Dryden and
Sylvie - Chapter Four
Sylvie
was not a singer. The image of all mermaids as
sirens and songstresses is a stereotype, far from
representative of every individual. But it's
generally true that happy people do sing. They
don't always sing well, but they often
sing.
'Why
is it that, when you sing, your vocabulary is
reduced to "la"?' Dryden asked.
'Not
true, I know "dee" and "da" too,' Sylvie protested.
'Sometimes even "doo." Teach me another song if you
don't like these ones.'
'I
do like them. I especially like the suspense of
seeing if you can stay in one key for a whole
verse. You sing like I swim.'
'Meanie.
Sometimes I stay in key for two at a
time!'
'Yes,
your songs are curate's eggs. Parts of them are
excellent.'
'An
egg is an oval, a perfect shape.'
'May
I say you're a perfect shape?' He ran a hand lazily
down the line of her waist.
'For
swimming, perhaps.'
'Oh,
just accept the compliment. I always
do!'
What
Sylvie found most delightful about the whole
arrangement was, the happier she made Dryden, the
happier she felt in herself. It was an endlessly
reciprocating loop. To delight his eyes, she danced
in the water while he watched through the glass
belly of the window, and the sense of her beauty
reflected back to her from his eyes made her heart
dance.
'Of
course, in the old days, they thought sight worked
by rays emitted from the eyes striking objects, and
everything giving out rays of its own that went
into the eyes. People actually believed a poisonous
thing could be poisonous to look at, because the
rays would be the essence of the object's nature,
and this, of course, tied in very neatly with the
whole idea of the eyes being the windows of the
soul. Your essence comes out through your eyes,
your light shines out.' Dryden had slipped into
lecture mode while they ate their dinner together,
at the rim of the aquarium. Sylvie listened with
her elbows on either side of her unheeded plate and
her chin in her hands. There was something adorable
to her in the way passion animated him, and
knowledge was a pure passion with
Dryden.
'And
that's why you wear dark glasses,' she put in, 'so
people won't be dazzled by the brilliant rays of
your intellect. The windows of your soul need
double-glazing.'
'A
roof over your head, scintillating company and a
mess of real oysters, brought in on ice at immense
expense, and still you make fun. Your ingratitude
wounds me. It must be true that mermaids have no
souls.' Dryden grinned and stole one of the
oyster-crackers from Sylvie's plate.
'But
then what shines out of my windows?' Sylvie asked,
and batted her eyelashes at him.
'If
you want to be modern and scientific, nothing much.
Light shines into them, and that's how vision
really works. Rays do strike your eyes from
objects, but they aren't generated by the objects,
they're reflected from a source of light, like a
flame or the sun. You know how the moons shine?
That's just the reflection of the sun, when it's
behind the world ... they're the sun's mirrors.
It's all done with mirrors. Speaking of which, I
keep wanting to get some glasses made up with that
two-way mirror glass and I keep forgetting to do
it. I think they'd look neat. Remind me next time
I'm going out. So that's that. And of course, one
day my great-grandson may be telling your
great-granddaughter, "Just think, in the old days
they believed it all worked by the reflection and
refraction of light, whereas of course now we know,
blah blah blah."'
'And
how will your great-grandson know my
great-granddaughter? Do you think she'll go
exploring as well? On purpose, I mean.'
'Oh,
she might do. It will be the future, of course, and
we expect great things of the future. Ships that
travel under the water as well as in the air, that
would be a good one. Could open up trade, cultural
exchange, that sort of thing, benefits for both
sides. Maybe mechanical lungs with a bottled air
supply, that you could take down with you to
breathe underwater - or to help you breathe up top.
I hear they can make artificial arms and legs in
Zaibach that work better than a real one ... how'd
you like mechanical legs, Sylvie, so you could
really walk around?'
'But
they would have to cut off my tail to put them on,
wouldn't they? I would hate that. I could never go
back to the sea. I'd be stuck up on land forever.
And I'd still have the same weak chest, I'd get
just as puffed. And what's the good of legs that
aren't real legs, with a skin and muscles? It
wouldn't feel good to walk, or run, it would feel
like nothing. Just think of touching someone with a
metal hand. Ugh, am I right?'
'Ugh
indeed,' said Dryden pensively. 'You've put a whole
new complexion on it. I was quite enthusiastic
about the idea until you said that. I was just
about to say you could have artificial lungs too,
good strong ones. And then I thought of the scars
you would have after they put them in ... I think
even you would have scars from something like
that.'
'Why
not an artificial heart while you're at it?' Sylvie
asked. 'And mechanical eyes, that don't need
glasses, and just reflect light the way science
says, nothing else ... would you want those? Do you
think the world would look the same through
them?'
