Girl at the Bottom of the Sea (24 page)

The Billow Maiden reached out and grabbed Sophie's hands in her own. Her nails were tipped with darkness, a darkness that went up and underneath the claw of her fingernails. Their tips dug into Sophie's skin just slightly, but she knew Bloo didn't mean to hurt her. It's just what her fingertips did.

“I know what I am, and what I do. I'm very good at it.”

“Drowning sailors,” Sophie said.

“Yes,” Bloo nodded, oblivious to any judging tone in the girl's voice. “I work much less than my sisters. It is a strange sort of compromise—I see less death, but the death I do see is more terrible. But it is as if I were built for it. I swim out to the ships, and the redder the water, the more alive I feel. It's as if there is an animal where my heart should be, and it comes alive then, and I know what to do.”

The earnestness in Bloo's face, almost a tenderness, melted Sophie's bad feelings toward her. “You're like a shark,” she said aloud, more for her own understanding than for Bloo.

“Yes. There are many creatures down here that do killing. Most of us, in fact. I am more akin to a shark than, say, an octopus,” the maiden said, reaching out and petting the octopus on Sophie's head. “But, Sophie”—Bloo's hands came back and clutched at Sophie's painfully—“I must know that there is no evil in my heart for this. I can… enjoy my work. I know it sounds strange to you. My parents, my sister, the Dola, all insist it is my nature, and as such is not evil. But I have finally met someone who can look into my heart and say for certain.” Her grip intensified, and a nail brought a small prick of blood from Sophie's hand.

“Okay—but why did you say I need this, too?” Sophie pulled her hands away, sucking on her tiny wound.

“I see this is getting to you,” Bloo said softly. “My family. What we do. And Syrena, her pain, I heard her speaking about how you tried to take it. It sounds like you need to understand what is the good badness and what is the bad badness.”

There was a pause while Sophie considered Bloo's words, and then she burst out, “This is making me crazy!” Then she just couldn't stop. “I didn't realize this would be so hard! Leaving my family, I knew that would be hard, and I knew it would be hard to travel with Syrena because she can be sort of mean, and I can hardly wrap my head around whatever I need to do to Kishka, who is still, in spite of everything,
my grandmother, you know? I know that is going to be
really
tough, like, I know I'm going to need therapy after all this. But you want me to figure out the
bad
badness from the good badness? That sounds impossible.”

In the roar of the revelry around them Sophie's outburst was unheard by anyone but Bloo. The maiden took Sophie by her hand, and the fight went out of the girl. She allowed the maiden to lead her down a gilded hallway and into a chamber hung with tapestries and tossed with fat velvet pillows. Sophie followed Bloo's lead and sat down on one of them. The tapestry facing her depicted a lone unicorn with a long, slender horn. Behind it were droopy willow trees and a pale blue sky.

“Are these guys for real, too?” Sophie asked, gesturing to the artwork.

“Unicorns?” Bloo asked. “Oh, yes, of course. I mean, they were. They haven't done well with the changes on earth. Very sensitive creatures. I think there are some left, but they don't grow horns anymore, and they have quite lost their magic. But they were so beautiful, weren't they? In their day.” Bloo shifted into a comfortable position and looked at Sophie expectantly. “So, what should I do?”

“Oh—um, nothing,” Sophie shrugged. “Just be comfortable, I suppose. I do it.”

“Are you ready?”

“I guess so.”

“Then do it already.” Bloo swatted at Sophie like a cat, leaving tiny red scratches.

“Ow!”

“Oh, sorry. Sorry. Just—you know, let's go. Before someone comes for us. My family
hates
when anyone goes off by themselves. It's all ‘Come be happy, come be happy' all the time.”

Sophie snorted. “That's kind of great,” she said. “I wish my mom was as happy as your mom.”

“It's harder for humans,” Bloo said. “It's so stressful. Your lives are so short you don't really have time to figure out how to get it together. But please—me. Can you look at my heart, please?”

