Work Text:
(They will tell your tale as the years pass by.)
Once upon a time, there lived a young girl in a castle by the river in the forest by the sea. She was beautiful to look at, with flaxen hair and glimmering eyes the color of amethyst. Her mother was dead and her father was dead and her brother in faraway land.
(This is your world: sculpted stone, painted windows, winding stairways and mosaic floors. Velvet cushions, heavy drapes, rugs that swallow the sound of your steps. Great halls, narrow corridors, the distant song of rushing water ringing through the rooms. The pond in your garden where the lilies grow, white sand, tadpoles, the croaking midnight choir. Roses climbing up the tower to the west, white and pink with jagged leaves, thorns as sharp as needles. Mushrooms hiding under the moss, where the wall is low and crumbling and the outside forest thick and old. Crows calling coarsely from the tallest of the pines. Lizards drinking heat on the marble tiles.
And in between the sunny spots: doors you mustn’t open, paths you mustn’t walk.)
But though she stood alone without family or kin, the girl was not lonely. She had a friend with her, a girl as young and just as beautiful, with night-black hair and glittering eyes the color of emeralds. Her mother was dead and her father was dead and her brother in faraway land, but she thought of the girl the way one would a sister, and the girl thought the same of her.
(Jade is your world. She has mud stains on her golden dress from kneeling in the dirt, picking weeds and planting seeds, tending to her flowerbeds. The quiet shatters where she goes, her voice swinging boldly to the ceiling, the echo talking back. She parts the curtains, slamming sunshine into every corner. She opens all the doors to invite the wind inside. She dances through the empty chambers, stirring the dust. She lies beside you on the grass and throws an arm around your waist, her fingers tangled up with yours, her hair soft on your face. Satin lips and silky skin and laughter bubbling between you.
But then she falls silent and looks to the shore.)
Together, the two girls had everything they could wish for. If they ever tired of their towers and halls and their blooming garden they would go into the forest, picking berries and nuts, or to the river to bathe their feet in the stream.
(She tells you what she sees in the clouds when she dreams in her tower at noon. The river laps at your naked toes and you don’t say much as you listen. You know nothing of daylight dreams. You only dream at night.
“I see water,” she says. “Water that goes on and on forever.”
She cranes her neck to face the sky.
“It’s so beautiful.”)
There was only one place where they must never go. They must never go down to the sea.
(Sometimes you dream darkly.
Dreams that slither wet and cold around your mind, whisper hollowly through your slumber. You dream of cracking bones and tearing flesh, of skies bleeding rain, red pooling on the ground. Your thoughts slip, your tongue numbs. Whispers all around you, whispers all inside you, a thousand voices high and low and each one speaks of a horrible hunger, a terrible thirst.
You shudder awake but the whispers persist.)
Days went by and years went by, ever peacefully. But as time passed, the friend became curious about the ocean, the one place she had not explored. Soon her only desire was to see the waves. One day, the longing became too much to bear. Early in the morning, while the sun had yet to rise, she snuck out through the castle gate and followed the path that led to the shore.
(You know where she has gone. There is no need for you to look in her tower, in the halls, in the corridors and stairways, in your garden, by the pond, in the forest, on the riverbanks. Yet you do.
As you make your way back, you are fuming calmly.)
The girl found her friend gone, and though she searched she did not find her. With every passing hour, her worry grew.
(You cannot believe she did not take you with her.)
When the friend returned to the castle, she was gloomy and pale. She left all the girl’s questions unanswered, went straight to her tower and early to bed.
(Jade drags her feet across the hardwood past the fireplace, heels scraping. She gives no word of greeting.
Heavy tome on your lap, you stay in your chair. You turn the pages slowly and you do not raise your head.)
Morning came, but she did not wake up.
(The shadows sharpen as the sun rises to the beat of the longcase clock, each tick adding to the ever growing count of seconds lost. You wait for Jade until your breakfast tea is cold. The pendulum swings. Noon approaches.
The air is too still. Your mind is too stormy. You send yourself on errands that will take you past her door, slow your steps and hold your breath and listen. The silence is thick, like a coating of snow. Time melts between your idle fingers.)
And evening fell, but she did not wake up.
(You call her and you shake her and you tug at her hair. You slap her with your open hand, leaving red, accusing marks on her cheek to regret. You kiss her eyelids gently and you pinch her where it hurts, but she lies heavy and unmoving in her bed.
Down in the hall the longcase clock strikes twelve.
Jade sleeps.)
And morning after morning came and went, but the friend remained deep in slumber.
(You wake.
Your hands are ice-cold. Your forehead is fever hot. You light no candles. In her tower, by her bedside, in her gilded silver chair, you let the hours slip.
Tick-tock goes the longcase clock, merciless measurer of time.)
The girl did all she could to wake her dear companion, but despite her efforts her friend would not stir. As time went by, her hope for the friend to wake up grew smaller and smaller. On the seventh evening of her friend in deep sleep, the girl had almost no hope left. There was only one more thing she could think of.
(The sky is nightmare-dark. The stars are pale and small.
