Archive of Our Own

It was just a Saturday afternoon trip for fun, organised by Alix’s dad, to celebrate the start of summer vacation and the end of second grade. ‘Sun and fun at Île aux Cygnes’, he’d called it in the slip of paper he’d made Alix send out on the last day of class. Alix had looked embarrassed to even be alive the whole time she walked through the classroom.

The whole class came: Alix, Juleka, Mylène, Rose, Kim, Nino, and me. Alix and Mylène’s fathers were also there, as well as Rose’s mother. We’d brought swimsuits and beach towels just because, but we weren’t supposed to go in the water at all – it was just so we could play in the sand and have water balloon fights and maybe get a tan without having to worry about our normal clothes. And it wouldn’t be so bad to dump sand onto someone’s head, which Kim and Alix loved.

It was a nice afternoon, I guess. The sun was nice and the wind was just cold enough. But I wanted to be as near as possible to the river. Water was precious to me, because it – well, I didn’t really know. It just was precious, and I imagined what it would be like to live in it, to build a house at the bottom of a lake and just look up at the water above me, the fishes as they swam past, the seaweed as it brushed against the windows.

I could see the Seine from my room every day. But I was never so close to it as I could be at Île aux Cygnes. I wasn’t really into swimming in it, because Dad always said it was full of bicycles and shopping carts and poop. Besides, I couldn’t swim yet, not without a pool and floaties, but I was working hard for my swimming badges. But sitting next to the Seine still gave me the closest feeling I could get to sitting by a lake or on an ocean beach without leaving Paris.

While the others changed, I snuck away and went underneath the bridge, to a place between concrete pillars that was hidden from view. In the shadows, the river felt calmer, because the sun didn’t shine off it as much and the noise from the road above was muted a little bit. My feet didn’t touch the water when I sat on the edge of the wall, but I could hear it slosh all lazy against the brickwork, and feel the cold from it creep up into my toes.

I sat there for a while, imagining faces in the water, pretending there were voices in it that called out to me: “Hello, who are you?” – “I’m Marinette, who are you?” – “I’m the spirit of the water, and I want to be your friend!” – “I want to be your friend too!” – “Won’t you come into the water with me?” – “No, there’s poop, and I don’t have my swimming badges. But when I have my badges we can go to the ocean!”

The water spirit was a little disappointed, of course, but it laughed and said it would wait for me. And I waved at it, and made to look at the next face, the next glint of light that blinked like a winking eye, the next gurgling voice inviting me to dip my toes or stick my fingers in.

But one glint suddenly became a splash, and there was a spark of colour somewhere underneath. I thought it was a fish, but it was big, maybe as big as me – and I pulled up my feet and stood up, because it swam closer, and it was red and baby blue, and it was… strange…

I stared down at it, bunching and unbunching my hands. It came to a rest very close to the embankment, and I saw it had a tail like a fish, a body like a fish, but then the body changed halfway up and I saw arms, and billowing hair, and I saw…

… a face.

The face rose out of the water. And she looked kind of like me. She had floppy black hair in a bob that reached the base of her neck, spotty freckles across her nose that made her look kind of dirty, and deep brown eyes with irises that were larger than any other iris I’d ever seen. She peered straight at me.

A half-fish girl.

“Um… hello?” I said, staring right back. She looked confused, creasing her watery eyebrows, head lolling to the side. “Are you… a water spirit?”

She replied, but not in any language I’d ever heard before. It sounded like the clucking of the creeks flowing down the hillsides where Mylène’s uncle lived, or the sound of the sea washing over rocks outside grandma’s cottage. But it also kind of sounded like a chant.

“I don’t speak water,” I said, pointing to my mouth and shaking my head. She only seemed more confused. “I’m not a water spirit.”

She glided closer and put her hands on the little wall that rose out of the water, pulling herself up so her head was above it. And she spoke again, in bubbles and crests and tides, only a handful of words. At the end, she looked at me, her eyes like sunlight glowing in two wells. She was prettier than anything I’d ever seen.

I tried to copy her. A blop and a sploosh, sounds I didn’t know if would work together, but her eyes went even wider after I said them – and her mouth went into a smile. She held up her hand towards me and beckoned.

“I can’t go in,” I said, shaking my head, but she kept beckoning, even more insistently. So I knelt down next to her, and I leant forward towards her, and her eyes became so big I thought they would swallow me. But then she burbled something, and fell back into the water, leaving only her head above the surface. And the little hand, still beckoning.

“No, I can’t,” I tried again, shaking my head. “I can’t swim. Blop sploosh. Blop.”

She pouted, and folded her arms under the water.

“I’m sorry. I really wanna. But I need more swimming lessons first. Okay?” I wouldn’t swim in poop for a water spirit, because they were imaginary. But this was a real fish-girl, a mermaid, maybe?

She lifted both her hands out of the water, and made a swimming motion in the air. Then she shook her head, and looked at me.

