Monstrous Beauty (25 page)

It made sense—it all made perfect sense—and it was wrong at the same time. She lay back down, vaguely uncertain. The pressure of the water surrounding her body was comforting, but shouldn’t it be deadly to her? The kelp felt luxurious, but shouldn’t its slimy, tentacled touch disgust her? She closed her eyes. Her muscles felt loose. Her thoughts pleasantly escaped her. She rested.

Needa finished her work and turned to Weeku. “Tell Noo’kas we arrive presently.” The guard bowed her head and swam quickly away.

Needa reached under the bed of kelp and removed the silver flask that she’d found in Hester’s hand. She studied it, not quite sure what to do, and then finally she stroked Hester’s cheek once. Hester’s eyes opened at the touch.

“What is this?” Needa asked gently, showing her the flask.

Hester was ashamed. “I don’t know. I took it from Noo’kas’s pile. It reminded me of something. It felt important to me.”

“From your life on land?”

“Yes.”

“Can you fit it in your pocket?”

“I should give it back, shouldn’t I?”

Needa thought for a moment. She shook her head. “Keep it for now. We will trust your instinct. But take care: do not allow your mind to wander to it while you are in her presence, or Noo’kas will sense that you have stolen from her.”

She rose up and said, “I am to take you to her. There is not much time to tell you what you need to know, but I will try. You must not reveal it to Noo’kas, or Weeku, or anyone, do you understand?”

“Why are you helping me, Needa?”

Needa smiled wistfully. “I want you to live with us—so dearly—but unlike Noo’kas, I believe it must be your choice. Oh!” She covered her mouth. “I am speaking treason!”

She rose up and swam in a graceful figure eight, pacing. “But I cannot leave you defenseless. She is treating you unfairly, out of jealousy. I owe it to my beloved sister.” She stopped pacing, swam to Hester, and offered her hands. Hester reached out to grasp them. Needa turned Hester’s right hand over.

“Look at your palm. Look carefully.”

Hester examined it. “It’s just my hand.”

“Look at the pattern.”

“Wrinkles—I see lines and wrinkles.”

“Look again, there.” Needa touched the skin lightly with her fingertips.

Hester’s hand burned. She looked closely—her vision was coarse, but she saw that some of the smaller, fainter wrinkles seemed to form crackled letters. “Peter,” she said after a moment. She looked up at Needa. “How did you know this name?” She made a fist with her hand, opened it, closed it, and opened it again. The letters remained. “How did you do it?”

“You called the name while you were sleeping.”

“While I was unconscious,” Hester corrected.

“I never spoke as well as Syrenka.” Needa smiled. “You must think hard while you are in Noo’kas’s realm. Try always to remember where you came from, and if you cannot, look at your palm to remind yourself. She wants you to forget everything—your family, your friends, who you are. She never wants you to know your real connection to Syrenka.”

“Who
is
Syrenka?”

“Syrenka was one of us. She was my dearest sister. She became human to be with her lover. They were happy for a time. They were married, but then it went wrong. He was killed, and Syrenka—she was always so passionate, so determined!—she desperately wanted to save a part of him. It was a mistake. She did a terrible, impulsive thing: she bound his emotions to the earth using the soul of a baby. To do that, she needed Noo’kas’s help. But Noo’kas was jealous. She had always been jealous of her. Syrenka was smart, powerful, and headstrong—never obedient enough. Noo’kas could have mercifully refused to help, knowing what poor Syrenka would discover as soon as the deed was done. But she didn’t refuse her, because she selfishly wanted those last, lingering pieces of Ezra for herself, and because she wanted to punish her.”

“Ezra,” Hester said, disquieted by the name of Syrenka’s husband. “I know an Ezra.”

“Just so. Tell me about your Ezra, Hester.”

“The Ezra I know … he’s lovely,” she said with heat building in her face. And then she felt the distinctive knife of longing and suddenly remembered him clearly, as if he were standing in front of her. “In some ways I know him as well as myself. In other ways I don’t know who he is at all.”

“Think on it, Hester, I entreat you. Remember your past. But there is more to the story. I shall tell you on the way—we must leave now or Noo’kas will punish us for dawdling. Can you stand?”

