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After graduation, it doesn’t take Mermaid long to learn that she wasn’t supposed to exist outside the House. One minute she is there, the next she isn’t. Now you see her, now you don’t.
Her experience is not exactly the same as the others, from what she can tell. She doesn’t go straight to the Underside; not the boundary, not the town, not the Forest. Instead, she is deposited in a warm barrow den, stuffed full of junk, but dry and safe. She finds a dead end in the labyrinthine tunnels, curls up into a ball, and sleeps.
Sometimes, the echo of a hyena’s cackle wakes her, far in the distance, but it never comes close enough to make her feel afraid, never lasts long enough to fully rouse her, so she always drifts back again.
Time passes, she dreams of her life. A fish who wanted to become a human. And she’d found her Prince, he even kissed her plenty, even supposed he’d been in love with her. But he hadn’t, because at that critical moment, at the point of no return, he’d married the Outsides instead, left her flopping and lame on the unkind earth.
Of course, he didn’t know what the consequences of his actions would be back then. Life was unfair like that.
Mermaid wakes up.
She must have slept for a terribly long time, because her hair, once down past her knees, is now the length of her body twice over.
She gathers it up, braiding it and tucking it into itself until it won’t hinder her legs (they still work here, miracle of miracles). And then she walks.
The tunnels twist and curl, slant upwards and drop steeply down, branch and reconvene, widen and narrow. Once, the passage grows so tight she has to push her hair through first, then slip the rest of her body after it. She is grateful to be so slight, or she might have been stuck forever.
She must walk at least for hours, but perhaps for weeks, until finally she finds what she didn’t realize she was looking for. A cozy chamber, almost spherical, piled high with more junk than all the tunnels combined. And in the center sits a little old man, surrounded by a nest of pillows and blankets and feathers and instruments and hide.
Except when she looks at the man, really looks at him, he is a hyena with petals for wings. And when she double-takes, the only person sitting there is Tabaqui the Jackal, wild-haired and bright eyed, smiling meekly at her.
“Hello!” he calls to her. “Weaver of my most cherished vest.”
“Hello, Tabaqui,” she says, ducking into the room and approaching him cautiously. “I’ve been walking for a very long time.”
“So you have! And sleeping, too. Look at that mane of yours.”
“So it would seem,” she says, feeling almost contrite. “What am I doing here?”
Jackal clasps his mouth in his hand, looking like a caricature of contemplation. “What, indeed…”
“Ah,” he says, finally. “You fulfilled the role your wish-father bestowed on you. Well, I shouldn’t say fulfilled. You ran your course. And there’s not much left to be done about it, so now you are here, from whence you came, to start living your own life, I suppose!”
“What role?” Mermaid asks, though she sees Sphinx’s face in her mind, his green eyes, framed by a golden infinity symbol twisted from her own hair. Her pulse quickens, and she’s not certain why. “What wish-father?”
“You should know! It’s in your name, isn’t it? Mermaid? Siren? As for your wish-father…” Jackal grimaces. “Well. He’s in hibernation now. Not unlike you just were, my dear. But far more urgently.”
Mermaid frowns. She is not eager to think more about this, about what Sphinx might have to do with it, about the other involved party.
“Sphinx isn’t here,” she says instead, although she already knows the answer.
“Sphinx isn’t here,” he confirms, giving her a compassionate smile. “And now, I need to go. But I’ll help you get out of here, if you’d like.”
“Okay,” she says. “Thank you.”
And then Jackal is gone, and the den vanishes around her.
She is in a meadow, sweeping and green, tucked between two hills and pressing up against the seaside. She takes off at a run, not minding that her hair comes undone as she goes, lets her bare feet pound down on the grassy turf, pushes it until her limbs ache and her heart pounds and her lungs burn. She flops down right where she is, watches fluffy clouds drift by overhead, and dozes off.