SO SOPHIE DID
. With the slightest push she was inside Blooughadda. It was a vast place, much bigger than the maiden herself. Not the tight, sick interior of Laurie LeClair, or the tough terrain of Angel. Not her mother's claustrophobic, anxious heart or Livia's—Livia!—compact pigeon heart full of love. Bloo's heart was a windy place, wide enough to have weather. It was like its own land. Sophie couldn't tell if she saw craggy rocks, tough green shoots fighting through the cracks, or if that was just what Bloo's heart felt like. Like something that had been there forever. Like the heart of the earth itself.

Sophie pushed in deeper, feeling no resistance from the Billow Maiden. The atmosphere grew humid, and Sophie knew she was getting to the real stuff, whatever it was. The stuff that mattered. She didn't feel afraid, because Bloo's heart was deep and good. There was love in here, old and abiding. For her family and for the ocean. As
she pushed through it, the love entered Sophie as well, contagious, as love should be. She felt a great swell of affection for the Jottnar, their jolliness, their extreme good nature. But still, Sophie moved forward, seeking. The mist grew hotter, and Sophie could feel it in her lungs. Like when she was little and had a bad cough, the croup, and her mother had sat her in the bathroom with the shower on full blast, creating clouds of steam that filled the room and curled around her.

Sophie went deeper, looking for the source of that heat. The landscape was gone. It was only crimson and darkness here, something glowing embedded in the rock wall of a cave. Sophie could feel it; it practically pulsed. Sophie approached it like coming up on a sleeping beast. This was the heart of Blooughadda's heart. As if the heart had a heart of its own, and Bloo's was like a sleeping dog, ready to snap at whatever disturbed its dreams. Sophie could imagine what woke it up. Blood, war, the smell of men sweating out the toxins of hatred in battle.

Sophie sat beside Bloo's heart of hearts. She imagined herself upon a pillow, much as her body was back in the chamber. She sat calmly and breathed. With her mind and her own heart, she touched it. She could feel memories in the air around it—oh, how sharply she felt them! She was moving slowly, but the punch of memories was unexpected. The piercing eye of a sailor, close to death, thrashing. Sophie breathed it in, the sailor's final terror, Bloo's fleeting feeling of grief. A great stain of red blotted her vision, as if the maiden had wrapped her hair around her face. It was the blood of war, and she felt in Bloo's heart something dull and constant. It felt like
No
. Bloo's refusal that
this was the way. That this had to be. Sophie stepped back from the
No
, though she could feel the hurt it brought the maiden. There was love in this hurt. It stayed.

She moved toward something that spun thick and gray, a cobweb. Every thread of it tangled into the other, and it was sticky. It clung to Sophie and she experienced the maiden's confusion, her guilt at her very nature. Sophie took it. She breathed it in.

This glowing thing in the rock wall, bright as molten lava, it had a sheen now, like hot glass. It glistened. Sophie pushed into it gingerly, like dipping her toe in an ocean. The feeling, hot and strong, knocked her down. Like a fireball had shot through her—not exactly electric, but like the breath of god, or a gate of hell swung open. Sophie lay where she landed, down but not out, and breathed herself calm again. What was that? An alarm, a warning system.

Bloo's heart of hearts was protecting her from what it contained—instinct, blood lust. It was a wolf; it wanted what it wanted. It was animal, it was nature. And it was fed by that other thing, the
No
. The grief at war worked to temper Bloo's native impulse, and together they shielded the rest of the maiden's heart from its hungry wildness.

Sophie moved backward, away from the scorching glow, back through the mist of love until that too cooled and dried and she was back by the crags, their tough landscape of ancient rock and persistent life that sprung from it. Sophie came back.

Chapter 18

I
nside Bloo's chamber Sophie was splayed on her back, and it felt like one of the boulders she'd imagined was crushing her chest. She saw the unicorn, noble and stoic in the tapestry above her, and then Bloo, gripping her, her claws tearing holes in Sophie's linen garment.

“Sophie!” the maiden hissed. “Sophie! Are you okay? What do you need?”