Despite her relative buoyancy in the water, Hester struggled and failed. “I’m all numb and tingly. I’m afraid of losing my legs, Needa.”

Needa scooped her arm around Hester’s waist. “It is because you still feel a connection to land. Listen carefully, Hester. If you leave the ocean, the spell will be interrupted, and you may keep your legs. Noo’kas does not want you to leave, so you will have to be clever and determined. If you choose the land over the sea, I cannot help you.”

As Needa swam, she explained that for mischief’s sake, Noo’kas had deliberately fouled Syrenka’s magic. She had entangled the emotions of others who had also died that tragic night.

“It entertained her to know they would always suffer, trapped halfway on the earth, neither truly living, nor freed by death.”

“Ghosts—do you mean ghosts, like Linnie?”

Needa nodded. “Yes, I believe that is what you call them. And until now Noo’kas had also delighted in the misery created by the stolen soul of the infant, because it had become a debt that generations of Syrenka’s family would pay, over and over again. For Noo’kas that was an unexpected benefit that she came to feel was her biggest achievement: a deliciously recurring punishment. She believed the cycle would continue forever: love, birth, suffering, sacrifice. And she thought she would always have Ezra as her plaything. She calls on him as she wishes, when the tide is high and he is trapped in the cave. Then you came along, trying to break the cycle, discovering important pieces of your curse, causing Ezra to know real love again.”

They passed the doll nursery, and Hester knew they were almost at the throne room.

“I haven’t discovered a thing,” Hester said. “Help me, Needa! Why is the baby’s soul a debt?”

“Because it is contrary to nature for a soul to exist on earth without a body, as the baby’s soul does. It is also not possible for a human body to live without a soul…”

Weeku appeared in the distance, swimming toward them.

Needa swore under her breath in her own language. And then she said in a low voice into Hester’s ear, “Do not speak in front of her. This is the last thing I can say to you. Commit it to your memory: as long as the infant’s soul is selfishly detained, there is one soul too many on earth, and one will be taken from Syrenka’s family.”

“But I don’t understand,” Hester said. Needa squeezed her powerfully around the waist, scolding her. Hester clamped her mouth shut.
A fucking riddle.

They traveled in silence, with Weeku escorting them. A part of Hester didn’t want to understand the story Needa had begun to tell her. She tried instead to concentrate on what it would take to free herself. But her mind would not let go.

The Doyle journal contained detailed, intimate knowledge of the sea folk. Syrenka’s lover was named Ezra. E. A. Doyle was Ezra. He had died generations ago, and yet he was still Noo’kas’s plaything—until Hester came along, until Hester caught his attention. E. A. Doyle’s headstone was upended, along with Linnie’s. Hester had no doubt that Linnie had been sending her an angry message.
Why do you want to be with Ezra more than with me?

Hester felt a film of warm tears bathe her eyes, and the cold ocean wash them away. She breathed in water and felt the sting of the salt against a suddenly raw throat. Ezra, her beloved Ezra, was a ghost like Linnie.

Ezra.

Once it entered her mind, she couldn’t erase it. She had deliberately disregarded everything that was unusual about him: that they’d met only on the beach or in the cave; his handmade clothing that was always clean; the outdated language and references; that he never seemed to feel cold; that she’d never seen him speak to another person. Pastor McKee had said that no one could see or hear Linnie but Hester. If she were honest, couldn’t the same be said of Ezra? She remembered the couple who passed him on the sand—the fraternity boy and his girlfriend, who both looked bemused when she motioned in his direction. She recalled him standing unnoticed in a sea of people on the Fourth of July.

But what about Joey Grimani? He had heard Ezra’s voice in the cave that first night, hadn’t he? She replayed the incident in her mind.
You’re a crackpot,
Joey had said to her before she shoved him out of the cave. She suddenly recognized that he’d never responded to Ezra’s voice at all, he’d only responded to her own perception of a voice.

Even Ezra had seemed taken aback when she spoke to him.
Whom are you speaking to?
he had asked her. She had thought the comment was strange, but she had tucked it away into the recesses of her mind after she got to know him better. Now she wondered, could she have been the first person to speak to him in generations? The first human being to touch him and hold him with love? If it were true, good God, how lonely had he been until then? How could someone so sensitive survive that deprivation? Suddenly Hester was thinking critically again. The lulling effect of Noo’kas’s undersea spell was fading.