She wakes up when a honey bee lands on her nose, buzzing emphatically. The flutter of her eyelashes as she opens her eyes startles it away, and she hops up, reinvigorated, and follows after it.
She reaches the spot where the meadow meets a forest, and there, right on the edge, is a whole hive of honey bees flicking their wings one after the other. The result makes a shimmering sort of wave span across their fuzzy backs. The warning is clear: “Keep away! This honey is for our Queen!”
Mermaid thinks to leave before she disturbs them too badly, but as if on cue, the bees part open like a womb and reveal a figure inside, tucked tight and safe in a ball, knees to his chest.
She recognizes him as Crab from the sixth, who died of unknown causes on the second to last Longest. He is very much alive now, she sees, as he gives her a scowl. His eyes are each on stalks which protrude from his face, his mouth turned sideways, and each of his two-fingered hands have changed into honest-to-goodness crab claws, carapace and all. He makes a threatening bubbling sound at her, and she wonders if the bees understand that he has eaten every last drop of their honey.
“Sorry!” she says to him, backing off before he tries to pinch her.
Her hair is dragging in the grass behind her, but she doesn’t pay it any mind. She makes her way back through the meadow and down to the sea, where a rocky beach meets the water.
Upon a flat black boulder, two massive azure marine iguanas lay out, sunning themselves. She remembers watching a documentary about them once in the common room. Nature documentaries were about the only thing she had liked to watch on TV. They both spare her a lazy glance, and suddenly they are two boys, naked and dark from the sun. One lays on his stomach, the other on his back, and neither of them are remotely concerned with modesty.
“Hello! Mermaid’s the nick, isn’t it?” says the one on his back.
Mermaid carefully keeps her gaze aimed upwards, focusing on a point in the sky.
“That’s right! You look familiar, but I’m afraid I don’t recognize you.”
“Scorpio,” he replies. “Or more popularly, Corpse. But I’m molting, you see. Shedding that particular old skin.”
He is, too. Mermaid remembers Corpse well because she had to so carefully train herself to not grimace in sympathy whenever she saw him in the halls. His skin was the color of gray mush that looked like it would slough off at any moment. The blue dreads are gone, too, replaced with a buzz that reveals his hair is naturally just a simple brown. It’s strange how some of them stop decorating themselves when they start to feel whole.
The boy behind him, the one on his stomach, with his face turned to the sun, eyes half-lidded, mumbles, “Sleepy.” Unlike Scorpio-formerly-Corpse, Sleepy seems in no hurry to be rid of his nick or the behavior which earned it.
Scorpio rises from his place on the rocks, approaching Mermaid and calling, “Say, want to go for a swim?”
Mermaid squeaks. He is very naked, and, while not especially tall, much taller than her, and there’s very little in the ways of law or shelter in this place. She can’t help but feel nervous. He seems to notice immediately and freezes.
“Oh, shit. Sorry. Let me just-” and when Mermaid looks back at him, he’s wearing the kind of swimsuit a model in a skate magazine would wear. He looks a bit silly in it, not quite handsome enough to pull it off, which she finds endearing.
“I forget not everyone who passes through here is part of the wilds. You must live in the town.”
Mermaid glances past him at Sleepy, who has not moved, but who is now wearing a plain blue pair of swim trunks and a t-shirt.
“Actually, I only just woke up. This is the first place I’ve been.”
“Wow,” says Scorpio, palm to his forehead. “Imagine that. I thought everyone had woken up by now.”
Sleepy stays put, but he is watching her out of the corner of his eye.
“I get the impression I’m…” Mermaid hesitates. “A special case?”
“I would say so!” Scorpio cries. “Anyway, don’t be afraid if not everyone remembers you. Sleepy and I came over completely, so we’re a little more intact than most. The rest of them will get it eventually, though. They always do. Fret not.”
“Thanks for the warning,” she says, thinking of Crab. Then of Ginger, and Noble, and Rat. And of course…
She looks at the sea. The water is that absurd deep-ocean blue that she has only ever dreamt of. Somehow, it feels like it’s calling her home.