“Yes! Yes.”

She swam a little circle. She said another sequence of ocean words. Then she ducked down under the water, and disappeared from view. I threw myself flat on my stomach and inched forwards, in shock – she was leaving, she’d be gone forever, I needed her name or I would never see her again, I –

 – but then I saw her face come closer again through the muddy water, the eyes fully open. She shot up, lifting her whole upper body free from the Seine, only leaving the fishy tail below the surface. She held her hands together but when the water settled, she pulled them apart, and held her palm out to me.

There was a red seashell. A tiny, red, bulby seashell, with black spots on it. I reached out to touch it. It was rough, but also a little smooth, like sandpaper that was all used up. And it was a little bit warm. She watched me as I rubbed it, eyes still and mouth flat.

After a while, she grabbed hold of my hand and flipped it, and she put the shell into my hand. Then she pushed the hand towards me.

“For me?”

She stared.

“Blorpo splash?”

Her eyes went wide, and she shook her head. She pointed at my hand, then at me. I nodded, and she smiled for a brief second, before her mouth went flat again. She was like… a doll. A pretty mermaid doll that swam and talked in a weird but cool language. If she wasn’t speaking or smiling, it was the same: big eyes watching me. And she looked so smart and lovely.

“I’ll keep it,” I whispered, pulling my hand closer.

She tapped the wall three times. Then she pointed up at the sun, which was barely visible under the edge of the bridge, and she made a sweeping half-circle arch with one hand. Then she held up seven fingers.

I smiled happily. “Yes! I wanna come back. Blop sploosh! I wanna come back.”

She shook her head, but she also smiled. And she said something else and I didn’t know what it meant, but it felt like I was lying down in a brook as the water washed past me. I closed my eyes.

There was a glorping sound. When I opened my eyes, the mermaid was gone. All that was left was rings in the water, and a little seashell that I would never put down ever again. And the promise that we’d meet again next week.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

“Are you sure she’s coming?” said Alix. She was stretched out on the ground next to me, looking up at the underside of the bridge, scratching at a pebble. “I’m bored.”

“Yep. She’s coming.” I clutched the seashell closer to my chest. The mermaid had promised. Though she hadn’t said a time, not really…

Alix had tagged along, because I wasn’t allowed to go to Île aux Cygnes by myself. I don’t think the water excited her as much as it excited me, but she was very interested to see a mermaid. We’d watched My Fish Wife together, even though we technically weren’t allowed to, because Jalil had been there and he also liked it. They didn’t have a grandma with a lake cottage, though.

“Didn’t you say something about the sun?” She pointed up at where the sky met the bridge; the sun had gone past by now. “Guh. It’s been like… twenty hours.”

“Has not!”

“Maybe just ten.” She sighed. “I wanna see her already. We shoulda been at the skate park by now.”

“Mmf,” I said. I didn’t wanna leave. I wanted to wait by the riverside until the mermaid showed up again. I wanted to dive down into the river with her, even if it was full of poop, because I could just have a wash later. And I didn’t want to go to the skate park, not really, because rollerblades were scary never mind how much Alix said they ruled.

Nothing happened in the water. It was just calm and dusty and greenish-brown. Like it was tired.

“See anything yet?” said Alix, flinging a pebble into the river.

“Not y-”

There was a glint somewhere in the deep. A splash of colours, moving a little distance below the surface. I sat up super straight and pointed at the moving creature, following it with my eyes.

“Yes! I see her! Look!”

Alix scrambled to her knees, crawled up next to me and stared down with wide eyes. “Wow! Where?”

I kept pointing, but the glint kind of faded. It didn’t move closer. “She’s down there!”

“That’s a fish, Marinette.”

“No, it’s…”

I looked again. The shape didn’t come any closer. It was small, and short. And it wasn’t red, like the mermaid had been.

Alix waited next to me a few more seconds, then nudged me in the side. “We’ve been here five hundred hours. She’s prolly not coming. C’mon, let’s go!”

I held the shell tighter. “No… I wanna stay longer. I don’t wanna miss her.”

“Well, I’m gonna rollerblade.” She pushed me lightly in the shoulder. “I’m taking your rollerskates too, or you’ll forget. Don’t be long, okay?”

“’kay…”

She walked off. I kept watching the water, getting more and more worried now I was alone and didn’t have anyone to be brave to. The mermaid hadn’t actually said anything I understood – maybe she meant something else? Maybe she actually meant seven hours and not seven days. I never got her name, either, and without her name I couldn’t call out to her.

I pushed the shell closer to my chest. Maybe she just meant to say goodbye… it was just used-up sandpaper, not something meant to last…

Then there was a glint of colour in the water again. I sat to attention. It was her. “Alix! Alix!” I shouted, but she’d left minutes ago, she wasn’t coming back –

The mermaid’s face broke the water quietly. Her hair plastered down her face, but it didn’t hide her eyes, which were still the hugest I’d ever seen. And she was watching me.

