Mermaids and Other Mysteries of the Deep

by Elizabeth Bear

  “She spelled Duster Kimes dotty,” he whimpered.

  “Kimeses are all dotty,” I said. How like my dad I sounded, so sensible, knowing everything. “Duster is just more frightenable than the rest. Come, look.” And I thrust a good big heart into his hands, sharp with barnacles to wake him up.

  The ones as still floats is the best, most tender, though the ones that’s landed, leaning in the wet with sea-spit still around them, is still good, and so even are those that have sat only a little, up there along the drying rime, beginning to dry themselves. The others were dancing along the wrack, gathering too much, especially lad Cawdron. He was too little; why hadn’t Raditch told him? We would have to tip most that sack out, or he’d stink up half the town with the waste.

  “They’ll not need to go as far as us,” said Grinny at my elbow.

  I dropped a nice wet-heavy heart in my sack. “We can call them down here, make us up some numbers . . . ”

  No more had I said it than Grinny was off up the beach fetching them. He must have been scareder than he looked.

  I preoccupied myself catching floating ones without sogging my trouser-edges. Some people eat the best ones raw, particularly mams; they drink up the liquor inside, and if there is more than one mam there they will exclaim how delicious, and if not they will go quiet and stare away from everyone. If it is only dads, they will say to each other, “I cannot see the ’traction, myself,” and smack their lips and toss the heartskin in the pot for biling with the rest. If you bile the heart up whole, that clear liquor goes curdish; we were all brung up on that, spooned and spooned into us, and some kids never lose the taste. I quite like it myself, but only when I am ailing. It is bab-food, and a growing lad needs bread and meat, mostly.

  Anyway, the wrack-hunters came down and made a big crowd with us. Harper picked up a wet heart and weighed and turned it, and emptied his sack of dry ones to start again. Cawdron watched him, in great doubt now.

  “Why’n’t you take a few o’ these, Cawdron?” I said. “’Stead of all them jaw-breakers. Your mam will think you a champion.”

  He stared at the heart glistening by his foot, and then came alive and upended his sack. Oh, he had some dross in there; they bounced down the shore dry as pompons.

  I picked up a few good hearts, if small, to encourage him. “See how all the shells is closed on it? And the thready weed still has some juice in it, see? Those is the signs, if you want to make mams happy.”

  “Do they want small or big?” he says, taking one.

  “Depends on her taste. Does she want small and quicker to cook, or fat and full of juice? My mam likes both, so I take a variety.”

  And now we were quite close to the witch, in the back of the bunch, which was closer, quieter, and not half so dancey as before, oh no. And she was fixed on us, the face of our night-horrors, white and creased and greedy.

  “Move along past,” I muttered. “Plenty on further.”

  “Oh, plenty!” says Messkeletha, making me jump and stiffen. “Naught want to pause by oul Messkel and be knitted up, eh? Naught want to become piglets in a blanket!” Her eyes bulged in their cavities like glisteny rockpool creatures; I’d have wet myself had I had any in me to wet with.

  “We is only c’lecting sea-hearts, Messkeletha,” says Grinny politely, and I was grateful to him for dragging her sights off me.

  “Only!” she says, and her voice would tear tinplate. “Only collecting!”

  “That’s right, for our mams’ dinners.”

  She snorted, and matter flew out one of her nostrils and into the blanket. She knitted on savagely, the iron needles noising as would send your boy-sacks up inside you like started mice to their hole. “That’s right. Keep ’em sweet, keep ’em sweet, those pretty mams.”

  There was a pause, she sounded so nasty, but Grinny took his life in his hands and went on. “That’s what we aim to do, ma’am.”

  “Don’t ‘ma’am’ me, sprogget!”

  We all jumped.

  “Move along, all ye, and stop your gawking,” spat the witch. So I’m ugly and unmanned! So’s I make my own living! What’s the fascination? Staring there like folk at a hanging. Get out my sight, ’fore I emblanket youse and tangle you up to drown!”

  Well, we didn’t need her to tell us twice.

  “You can never tell which way she’ll go,” muttered Grinny.

