Bewitching (27 page)

“Forever!” No wonder, then, that the sailor was unafraid of sinking below the sea.

“And angels,” my grandmother continued, “are believed by some to be souls that have grown wings, kindhearted souls who watch over the living. They wear beautiful dresses and golden crowns on their heads, and they have long, beautiful golden hair…”

“Like me?” I fingered my own golden locks.

“Indeed,” my grandmother said. “And blue eyes like yours too.”

“And … and would they help the living…?” I remembered the sailor’s words: “… at the hour of my death.”

My grandmother, who was very wise, nodded. “Some believe these Daughters of the Air bring the soul to heaven, a kingdom in the sky.”

A kingdom in the sky! From that day on, whenever I saw a shipwreck, I made it my aim to find the dying sailors and act as an angel, holding their hands and comforting them as they died. Even as I watched them thrash and suffer, freeze and drown, even as I imagined the despair of the human women and children who would wait for them on shore, I envied them. These men, the lowliest as well as the highest, had a soul, an “immortal soul,” as my grandmother had said, which meant they would live forever, simply because they were human. I imagined the kingdom in the sky as being much like our kingdom beneath the water. But where our kingdom was composed of coral and the shells of dead sea creatures, theirs would be made of clouds. Where ours was all darkness, theirs would be bathed in light.

I wanted to go there. More than that, I wanted to live forever and be an angel, a Daughter of the Air.

When I told my sisters this, they laughed. “That is nonsense,” Mariel said. “We mermaids are the most beautiful creatures in the sea, which takes up more than half the earth’s surface. Their world is a land of bad smells and rocky places!”

“A place where the sun blazes and the night air freezes the water,” agreed Marina. “Far better to be a mermaid, even for our short time.”

I pretended to agree with them, but secretly, I longed to see the beauty of the shore.

Finally, finally my fifteenth birthday came. On that day, I swam with my sisters as close to shore as I could. Then they left me to make the rest of the way myself.

“Will you not come with me?” I asked Marina and Sirena, Mariel, Damarion, and Meredith.

“We have seen it once,” said Meredith. “That is enough.” And they waved their good-byes.

At first, I was scared to proceed without them. But soon, curiosity took hold, and I swam closer.

Nearer the shore, I saw many things, tiny boats with little white sails that that bobbed merrily atop the waves. People waded in, strangely dressed in such billowing clothes that, at first, I believed they were angels. But on closer view, I saw that they had neither crowns nor wings and, in fact, were very much alive. No. This must be how female humans looked. They shrieked in fear when the smallest wave hit them, then collapsed in giggles.

I dared not swim too near, lest they see me. I dove under the water and swam far away, pausing sometimes to glance at the fisherman and the tidy, tiny houses that lined the seaside.

Finally, I found what I sought. It was the building that most resembled our mansions beneath the waves. Like our homes, it was constructed of coral and rock and stood much taller than the other buildings, its spires reaching into the clouds. Unlike our homes, the openings in the side were filled with multicolored jewels, and these jewels formed pictures.

And one of those pictures—I was certain of it—was an angel. She was a beautiful woman clad in white. Her wings of gold were silhouetted against the bright blue sky. The light glinted off her, and she sparkled.

I floated, staring, for the longest time, until a voice interrupted my reverie.

“Hey, would you looka that, Mama?”

“What, dear?” another voice said.

“Over by the rocks. It’s a mermaid!”

I dove beneath the waves to hide.

I swam very hard and very far. It was still early. I could have gone to another place, seen something else. It was my birthday after all. But I was too afraid of being found out. Besides, now that I had seen the angel, I wanted nothing more. Her jeweled image was printed upon my brain forever.

So I returned home.

When my sisters saw me, they said, “Ha! You’ve returned early. Nothing to see, eh?”

“No,” I said, “nothing to see.” I did not wish to tell them the truth, for if they knew how I longed to return again and again to the shore, they would watch me. If I pretended lack of interest, they would let me alone. I could go as I pleased.

Which is what I did. At first, I waited several days in case the boy had told someone about me.

