Dryden and
Sylvie - Chapter Two
The
next little while was not clear in Sylvie's memory,
but when she was sure of things again, she was
lying bandaged in a bath of proper salt water, not
the silty nothingish stuff from wells and rivers
she had been put into for weeks. There was a pillow
between the edge of the bath and her neck; her hair
hung over the side of the tub and someone was
carefully picking out the knots. A slightly painful
tug in the process had brought her fully awake. She
lay very still, wondering where she could be. The
background hum told her she was on board an
airship. It looked like a stateroom. There were a
lot of bookshelves around the walls, and a rather
lumpily-made bed with a large lamp hanging over
it.
'Awake
now? I was worried about you for a while,' said a
deep voice behind her. For a moment it was
unfamiliar, and then she matched it up to the name
Dryden Fassa. She did not want to answer. He had
bought her. Even if he had been kind, he had still
bought her.
'I
hope you're not thinking of doing anything really
energetic like blinking,' he went on,
imperturbably, 'because you're probably pretty weak
after all that bleeding. Lucky there was a
barber-surgeon just opposite your old master's. He
kept saying "I've never done this on a mermaid."
Still, he seemed to do a competent job of bandaging
you. He put a couple of stitches in the bigger
gashes, but apparently they're a kind that will
dissolve as they heal up, so nothing to worry about
there. I've just got to keep you clean and
comfortable, and feed you up, and we'll see a much
happier Sylvie in a few days.' He finished breaking
up the knots in the section of hair he was working
on, and combed it smooth. 'I'm spending more time
on your hair than I do on mine.'
Sylvie
did not speak, and he did not seem to require her
to. She grew increasingly irritated at his
familiarity. What did he want to be playing with
her hair for? What was the point of all this? Some
men liked funny things, and she was beginning to
worry. When he had untangled all her hair, he got
up from behind her and walked around to take
another look at her.
'Much
too thin,' he said, shaking his head.
'Much
too tall,' Sylvie replied. She had had enough of
people talking about how she looked. Someone else
could see how they liked it for once.
Dryden's
mouth opened slightly, as if he wanted to say
something back but had no idea what. His expression
cleared to a broad smile. 'Oh, yes,' he said.
'Much too tall. Any other criticisms you'd
like to make? Be brutally frank.'
'Your
face is bristly,' she said. 'You have ugly boots
on. You wear windows on your face and that bow on
your hair looks frankly stupid.'
Dryden
put his hand to the scarf fastening his high
ponytail. 'I don't think it's that bad. You can
have the rest, but I like my bandanna.' He smiled
again. 'Did you enjoy getting that out of your
system? I bet you've been longing to tell someone
exactly what you think of them as a piece of
merchandise.'
He
had no right to know what she was thinking. Having
private thoughts was one of the few things Sylvie
had been able to keep sacred. She scowled at
him.
'That's
a lovely way to look at the man who's going to set
you free,' he remarked amiably. The scowl fell off
Sylvie's face like the tank off the
stand.
'Set
me free!'
'That's
why I bought you,' Dryden explained. He squatted
down beside the bath, his elbows on his knees,
getting on eye level with her. 'You're legally mine
to do what I like with, and if what I like is
taking you back where they caught you and letting
you go, who's going to stop me? I don't happen to
like seeing things in cages. When I heard someone
had a mermaid for sale that far inland I didn't
really believe it, but I thought I'd go and see
just for curiosity. And when I saw you in that
little glass coffin I knew straight off what I
wanted to do. Get a good meal inside you for
starters. Didn't he feed you?'
'I
... I haven't felt well enough to eat,' Sylvie
stammered. She was thrown entirely off balance by
this. Drylanders bought and sold you, she had been
warned about that since she was a child, and she
knew all too well from experience that it was true.
She had never heard of buying a slave purely in
order to free her.
'Do
you think you could choke something down now? We
haven't got any fresh seafood, but we do have
tinned oysters and dried seaweed sheets. And I'm
having the big display aquarium filled as we speak
... salting the water and everything. I know it's
not the same as real seawater, but I'll do my best
to make you feel at home until we say
goodbye.'
'When
will that be?' she asked eagerly.
