Mermaid_ A Twist on the Classic Tale - Carolyn Turgeon [34]
“Lenia!”
She pushed back up to the surface and looked out. It was Margrethe, frantically running along the cliff, under the trees, to the gate, dressed all in white, her head covered but her voice and her face unmistakable.
She had come back.
Lenia was about to go to her when a man appeared behind her, chasing her as she began running down the stairs. For a moment Lenia froze, wondering what to do, and then she felt it, she understood that the man would not hurt Margrethe, that he was trying to protect her, that they were taking her away.
She stopped in the water. Watched Margrethe cry out to her, her voice ripping into her again as the man pulled her away. He put his arms around her and drew her next to him. Margrethe was freezing, the cold wracking her body. Lenia focused and saw, felt all of it, watched them until they disappeared. And she knew, then, she would not see Margrethe again.
The shore was desolate now, and bare. A grief broke open over Lenia, a feeling that was brand-new to her, raw and pulsing.
She pushed forward, through the water. In moments she was at the shore, feeling the rocks under her palm. They glittered where she touched them. She remembered the feel of the prince in her arms as she moved from the water onto the beach. He had lain right there. She had kissed him, felt his skin under her palms, her lips. Now, it was as if he had died, as if both of them had, and she felt real grief moving through her. She had not felt this way since her grandfather had turned to foam a few years before. Everyone had celebrated his passing. She alone had felt it was an irretrievable loss. He is a part of the sea now, they had said. But she had watched his body disintegrate, disappear into the water. Become nothing at all.
Margrethe’s voice rang in her ears. The longing inside of her.
And the thought came to Lenia, as it had repeatedly since the day after her birthday, when her sisters had given her the necklace she was wearing now.
She could go to the sea witch, Sybil.
She shook her head. She should go home, forget this world, mate with Falke, who was the best of the mermen, as Thilla had said, and lay her eggs. Spend the rest of her three hundred years with her sisters and her children, her sisters’ children, all of them together. And she could tell the children stories about souls as they laughed and played, imagining what it would be like to have webs of light living inside them. Why did she have to long for more than that?
But the thought kept lingering, still.
FROM AS FAR back as she could remember, Lenia had heard tales about the sea witch, and her great powers. They all knew that the witch had once been favored by Lenia’s great-grandmother, the former queen, and that the two had fallen out spectacularly when the queen issued the royal decree forbidding interaction with humans. Some said that Sybil had argued vehemently against the decree and openly defied it, others that the disagreement was of a more personal, scandalous nature. Whatever the case, the queen had banished Sybil to a cave at the outskirts of the central kingdom. Where, the story went, she’d been practicing magic ever since.
Lenia had always heard rumors of mermaids consulting her for love potions and spells, for charms to ensure the healthy hatchings of their children, and now she’d learned that her own sister had gone to see Sybil, too. All of this was strictly forbidden, of course, but for some, magic had its own allure, stronger than a royal decree.
Ever since Vela had mentioned Sybil, Lenia could not stop thinking of her—and what she might know of the prince, whether or not Lenia could see him again.
She would do anything, she thought, to see him one more time.
THAT NIGHT, AFTER the thought had lingered long enough to turn into a possibility, a shining hope, Lenia made a decision. She would visit the sea witch, just to see. It would not