Between the Sea and Sky (6 page)

Chapter Nine

Ginnia returned before long to help Esmerine dress for dinner. She didn’t lace her stays as tightly, but Esmerine still hated the feel of the rigid ribs and sturdy cloth hugging her chest. The sky-blue dress had loose sleeves that afforded far more movement, but she was used to her bare skin moving through soft water. She would never get used to the short breaths and the hem of a skirt getting underfoot.

“Do I need to wear the shoes in the house?” she asked Ginnia, whose look of amusement was answer enough.

“No sense wearing out those stockings.” Ginnia led Esmerine from the dim bedroom. Dusk had crept up almost unnoticed until Esmerine came into a dining room lit by a candle and glowing hearth fire. Sometimes the mermen started a fire on the islands for some purpose or another, but only certain men knew how, and children couldn’t come near, so Esmerine had never been close enough to fire to feel the heat. An older woman with gray curls spilling sideways from a squarish black cap was sitting quite near it, smoking a pipe. Could this be Belawyn? Esmerine couldn’t believe a mermaid would smoke.

Ginnia went to stir the pot while Swift waved Esmerine to an empty seat. Alan was pouring something red into a glass. “Esmerine, do you want wine or water?” he asked.

“I’ve never tasted wine.”

He poured a little in a cup and handed it to her. She took a sip. It was not at all sweet or salty, just nasty and like nothing else she had ever tasted.

Swift laughed. “She doesn’t like it.”

“It’s an acquired taste,” the older woman said, giving Esmerine a sly smile. Her lips were thin and painted, and her eyes had a combination of squint and slant as if she were looking very keenly at everything. “So, Alan tells me you’re Esmerine. I’m Belawyn. I own the shop.”

“And you’re … a mermaid?”

“That’s right, my pearl.”

“A siren?”

“Not a siren. Just one of the common folk.”

“How did you end up here?”

“Well, the shop belonged to a former husband. We were only married a year before I guess he’d had enough of me and departed this mortal coil, leaving me with the shop. I’ve never been much for books, but one must eat somehow.”

“I mean … why did you leave the sea?”

“Oh—” Belawyn sipped her wine. “There’s no written rule that you have to be a poor fool of a siren to see the world.”

“None of our rules are written,” Esmerine said.

“Good thing,” Belawyn said. “They make enough trouble without being on paper.”

Esmerine had never seen an old person complain about rules so much. Most of the old women she knew were the ones who enforced the rules. “Do you live above the shop too?” she asked.

“I live in a cottage not far from here,” Belawyn said. “Alan rents these rooms for a song, which suits me fine. I never was too fond of this place. It’s drafty all winter, the roof leaks, and there’s no room for a garden.”

The heat from the hearth warmed Esmerine’s left side, and on the right, a breeze drifted through the windows. The air had cooled with the darkness. Esmerine wondered how her mother and father were doing without her. Night was a quiet time beneath the sea. Was her mother lying awake wondering if Esmerine was all right? She wished she had a way to tell them what she had learned.

Alan gave Esmerine a cup of water and sat beside her.

“So, Swift was saying your charming father paid us a visit today?” Belawyn said.

“Oh, we don’t need to talk about that.” Alan sipped his wine. “Swift, could you not hoard the butter?”

Alan’s servant girl circled the table, filling bowls with fish stew. The fish smelled fishier than Esmerine was used to, and steam rose from it. Esmerine had never eaten hot food before. “Just a little, please,” she whispered, unsure if she would like it.

“We ought to talk about your father. I’m starting to regret ever accepting money from you. If I’d known it was really from him, and that he would hover around every week, I wouldn’t have taken it. It’s making me quite uncomfortable. I could sell the place, but I hate to become one of those old women who sits in the house all day, with a portrait of myself in my glory days staring down at me.”

“Why not sell your portrait?” Swift offered. “You used to be a looker, or else the artist was being nice; I bet someone would buy it.”

Belawyn smacked his shoulder with the back of her hand.

Alan frowned. “If this place shuts down, I’ll have to go home.”

“Well, Alan, dear, I hate to be honest—it just isn’t my style—but part of the problem might be the way you keep thrusting books at people that they don’t even understand, and curling your lip when they want something amusing, or, dare I say, titillating.”

“It isn’t my fault if everyone wants to read a bunch of nonsense! You have travelers from all over the world coming through Sormesen, stopping in this shop. There’s a real opportunity to sell them something of
value
.”

“Is that your father talking, or you?” Belawyn arched a nearly nonexistent brow.

“My father does not talk
through
me. But why should we waste our time selling trash?”

“So you’d like to control and censor what people read, then?”

