Mermaid_ A Twist on the Classic Tale - Carolyn Turgeon [36]
“Yes,” Sybil said, finally. “But the cost is great. That is the thing about magic. There is always a cost.”
“What is it?” Lenia whispered. And everything shifted then, became serious, sacred. The cavern seemed unbearably quiet.
Sybil looked at her and cocked her head. “It has been a long time since any merperson asked this of me,” she said.
“It has happened before? Others have asked this?”
“Yes,” Sybil said. “You’re not the first mermaid to love a human. This has happened for as long as our worlds have been separated. It is one reason we have all these rules now, why they try so hard to keep us away. You, my dear, might simply have more human left in you than most. Maybe that’s what makes you long for their world.”
“Yes,” Lenia said. For the first time, someone understood. The witch knew what she felt. Others of her kind had felt this way before. Yes. “Please, tell me what the price is. What I can do.”
Sybil looked at her sympathetically. “I can give you a potion,” she said, “that will split your tail into legs.”
“A potion,” Lenia breathed. “It is that simple?”
“It is very, very painful. When your tail splits, it feels as if you’re being slashed by a huge sword, and it continues to feel that way. Though you keep your grace and ease of movement, you feel as if you’re walking on knife blades with every step, even when every human who sees you is struck by your uncommon elegance. Would you be willing to suffer all that? For a mere human?”
Lenia could not even imagine such pain, but she felt she could bear anything to see him again. How could she think that she could return to the palace and mate with Falke? “I think so,” she said.
“You cannot be a mermaid again, once you take on human form. You cannot visit your parents or your sisters. You cannot watch their children grow. You have to abandon everything of the life you’ve known, everyone you’ve loved. Could you do that?”
Sybil paused, waiting for her response.
“Yes,” Lenia said, but her voice was trembling.
“And furthermore, you must win the prince’s love. Win it so completely that he is willing to marry you, and a priest must cleave his soul to you. That is the only way for you to gain a human soul, Lenia.”
“He will love me,” Lenia whispered, nodding. “I know he will love me.”
“If he marries someone else, the next morning at dawn your heart will break, and you will turn to foam. If he does not marry at all, you will live as a regular human does, and die, but without a precious soul. Here, in the sea, you have hundreds of years left to live, as long as you stay away from humans. But in the upper world, you can die at any moment. Your body will be fragile, and there is danger everywhere there. And when you die, you will turn to foam.”
“Unless he marries me.”
“Yes. Unless he marries you.”
“And if he marries me, I can live forever, right? It is true?”
Sybil nodded. “You can gain a human soul, and a human soul lives forever, in heaven. But do not forget that we, too, continue to exist, as part of the sea.”
“But we turn to foam. We disappear.”
“Yes.”
“It is not the same.”
Lenia thought of her mother and father, her sisters and their children, their gleaming eggs. The sea. All that she loved of the ocean. The power of her own body as she glided through the depths, the water streaming on all sides of her and the glow of fish and octopi and starfish all around.
But what were the riches of her own world compared to everything that would come after death? Even the bonds of family would disappear, eventually—and then all that would remain would be memories, memories and foam, and eventually all those who remembered her would become foam as well. Their palaces would crumble, their stories be forgotten. Until there was nothing, no trace, left. She thought of all those who