Deeper (12 page)

Chapter 15

You saw me sitting by the glass, staring at the blue sea
so far down, and you opened the door and said, “Come.”

There were three things that kept
you from me.  The first were words, and those I was learning.  The second was walking on my two legs.

T
he pathway down was too steep for me to go dragging myself on my arms, and the rocks were sharp.  I’d never get down there unless you carried me, and I didn’t have the words to ask you.

You looked at me again, head cocked on one side, and then you disappeared. It seemed your human-cave had
more holes than an old piece of coral.  I heard banging and scraping.  After a while you came back, carrying two sticks.

You pulled me up, my arms around your neck so that I wouldn’t feel the weight on my feet, and I kept my lips tight shut so that no sounds of pain would escape.  You put a stick under each arm, and lowered me on to them, and showed me how I
could hold myself up with each hand, away from the ground.  I had to put my feet down for balance, but I was very strong, and I could touch the rocks lightly.  You watched me as I danced carefully on my two sticks back and forth on the rock platform outside your door, so proud and silly.

It still hurt. 
But you looked so pleased with the sticks you’d found, that I didn’t even wince, but smiled back, and swung myself around on my two arms and four legs, laughing myself because you laughed and were happy.

Still the path was too steep
for me and my sticks.  You put your arm around my waist, and with that and the stick on the other side, we climbed step by step towards the beach.  With every step the beloved water came closer, until I stood, two legged, on the sand just as you had – and then I dropped the stick, and fell into the silvery beach, and wriggled towards the surf dragging my legs behind me.  But you came after me and pulled me back.

I looked at you, puzzled.  You pointed to my legs, trailing behind me, and to the waves throwing themselves towards the shelving sand.   Did you think I couldn’t swim?  Of
course – to you I was human.

But e
ven humans can swim.  I shook you off and wriggled into the water, sliding down under the sea foam.  You followed me to thigh depth, calling like a mer to its pup. Anybody would have thought I was heading out to Deep Sea. 

For the first time in days I felt the weight of my pain lifted from me and I forgot my clumsy human legs and the hard
unforgiving Dry, and the struggle to become human, and melted into the ocean in pure joy.

I missed my strong
tail, but my arms were still powerful.  I felt the swell suck and lift and toss me into deeper green, though it was still not much deeper than you were tall.  You waded in to chest-height, calling after me.  Melur!  It was the first time you’d called my name.  I lifted my head up just to hear you call it again, with the same look you’d had when I lay face first in your warm pool in the human cave.  You were afraid for me.  You must like me then, a little.

I called
back to you, to come out beyond the breaker line with me, where the sea swelled smooth and clear as a mer woman’s teats- but you wouldn’t come out any further, but just stretched your arms out.  Your fear wasn’t just for me – it was the water.  You felt safe on the Dry, it was your world.  The under-wash pulled at your legs and you stumbled in the sand and stepped back.

“Come in, swim with me.”

You shook your head.  You didn’t understand my words, but you saw the brightness in my face.  You weren’t happy, though.  You looked out towards the horizon, blue meeting blue, and you frowned as if you saw storm clouds rushing to meet you.

I
was sorry to make you troubled, and glad that I could. I swam back in, underneath the wash, then rose up at your wet knees and wrapped my arms around them. A big human, a male, wary of the water like a newborn baby. Although mer babies are sometimes born in water, and not often afraid. A small wave burst against your stomach and you looked down at me, my new washed hair shining with spray.  You peeled my hands from your legs and pulled me back towards the Dry.

I remembered then
that not so long ago you’d almost drowned.  No wonder you were afraid.  If I’d still had my tail, I could have taught you to be no more afraid than a fish is - but if you got out of your depth now, I’d be able to do nothing for you now but watch you drown.

I felt tender towards you
, loving as a mother with a pup crying for fear of being left behind.  I laid my head up against your flat, rough-haired stomach, and you sat on the sand and pulled me up to sit beside you.  When you turned your face towards me to speak, I kissed you again on your lips.  They were wet with salt and seawater, just as they had been the first time.