You are in the western tower, pressing rose thorns into your palms, with your eyes on the pine top-jagged horizon and your heart in a hardening state. You lift your head to smell the salt on the wind, and your mind is all made up.)
That night, the girl scarcely slept. Early in the morning, while the sun had yet to rise, she walked out through the castle gate and followed the path that led to the shore.
(You learn this road by heart.
Every snaking turn and every rising hill. Every sturdy rock and every twisting root. On pretty days the earth is dry and powders your shoes with dust. On mornings cloudy-grey and glum you crisscross between puddles and stretch up on your toes to avoid the gloppy mud, sometimes steering off the soaked path to walk where the long grass leaves sloppy kisses on your bare calves. In the mornings you move to the accompaniment of eager birds; after nightfall you return to the sound of the chirping cricket orchestra. The forest is dense for a good long while, ferns bowing gracefully underneath a thick roof of swaying branches, but then the pines become shorter, mixed with slender birches. Then there are only bushes, and then there are only weeds. Then there is nothing but stone.)
Day after day after day, your heels click on the cliffs.)
When the girl saw the glittering sea, the falling and rising waves, she was stunned. It was just as beautiful as her friend had said, if not more.
(It fills you with awe. The sunlight gleaming on the surface makes the world too bright - you must squint or be blinded. Everything out here is strong; the light, the wind, the smell of salt and decay. It is big, it is endless, it goes on and on forever, this massive body of water that is never still, always moving, a living creature with an old, ferocious soul. You do not know what horrible children it carries in its belly, what terrible spawn it nurtures in its depths.
You are prepared to find out.)
But she did not stand gaping for long. She climbed close to the waterline, to ask the ocean for her beloved friend back.
(There is no beach, no strip of white, silky sand for you to rest on. Only harsh rocks with sharp edges, like pieces of broken china. You spend hours searching for a way down the first time, your shoes slipping on loose gravel and slippery washed up seaweed, but far too soon, you could get there with your eyes closed.)
She pleaded with the waves.
(You reason. You argue. You discuss, stringing sentences together like your rhetoric books taught you to, logical and neat and convincing in your composure.
And then sometimes, on the cusp of fatigue, you shout until your throat is raw, you scream your rage into the roaring waves, forgetting about dignity for short, disheveled moments.)
She pounded her fists against the rocks.
(Sometimes. Only sometimes. But often enough.
The scabs on your knuckles become perpetual. The time when they were not there seems distant. You pick at them. You relish the pain.)
She fell to her knees, and she cried bitterly.
(It is the thirtieth day.
You wish you didn’t know, but you do, you count them in your head the way you count the hours, the minutes, the tick-tock seconds. It is the thirtieth day and you are so very tired.
In the castle, in her tower, in her four-post silver bed, Jade sleeps. And by the ocean, on the cliffs, in your spray-soaked violet gown, you despair.
When you cry it is like cramping, your body contracting, curling on the rock. Lips drawn back from your teeth, throbbing head, throbbing heart, you do not recognize these bleeding, twisted hands clenching in your line of sight, and how can this be your voice? This gurgling wail, these garbled words, this please, please give her back, just please, if anyone, then me.
Made to kneel before the unresponsive waves, you cry until all you are is aching.)
Her tears fell into the water where they turned into glimmering amethysts.
(Drip-drop go your tears into the sea. Drip-drop go your tears on the cliffs, flowing in runnels to join their fallen comrades. Water to water, salt to salt. You are wrung out and crumpled like a fraying kitchen rag, mouth dry and eyes smarting. You lick your lips, feel the moisture.)
Then happened something peculiar.
(At first you barely notice. At first it’s just a shift, a quick, jittery movement below. It returns, and you simply stare exhausted at the blurry form taking shape little by little, closing in on – you realize just as it emerges - you.)
For where the gems had fallen there rose a girl out of the foam. She was beautiful to look at, with shining hair and glowing eyes like embers.
( She startles you, for she is startling.
Hair that is very long and coils around her shoulders. Soft cheeks, button nose, plump chin, fluttering lashes. Dimples that deepen as she breaks into a smile. A sprinkling of freckles, brows splendidly arched. The slope of her chest, her swelling breasts. The trails of droplets hastening to seek shelter in the cleft.
And then her ashen skin, that strange, confusing color. And her black lips, so shockingly stark. Flared gills protruding from below her jaw, trembling like leaves, those glistening membranes. Wide eyes that burn with a golden glow, pupils without irises like insects trapped in amber. Flashing rows of knife-sharp teeth as her smile becomes a grin. Bulging joints, too-long arms, crooked collarbones.
Not human. Though not far from. Seeing her is like catching your image in a mirror late at night, frightened witless by the features that seem not to hold together, monstrous on their own. Gradually, your pulse calms down and you slowly recognize it, piece together familiarity from a pile of foreign parts. Yes, this thing is you. No, you shall not fear it.
You look and look and look at this splendid, knife-sharp, not-quite-like-you girl.)
It was the princess from the Darkest Depths, heiress to the sea.
(Were you not already gasping from those violent sobs, she would take your breath away.)
