Deeper (11 page)

Chapter 13

The mer world is full of song.  We sing to our babies, or to tell the pod sisters where we are, or because the rain is falling.  Under the sea, our voices mingle with the whales and the dolphins, the clicking turtles, the
silvertails and the shrimp.  Their music is beautiful – and useful, because you can follow it to food, or away from a pod of white bellies.

But you – your music is like lobsters being cut up alive, or
females giving birth to their first pup.  That first night, you went over to a corner, fiddled with some object - and suddenly a human voice began to screech, against the noise of bangings and scrapings and long drawn out clicks like porpoises in pain.  I cowered and hid my face. 

You
grimaced, sighed, fiddled again, and there was silence, except for the slap of the waves on the rocks below.  I felt the awkwardness grow between us.

You started to speak, then stopped and made a
helpless face.  If I’d known how hard it would be, I would’ve asked Grandmother for speech instead of legs.  You didn’t know what to do with your crippled, wordless guest.  You began to tap your foot, a nervous flick of the tail you didn’t have.

I understood. 
I closed my eyes, so that you’d think I was asleep and you could leave me be.  Under my lids, I saw you staring, now at my face, then at my body, and up again.  You stroked the hair on your belly absently, stopped.  You chewed a fingernail.

I let my mouth fall open and my breathing come steady.  You got up, with a final glance
, and went to sit in another part of the cave.  You took something up on your lap, and worked at it with your fingers, as if you were weaving.  Now you were staring at this thing, not at me, your face glowing silver brown.  I think after a while you almost forgot that I was there.

I peered at you
sidewise.  Sometimes, your lips moved as if you were talking to yourself.  Your hair hung uncombed in the afternoon sunlight, tangled over your lean cheeks.  You had red spots on your legs, and some on your neck, as if something small had bitten you again and again.  You had a long pink weal on one leg: maybe a stinger had got you.  You had a scar on your right temple, deep and red.  I remembered how you’d got that one.  You had a shiny loop in one ear, stuck in the fat circle of skin hanging down from your ear cavity, that no mer has.  You had toenails full of dirt and sand.  I went to sleep, too tired to care what happened.

When I woke
I was hungry again. I couldn’t see you anywhere, but the sun was setting red beyond the rocks.  I pulled myself off the covered soft thing, and crawled painfully on my hands and my new, strange, bendable legs, across the floor to the hard water.  It felt like cool smooth rock, but I could see straight through it.  I couldn’t get out, though.  I ran my hand up and down and across, put my nose against it, felt it push back, flattening my cheeks.  You found me pressed up against it, staring out at the darkening sea through a mist of my own breath.

You
stretched out your hands to help me up, and I held them, and tried to get up. A pain like a knife slicing up through my foot to the parting of my legs threw me down again, hissing in fear.  You dropped my hands, scared of the sudden noise.  How to explain?

“I’m alright,” I said, and was.  The pain
sank to an ache, as long as I didn’t try to stand.  I smiled, so you’d understand.

I tapped at the hard water, and looked at you.
  What is it?  We would have to speak to one another, for me to survive here.  How could you come to love me if we didn’t understand one another?

I tapped again, looked at you.

“Door?” you said, puzzled.  “Glass?”

D
oorglass.  If I was going to live with you, I had to learn your language.  Doorglass.

You leaned across me and gently, sl
owly pulled the hard water aside.  I’d seen you do that before, from a distance.  I put my hand out and pulled like you did, back and forth, open, shut, and giggled, because it was the first thing I’d managed to do in this new human world and get right!

You sat and just looked at me for what seemed like a very long time, and I looked back at you.  I took in the strangeness of your face.  You had no
thing of the pale green and sand-white colouring of the mer – your skin was a uniform sort of coconut-shell brown, and your eyes were mud and egg-white.  Dry, your hair was more gold than dark.  It reminded me of the bright, swirling specks in the current of the channels when the sand was washed out toward the sea.  I could see the skull under your face, pushing through the thin skin – sharp cheekbones, a nose like a headland, lips a line in wet sand.  My eyes travelled over you, remembering.  You’d given me a covering, of bone-white, and it covered my legs to the waist.   Your eyes passed over my teats and hovered, moved aside.  You wanted to look at my body but you were embarrassed, for some reason.  You thought you should not.

You pointed at yourself.

“Daniel,” you said.

D
aniel.  You.  Daniel.  I made the noise deep in my throat. Daniel.  It still came out high-pitched.

I held my own face.

