“Esmerine is … not like other girls,” Alan admitted. She hoped he meant that as a compliment.
“I cannot endorse your plans,” Alan’s father said abruptly. “I’m sorry. You know what comes of involving yourself with the business of sirens, Alander.”
“Father, I swear I’ll come home if only you’ll help me this one time. For Mother’s sake, if not for mine.”
“Your mother is quite dead; there is nothing you can do for her sake. I appreciate the sentiment, but do be reasonable. I tell you, no good ever came of Fandarsee chasing after a siren; if anyone can tell you that with authority, I can.”
“Please, sir,” Esmerine said. “I have to find my sister and learn her fate, only there’s no way I can do it alone. Alander knew my sister too. We both just want to help her.”
“I know all about your kind,” Alan’s father said. “If your sister has given away her belt, her choice is made.”
They weren’t getting anywhere. Alan looked defeated, Alan’s father, dismissive. He had already made up his mind about mermaids, she supposed.
“Sir, I’ll give you this statue if I can have an audience with you alone,” Esmerine said, pulling the statue from her sack.
“An audience with my father? Alone?” Alan looked alarmed. “Why do you need to speak to him alone?”
“I just do. Please.”
“You won’t change my mind,” Alan’s father said. “And a moment of my attention is hardly worth a Second Empire statue. Sell it at market, don’t waste it on an old man.”
“Please, sir. I’m not trying to change your mind”—a lie—“I just want to speak with you a moment.”
Alan’s father huffed, then took the statue off her hands. “Very well. If you wish … Alander, go eat your lunch.”
Alan moved to the door, but his head still pointed in their direction until the last moment. Esmerine twisted her hands but kept her back straight, trying valiantly to stay calm.
Chapter Seventeen
Alan’s father turned to her. He reminded her of an eel—cold eyes and a grimace—so different from her own dear father. And yet, she had to convince him somehow.
“Sir, I know how this must look, and considering what happened to Alan’s mother, I understand why you might be concerned about Alan following your path.” Her jaw trembled as she spoke, but she didn’t allow herself to pause. “But Alan and I are both aware of the trouble—” No, no. Wrong direction. “That is, we both have our own reason for helping my sister, and we’re not doing this because—”
“My son clearly cares for you,” Alan’s father interrupted, his tone sharp. “Do you think I’m so stupid as to not notice the way his tone changes when he speaks of you, the way he grows nervous? Do you think I don’t remember the way a siren’s song can bewitch a man, make him lose his senses?”
“But—don’t you see? Alan can’t lose his senses. Mermen aren’t affected by siren song, and Alan isn’t either. Anyway, siren song works better on some people than others. I should know, I used it to sell books this past week, and not everyone bought them. It only plays on the inclinations people already have. Just like every mermaid can’t become a siren. Only the ones who are enthralled by the surface to begin with.”
“Are you suggesting that I had some inclination to marry a mermaid? A girl who couldn’t read or write, and who knew nothing of cooking or managing servants?”
“That is how it works,” Esmerine said, unwilling to say anything less than the truth, even if it angered him. “But I’m not like that. I don’t profess to like books because I’m trying to enchant someone. In my heart, I love books, I love writing. I love the lines of letters on a page. Alan and I became friends because we shared that love. If we have any inclination toward one another, that’s the reason—not because of a siren song.”
Alan’s father’s expression didn’t change in the slightest as she spoke. It made it hard to gauge what direction to take her words. “My son taught you to read?” he asked again, as if he hadn’t quite believed it until now.
“Yes. I asked him to. He used to come to the islands and he always had a book. I wanted to know what was in them.”
“And yet, it takes more than a shared desire for knowledge to sustain love,” Alan’s father said, and the word “love,” the gentle, treasured word, became a rigid thing on his tongue.
“We’re not in love,” Esmerine said quickly. “We just want to find my sister. We may have different reasons, but doing so will ease both our hearts.”