Around her neck and arms she wore jewels in all the colors of the rainbow, threaded on long strings like beads. In her hands she held the tear-amethysts that had lured her from her sea-floor palace. She looked upon them with delight, and upon the girl with wonder.
(Her cupped hands are filled with water, webbed fingers spread wide like fans. She opens her fangy mouth wide, and saliva pours in stringy, slimy leisure from her tongue.
Blood! You think with a gust of instinctive panic; because its color is bright, intrusive. But no, this isn’t red, not the warning sight of looming death, she’s dripping purple into her palms, a rich, gorgeous tyrian.
Her spit doesn’t mingle with the water. It thickens, floats separate in shimmering clumps, like oil. She rolls her wrists with gentle ease, sifting out the colorless, the unsalivated.
Of what is left, the tyrian mixture, she takes a hefty sip, and smacks her lips.
“There’s somefin so precious about tears of despair,” she says. “And yours are the best I’ve ever tasted!”
Her voice is cheerful. With a laugh like clinking silver coins, she drinks your tears until the very last drop.)
The princess asked the girl what was wrong, why was she crying so?
(“Do you think you could cry some more? I’m so hungry, I’m practically starfish!”
She is swimming closer, eager and excited, as if your swollen face is a treasure she has found. Dawn approaches, the stars are fading one by one. Against the indistinct contours of the faltering night, her eyes are alarmingly bright.)
The girl told the story of her sleeping friend, the friend taken from her. Speaking the words, tears once again began to roll down her cheeks.
(You wipe at your wet cheeks with irritation, belatedly attempting to destroy the evidence of your humiliation. She has the nerve to pout at this, as though you snatched a tasty snack from under her nose.
"Who are you?" you ask. She laughs again, an all too lovely sound for such an intimidating mouth.
"I'm Feferi! Ocean heiress, don't you know?" she says. “It’s all right, I know who you are. You’re Rose! They told me they whisper to you sometimes when you are dreaming.”
Who are they you mean to ask, but Feferi interrupts:
“They never told me anyfin about Jade, though. I think they might not even be able to sea her!”
You go crackle-snap, flung back to wide-eyed clarity from the dullness of despair. You lean forward, past the edge, standing straighter on your knees.
“So you know.”
“Know? Know what?”
“Don’t be coy with me.”
Your words are hoarse, and low, and hurt as you growl them too forcefully through gritted teeth. And your fury hurts, and your sorrow hurts, you are tense, you are taut, you are stretched paper thin.
“Ooh, ‘koi’! That’s a good one!”
She giggles. She is entirely infuriating.
“If we can put the fishpuns aside-“
“Now wait a minnow!” she huffs. “The right to pun can only be revoked by a fellow sea dweller. Asking me to put them ashore, you might as well just go ahead and clip my fins so that I am properly stranded! Whale, glub that! It’s what I told Jade, and now I am telling you.”
Cheeks puffed up in offense like an attractive blowfish, she blows noisy little bubbles that burst as quickly as they form. You want so very much to be the one to make her bleed.
“So tell me this, then,” you say instead, press your voice crisp and banish violence from your mind. “How low do you need me to stoop? To what extremes do you desire my humiliation to be taken? Since evidently this isn’t enough for you, I would appreciate a few pointers in the right direction, a specification of your requirements and personal preferences, perhaps. And after I have spent a sufficient amount of time crawling in the dust before your feet – pardon me, I meant to say fins, of course –then maybe you could release my friend from her death sleep. If you would be so kind.”
“I can’t.”)
Upon this, the princess was filled with pity.
(The pity in her words is pure and strong, fills you with hope and revulsion.
“I can’t wake the dreaming dead.”
She robs you of momentum when she speaks so readily. The tiny, grimy part of you that was set to rip and tear and break is shamefully disappointed.
“What does that mean?”
“When you are asleep you are awake in your dreams. Right?” Feferi nods to herself, in lieu of your answer. “But Jade is asleep in her dreams as well, so her soul is resting far from both your world and mine, where the gods can’t reach her and I can’t either. You can, though.”
You swallow hard, heart pounding.
“Tell me how.”)
She promised to help the girl. For no one knew the sea and how to speak to its hidden gods as well as her.
(She tilts her head. A kind of sadness, maybe longing, gleams in her amber eyes.
“What would you give to have her back?”
“Anything,” you say. “Everything.”
She rises from the sea. She hooks her claws around the rock, curved talons scraping stone. For a moment you are face to face, perfectly aligned. Then she seizes your arms, too suddenly to react.
Her grip is stinging, prickling, hard - you realize she is pulling. You try to struggle, to break free, but you are already falling.)
The princess invited the girl into her kingdom.
(You sink trapped in her embrace, an irrevocable descent. You thrash, you kick, you fight to no avail. Beneath her yielding flesh, plush layers of fat, she is all agile strength and muscle and this element is hers, it offers you no leverage. Your fists close around nothing but water. Your feet find nothing but water. Your lungs burn, your ears ache. Your eyes are open to the sting of salt and all you see is her grin.