“… Hi,” I said. I realised I was smiling – a wide grin that had started the moment I recognised her colours again. “You’re back!”

“Mmm,” she said. My eyes went wide open. “Mablabt.”

“Marinette. Me?”

She nodded. She stared. She pointed over my shoulder – where Alix had disappeared – and she shook her head, holding her arms up in an X shape.

“Alix?” I asked, glancing over – there was nobody else present. Just me – and some people out at the end of the island. “You… don’t want Alix to see you?”

The mermaid just kept watching me – so instead, I pointed like she had done, and shook my head slowly. “No Alix?” I said, and she smiled, made a sound that I thought would be ‘Yes’, but it sounded like a flat rock being skipped across water. Just a simple… splish.

“What’s wrong with Alix?”

Again, more noises I didn’t understand. Maybe she was just nervous about meeting new people. I could understand that.

“You’re a mermaid,” I said, skipping past the topic of Alix as I lay down on my stomach, fingers gripping the wall like it would hold me safe above the water. “You can swim.” I didn’t care that it was terrible conversation material – we didn’t understand each other’s words anyway, so why would I need to say interesting things?

She made some bubble noises back at me, and I still had no idea what they meant. But I felt like they meant good things, at least. “Blop sploosh,” I said, holding out the shell to her. And she smiled, touched it softly with a finger, before pushing my hand back. I got a very clear idea of what she wanted: Keep it. “I will,” I said.

Something was different that day, but I didn’t know what. It made me super happy to see her, and to hear her talk like a river in the rain, and to feel her soft and chilly skin rub against mine. And there was something there that I couldn’t put a word to, except that I knew it was, like, good.

Maybe it was because I recognised some of what she said now. The way she spoke was so different from me, the words she used and the looks on her face and the movements of her hands, but I got some of it. I understood what she meant when she closed her eyes and lay back in the water, her whole body flat on the surface. I knew she said she liked the water. I didn’t understand anything but I got it.

Understanding wasn’t the point, though. It was just super awesome to talk to an actual mermaid, and she was super pretty, and it was super cool to just be there to talk to her and hear the sounds she made.

She tugged on my hand suddenly. Her eyes seemed even larger than before; her hand was damp and cold, but not like a fish. More like a friend who’s also damp and cold. “Bibble,” she said, except it sounded a lot different.

“Bibble?”

“Biblub.” She tugged more, pulled my hand into the water, looked at me like she was waiting for something.

“… What?” I said, but she just tugged more fervently; she yanked further so parts of my lower arm went in too. “No! No, I can’t…”

Could I? I had the badge for holding my breath underwater, and the badge for floating. But this was a big river and a dirty river that had poop in, and my parents would freak out if they saw me with wet clothes. I tugged my hand back.

“Blop sploosh,” I said, holding on to that one line the mermaid seemed to like. “I can’t. No water. I wanna but no water!”

She pulled again, but with less effort. Then she sank back in the water, pouting, arms folded. I opened my mouth to apologise again, but then –

– a sound like an incoming rainstorm washed over the surface of the water, and the mermaid’s eyes went wide and she looked off to the side, towards Pont Mirabeau. She turned back to me, held up seven fingers again, and then gave me a smile that vanished straight away.

She didn’t say “I have to go,” but I got it. And then she left, looking sad as she sank below the surface and then shot off into the distance, swimming like she’s be grounded if she didn’t get there as fast as she could.

I got up, pocketed the shell, and tapped by feet on the ground. One more week, then we could try again. In the meantime, I had rollerskates to fall over on.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

“She didn’t come,” I told Alix. It hurt a little bit to lie, but I didn’t want to hurt the mermaid, either.

“Maybe she’s from somewhere else,” Alix said, handing me the rollerblades. “I bet there are tons of mermaids in Rouen.”

“Maybe,” I said.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

I kept sneaking out to that little secluded spot on Île aux Cygnes throughout the summer, once a week, to meet the mermaid. I always asked Alix to help me make excuses; she told me that was fine, if I bought her a soda with my allowance. We’d go to a nearby mall, I’d buy the soda, and then I’d go to the waterside alone while Alix went around looking at stuff. Neither of us were supposed to be by the water, after all.

I’d come back after half an hour and say I still didn’t see the mermaid, and then Alix would ask why I kept going down there when the mermaid never showed, and I still wouldn’t tell her. I just said, “I wanna see her again.” And Alix kinda resigned herself to having a really weird friend.

Afterwards, though, I’d always come hang with Alix again. And we made plans to go look for actual mermaids when we got older.

“Why don’t you want Alix to see you?” I asked the mermaid one day, kicking my legs above the water, some time in the middle of August. “She’s super cool.”

I didn’t know how much she understood me. But I was starting to understand more and more of what she said. Sounds that were repeated often enough that I just got them, or the tone she used when she asked questions; it didn’t really sound like anything specific, but it felt like water pouring out of something, so something else could be filled in.

