Dryden and
Sylvie - Chapter Five
Sylvie
swam up to take the air, her hair neatly knotted.
When she passed an attractive stand of Neptune's
necklace, she took clusters to tuck into the coils
of the bun. She had been keeping herself bare as
though it could still please Dryden. He would not
even be thinking of her any more. It was foolish
and useless to keep wanting him like this. Knowing
that did not help one bit. The fact was inescapable
... she was miserable. She was missing
him.
Sylvie
sat on a rock in Beidurl Cove, one of the large
slant-stacked flat slabs of pinkish grey stone
where she had basked many times with her sisters,
with her tail doubled in front of her and her arms
hooked around the curve of it. The sun was weak and
watery today, although she did not really feel the
chill.
I
need to be sensible about this, she told
herself. I need to think about it clearly, and
understand the situation before I decide anything
about it. I'm sure that's why it's gone wrong, that
I didn't understand the situation before ... I
assumed too quickly that I knew all about it,
because there was an easy answer.
I've
given it plenty of time to wear off, I really have.
Perhaps I haven't tried as hard to take my mind off
him with other things as I should have, but I just
can't think of anything. Or rather, I keep thinking
of things like, oh, I'll read a
Charivari, that will cheer me
up. All the things I think would take my mind off
him are part of my idea of him. All the things I
like best now are part of him. I used to always
enjoy rereading my favourite books about once a
year each, but they don't even look interesting to
me any more. I never even really scratched the
surface of his library, and I don't just want to
read all his books, I want to talk about them with
him, and know what he thinks about what's in the
book, as well as what the book says. Without him
involved it would be like water without
salt.
And
I miss him. I miss how sweet
and kissy he is when he's sleepy and just wants to
curl up together. I miss him making very, very bad
jokes and waggling his eyebrows at me. I miss him
stealing food off my plate and feeding me from his
hand and watching me read because he wanted to try
to read my face
I miss just knowing how much
he liked me. I miss how important I used to feel
because he would steal an extra half-hour with me
before starting work. I miss being special to
someone so special.
The
wind changed direction and an escaping tendril of
hair blew smartingly into the corner of her
eye.
Before
I get all lovey about it I have to remember that he
doesn't feel this way about me. We were both very
clear about that, and it's too much to hope for
that he might have had a change of heart like me.
If he had he would have come to find me. That's
what Dryden would do.
Perhaps
I should go to find him.
Go
to find Dryden, and tell him how she felt. It
seemed like the only reasonable plan, the only
alternative to drifting drearily at home for the
rest of her life. It didn't do any good to think
about how she would feel or what she would do if he
rejected her, however kindly, so she didn't.
Perhaps it would change things. Perhaps she could
work some kind of magic-kiss trick again. Or
perhaps when she explained what she was coming to
believe he would come around to her way of seeing
it ... that they had accidentally come up with a
hybrid of the human ideal of romantic love, and the
mer-concept of affectionate partnership. It didn't
have to be as difficult to handle as the first,
although it would be more demanding than the
second, because on each side it contained a little
of the other. It might make them both happy. There
was no way of knowing for sure that he wouldn't
like the idea. Therefore it had to be worth a
try.
Sylvie
felt happy with how she had reasoned it out; she
felt better still to have made a decision and
formed a plan. The only daunting thought now was
how in the world she was to find one man, who moved
around constantly, on a whole continent where she
could no more walk than she could fly.
The
first step was simple enough. She knew his family
lived in Pallas, the capital of Asturia. She would
go there, and make enquiries. It should be possible
to do without being taken by slavers again, now she
knew how that worked, and if necessary she could
simply tell them that they could not sell her
because she already belonged to Dryden Fassa. Then
they would have to get in touch with him about it
and that would lead her to him too.
It
would not do to discuss it with her family, because
they would certainly not understand or approve. She
made some simple, careful preparations, putting a
few favourite and necessary things in a small bag
she could easily carry on her back, and wrote a
short, straightforward letter in which she
explained what she was doing and why, assuring her
family that she still loved them very much, but
would never feel right if she did not try to settle
this matter. Her pencil shook rather as she wrote
the words, but she kept her resolve
firm.