The darkness sweeps around you like a shroud, offers comfort, peace, oblivion. You cling with drowning frenzy to the mouthful of air you have left, to the fire that rages in your chest.)
She pressed a gentle kiss to the girl’s lips.
(Her tongue prods your lips, insistent. She parts them to trace your teeth, to tap your gums, to coax you open. You shake your head, but she holds steady, two hands around your neck, fangs cutting your skin, claws forcing your jaws apart. A kiss like an attack, a kiss to breach your dam, a kiss to flood your body, weigh it down, lay it to rest among the other sunken ocean beasts , let the eels have their fill ‘til your bones are clean.
She bites you harder, bloody water seeping through. With a defeated shudder, you give in.)
With this, the girl could breathe in the land underwater, she could walk on the seafloor just like her.
(You do not lose your consciousness.
You blink, awake, you see her glowing eyes, but you do not feel the cold that tore at you but seconds in the past, you do not taste the blood, the pain.
Feferi holds your hand in hers through your ascend to shore. You do not swim, you merely glide, smoothly in her wake. You break the surface, synchronized.
You try to draw a shaky breath and find you have no need for air at all.)
To the girl, the land of salt and water was a wondrous place, so far from all she had ever known.
(You turn your gaze upwards, and recoil.
The sky is not the sky. The stars are not stars.
What arches overhead is not the canopy you know, expect to find. It is a weave of limbs, of knitted tendrils, tentacles that twine around each other endlessly, from one horizon to the next. A fabric that is never still, always moving. Living creatures. Old, ferocious souls. Their bodies strewn with eyes, blinking, twinkling down at you, piercing, chilling, entirely other. Whispers all around you, whispers about horrible hunger, terrible thirst.
You meet a thousand gazes steady, and you refuse to fear.)
She could not stop looking at the many things she found, at the beautiful and frightening creatures that inhabited it under the reign of the princess.
(“What are those?” you ask.
Feferi smiles, hand raised in greeting, waves hello. The mass above undulates in response, heaves and ripples.
“The noble circle. Do you not recognize them? They have been drinking your tears for years!”
None the wiser, you continue to stare.
“Where did they come from?”
“They have been here all along. Since forever!” She pats your arm comfortingly, a patient mistress with her awestruck young apprentice. “Reely, Rose, so many of your dreams have been glubbed by them!”
“My dreams? By them?”
“Oh, silly. Where did you think dreams came from?”)
But she did not stand gaping for long.
(You stare at your arms, then, at your wrists where your soaked sleeves end. Where there should be skin, where you should see the net of pale blue veins around the outline of sinews, is black, wispy smoke. It coats you head to toe. It dyes your dress from glossy purple shine to matte black. It seeps from every pore into the mist of not-yet-dawn, opaque at the start but soon thinning to translucency.
“I had to do this or you couldn’t have crossed over to this realm very well,” Feferi says. “You would not have been able to sea them otterwise.”
She drags a finger through the simmering smoke, watches it part, reveal your now gray skin underneath, a nuance much like hers .
“Don’t worry. This is just all your most wretched desires and hatred and stuff floating on the surface, now that your fleshy human body can’t hold them in like it used to! It isn’t dangerous at all unless you want it to be.”
“Though it renders my appearance rather grim,” you say, hear your voice tremble.
“Everyfin has a price” Feferi pulls you close again, embraces you once more. The smoke embraces her back. “But I think it suits you, going dark.”)
As with all sea dwellers, the princess feared the sun and thrived in the dark. The morning light crept over the horizon, and the girl and the princess swam deeper, to sleep beneath the waves until nightfall.
(Feferi leads you to a crevice not too far from the shore, where land meets water in companionship and the waves converse and do not roar. You throw a glance behind you as you enter her quarters. The rising sun is a sick, distorted green. You turn your eyes away.
In her stone-wall chamber, on her seaweed bed, under her wave-foam blanket, you rest your head on her arm.)
Cradled by the waves and lulled by the sea, the princess told the girl what she had to do. To wake her friend she must find three treasures and bring them to her bedside. But it all must be done before dawn on her third day in the ocean kingdom, or she would not be able to return to land and walk in the sun ever again.
(“I will kelp you find them. I won’t even be shellfish and make you cry more again, even if I’m hungry! So please cheer up Rose, there will be a happy ending for us both, I swear!”)
Then she told her stories of her people and her life, of the shadows and the foam and drinkers of salt.
(This is what she tells you: your world and hers are two sides of a mussel shell, the rough, pigmented outside and the inner lining with mother of pearl. You have spent your life inside, embedded safely under the mantle. Now you see the outer layers, the creatures clinging to your universe, its outer ring.
“If they were not here we would all succumb to cosmic abrasion,” Feferi says. “They are reel important!”
This what you learn: the elder gods sustain on salt, but not the ocean kind, not the mountain sort. They drink the salt from human eyes, sip sorrow from their dewy lashes. They whisper dreams into their ears and gift them dreams, but only those of horror, only those of terror, only those that fill their crops with fear. You know them from your slither-dreams, know their persistent voices.
“But they are not as terrible as they look!” Feferi says. “Just wait and I will prove it to you.”