“So… How about a swim?”
“Okay,” she says. Before she can take a step towards the ocean, the marine iguana is back, huge and covered in bumpy scales, scrambling down the rocks to the water, where he vanishes.
Mermaid glances back to where Sleepy was laying, finds an iguana in his spot, eyes closed, head turned to the sun. She shrugs and trots down to the water.
As soon as her feet hit the surf, something comes to her like a memory. The current passing over her face, water in her lungs that feels like air, the way the temperature changes as you dive down deeper. She is completely submerged now, but feels no need to surface. The iguana paddles by her, almost twice her size now, and she wheels around to see a white and orange painted tail where her hair should be.
Oh! she thinks, because she no longer has the kind of lips and tongue that can be used for talking.
Coy koi, a voice sounds in her head, which she remembers as Scorpio’s. Have a good life, come visit sometime.
Mermaid is only momentarily confused, because she thought they would swim together, when she feels the urge to go. Somewhere, something far away is calling her. With nothing but blue surrounding her, she submits, swimming in the direction of the call, the current against her face and glassy black eyes.
There is so much ocean out there.
She breaches the surface, leaping into the air to see what she can see. She’s swimming parallel to the land, so one eye sees the shore and the other the horizon. It’s addictive, leaping between these worlds, so she travels like that until a cormorant takes a snap at her. After that, she keeps to the water, surfacing only every now and then, when her curiosity can’t stand it.
She slows down when the water grows murky, but the call is coming from the stirred up silt, so she forges through it. It’s impossible to see, and once or twice she bumps right into floating debris. The call only gets stronger, so on she goes, now definitively upstream.
As she leaves the river delta, the water clears up and the current gets stronger. She doesn’t mind. Fish are meant to swim, after all.
She swims and she swims until finally the call takes her up a small tributary, where the current gradually comes to an almost-standstill, broadening out into a massive swamp.
The scent of danger and rot is heavy in the water, and her white and orange scales give her no subtlety against the bleak gray-brown backdrop. She moves forward with caution until she has a much-too close call with a steel-jawed snapping turtle, followed by a harmless but petrifying face-to-face encounter with a giant salamander.
She decides to cut her losses and take to the soggy land.
Now she is Mermaid again, a small barefooted person trodding through ankle-deep muck that sucks at her feet with each step. She finds that, to hear the call, she must open the earholes embedded in her neck. Holding them open on land is unpleasant and difficult, so she pauses every few minutes of walking, listens, re-orients herself, and resumes.
Finding the call is becoming an unsettling game of marco-polo, more frightening still now that dusk is falling and the creatures of the swamp begin to cry out in unison. In the dark, she trips over a stone and falls face-down in the mud.
When she picks up her face, she sees a log with a barely-legible inscription on it. As she squints to read it, she lifts her hand, and realizes there is a flashlight clutched in it. She blinks, surprised, then flicks it on. The beam is strong and white and perfect for cutting through the darkness. She shines it down on the log. It reads:
HERE ENTHRONED SHALL ONE DAY BE THE GREAT BIRD BROTHERS VULTURE AND WOOD STORK, TO RULE OVER THEIR FOREST KINGDOM UNTIL THE END OF TIME
Mermaid tilts the light upward, and sure enough, there are two rough chairs constructed of gray stone with a single, gnarled tree twisting over them like a perch for giant birds. The thrones are empty. Casting them in a white circle of light with the darkening swamp as a backdrop paints a chilling image. She turns away, shining the light at her feet to watch her step.
The dusk rapidly gives way to ink-black night. Swamp things scream so close she is afraid she will step on them, but none ever appear underfoot. She walks and she walks until she thinks she may have to curl up in the mud and rest. It’s a chilling thought - this place is full of scavengers for whom she would make a delectable snack.