She made no sounds I recognised this time. But I felt like she wanted to say something she wasn’t allowed to. And I thought she said, “I want,” but I couldn’t tell what she wanted.

“Is it dangerous?” I said, and she shook her head, and then she looked thoughtful, and then she looked at me and her wide bronze eyes maybe asked something but all I could think was how pretty they were. How pretty she was.

She made a sound like rivers again, and I smiled, and I wondered if I would one day be able to understand her completely, just like Dad spoke Italian and Mum spoke Chinese. Or maybe I could speak the language myself, even, and also sound like rivers.

“I wish I could swim,” I told her, leaning forward. “I’d come into the deep with you.”

She grabbed my wrist, for the hand where I held the shell she gave me. And she said a single rushing word that I knew meant: “Come.”

“No, I can’t,” I said. “I can’t swim.”

“I’ll carry you,” she said, or maybe she said something else.

“My parents would freak out!”

She tugged, hard. And I wasn’t holding on to anything, and her eyes went even bigger, and I fell forward and I opened my hands to break the water before my face hit it and we both screamed –

The water was cold and grimy and I got a ton of it in my nose and mouth, but it didn’t feel like bicycles and poop. I didn’t panic – I just went limp and wide like in my swimming lessons, so I could float. And I turned around on my back, too, and the water tickled inside my ears. And it was kind of… relaxing.

I could see her in the corner of my eye. I heard bubbling sounds, the rapid movement of her tailfin in the water.

“Hey,” I said, and laughed. I was in the water, and it felt so much less terrifying than I’d imagined.

And then I started to cry. Because I wasn’t supposed to be here, and now my parents would definitely find out. And I would have to walk home in wet clothes, and then I wouldn’t be allowed to come out here again to see the mermaid –

– I felt her arms around mine, her fingers against my cheek. She said something – and it was a question, but I didn’t know if it was ‘Are you okay?’, or ‘Do you need help?’, or something else.

“He-help me u-up, please?” I said, choking on sobs. And she understood, and she was strong, because she grabbed hold of all of me and lifted me out completely just with her arms, and she placed me on the little wall, on my back.

Then she disappeared in the deep, as I heaved for stable breaths while I wept. I clenched my fists to my chest, looked sideways at the river. It was… dark. I couldn’t imagine water spirits in it, not when I had to imagine Dad’s stern face and Mum’s quiet voice and being grounded.

The mermaid surfaced again, but she stopped when she saw I was still crying. I looked at her and smiled, despite the tears. “I’m okay,” I said. “Blop sploosh.”

“Blop sploosh,” she repeated, but it sounded so much more like waves when she said it. And she rose higher in the water and reached out to grab my hand, and she placed something small and round and not-exactly-smooth into it. And she said something else, a new combination of sounds, but I knew immediately what it meant: “Sorry.”

I grabbed onto the thing she gave me with my fingertips and lifted it up to see – it was the shell. I’d dropped it when I fell in.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

She held up seven fingers and pointed at the sun again. She seemed anxious; her eyes were massive question marks.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I want to. But I don’t know.”

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

When I got back to Alix at the mall, she immediately took me into a washroom and locked the door. “Did you fall in the water?” she asked, and I started to cry again.

“I – I fell in when…”

Alix pulled out some tissues from the dispenser and handed them to me, then took a couple more and started drying me off in the face. “You’re dirty,” she said. “Is it poop?”

“No, it’s just water,” I said, as she kept drying. “I – Mum and Dad are, they, they’re go-gonna be so a-a-angry…”

“No, they won’t,” said Alix. “I’ll help you dry off. Come on, take off your clothes, we’ll wring them out.” She reached out to grab hold of my shirt. I jumped away, tears shocked away.

“No! I can’t be – I can’t be naked here! I can’t be –”

Alix took hold of my arms. “Okay! Okay! You don’t need to be. But then we have to get you home. You can’t be out in wet clothes.”

“But Mum and Dad –”

“I’ll come with you,” she said. “We’ll say we both went.”

“But you’ll get in trouble too!”

Alix tilted her head to the side, left then right. “Doesn’t matter. I wasn’t there when you fell in the water, I can be there now.”

I could only stare at her for her kindness, even after I’d spent weeks ditching her at the mall for like half an hour every weekend. Even after I didn’t tell her I’d actually met the mermaid. How could I ever show her how thankful I was?

Then I remembered my parents kissing, because they loved each other. And I looked Alix in the eyes, and I leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth. It was just barely touching, and our noses bumped, but it was probably a kiss. It felt like one, at least.

Alix looked a little embarrassed, though. “Don’t make a big deal about it,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said. “I, um, I like you.”

“Like like like?” said Alix.

My awkward grin faded. “Um… I don’t know? I just like you.”