“Melur”

Melur
, you repeated, but in your deep voice, so it sounded like you were trying to say it under water, with your fingers up your nose.  Melur.

You pointed to your legs, and gestured towards mine, raising your eyebrows.

What’s wrong with your legs?

How could I explain Grandmother’s dark magic, to
you.  Then again, maybe you had magic of your own. Maybe you’d think I was some kind of injured human, from a pod far away perhaps, where they didn’t understand how things were done here.  I spread my hands, like you had.

You shook your head, and went away, and came back with a thin white
square, and a pointed thing, and you sat down beside me, next to the door glass, and drew the point over the white thing, and made marks on it – which meant nothing to me.  But my sisters and I used to draw pictures on rocks and on the sand, so I took the marker from you and the thin white thing – and drew a picture of a fish in the sea.  I was desperately hungry, and not for that white stuff.  Bread.

I made biting, chewing motions, hoping you’d understand.  You did – you came back with a round container, filled with pink stuff, like the cud Grandmother spits out when she’s finished digesting crab with her three teeth.  But I smelled it, and it
smelled of fish.

I leant my face down towards it, and you made a sudden noise
– no, not like that -and poked a silver thing at me.

I wanted to eat more than anything! I hadn’t eaten
properly since the night that Che had swum in with me to the bay.

I
looked at you despairingly, and leaned down again, my tongue snaking out. You took the container away, and thrust the silver thing at me, as if you wanted me to eat that instead.

Some kind of
riddle, that I had to solve before I could eat.  My eyes followed the fish.

Slowly, you put the silver thing into the container, and brought out a tiny piece of
chewed up pink mush, and put it in your mouth. 

Were YOU going to eat it?
In front of me?  I hissed, swallowed.  Of course.  You had to eat first, you were the male.  Perhaps I had to catch my own fish.

But then you held out the silver thing to me.  I opened my mouth and you put
it inside.  To me, starving, even this pre-digested fish-stuff tasted good – and that even though it seemed you wanted me to eat it piece by piece with a silver stick!  I took the stick and scraped out the container, and would have licked the remains out of it – but I saw you looking at me and I guessed you wouldn’t like it.  We were learning one another.

I was still hungry though.  I made chewing motions
and touched my belly – you seemed to understand that – and you brought me more bread– which wasn’t very nice, and made me feel sick, but I ate it anyway, to be polite.

You drew a picture of
a floater.

You?
Melur? Home?

I smiled and nodded. 
If you thought I came from a floater that would help.

You
brought a round shiny thing, blotched blue and green and red, raised your eyebrows.  I had no idea what you were asking.  To stop your questions, I pointed and asked my own questions.

“
What is it?”

“India?” you
said, cautiously.

India.  The shiny thing
was India?

Seeing me learning, y
ou were eager now to teach.

“That.”  I pointed to the thing you sat on.

“Chair”, you said.  I repeated it.  Chair.

“And this?”

“Table.”

I pointed.

“Couch.” 

That was the covered thing I’d been lying on.  Couch.

I waved the silver thing in front of your face.  If I had to eat everything with it, I’d better know what it was.

“
Spoon.”

You liked this game of ours.  You watched your
pet crab scuttle, not cruel, but curious.

I picked up the empty container.
I wondered if you ate a lot of this kind of stuff.  Did you ever eat real fish from the sea.  I looked longingly towards the water.  Perhaps sometimes I could slide into the water and catch some real fish for us to eat – that is, if I was still fast enough and quiet enough.  I hadn’t caught anything since Grandmother took my tail from me. But then, I’d never get down to the beach unless you carried me.  Unless I walked.

“This?” I signed.

Salmon, you said.  On the container, a picture of a leaping fish.  I didn’t know that fish, I’d never seen one like it in the Channels or even in Deep Sea.  I knew lots of other fish though.

I drew you a picture
of the striped one that lives in the coral.

Clown fish?

I told you the mer for it, ikhbathe, and you tried to repeat it, puzzled.  We speak in high, singing tones, like the wind over piled sand.  Every time you tried to say a word in mer, it came out hoarse and flat and without meaning.  I thought, it’s going to be easier in pictures.  We drew.

