Girl at the Bottom of the Sea (16 page)

“Stop,” the mermaid swatted at her. “I—it must be place. The deep. I miss my sister. I miss Griet.” The mermaid's name came out on a
choke, loosening a fresh spill of tears from Syrena's face. “Is like I never truly missed her. Never, not until now.”

Feeling the mermaid's sadness, Sophie began to cry harder, her sadness for Syrena's loss mingling with that of her own. Livia, lost forever. And the others—her mother, Angel, Ella. Perhaps they were only lost for now, but down here, now was beginning to feel like forever. Finally, the two of them, mermaid and girl, wound themselves together and let loose their sorrows into one another's tangles. In this clutch they half swam, half stumbled back through the glowing creatures and into the cave of the giants.

As soon as they entered the cave, the heavy salt walls brought relief, like they were stepping from hot sun into shade. They collapsed against the nearest one and slid down into the sand, finally able to catch their breath and slow their tears, but they continued to clasp each other's hands. For Syrena, it was like holding Griet's hand once more, but of course it was also not, and so she cried a bit more. Sophie was shocked to witness the mermaid so vulnerable, and honored to bring her some comfort. She never wanted to let go of her hand; she never wanted Syrena to stop needing her closeness as she did in this moment, no matter how sad they felt. For a time they were content to simply lie there in the mouth of the cave, exhausted by what they'd been through, looking out at the flashes of creatures beyond like they were stargazing.

“Syrena, have you ever seen the stars at night, in the sky above the ocean?” Sophie asked.

Syrena had—and the memory made her cry all the harder.

“Oh, Syrena, I'm sorry,” Sophie said, clutching the mermaid's other hand, bringing both of her hands up to her face like a bouquet of flowers. And at that, Syrena looked at Sophie and the flash of her eyes was like lightning in the cave and before Sophie knew what she was doing she was going into Syrena, into the mermaid's head and heart, and the mermaid was not fighting her. Inside Syrena's heart. Sophie felt a great hardness all around,
hardness, hardship, hardness, hardship
, these words looped in her head as she breathed in a wave of the mermaid's dense sadness. Griet was gone, Griet was gone forever: this knowledge was alive so deep inside the mermaid, so far down, that it felt to Sophie like she was digging, like she was getting her hands dirty, even though all she was doing was staring into Syrena's eyes while the two of them sat, perfectly still. She dug up Griet's memory, buried like something beautiful deep in the sludge, and the memory shone so brightly that it hurt, it really
hurt
Syrena as it was unearthed. As the mermaid buckled over in pain it hurt Sophie, too, and it kept hurting. Because when she pulled Griet from the mermaid's depths she pulled up other things, too, things she didn't know anything about—a winged lion with the face of an eagle reared up, roaring. A monstrous object filled the sky and dropped bombs that burned the city, made the river boil. Bodies fell on the banks. It was as if the mermaid's heart was a hive and Sophie had whacked it and out poured the bees, a thousand memories pricking and stinging: a cold so cruel the river had frozen, people staggering to and fro with blocks of ice, Syrena's fingers bleeding when she held them up before her face.
Sophie batted away the images but as one was banished another surged forth. The loss was like a river, a current pushing through Sophie's heart. All the death the mermaid had seen! Something in Syrena was trying to resist her, but Sophie pushed through it, she pushed and she pulled, and she pulled all of that loss into her own heart.

The mermaid's face contorted as she pulled away from Sophie, wrapping her arms around her chest. Her fin pounded the floor of the cave, drawing a shroud of sand around them. The mermaid's gaze flashed back to Sophie, and for a moment, a weightless moment, Sophie could feel Syrena lift up inside. It was as if she were nothing, a bright, blissful nothing.

As the full weight of what she'd taken on hit her, Sophie fell back into the heavy mud of the seafloor, Syrena reaching toward her the last thing she remembered before darkness enveloped her.