“Well—no! No, not that,” Alan said. “I just …”

“Alan—” Esmerine didn’t want to thrust herself in the middle of an argument that had obviously been brewing for some time, and she doubted she could save the shop, but she might be able to repay Alan and Swift. “Since Swift will be gone for the week, maybe I could stand outside with those … Hauzdeen pamphlets and try to sell them. I could sing about them, and people would want to buy them then.”

“Esmerine—you’re a siren too?” Alan began. “I thought only Dosia—”

“Yes, I’m a siren too.” She couldn’t tell if he was upset by this or only surprised. And why should he be either?

“So you’re saying you would
hoodwink
them into buying Hauzdeen?” Alan asked.

Belawyn cackled. “It’s the only way we’re going to sell all those copies! Why, if I could sing customers into buying twenty-volume encyclopedias, I would!”

“It’s not hoodwinking!” Esmerine said, chagrined. “Siren magic doesn’t work if they don’t have
some
interest in it to begin with. Although … I don’t know why you can’t sell plenty of books, Alan. You used to bring me the most wonderful books. All those stories about princesses and winged travelers and trees that turned into people and people that turned into animals …”

Alan’s ears flushed. “Well—you will only be here a week, until Swift returns from the Diels. I hardly think it’s enough time to save us from our troubles.”

“But it couldn’t hurt,” Belawyn said. “And it could help. It could help a great deal.”

Alan frowned into his soup, poking apart the flesh of a white fish with his spoon, and didn’t respond.

Chapter Ten

When Belawyn stood to go, she reached for a cane propped against the back of her chair and limped to the stairs. She wiggled a beckoning finger to Esmerine.

“You ought to use a little of that siren song on Alan, my pearl. The boy needs to loosen his cravat.”

Alan was still sitting at the table, and while Esmerine didn’t think he couldn’t hear them, he stared at them over his cup and took a slow sip.

“Siren song has never had any effect on him. At least, not when he was a kid.”

“Well, doesn’t that just figure.” Belawyn patted her shoulder. “Good luck.”

Esmerine couldn’t tell to what degree Belawyn was teasing.

“You should head home, Bel,” Alan said. “Swift needs sleep if he’s going to the Diels tomorrow morning.”

Swift was waiting to walk Belawyn home.

“Trying to run me out of my own building, eh? Behave yourselves, you two,” Belawyn said, which made Alan’s ears turn red again. As soon as she disappeared down the stairwell, he turned to Ginnia.

“Ginnia, if you could help Esmerine to bed before anything else, I’d be obliged.”

“Yes, sir.”

He departed the room without even saying good night.

Ginnia put a hand on Esmerine’s shoulders, guiding her into the bedroom. “Don’t mind him. He gets awfully moody when his father comes around, and Belawyn enjoys goading him.”

Ginnia helped Esmerine out of the dress and stays and showed her the chamber pot. Esmerine frowned. The human world was so dirty. Under the ocean, holes in the rocks channeled currents through privy rooms to whisk waste into the deep sea; it didn’t just sit there and reek.

Ginnia had pulled back the covers for her. She slipped her feet beneath them and pulled the blanket over her shoulder. She knew that was the intention with human blankets, but the weight didn’t feel right. She folded it back to her waist. A feather sneaked out from the pillow to prick her cheeks. Her chemise clung to her sticky skin. She tried to think of something else. Her ear began following unfamiliar sounds—voices down the street somewhere, and a continual creak. What was that? Something outside? She looked out the window to search out the source. It was the wooden bookstore sign, swaying in the wind.

Esmerine had a wild urge to tear out of bed and run home, where familiar waters would welcome her back to a safe embrace. Alan didn’t want her here. She had been such a fool to seek out a boy who had once taught her to read but didn’t care for her at all.

She shoved off the covers. She was drowning in fabric. The air was too hot, and her body too heavy. She yanked off her chemise and threw it aside, but it felt strange to be naked with legs. The legs were a part of her, but as she stared at them in the moonlight, they seemed alien limbs, like her tail had been torn apart and stripped of scales and the legs were all that remained. There were bruises at her waist where the stays had been too tight, and dirt between her toes.

She wanted her tail and she wanted her mother. When she closed her eyes, she could almost feel her mother’s arms around her, her shell necklace against Esmerine’s skin, and her firm touch on the back of Esmerine’s head.

Home felt so far away, but she kept telling herself it was only a day’s travel. Her parents were sleeping soundly in the bay. She could go home soon. She wasn’t trapped here. Not like Dosia, she reminded herself.