“It is the way of sirens to leave home, isn’t it?” he said, his tone growing bitter once more. “Why else do you keep your magic in such a way, and cast about with your feminine wiles? I’m sorry for your sister, but I won’t allow you to drag my son along on some mad quest because you want to defy the very nature of what you are.”
“But it isn’t what I am!” Esmerine shouted. “And it isn’t Dosia either! We always wanted to go to the surface world of our own accord. It wasn’t to charm men; I’m so tired of people saying that. We wanted to see this world. Is it wrong to feel such curiosity? And what about Alan? His mother was a mermaid, yet he never knew her and he can never really know her world. But he must be curious too.”
Alan’s father sighed deeply. A hint of sorrow crept into his dark brows. “When he was born … a part of me hoped he would be a mer. And I would set them free. It was clear by then that her homesickness would never go away. But he was more Fandarsee, and she wouldn’t leave her child.”
Esmerine glanced, ever so briefly, around the beautiful library, and imagined a mermaid holding her winged baby, trapped by her love for him. First she saw her like a ghost, but then she imagined it was her own hand stroking the baby’s hair. The baby vanished from the vision and she imagined herself standing in the library, knowing she had time to read all the books there. She was picking up that illustrated book and sitting in that plush red chair, crossing her breeches-clad legs, resting her aching feet, venturing into the world between the pages … She would not be unhappy here like Alan’s mother had been.
Esmerine shivered, realizing it was no longer a vision of another woman, it was a wish for herself, a dangerous wish to wear the shoes of a Fandarsee woman, with all those books …
“Young woman,” Alan’s father said. “When I took Alan’s mother home, I was dizzy with love for her. I never thought then about spending day after day flying away from her, going where she couldn’t follow. I never thought about having to teach our son to fly by myself. And I never thought I would watch her die, begging for her belt so she could die a mermaid, begging for water, begging for someone to sing to her.”
“Did you?” she asked.
“I don’t sing,” he said. “But Alan did. He sang every song she had taught him, until she was gone.” He looked into her eyes, and his own were the same warm shade as Alan’s. “Tell my son I want to speak with him.”
She slipped out of the room, limping badly, thoroughly shaken. Alan sat at the table with his stepmother and Karinda, but he wasn’t even holding a utensil despite the bowl in front of him. He stood as soon as she appeared.
“He wants to see you,” she said.
“What happened?” Alan asked. “What did you say? Did he agree to help?”
“I don’t know,” Esmerine said. “He’s waiting.”
Esmerine returned to her chair, where her food waited, now cold.
Alan’s stepmother smiled. “It’s not just anyone who would talk to my husband alone. Good for you.”
“It wasn’t easy,” Esmerine admitted, but she relaxed a little at the idea that she had done a brave thing.
“Did you cry?” Karinda asked. “Father always gives in when I cry.”
“I think that only works for you,” Alan’s stepmother said, tweaking her bun.
“No, no crying,” Esmerine said. “Though I might have, if we’d gone on much longer.”
“Did you tell him what you’d learn from the experience?” Karinda asked. “He like
s that too.”
“I may have gotten closer to that …”
Alan’s stepmother seemed to understand the topic was best left alone now, and asked Karinda if she had done her schoolwork. Esmerine had still not touched her food by the time Alan returned from the library. She understood immediately by his expression—serious yet peaceful—that the talk had gone well.
“He’s given me the magic,” he said. “We can fly to the Diels. In fact, we should get going. I don’t know how fast the magic will allow us to travel to get her.”
“Truly?” Could their journey really begin? It already felt like days since they left Sormesen, not hours.
A servant girl—also clad in a practical shirt and breeches—filled Esmerine’s pack with bread and cheese and a thin blanket. There was no room for a second, but with the winged statue gone, the pack weighed no more than before.
Esmerine had never set out on a journey that would last longer than a day. As she watched Alan kiss his stepmother and Karinda good-bye, an anxious fluttering spread from her stomach out to her fingertips.