But I heard nothing about it, so I began to return periodically to shore. My main—indeed, my only—purpose was to search for more angels. I became fascinated, obsessed by them. However, since I could not walk as humans did, I could only find those near the shore. Once, I saw one on the bow of a ship, a winged creature carved in wood. Usually, though, I kept returning to that one glass-jeweled image of the angel. On some days, early in the morning, I heard the most beautiful music emanating from behind the image. Singing. Not singing as merfolk sang, which lured men to their deaths. Instead, the voices I heard sang of worship and rejoicing, and they sang of heaven, the place in the sky where only humans could go.

Still I looked for sailors and the shipwrecks, still held their hands and comforted them, pretending to be an angel. But now that I had seen a real angel, I felt an emptiness at being a false one.

Our castle was located in the cold waters near Newfoundland. It was nearly spring, and we knew that the temperature would soon warm. But, for now, my sisters and I enjoyed playing amongst the icebergs.

But, one night, when the sky was clear and dappled with stars, I saw by their light the strangest thing, an iceberg with a bit of red upon it.

I swam closer to get a look. Was it blood? (I hoped not.) Or a bit of ribbon? (I hoped so.) Upon closer examination, I found that it was what my grandmother called paint, which humans used to color the hulls of their ships.

A ship must have struck an iceberg and left behind some of her lovely red paint.

And then, I heard the screaming!

Not merely one scream or ten, but hundreds; not only men but women’s voices too.

I could barely see in the star-spotted darkness but I plunged underwater where my vision was keener, and began to swim in the direction of the voices.

Yet, when I resurfaced closer, the voices were no louder, as if some of them had faded away.

Closer still, I realized why they had faded. The first I saw was a woman, sickly white and so cold, despite the shawl wrapped around her shoulders. The second was the same, and the third, a little girl holding a tiny animal. They were dead, floating, frozen. I closed my eyes. I could not look.

I reminded myself that this was a happy scene. These people, these humans, were gone to live with the angels, to inhabit the starry sky forever.

Then, I heard a voice, so soft I could barely recognize it was real.

“Can you … help me?”

I turned and looked across the still, black water. It was a boy, a boy near my own age, or perhaps a bit older. He was more beautiful, though, than any merboy I had ever seen, with light brown hair and eyes black as mussel shells.

I knew he was dying.

I also knew I should comfort him, should give him my hand and assure him he would live forever in the sky. Yet I did not want him to die. He was so beautiful, I wanted him to live. I wanted him to live with me.

Thus, with an instinct sure as the instinct that counseled me to fish or to swim, I plunged through the icy water and swam toward him. Once there, I seized the boy and wrapped my arms around him. He had on some sort of soft, white, cloudlike clothing, and through it, I could feel his heartbeat. So slow! Was it because he was dying?

My first instinct was to pull him beneath the sea, to take him home to our castle. I knew he could not breathe under the water. If I took him with me, I would gain nothing but a beautiful, frozen corpse.

And yet, his ship was gone. I could see it when I looked beneath the water, its golden contents still spiraling toward the ocean floor. The land was so far away that I was sure the boy, with his slow heartbeat, would die before we reached it.

That was when I saw a light.

At first, I thought it was the moon, reflected on the black waves. But then, it hit me in the eyes, and I saw that it was a human light such as I had seen on ships that passed at night. Someone was there!

With not a moment to spare, I grabbed the boy tighter and began to pull him toward the light. He moaned softly at being wrested away. I took this as a sign of life, and I said, “Yes! Yes! Go ahead! Just another minute! Please, don’t die.”

“What? Who?”

“I am Doria. I will save you.”

He went limp in my arms. Still, I felt his heart beating. No time to speak. My arms gripped. My tail churned. I plunged forward through the icy waves.

The light? Where was the light? Was it merely an illusion caused by my own desperate hopes? I turned first one way, then the other, searching for a sign of it. Nothing.

“Who is that?” A voice!

“No one there,” another said. “None could live so long in such cold water.”

The humans! They were there! I splashed my tail, heedless of the risk of being seen, forgetting everything but the beautiful boy I held in my arms, everything but that he should live on the same earth I inhabited.