“Um, okay. Thank you,” said Alix, looking confused.

I panicked. “And, um, you know the mermaid? I actually met her every time I bought you a soda,” I said. “Like… she was there every time, but –”

“You didn’t tell me?” said Alix, and I realised I’d made a mistake. “I wanna meet her! You were hiding her from me!”

“I didn’t mean to – she said she didn’t want to see you! Um, I mean,” Alix suddenly looked really hurt, “I dunno, I think she was just scared to meet people. It wasn’t about you, and she doesn’t speak French, so…”

“Okay, I guess,” said Alix, looking away. “But you gotta let me meet her, okay? Tell her I’m cool and I wanna see, and stuff.”

She still looked hurt, but I didn’t know how to fix it. So instead I just opened my mouth, said “Um,” and then I looked away too.

“Did she help you out of the water?” she asked, a few moments later.

“… Yes,” I said, and sniffled my way into a cough.

“Okay. You gotta get home.” Alix put the tissue papers she’d been holding into the bin. “I’ll come with.”

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

We both ended up in trouble, but Mum and Dad were less angry than I’d been scared of. They did ground me, though: they were so frightened, I wasn’t allowed to leave the house without them except to go to school. Alix got an earful from her dad, but she could go outside without permission – she just couldn’t go near the river at all.

But we didn’t tell our parents anything about the mermaid. She’d been my secret alone – now she’d be mine and Alix’s together.

Alix was allowed to come to my house on her own. So she came to visit me the next day. We both complained that we couldn’t go down to see the mermaid, while playing with dolls in my room. We took a shoe box as a ship and made one doll be a mermaid and then two dolls were captains on the ship, and we invited the mermaid aboard.

We talked about maybe disobeying our parents for the next week, because we didn’t want to miss the mermaid when she came back. But I knew I couldn’t go against my parents. Alix was good at disobeying in general, but Alim Kubdel was like the one person she wouldn’t disobey.

I’m not sure how Alix felt. But I was more sad than I let on to her. If I couldn’t go meet the mermaid, she might be disappointed in me and hate me. And I wouldn’t get to keep learning her language, or feel the funny way her skin felt against mine, or hear her voice.

But I showed Alix the shell. Her eyes went wide. “She gave you that?”

“Yes,” I said, a little bit proud.

“That’s the most obviously mermaid shell I’ve seen my whole life,” Alix said. “Way more mermaid than the shells at the Louvre.”

“They have shells at the Louvre?” I asked, wide-eyed.

Alix shrugged. “Dunno. In paintings, at least.”

“Maybe she’ll give you one too,” I said. It was hope beyond hope beyond hope – hope that I’d meet the mermaid again, hope that she’d want to meet Alix, hope that she’d have another shell as cool as this one.

But Alix just smiled, and said “Yeah! I hope so.”

“And she’ll say, like, ‘blop sploosh’ or something.”

“Um…” said Alix. She looked at me like I was naked or something. “That sounded really weird.”

“Weird?”

“Like… I don’t know. It sounded water-y.”

“It’s the mermaid language. Maybe. She likes when I say ‘blop sploosh’.”

Alix shivered so hard I could see it, but she smiled. “Cool. That sounds really awesome.”

“Yeah…”

And so we kept playing sailors and mermaids, and they all ended up in the sea – diving for the precious red shell with black spots that was my favourite thing I’d ever owned, and Alix’s favourite thing she’d ever seen. And the next morning, I woke up with a cold.

We didn’t get to Île aux Cygnes again that summer. I tried to convince my parents to go out there, but they had completely lost any wish to see me near water after I fell in and they weren’t there. They only took me to parks with fountains, or they let me go to Alix’s if Alix came to pick me up. But I didn’t get to see the mermaid again, and Alix said she never went down to look either.

But at night, I started dreaming about the sea, and about the mermaid. I felt like I knew her name in the dream, but when I woke up it disappeared. And I felt like I heard sounds of the sea when I slept, and every now and then the shell seemed like it glowed. And when I touched it, it was a little bit warm.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Over the next few years, the mermaid faded a bit. I still had the shell, I still missed her, but it didn’t feel like it hurt the same way. I sometimes went down to Île aux Cygnes once I was no longer grounded, which was well into September, but there was no sign of any mermaids. I asked the water spirits about her, hoping my imagination would tell me, but all they said was “We don’t know!”

With time I even sort of forgot the feeling I’d had by the riverside those times I talked to her. The feeling that I was almost inside the water myself, without getting wet. Of meeting someone who was so interesting and cool I’d never get bored of them. And of being reminded that magic existed. I only remembered the mermaid, but a little bit like she’d been a dream.

I ended up putting away my wish for a house at the bottom of a lake. But I still practised some of the mermaid words, because I never gave up completely. I just couldn’t forget her all the way, and I didn’t want to, either – I had a small hope of meeting her again. It just… became less important.