They went to the roof, the surface now radiating afternoon warmth. The Floating City made her think of a storybook—with its tiers of roofs and towers, it had the order and the tidy quality of a line drawing. More people filled the air than when they arrived: men, women, and children, some with books or hats or other parcels clasped in their toes. In certain congested areas Esmerine wondered how they avoided collision.
“Once in a while there’s an accident,” Alan said, seeing her alarm at the sky traffic. “But usually they manage to recover in the air. I don’t think it’s nearly as hazardous as those carriages tearing through the streets of Sormesen.”
This time their ascent was quick and smooth, allowing her the brief delusion that she was getting to be an old hand at flying.
“We’re making a sharp turn north,” Alan said. “Hold on.”
They passed over the Floating City. A flock of birds scattered from a tree below them and resettled in another. It made her dizzy to watch them and think she was higher than a bird in a tree. She closed her eyes until the feeling passed, pressing her nose into the back of Alan’s collar.
Ahead, roads cut through fields where the tiny forms of men and women went about their work. “I never realized how much open land there is beyond the cities.”
“Yes, you don’t realize from the roads, but most of the country is just fields and hills, forests and mountains …”
“Have you been everywhere in the country?”
“Yes,” Alan said. “My messenger route was usually from Sormesen to Torna. Sometimes to the eastern coast. A few times to the Diels.”
A rippled blanket of hills stretched out ahead of them. If Esmerine squinted, the green tops of trees reminded her of the soft moss that grew on rocks under the ocean.
The sun rose higher and Esmerine guessed they had been flying for an hour, maybe even two. Her arms yearned to move, but she didn’t dare release her grasp on Alan’s vest. She fidgeted, wishing she could bend her legs or move onto her back or side, or even just escape the warmth of Alan’s back. Anyone who might worry that flying together was romantic had it very wrong, she thought wryly.
“Uncomfortable?” Alan asked as she shifted again. “We’ll stop, but we should try to make it farther.”
Esmerine pushed her discomfort from her mind as best she could, but she was relieved when Alan decided to land. He brought them down in a grassy field, where they walked a short distance to the shade of a tree and ate their bread and cheese. Esmerine’s arms trembled from gripping Alan’s collar. And despite her aching feet, it felt good to have them on the ground once again.
“Will you make it?” Alan asked, scratching his back against the rock on which he leaned. He looked exhausted too. She imagined it was no easier to carry a passenger than it was to be one.
“I will.”
“There’s an abbey just through the trees where I sometimes stop to get water,” Alan said. “You can walk with me or I’ll bring you a cup.”
Esmerine chose to wait, stretched flat on the grass, so tired of hurting but unwilling to admit it.
After food and water, they departed. She hated the idea of flying again, but she certainly couldn’t complain about it in the middle of the countryside and after all the trouble they’d gone to.
Now the farmland looked endless, a patchwork of green broken by an occasional grove and the small block shapes of farm buildings with tan stone roofs reflecting the sunlight. Esmerine tried to relax her arms a little more, but it seemed that as soon as she loosened her grip, an unexpected current would make them dip or wobble, and her fingers would clench his vest again.
Despite her discomfort, she was struck by the endless beauty of the country, and by Alan, who kept them moving high and fast on his glorious wings.
“We’ll have to stop in Calpurni,” Alan said. “It’s a little market town between farms. Should be safe enough, but … I don’t know what the lodgings will be like. It could be very primitive.”
He landed outside the city walls.
“It’s not polite to bypass the gates in a small town that isn’t accustomed to Fandarsee,” he explained. “They get winged people stopping by sometimes, but usually we fly from Sormesen to Torna in one go.”
Men in dirty, threadbare clothes rolled wheelbarrows out the city gates, while women carried baskets of food or yarn.
A few men loitered outside an inn, talking in a broad dialect Esmerine didn’t understand. One spit in the street and another followed suit. Their eyes followed her feet, and moved up to her face, and one nodded to the other. “Pretty mermaid!” one called. “I’ll give you something if you sing for me.”