It
was a long way to Pallas, and she knew the
direction only vaguely as somewhere to keep away
from. You just didn't go to a big centre of human
population. You'd have to be crazy. Sylvie slipped
out of her family's home range while the others
slept, reassuring herself that she was perfectly
rational, just following a series of steps to get
to her desired goal. To try and make it seem less
frightening, she thought of it as The Quest For The
Spotted Sausage. That sounded so completely silly
that there was no way it could intimidate her
except when she remembered that she had thought it
meant something impossible,
unattainable.
She
was some days travelling, and more than once she
was lonely enough to seriously consider going home
and trying to find some other way. But each time
she managed to make up her mind to go a bit further
before she made up her mind about anything else,
and after a few times of doing that she had gotten
so far along that it was surely more worthwhile to
keep going than go all that long way back. She had
to be careful to avoid many hazards, whether the
natural predators of the sea or the manmade
intrusion of fishing nets and lines.
On
one occasion she got a terrible fright when she
swam into a finely-made gillnet that she did not
see ahead of her, but one of the things in her
small bag was a good sharp knife, and after some
effort she cut her way out, pausing along the way
to assist a very small dolphin who had gotten
caught up in the same way. The fishermen who set
these nets did not even want dolphins, and would
just discard its body when they pulled it up. It
was almost suffocating, having held its breath
nearly to the limit, and in such a panic that it
fought against her efforts to disentangle it, with
the result that she accidentally gave it a couple
of small cuts, and it bit her painfully on the hand
before thrashing its way out of the tattered net
and shooting up to the surface for a much-needed
draught of fresh air. Sylvie glared after it
resentfully, and made a few choice remarks in
dolphin language concerning its mother's moral
character.
'Oh,
fine, you take all the glory for rescuing swimmers
and looking good that way, but if anyone tries to
help you you
' She realised that she
was not exactly making sense, but she still felt
that it had been very poor form on the dolphin's
part to bite her. Besides, now there was blood in
the water and any sharks who happened to be nearby
would be sure to come sniffing around. She left
that place as quickly as she could, passing the
recovering dolphin as it rested near the surface
and making a certain gesture with her good hand as
she went.
Several
times she came to a fishing village or coastal town
and had to spend some time hanging around among
docks and jetties, keeping out of sight, before she
could overhear enough conversation to ascertain
that she was not yet at Pallas. She always hated
doing that, because she felt so terribly unsafe in
amongst the swinging ropes and swaying hulls of
anchored boats, and harbour water felt so bad on
her skin, but it was good practice, she told
herself sternly, and kept on.
One
night she realised from what she heard two
fishermen say that the next place she reached along
the coastline had to be Pallas. It gave her a jolt
to realise that the goal might be in sight now, or
at least the approach to the goal. She did not hang
around to rest there, but swam through the night.
Pallas came into view along with the rising of the
sun. It was the biggest human place she had ever
seen, as sprawling as the submarine city of
Aramoana, a great white network of buildings
backing onto hills and mingling with the ocean
through its maze of canals. It made her nervy just
to look at it, but she reminded herself of the
Spotted Sausage, wished she had not thought of such
a dumb joke because by now she was really tired of
it, and made for the sea-docks.
Sylvie
spent the next few days haunting the area of Pallas
known as the Pearl Docks. It was a dingy, low-rent
area where people took care of business as and when
they had to. She was simply reconnoitring, getting
her bearings now that she had arrived. Until now
the only information she had listened to with any
care was what she would need to get to Pallas, but
now she opened her ears to everything and what she
heard truly alarmed her.
Apparently
the humans were having some sort of imbroglio that
was working its way up to a full-on war. Zaibach
was continuing to behave in an aggressive and
mystifying manner, and there had been fighting in
Pallas itself, despite the treaties. The new young
king of Fanelia was making a real nuisance of
himself, there were bad omens in the sky, there
were lunatics going around setting fire to stuff
and no-one knew what to expect next. Some sort of
big public wedding, she was unclear about whose
because everyone discussing it knew it so well that
they did not need to quote names or places, had
been crashed by Zaibach soldiers and a lot of
damage had been done.
He
said he'd be all right, she told herself
firmly. Dryden would never be the sort of person to
hang around where he might get hurt to no good
purpose, and if he got involved in a war it would
be on the strategic side, surely. She had no time
to spare thinking about the war itself, its causes
and likely outcome. Those were human affairs;
besides, she couldn't hope to understand them with
the little she knew of what had come before. She
had to talk to someone who lived here and get a
clearer view of events, not to mention try to find
out where, for example, Dryden's family residence
was. Surely it would be possible to get a message
to him that way. He might even have come home
because of the trouble.