She balls her fists in unabashed glee, giggles joyfully.
“We are going to have such an adventure together! I’m so excited!”)
Evening came and the princess and the girl woke up.
(She interrupts your sleep with a kiss on each eyelid, laughing when you strike out in shock and seize her hair.
“Come on, slowpike. Time to go!”
You sit up, find your memories, piece together yesterday. The smoke surrounds you still, flickers at the edges of your field of vision. Your skin is still grey and your mouth tastes of salt and decay, but it was thirty days since you last felt this rested.
Feferi wields a trident, long and slender, as golden as her eyes. She twirls it in her hand, between her four-jointed fingers. The prongs on each end are sharpened to deadly points.
Beneath her is a pile of meat. Moist slabs leaking blood into the water, blood that is not red, but brown and green and teal. Crushed skulls, spines and broken fins in listless heaps, entrails swaying weedlike in the stream.
“All set?” she asks you, and you nod, although you cannot help the way the nausea makes you frown.
“If those things are intended as breakfast, I must inform you that as of last second, I have become a vegetarian.”
“Cod, no. These are distractions. We are going to sea my mom!”)
The first treasure, said the princess, was a beautiful white pearl, big as a child’s head. It was guarded by a giant squid, hidden away at the bottom of the sea.
(You wait for her to take the lead. Likewise, she waits for you.
“Well?”
“Whale?”
“Since I seem to have neglected to procure a map for this place, may I ask you to show the way to our destination? I would be more than happy to stumble around the entire coastline and make a fool of myself, but I was under the impression that we were in a hurry.”
She bundles up the carcasses inside a fishnet. You wonder if she stole it from a passing ship somewhere, or if her creatures made it for her, tying thread to thread to help her with her hunt.
“Clam down, no one’s in a hurry,” she says, and lifts her grisly burden to carry over her shoulder. It nearly doubles her in size. She doesn’t bat a lash. “But I can’t tell you how to find your way. Those are the rules.”
“That’s ridiculous and unfathomably impractical.” You scratch your nails over your dress, ragged ends hitching in the silk. “I don’t suppose our next course of action will be to engage in some healthy rule breaking, either?”
“No! That would be cheating, it could mess with the magic! We will do it properly or not at all.”
“Yet the problem remains. I still don’t know where to go.”
Feferi reaches out to you, shushes your protest. She winds a tendril of your smoke around finger, spins it to a loose thread. She winks.
“As long as you find somewhere to start, you will be fine.”)
The princess gave the girl a bundle of enchanted rope that would lead them right in the darkness.
(The smoke has texture. When you touch it from outside, put your fingertips to your skin, it is smooth as egg yolk, stringy like stems of yarrow. You tease out the ends and spin it into yarn, gather it into a ball. You take it, let it roll. It hurries out into the rolling deep, moving on its own. Darkness to darkness.
You follow where it leads you, Feferi gliding smoothly in your wake.)
The two girls traveled quietly past many fearful things on their descent, holding on to the rope and each other with all their might. Finally, they reached the lair of the squid.
(She is too massive. She is a planet of flesh, a world within herself, a cephalopod universe in hiding. Feferi’s monster mother broods in silence, shooting tentacles into the night – what she is fishing for you do not wish to know. You hope with all your heart that you will pass unnoticed.
Feferi comes up behind you, whispers in your ear:
“She can be a handful, but she’s also such a sweetcarp. Everyone says I take after her.”
You look from your companion to the hideous mountain towering upfront. You fail to see the resemblance.)
It was frightening to look at, with thousands of arms and vicious eyes, but the girl bravely soldiered on and snuck into its nest.
(“You find the pearl,” she says to you, and then she is bursting off, drags her net of killing towards this creature’s beak. She pets it and she nuzzles it, all while her mother eats. A mesmerizing, grisly sight, but tender, loving, too.
You dive into the heap of limbs, you struggle to get past. She does not move or part for you, a labyrinth of tapered tips, of suction cups and slime. The salt is musty, tasting stale – you find it hard to swallow. She moves too often, rolls her flesh, and you spin directionlessly with her.)
While the girl was doing so, the princess sang. She had a wondrous voice, as sweet as nectar and as soft as cottongrass. When she sang, all the sea listened, and so did the squid.
(But then: you touch sand. And then you feel it, round and smooth. Half of your head in size, a monster pearl, made over millennia. You pick it up and hold it hard and push yourself to open water, your escape much easier than your entry.
When you emerge Feferi is deep in conversation. She speaks affectionately to the beast, sprinkles kisses where she reaches, and the creature calms and listens to her soft and soothing mumbling tone. Tiny like a speck of dust, the princess from the depths, but her presence fills the void.
You wait there, pearl in idle hands, until she spots you.”)
With the monster so distracted, the girl could steal the pearl away from right under it. The princess sang until the girl was safely out of reach, and then they embraced victoriously, dizzy with success.
(“So meat is an acceptable complement to a tear duct diet?”
“Not normally, but mom is not above a little snack or two. She’s a free spirit!”)
