I swim away from Zale, floating up towards the surface. My breath feels leaden, as if it wants to break my ribs. I wish Oliver was here to rescue me, take me away. I wish my mother was still alive. I wish someone would ask me what I want, just once. I wish for so many things, and I know that none of them are possible for girls like me.
“Always looking up,” Zale says, floating easily beside me. “Tell me, what is it about up there that fascinates you so much, Muirgen? Is there anything you would like to tell me?”
“What do you mean by that?” (Does he know? How could he know?)
“Nothing,” he says. “I was just wondering.”
Zale has never even been to the surface; it is a point of pride for him. Why would I? he says. Why would I even want to be near those disgusting creatures?
“And all of this nonsense,” he says now, pointing to the statue and the precious things on my table. “This human rubbish. I don’t know why your father indulges this obsession of yours.”
“It’s not an obsession.” And my father does not know anything about me. “I just think they’re pretty.”
“Typical girl,” Zale says. “Distracted by shiny trinkets, regardless of their provenance. Things will change when we are bonded. These visits to the surface will come to a stop, for one. It’s too dangerous, your risk of capture increases with each return. Perhaps you should heed what happened to your mother. There’s a lesson in that, isn’t there? A lesson I’m sure you would do well to remember, especially when you belong to me.”
What he says is true; I will be his. I belong to my father, and my father has chosen Zale for me. I shall be passed from one man to the next, ownership transferred with the ease of a handshake, and I will be expected to smile as the deal is done.
“Do you mind being bethrothed to Marlin?” I had asked Nia a few months before my last birthday. The others had gone on a rare trip to the surface to watch a lightning storm (Don’t tell Father, Talia warned me. You know how he would get if he heard we were going up there.) and I had to watch jealously as they swam away from the palace. Bored of sitting in the tower for them to return, I found Nia in the dormitory, staring out the window.
“Do you mind?” I asked her again when she didn’t answer me. I couldn’t stop thinking about that conversation between her and Grandmother that I had stumbled upon; Nia’s despair, her pleas that our grandmother do something to help her. Both of us remained still then, listening to each other’s breathing. We were waiting for the other to be the first one to tell the truth. “Do you love Marlin?”
Nia was quiet for a long time. “Muirgen,” she said eventually, “you can’t always get what you want. We should know that better than anyone else.”
“Zale?” I ask now. “Do you…” I am unsure of how to phrase this. He moves through the water until he is floating in front of me, reaching out to caress my hair. Something heavy pulses in my throat.
“Delicious,” he murmurs, examining each bare inch of flesh and scale. Next he will ask me to show him my teeth so he can check for cavities. “What were you asking? Do I what?”
“Do you love me?” I need to ask him this. If Zale feels the same way about that me that I do about Oliver, if he dreams about me, if he can spend hours thinking about holding my hand, maybe it will all be okay. He will treat me with kindness when we are bonded. I could learn to be content if I was treated kindly.
“Love you?” he says. “What has ‘love’ got to do with anything? This isn’t one of those nymph-tales your grandmother has filled your head with, Muirgen.”
“I don’t think it’s the most absurd question in the kingdom,” I say, anger rising in me. “Considering we are to be bonded on my next birthday.”
“Don’t be such a child,” he says. “You are the Sea King’s favourite daughter. Your beauty is unrivalled and therefore you are the correct choice for a man like me. He has no sons, so once we are bonded, the Sea King will have to honour me as rightful heir to the throne. I shall make certain improvements that need to be enforced around here.”
He has never spoken so freely about his ambitions for the future before. There has always been a chaperone present, an elder there to safeguard my purity. But in a few short months, there will be no one there to protect me from this man. I will be alone with him, for ever.
“But I am the youngest,” I say, ignoring the pain in my chest, my lungs feeling as if they are too big for this body to contain. “If this is what you want, surely Talia would be a better match. She is the first-born. Or Cosima, the way it was supposed to be. Zale, she still adores you, she would—”
“You’re being ridiculous,” he says, his mouth tightening at the mention of Cosima’s name. “You are just girls. Your looks are the only thing that distinguishes you from one another, and I want the best.” He touches my face, as if testing my beauty to ensure it is worthy of acquisition. “You remind me of your mother,” he says. “I wanted Muireann myself, you know – every mer-man did at that time – but the Sea King had first priority.” He smiles at me. “But you’re the next best thing, little Muirgen. With you by my side and the Sea King’s trident in my hand,” he closes his eyes, as if imagining the power flooding through him, “the kingdom will be mine. All of it. I will make sure of that.”
“You don’t mean—”
“Yes, I do,” he says, opening his eyes again. “It is time to be rid of the Salkas for good. We were so close to victory the last time; if your father had remained resolute instead of allowing a mermaid to persuade him to concede. We had nearly destroyed them when he agreed to this joke of an armistice.”
The armistice that my mother was so anxious to achieve. A crown of white lilies in her hair, my father’s hand on hers. Peace, that was what Muireann of the Green Sea wanted, the stories go. She wanted peace so badly that she gave her body to a man old enough to be her father. I would not see that legacy so carelessly dismantled.
“That ‘joke of an armistice’, as you put it, has worked for so long,” I say. “No one wants a return to the times of war, Zale. The mer-folk nearly died of starvation before. Why would you want such a thing to happen again?”
“It won’t happen like that this time. This time, we shall be the victors.”
There are no victors in war. “But why would you want to take such a risk? When things are peaceful now…” We have heard the stories of the Sea Witch, and the atrocities that she is capable of. If provoked she will eat our young, she will send her Salkas to scalp our women, shave our hair and wear it as their own. And they will kill every last mer-man they find in the kingdom. There is no guarantee of our victory, no matter what Zale might think. He is so blinded by prejudice that he cannot see his own foolishness.
“It is not a risk,” he says. “The Salkas are an abomination and must be destroyed.”
“But—”
“Enough back talk, girl. I am a man, not a fish,” he says. “And men go to war.”
“Why do you hate them so much?” I ask him. “What did they ever do to you?”
“Muirgen. They came from the world above, from the human world.” I am silent; that is all he needs to hate, I think. A human touch is enough to make him venomous.
“Besides,” he says, and there is an amused smile on his face, “a war should make you happy. Are you not afraid that they will come for you? They must have been most displeased at your little … intervention.”
“What?” I say, and the water is ice suddenly, frost chipping into my bones. “What are you talking about?”
He tilts his head to one side, a smirk playing on his lips. “You know exactly what I’m talking about, don’t you? I saw you. I saw you the night of the storm.”
“But, but you never go to the—”
“—dragging that human away from the Salka.”