“L
ubh”

“D
olphin”

“Y
uur”

“S
hark”

“M
eraai”

“S
eal”

“B
eluth”

“E
el”

“P
enyuu”

“T
urtle”

“
Ichthanne”

“R
ay”

You knew
most of the fish I drew, but some you didn’t, so you brought a flat thing and pulled it apart, and inside were all kinds of things that lived in the sea.  Some of them I hadn’t seen – a big silvertail that you called cod, black and white birds that dived from white cliffs, seals covered with fur.  Some were from the black Deep.  I’d never seen them alive, though sometimes dead.  Mer can’t dive to those places, so dark your eyes can’t see and your lungs get too full to hold the air.  Mer babies soon learn how deep they can go – never out of sight of the light, that was what the mothers said.

You left me lying there, with the
sea-pictures beside me, while you sat with your drawing board and made marks on it, looking at me every now and again all the while.  I thought maybe you were drawing a picture of me, and was pleased - but when I caught a look at it, it wasn’t at all – just black marks that meant nothing at all, not then. At least you hadn’t thrown me back, yet.

Chapter 14

I slept badly that first night in your cave, waking from dreams where you came with a long sharp knife to skin me, and crunched me up with a spoon and put me in a container like the salmon.  On the container was the sign of my totem, so you could see what was in there, when you came to eat it.  In one dream I managed to slide away from you and out the doorglass – but then rolled down your long rocky path and felt the sharp stones at the bottom pierce me in many different places, while you stood with a red light in your mouth, looking down.

When the dawn came I was even hungrier than the night before, and I needed to pee, too. 
I’d normally go to the water and do it but that wasn’t an option here.  In the cool dawn you were snoring in your own place.  I couldn’t see you but I could hear you, wheezing and muttering like a sick old tortoise. So I pulled myself over to the door and let the urine run down the stones outside.

Wanting food, I
went to where you kept it, but it was too high for me to reach from the floor.  I tried to stand on my new legs, pulling myself up with my arms on the wooden shelf.  As soon as I put my weight on the five toed feet, the pain ripped and tore and I had to let go. 

I
crashed to the hard wooden floor and screeched like a gull.  Your wheezing stopped in a great snort, and I felt your feet treading towards me, heavy and stumbling. You crouched down beside me and put your hand out to me to pull me up.  I wriggled away, hiding my hands.  You sighed, clicked.

I gestured upwards, towards the food. 
You reached up and pulled down containers and showed them to me one by one.  None of those things smelled at all like something anybody could eat.  But some had pictures of things you might eat – some kind of green plant, some fish, an egg.  Food in your world always seemed to come in a container with a picture on it.  If Grandmother had only had those things for her pouches, I thought – nobody need ever have gone searching for the chewing weed, or the little dried fish, or the net-weaving needles.

You pulled down a container, opened it,
ran your finger inside.  It came out smeared with a black, salty paste.  You held your finger out to me and I sucked it.  It wasn’t bad – I like salty things.  You handed the container to me and I stuck my tongue inside.  For a moment you looked angry, like Father when you ate something in front of him – and then you grinned, and laughed outright, sitting beside me on the floor with your head in your hands.  I laughed back at you, and licked the black stuff from my lips and then my fingers.  It was sticky as mud but tasty as oysters.  You bent down and you wiped my hands with another piece of weave.  You had weave for everything – weave for clothes, weave for covering – couches – weave for covering tables, for washing things, for drying things.  You had containers for everything, too.

You took down another
container, made of something hard that I could see through, and squeezed out a white paste like bird shit.

“
I don’t want to eat that!”

              I shook my head. 

You pulled my
finger and dipped it in.  I sucked it cautiously – and liked it! I’d never tasted anything like that before, I didn’t even have a name for the touch on my tongue.  I reached in to get more - and remembered that you didn’t like me eating things with my hands.  You liked me to eat with that hard silver stick, with a scoop at one end.

Spoon?

You cocked your head. You looked like a tired turtle, with your big rounded eyelids and your eyes pouched underneath.

Spoon.

I wasn’t saying it right.

Spoon.

You reached for a silver stick with a scoop, held it out to me.  I’d done it! I’d made you understand!  I laughed with relief.  Spoon!  You put out the food you’d got out, low down where I could reach, and with the spoon I had some of this, then some of that.  Some were horrible but I didn’t spit, I knew you didn’t like that.  I swallowed them down and took smaller pieces on the – spoon – next time.  You just looked, grinning, knees to your prickled chin.  I grinned back, the pain forgotten.

You left me to
go stare at your shining box.  I watched you as your fingers flowed and lifted, with small clicking noises as they moved.  Later, you gave me water, and made sounds on a piece of wood strung with silver gut, and sang.  The sound of the strings was like nothing I’d ever heard –not pleasant – but the singing I understood.  Your singing was like your talking, growling and rough and lower than even Father could reach, in a bad mood. I couldn’t say I liked it.  But it was yours, so I listened and smiled.

