Mermaids and Other Mysteries of the Deep

by Elizabeth Bear

  “Come with me.” Aoife’s hand slides lower and Rebecca shivers. “The sea can cure you. Nothing is hungrier than she is.”

  “Cure me.” She swallows, throat gone dry. “You mean change me. I’d be like you.”

  “You’d be with me. Forever.” She cups Rebecca’s face in her hands. “I’ll never be sick. I’ll never die. But it’s lonely, sometimes. I still remember a woman’s heart.”

  Rebecca’s heart cracks like glass. “I said no, Aoife. I walked away, remember. What makes you think the sea would take me after all this time?”

  “I can intercede. I’ll go to the deep places and beg for you. Mother Hydra will listen.”

  “Aoife—”

  Cold fingers brush her lips, silencing her doubts. “You had your life on land. There’s no need for you to die a mammal’s death.”

  Her mouth closes on Rebecca’s, cold probing tongue and razor teeth and her kiss tastes of blood and brine, tastes like a shipwreck. Wide webbed hands slide under Rebecca’s shirt, leaving trails of damp. Twenty years, but her body still remembers Aoife’s touch, no matter how she’s changed. Her hands clutch damp fabric, searching for buttons on the white dress.

  Aoife’s hair clings to Rebecca’s face and shoulders, anemone tendrils trapping her as they sink to the sandy, salt-slick grass, washing up against the beach like so much flotsam.

  The moon has set when Rebecca stumbles back to the cottage, the stars blinded by a swath of clouds and no one to watch as she staggers tingling and half-numb across the beach. Her heart won’t slow its mad rhythm; every throb of her pulse burns in the bloody scratches Aoife left on her back and thighs.

  Her whiskey still sits on the table, gleaming in the warm pool of kitchen light. She drains it, and then another, but as she falls into bed her mouth still tastes of the sea.

  She dreams of Aoife, again and again, follows her down through blood-thick brine, where the water turns from clear to blue to black, where light and color are only memories. Where the only illumination is the phosphorescent glow of Aoife’s skin, a lure to draw the unwary.

  Down and down and down, into the cathedral of the abyss, to an altar-throne where things older than gods hold court. Rebecca wants to look away as Aoife prostrates herself before the blood-scarlet gaze of those things, as she gives herself to the writhing teeth-and-tentacle embrace of the Hydra.

  But she cannot blink, cannot turn aside.

  Even waking can’t banish those images, and she doesn’t dare profane them with paint and canvas.

  Then the dreams stop, and she knows Aoife’s paid whatever price they asked of her.

  For the rest of the week she can’t work, can’t concentrate. She’s short with Siobhan, or doesn’t speak at all; she has no answer for the hurt in the girl’s eyes.

  Live in pain perhaps another three months, or live forever. It doesn’t seem much of a choice.

  She could have chosen it twenty years ago, when Aoife first started to hear the call of the waves. Rebecca heard it too, but feared the change, feared the other. So she fled Ireland, fled Aoife, and channeled all that siren-song into her art. She’s never regretted her life, for all the dark hours of the night when she’s wondered what if.

  But now . . .

  Rebecca stands on the beach, toes in the sand, watching the moon hang pale and swollen over the water, its light painting a silver road along the waves. The tide swells in response; she can feel it in her blood, calling her out, calling her down.

  She thought Aoife would be here, but the bay is empty. This road she’ll have to start alone.

  She doesn’t realize she’s moving until the sand changes under her feet, from dry and soft to damp and clinging. She strips off her shirt and underwear, leaves them like driftwood on the shore.

  Water swirls around her legs, sliding cold between her thighs. Sand slips under her feet, sucked away with every lapping wave. Deeper and deeper, and the sea swallows her hips, her waist, reaching higher. The silver road stretches before her.

  She can keep walking forever, into the endless blue wine.

  Rebecca opens her mouth, tongue heavy with salt. Maybe she means to call Aoife’s name, or just take a last breath, but a shout echoes behind her and she turns, clumsy, waves tugging at her legs. She slips and goes under, rocks and sand scraping her knees as water closes over her head. It burns her nostrils, chokes her.