You
didn’t turn away, but you didn’t kiss me back.  You looked into my eyes as if you’d found a strange shell or a crab with an extra leg.  You licked your lips, and looked thoughtful.

I wondered if,
on the Dry, they had tales about mer just like we had about humans.  Maybe your elders told you of mer that waited in the sea, dragging humans into the water with their claws to tear apart far under Deep Sea.  But then, you didn’t know I was mer – to you, I was human.  These thoughts went through me, and also the thought, would you ever love me, or would you get bored with me as the seasons changed?

I scooped
the wet sand over your legs, building up a tail for you that the sea sucked away as soon as it was done.  I made one for me, too, covering up my blue-white legs.  We were both mer now, our tail fins sliding into the tide.   You reached across to me and ran a finger over my teats, where my nipples stood erect from the sea wind.  Cold, you said, grinning?

I
leaned towards you, wanting you to touch me again - but you turned away, and found a patch of dry warm sand away from the water, and lay on your stomach, your back to the sun and to me.  I lay beside you, smelling the warmth of your body.

Down here on the beach
, I felt less uneasy than I had.  The mer are often on the shore, on sand or rock, not far from the sea.  Even without legs we can easily wriggle ourselves and slide to where we need to be, or back into the water.  I lay beside you, as I had that first night when you almost drowned, and slowly drew my fingers over your strong knobbly spine.  You had raised brown moles, three of them, on either side, like soft brown barnacles.

You pushed yourself up on your elbows, and
gave me a long look.  Wrong?  I took my hand away and dug it under the sand, hid my face from you.

You reached across me in your turn. 
I felt you tracing the picture on my back, running your forefinger along the raised scars, white, purple and green. 

“Salamander?
”

I squinted round over my shoulder – stupid, because I’d never been able to see it before, and I couldn’t now either.

You drew a picture in the sand with your finger, a kind of lizard.  Sometimes we see them running across the rocks in the channels.  I’ve seen them swimming, too. 

So my totem was a lizard?

You scrubbed out the legs with your hand.  No legs, swimming in the water – you pointed and paddled.  Then legs, crawling on the Dry.

Salamander.

You sat up and pulled up your clothes to show me. 

“Tattoo.”

On your thigh was painted – cut? – a mermaid in blue and green.  She looked a little like Azura, with long yellowish ropes of hair – but her teats were much bigger than any mermaid ever had.  I snorted, imagining dragging those round bulbous things through the water like a spiders’ egg sacs.  She had no slit, either, that I could see, but just a tail that started from her waist, curved around your leg. So you humans do tell stories about the mer! Is this what you thought mer looked like?  Had you ever seen one?

Whoever had cut this hadn’t done it with a knife like Grandmother’s.  This was much finer work.  I traced it with my hand,
wondering if it’d hurt to make, as much as mine did.  You pointed to the mer woman, and then to me.

Mermaid
?

You lifted the strands of my dark hair, touched my eyelid.

Who, me?  I shook my head, brushed the remains of the sand tail away from my legs.

You waved towards the
sea, and raised your long brows.

The heart in my chest lurched.  But no, you didn’t
mean it.  You pulled my hair and twisted one side of your mouth up – it was your way of starting a smile you didn’t want to finish – and I could see you were just saying it because you’d found me on the beach, washed up by the tide, and because I liked to swim.

Afterwards, we walked together along the tide line.  Even though I knew you were
keeping a distance, my body warmed and shivered at the touch of your arm under my elbow, and I leaned in towards you, hoping yours would hear me and answer.  Your arm around me tightened, so maybe it did.

Among the rocks I saw things that I knew well and I told you the names of them in mer.  There are hundreds of different kinds of sea plants, though you can find only a few washed up on the sand.  Some are food and can be eaten straight away.  Some can’t be eaten wet, but can be dried and eaten later.  Others again you can make things from, and some are just used for decoration.  I had to laugh when you tried to say the names, nearly choking as you tried to force your voice into the high tones and clicks of mer.