She tossed and turned all night, but finally the sun came through the curtains and she heard movement in the kitchen. She wished she could float out of bed with a flick of her tail. Waking up here seemed such an exhausting prospect.

She couldn’t lace her stays herself, so she emerged in her chemise. Alan was at the table with a cup of black liquid and a paper in hand. He glanced up at her very briefly. “Oh—Ginnia, our guest is awake; could you …?”

“Of course, sir,” she replied, shaking her head at him behind his back, smiling at Esmerine.

“Is there some way to wash?” Esmerine asked as Ginnia laced the stays over a fresh chemise, while Esmerine’s body still had all the grime of the past day.

“Wash what?”

“Myself?”

“You’ll only be here a week,” Ginnia said. “Why do you need to wash? Maybe Belawyn has some scent you can borrow, if you’d like.”

“No, it’s all right.” Esmerine wanted sand and salt water to scrub with, not
scent
.

“Anyway, you look lovely. Would you like any coffee? Soup?” Ginnia led her back into the kitchen. “I apologize that we don’t have any porridge. Master Dare prefers a light breakfast.”

“Soup is fine,” Esmerine said. As if she knew a thing about breakfasts here to begin with.

“She might rather have water than coffee,” Alan said, still looking at his paper.

“I do, actually.”

Ginnia brought the cup of water and a bowl of soup to the opposite end of the table. Alan turned a page. Esmerine slurped the soup, surprised to find such familiar food—strands of seaweed floated in the pale broth. He obviously didn’t gather seaweed on her islands anymore but he still got it somewhere.

She felt Alan’s eyes on her, but when she looked up to catch them, he was back to the paper.

“What are you reading?” she asked.

“Just the newspaper.”

“Oh.” She had to resist touching the pages. “Could you read any to me? Like you used to, with the stories?”

He hesitated, tugging at his necktie, and then shifted to sit next to her, rather than across, so she could see the words while he read to her. She bent her head over the newspaper, twisting her hair and pulling it around her neck so it wouldn’t fall on the pages.

“You know what?” he said. “I don’t know if this paper is the thing.” He stood. “I’ll be right back.”

He returned with a little red book she recognized.

“
Tales of Many Lands
,” she exclaimed, reaching out to touch the dear cover, with its worn edges.

“I haven’t opened this book in many years,” Alan said. “Not since the last time I saw you. I always wanted to give it to you, but I knew it would only disintegrate under the sea.”

“Let me see …”

She had always loved the pictures. The book fell open naturally to her favorite story, “The Girl Who Loved a Bird.” There was a picture of the girl transforming into a bird on the last page. After three trials, with the bird’s help, she could join him.

“You always loved this one best,” he said.

“I guess I wanted to fly.”

“Do you … still?” He looked away from her, seeming uncomfortable.

“I guess I want a lot of things,” she said. “But I’ll work on the ones that seem possible first.”
Possible … and safe.

“Like what?” he asked. His eyes traveled back to her. She remembered his eyes as brown, but now she noticed they were only brown at the edges, bleeding into a mossy green. It was the first really good look at him she’d had since arriving, and for a moment—perhaps it was the appearance of the old familiar book—she was overwhelmed with memories of him. When she’d first seen him all grown up, she had thought him strange, but now that was already fading. He actually looked the same, just a little older, only she’d forgotten all the subtleties of him, like the color of his eyes and the straight, firm lines of his nose and mouth that seemed to match the long, swift lines of his wings. Everything about him seemed sharper and faster than a merman.

“Your hair used to be longer,” she said.

He didn’t seem bothered that she hadn’t answered his question. “Well, it got in my eyes in the wind. And you always wore yours in a braid.”

“It gets tangled underwater, so my mother would braid it in the morning. When I was little, I mean. My mother doesn’t braid my hair anymore. Of course.” Her cheeks heated. “The sirens, we keep ourselves busy while we’re waiting for ships by combing our hair.”

“That sounds very scintillating.”

“Well, we don’t just comb our hair. We sing and tell stories.”

“No, I know.” He shook his head slightly. “The merfolk sing beautifully. Like the sea itself. I had a hard time sleeping when I became a messenger and traveled away from the ocean.” He paused. “Do you miss—that is, I always felt terrible for leaving when I was your only source of books.”

“It’s—it’s all right … Everyone back home thinks I’m very odd for missing them, anyway.” She flipped the pages of
Tales of Many Lands
. The fact that the book would disintegrate underwater like the books in shipwrecks burned in her heart like her feet burned when they touched the ground. If Alan could admit to missing the sound of the sea, she could admit to missing books. “I suppose … I just want to know things. I’m not always sure why. I thought I wanted to be a siren, I thought I would be happy then, but I wasn’t. I was so angry at Dosia for leaving, but I also …” She trailed off. It was so hard to explain the raw desire she felt for something that was unnameable, something that had no purpose for a mermaid. Was it enough to want to know something just to know it?