In
the end Sylvie approached the kindest-looking
person she could find. The people you saw in the
Pearl Docks were not always inviting, although of
course a lot of them were soliciting. She had seen
and heard enough to send her opinion of sailors
plunging to new lows, and felt a keen sympathy for
the men and women who got their living by providing
them with the kind of favours that had been
demanded of her in the past. Just because she had
some fellow-feeling for them did not mean they were
the sort of people with whom she wished to strike
up a conversation. But some of the older
prostitutes had an almost motherly look about them,
and she had had her eye on one of them for a while
now, a woman of perhaps forty years whose chief
business asset was a vast pillowy bosom, offset by
sharp grey eyes that suggested she was far cleverer
than she needed to be for her line of work. She was
around most nights, sometimes having to hang around
for a long time before she found anyone who wished
to come home with her. It was not that she was
unappealing, but there were many much younger girls
(and boys) on offer, and the lowest common
denominator went there.
One
late, moonless evening when the woman she had been
watching was sitting a little wearily on a bollard,
giving her feet a rest from their fashionable
shoes, Sylvie swam close to the dockside and
flicked some water at her from her fingertips. At
first she did not notice it. A second spattering
seemed to annoy her, but she thought it was only a
spitting of rain. A third made her realise that the
water was coming up from below, not down from
above, and caused her to look curiously over the
side of the dock.
'Hello,'
said Sylvie. The woman's eyes widened considerably.
She had clearly never in her life expected to be
addressed by a mermaid from the oily waters around
the Pearl Docks of Pallas, and fair enough
too.
'Hello,'
she said, and Sylvie admired how she was keeping
her composure in spite of everything. 'Who might
you be?'
'My
name is Sylvie.'
'Mine
is Marimay.' The woman looked over her shoulders to
see if there was anyone about, found that she was
alone, and knelt down to get a better look. 'What
in the world are you doing there? I thought ones
like you never came near a place with so many boats
and people. Much less talked to people and
introduced themselves! Am I imagining something to
keep myself company on a bad night?'
'No,'
said Sylvie, 'although I'm sorry you're having a
bad night. I could give you something to make it up
to you.' From her bag she carefully took a black
pearl. It was one of the ones her mother kept in a
glass vase to hold the stems of decorative weeds
she arranged in it. Sylvie had pinched a few
because she knew they were valuable on land for
more than visual charm. It was not, she thought,
especially big, perhaps half an inch in diameter.
Marimay's eyes bulged and her jaw
dropped.
'That's
never real!'
'It's
as real as I am. If I gave you this, you could have
a holiday from your job, couldn't you?'
'Not
half!'
'And
then you would be free to help me with something,
wouldn't you?'
'Just
what do you want?' Marimay's eyes narrowed again.
'I'm not taking anything until I know what you want
for it. And there's things I won't do, whatever
you're offering. That's too much for you to be up
to any good.'
'I
don't want to hire you for anything,' Sylvie
assured her hastily. 'And it is something good,
really, or harmless, anyway. I need someone to
explain some things to me, and not run around
telling people about me, or sell me to slavers, or
put me in a fishbowl. I thought I could trust you
for that because you understand about people buying
you. You wouldn't put someone into that against
their will, would you?'
'No,'
Marimay conceded. 'Well. It's not as if I'm busy
tonight anyway. You tell me what you want to know
and I'll decide if telling you is worth that
shiner. First time I ever saw a pearl that size on
the Pearl Docks.'
Sylvie
settled herself in a comfortable floating posture
and began to tell the story. It took much longer
than she had anticipated, partly because Marimay
was such a good listener that she kept thinking of
more to say. It was a relief to tell the whole
thing to someone who had no emotional investment in
how the story turned out, and would not be wanting
her to reach a certain conclusion. The occasional
denizen of the docks passed by, but no-one seemed
to notice a woman apparently kneeling and talking
to the water. You could be a lot stranger than that
in the Pearl Docks and not impress people. At
first, it was also a relief to Sylvie that Marimay
offered no opinions on the story, but after a while
she began to wonder exactly what she thought, and
why she was reserving her judgement.
'So
do you think I was very foolish to make that
sort of arrangement?' she asked eventually, when
she had brought the other woman well up to date on
the situation.