I waited for you to tell me the human words but you just said ‘sea weed’.   All these things were ‘sea weed’ to you.  What a strange narrow world you have – living so close by Deep Sea, and you hardly know anything about it. 

Chapter 16

Some days after you brought me to your cave on Trapped Moon, a woman came, in a growling floater – boat – that moved like a dragon fly over the sea and beached on the sand.   She was taller than me, lean, like you, with long brown thighs, knees, calves, ankles, and big round breasts like the mermaid on your leg. 

You were
tending to your moon box - laptop – what you were doing, I didn’t yet understand - and I lay on the couch, turning over pictures of sea creatures, remembering the taste of this one, and then that.  At the sound of the boat scraping, you got up and went out to the cliff path, and peered down the track eagerly, shading your eyes.  I saw that you’d been bored – and it stung.

She climbed up the path easily to where you waited, standing still and watchful like a seabird.  I was shy, and stayed inside.

You threw your arms around the woman – but not like male to female, more as if she were another male.  Maybe to you, she was like Che.  I was relieved to see that.  She came with you into the house, and then she stopped, and stared a little, and turned pink. She looked at you, eyebrows raised.

I looked
back at her.  She had brown hair, not long but curling lightly on her shoulders, and she wore loose blue coverings that came to her thigh.  Her mouth was long and thin, and her eyes were the reddish brown of kelp.  She was curious, too, but there was nothing cruel in her.  She smiled at me, and held out her hand.

“Caz,” you said, waving towards her.  The
name was short and sharp and urchin-spiky.   She asked a question, and you shook your head, meaning, she doesn’t understand you.  But I will soon, I thought.  I heard my name. Melur.

“
Melur,” said Caz, sitting beside me, holding out a hand, and then letting it drop. 

You brought out
your golden drink, that tasted of water with piss in it, and made you sing and tell me long stories I didn’t understand, and stumble to sleep.  Caz drank it greedily, glass for glass, her elbows on her knees.  You talked, and I heard my name, and saw you both glancing at me.  Caz put a hand on my leg, pressed it, as if to say, never mind.  I liked her, though I didn’t much want to. 

She
looked at my legs, and you followed the direction of her eyes.  I understood that she wanted to know what was the matter with me.   Grandmother was wrong about humans, I thought.  They’re harmless and soft-hearted.  In the mer world, we don’t tolerate cripples.  They cost effort to feed, and life can be hard enough without that.

I
examined her, too – especially the legs.  These were the legs I should have had!  Everything about them was right.  I could tell that by the confident way she stretched them out in front of her, crossing one over the other, then back again, showing them to you to admire and approve, as Azura used to toss her plaits.  The way her knees bent and straightened, the way her ankles tapered and her feet branched into short toes, pink at the ends, with nails coloured silver and just beginning to peel.   Azura would have killed for that secret! I wondered if you’d like me better if my toenails were coloured silver.  Perhaps Caz would show me how..

My own legs were blue-green pale
, pink on the insides, still carrying the long thin scars the spirits had given me. I pulled a blanket over them, hoping she wouldn’t notice.  Her eyes caught the movement, understanding.

She reached over, touched my
hair. 

“Beautiful.”

What is beautiful?

You and Caz exchanged glances.  But she meant well, I could see that. 
She was telling me, it’s alright.  Why didn’t I feel grateful to her then? 

She
spoke to me, and drew the blanket up, and peered, and prodded me gently as you would a strange growth on your body.  You leaned forward – you were being consulted.  I was a thing, a problem, for you to explore together.  I pushed away her hand.

If she could touch, then so could I. 
I pulled the covering from her teats, huge and round, sitting in some kind of basket hanging from her shoulders.  She would have stopped me, but she was taken by surprise.  I poked, and the flesh dimpled and bounced back.  Now she too was a thing.

She laughed nervously,
covered herself up and sat cross-armed, off-set.  She looked to you for help.  You caught my eye, grinned.  I’d thrown your friend off-balance, and for now I was the winner in this contest for you.  I could see in your eyes that you liked that game.