She opens her ear holes again, and realizes with a shock that the call is close, so close it startles her. She keeps them open as she walks towards it, moving forward until her feet find dirt instead of mud, a low island in the middle of the swamp. At the center there is a mound of dirt with the entrance to a burrow dug into it, big enough for an adult human to crawl into. It is pitch black inside, and even seems to swallow up the beam of her flashlight when she shines it there.
The call cuts off, abruptly, and even the insects and amphibians stop their keening. Mermaid feels her heart begin to pound, and looks around quickly, the hair on the back of her neck standing up.
No danger seems to be approaching, but as she shines the beam of her light around, it falls upon four small figures, sitting about three meters from the mouth of the burrow.
They are toads, the most warty and lumpy toads she has ever seen, with puffy, fat sides and expressionless faces. One of the toads appears to have just consumed the smallest of its compatriots, mouth stretched wide around a pair of legs sticking straight out. It looks to be in no hurry to swallow, and the consumed seems to have given up the fight.
Instead of eyes, each toad has two shiny black spheres with a seemingly infinite number of tiny stars trapped inside. Mermaid gets the impression that each of these spheres holds its very own universe, complete with life and physics and technology all its own. Which means two whole universes have been snuffed out this night, right in front of her. It is a solemn sight to bear witness to, and Mermaid is worried for a moment that she might cry.
Just then, the three toads who are not otherwise engaged begin to croak. First one, then another, then all three in unison, creating a cacophony that seems too loud for its source. She frowns, plugging up her human ears with her fingers. Then, after a pase, opens up the ears on her neck.
“.... one has left his domain for the time, come back later! Later!”
“ ...left unguarded, leave this place, the White-Lipped One will not show mercy-”
“...spass! Trespass! Trespass! Trespass! Trespass! Tre-”
Mermaid winces and holds her hands up to the toads, who stare at her, unflinching, unblinking.
“No, no!” she cries, speaking for some reason in a stage whisper. “I’m not here to harm anyone! I was called here, from far away!”
The croaks cease simultaneously, except for the one shouting ‘trespass’, who repeats itself a few more times before falling silent.
The toad in the middle puffs out its vocal sac and begins to let out a steady trill. Mermaid listens carefully.
“What you seek lies within the burrow, but be warned: This one is protected by more fearsome things than Saära.”
Mermaid nods. “I understand. Thank you.”
She is small enough that she can walk into the burrow while crouching. Her flashlight illuminates her way. The walls of the burrow are paved with thousands of shells - some pretty some ugly but each serving their purpose. For a place so foreboding on the outside, it is actually beautiful. At the bottom of the entrance, the burrow flares out, smaller but similar to Jackal’s own quarters.
She shines her light around until it falls on what she is looking for, and as soon as she sees him, she understands why she was called here.
It’s Blind, or Pale One, Sightless One, the changeling, the werewolf. He looks smaller and more frail than he ever did in the House, which is a feat, and a little bit scary. He’s curled up in the ribcage of what looks like a fallen forest beast - a moose, or an elk.
She goes to him quietly and sits beside him. He is sleeping deeply, barely breathing. Hibernating. Like her, his hair has grown too-long, but his is coarse and oily and terrible.
She touches his face, smooths some of the hair away from it. So pale, almost transparent. There’s nothing to him. It frightens her. Can people die here? It seems wrong, somehow, that Blind, the master of this side, could be reduced to this.
His eyes open in slivers, and this frightens her, too. They are not the milky white she knew from before, but rather, green. A shade darker than Sphinx’s. Two shades darker than her own.
Something in her mind clicks with nauseating clarity, but she wills the thoughts away, kicking them back and slamming the door on them. What a horrible thing. What a rotten thing he has done.
“Blind,” she whispers, “I came to your call, but I don’t know what you want from me. Why bring me all this way to teach me something so terrible about us?”
He exhales like a death rattle. She worries he might not breathe again, but he does eventually. Again, and again. A long time passes, just him breathing. His open green eyes seem no more useful than his eyes on the other side had been.
