Dryden and
Sylvie - Chapter One
It's
a curious fact that the tears of a mermaid are
fresh water. Sylvie did not know why this should be
so, but she could taste her tears in the water
around her face, oddly flavourless, null and warm,
before they blended with the great salty normality
of the sea. She had wept enough to be very familiar
with the taste.
After
the first joy of receiving her home, Sylvie's
mother had become subtly critical of her daughter's
attitude.
'I
don't know why you want to be off by yourself so
much of the time,' Melamy said. She had never
particularly understood her middle daughter, but
she never ceased to remark upon the fact. 'I'd have
thought you'd have had enough of that, being all
alone, away from your family, up among drylanders
for months. It almost looks as though you're not
grateful to be home.'
'I
am and I'm not,' Sylvie said. She still sometimes
tried to explain to her mother, although she had
come to feel that some things could not be put into
words. 'I'm grateful to be home. I love being here
with you and Tanamil and Manaly and Gerrane again.
But I'm sad that I'm not with him any
more.'
That
explanation only made Melamy angry. 'How can a
drylander be more important to you than your whole
family?' she exclaimed, throwing up her hands. The
disturbed water rushed in Sylvie's face, buffeting
her puffy eyelids.
'He
is and he isn't,' she tried again. 'I could never
be happy not seeing you again. But
' she
trailed off as her mother turned her back and swam
away, leaving her alone in the ice-green grotto. It
was not that Melamy did not care about Sylvie's
feelings; it was only that she despised and feared
drylanders so much that for Sylvie even to suggest
that they might not all be bad would have felt like
mutiny; for her to mope around for the sake of one
of them for weeks on end was a betrayal. Melamy
could not see that there could be a
'but.'
'What
was so special about him?' Manaly, Sylvie's younger
sister, who was more easygoing and less fearful,
enquired.
Sylvie
struggled again to put words around an inchoate
feeling. Manaly looked at her, hands vaguely
sketching in the water before her, lips trembling
with unformed words, and sighed in mild
exasperation.
'I
mean, wasn't he like all the others? Just wanting
you for a status symbol to stare at? The only
reason they don't kill us is because they think
we're beautiful. I hear they'll even take quite
good care of you to keep you looking
nice.'
'He
wasn't like that,' Sylvie said, grateful for an
example that might illustrate the indefinable
quality. 'He did think I was beautiful. He
said so to me many times. But the others look at
you like you're a statue or a painting, a beautiful
possession, not something that might be looking
back and having its own thoughts about them.
He looked at me as though I were a beautiful woman,
and he asked me ... he asked me what I thought of
him.'
'I
don't see what's so remarkable about that,' Manaly
said.
'Because
you've never been a slave,' Sylvie told her. 'When
you're a slave, no-one asks. They tell. Sometimes
they question you, but that's not like his asking.
They ask things like "Can you sing?" and "What will
you do for a good dinner, darling?" He asked things
like "How does it feel to breathe water?" and "What
do you dream about?"' He never told me to do
anything, except, at the end, to go home.' The
tears began to leak again.
'Well,
he must have been basically all right, then,'
Manaly said comfortingly, and put her arm around
Sylvie's shoulders, feeling that she was being very
understanding.
'You
still don't know what I mean,' Sylvie said,
shrugging her shoulders round, folding her arms
protectively, rejecting her sister's hug in favour
of her own. 'He wasn't basically all right.
He was wonderful. You don't understand at all.
No-one does.'
Sylvie's
long hair swirled loosely around her face, blinding
her to the look of hurt crossing Manaly's features.
She felt it when she left, but she did not see her
go.
Eventually
Sylvie had to come out of the ice-green grotto. The
colour was beginning to make her feel sick. She
whipped her hair into a bun, because it had started
to bother her too, and went up to take the
air.
It
was not that a mermaid could not breathe air, since
she had a nose and all the requisite tubes, but her
lungs were less efficient above the waterline. She
could keep her head and shoulders out of the water
and talk ... for hours she had kept her head and
shoulders out of the water and talked, until her
throat felt dry and thick ... but if she hauled her
whole body onto land she grew exhausted quickly,
and exertion brought on an asthmatic
wheezing.
