almost scolding finger. “Oh, there’s nothing you can do. Certainly you have no experience in a bookshop.” He leaned his head into his fingers and pinched his forehead. “What am I saying? I can’t very well refuse to help an old friend, can I?”

  Such reluctance. No, indeed, she was a burden, and she couldn’t bear that. She got to her feet as fast as she could. “Never mind, Alander, I can find Dosia myself. I never expected to come across you in the first place, after all.” She stalked to the door, her movements jerky, but the pain wasn’t just in her feet now. She’d been naive to think of him all these years, she saw that now, but—

  He was on his feet in a flash, sweeping behind her. “Esmerine—wait.”

  “I don’t need your pity. I didn’t come looking for you, like I said. I just figured it was worth asking. Maybe I don’t have experience, but I would never ask you to help me without offering something in return.” She clenched the skirts that clung to her legs and hindered her steps. She was letting pride get in the way of looking for Dosia, and that wouldn’t do, but none of this was going as she had planned.

  “No, I’ll look for Dosia,” he said. “Tell me where I might find her.”

  “I don’t know,” Esmerine said, still upset. Even now, he didn’t sound apologetic for taking such a snappish tone. “We thought she’d gone to the big house on the point. The one made from tan stones that looks like a castle. But the humans there denied they’d ever seen her. Now we’ve heard a rumor that her husband has taken her to mountain country.”

  “I know the house,” he said, reaching for his hat. “I’ll go investigate.”

  “You don’t have to go this very moment! Anyway, I wondered if I could hire a cart to take me there.” She didn’t want to send Alander alone. He didn’t seem especially passionate about Dosia’s fate, and she feared he wouldn’t ask the right questions.

  “I ought to see what I can find out before you bother with a cart. Don’t worry. I imagine they’ll be more likely to answer me than a mermaid. It shouldn’t take more than an hour, and Swift will return before I do.”

  “Thank you, Alander.” Even if he didn’t really want to help her, she meant it heartily.

  “It’s nothing.” He paused. “You can call me Alan now. Humans have first and last names from birth, so I broke mine into two, Alan Dare. Fandarsee don’t take last names until they’ve chosen a profession. And only my father calls me Alander anyway.”

  “Alan, then. Or should I say Mr. Dare?”

  “Alan.”

  “Thank you, Alan.” She smiled, but he didn’t smile back.

  She watched him go, but didn’t have the pleasure of watching him take flight; he walked out of sight first. She turned back to explore the bookstore, but her feet still hurt badly from the walk, so she picked up the book Alan had been reading and dragged a chair to the window to wait. Maybe she could read a chapter or two and discuss it with him when he returned. On Morality had chapter titles like “The Nature of Man” and “Consciousness and Dreams.” She started to read a little, but none of it made much sense. If only it did. She had so much catching up to do with books.

  It felt strange to sit in a chair. One didn’t really need chairs underwater. Her stays kept her sitting very rigidly, and her stockings itched. She was out of the sun, but out of the breeze too. Could the windows open? It looked like they might, but she wasn’t sure how. Couples strolled by, consulting maps; a group tromped along in funny little black hats with red feathers; children played tag and screamed with laughter she could hear through the glass.

  An older man with white hair poufing from a bald spot poked his head in. “Are you open for business, miss?”

  “Um—no. Alan will be back at half past.” She motioned to the sign.

  “Funny, I was here earlier and it said the same. I’m sure that was a different hour. Who are you, then?”

  “I’m just … a friend of his.”

  “Miss Belawyn’s not here today either?”

  Esmerine assumed Belawyn to be the mysterious mermaid owner. “I guess not.”

  “Well, do you mind if I look around?” The man stepped in and headed for the shelf without waiting for permission. “I’ll be no trouble at all. In fact, I’ll be glad enough to look without Mr. Dare hovering over me every moment, suggesting I read Hauzdeen and Ambrona and Volcke, and sniffing when I’d rather have something enjoyable that doesn’t make my head throb.”

  “What do you like to read?” It was an irresistible novelty having a conversation about books with a stranger.

  He browsed a moment, and took one out. “Now, this author is excellent. He’s working on a complete history of the ancients, and this is the latest volume. Gripping history.” He noticed her eager expression and handed her a different book. “This is the first part. You’d want to start with it.”