IN HER DREAM
, Sophie watched as a man lifted a mermaid from the water. Like a river rock taken from its home, her tail became instantly dull as the drops of seawater fell away. Her hair, lustrous and tempered by the faint blue of the sea, became lank and sticky, the tangles heavy on her head out here on land, where gravity weighed everything down. The mermaid shook her head, trying to toss her hair like she could in the water, but it just fell messily across her face. The algae that clung to her locks looked suddenly scuzzy, like mold blooming on an old plate of food. She turned back, and Sophie could see the twin
fangs poking over her dry lips. When she opened her mouth, a bristle of baleen showed.

“I'll be back!” hollered Griet. “I'll be right back, please, don't cry!”

Sophie hadn't known she was crying, but when she brought her hand to her face she felt the tears. Her other hand was wrapped around something—a weapon. She tried to follow after the mermaid, but she tripped over her tail, bulky and clumsy beneath her. She opened her mouth and unleashed her zawolanie, watching as the man dropped Griet onto the rocks, bringing his hands up over his ears. The mermaid twisted, lifting herself up on her arms and turning her face to the sea.

“Stop it! Stop it! You're hurting him!” Griet shouted, alarmed. And Sophie watched as the man, his face red with pain, reached down and gruffly grabbed Griet by the tail, dragging her across the land. Sophie let her zawolanie sound again, and again the man let go of Griet, now even farther from the banks of the sea.

“Please, I just want to see how they live. He'll bring me right back!”

“Just leave her!” Sophie cried, and the man, in his madness, struck out with his boot, kicking Griet's tail, so dry now that the scales were brittle and crushed, the scars she bore from her journey standing out in stark relief. Griet cried out, ducking her head, and the man lifted her tail again and dragged her away, and Sophie could do nothing more than watch them go. Her eyes locked with her sister's as she was tugged away across the earth, her face turned back to her home.

Chapter 14

S
ophie awoke choking on her zawolanie like it was caught in her throat. With a burning sputter she swallowed it back down. As she came to her senses, she found that she was looking into the pale, bulbous face of a giant octopus. A tentacle, slinky and long, was curved around her brow; she could feel the slight tingle of its cups across her skin. Another tentacle lay on her chest, across her heart. She followed the outstretched arms of the many-armed beast and traced them to Syrena, lying beside her. The octopus cupped the mermaid's head as well, and lay upon her breast.

“Is it working?” A voice emanated from a long swath of linen that rose like a curtain toward the ceiling. Somewhere high in the darkness, the Ogress spoke. The octopus didn't respond, but bobbed its head. Beneath its translucent skin Sophie could see pulses of light.

“Yes,” Syrena murmured. “Is working. I see her, now. I see everything.”

Sophie felt a strange relief as the octopus massaged her. It was like she was a sheet of ice cracking apart beneath something warm, turning first to slush and then to a liquid peace. The octopus withdrew its tentacles gently, twining them together in a bundle and settling onto the floor where Sophie and the mermaid lay.

“You took my
heart
,” Syrena said, turning to the girl. “You took too much. It was not, what you think, the curse, the Invisible, whatever you seek to remove. Was my
heart. My
heart.”

“But you were so sad,” Sophie said. “There was so much of it. It was beautiful, and all mucky, all buried so deep, it was hard for me to get to—”

“It wasn't for you,” the mermaid snapped. “Is
mine
. My Griet, and my Griffin. My wars, my beloveds, my Krystyna. You took them all and I was empty. And that was even more terrible.”

“But it's supposed to feel good,” Sophie protested weakly. “I was trying to help you. You were so sad.”

“Is okay to feel sad. Sadness okay. Your sister get taken away by spoiled prince, okay to be sad. Your love become dead from your very own weapon? Okay for sadness. Your, what you call, bestie, best human friend become shot by bullets till not breathing? Your city set to fire? Your home, your river, torn to pieces? The people you supposed to protect dying right at your banks, with you no help to them? Make you very sad. If not, you monster. Do not make me monster. I am mermaid. I have mermaid strong heart, hold many sad things. Is built for such.”

“I'm sorry,” Sophie whispered. She felt as dry as Griet upon the banks, everything alive in her curling up. She shuddered at the memory
and wished she could give it all back to Syrena, every last bit of it, even this last haze of it upon her heart.

