Mermaid_ A Twist on the Classic Tale - Carolyn Turgeon [27]
“Do I love God?”
“No. The man I carried through the sea. Do you love him?”
The girl’s face shifted entirely. She looked behind her, as if they weren’t there alone, on the most desolate stretch of rock in the world, as if she had not just revealed many other secrets to her, this creature from the bottom of the sea. “I don’t know if I love him, but there is … something.”
“What? Tell me.” Lenia realized she was holding her breath. “Tell me about him.”
The girl looked at her nervously, and Lenia focused her mind. Tell me. Please. Again, the girl visibly relaxed. “He is … an adventurer. Like Odysseus. Do you know who that is?” When Lenia shook her head, she continued. “He tells stories, stories I have read in ancient texts. Most men do not have time for such things anymore, but he is learned, I can tell he has a curiosity for everything. The way he sees things makes everything seem different. There is something magical about him. And his eyes, the color of weeds, or stone. And he has … I mean, you touched him. His skin, where you touched him, it shimmers.”
“What do you mean?”
“Where you touched him, where I saw you touch him, it’s like there are jewels on his skin.”
Lenia looked down at her own skin, and then at the girl’s. They were so different. Hers thick and shining, almost hard, the girl’s so soft and thin and flat. Delicate. Like petals.
“I don’t know if anyone else can see,” the girl said. “I don’t understand it …”
Lenia lifted her hands in front of her. They both watched the light reflect off of them.
“Your skin is beautiful,” the girl breathed.
Suddenly, the girl’s eyes turned to water. It was the strangest thing Lenia had ever seen. Water, running from her eyes, down her cheeks.
Lenia reached out her hand, held it above the girl’s hand. “He’s the only human I’ve ever touched,” she said. “May I?”
Trembling, the girl pushed up her sleeve, revealing the pale skin of her forearm. “Yes,” she whispered. “Please.”
Softly, Lenia placed her palm on the girl’s skin. She saw her flinch as their skin touched, but the girl remained still as Lenia moved her palm up and then down, the heat of the girl’s arm moving into her. Even in this cold, Lenia could feel the girl’s blood pulsing underneath her skin.
“You’re so cold,” the girl said.
“I can feel your heart beating beneath your skin,” Lenia said.
The moment seemed to stretch out. When she lifted her hand away then, it was unmistakable: the trail of diamonds on the girl’s skin.
“There,” Lenia said. “Is that what you saw on him?”
“Yes,” the girl whispered.
A sound clanged through the air, and Lenia was quick to cover her ears. Still, the sound seared through them, through her body. “What is that?”
“Those are the bells,” the girl said. “It is time to pray.”
The girl did not notice Lenia’s discomfort. She was mesmerized by her own skin, where Lenia had touched it. Lenia studied her again: the dark eyes, soft, pale skin, the shimmer on her arm. The furs wrapped around her, the white cloth that hung down to her slippers. Her hair, which blew in the wind, in front of that silver, darkening sky.
Margrethe looked up then, her eyes still full of water. “I have to go, or they will come searching for me in my cell. But I want to stay. I fear I will wonder if I dreamt all of this.”
“I am real,” Lenia said. “I promise you. All of us are. It was our ancestors, not us, that made our worlds separate and created the land you live on, that separated you from the sea.”
“Thank you,” the girl said. But she did not move, just sat and stared at Lenia, her eyes tracing Lenia’s hair, her glimmering tail. “I …”
Lenia nodded. “I know.” She could see that the girl would freeze to death if she stayed outside any longer, could sense that the air was getting even colder as the sky went from white to silver, to black.
Go, Lenia thought. Go, and warm yourself.
“Good-bye,” Margrethe said. “I hope we will meet again.”
“As do I.”
And then Lenia watched the girl pick her way back over the rocks, to the staircase that wound up the cliff, to the world above, under the stars.