“There is someone! He’s splashing!”

With the boy, I swam closer to the little white boat. I waved.

“He’s there! Get him!”

“No, Mr. Lowe! He’ll capsize the boat!”

“We cannot just let him die!”

I swam through the black water, still holding the boy, shoving him ahead of me. They could not leave him. Finally, I reached out, and with one hand, touched the boat’s side.

“Hey, there’s two of them!”

They couldn’t see me, couldn’t find me. I tried to push the boy in front of me, concealing myself. As soon as they took him, I would swim away. I had done my part. I had saved him.

And then, I felt something, hands on my shoulders, lifting me, taking not just the boy, but both of us, onto the boat.

I tried to struggle, to keep from being pulled up. They could not see me. Yet refusing to go would give me away just as much. Finally, I let them take me up, and I tucked my tail beneath me, the darkness as my shield. The truth was, I wanted to stay. Most of the small boat’s passengers sat, eyes glazed with sleeplessness and maybe fright, staring ahead. A young woman with blond hair much like my own dozed in back. Only two men, the ones who had pulled us in, paid attention.

No. A third passenger, a young woman. Her eyes flicked downward. She had seen my tail. I was certain. I wanted to jump overboard. Yet, when her eyes met mine again, she gave no sign of anything awry. She said, “Oh, you poor dear, let me give you my coat.”

Before I could protest, she’d stripped it off and wrapped it around me. It was a long coat, which covered every trace of what I was.

“Poor dear,” she cooed again. “You must be half frozen. What is your name?”

I glanced at the boy. He was unconscious, it seemed. Yet I could see he was breathing, for his teeth chattered. “I’m fine. Help him.”

“I’ll help both of you.” She laid her hands on my shoulders, and suddenly, I felt warm, like a summer’s day in the Gulf of Mexico. “Better?”

“Yes.”

She did the same to the boy. His teeth ceased chattering.

“I am Bessie,” the woman said. Her eyes were lovely, green.

“Thank you, Bessie. You saved his—our—lives.”

The boy stared at me. To my amazement, he had recovered enough to speak already. “You saved mine. I was … thrashing in that water, watching death all around. I had no time. But then, I saw your face, the face of an angel. Where did you come from?”

I was dumbstruck. How could I explain my sudden appearance?

Bessie said, “Silly boy. She was in the water the whole time. Where else would she have been?”

“I don’t know.” His black eyes shone. All merfolk have eyes the color of the sea. His were so beautiful. “She seemed to come from beneath the water.”

Bessie glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “Under this water? She’d be dead, sure as day!”

The boy shook his head. “It just seemed like she came by magic.”

Bessie laughed and turned back to me. “Did I clean your cabin, Miss? E deck?”

I recovered enough to say, “Oh, yes. Yes.” I had no idea what a cabin was. Or a deck. But I realized she was trying to change the subject. “Yes.”

“Not that it matters now, I suppose. Your cabin, everything in it is sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Lost. Lost.”

“Lost,” I repeated, remembering the great ship I had seen, still sinking, down, down. How many were on board when it sunk? How many went to sleep, never to awaken?

“Two thousand two hundred twenty-three,” Bessie said.

“What?” I said.

“How many were on board,” Bessie said. “And us few on the boats, seven hundred and six in all, we are the only ones who survived. The rest are sleeping, deep, deep under the waves.”

“Their souls gone to heaven!” I could picture them, their souls white as angels, flying up through the air, looking nothing like the bloated, floating cadavers I’d seen around me.

“I would be there, but for you, my angel!” the boy said.

“Oh, no, no,” I protested. Mermaids were not supposed to save human lives. We were allowed only to watch, barely even that.

“You did!” he said.

“No!” I wanted to leave, to jump, to leap from the lifeboat and swim away. Yet I didn’t want to because I wanted to sit longer with this boy, this boy whose face was more beautiful with every passing moment.

Instead, I did the only other thing I could think to do.

I sang. I sang one of the songs known to the merfolk, my high, clear voice sounding through the cold, starry night.

Under the ocean, seaweed for a bed
,

Shells for a pillow, cradle his head
.