The mountain of treasure grew before them, and Hester clamped her lips tight, preparing to face Noo’kas.

Her mind asserted itself defensively: why shouldn’t she have ignored the warning signs about Ezra? It was an understandable, protective reaction. He was made for her. He was intelligent, he was odd and old-fashioned, and he knew her well—he knew her to her core. He had crushed her resolve with that crooked tooth and his maddening, endearing verbal playfulness. He sparred with her; he made her happy; he filled her with desire. Her connection to him was something they’d both felt, almost instantly. It defied time and space. He had been waiting for her, he’d said once, and now she knew he meant it literally. She knew that she was somehow inextricably linked to him through Syrenka.

This realization was followed quickly by another, more painful one: all the time he’d waited he had been enduring Noo’kas. He’d been trapped on the beach; trapped in a cave that filled with water every twelve and a half hours, exposing him to that hag on her whim; trapped for all eternity, with no control over what happened to him. What horrors had Noo’kas inflicted on him—Noo’kas, who was so selfish and cruel? She wanted to roar in frustration for him. And then, with her thoughts so discomposed, she found herself in front of the sea queen again.

Chapter 39

N
EEDA AND
W
EEKU PLACED
Hester on her numb feet in front of Noo’kas, who was sitting in her throne like a giant slug. Her flesh spilled both over and under the armrests, and the tiny fish that groomed her formed a cloud of movement. Needa and Weeku genuflected—which reminded Hester to bow—before they retreated to the phalanx of attendants.

“Ah, Semiramis,” Noo’kas said, obviously pleased. “Thank you for coming; I did so want to see your legs one last time before your confinement.”

Hester wanted to retort that she’d had no choice in the matter, but quickly felt a rush of warm water bathe her—a current, swirling past every crevice of her body, soothing her and lulling her. She felt a wobble in her self-confidence, and the fog of forgetting.

“Please don’t call me Semiramis,” she said uncertainly. “My name is Hester.” She looked at Needa, who stared with determined blankness at Noo’kas.

“But Semiramis suits you so well, now that you belong to the sea.”

The attendants clicked welcomingly.

Just a moment ago Hester had been seething with anger. But what had caused her rage? It escaped her now, and she felt the first winding threads of a cocoon of belonging.

“We want you,” Noo’kas said.

“We love you,” the attendants echoed.

“Be with me.”

“Stay with us.”

Noo’kas smiled broadly. Hester felt herself smile back. And then her eyes gravitated to Noo’kas’s teeth. They were sharp like Needa’s, but yellower. Hester stared, mesmerized, until she realized that something else was different: Noo’kas had multiple rows of teeth, like a shark. Hester blinked.

Something was not right. Something was clouding her judgment. She found herself squeezing her hands into fists. And then, as her fingernails dug painfully into the palm of her right hand, she remembered that it contained a secret. She opened her hand. She pretended to rub one of her fingers thoughtfully with the other hand, and then she glanced at it.

Peter.

So kind.

Peter.

Her loyal friend.

Her home was on the surface.

“I want to go back on land now.”

Noo’kas’s smile evaporated. She pushed her skeletal face forward.

“
What you want
means nothing in my world. Do not defy me, Semiramis. You will lose.”

“Hester, please. It’s
Hester
. I belong on land. I’m not one of you. I don’t want to be one of you.”

There was a disapproving murmur among the attendants.

“Come closer,” the hag said.

Hester looked at her legs. She knew that if she moved them, she’d collapse. “I can’t.”

Noo’kas waved a hand. Needa swam over at a quick clip, picked Hester up under her arms, and deposited her in front of the throne. She held her in place.

Noo’kas lifted Hester’s face with something that was more claw than hand and looked into her eyes, penetrating her.

“Mmm. So many unfortunate traces of Syrenka. Perhaps I should have killed you.” She reached back behind Hester’s head to stroke her hair. She drew a handful forward and then sniffed it through the pitlike nostril holes in her face. “Such a gloriously rich shade, like a sea otter—sleek and much too lovely.”

“I need to go back to the surface,” Hester said, in as controlled a voice as she could. She had something urgent to do, an errand, or a favor … she was on the verge of remembering.