And morning came, and the princess and the girl returned to the underwater palace. Cradled by the waves and lulled by the sea, the girl slept soundly in the princess’ arms.
(“Will you explain something to me?” you ask.
“Oh, shore! Whatever you want.”
Inside your crevice, the sunrays do not reach, the only light is the yellows of her eyes and the whites of yours. You glow like lanterns at each other, blink in unison.
“What are you?” She is silent, gills flaring briefly. You press on. “Physically, you differ spectacularly from anything I have encountered since entering this realm, but you do drink tears and seem to be sharing their lifestyle to some extent. Where, exactly, do you fit into this? What, and I do apologize for phrasing this so rudely, is your function?”
Feferi rolls over on her side, so that you are face to face. Her gills flutter.
“I am the link between you and them. Mom, she is an emissary! She was tasked to raise me long ago, so I can keep order in the seas and help them find minds to plant dreams in and good places to drink. They don’t understand humans at all, but I do!” She sighs kindly. “You are all so pretty and exciting!”
“So the likeness in our physiology is only coincidental, I take it.”
“Yeah, I am reely not human at all. You humans can’t linger in the outer ring.” Her dimples deepen. “Not unless you leave your body behind to die first.”
“Any kin? That aren’t betentacled.”
She shakes her head.
“It sounds like a lonely existence.”
“It has been until now.”
Her arm is resting in the crook of her waist, where her hips curve and her belly swells. The dress that she wears hugs her torso tight, shows off the inviting shape of her figure. You scoot a little closer, inspect the bridge of her nose, the scales on her gills, the angle of her shoulders. A kind of gladness, maybe longing, glints in her sharp-edged smile.
You follow the light of her lantern eyes, kiss her right on her charcoal lips.)
And evening came and the princess and the girl woke up. The second treasure, said the princess, was a beautiful crystal, black like an opal. It was guarded by a giant turtle, hidden away in the archipelago.
(She interrupts your sleep with a kiss to each eyelid. You sit up, greet your smoke. You take the yarn, you let it roll, you follow where it leads you.)
The two girls followed the enchanted rope past many fearful things on their journey, holding on to it and each other with all their might. Finally, they reached the lair of the turtle.
(This time you are led to a wide open space, dazzling white sand stretching onward for miles. Hillsides rise, become islands high above your heads, with long, narrow beaches for turtles to lay their eggs. Moonshine filters down upon you, you swim through liquid light. It shimmers iridescently, captivates your soul.
The yarn runs out. You find nothing at its end. You turn to Feferi, quizzically, but she simply shrugs.
“It’s here somewhere, all you need to do is dig around a little bit.”)
The beast was frightening to look at it, with a cutting beak and a shell the size of a cathedral, but the girl bravely soldiered on and snuck into its nest.
(You search for uneventful hours, uneventful hours more, combing through the sand, your patience chipping bit by bit. Feferi floats around you, chatters cheerfully, glubs melodies that resemble nothing. You find you do not mind it.
Little turtles curiously swarm your both, dart off if you move too close, anxious if you leave their sight. You leave them be. They let you pass.)
While the girl was doing so, the princess sang with her wondrous voice, as sweet as honey and as soft as eiderdown. When she sang, all the sea listened, and so did the turtle. With the monster so distracted, the girl could steal the crystal away from right under it. The princess sang until the girl was safely out of reach, and then they embraced triumphantly, dizzy with success.
(You come against a glassy texture and you feel it, round and smooth. Half of the pearl in size, shimmer-black, polished by the sand and salt and sea for centuries. When you turn to her, Feferi claps her hands and hugs you tight.
“I knew you could do it!”
“Wasn’t this a little too easy?”
“No, no, don’t question it! The turtles can be reel rowdy, believe me, but I guess you make them nervous with the way you look and behave. You seem like a dangerous girl!”
You laugh at this, at her strange praise, at the wild joy coursing through you, at the ferocity you feel. Like the salt is scrubbing off the thin veneer of practiced calm, like you shed your skin, revealed a self more you than all the rest.
“Whoa,” Feferi breathes, and her eyes are wide. “Your laughter is the prettiest thing.”)
On your return, your flight from day, you tuck the crystal into your dress. You know it should be cold enough to make you wince and gasp, but where it nests between your breasts it feels no different from your skin.)
And morning came, and the princess and the girl returned to the underwater palace. Cradled by the waves and lulled by the sea, the girl slept soundly in the princess’ arms.
(You hold Feferi very close, that morning in her chamber, on her mattress, under her blanket. She lies beside you on the seaweed and throws an arm around your waist, her legs all tangled up with yours, her hair tickling your face. Leathery lips and slippery skin and whispers blending between you.
“I am so happy I flounder on the shore that ray before,” she says.
You are resting, almost sleeping, nose pressing against her neck, and her fishpuns are a riddle your drowsy mind cannot decipher.
“What?” you murmur, hoping she will let it go, kiss your cheeks and let you slumber, stroke your back until evening comes.
“Jade. I am so happy we began to talk and I did not just steal her away in secret.”
You crackle-snap awake, flung back to wide-eyed clarity from the dullness of contentment.