“She gave you an excuse to come here, didn’t she?” Alan said.

“Of course not! I would never have come if it weren’t for her. I already worry what the other sirens must think of me.”

“I’m surprised that you became a siren,” he said. “With Dosia, I’m not surprised, but you …”

“Why wouldn’t I be a siren?”

“Aren’t sirens always drawn to human men? Isn’t it what makes siren magic so potent to them? I just never thought you were drawn to human men.”

“Well, I’m
not
.”

“Well, what are you drawn to?”

Her stomach fluttered. “I guess—it must be—books.” True. Just not entirely true. Other mermaids were content to marry mermen and giggle about humans. Why did she have to be so drawn to dark, clever eyes and graceful wings and childhood memories that wouldn’t leave her alone? “It’s your fault,” she added.

“I know. I—I don’t know why I taught you to read when you can’t have any books.”

“I’m not sorry,” she said. She let the book fall open once again to that girl transforming into a little black shape taking flight, swift and free. Everything about it pierced her. The way the book felt in her hands, delicate and precious with its textured cover and slightly browned pages. The way the words ran across the page in perfect lines, expressing order and permanence. And of course the picture, reaching into her soul and twisting, whispering of things she could not have.

Alan put his thumbs on the edge of the book just above hers and gently shut it. “Maybe I should give you a tour of the bookstore since you’ll be helping Belawyn out this week.”

“Yes. Please.”

Once she finished her soup, she followed him downstairs. The bookstore front faced the morning sun, and the beams slanted in and fell on the shelves, like the sky was pointing a benevolent finger at them.

“Those are novels on the back shelves,” Alan said. “With plays and poetry beside them. On the left we have books of philosophy, science, botany, and medicine. On the right, political tracts, history, and travel, including guidebooks for Sormesen, which are very popular.”

“Where are the books like this?” She held up
Tales of Many Lands
. “The books you used to bring me?”

“That would be with the fairy tales and myths, which are by poetry. Other books we used to read are peppered all through here—some history, some narratives, some novels … but, of course, those aren’t the books I’m trying to sell.”

“Why not?”

“Because … Fandarsee have a certain responsibility to educate. People look to us for ideas, not fanciful things. I might not be discovering a planet, but I hope I assist people in discovering ideas that might lead to more ideas, and so on.”

“Ideas about what?”

“Well, anything important. Like the book I’m reading. It’s about whether people have inherent moral values. What is right and wrong. That’s quite important.”

“I suppose, but don’t myths teach that too?”

“Maybe, but it isn’t the sort of thing learned men discuss.”

Another thing that hadn’t really changed about Alan was that sometimes she didn’t understand him at all. “Why not? Isn’t it interesting?”

“It is, but you don’t understand. It’s not …
important
.”

“No, you’re right, I don’t understand. I guess I’m glad I’m not a ‘learned man.’ ”

He looked briefly affronted, but then he either realized how silly he sounded or he simply gave up on her, she wasn’t sure which. “Anyway, you’ve seen the bookstore,” he said. “Now, I ought to show you how to write with a quill so we can send Swift off with that letter for Dosia.”

They returned to the desk in her bedroom. He jerked open a drawer and took a few sheets of paper from the stack inside. “You’ve only ever written with a stick and sand, correct? Pen and ink is a bit different.”

He showed her how to mix ink from powder and dip her quill into the pot.

“I already have these few ready,” he said, gesturing to the waiting quills, their fronds trimmed to mere puffs at the ends. “But later I’ll show you how to trim the tip. Let me know if you have trouble.”

“All right.”

He left her alone, and she carefully wrote
Dear Dosia
. She remembered that letters were always addressed that way in books, and was quite proud of herself for beginning a proper human letter with a real quill.

After that, it became more difficult.
What happened to you?
she wrote.
Are you all right?
From there, she hardly knew what else to say. That felt like all that really mattered at the moment.

She didn’t realize how long she’d been there until Swift appeared in the doorway, munching on bread, hair mussed from sleep. “Is the letter ready?”

“Um … almost.”

He peered at her paper. “Do you need help?”

“No—well—I can write, but—”

“That doesn’t look like much of a letter,” Swift said.

“I know it’s not!” She sighed. “I have no idea what to say. This might be the last time I ever get to communicate with her …” She bit her lip, as if it might loosen the constriction in her throat.

“Why don’t you add that you miss her and—I don’t know—you hope she’s happy?”