“Salt,” Sophie creaked, finding her throat so dry—parched—that it seemed to cling to itself. She could barely speak.

“All around you,” Bloo gestured. “We are in the ocean.”

“More,” Sophie managed. Then, “Please.”

Bloo vanished in a cloud of pink water, and was back swiftly, the Dola in tow.

“Help her,” Bloo demanded.

“Yesssss,” Sophie squeaked at the sight of the Ogresses' salt, worn as a bead around the dolphin's neck. It was smaller than it had been at
the start of their journey, but there was enough. “That,” she lifted her hand weakly, pointing at the rock. Bloo used her fingernails to slice the rope that knotted it to the dolphin's body and handed the salt to Sophie, who began to gnaw.

Oh, salt! It zinged her like a wonderful shock, like a battery charged. It quenched a thirst deeper than water, brought wetness back to her body. She broke off a piece with her back molars and sucked it, let the juice of it fall back down her throat. She crunched a great mouthful, straining it through her teeth.

Bloo laughed at the sight of her, clapping her hands joyfully. “You are happy!” she cried. “I have not seen you happy since you arrived at Laeso Island! Had anyone known all it took was some salt, well, we would have brought you bricks of it!”

“It helps me,” Sophie said simply, noting that Bloo, too, seemed happier than she had been. “When I do that stuff.”

“What did you do to me?” The maiden ruffled her robes, touching herself, as if what had happened could be felt upon her body.

“I did what you asked,” Sophie said. “I looked in on your heart.”

“And?”

“Jottnar have such complicated hearts!” Sophie marveled. “So much more complicated than humans.”

“Well, that would make sense,” Bloo nodded. “All things considered.” She looked proud.

“It's like, you have a heart inside your heart. And the heart that does the, the—”

“The killing, yes.”

“It sort of protects the rest of the heart from it. And you're sad about it all. And some sadness I took away—”

“I can feel it!” the Billow Maiden cried.

“—but most of it had to stay.”

“Of course,” Bloo nodded solemnly.

“Your sadness is so important,” Sophie mused. “It's actually stopping your heart of hearts from feeding on hate. Your heart of hearts—it's very scary, it's sort of like a monster.”

“Yes,” Bloo nodded. “It feels like a monster.”

“But it's not a bad monster. It wants it all to stop—the war, the blood.”

“I can't make it stop,” Bloo whispered.

“No,” Sophie affirmed. “You can't.”

Bloo was silent for a moment, and then she took Sophie's hand again. “But you can,” she said. “And that's why you're here.”

BACK IN THE
great hall, Ran and her daughters were whooping and ululating, making strange, wild cries flow from their throats. Aegir stood behind them, stirring a large cauldron of ale, watching silently. His eyes above his great beard seemed full of pride and awe.

“What's going on?” Sophie asked Bloo. She had become accustomed to the little stabs of the maiden's fingernails. It was worth it, she'd decided, to have such friendship with the creature.

“It's time to go,” Bloo said, her eyes on her family. “They've been summoned.”

“You're not needed,” said the Dola to Blooughadda. “It's not a battle.”

“Well, that is sweet news,” Bloo nodded.

“What is it?” Sophie asked. “Are they going to—are they—sinking?”

“There is a submarine,” the Dola said simply. “A research vessel. It is headed to the waters near the Ogresses' cave, into the depths.”

“And I guess it won't make it,” Sophie said, a chilly dread coursing down her spine.

“It is not meant to,” said the Dola. “But it is not an accident that you are here, Sophia. You are meant to be. You are meant to join the Jottnar. There is something for you to see.”

Sophie looked anxiously at Bloo, as if for help, but Bloo just looked at the Dola.

“But—I would rather not. I don't think I'm ready to see something so awful.”

“You must,” the Dola stated. “Gather yourself.”

Sophie had no clue as to how to prepare to sink a submarine with a bunch of nonhuman ocean goddesses. Angel and the pigeons had maybe forgotten to prep her for this one. Syrena, too. Sophie scanned the great hall for the mermaid, but she didn't see her.