Girl at the Bottom of the Sea (6 page)

The mermaids' heads and hearts spun with confusion and despair. “But we are a nation!” cried one elder. “How dare they not reckon with us!”

“Maid, they do not reckon with one another,” the warrior said softly, at last allowing a glimmer of her own sadness to show. “They will not reckon with us. We must prepare. They come deeper and deeper into our waters.”

Syrena was curled on the lap of the mermaid who had first claimed her when she swam into the village, the one who had cared for her the most. She wrapped Syrena in her great, strong braids, binding the baby to her chest. Syrena's chubby tail wiggled in the water and her fist clutched and rattled the seedpod she kept as a toy. The older mermaid hugged baby Syrena tightly and cried into her soft hair. Only one other baby had swum into the village since Syrena had appeared nearly a year ago—her sister, Griet. She was being bounced on the tail of another tearful mermaid close by, teething her new canines on a thick chunk of the mermaid's hair. The two baby mermaids, Syrena and Griet, had beaten the odds and made it to the village. And as the village cast its vote, so it was decided that no more would.

“Only for a time,” the elders said, hoping to take the edge off the younger mermaids' sadness.

“Only for a time,” the mermaids all repeated to one another, their voices strained with desperate hope.

“Only for a time,” they consoled themselves as they set their eggs adrift in the sea, turning their backs to the schools of fish gathered for a feeding frenzy. They swallowed the foam meant to protect their creations, choking on its bitter taste.

Chapter 6

W
hen Sophie awoke, the first thing she thought was,
I can move!
She kicked her legs out beneath her and brought her arms up in a long, delicious stretch. Oh, it felt so
good
to have a body! How strange had been these past days when she'd been reduced to a sort of amoeba, a brain inside a shell—like a clam, she thought, but even clams could move. Cuddled into the crook of Syrena's great tail, Sophie grew excited at the thought of swimming alongside the mermaid. There, at the bottom of the sea, it was easy to forget a world existed above them, but it did. And Sophie would see it.
Poland.
What would it be like? She found herself yearning to see the sun again. She could barely remember what it felt like to stand beneath its yellowy glow.

Bringing her hands to her face to wipe away the mud and bits of mermaid scale stuck to her cheeks from using Syrena's tail as a pillow, Sophie started. Her hands had been clenched into fists since the great wave had pounded her, and now, as she spread her fingers, she found tucked inside her palm a bit of softness, iridescent in the glow of her talisman. A feather.

Livia.

Sophie remembered the moments before her grandmother summoned the waters, when she'd plucked from the sky above her
Livia
, graceful and sweet-hearted, the pigeon whose love was so pure and true Sophie could still feel it inside her—the bird's love for her crotchety husband and their beautiful children, her love for the humans who had lost their way and fallen into cruelty, her love for Sophie, the girl the pigeons had spoken of for so long, anticipating her coming. Livia had helped her and Livia had loved her. And it was because of Sophie that Livia was dead. Sophie's tears squeezed from her eyes and merged with the sea; she was her own sad creek, sending trickles of salt into the ocean.

It was this way that Syrena found her, crumbled into a wet heap of a girl, Livia's feather held tight in her hand. Syrena knew at once what was paining Sophie. She'd known that once Sophie regained her faculties, great grief was awaiting her. So Syrena came to her, wrapped her tail around the girl and stroked her hair with her long, cool fingers.

“What will Arthur do?” Sophie cried to the mermaid. Arthur with his hobbled feet, wounded from the chemicals people left out to try to rid the streets of pigeons. How Arthur had relied on Livia for her strength and humor and love. It was Livia's brightness that kept cranky Arthur from sliding too deeply into hurt and anger. What would he become without her?

“Arthur will get by without her,” the mermaid said resolutely. She knew the girl might find her cold, but there was nothing to be done about it. Lives passed so quickly on land that the creatures who dwelled there could never become accustomed to death. In the oceans, life spanned millennia, and so thousands of deaths are witnessed and one learned to accept it. Syrena had lived for many years and had witnessed many wars and many atrocities in the sea and on the banks of her river, and she knew that she accepted Arthur's plight in a way Sophie could not. She could feel the girl's heart rage against it. Syrena could not tell if this feeling of humans was a sweet thing or an annoyance. They were like small children in this way, forever confused by the ways of life, of death's inherent part in it. But of course it was sweet. The mermaid could feel the pounding of love behind the girl's tears.

So Syrena let Sophie cry, but after a time the mermaid knew they must move on. She saluted the brave life of the dead bird, and the sorrow of the family she had left behind. And then it was time to go. They were still in the middle of the Atlantic; they had a long way to travel.

“I will teach you some swimming tricks now.” Syrena gave the girl a last pat and pulled back her tail. “You are ready.”

Sophie, still mourning for Livia and her flock, suddenly bristled at the way the mermaid always spoke her questions as statements. “It's not ‘You are ready,'” she corrected sharply. “It's ‘Are you ready?' or ‘You are ready?'”

“As I said,” Syrena replied. “You are ready. Don't be dumb.”

