I can’t move, my legs lifeless as a statue. I’m trapped here with Rupert, forced to listen. “Poor old Alexander Carlisle went back to the sea and he drowned himself.” Oliver’s father took his own life? Why did he not tell me that? “Giving Eleanor free rein to run the company and Oliver the perfect excuse to act like an asshole for the rest of his life.”
There is a silence and he rubs his hand across his face. “Anyway,” he says. “Enough of that. The past is in the past. It’s just you and me now, isn’t it? Whatever shall we do to pass the time?” His hand trails down my arm, then on to the skirt of my dress, inching it up a little. “Don’t be so coy,” he says. “I’ve seen the way you look at Oliver, like you’re a bitch on heat. There’s no need to pretend that you’re some innocent virgin.” He presses his lips against my ear, sticking the tip of his tongue into it, like Zale used to, and my stomach flips over, pushing vomit up my throat like a promise.
My mouth is open, searching for my voice – please. Please help me. But there is no help coming, and no sound save for Rupert’s heavy breathing. He backs me into the wall, pressing his body against mine until my spine feels like it might crack. Undoing his belt, and a silent sob breaks from me at what is to come. He will finish what Zale started. “You’ll like this,” he says. A hand reaching down, pulling up my skirt, Rupert’s fingers prodding that new place between my legs. No. No. But I cannot speak and worse, I cannot move. I am motionless, petrified; watching this man as he takes my body and does what he wants with it. My words are trapped tight in my throat, frozen, turning my limbs to stone.
Little mermaid.
Rupert is grunting, fumbling. He will take what he wants from me and he will destroy me as he does so.
Be brave, little mermaid.
Brave? I push Rupert off me, and he trips, trousers caught around his ankles. “You tease,” he says. I turn left, right, the frenzy of dread making me clumsy and stupid, running to the end of the boat but there is nowhere for me to escape to – unless I dive into the sea as cleanly as if I was diving into my nightmares.
There will be no protection there. The Sea Witch told me, she warned me. There is no going back.
Little mermaid, we are here.
Where are those voices coming from? Am I going mad, like Oliver’s father? Is my sanity as lost to me as my voice is? Will they find me knee-deep in salt water, knuckle-white, mouthing words I will never be able to hear again?
“Where do you think you’re going?” Rupert says, pulling his trousers up. He is walking towards me, oh, so slowly. He is in no rush. He is standing in front of me now, his lips almost touching mine. He leans in to kiss the bare skin of my throat, ignoring my uncontrollable shaking. “Just relax, Grace.”
Little mermaid. The hissing words are louder now, demanding my attention. They sound … wet. I look over Rupert’s shoulder to find dozens of eyes staring at me from the dead of the water. They emerge, green hair slicked back, mouths open. The Rusalkas. The fallen women with arms outstretched, ready for their prey.
“Woah,” Rupert says as I push him against the side of the boat, kissing him forcefully. “Easy, tiger.” His tongue invades my empty mouth. “So strange,” he mutters. “There’s just nothing there…” I allow my fingers to dip beneath the waistband of his trousers as I had seen Flora do to Oliver earlier, and Rupert relaxes, his grip softening just enough for me to gather my strength. For I am Muirgen, daughter of Muireann of the Green Sea. I am Gaia, of the earth. And no one treats me in such a manner.
“Jesus!” His face gnarling in wide-eyed panic as he falls, his arms flailing for something to grab on to. The cry as he hits the water, hard, his body flinching. He resurfaces in a splashing fury. “You little—”
Then he sees the first Rusalka and his double-take of shock is nearly comical. These are creatures that he has not given credence to since he was a small child on his mother’s lap, listening as she spun stories to help him sleep. Monsters or mermaids? Maybe the Rusalkas are both. And maybe, in the end, they are neither.
Salka by Salka, they rise from the water, surrounding him in a circle, baring pointed teeth.
“Grace. Grace, help me. Get someone,” Rupert begs. “Anyone!” he shouts when I stay where I am. The Rusalkas pull a tighter ring around Rupert, wrapping their arms around each other’s shoulders, heads thrown to the skies, music slashing from their throats. A song of betrayal, of broken promises. Jilted brides, and babies torn from wombs and imprisoned girls put to work in institutions, locked away by men who were supposed to be holy, men who told those same girls that they must atone for their sins of lust. (Tell me about your impure actions, my child, they whispered in dark corners, trying not to drool with anticipation. Tell me in great detail about what you have done, and I shall grant you absolution.)
Rupert is weeping as their song turns to a searing shriek, the windows in the yacht shattering and falling in shards of glass around my feet. Blood dribbles down Rupert’s nose and his eyes start to cry tears of blood too. One of the Salkas breaks rank, Rupert’s head between her clawed hands, licking his tears away, red tarred across her mouth. Then he screams no more.
I slump to the ground, shaking, my legs too weak to hold me any longer. What would I have done if the Salkas hadn’t come to my rescue, if they hadn’t smelled a bad man’s rapacious appetite? I was so stupid to come here, to give up everything that I have ever known, ever loved, in an attempt to seduce a human man. A man I didn’t know, a man that I had seen once and decided would be the answer to all of my problems. Perhaps my father was right. I am just a stupid little mermaid.
My hands touch my throat. I will never hear my voice again. I stare at the sky. The light is turning and the moon slipping, calling her lover, the sun, to take her place. I use the rail at the side of the boat to drag myself to standing again and I begin to cry. I have no words in this world above the sea but I will spell out the alphabet with my tears.
A head in the water (Have the Salkas come back?) then another. And another, another, another. No green manes this time, but clean skulls; hair plucked as finely as the kitchen maids pluck a chicken for yet another one of Eleanor’s interminable parties. I strain to see, waiting until they swim closer and I can see features etched on those pale faces. Eyes so blue and lips so red. And then I realize who these maidens are.
“Muirgen,” one of them says, and I squint at her to figure out that it’s Talia. I had forgotten how homogeneous the mer-folk could appear. My father wants us all to look the same, act the same, think the same; and I just accepted that as natural. Why did I never understand how boring it was? And how stifling? Why did none of us realize that there could be strength in our differences as much as our similarities? “What have you done to yourself?” Talia asks when she sees me, her eyes wide in horror.
“You’ve caused so much trouble,” Arianna says. “Father is furious. He and Zale have been planning—” She looks over her shoulder as if expecting our father to be there, like all of us do. “But he’s right, of course,” she says. “The Sea King is always right. For he is wise and good. We are fortunate to be living in the time of the Sea King.”
My sisters are thinner, the bones pronounced in their faces. They’re nervous, speaking quickly and yet choosing their words with a deliberation that is unusual. I look past them, searching for the other face that I want to see before I die. “Grandmother is not here,” Sophia says, understanding instantly. “She would have felt obliged to tell Father, and there’s no telling what he might do if he heard we went to the Sea Witch.”
You went to the Sea Witch? I shake my head. I cannot believe my sisters would do such a thing.
“Our father would be right to be angry,” Cosima says. “What would he think if he knew we had left the Shadowlands looking as we do? His daughters, ugly.”