As for Alix, I told her that             I liked liked her when I was eleven and a bit. She said “Okay,” and then we were maybe girlfriends. It was hard to tell because we didn’t know any other girlfriend couples, but we said we were that, even though my parents thought we were maybe a little too young. But just like my parents, me and Alix kissed every now and then, even if she wasn’t super excited about it.

She let me continue kissing her, though. We hung out a lot, and we skated, and sometimes she told me to say the mermaid words again and then I did. But when she tried to copy me, she just sounded like she was making weird sounds with her mouth. It wasn’t right, and I knew it, but I didn’t know how or why it wasn’t right.

That summer, after we’d been sort-of-girlfriends for three months, Alix’s dad invited my family to Rouen for the summer holidays. They were planning to rent an apartment for a week-long vacation, and he thought it’d be nice to invite us so I could be with Alix.

We went to Rouen in July, me and Alix and our parents and Alix’s big brother Jalil who was in lycée at the time. We got a whole cabin near the banks next to an island called Île Maugendre, where trees lined everything and the river itself was even more green than in Paris. The island itself was empty, but me and Alix went down to sit and watch it every day.

“This is a mermaid place,” said Alix the third time we went down there. “I’m sure now. There’s gotta be some mermaids here.”

“Maybe,” I said. It was nothing like the dark and hidden spot underneath Île aux Cygnes, but maybe mermaids liked nature better. I had only ever met one, after all.

“Did you bring the shell?”

I picked it out of my pocket and held it up. Alix touched her fingers to it, then shuddered. “It feels so cold,” she said.

“I think it’s kinda warm.”

We were allowed to sit by the water by ourselves, because we had all our swimming badges, and our parents could watch us and hear us from the back porch. But they didn’t really look that much, because they thought we wanted privacy.

What we really wanted, though, was just to experience the river. To sit there and hope for something cool to show up, like it hadn’t for the past few years. And we talked about the mermaid.

“I still wish I coulda seen the mermaid,” Alix said.

“I wanna see her again,” I said, and kissed her on the cheek. “Blop sploosh.”

“I don’t know how you do that voice,” sighed Alix. “Can I hold the shell for a bit?”

I nodded, handed it to her. “Is it really cold to you?”

“A little bit,” she said. “In a cool way.”

“Cool as in… cold?”

Alix shook her head. “As in awesome.” Her fist closed around the shell. She lifted it higher, then lowered it, then up again, like she was testing the shell’s weight.

“It glows sometimes,” I said.

“Cool,” said Alix. She frowned a little bit. “If you’d taken me to see her, I coulda had a shell too.”

“Sorry…”

“That’s all right,” said Alix, handing me the shell back. She looked wistful as she peered across to Île Maugendre. “Maybe I can find my own mermaid.”

“You can find mine. If I see her again, I can talk to her.” I knew how big of an ‘if’ that was, but I wanted to do right by my girlfriend if I could.

That was when I heard a voice, though. And there were footsteps through the twigs and grass down to our left, and the voice sounded like it was calling out. “Hey!” it said. We turned our heads to look.

She was young, like around our age, and she wore a weirdly patterned skirt that covered her legs completely and an airy top, and she looked super familiar. She had large bronze eyes and dark hair in a bob, and she was looking at me as she walked closer.

“Hello,” the girl said, stopping a short ways away. “What’s that in your hand?”

“Um…” I pinched the shell between thumb and forefinger with both hands, a little bit nervous to show it off too openly. “A seashell.”

The girl watched me. She looked so focused, like I was maths homework and she only had fifteen minutes to do me. And she was very pretty, too, not like Alix was pretty but in a different way. Like she was a soft pretty where Alix was a tough pretty.

“You got that from a mermaid,” she said eventually.

I felt my eyes bulge out. “You know about mermaids?”

“Yes.” She frowned. “I know many mermaids. I know more mermaids than I know people.”

“Cool!” I said, glancing sideways at Alix – but Alix just stared at me, surprised and speechless. “Um, Alix? What’s wrong?”

Alix closed her mouth, shaking her head. “This is freaky,” she said in a half-mumble.

“A mermaid gift is important,” the girl said when I turned back to her. She was stern – but also, I got the feeling she knew me too. When she caught my eye, it was like she tried to dare me to do something. “And personal. You need to be careful with it.”

“I am,” I said. “I’m always careful with it.”

“Good,” said the girl. Then she looked at Alix. Then she looked away. She didn’t say anything else.

“Um,” I said, grabbing Alix’s hand, “who are you? How did you know I had a mermaid shell?”

“I don’t know what’s going on,” whispered Alix. “What are you two saying?”

The girl didn’t say anything. She seemed kinda hopeful as she looked at me, taking half a step closer, wringing her hands.

And suddenly, I recognised the eyes. They were the same deep and brown and humongous eyes that had come out of the water to see me years ago, at Île aux Cygnes. The same eyes that gave me the seashell in the first place. “You’re the mermaid from Paris!” I said, wrapping my arms around Alix’s and pulling her closer, jumping up and down. “You’re here!”