'You
manage better in the air than I could in the
water,' Dryden had said. She didn't speak his name
aloud, but kept it in the silence of her mind like
a star-shaped treasure in a velvet box. He had
tried to swim with her, so awkward and weak with
two thin cornery legs instead of a powerful flexing
tail; she had tried to hide her smiles, afraid that
she would make him angry, but he had seen and
laughed at himself. He was lost in that tank of
water on board a ship afloat on an ocean of air,
and he knew it, and had no pride about
it.
He
had been so strange-looking to her to begin with,
as all of them were strange-looking. They didn't
have normal hair colours, colours of the sea like
deepwater turquoise and faintest green-tinged
foam-white and all the shades of coral from
rose-red to palest pink, and although some of them
were nearly as fair as merpeople, they displayed a
whole range of pigmentation in their skin. She had
seen one little girl who was actually brown-black
all over, except for pink palms on her hands and
soles on her feet. That was the ones who called
themselves human.
The
demi-human beast-people looked more normal to her,
for all their strange fur and teeth, because at
least they were something mixed, not this undiluted
humanity that was so weird and bare and
weak-looking, but which apparently had all the
power. In the first market, the one by the sea, she
had seen dolphin-men, and they had been like faces
from home, but they did not turn when she called,
though she called them in their own language. After
whistling and clicking herself hoarse she had
realised that she was in a glass box of water, and
they were out there in air, surrounded by air
voices, such a babble that they probably could not
make out her tired, desperate speech. One had
walked close by her aquarium and looked right at
her, and her heart had leapt with hope, before he
had shaken his head sadly and walked away without a
second glance. She had quite soon lost any idea
that anyone would try to help her.
It
had been market to market, because at first her
purchasers were slave-merchants who planned to take
her on to the next place and sell her at a profit.
The further inland you went, the more of a rarity
she was, and the price you could ask went up
accordingly. Or she might be transported over miles
of weird terrain, jouncing in a wagon or floating
in an airship, sloshing in her square bubble of
real world, bumping shoulders and hips against the
dead flat glass until the motion stopped and she
was unloaded somewhere where a local big man had
made a name for keeping a menagerie. He could look
her over and decide if she was a suitable addition
to his collection.
Once
she had passed into private hands, no-one had kept
her long. They seemed to have been expecting her to
be fun. When she lay curled at the bottom of
her tank all day, only the soft slight flutter of
the gill-slits at the nape of her neck showing she
was alive, they felt cheated.
'What
does it do?' one pretty young lady had asked
querulously. Sylvie was her birthday present. After
a week the pretty young lady said she was boring
and stupid and she had wanted a new spring coat
anyway ... the one in the catalogue, isn't it
pretty, Daddy, and they'll send it really quickly
from Pallas if you pay just a little more for the
courier.
Sylvie
wondered what they all put so many layers around
themselves for. Perhaps they found themselves
strange-looking too. The only things a mermaid wore
were for decoration. The day they had caught her,
she had had ribands of red deepwater seaweed bound
about her arms and the hollow shells of baby
nautilus coiled in her hair. They had put gold on
her, and ropes of pearls, as heavy as chains. One
merchant complained that she was sickly-looking,
and tried to paint her face rosy with makeup, but
it rinsed off as soon as she was let back into the
water. He was a downmarket man who could not afford
jewellery to decorate her. That was near the middle
of the second month, when she could no longer
eat.
She
was not beautiful any more, then. Her only value
lay in rarity, and even then she was considered a
poor thing by most of the people who saw her. This
last merchant, the one with the makeup, was getting
tired of her. She was a disappointing investment,
and he felt that the man who sold her had seen him
coming. It hurt his pride to have been duped that
way, and he was not especially kind to Sylvie as a
result. When people came to see her, he would roll
up a sleeve, plunge his arm into the shallow
display tank ... too small to turn around, only
just enough room to turn over, nothing to hide
behind so people could see her better, and
sometimes the air-bubbler did not work so the water
grew sludgy and she felt she was choking, and had
to come up and take shallow breaths of straight
air, though she did not feel safe that way ... he
would plunge his arm in, twist his hand in her
floating hair and pull her sharply to the
surface.