'You're
so flattering,' Dryden smiled. 'Can't wait to see
the back of me, can you? Well, it won't be for at
least three more weeks. I have to make a round
trip, because I've got various meetings planned and
I want to be in time for various fairs, and that's
the soonest we can get round to the Beidurl area.
But I promise you that's where we're heading,
eventually. And when your family see you again, I
don't think you want to look like this, do
you?'
'N-no,'
Sylvie said, uncertainly. He was offering her such
a wonderful hope that she had to work very hard not
to grab onto it with all her heart. Remember it
might still go wrong. Remember he might change his
mind. Setting mermaids free might seem like a nice
idea to him now but he might get bored with it,
they get bored easily, or if I get too healthy and
pretty he might decide to keep me after all
but it can't hurt to eat a little, can it?
She
was feeling a little twitch of appetite for the
first time in days. It was the word 'oysters' that
had done it. They were her favourite treat. No-one
had offered her anything as special as oysters in
all her captivity. When they were anywhere near the
sea, most people had appeared to feel that bait was
good enough for her. Inland she had had to learn to
eat freshwater fish, if anyone would give it to
her, or worse, poultry, or red meat which she could
hardly chew. She did not even get fed good meat;
she suspected it was often dog-food. The vegetables
were not much better; her hopes had leapt at the
mention of lettuce but it was not like sea-lettuce,
soft and filmy, and the subtle wrongness brought
tears to her eyes. Now she imagined the deliciously
clammy slip of a raw oyster going down her throat
and her mouth watered.
Tinned
oysters turned out to be different again, cooked
somehow and packed in fishy oil, but they were
oysters for all that and she ate a dozen. Dryden,
who had brought her a tray and set it across the
top of the bath himself, watched her eat, sitting
on a stool with his chin on his hands, as
interested as her elder sister Gerrane sitting on
the rocks watching the tiny world of a
tidepool.
Eating
so much so quickly made Sylvie feel a little sick,
and she was not at all sure her stomach was not
going to throw the oysters out again. It had
probably gotten used to being empty and resented
the intrusion. She had to sit back and breathe
deeply for a minute, and Dryden looked worried at
the slight whistle of her air-breathing.
'Is
that normal for you?' he asked. 'Or do you think
you might have picked up some kind of lung
trouble?'
'It's
normal,' she assured him. 'I'm all
right.'
'I
used to get that when I was a kid,' he said, to her
surprise. She had not thought anyone who lived in
air could have trouble breathing it. 'I had to
sleep propped up and breathe a lot of steam to open
my airways. A couple of times they locked up so
hard I nearly died. I grew out of it, I'm glad to
say. But I was a pretty pathetic little kid, what
with glasses and asthma and killer tonsillitis
every winter. I didn't get out to play much so I
turned into a bookworm, and I never grew out of
that.' He waved a hand around the room, indicating
the shelves.
Sylvie
was not sure what to say. Drylanders did not
usually tell you about themselves. Perhaps she
should just respond in kind.
'When
I was a little girl,' she offered, 'I had this
theory that I could learn to walk on the end of my
tail ... on land, you know ... if I tried hard
enough. I used to go up on the beach at night, when
drylanders wouldn't be around, and practise. But I
could never even get up on the end of it. I used to
get all puffed out trying, and sometimes I made
myself feel quite sick.'
'Why
did you want to walk on land?' he asked. 'Well,
silly question, lots of people have thought it
would be great to be able to swim like a fish. It's
to do something different, right?'
'Yes,'
she said. 'I wanted to walk around there and just
... well, see what it was like. You hear stories.
Some explorers have gone up rivers ... they've met
our cousins who live in lakes and streams, the
naiads and nixies ... and they tell stories about
strange animals like cows and dogs and cats ... and
when I heard them I always thought what a shame it
was that they could only tell about what they had
seen from the riverbanks, and not actually go into
the fields and towns and see what they were like up
close.'
'Well,
you've been an explorer after all,' Dryden pointed
out. 'When you go home you can tell people all
about the fields and towns. You can get something
good out of practically any experience if you look
for it.'
'I
suppose,' said Sylvie doubtfully. She was beginning
to feel better.
'Would
you like a drink?' he asked politely. 'I can give
you wine or milk or whatever you like, pretty
much.'