“‘You are
ready
?'” Sophie stressed through gritted teeth, bringing her voice up at the end. “You
ask
. Otherwise it's rude.” She pulled at the stringy tendrils hanging from the bottom of her cutoff shorts, annoyed.

“What is—rude? When I speak to you plain and direct like mermaid speak? You can't handle it? I say too bad for you,” Syrena snorted, tiny bubbles flaring from her nose. “Humans have hardly any life and spend most of it crying. If worst thing to happen to you today is mermaid rudeness, I think good day for you, ya? Now, come. We swim. You are ready.”

“Since you are
asking
, no, I am
not
ready,” Sophie said, barely containing the tears building hotly again behind her eyes. “I'm trying to deal with the fact that someone I love is
dead
, and other people I love are in pain and danger, and it's all
my fault
!” The sob burst forth, a shimmer in the water around Sophie's face. She glared at the mermaid as if she were a monster.

Syrena shrugged, feeling the girl's thoughts. “Well, I am what you call
monster
,” she allowed. “More or less. I know is sad Livia gone. More reason we swim now. Must fight Kishka, yes? Avenge your friend? You don't fight Kishka with crying.”

Syrena plucked the feather from Sophie's hand, and before the girl could protest she was at work deftly braiding it into Sophie's long, messy hair. “You on your way to becoming real mermaid,” she said with something like tenderness. “So much tangle in your hair!”

The touch of the mermaid's fingers could not help but calm Sophie down. The stroke and scratch of Syrena's nails as she wove
locks around Livia's feather soothed her. She closed her eyes, and her tears came slower. Steady, but slower. The rush of memory was almost too much. Dr. Chen—how she loved her birds! How she had woven the lovely flute into Livia's tails with affection and care. Angel, who had been on the banks of the creek as the rogue wave descended. Her mother, all alone without Sophie's protection. Even Ella, left to a different sort of peril, her own compulsions and the compulsions of the boys she now spent her time with. How could Sophie help them—how could she help anyone, a million miles beneath the ocean, in the earth's darkest place?

“I think we've made a mistake,” she said to the mermaid. “What are we doing here? We've got to go back! We've got to help everyone! Why did we leave Chelsea?” Sophie was wracked with urgency and homesickness.

“You must trust, Sophie,” Syrena said, patting her hair into place.

The feather was braided so that it hung along the girl's cheek, brushing it gently. Sophie reached out and touched it, pulling it before her eyes. Even in the darkness, the rainbow sheen of Livia's feather glinted, iridescent.

“Thanks,” Sophie said softly.

“Is true we must get out of here,” Syrena said briskly. “So—you are ready now.”

“‘
Are
you ready now?'” Sophie corrected. “And yes,” she sighed. “I am.”

*   *   *

“
MORE ELEGANT
!”
SYRENA
hollered to Sophie, watching her make her way through the waters. The girl's arms shot out in front of her, grasping at the water and pushing it jerkily behind her. Her body bucked awkwardly; she looked like a frog, only less elegant. And Syrena didn't find frogs very elegant to begin with.

The real problem was Sophie's legs. They bowed and kicked and flailed. They propelled the girl forward—Sophie
was
swimming—but to Syrena it looked like a complete disaster. In the time it took for Sophie to move twenty feet, Syrena could have been a mile into the depths.

“Like this,” Syrena commanded. She stretched the length of her body, uncurling her tail, letting it undulate gently in the water. She laid her arms before her, demonstrating good, elegant swimming posture. She turned her head to Sophie. “You see? Now, you.”

Sophie kicked her legs behind her and stretched her arms out. It was a pose she could not hold. Her body would begin to fall this way or that, sinking and bobbing. She tried again, working to approximate the delicate ripple of the mermaid's tail with her own bony legs. She tried to undulate but only jerked as if in the throes of a seizure.

“Okay, okay, very well, keep trying.”

For a moment Sophie almost had it, slinking in an underwater full-body belly dance. But immediately she lost the rhythm and sunk back down in a tangle of arms and legs.

“Syrena, I'm not a mermaid,” Sophie complained. “I don't have a tail. I can't just, you know, lounge around the water like you do. I'm a
person
. I have to swim or I just sink, you know?” Her hand rose up and gently stroked the pigeon feather wound into her hair. How swiftly this had become a little habit of comfort, but Sophie needed a lot of comfort. Even with a mermaid for a coach, she was failing her swim test.

“I had not thought of this problem,” Syrena admitted. “I just think—you swim. How you say—big deal? Is no big deal. You breathe, you eat, you swim.” Syrena felt almost embarrassed at how mermaid-centric her assumptions had been. She had spent time here and there with humans, but never in her territory, beneath the waters. Of course they could not manage below the waves as she could.

“Try walking, okay?” Sophie grumbled. “I could totally outwalk you on any piece of land on this earth. I bet you can't even walk at
all
. I bet you have to, like, crawl.”

“Is true,” the mermaid admitted. “I can not walk even a small bit.”

“At least I can swim a small bit,” Sophie said proudly.

“Okay, fine, you win.”

“Have you ever even
been
on earth?” Sophie asked the mermaid, curious. “On the land?”