When you stopped, I sang
my own song to you, thinking maybe you’d understand the feelings if not the words.  You lay back on the covered – on the couch – and I sang about all the things I’d like you to see – the channels, the fish flowing through the water in a shining stream, my sisters sitting on the rocks fixing each other’s inlays, the sun coming in strong shafts down through the cool green water…  All these things were my secret.  I sang about you, too, and how I’d like to lie with you in the clear water, and about your hair silver as sand and your nose proud as a palm tree.  I made it up as I went along, laughing, as mer sometimes do in courting, when they’re both young and silly.  Still, you listened and when I finished, you smiled and hit one hand against the other – I think from your expression that meant that you liked it.

As I sang
, I caught you glancing at me, assessing, wondering.  I stopped, and pulled myself down from the couch, and over to your knees as you sat.  I put my head close to your thighs, and then, because I was close, I sniffed at you.  You smelled a little of sea – I guess because you walk in it and live by the shore –but mostly of dry dirt and human maleness. 

You let me
smell, then you bent down to me, and you smelled me too, and your mouth turned down.  You didn’t like my smell.  I’d been out of the water for days now and I smelt different and bad – not of mer, not of human, but something in between.  You got up, and I heard the sound of water running into a pool.  You had your own pool of water, up on your rock?  Why not? Grandmother had hers.  I pushed myself away from the door and pulled myself after you, to find the water. 

Seeing me wriggle across the floor, y
ou picked me up in your arms, as you had that first time on the beach.  You took me to a place with white walls.  Your pool was there, the water still running into it from a silver tube. 

I looked at the pool, and then at you.  Steam came up from the water, as it had from the first drink you gave me, and I felt its heat in the room. 
Burning drinks, now you were going to drop me into burning water.  You liked to burn your food, I’d noticed that.  I linked my arms tight around your neck.  I wouldn’t let you drop me in.  I’d cling to you and pull you in with me, we’d burn together. I hissed my fright.

You leant down and I felt my skin touch the water.  I
jerked away, imagining the heat and pain – but it was just warm like the water that collects in the shallow back ways of the channels in summer, and doesn’t flush out with the tides – no, warmer than that and clearer!  It was more than lovely!  I rolled in it, feeling the water rise soft over my sore skin.  You smoothed my hair, a cloud of ink in the water.  You were a little afraid of me as I was of you, but in a different way, I think.  As if you thought I might come apart in your hands.

I thought you’d leave then and go back to your
moon box – lap top, you called it.  I wanted you to go away and let me enjoy this thing all by myself. My own pool!  My own clear, rain fresh, sun warm pool!

But you sat next to me,
on a chair, and smeared sharp smelling green stuff on my head, and rubbed it in.  White froth dribbled down the sides of my face, an old man seal.  You pulled your hands through my hair as it lay in the water, till the green stuff turned grey-white and floated over my body like pond scum.  You lifted the ropes heavy with wet and wrapped one around your brown finger.  Your nails were short and white and chipped.

I
did wonder then whether you were really a male.  Perhaps I’d made a mistake.  Mer females love to play with hair, stroking and combing and plaiting.  Males don’t play with each other’s hair, or their own. 

Thinking of my sisters, even vain
Azura, made me feel homesick for them.  I must have looked woebegone, because your hand moved from my hair to my forehead and down my nose to draw a gentle circle around my lips, so much broader than yours. You pulled the corners up into a smile. I pulled you towards the water, to share it with you, but you pulled away and got up. Uh uh, you said.  Wrong again.

You went away, and gratefully I rolled over
on my stomach and sank my face underneath the water.  It felt almost like home – almost – to be submerged in this little white pool.  I opened my eyes and looked at the floor and sides, curving gently around me.  Underneath the water, I could hear the sounds of my own blood like waves in my ears.

After a while, I felt your hands pulling me up
by the shoulders and away, turning me.  I looked into your face, surprised, and I saw that you were quite terrified.  I didn’t have a clue why.  I reached up to comfort you, ran my finger along your bony nose.  You pulled me out, half the water coming with me.  You were still breathing fast as we stood dripping, my body tight against your chest.  You wrapped me up in one of your coverings, and laid me down on the soft thing as if I was a strange, delicate shell, nearly lost to the sea.  Couch, I repeated to myself, feeling warm and happy and safe.  Couch.