'Doesn't
hurt her,' he would say cheerfully to any
tender-hearted customers who winced. 'They don't
really feel much. This one's good. She's gentle,
see?' He shook her head, and Sylvie stared dully at
the way the world bounced. 'Doesn't fight. Nice
quiet pet. Teach the kids about nature, eh?' That
was to family men, at least those who wished to
remember they were family men. It was for the
others that he wanted to paint her.
'You
could pretty much do what you want with her, am I
right, squire? Look at those eyes, look at the pair
on her. She doesn't say much, but who wants them
to? Name? You can call her what you want, they
haven't got names. I call her Bubbles, but she'll
pick up a new one pretty quickly. Fairly bright, if
you're firm with her. She needs a firm hand, don't
you Bubbles?' He made her nod. 'And you'd like to
go home with this gentleman, wouldn't you? Like the
look of him, don't you? We know what they say about
mermaids, right?' Nod, nod. It was a bit desperate.
It got too tawdry for even the ones who looked at
her hungrily.
'I've
seen livelier things on a fishmonger's slab,'
someone said. 'Give you a tanner for her battered
and fried with chips,' said someone else. No-one
wanted to pay any more. They left the merchant's
tent with a final air, though he followed them,
suggesting other things they might like to
see.
One
day someone came in when the merchant wasn't there,
ducking under the tent flap, which was not so very
low, but he was tall. Sylvie lay in her tank, one
arm pillowing her head, and watched him because he
was moving. The water was stale today. It made her
skin itch.
He
took a look at her from the far side of the tent,
arms folded. He was one of those who wore so much
that you could not even see the shape of him, big
loose wraps and a hanging sash. Earth colours in
his skin and hair. He wore glass in front of his
eyes. Sylvie did not understand that, although
plenty of people seemed to do it. Did they need
windows for their faces? Or shutters, because the
glass was dark. Windows and shutters were things
she had only learned about on dry land. She was
trying to solve a puzzle with ideas that did not
really make sense to her anyway.
He
gave a little start and murmured 'Of course it's
not that dark in here ... forgot I had my shades
down.' It was the soft voice people used to talk to
themselves, and were embarrassed if they thought
she was listening. He put his hands to the glass
circles and turned them up ... the dark glass swung
up on little hinges, and there was clear glass
behind it. Sylvie thought glass was like water that
had died and turned to stone.
Once
he could see clearly, the man crossed the dusty
floor of the tent and looked at her more carefully.
His eyes flicked over her breasts rather quickly,
as though he were embarrassed to look there, and
lingered on her face, which was noteworthy simply
for being the exact opposite of what she was used
to. Most people would not really look at her eyes.
'They're almost human,' one old woman had said,
shuddering and turning away.
This
man looked into her eyes for a long time, until she
began to feel twitchy. She realised he was a young
man. If you ignored the colours, he had a good sort
of face. Everything about him was scruffy and
comfortable.
Once
he's had his eyeful, she told herself, he'll
leave. The merchant must not even care any more if
he just tells people to go in and take a look. He
isn't really trying to sell me now. He must think
I'll die soon. She tried, really tried to find
that comforting, and in her worst moments she
almost did, but most of the time she felt a thick
black terror of dying, of never seeing her mother
and father, never seeing Melamy and Tanamil again,
of going down into darkness alone. Mermaids can
breathe in air or water, so they have no concept of
drowning as something that could happen to
themselves, and at first Sylvie had not been able
to think of the word for how she felt. Now she knew
she was drowning, and it was taking a very long
time.
Abruptly,
the young man cocked his head to one side, and said
'Pardon my asking, but aren't you cramped in
there?'
No-one
had used a word like 'pardon' to Sylvie for what
felt like years. It was like a current of fresh
water in her stale tank. She opened her mouth to
speak, remembered that he would not be able to
distinguish the sounds through water, and sat up to
answer him properly.
Sitting
up was a problem. She had not eaten for long enough
to be unsure how long it was, and when she raised
her head the room swung around wildly, as though
they were on board a ship tossed by high winds. She
slouched sideways, falling heavily against the side
of the tank, and almost overbalanced it from its
display platform.