'I
don't know about foolish. I think perhaps you were
both a little too clever for your own good ...
sharp enough to cut yourself, as my nan used to
say.' Marimay tightened the belt of her coat. It
was a good piece of clothing, well-cut, but very
old and much repaired. 'And if you've come looking
for information to help you find your Dryden
I'm afraid I know what you want to know, but you
may not like it much when you hear it. Try not to
be too upset.'
'Why?'
Sylvie caught hold of the greasy woodwork of the
dock and pulled herself up a little way, a feeling
of constriction seizing her heart. 'Have you heard
of him before? Has something bad happened to
him?'
'Yes,
I've heard of him, love ... he's been in the news
lately, you might say. You said you'd heard about
the wedding that was ruined by those terrible
Zaibach flying giants, but you didn't know much
more about it. That was your Dryden's wedding. He's
married to the Crown Princess, Millerna. He's
helping run the country in the state of emergency.
I believe he got hurt when they attacked the
wedding, but he's getting better. The King really
needs him and apparently he adores his wife. You
mustn't take it to heart too much, but I really
don't think he'll be overjoyed to see you
now.'
'He
got married?' Sylvie was not upset yet; she
was still too astonished to react. 'When did he
meet her? When did he have time to decide he wanted
to get married?'
'It
had all been arranged for years, pet. They were
engaged to each other when they were children.
Their parents organised it. And before you say
something like "but why didn't he tell me," he
probably honestly didn't think it was important.
Men are like that. They don't feel the way we do.
Well, I say we, but I suppose I've got more in
common with you, us both being women, than we've
got different with you being a mermaid. Unless it's
true what they say and you don't have
hearts.'
'It's
souls,' Sylvie said, numbly. 'They say we haven't
got souls.'
'I
remember my nan telling me a story about that,'
Marimay said thoughtfully. 'About a mermaid who
fell in love with a prince from the land, and saved
his life, and gave her voice to a sea-witch so she
could walk on land and try to get him to fall in
love with her, but she never got through to him and
he married a princess and she threw herself into
the sea to turn into foam. But she didn't, she
turned into a sort of half-way angel who would get
to have a proper soul and go to heaven if children
would be very good and sort of score points for
her.' She paused reminiscently. 'I always hated
that story.'
'I
should think so,' said Sylvie fervently. 'It sounds
like the most appalling anti-mermaid propaganda.'
Her voice sounded strange in her ears, high and
tight. He knew all along that he was going to
get married to someone else. That was why he didn't
want a long-term attachment. I know we said it
would be convenient, I know I wanted it to be
convenient, but it all sounds so damn' calculating
now! Did he have any real feelings about me or was
it something he turned on and off like a
lamp?
'Well,
I didn't like it because it wasn't fair to
blackmail us like that,' said Marimay. 'You know,
make you feel guilty about doing some little thing
because it meant the little mermaid would be stuck
half-way for another year. The number of things
I've had to do in my life, that poor old mermaid
would never see heaven if it were true.' She
sighed, looking at Sylvie's stricken expression,
shakily illuminated by a gas-lamp hanging from a
pole above them. 'I can see you're surprised. Have
you not had much to do with men before?' She
adjusted the belt of her coat again, settling to
make a big speech of her own.
'I'm
not saying they're all bad. They're not. I don't
know if bad is even the word for when they do
things like this. They just don't understand how
they hurt you. They don't see it. They'd be
honestly surprised if you told them, and some of
them would be sorry. But you can't depend on them.
Even if they love you. It sounds to me as though he
did love you. And now he loves his princess. Maybe
a bit of him still loves you, but it's not the bit
he's using right now.
'I
didn't use to be always a poor old slapper down
here in the docks, you know. I was a pretty little
courtesan and they knew me in all the best places.
I can't help taking a sort of interest because you
know, his father kept me for a while, when he was a
younger man. Meiden Fassa. I never did like him. He
treated people like things. Nice things, maybe,
things he thought were worth a fair bit, but that
was the only reason he thought anything of them. He
liked me because I made other people envious. It's
a funny coincidence, isn't it? Father and son, for
you and me, and then I'm the one you come asking?
But I've been kept by a lot of men, 'cos I could
never really keep myself. You're lucky he didn't
want to keep you.'
'He's
not like his father. He doesn't want to be like his
father,' Sylvie whispered. She leant her face
against the cold dank wood of the jetty pile she
clung to. There were little crusty things living on
it; she felt them under her cheek.