'I
don't think I want to find out,' said Dryden. 'It's
such a creepy thought, that I might look at you and
not be able to see that you're beautiful. Although
I think seeing you in soft focus all the time
helps.'
Sylvie
stuck her tongue out at him. Where, before, Dryden
had worn his glasses habitually, looking over the
tops of them when he did not really need them, he
now put them on only if there was something he had
to read. His hair hung loosely about his shoulders,
which were in shirtsleeves; everything was minimal,
to please Sylvie. She had asked how he would like
her to decorate herself, and he had asked her to do
nothing at all, because she was already exactly as
he liked her. She was not a display object for him
to show off to other people; he would give her
jewellery only if it was something she would like
to have for herself. Sylvie was not remotely
interested in decorations of cold metal and stone.
Now that she was feeling herself again, it seemed a
little odd to have her hair loose and arms bare,
but again, his happiness was her happiness, and
there was something she really liked in the notion
that there was no artifice between them.
'Why,
the two of us are just so gorgeous that we simply
don't need it,' Dryden would say as he dressed to
go to some meeting or occasion of trade. 'Here I go
uglifying myself, so as not to blind people with my
glory.' He had adopted her joke and used it to
tease her in return.
'You
couldn't be ugly,' Sylvie assured him. 'A little
weird-looking, perhaps, but ugly is not a
possibility.' She lay comfortably on his bed,
getting the whole thing damp and salty, but Dryden
did not mind. She was trying to acclimatise herself
to longer periods out of the water, in the hope
that this would strengthen her lungs. Certainly her
arms were getting stronger, and she was working on
her crawling, so that it was easy for her to move
from the bath to the bed in his stateroom, or
vice-versa. When he had gone to his meeting, or
whatever it was, it occurred to her to wonder why
she was doing that. In a few days they would be at
Beidurl, and he would set her free. She would not
need to be able to breathe air well. Life would be
easy again. No more peculiar food, no more needing
to be carried over moderate distances, no more
tightness in her chest and blue lights in her
head.
And,
of course, no more warm kisses to make her head
spin, no more dreadful jokes back and forth all
day, no more exploring the various pleasures his
rangy body could offer her. Naturally she would
miss all that. She would miss his comfortable
company, his unfailing repertoire of stories and
ideas, the way he helped her to think things that
she would not otherwise have dreamed of, and the
way he seemed to find all these fascinations in her
too.
They
talked their heads off, there were no two ways
about it. Sylvie gave in and told Dryden the story
of her life, or rather the stories; the edited
highlights. Then they got into the bits that were
not stories at all, hardly even narratives, just
things that happened with no cause and effect or
particular significance, but he wanted to know
because they had happened to her. She told him her
dreams; not her aspirations but the strange little
slideshows her mind put together for her at
night.
'It
was the strangest dream,' she told him seriously
over breakfast, sitting up as best she could in a
basket chair with a deep bucket seat that she
should not slide out of. 'Not at all a nightmare,
but still with an eerie, just-before-a-thunderstorm
sort of feeling. I dreamed I was watching myself
from the outside, like you watching me through the
window. And I was trying on one pair of glasses
after another, with different coloured lenses and
different shaped frames, and every one gave me a
whole different view of the world, as though it
were a different mind to think with, and I was
looking for the exactly perfect one. And a voice
spoke in my dream, and said to me, "What you want
is a spotted sausage."'
Dryden
was somewhat overcome by that mental image, and
almost lost a quantity of the tea he was drinking
through his nose. 'You didn't tell me at the start
that this dream was going to be indecent,' he said,
when he had recovered a little.
'It
wasn't! It meant "something that doesn't exist in
the real world." Like an impossible
combination.'
'You're
really sure about that?'
'Yes,
I'm sure that's what it meant. It was my dream and
I ought to know.'
'Because
from what I've read about dream interpretation,
that isn't the first significance most
practictioners would put on a sausage.'
'If
you mean what I think you mean, firstly shame on
you, and secondly, who would want a spotted
one?'
'That's
a point,' Dryden admitted. 'Oh well ... I suppose
sometimes a sausage is just a sausage.'
'Or
a symbol of an unattainable heart's desire, which
sounds more impressive.'
'Your
subconscious is even more interesting than I
thought.'
'It's
not bad for someone with no soul.'
'Do
you think you've really got an unattainable heart's
desire?' he asked, cocking his head to one side
quizzically. 'I wouldn't like to think so. I'm
providing for all your immediate needs, I hope, and
working towards giving you what you want most. Is
there still something left over?'