'Whoops!'
The young man caught the side of the tank with both
hands, and a wave of musty water slopped down the
front of his robes. He steadied the glass box,
leaning his hip against it, freeing his hands to
help Sylvie sit up straight. Her hair had caught
across her face, a thick net. It did not smell
good. There was some algae in it and many tangles,
since she had not had the space nor the will to
comb it properly for some time. The young man
pushed the hair back from her face, which she
slightly resented, but there was no disrespect in
his touch.
'Good
grief,' he said, 'you're half starved. Do you
understand me? Or is it all jabber to
you?'
'I
understand you,' she said hoarsely. It had been
quite a while since she had spoken, and her vocal
chords shrank from the catch of air.
'Glad
to hear it. My name is Dryden Fassa. What's
yours?'
She
almost said Bubbles. That was supposed to be her
name here. She had also been Sandy, Aquamarina,
Pearl, Coral and Salty Sue. After a moment's
thought, she said carefully, 'Sylvie.'
'Where
are you from, Sylvie? Where's your
home?'
'Farferee,'
Sylvie said promptly. 'My family's home range is
between the Caris Trench and
' She trailed
off, realising the place-names of her geography
would mean nothing to him. 'They caught me in
Beidurl Cove, in the Firth of Rhince,' she said.
'There was a net I didn't see. I swam in and they
pulled me up. They were mermaid hunters. They had
been watching our family for days and we didn't
know.'
'Beidurl
Cove,' Dryden Fassa said thoughtfully. 'You're a
long way from home. I'd have to go a bit out of my
way to go straight there. Can't really change my
plans at this stage. But that doesn't have to be a
problem.'
'What
do you mean?'
'Good
news; I'm buying you.'
Sylvie's
heart sank. She had begun to think he might be
different, although in what way she could not say,
but now it seemed he was going to be just like
anyone else. One more master. They just had to see
her and all they thought about was possessing
her
or they had. Did it still work that way
now that she had lost her looks?
'Where's
that greasy little greeb who showed me in?' he
wondered aloud. 'Wait there a sec.' He turned away
and strode out of the tent purposefully. Sylvie
sagged against the side of the tank and this time
there was no-one to catch it; the whole thing
tipped, at first oddly slowly, and then fell in a
splash and smash of glass and water on the packed
earth floor. She lay there, only vaguely aware of
the pain of the cuts, and felt the drum of feet on
the floor as people rushed in.
'You've
damaged the merchandise! You've damaged the
merchandise!' the merchant was saying, sounding a
little hysterical. 'You can't say you don't want
her now, you broke it, you bought it!' He fluttered
around, unwilling to touch anything.
Dryden
dropped to his knees in the puddle of mud and glass
and Sylvie's violet blood, gently, quickly picking
the shards of glass off her back, sliding his arms
under her body and, with a small grunt of effort,
standing up. He held her carefully but firmly,
guiding her head to rest on his shoulder. Her tail
flopped and slapped against his legs, and he had to
make a quick grab to adjust his grip before she
slithered out of his arms.
'I'll
take her now,' he said briskly. 'Since you seem so
anxious to be rid of her. My secretary will be
along in a minute and he'll pay you.'
'Don't
you want to discuss the price?' the merchant asked,
sounding dumbfounded.
'No,
I just want to get her out of here,' Dryden said.
He glanced down at Sylvie, and she was confused all
over again by the worry in his eyes, clear to see
through their little windows. The world seemed to
be tilting away from her, and she could not spare
much mind to wonder about windows any
more.
The
merchant's eyes narrowed. 'I'm not letting her go
cheaply, mind,' he said quickly. 'You don't see a
mermaid like that every day.'
'Thank
goodness,' said Dryden shortly. 'I'd be ashamed to
keep an animal in such a wretched state. If
all she's worth to you is money, that's all you
deserve to get. Come on, Sylvie ... don't worry,
you'll be all right.'
'Sylphy?'
the merchant said. 'Fancy name. Where'd you come up
with that?'
'I
asked her,' said Dryden, in tones of withering
scorn, and walked out of the tent.
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