'I'm
sure he's not,' Marimay said soothingly. 'I'm sure
he's very nice or you wouldn't feel this way. But
he is a man, and even the nice ones are still what
they are. I heard once where there's some wise men,
philosophers, that say it's all women that haven't
got souls. I say it's just we haven't got the same
kind as them so they don't know them when they see
them.' She shot a little smile at Sylvie, who was
looking surprised at the depth of this observation.
'Well, you get a lot of time to think in my line.
You stare up at the stars and the deep thoughts
just kind of come.'
'I
I don't know what I'm going to do now.' Sylvie
closed her eyes, pressing her cheek harder against
the nasty wood, feeling the little hard creatures
dig into her skin. They might cut her. They might
give her a skin infection. She would probably cry
soon. Again. She bit her lip.
'You
be sensible, love. Go home to your family, and wait
till you feel better, because you really will if
you give it long enough. Don't make the mistake I
did, because long ago I thought the thing to do was
get hooked up with another man as quick as
possible, and it set me on a bad path. You wait
till you feel all right by yourself before you
start thinking about anyone else.'
'Even
if I went and found him
he wouldn't want to
talk to me, would he? Or if he did it'd only be
because I insisted.'
'And
... although you might not think of it right away
... it wouldn't be fair to his wife, would it? I'm
sure she wouldn't like to know there was someone
else so soon before her, and there's the thing, he
won't have told her about you, not because he's
ashamed of it, but because he won't think it's
important.'
'I
... I was important to him.'
'Oh,
not that you weren't important. He just
won't think it's important for her to know. He'd
probably say it's got nothing to do with her, the
same as him being engaged had nothing to do with
you.'
'I
just can't believe Dryden would
no, I suppose
I can believe that. I could see when we were saying
goodbye
' Sylvie's voice died for a little
while. 'What am I going to do for the rest of my
life?'
'What
were you going to do anyway?'
'I
don't know
I thought I might be a teacher, or
work in the city library
I don't
know.'
'Well,
you go on and do that.' There was little room for
sentiment in Marimay's tired eyes, but her voice
was kind. 'You've still got lots of good chances in
life, and one day chances are you'll look back and
wonder why you ever thought this was such a
milestone. And frankly, you're well out of it down
there in the sea. I don't know what's going to
happen up here but they're expecting big, full-on
battle any time now. We just have to hope for the
best.'
'If
if Zaibach win
Zaibach are the enemy,
right?'
'Yes
'
'They
might kill Dryden because he's a leader, mightn't
they?'
'I
don't know. I don't know if they're that kind of
people. I don't know anything about them, really,
except they're bastards for what they did to our
downtown with their flamethrowers. I had a friend
got burned, all one side of her face. She can't
work now. Scars are a bad thing for a woman.'
Marimay redirected her thoughts to Sylvie's
problem. 'Just go home. It's not your business any
more. You're going to be all right. You can believe
in that.' She got to her feet again, a little
stiffly from kneeling so long, and brushed the dirt
from her skirt. 'I have to be going, but I'm glad I
talked to you. It's nice to know there's a world
they can't touch. Unless they invent melefs that
will go under the sea, and I wouldn't put it past
them, so you tell your friends to be on the
lookout. Goodnight, Sylvie, Jeture bless ... you'll
be all right.' She walked away.
Sylvie
slid down the piling, letting the oily harbour
water embrace her. Everything was worse than ever.
Surely this should set her free, in a way, but it
made her feel incapable of doing anything. If
nothing else, she was sure she did not want to stay
in this harbour. It depressed her beyond words. She
had seen a nice-looking bay just round a headland
on her way here, and she could rest there while she
gathered her thoughts. Going there was something to
do, anyway. She thought if she did not give herself
something to do she might do nothing, even forget
to breathe.
When
she got there she did nothing for some time,
nothing except cry, lying quietly on the warm damp
sand where the little lacy waves rolled in. Then
she did nothing at all, lying with her cheek
pressed to the beach's bosom, looking with unseeing
eyes at a small red shell a few inches from her
face. She lay like that while the tide rose and
fell, and did not feel hunger or thirst, having
slipped into a grieving catatonia. No-one saw her.
No-one came near. It could have been hours that she
lay there, or it could have been days.