“Yes. And you’re Marinette,” the mermaid said.

“She’s the mermaid!” I told Alix. “She’s here! She just said my name!”

Alix seemed to be in some kind of daydream. Her eyes were super unfocused as she turned to look at me. “… Mablabt?” she said.

“It’s nice to see you again,” the mermaid said, smiling faintly once I turned back towards her. “I’ve watched you and your… girlfriend every day you were here. I wasn’t sure you wanted to see me, until you said just now…”

I tried to say something, but my surprise made me choke on the first word. Then I tried again. “Of course I want to see you! I’ve been trying to find you again, but you weren’t – and you never told me what your name is!”

“… Kagami,” she said.

“Blagmy,” said Alix.

“I thought you would be mad at me,” Kagami continued. “Because I pulled you into the water, and you started to cry. And then you didn’t show up the week after.”

“That’s because I was grounded! I wanted to come back, but I couldn’t, and then I got back and you weren’t there anymore.”

“Blop sploosh,” said Alix, wrongly.

Kagami frowned. “Then I got you grounded, and that was unacceptable of me. I’m sorry.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “It was my fault! I should have been more careful. And I’m sorry for not coming back.”

She smiled faintly. “Thank you, Marinette.”

I took a step closer, tugging Alix along. “Hey – this is Alix! She’s wanted to meet you for ages!”

“Haglish,” said Alix.

“Yes,” Kagami replied, though her smile faded. “I heard.”

I’d forgotten that Kagami had told me not to bring Alix. Now she seemed nervous. “Is something wrong?” I asked her, before glancing at Alix to give her a smile; Alix looked at me like she had no idea what was going on.

“… No,” said Kagami. “Nothing is wrong.”

“Something is wrong. Please tell me,” I said.

“I… don’t want to come between you and your girlfriend,” Kagami said. “I just used to have a silly dream, and I gave you the shell without thinking because I was so young, but you and Alix look so happy together.”

Alix tugged back on my arm just as I was about to reply to ask what Kagami was talking about. “Hey,” she said, “I can’t understand a single word you’re saying. Can you please go back to talking French?”

“French? But –”

“We’re speaking Atlantic,” said Kagami. “You didn’t notice.”

I stared at her. “But – I don’t know Atlantic?”

“The shell taught you, in your dreams, over time. I also learned some French from you when you held it. That’s why I gave it to you, so we could talk to each other.” She looked at Alix for a moment. “It’s not magic, so we could just speak French instead, if your girlfriend wants.”

“Can’t you give her a shell too?” I said. I finally noticed that my voice sounded like – rain, droplets of rain on a thin roof, or maybe it sounded like splashes of water in a little basin. The mermaid language. And I hadn’t realised she spoke it to me, or that I’d answered in it, because I thought I only spoke French. I made a conscious effort to switch back. “Give Alix a shell! Then she can understand Atlantic too.”

Kagami shook her head, and kept replying in Atlantic. “I can’t. The shells are special. I need to give them to someone I want to build a life-long bond with… and I already did that with you.”

“But – wait. You’re bound to me?”

“That’s why I didn’t want Alix there,” said Kagami. “I wanted to have you for myself. But it doesn’t matter. You’re happy now, so I won’t put myself in your way.”

“What’s she saying?” asked Alix. She sounded excited. “Is she going to give me a shell too?”

“No,” said Kagami. “It doesn’t work like that. I’m sorry.”

Gears whirred in my head. First they unlocked what Kagami was saying; then they tried to unlock other doors. If Kagami was bound to me, and I’d just left her alone, then that was something I needed to fix. Magic or not, I couldn’t let her deal with that alone.

I looked from Alix to Kagami. Obviously I liked liked Alix. I liked kissing her, and I liked spending time with her, and she was very pretty. But Kagami… she was also very pretty, and she was a mermaid, and she had wanted to be with me, and I liked spending time with her too. I wasn’t sure enough about what love was to say I was in love with Alix, and I had even less of an idea what I really felt about Kagami. But what I did know was that I’d loved spending time with both of them. And I was already girlfriends with one of them.

“Um, Kagami?” I said, switching back to Atlantic. “Couldn’t you… make a life-long bond with both of us?”

Kagami balked. “What? But you two are already together.”

“Yes, but… we could be three people together?” I said, feeling a little bit silly. Maybe I was just naïve. I didn’t know of any adults who were more than two people dating. Maybe it just couldn’t happen like that, but… if it could...

I turned to Alix, too. “Um, Alix? Would you be fine with dating Kagami too? The mermaid,” I added, when Alix looked confused. “I think she’s bound herself to me, and if she can’t be with me, then maybe she can’t be with anyone. So if we both dated her, together…”

Kagami looked like she was watching a burning building, but she didn’t say anything.