“If I grow to hatred because of Griet taken from me,” Syrena explained. “If I never love after Griffin slayed. If I never fight again. If I give up on humans after they kill one another at my banks, make my river into graveyard. That you take. You take the hate and the pain that makes more hate and the pain, that brings madness. But sadness? Sadness is innocent, like salt, like pearl. Like Griet. You leave me with my sadness.”

With a gust of wind, the Ogress bent down to look at Sophie. Her enormous eye was full of feeling. “You are doing such complicated work, Sophia,” she whispered. The breath of her voice blew across the girl like weather, a warm salt breeze. “Fenja and I, we tried to fix it, too. We thought we could grind goodness into the world, to outweigh the bad. But it didn't work. The Invisible only had more to prey upon. So we began to mill the salt, and that works some. It absorbs the Invisible, we know it does. But that, too, upsets the balance. The sea, it should not be so salty. But it's the best we can do. You, you're like a surgeon.”

“Ya,” Syrena nodded her head. “Is true.”

“You must learn to go in and take only the bad. There are many sadnesses that may
feel
bad, but they have to stay. The heart cannot function without them.”

“Why can't I just take it all?” Sophie cried. “I hate that Syrena feels so bad!” She turned to her friend. “I hate that you feel like that,” she said, and her eyes filled with tears. When the mermaid smiled upon
her so kindly, the tears came forward, spilling down the girl's cheeks.

“You may have taken some bad things, ya? Bad I did not know I had. I do feel lighter. But when you take away all the sadness, I so disoriented, so lost. Heart is compass. Love help me move forward every day.” Syrena looked upon Sophie, and with a gasp inside her heart the girl realized that the mermaid loved her. In her tough, mermaid way, Syrena loved Sophie. “You help me, Sophie,” she said. “Griet help me, her memory. Love and sadness, together. Must not take the sadness that love holds.”

Sophie nodded. All she had taken from the mermaid left a residue like a fog around her heart. Bloody sunflowers. Muddy cubes of ice melting on the bank of a river. “What was all that?” she choked.

“It my life, Sophie. And I will tell you all, as I have been. But is my life. Okay?”

“Yes,” Sophie nodded.

“Syrena will teach you how to tell the good from the bad,” Menja told her. For such a booming whisper, it still soothed. “It's all part of your training.”

“I your guinea pig, yes?” Syrena asked. “You experiment on me like mad doctor!”

Sophie peered deeper at the mermaid. “Syrena, I really do think I helped you. You seem happier. I think I got something.”

“Okay, so what. Broken clock right twice a day, ya?” The mermaid giggled.

The octopus, quiet on the floor, undulated toward Menja's foot and
slithered its tentacles across it, tapping.

“Sophie,” said the giantess, and straightened back up to the ceiling, her long braid hanging down her back, making waves as it swung. “The Vulcan would like to work with you. It has some things to show you.”

The octopus slid off the giant's foot and swam back to Sophie.

“Vulcan amazing,” Syrena affirmed. “Bring me back my heart. Has big powers, for healing and for seeing. Thank you.” The mermaid held up her hands, flat, and the Vulcan tapped against it with his tentacles. “If I have eight hands I give you all for high five,” she said. She swam away, toward the giantess. “Now I leave you alone,” she said.

SOPHIE FACED THE
octopus. It was a mysterious, slightly ghoulish figure. Its skin was so pale it glowed like an apparition. And it glowed for real, too, with little pulses of light here and there, visible through its translucent skin. Its legs swayed gently, like little scarves in a wind, the tips curling and looping. And its head! Bulbous, slightly cone-shaped, its eyes on either side of its long head. It was very different from the small creature that had been living in her hair for the past few days. Sophie reached up to check that it was still there, and her fingers felt its tiny tentacles, raised in greeting. The Vulcan extended the thinnest tip of an arm as if to shake hands with it. Then it placed that arm on Sophie's head, and then another arm, and then another. And then all of the Vulcan's appendages were cradling Sophie's head, and she was looking into its flickering face. She tried to fearlessly face the strange and groping creature, but it was hard. Its eyes were splayed so far apart, and it seemed to be looking directly into her heart.