Caz
smiled too, then, but it was a tight smile – the kind you make when you’re annoyed and can’t show it.  If you and I come to fight, Caz – I thought – you’ll lose.  I’m stronger than you, and one day soon he’ll like me better. Besides, my teeth are sharper and I can hit very hard when I want to.

Caz had brought you food in boxes, which the two of you carried up from the floater. You were hot and tired when you’d finished, and threw yourselves down, stretching out your long brown legs towards each other. 

You turned on your noise machine and got out more of the yellow drink from the cold place, fridge.  I decided to try it again.  It’s funny, the more I drank of it, the less bad it tasted.  Maybe if I drank enough of it, I’d even like it sometime, I thought.  I finished a glass and yawned.   Through the haze, I could hear that you two were arguing, because your voices got louder and deeper, and you leaned out towards one another with your mouths wide as if you’d have liked to bite.  Do humans ever bite, I thought – and yet, I didn’t care.  I slept.

When I woke, you’d finished fighting, and you
were sitting outside, glow-sticks in your mouths.  Cigarettes. The cave was full of their sharp mist - it made me sneeze and cough.  You held one out to me.  I would have taken it, just to try, but Caz pulled it away from you and threw it onto the stone, grinding it under her foot.  Your voices drifted, slow flowing, words like sticks caught in a side stream.

I
sniffed at the sea air, blowing the sharpness out of my nostrils.  Your eyes slid over me, cloudy as dawn rain, and you put your arm around my waist, and around Caz’s, and held us both close to your side, and sighed.  Caz laughed, a high laugh more like the mer than anything I’d heard a human make so far.  You stroked my shoulder, and hers.  I wriggled out from under, and lay watching you, till you both got up and walked slowly away into the darkness, unsteady on your perfect human legs. 

Chapter 17

Caz
left when the sun was high overhead the next day.  She pointed at the boat and pulled at me to come, smiling, and you pointed too, and pushed, as if you were herding a bait ball.  But I held on to your legs, and shook my head, and curled up tight and solid at your feet.  Caz argued, looking at you, and you spread your hands as if to say, it’s not my fault.  Then she got back into the growling floater – boat - and moving away at a speed I couldn’t believe, throwing up white spray in front and a bow wave behind.  I was glad we were alone again. If she came again, you’d be mine.

If you’d been a merman, I’d have only had to look ba
ck at you, diving, in that particular way, and you’d have known what to do.  They don’t wait for second invitations.  Usually they don’t even wait to be invited at all.

At night you slept alone in your dark sleeping place with the cloth pulled across the glass so the morning light couldn’t get to you, long after the dawn broke. 
Strange for a man who lived by the sea, you often seemed to want to shut it out.

I slept on the couch.  On the third night, you moved
my bed out on the rock platform in front of your cave, because you saw that I liked to be nearer to the sea.  From there, I could see the ocean at dawn, without even lifting my head – sometimes, the dark shapes of dolphins and whales and I imagined, maybe, of Che, watching for me.  When I thought of Che, my stomach tightened – but then, I was happy with you, so why should I think of Che?

Sleeping all alone out there
I missed my sisters and Casih.  Mer rarely sleep alone, not even outcasts, like Che.  We sleep all together on the sand, in a huddle of tails and hair and arms, side against side.

I
crept into your sleeping place when the moon was almost faded out of the sky, but the sun hadn’t yet risen.  It was the coolest time of night, but I wasn’t cold.  I slept without covering, liking to feel the salt drops carried by the wind on my skin.  You lay with your blankets pulled up to your chin, your eyelids twitching uneasily.  In your sleep, you always looked troubled, child-like, even a little spoilt – a mer pup whose mother loved him too much or not enough.

I pulled myself in beside you and lay very quietly.  I hoped you wouldn’t wake
too soon, because I was afraid of what might happen if you did.  You were still unpredictable to me.  I put my arm gently around you, feeling the heat of your body, a furnace compared to mine. 