  Hands close on her arms and pull her up. Siobhan’s wiry arm around her, dragging her onto the beach.

  “Don’t you bloody leave me,” the girl mutters. “Not like this.” They collapse on damp sand and Rebecca coughs and sputters as Siobhan slaps her back.

  “I wasn’t—” But she can’t explain that she wasn’t trying to die, that wasn’t the point at all, and then Siobhan is kissing her, stealing her words away.

  Nothing like cold mermaid kisses—Siobhan is warm and sweet, smoke and honeysuckle, muscles strong and lithe under smooth skin. Light spills from the hall, limns the planes and curves of her body, gleams yellow on metal.

  Rebecca lays her palm over the girl’s belly, feeling the rhythm of blood and breath, studying the line and contrast. Siobhan takes her hand, twining their fingers together.

  “Don’t leave me,” she whispers, “not tonight.”

  “Not tonight.” And Rebecca lowers her head to Siobhan’s breast, tugs the silver ring until she moans; they don’t speak again.

  But morning comes, and the conversation they can’t avoid. Rebecca explains the cancer, the diagnosis—four months, if she’s lucky.

  “Oh.” Siobhan’s blue-gray eyes widen. “Oh, god. I thought . . . ”

  “You thought I was just a drunk?” She chuckles wryly as the girl blushes.

  “I’m sorry about last night. I didn’t know you were in so much pain. It wasn’t my place to interfere.”

  “No, don’t be sorry.” She lights a cigarette, looking anywhere but those stricken eyes. “I never should have thought of leaving you with no explanation—it was a shitty thing to try.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She thinks of all the paintings back in the loft, all the pieces she’s started and abandoned in the last six months. Not much of a swansong. The cigarette burns in her hand, orange ember consuming paper and tobacco. Can webbed hands hold a brush?

  “I don’t know.”

  Another day with Siobhan, talking about paintings. Rebecca could give her a show—easy to imagine those haunting pictures hanging in her gallery. Easy to imagine the girl sprawled on the wide bed in her loft, purple-tipped hair rasping against the pillows. Kat would like her.

  They don’t talk about choices, about the future. That night Siobhan makes love like she’s already lost, like Rebecca is a ghost in her arms. A tear splashes Rebecca’s lips, a tiny ocean against her tongue.

  Eventually Siobhan’s breathing slows, deepens, and her arm around Rebecca relaxes. She doesn’t stir when a pillow replaces her lover.

  The tide is pulling out, leaving dark swathes of seaweed limp on the sand. This time Aoife waits on the beach, waves breaking around her ankles. She’s shed the white dress, along with any pretense of humanity. A creature of salt and bone, of razor spines and scales and writhing anemone hair. Rebecca meets her glowing eyes and it’s all she can do not to fall to her knees on the sand.

  Siren, sea goddess—Aoife could take her, drown her and eat her and give her bones to the hungry sea, and Rebecca would never regret it.

  But she doesn’t. Instead she steps forward, hand outstretched, and Rebecca sees the familiar in the other again. The necklace sparkles on her cousin’s white breast.

  “Please—” Her voice is fainter. Gill-slits flutter around her collarbones, below her ribs.

  Live three months in pain, or live forever with the woman she loves. How can such a choice be so hard to make?

  “Even the sea won’t wait forever,” Aoife says. “Come with me.”

  Before Rebecca can answer, those lumine
scent green eyes flicker over her shoulder, toward the cottage. She glances back, sees a slender shape silhouetted in the open doorway. Then the door closes.

  Rebecca moves forward, takes Aoife’s hand, kisses her cold salty lips. “I’m sorry.” She steps back, toward dry ground.

  “But you’ll die! Pain and death and rot—what kind of end is that?”

  “I’ve never been as brave as you.”

  “Don’t leave me again.” The tide draws back and Aoife slides with it.

  Third chance. Last chance. Rebecca bites her lip until copper washes over her tongue.

  “I’m sorry. I love you. I always will.”

  And she turns away from Aoife, away from the hungry sea, and walks up the hill to the cottage. The wind dries her tears.