“Er, sure, I guess?” said Alix. She seemed to be watching a different building, one that was just painted a weird colour.

“Be honest,” I said. “I don’t want you to be hurt.”

Alix shrugged. “Look, you know I’m not into lovey-dovey stuff anyway. I just wanna hang out and do stuff together. And it’d be really cool to do that with a mermaid, too, but I don’t wanna have to think about kissing two people.” Her eyes lit up. “Maybe you two can kiss each other, and I can just hang out with you? That’d be neat.”

“Yeah!”

“I’m fine with a bit of kissing, by the way.”

Kagami kept wringing her hands. “I still can’t make more shells.”

I held out my hand, shell resting in my palm. “Then we can share mine! You can be bound to both of us.” Then I handed it to Alix, who grabbed it in one hand and put it to her chest.

“I… suppose,” said Kagami. Her building was less on fire now. “I’ve never heard of that before. But maybe it would work.” She shook her head. “I would like to get to know Alix first.”

“We’re here for four more days,” I said, smiling. “And I want to get to know you more, too.”

“Wait, if we’re bound, does that mean we can go in the water and get fish tails?” said Alix, wrenching herself free from me and stepping towards Kagami; she balled up her fists and jittered excitedly. “That sounds so wicked cool.”

Kagami shook her head. “No. Humans can never become mermaids. And I can only be on land for a few hours at a time.”

“Darn. Well, there goes that dream.”

I held out my hand towards Kagami. “Come – sit with us. We can talk and stuff. But we can’t kiss here, because our parents might see us, and they could get worried.”

Kagami looked confused for a second. Then she smiled, came closer, took my hand – and the three of us sat down to discuss the sea in French, and to talk live rivers and streams and drizzling rain.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

“This is Kagami,” I told Dad. “She lives here. Can she eat dinner with us today?”

He smiled, though he seemed a little cautious. “Sure, honey, but… when did you meet her?”

“Years ago. She came to Paris.”

Alix put her hands on Kagami’s shoulders. “She’s really cool and we’re gonna hang with her the rest of the vacation, too.”

Dad, perplexed, could only smile and nod. Little would he ever know his daughter now had two girlfriends, even less so that one of them would have to go back in the river once we were done eating.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

It was summer again, the start of our last year at collège. Me and Alix sat in the secluded spot under Île aux Cygnes, Alix holding the shell in her hand. We practised Atlantic together, waiting for Kagami to show up.

“Is she really moving here? The river is full of shopping carts and poop,” Alix said.

“Well, you’re not kissing her, so you don’t have to worry about that,” I teased.

“If you think I’m not gonna kiss my second girlfriend, then you’ve got another thing coming.” She grinned, then switched back to French. “I’m not kissing the two of you for me, anyway. When I kiss you it’s because I wanna let you know I appreciate you.”

Alix didn’t love. That didn’t matter. She was as big a part of the relationship as me and Kagami; she just expressed it differently. She was like a friend plus. And me and Kagami still loved her like we loved each other.

“I wonder what she looks like now,” Alix said.

“Even prettier,” I volunteered.

“Well, yeah. That goes without saying.”

“I wonder where she’s going to live,” I said. “Do you think she’ll just live in the river?”

“Apartment with a large pool in it,” suggested Alix.

When a bond was active, it could send messages back and forth between the person who gave the shell and the person who held the shell. That had worked for both Alix and me.

That was how we heard: Kagami would be living in Paris permanently from now on, though she didn't say how or why. That was immaterial: after two years of only seeing her intermittently, sometimes only one of us at a time, we were all looking forward to living in the same city. Alix wanted to take Kagami rollerblading; I was hoping to swim with her, and to do a minimum of rollerblading.

The shell suddenly hummed; we both looked down at the water, anticipation rising. It didn’t take long until we could see a familiar face rising from the brown deeps. A handful of moments later, Kagami broke the surface, spraying us with water.

“Hey, girlfriend,” said Alix, somehow making the word sound both joking and genuine at the same time.

“Hello, Alix,” said Kagami. She was indeed even prettier than before. Her hair was cut a little shorter, and she had even more freckles; her eyes were a little bit smaller than they had been, but they were as glowing and deep as ever, like a sea at sunset.

I thought back to the time Kagami pulled me into the Seine, when I couldn’t swim properly. When I ended up crying on the riverside because I was scared I might never see her again. But today, I knew that could never happen again. I got up on my haunches, and I jumped into the river next to Kagami.

“Ew, gross!” said Alix when I surfaced. “You’re gonna catch a cold.”

Kagami grabbed hold of me, and I wrapped my arms around her in response. “Hey,” I said.

“Hello, Marinette.”

I kissed her on the mouth. It tasted wet, and grimy, and amazing.

My dream of a house at the bottom of a lake would probably never happen. But I still had someone of the sea to build a home with. And that home would be like a wide river, with more than enough room for three people.