You muttered, and turned to me, eyes still closed.  You stretched your right arm across me.  Your face in the moonlight was almost as pale as mine. 

You opened an eye, just one.  In the darkness, I couldn’t see the white of your eye: it was all pupil, like a mer.  The other opened too.  My face was very close to yours, so close it looked to me as if you had two eyes and another between them.

You put your hand behind my head and brought me towards you.  Y
ou kissed me, at last.  Your lips tasted of cigarettes, those acrid sticks you lit and sucked at before you slept, and beer.  I licked the flavours from the outside of your mouth and then from the inside. 

You pulled the
coverings from both of us and blinked at me in the darkness.  You’d seen my body before.  Why then did I feel shy, scared?   Perhaps because in your look there wasn’t just desire, but curiosity and a kind of coolness behind the heat, as if this too was just an experiment, and whether it succeeded or failed didn’t much matter.  Your hand moved slowly over the shape on my back and then on to the backs of my legs, stroking the scarred skin on the inside of my thighs.  I’d had no feeling there except pain: now I felt pleasure.

Y
ou kissed my nipples, ran your mouth over my flat mer breasts, licked me, your tongue warm and sticky with sleep.  I pushed myself towards you, feeling your long human bones burning hot along my cool mer skin.  I felt your penis rise against me.  You were definitely male.  I laughed, thinking about how I’d wondered.  Of course you were male.

You’re
very beautiful, you said – or something like that, I think.  I didn’t understand the words but your eyes gleamed in the moonlight and your lips and your hands said you liked me.

You moved your fingers
over me, warm shallow currents pulling me out to deeper water.

You stroked me between my
teats and over them, in small circles, on down to my belly.

Mermaid, you said.

You kissed me, slid your face down between my legs, reached the warmth inside and nibbled me, a hundred small fishes. They streamed into me and through me, their fins setting my body fluttering and shivering.  For the first time, to be human was pleasure as well as pain.  You leaned over to kiss me again and I felt for your penis.  You were hot and strange and strong, but not like a mer, because there was no sheath you could hide yourself in.  I stroked your seed-sac, the soft balls that hang in front of human males for anything to bite, now tight and strained. But you looked the same as any young mer ready to fuck, straight, and pink, and reaching up for me.

You wanted to
mate then, and I wanted it too, but when it came to it I was frightened.  You leant over me, still kissing my neck with tiny cruel bites, and you were very heavy for something so thin.  Your bones pressed into me.  It was hard for me to breathe.  I struggled to get out from under you.  I felt your penis pressing at me, breaking through.  I wasn’t made for fucking with a human.  I tried to cover myself with my hands.  You felt it, raised your head and kissed my eyelids as I’d kissed yours.

It’s ok.  I’d heard you say that before.  It meant, don’t be scared.
It meant, let me in, or I’ll come in without asking.

Are you alright
? That upwards inflection in your voice, and breathlessness, as if there wasn’t enough air now in the room for both of us.  While you asked, you pushed and parted.

It’s ok. 

I wanted you.  I choked down my fear and took my hands away and put them around your neck, and rolled towards you.  You lifted my legs over your hips, and I felt a sharp pain.  You entered me, slowly, watching my face.  If we’d been in the sea, this moment would have been side by side in the sand, or the current, twisting around one another, weightless, till the seed came from you and we drifted apart.  So I’d seen Casih and Father, and my sisters with their mer-mates.

Here, now, everything was heavy and awkward.  You
thrust into me, your eyes shut and your face screwed up as if you were eating something you didn’t like. I wondered if I’d die, mating with a human male, against nature. 

You slowed, opened your eyes,
brought your face to mine.  I felt your body trembling, holding back.  You nibbled my lower lip, bit gently into my neck.  I had the feeling it wasn’t me you saw.

The feeling took me by surprise. It grew in seconds, from a
ripple to a rush, and I kissed you, and pulled you hard into me.  You thrust, and cried out, and then twisted away with a shout, and I didn’t know at first why, until I saw the blood running from your shoulder onto my body.