'Not
that I know of,' Sylvie said, shrugging. 'That was
why I thought it was such an odd dream. It might
not actually mean anything at all. I probably just
dreamed about glasses because you wear them, and
about seeing myself from the outside because I like
you watching me.'
'Which
I think makes the whole thing indecent again.'
Dryden slipped his arm around Sylvie's waist and
kissed her on the cheek. 'I know what you
want.'
'And
happily, so do I.'
Time
was melting away like blue coils of smoke in the
air. One day Sylvie woke and thought 'Three days to
go.' Then it was two. Then it was one. She was
counting down. Only one day until she would get to
Beidurl, until she could get back into the real,
natural, right sea and head for home. Only one day
away from the hugs and kisses of her family, and
the tears and laughter and jumbled explanations of
a reunion. Only one day until Dryden would say
goodbye with a smile.
He
told her that he could not accompany her to the
actual cove, that she would be taken on the last
leg of the journey in a small yacht by a couple of
trustworthy staff. It was better, after all, to say
goodbye like this, with both of them moving off in
their own proper directions, not getting into any
dead ends. Through the double-glazed aquarium
porthole, Sylvie could see the long dark tongue of
the Firth of Rhince, lapping deep
inland.
Through
the single layer of strong glass in the viewing
room, Dryden watched her dance on the last day.
There was a smile on his face that was almost too
gentle, a little vague, as though he were beginning
to detach from her before they were really parted.
Sylvie flew within the limited heaven of her
aquarium, full of the joy of anticipation and
wondering at the ache she felt, as though she were
missing him already. It shouldn't be this strong.
It must just be an overreaction because she was so
keyed up about going home to her family, to Melamy,
to Tanamil, to everything that was familiar and
friendly.
She
let herself sink to the bottom, hovering at the
level where he sat at his ease, brown hair curling
like kelp on his shoulders, arms spread over the
back of the seat, looking back at her over his
shoulder. Sylvie pressed her palms against the
chilly glass. These were the last moments, the very
last, and she would not see him, probably, for the
rest of her life. She had kissed him goodbye
already, but somehow she wanted to try to make a
good last impression. Impulsively, she pressed her
lips to the glass, and as her eyes flickered
closed, she saw that he had understood and returned
the kiss.
It
was right for this, a divided kiss, given by both
and received by neither. It was probably just
because of the sentimental romance of it that
Sylvie's heart stung her, she knew. When she opened
her eyes again, she could see Dryden was speaking,
but there was too much water and air between them
for her to make out the words. She really could not
read lips, even lips she knew so well. She thought
she caught her own name, and 'goodbye.' He smiled
again, a familiar smile, and she knew he was making
fun of her for making a face. She realised with a
flicker of surprise that she was wearing a mask of
sadness, and that it was oddly hard to convert it
to a smile. Her smile pleased him, and he returned
it to her in its original condition. She was a free
agent now, and so was he. He rose and left. Sylvie
knew she should swim away from the window, not
linger there watching him go. He was pulling on the
heavy outer coat he wore before the rest of the
world. As he went through the door his hands went
to his hair, gathering it at the back of his head,
and then the door swung shut and he was out of her
world.
Sylvie
re-entered her native ocean at Beidurl Cove, by
moonlight. She had been so long out of natural salt
water that its minerals and sediments smelt strange
to her, making her skin tingle in half-forgotten
ways. The cove was deserted by all but small
sealife; probably no-one felt safe there after what
had happened to her. There was a sad, scared
feeling to the place even now. She sped down
through the water, seeing her faint moon-shadow
race over a real, uneven seabed, one that got
deeper and deeper and had never been landscaped by
workmen.
She
felt a shock of amazement, and then of fear, when
she saw the outline of a hammerhead shark far off
in the cold, as she drew near to the phosphorescent
lights of her family's home, to the garden of
grottoes and coral. It could probably smell her,
but she was at a safe enough distance, and with an
extra burst of speed she quickly reached the
well-known white stone that indicated the start of
the home range.
Her
father answered the door and burst into tears at
the sight of her. The water in the family room
almost ran fresh that night, so many happy tears
were shed. They stayed up ridiculously late, and
the whole story was told again and again from both
sides.
Eventually,
Sylvie was back in her own bed, her soft cocoon of
weed, tucked in with kisses and embraces. Home was
wrapped around her as surely and warmly as a
blanket. The stone was rolled off the little
thermal vent in the corner so that she would be
extra snug. Tomorrow would be a new day, fresh and
untouched, and her life would go on as if it had
never been interrupted.
For
a long time she could not stop the tears, which was
odd, because the elation, she felt, was beginning
to wear off.
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