“Pardon?”
You tear yourself away. You look and look and look at this foreign, frightful, incomprehensible girl.
“Do you mean to tell me, that all this time,” you say, “you were the one who abducted her?”
She rolls her eyes, too casually.
“Don’t carp! It wasn’t like that, we only borrowed her. Most times humans come back just fine! I didn’t know she was a day dreamer, I didn’t know the whispers would scare her and trap her like that.”
“Is this kidnapping of souls part of your daily routine, or should we consider ourselves special?” you ask, and she tenses her shoulders and flexes her arms, puts her hands on her hips and speaks fiercely.
“Now you’re misunderstanding on porpoise,” she huffs. “She looked so pretty and pitiful when I found her on the shore. I felt sorry for her, having to spend her sole life out in the sun! So I thought we could play, just a little while. And she could dream for some tide and I could drink my fill, and that would be the end of it. Unless she wanted to cast off her mortal shell and stay with me, I would be fine with that.” She sighs kindly. It chills you to the bone. “I like Jade lots. If you still could, I would ask you to give her a kiss from me.”
You have always been firm on the subject of betrayal, you have never forgiven deceit.
The cliff digs into your tail bone from underneath the seaweed as you roll onto your back, count the starfish on the ceiling, try to drain her presence from your mind. But Feferi shuffles close, sweetly persistent.
“It is not a thing we do often, taking people. Just when the dreaming ones to drink from ebb out, and we are so, so hungry. When you cry for them, it keeps us from dying. If they died, so would you!” She strokes your head. You lie stone-still. “We need you, and you need us. Don’t just sea the terrible.”
Hoarse. Your voice is hoarse.
“There is enough sorrow in this world already without you inflicting it on us.”
“Not enough to feed.”
She chews her full and inky bottom lip, her jaw set, neck held high. She furrows her splendid brows, webbed fingers fidgeting. Her dimples hid in her lovely cheeks, in her serious expression. The freckles blend with her agitated blush. Her eyes are aglow, alarmingly bright, lure your gaze out and trap it in their burning, golden shimmer.
You look for evil, wish to find it there, but all you see is a horrible hunger, a terrible loneliness.)
And evening came and the princess and the girl woke up. The third treasure, said the princess, was a beautiful gem stone, green like the very first birch leaves in March. It was guarded by a giant dog, hidden away in a cave.
(No kisses wake you, for you do not fall asleep. You sit up rigid, piece together your dismissal, forge unbreakable resolve. Feferi seeks your eyes, your hands, your lips. You steel yourself and turn away.
You take the yarn, you let it roll. You do not wait for her.)
The two girls followed the enchanted rope past many fearful things on their journey, holding on to it and each other with all their might. Finally, they reached the lair of the beast.
(There is a cave, you have been told, but it does not quite fit the word. This is a ruin, fallen stone, bricks and mortar pounded into rubble. Fragments of what once were walls jut precariously from the ground, like a torn and gnawed on ribcage that a beast has left behind. There is fabric, gold and purple, half-buried in piles of clay. There are fragments of what once were things strewn all over, in disarray.
Feferi halts upon the steps. You enter without looking back.)
The princess warned the girl that this was her most splendid foe yet. It had terrorized the sea kingdom for many years of bloodshed. But it had only one eye and it spent most of its nights in slumber. If she was very silent, if she did not make a sound, she could steal the gem.
(“If you do somefin brash I will not save you unless you apologize, do you hear that?” she calls after you.
You do not deign to answer.)
The girl thanked the princess for her kind advice and went into the cave.
(Crunching gravel, painted fragments, broken railings and ceramic shards. Anemone meadows, coral sculpture, sand that covers the floors like a rug. Shredded halls, caved in corridors, crustacean scavengers scurrying through the rooms.
And in the furthest chamber in the longest corridor: a door for you to open, a path for you to walk.)
The beast was frightening to look at, with its frothing mouth and its bulking form.
(The green light greets you with its sick, distorted sheen. The stone sits like a shard of diseased sun atop a pile of bric-à-brac, little trophies collected from around the yard, the remnants of inhabitants that went the way of sediment. Curled around the treasure lies the beast in waiting.
You meet its one eye steadily, far too enraged to fear.)
But the girl soldiered bravely on.
(You take one step, and then it charges.)
She stepped with utmost care across the treasure spread over the cave floor. Further and further in she snuck, and the beast did not stir. The girl become braver, and fearing that her three days were swiftly running out, she picked up her pace. But in her hurry, she toppled a goblet filled with coins. The noise woke the beast.
(The monster is bizarre. A dog with tendrils coiling from its heaving sides, and wing-like fins with narrow scales like feathers on its back. Encountered in your tomes at home you would have mocked it without mercy.
Now you are somewhat busy.)
It rose with a thundering roar from its resting place, and lunged at the girl.
(You fight.
You fight, and you are on your own, and your nails are blunt and your teeth are useless. You rip fistfuls of fur, but what good does it do when one hit from a paw crowned with foot-long claws will do more than just smart in your follicles. You should run but rage prevents you, throws you blindly at it. The rock, the sparkling sun-shard, is not within your reach. You try to close in but it blocks you easily, it is a clever monster.