“I didn’t call you,” he says finally, voice paper-dry. “It’s because I hatched you. You know me here.”
Mermaid shuts her eyes. She already figured out what he is saying, but hearing the words are no less painful.
He takes a few more long, slow breaths before speaking again. It seems to hurt him, speaking. Breathing. Thinking.
“It was wrong of me, but I have nothing to give you but my own life, and there is not much of it right now. I am so tired.”
Mermaid hears herself asking the words before she can stop herself. A stupid question, so inane for someone who was born to be good at listening instead.
“Why?”
More breathing, horrible and rasping.
“I wanted to keep him. I would have done anything.” He breathes. “I would do it again.”
Mermaid looks up at the domed ceiling of the burrow. He imbued her with all his longing, then. Both his longing, and a shape to hold it, alluring and good for Sphinx, meeting his tastes, meeting his needs, no problems of her own except insecurity about her lack of problems, so that he could be distracted from the awful evidence right in front of their noses. She was made for him, bait, a trap, to keep him there.
I’m throwing this shirt away, you’re obviously against it. And how she’d delighted in listening and listening, and only asking questions to get Sphinx to understand things he needed to hear. All she wanted in return were those moments, few and far between, where he wanted her enough to sit and talk, to kiss, to let her sleep with her head in his lap.
And after all that, being a creature designed to keep him, she hadn’t even managed. So here they are, her and Blind, empty-handed and Sphinxless.
Even now, her heart aches more for Sphinx than the fact of her own existence, and the one who cursed her thus lays beside her, half-dead. She doesn’t even hate him.
“What happened to you?” She asks.
“I brought a few over the rest of the way. The ones I found. It takes from me.” His eyes drift shut. Even keeping them open seems to be taxing to him.
“Who is this Saära?”
“You know him as Rat.”
Of course. The gender had thrown her, but it all makes sense. Rat must be carrying out the bidding that Blind himself is too weak to do. It brings Mermaid some comfort. He will be safe here until he is able to wake up.
“Can I do anything for you?”
“Let me sleep. And don’t speak to me about him. Even seeing you reminds me.”
Mermaid nods, although Blind isn’t looking. She leans down and presses a kiss to his temple.
“The gift I gave you,” he says without opening his eyes. “You can use it to go back to him, but it will take time, and it will take from you, too.”
He drifts back to sleep almost immediately, breathing slow and even. Her fingers climb up the locks of her hair, finding the tiny charm Blind had bestowed upon her on the last night in the House. She unweaves it carefully and tucks it deep inside her pocket.
She finds a rock with a blade-sharp edge, undoubtedly used by Saära to open his meals for drinking. With it, she cuts her hair, as close to the scalp as she can, until it all lies around her in silky pale waves.
Then she sets to work, creating tiny braid after tiny braid, wrapping strands around the ribs of the skeleton Blind slumbers inside of to keep track of them. It takes her many days, but finally, she has for him a blanket made of her own hair, which she drapes over him gently.
He does not wake up again, but when she dozes off beside him, she dreams of a great black wolf, napping in a sunspot while a hairless cat rests lazily on top of him. In the dream, she dares to creep closer to the two of them, rest her head on the wolf’s flank and let the cat wrap his tail loosely around her hand. The wolf opens a single eye, considering, before choosing to allow it.
When she leaves the burrow, the sun hurts her eyes, and it’s not long before it burns her scalp, too, but she feels lighter than she did before. She finds her way back to the river, diving in and slipping into the form of a shiny-scaled koi. She swims for a long time, back to the beach with the two iguanas. She hopes they will teach her more about her newfound life, the one she can live in the interim until she can make use of her gift.
Two boys lie naked on a flat, black boulder, listening to the tide come in as seagulls cry overhead. A girl emerges from the water, hair cropped short, and settles down on the rock beside them. One greets her lazily, the other just nods, and they close their eyes, faces turned to the sun together.