  “You did grand, Grin,” said Raditch. “I don’t know how you found a voice.” And Cawdron, I saw, was making sure to keep big Batton Baker between himself and the old crow.

  “Sometimes she’s all sly and coaxy? Sometimes she loses her temper like now.”

  “Sometimes all she does is sit and cry and not say a word or be frightening at all,” says Raditch. “Granted, that’s when she’s had a pot or two.”

  We collected most efficiently after that, and when we were done we described a wide circle way round the back of her on our way to the foot of the path. “From behind she ain’t nearly so bad,” I said, for she was a dark lump almost like a third mound of weed, only smoother-edged, and with her needle-knobs bobbing beyond her elbows.

  It was wintertime when we ruined everything. It was Cawdron, really, but he would not have said it had we not put a coat on him and got him overexcited.

  The weather was all over the place: that was why we were back of the pub. The first snow had fallen, but that was days ago, and it lay only little rotten bits in the shade of walls, nothing useful. We had made a man of what was available in the yard at back, but he was more of a snow-blob, it had gone to such slop—although he had a fine rod on him made of the brace of a broken bar stool Raditch’s dad had put back for mending, so you knew at least he was a man-blob.

  Anyway, it was beastly cold and the wind had begun to nip and numb us, so we came in the back, and it felt like heaven just the little heat that had leaked out into the hall from the snug, and there was no one to tell us to hie on out again before our ears turned blue from the language we might hear, so we milled there thawing out and being quiet.

  And then Jakes Trumbell found the coatroom door unlocked.

  “How is that?” he said, the door a crack open in his hand. He looked up and down it as if it must be broken somewhere.

  We were all standing just as shocked. The sea-smell came spilling out the crack, sour and cold.

  “Wholeman must have left it,” said Raditch. “Wholeman must store other stuff in there.”

  “What other?” said Baker. “Would there be food, mebbe? Would they notice a little gone? Crisps or summink?”

  At the word “crisps” the door went wider and our fright dissolved into hope and naughtiness. And as none of us had ever seen in there we went in, several at a time because there was not much room; the coats crowded it up pretty thorough.

  “Ain’t they strange?” said Angast ahead of me. “Like people theirselves.”

  “They’re thick,” said Raditch. “Have a feel. And smooth.”

  “Just like a mam,” said Jakes from the door, and some giggled and some jumped on him and started quietly fighting.

  “I wish I could see,” said Raditch, because it was afternoon and the most we could make out was glooming shapes, and hung up very tall. “I want to know how the heads go.”

  “Bring one out,” suggested Angast, “to the better light.”

  I was glad to go out ahead of him; that room was too much for me, the heavy things pressing at us, hung so closely they pushed out wide at the bottom. And the smell was the smell my mam got when she lay abed unhappy. It was like being suffocated.

  We managed to get one of the smaller ones out, and each tried it on awhile, except Cawdron, who would not.

  “How do they swim in these things?” said Raditch, lifting his sealie arm.

  “It is all bonded to them, proper,” said Angast. “And the water holds them up, you know.”

  Jakes was the only one put the hood over, and we made him stop when he looked out the eyes and lurched at us—he has dark mam-type
eyes, and it was too eerie.

  “It smells,” he said, taking it off. I sniffed the arm of my woolly to see if the smell had stuck. I was worried Mam would smell it on me later, and go into a mood. It was hard to tell. The whole air, the whole hall there, was greenish with that sad smell.

  “Cawn, Kit,” said Jakes to Cawdron, “let us see you in it; you will make a great little mam, you’re so pretty.”

  “Not on your nelly,” Cawdron said. “It’ll flatten me, that will.”

  “We will hold up the weight of it, from the shoulders, so you can stand. Come on; it will suit you so well.”

  And seeing as there was nothing else to do but persuade him, we set to it, and Jakes hauled out another bigger coat and put it on, and urged some more, and before too long we had weakened the poor lad sufficient to drape the thing dark and gleaming and—I cannot describe to you the feeling of putting it on. It was as if you found yourself suddenly swimming right down the bottom of the sea, a weight of black water above you.