One single stumble, one misplaced movement – this is all it takes. It attacks again, plunges its snout into your abdomen.
But you do not bleed. And you do not fall. And his teeth do not sink into your flesh, tear it apart, they pass right through. And you do not understand, you do not comprehend, you have slipped and are fumbling for footing.)
But just as its jaws were to close around the girl’s skull, the princess, who had followed her in secret, sank her trident into its neck.
(Feferi swoops in gracefully, one fluid movement from door to pile, scoops up the rock in seconds, flat. She pushes herself from the wall with her legs, projectiles in your direction. As she passes, she reaches down, webbed fingers spread like fans, calling urgently:
“Crab on!”
You cling to her with all your might, you cling all the way to the surface.)
The girls embraced in victory, shivery from shock. But they did not stay frozen for long. They collected the gem. Then, they departed for the castle by the river in the forest by the sea.
(“How dare you use me as a distraction!”
“Swimmer down, it couldn’t krill you” she scowls, and pats you impatiently on the head. “Nothing in any world can hurt you, not anymore.”
Carefully, with tenderness, she smoothes your tousled hair, disentangling newly formed knots. You long to lean into her touch, but swat at her, and snap:
“Stop pitying me.”
“If I didn’t pity you, you would never ever have come this far, and you know it! I promised I would kelp you wake Jade on my heiress honor, and I will not go back on that, whether you want me to or not. Now, get the glub up!”
You mean to protest, to resist, but she lifts you to carry over her shoulder, kicking up instant speed. In this way, like a struggling, thrashing bundle, you ascend.)
Together, the princess and the girl walked out of the waves and followed the path that led from the shore.
(Past snaking turns and rising hills, past sturdy rock and twisting roots. Past weeds and bushes, graceful ferns, past swaying pines and boulders. The grass leaves sloppy welcome kisses on your naked calves. The crickets greets you musically, line your way with song.
You squeeze Feferi’s hand, you tremble, forgetful of your grudge.)
They went to the friend’s chamber, where she remained deep in slumber.
(In Jade’s tower, by her bedside, on her gilded silver seat, you lay your treasures down.
“What now,” you ask. Feferi crosses her arms.
“Are you still crabby?”
“No,” you lie. “Can we proceed?”)
There, they placed the ocean treasures around the sleeping girl, and the princess sang a song from the darkest depths. The notes reverberated in the crystal, pearl and gem, they filled the chamber with a wake-up call deep from the belly of the many children of the waves.
(You carve thin lines into the pearl, a pentacle you draw with superfluous elegance. You soak the marks with tears and place it firmly in Jade’s sleeping grasp, linger there to sweep her grown out bangs from her face. You shine the green, distorted light through dark and sea-ground crystal, and watch the shadows dance.
You hold your breath and bite your cheek, praying to the elder ones.)
And then, the friend opened her eyes.
(You meet her namesake gaze steady on, but her eyes won’t lock with yours. They glaze over you, glide past, she doesn’t seem to notice you are there.
A tingle of confusion in the corner of your mouth.
“Why can’t she see me?”)
And then, the friend stirred.
(You say her name, say it again, you speak it close to crying. She does not turn, does not react, deaf to your urgent calling.
A twitch of irritation crawls like an insect along your spine.
“Why can’t she hear me?”)
And then, the friend rose from her bed and set her feet to the floor.
(You reach to touch, to run your hands over her shoulder. The smoke that is you only slides across her aura, is repelled and shoved away, you find no friction to hold on to.
A gust of panic numbs your feet and prickles in your abdomen.
“Why can’t I touch her?”
Feferi looks at you, and her amber eyes gleam.)
But by then dawn had broken through the darkness of night. The three days had passed. The girl was too late. She and her friend could only exchange one last loving glance before she vanished. She now belonged to the sea. Never again would she walk in the sun.
(“Because, silly. You’re dead!”)
The friend hurried down to the waterside, to ask the ocean to give the girl back.
( You sink in your princess’ embrace, an irrevocable descent. You laugh, you dance, you fill your lungs with water, salt, with sweet decay.)
She pleaded with the waves.
(Lips drawn back from your teeth to grin into the knife-sharp grin before you. Surrounded by your element, surrounded by your home.)
She pounded her fists against the rocks.
(Two hands caress your neck, fangs nibbling at your skin, claws lightly grazing, teasing, coy – they dip under your skirt.)
She fell to her knees, and she cried bitterly.
( The darkness sweeps around you like a blend of silk and wool, brings you comfort, peace, oblivion. You hold your ocean princess and she glows like burning embers, she is a fire that roars in your chest.)
Her tears fell into the water where they turned into glittering emeralds.
(Whispers all around you, whispers all inside you, whispers from her pretty mouth directly into yours. You whisper, too, you whisper endlessly, about horrible hunger, terrible thirst, and your wild, wild joy.)
The girl picked the gems from the ocean floor, and she wore them like beads around her neck.
(They will tell your tale as the years pass by; you will drink the salt from their eyes.)