  She opened it to a plate in the front with a picture titled The Oracle at Sormesen. A wide-eyed woman held out her arm to an alarmed-looking man in some kind of lightweight armor. Other women were clustered behind him, looking equally alarmed. “If the sorcerer ascends the throne, fire will rain down upon the empire,” read the text at the bottom.

  “My dear, you look as if that book is an old friend you haven’t seen in a decade.”

  She shut it and smiled sheepishly. “I just get excited about books.”

  “Then you’re in the right place, aren’t you?” He patted the cover of the first book. “I’ll likely purchase this one, but I’ll browse until Alan returns.”

  Esmerine returned to her chair. She felt the man watching her careful steps, but he said nothing. She opened the history book and looked at all the pictures first. The merfolk didn’t have pictures. No written word. The only way to share stories was by song and movement and passing tales from one mouth to another. When Esmerine was younger and her grandmother was still alive, she used to love to help her in the kitchen and listen to story after story.

  The very first time Alan came, he carried a bucket for gathering seaweed clutched in his toes, and a book tucked into his vest. She had been playing near the islands as he swept down, and she hid behind the rocks and watched him as he filled the bucket a quarter full with seaweed, and then sat on the shore holding the curious red square to his face. At that time she had never even seen a book before. Sometimes they were in the wrecked ships, but she was too young to go there, and books had no value as salvage. She thought he was using it as a shield against the sun, but she could see him turning the pages and wondered what they were.

  It wasn’t long before she gathered the courage to approach him. She didn’t change her tail into legs. She was just shy of her ninth birthday and far from adept at walking. She crawled forward in the sand and he looked up and asked who she was.

  The very first thing she asked, after they had exchanged names, was what he was holding, and the very first thing he had done was to explain to her about books and writing. He told her that even her name could be written down, and he wrote it in the sand with a stick. After he was gone, she tried to copy it over and over, mesmerized by the idea that a vast story could be quietly contained, permanent and unchanging. Alan had read some of the book to her, so she knew the story in the book could be told aloud, just like her grandmother’s stories, but it could also be a private story, read quietly to oneself. Esmerine had private stories in her head sometimes, but if she forgot them before a night of songs and theatricals, or if there was no time that night for her story, it was gone forever.

  “Is this real?” she asked the older man now, pointing at a picture of odd spotted beasts.

  “Those are giraffes. Yes. They’re real. We don’t have them in Sormesen, of course. I believe there is one in the menagerie in Torna.”

  Esmerine nodded, satisfied enough that such funny creatures truly existed.

  The door opened again. For a moment, she saw wings and a hat and thought Ala
n had returned, but the man was silver haired, wearing spectacles and a collar stiff enough to touch his cheeks. A woman came just behind him, in a fine cape pinned with a jeweled brooch, probably to cover the shirt and britches that humans would undoubtedly consider immodest.

  “Where is Alan?” the man demanded.

  “He’ll be back at half past,” Esmerine said. For people with regular access to books, everyone in Sormesen certainly had trouble reading.

  “Well, where is he? Don’t tell me he’s off gallivanting in coffee shops now?”

  “Uh—”

  “Who are you? A relative of Belawyn’s?”

  “Um—”

  “Why are you here?”

  Esmerine had an instinctive sense that it wouldn’t be wise to tell the truth. “I’m just an acquaintance passing through, minding the shop for a moment.”

  “Well, I don’t have time to dither around and wait for him. I’ve got appointments to keep. Tell him I was here and I’ll certainly be back.”

  “It isn’t long until half past,” the woman said.

  “Long enough! No, I’ve got better things to do. Anyway, when he learns I was here he’ll know what I want to talk about and will have time enough to mull it over, or better yet, come straight home.”

  The winged boy from the square walked in then, his wings folded around the Hauzdeen pamphlets, but he looked like he wanted to step right back out when he saw the older couple.

  “Say, boy, have you seen Alander?”

  “I have a name,” the boy said, moving past him and dumping the pamphlets on the counter.

  “Oh, Swift? Some sort of carnival name? It’s rather shameful.” As the man spoke, the woman sucked air through her teeth like she wished he would quiet down.

  “Well, it’s the only name I’ve got,” Swift said, now stacking the pamphlets, more as a distraction than anything, it seemed. “And I haven’t seen Alander, but I assume he’ll be back at half past.”