“I’ll give you money,” the other one said. “Then I’ll give you something else.” He laughed, and the other man elbowed him, but he was grinning too.
Alan put his wing around her, blocking her view of them.
“Hey, beautiful, I can’t fly, but I’ve got big strong hands,” one of them yelled as Alan hustled her in the door of the inn.
Esmerine imagined her whole face was the color of Alan’s ears.
“If anyone asks, we are married,” he whispered. “I’m not letting you out of my sight here.”
She nodded, feeling very far from home, wishing she had no siren’s belt. If men like them were to steal it in the night …
Inside, two younger men negotiated the price of lodgings with an old woman. She had the same accent Esmerine could scarcely understand, while the younger men were foreigners from Lorrine by the looks of their hats and sturdy clothes. A few Lorrinese tourists came to the bookshop every day. An old dog lay in front of a blazing hearth fire that contributed to the stuffy air of the room, despite open windows. Cheap religious art, yellowing and curling at the edges, adorned walls.
“You want a room, hmm? Haah? What sort of room would you like?” She jabbed a bony finger in Esmerine’s direction. “She with you? She doesn’t have the wings.”
The Lorrinese man standing by the fire muttered to each other.
“She’s, um, my wife,” Alan said. “We want one room.”
“Your poor wife,” the old woman said. “She doesn’t have the wings. I hope you take good care of her.” She patted Esmerine’s cheek, then waved them toward a staircase, as she discussed payment with Alan. Esmerine felt torn between laughter and irritation, but at least the old woman seemed to mean well.
The woman opened the door to a room that made Alan’s house seem quite the palace. The exchange of payment was brisk, and Alan looked as grim as a man purchasing his own coffin. Finally, the old woman shut the door on them, leaning Esmerine and Alan to look at each other.
“Is this the only inn in Calpurni?” Esmerine asked.
“It wouldn’t matter,” Alan said. “They’re all the same. You can understand why I didn’t last long in the messenger business with these conditions.”
The room stank in some undefined way—not quite sweat, no
t quite mold, but close to both. The bed looked lumpy, with one thin blanket Esmerine already knew she wouldn’t use. The open windows had no curtains, so any passing soul could poke his nose in, but the room would clearly be unbearably stuffy if they shut them. Through the thin wall, a man coughed incessantly, sounding quite as if he were in his death throes.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to Torna,” Esmerine said. She felt she was to blame for the whole thing.
“I can’t fly as far either,” Alan said. “It isn’t anyone’s fault. We’re here to help Dosia, not go on holiday.” He flopped on the bed with an exhausted groan, one wing drooping on the floor. Esmerine unpacked the blanket, taking her time to avoid the inevitable question of where they would sleep.
“I can sleep on the floor,” Alan answered before she could ask. “Just give me a minute.”
“It’s okay. I’m not tired yet. Not sleep-tired, anyway.” She sat on a rickety chair by the unlit hearth.
The old woman knocked on their door and brought in their dinner. Esmerine would not have been surprised to learn that it had boiled for a week straight.
“I’ve seen worse,” Alan said, attempting to poke a disintegrating potato with his fork. “This isn’t likely to kill us.”
It didn’t kill Esmerine, but it did force her to slip through dark halls to the privy, not long after their first attempt to sleep. The privy was dim and stinking, lit only by a high window, and she was trying to hurry through her business when she heard the Lorrinese tourists walk by. She didn’t understand much of their language, but she knew the words “mermaid” and “Fandarsee,” the former said with guttural lust, the latter with scorn. They sounded drunk and she froze with fear.
They talked in the hall for some time. She buttoned her breeches and stood, but was afraid to leave. It would be easy for one of them to grab her and the other to snatch her siren’s belt. If she was gone long, Alan might notice and come after her, but would he be able to defend her against them?
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