  Siobhan sits at the kitchen table, pouring the last of the whiskey with a trembling hand. She startles as Rebecca walks in, and drops of amber liquid spill. The empty bottle clacks against wood.

  Rebecca wipes salt off her cheeks and tries to smile. “Have you ever been to New York?”

  The Mermaids Singing Each to Each

  Cat Rambo

  Niko leaned behind me in the cabin, raising his voice to be heard over the roar of engine and water, “When you Choose, which is it going to be? Boy or girl?”

  I would have answered, if I thought it really mattered to him. But we were off shore by then, headed for the Lump, and he was just making conversation, knowing how long it would take us to get there. He didn’t care whether I’d be male or female, I’d still be his pal Lolo. I could feel the boat listening, but she knew I didn’t want her talking, that I’d turn her off if she went too far.

  So I kept steering the Mary Magdalena and said I didn’t know, and it didn’t matter, unless we did manage to cash in on the Lump before the corp-strippers got there. After that we were silent again, and everything was just the engine rumble moving up through my feet. Jorge Felipe turned over in the hammock we’d managed to fit into the cabin, hammering the nails into the paneling to hang the hooks. He let out something that was either snore or fart or maybe both.

  Jorge Felipe was the one who had found out about the Lump. It was four or five kilometers across, the guy who’d spotted it said. Four or five kilometers of prime debris floating in the ocean, bits of old plastic and wood and Dios knew what else, collected by the currents, amassed in a single spot. All salvageable, worth five new cents a pound. Within a week, the corp-stripper boats would be out there, disassembling it and shoveling all that money into company machines, company mouths.

  But we were going to get there first, carve off a chunk, enough to pay us all off. I wanted to be able to Choose, and I couldn’t do that until I could pay the medical bill. Niko said he wasn’t saving for anything, but really he was—there’d be enough money that he could relax for a month and not worry about feeding his mother, his extended family.

  Jorge Felipe just wanted out of Santo Nuevo. Any way he could escape our village was fine with him, and the first step in that was affording a ticket. He wanted to be out before storm season hit, when we’d all be living on whatever we could manage until a new crop of tourists bloomed in the spring.

  Winter was lean times. Jorge Felipe, for all his placid snoring right now, feeling desperation’s bite. That’s why he was willing to cut me in, in exchange for use of the Mary Magdalena. Most of the time he didn’t have much to say to me. I gave him the creeps, I knew. He’d told Niko in order to have him tell me. But he didn’t have any other friends with boats capable of going out to carve off a chunk of the Lump and bring it in for salvage. And on my side of things, I thought he was petty and mean and dangerous. But he knew the Lump’s coordinates.

  I tilted my head, listened to the engines, checking the rhythms to make sure everything was smooth. The familiar stutter of the water pump from behind me was nothing to worry about, or the way the ballaster coughed when it first switched on. I knew all the Mary Magdalena’s sounds. She’s old, but she works, and between the hydroengines and the solar panels, she manages to get along.

  Sometimes I used to imagine crashing her on a reef and swimming away, leaving her to be covered with birdshit and seaweed, her voice lasting, pleading, as long as the batteries held out. Sometimes I used to imagine taking one of the little cutting lasers, chopping away everything but her defenseless brainbox, deep in the planking below the cabin, then severing its inputs one by one, leaving her alone. Sometimes I imagined worse things.

  I inherited her from my uncle Fortunato. My uncle loved his boat like a woman, and she’d do things for him, stretch out the last bit of fuel, turn just a bit sharper, that she wouldn’t do for me or anyone else. Like an abandoned woman, pining for a lover who’d moved on. I could have the AI stripped down and retooled, re-imprint her, but I’d lose all her knowledge. Her ability to recognize me.

  I’d left the cabin the way my uncle had it: his baseball cap hanging on the peg beside the doorway, his pin-up photos shellacked onto the paneling. Sometimes I thought about painting over the photos. But they reminded me of my uncle, reminded me not to forgive him. You would have thought they would have been enough, but maybe they just egged him on. Some people claim that’s how it goes with porn, more and more until a man can’t control himself.

  I can’t say my experience has confirmed this.