  The snug door opened and there was a scramble. Somehow the coatroom door got pulled and the coats got hid behind legs and we were all lounging idle and innocent when Batton Baker’s dad passed us on his way out the back pisser.

  “What you lads brewing?” he says, swaying back when he sees all our eyes.

  But none of us need answer, ’cause he opens the yard door then, and the wind hits him to staggering.

  “It’s perishin’ out there, Mister Baker,” says Grinny in just the right voice, dour and respectful.

  “I’ll freeze my man off, pissing in that.” He squints into the darkening yard. “I see a chap who’s frozen out there already,” he adds jocular. “A fine upstanding chap, if I’m not mistaken.”

  And he laughs and out he goes, leaving the door banging.

  “He sees so much of a sleeve-edge, we are beaten,” says Grinny, into the quiet of our relief. “Beaten and put in our rooms and no suppers for ever—and our mams so disappointed.”

  We had time to hide them better before Baker came back. He swayed and looked at us, all in our same places. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” he finally said, and tapped his nose and went off.

  And that might have ended it there and then, and all been tip-top and usual.

  Except, “Come, Kit,” whispers Jakes. “You looked the perfect mam.’

  So we lumped the coat on Cawdron again, and Jakes put the other one on, and then they made us laugh, trying to walk about like mams, trying to move their hands all delicate and their heads all thoughtful. Cawdron was the best at it, of course, being so delicate anyway, and with the coloring. Jakes was funnier, though, being more dad-like, all freckles and orange hair and hands like sausage-bunches.

  “I been abed for days, so mis’rable, Missis Cawdron,” he said, and the way he leaned and rolled his eyes, and his voice trying and failing to trill and sing—we were holding each other up, it was so funny.

  And then Kit Cawdron joined in and, my, he was good, because his voice was not yet begun to go, and he could really sound the part. “Because I’m to have another bair-beh,” he says, and we were all just about rolling on the slates there, but as quiet as we could.

  “I thought you just had one, missis?” says Jakes, through laughing.

  “Oh’m, I did. But ’twas only a girl, so I took her down and drowned her.”

  “Grand!” says Jakes. “Another sea-wife for our lads to net, come sixteen summers.”

  “Oh no,” says Cawdron proudly—proudly because he was doing such a fine job of imitating, proudly because he was playing a proud mam. “I tied the cross on her breast just like you done, so she cannot be caught,” he said, and gave Jakes a stage-wink, whose face was already falling. “She’ll never suffer like we’ve had to, Missis Trumbell.”

  And he was just overacting a suffering mam, staggering, with the back of his hand to his forehead, when he realized how still we all were, how puzzled our faces.

  He looked beyond us, and up. His hand snatched to his side and he tripped at his coat-edge and banged up against the wall. His face was not mammish no more, and not at all playful; he was the littlest of us, and the most frightened. He had the most to lose, after all, with Baker’s dad there at the back of us, and Mister Grinny, too, come soundless from the snug to catch us at whatever.

  We all of us shrank together and back, all around Cawdron and Jakes against the wall there, staring at those men. They were red already in their natural coloring, but the drinking had enflamed them, and now the rage tided up across their faces and they scarcely looked human. Baker’s dad—jolly Mister Baker, who would toss a flour-roll out his shop door at a quiet time, to any boy, and mustle your hair as soon as look at you—honest, I thought his head were going to burst, it swelled and trembled so, and stared.

  “What did you say, lad,” he hissed into the utter silence. Someone gave a little peeping fart at the sound of such rage, and nobody even snickered, we were all so close to shitting ourselves.

  Cawdron didn’t whimper or sniff; I could hear behind me how he was applied, how glued, to the wall, trying to melt away into it.

  I expected Baker to wade in. Everyone expected it. I saw Grinny’s dad expect it, and decide it must not happen, and put a hand on Baker’s arm.

  “Take that off, lad,” he said to Kit Cawdron, gentle as gentle.

  The crowd of us loosened, but only a little, at the immediate danger’s easing. “Here,” Raditch muttered, helping Cawdron behind. Silence except for the fumbling, Cawdron’s unsteady breathing, the clop and slide of the coat.