'We
don't drink like you do,' Sylvie said. 'Water comes
in through our skins all the time. I would only
need to drink if I were out of water for a long
time, and since you've put me in this tub I'm
fine.'
'So
much for the expression drink like a fish,'
Dryden said. 'Although you can't be a fish, can
you? You're a mammal. But your tail's scaly, and
those are very fishy fins. I can't quite work you
out. You'll have to tell me all about yourself. I
always thought that logically mermaids ought to
have dolphin tails, or be more mixed all over like
demi-humans, but there, you've upset all my
theories. I've never really gotten to talk to a
water-living person before. I remember once when I
fell in a river an otter-man helped me out, but
it's not the same, is it? He wouldn't stay to talk
once he saw I was all right, and he must have held
his breath underwater. What are you thinking with
that look on your face?'
'That
you could talk the barb off a stingray,' Sylvie
said truthfully. He laughed. It was a remarkable
laugh, not just a sound he made; it animated his
whole face and his body seemed ready to join in.
Sylvie thought he had rather a big mouth, but that
was not objectionable. Her eyes were getting used
to his colours, and now she thought about it, the
ripply brown of his hair made her think rather of
kelp, an entirely agreeable association.
A
knock came at the door, and Dryden called out
'Yeah?' A short little rat-man put his head into
the room. His face wore what looked like a
habitually harried expression.
'The
men have finished filling the tank, as you
instructed,' he said, 'and do you realise what all
that salt cost?'
'Yes,'
said Dryden, 'to the last peizo, and I'm not
worried, so nor should you be. We'll be seeing a
return from the shares in Prossa Forestry this
autumn, and I'm expecting to close some important
deals when we get to Carile. I can afford to throw
a little salt around. I'm feeling lavish. Have you
met our guest? This is Sylvie. Sylvie, this is my
secretary. Loud noises scare him and words of
praise make him giggle and sneeze, and that's all
you need to know to get along with him. Would you
like to see your new room?'
He
carried her again, very carefully so as not to pull
her stitches or disturb her bandages. The tank was
huge. She wondered what anyone would want a thing
like that on a ship for.
'It
was put in when we were taking a pod of dolphins to
the new aquarium at Miramar Regis,' Dryden
explained. 'Don't look at me like that, I was
seventeen and still growing into my social
conscience. Those were very well looked-after
dolphins. We even made the bottom natural for them
... see the sand and rocks? If I'm going to be
entertaining clients on board I sometimes stock it
up with tropical fish to look pretty and
impressive. Since you'll be here for a while we can
try to get some fish and weed in. You'll be
comfortable, won't you?' He was standing on the
brink of the tank, looking down into the blue
depths of water, still holding Sylvie securely.
Down below was a viewing window, let into a lower
cabin. In the opposite wall, the tank even had a
sort of porthole, a double layer of reinforced
glass, giving out onto the sky. All Sylvie could
think of was the water.
Dryden
lowered her carefully, although she could happily
have been dropped straight in. As soon as she was
anything like immersed, she twisted swiftly out of
his arms and dove to the bottom of the tank. There
was so much space! It was tiny compared to her
family's range, but capacious compared to the
aquariums she had been in before, and that was what
mattered. She soared around its boundaries,
rejoicing in the freedom of movement, the lack of
defined direction beyond 'surface' and 'bottom,'
the sheer cold exhilaration of proper salt water
all around her, sluicing away her fatigue and
misery. This surge of energy was pure adrenalin,
and she could not keep up this pace long in her
weakened state, but here and now it was wonderful
and joyous.
Turning
and banking in the water, feeling the rush and push
of it, the constant reassuring pressure after which
being out in weak air made her feel lost and
drifting, she sped towards the surface, making the
kind of power-rush that let her breach and leap in
the air, turning in a shining arc, spraying chains
of water from her fins and hair and outstretched
arms before returning to the tank in a splash like
an upside-down chandelier. She bobbed up again,
blinking the water from her lashes, and found that
she had unintentionally saturated Dryden with her
splashing. He was gaping at her rather, just for a
moment, before breaking up into laughter again. She
liked the way he laughed more every time she heard
it; such a warm, low chuckle. It caught you by
surprise and warmed you, like swimming into a
thermal vent you hadn't noticed was
there.
'I
guess you're feeling better,' he managed to
say.
'I
am! I am. Thank you!'
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