  Uncle Fortunato left me the Mary Magdalena from guilt, guilt about what he’d done, guilt that his niece had decided to go sexless, to put away all of that rather than live with being female. I was the first in the village to opt for the Choice, but not the first in the world by a long shot. It was fashionable by then, and a lot of celebrities were having it done to their children for “therapeutic reasons.” My grandmother, Mama Fig, said it was unnatural and against the Church’s law, and every priest in the islands came and talked to me. But they didn’t change my mind. There was a program funding it for survivors of sexual assault. That’s how I got it paid for, even though I wouldn’t tell them who did it.

  I couldn’t have him punished. If they’d put him away, my grandmother would have lost her only means of support. But I could take myself out of his grasp by making myself unfuckable. Neuter. Neuter until I wanted to claim a gender. They didn’t tell me, though, that getting in was free, but getting out would cost. Cost a lot.

  When I first heard he’d left the boat to me, I didn’t want her. I let her sit for two weeks gathering barnacles at dock before I went down.

  I wouldn’t have ever gone, but the winter was driving me crazy. No work to be found, nothing to do but sit home with my grandmother and listen to her worry about her old friend’s children and her favorite soap opera’s plotlines.

  When I did go to the Mary Magdalena, she didn’t speak until I came aboard. First I stood and looked at her. She’s not much, all told: boxy, thirty years out of date, a dumbboat once, tweaked into this century.

  I used to imagine pouring acid on her deck, seeing it eat away with a hiss and a sizzle.

  As I made my way up the gangplank, I could feel that easy sway beneath my feet. There’s nothing like being on a boat, and I closed my eyes just to feel the vertigo underfoot like a familiar friend’s hand on my elbow.

  I used to imagine her torn apart by magnets, the bolts flying outward like being dismantled in a cartoon.

  “Laura,” a speaker said, as though I hadn’t been gone for six years, as though she’d seen me every day in between. “Laura, where is your uncle?”

  I used to imagine her disintegrated, torn apart into silent atoms.

  “It’s not Laura anymore,” I said. “It’s Lolo. I’m gender neutral.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “You’ve got a Net connection,” I said. “Search around on ‘gender neutral’ and ‘biomod operation.’ ”

  I wasn’t sure if the pause that came after that was for dramatic effect or whether she really was having trouble understanding the search parameters. Then she said, “Ah, I see. When did you do that?”

&nb
sp; “Six years ago.”

  “Where is your uncle?”

  “Dead,” I said flatly. I hoped that machine intelligences could hurt and so I twisted the knife as far as I could. “Stabbed in a bar fight.”

  Her voice always had the same flat affect, but I imagined/hoped I could hear sorrow and panic underneath. “Who owns me now?”

  “I do. Just as long as it takes me to sell you.”

  “You can’t, Laura.”

  “Lolo. And I can.”

  “The licenses to operate—the tourism, the sport-fishing, even the courier license—they won’t transfer to a new owner. They won’t pay much for a boat they can’t use.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “You’d fetch a decent amount as scrap.”

  She paused again. “Keep me going, Lolo, and you can take in enough to keep yourself and Mama Fig going. Your uncle had ferrying contracts, and every season is good for at least a couple of trips with very cheap or eccentric tourists.”

  She had grace enough not to push beyond that. I didn’t have much choice, and it was the only way to support my grandmother and myself month to month. With the Mary Magdalena, I was better off than Niko or Jorge Felipe by far. I could afford the occasional new shirt or record, rather than something scavenged.

  At the end of a year, we’d reached an agreement. Most of the time now the boat knew better than to talk to me. She could have been with me everywhere. Button mikes gleamed along the front railing, in the john, even in the little lifeboat that hugged the side. But she stayed silent except in the cabin, where she would tell me depths, weather, water temperature. I told her which way to go. Businesslike and impersonal.

  Niko went out on deck. I didn’t blame him. It was too warm in the cabin. I knew the Mary Magdalena would alert me if there was any trouble, but I liked to keep an eye on things.

  Jorge Felipe stirred, stuck his head out over the hammock’s edge. His dark hair stuck out in all directions, like broken broom straws.

  “Morning yet?” he rasped.

  “Couple more hours.”

  “Where’s Niko?”