  “Come,” said Mister Grinny, holding out his hand. I could not tell what he might be thinking—how does anyone else’s dad think, and what might he want?—but he was not so red now and I was relieved. I thought, Good, they’ll not thrash Cawdron, then. It is too bad even for that. “Hang them coats up, lads,” he says, and he stands there one freckly hand ensausaging Kit’s little white slip of a paw, and the other on Baker’s sleeve who was steaming and readying to roar and punch something, as we hauled the flemming things into the coatroom, and manage to re-hang them. Everybody was shaking like the leaves of the poplars on Watch-Out Hill; everyone was clumsy and needed each other’s help.

  When it was done and the door closed, whisper-quiet, Mister Grinny was still there holding Cawdron, but Baker was gone, the snug door slamming and beyond it his hard voice spreading a silence through the snug.

  “You’ll not touch them things again, all right?” says Mister Grinny, still gently.

  “No, sir.”

  “No, Mister Grinny.”

  “We won’t. Promise.”

  “Even if you find it unlocked,” he says. “Even if the door is swinging wide open, you will not go in. You will not lay a finger on your mams’ coats.”

  “Not a finger, sir.” We all shook our heads.

  “Shan,” he says to his boy, “you go on home to your mam. All you boys, go on home. Look to your mams and see if they need aught. Bring in some coal. Make them a tea. Rub their poor feet. Or just sit and talk to them the way they like, about nice things, the spring, mebbe, or the fishing. Go home and do something nice for your mams, each lad of you, because things will go not-so-nice for them for a while. And Shan? On your way? Fetch up Jod Cawdron. The lad should have his father by him, for this.”

  Out into the cold street we scattered.

  “What will they do to Kit?” said Raditch shiveringly to me as we ran. “They will kill him!”

  “They will kill his mam,’ I said. “They will kill all the mams—all those who’s had girl-babies, anyhow.”

  “Oh gawd, you think?”

  “Not kill,” I said. “But I don’t know what they will do to them.”

  “Still, I would not be Kit, for all the tea in china.”

  “I would not be Jakes,” I said. “It is all his fault and he will feel it. I know I will knuckle him, for one.”

  “I don’t know,’ said Raditch. “I don’t think a knuckling is going to set th
is right.”

  “No,” I said over my shoulder, leaving him on his house-step, “but I must hurt something.”

  And I ran on home.

  For a while Mam paced back and forth, muttering, the shaggy blanket dragging out behind her like a king’s cloak. From one window, past the door, to the other window, and muttering as I say, no words that I could hear.

  My dad had gone, the door banged behind him and the bang seeming still to ring, on and on throughout our house. All the swish and scratch of her blanket could not still it, all her hissing whispering, or the pad of her foot soles on the gray boards.

  Then she paused by one of the windows, fenced off from me by the chair backs, a seaweedy hummock of her shoulders and then her head, against the glary cloudlight, her hair pushed and pulled a little, a few strands waving in the wind of her warmth. She stood there applying herself to the view and silent, and I stood at the kitchen door silent, listening to the distress.

  I went to her, stood at the sill as if I were interested, innocently interested, also in the view. The same lanes slanted away: the one up, the one down. The same front steps shone whitewashed like lamps up and down the lane. The same tedious cat sat in Sacks’ window, now blinking out at us, now dozing again. And through the gaps and over some of the roofs, the sea rode charcoal to the horizon, flat-colored as a piece of slate, with neither sail nor dragon nor dinghy to relieve the emptiness.

  She was turning and turning her silver wedding ring, which she did when she was upset sometimes, to the point of reddening the spare flesh around it. She pressed and turned, as if to work free the stuck lid of a jar.

  I laid my hands on hers, paler than hers. She looked down from the view.

  “What is it, Daniel?”

  I took her hands one from the other. I turned to the window again, and draped the ring hand over my shoulder, down to my chest, and I held it and took from her the task of turning the warm silver, moving it much more gently upon her finger than she had been doing. It was loose; let it go and it would slide down to the first joint. If you held it higher and quite careful it need not touch her finger-skin at all. But I did not play so with it, only continued the turning of it for her.