At
some time, she heard a terrible distant sound, and
she knew it was battle. The tears began to well
again, as though their ducts were little automatic
pumps that would go on even when she had passed
through pain into numbness. Somewhere men were
fighting, killing, dying, somewhere women were
praying for fathers and husbands and brothers and
sons to come home alive, somewhere mouths screamed
blood and cried for mother. There had never been
war under the sea on the scale that there was on
land. She had read about some of the battles in
Dryden's books and they had chilled her; at the
time she had taken great comfort in the thought
that soon she would be safely home and would never
have to worry about things like that. But now she
had a stake in it, an investment as Dryden might
like to think of it. Dryden might be fighting.
Would he? Would he be any good? Was it the sort of
war where they were so desperate they took anyone
healthy, whether they had any training or not? Or
was he in a planning room somewhere, pushing
counters around on a map, or trying to make a
calming speech from a balcony to panicked people?
Was he already dead? He had been recently hurt,
Marimay had said, he could be weak, and her mind
filled with awful images of brown hair plastered
down with blood, sticky ragged wounds and
split-open joints, eyes glazed like dead cold
water.
Sylvie
found herself remembering how often, when someone
died, people lamented that they had had no
opportunity to say goodbye. She had said goodbye,
but now she took it back with all her heart. It
meant that she had no further claim on Dryden, no
right to cry if he fell, to know where he lay
buried, to water his grave with her freshwater
tears; she would not be his widow, and the way
things were she bitterly envied this Millerna who
would have all those rights as part and parcel of
her grief.
He
may not be dead, she reminded herself fiercely.
You have no way of knowing. Everything on land
is uncertain. You mustn't go thinking like this
when you don't know, you'll jinx him. He could even
be hiding out somewhere, avoiding all the
unpleasantness, clever and cowardly. He'll emerge
when the noise stops and sell bandages to the
survivors at a premium. Would he? No, not my
Dryden, please not my Dryden.
Sylvie
struggled up, pushing herself with her arms,
looking up at the land beyond the bay, wishing she
could see anything more informative than a small
sward of grass petering out into the sand, and a
path leading away into pretty feathery trees. Dark
clouds were boiling in the sky but no rain was
falling where she was. They were writhing and
piling towards a point somewhere far away, rushing
in from the sea to the heart of the warring land. A
light went up, a bright, blinding blue-white light,
reflecting off the clouds, and Sylvie flinched at
the sight. It was unnatural, and that was its
horror; a second later a thunderous noise reached
her and she fell back on the sand, hands over her
pointed ears, screaming but unable to hear herself
over the report. Her heart drummed wildly and her
rusty breathing escalated to a constant high
asphyxiating wheeze, admitting no air to her
locked-up lungs.
Everything
in the world is wrong! Nothing should do that! I
don't know where Dryden is and I can't help him and
I won't know what happens to him and things like
that could be killing him right now! I would do
anything to be with him, but not like this, not
like I am, not so I'd always need him to carry me
and change my water. I want to look after him.
Please
if anyone cares
if anyone can
hear me, let me change, take my tail and fins and
give me legs and feet, make me sound in wind and
limb, let me be a mermaid who walks on land and
finds her love and saves him! It's all I want. He's
all I want!
On
the borders of the Zone of Absolute Fortune, this
desperate wish burst open, and Sylvie felt that
something burst within her too. She felt that she
was being torn in two, lengthways, filletted; her
blood boiled and melted her flesh and in that
molten, malleable state it took on new form.
Terrible white light filled her mind till it seemed
it must stream out of her eyesockets, burning them
from within, but nothing could burn out the image
of Dryden that she saw every time her eyes closed.
She reached out to that image, to that smile and
that embrace, straining against pain, not daring to
be weak when he needed her.
Abruptly,
the tearing, splitting pain was gone. Sylvie
gasped, then gasped again, then realised she could
take a proper, deep breath with no trouble. There
was no catch in her lungs, no whistle or wheeze.
She was breathing fast and hard but with depth and
strength. And she felt entirely different from the
waist down. Before turning to look, she tried to
move her tail, tried to bend it upwards, and found
that the old flexing movement of a long, limber
appendage would not do. There was one large joint
on each side, and that was where she could bend. On
each side. Two joints. Two knees, she realised. She
pushed herself up on her elbows and craned round,
rolling as she did so. She turned right over,
sitting on the sand and staring down at this
foreign body that was hers.
Two
long, thin legs, pale as the skin of her arms,
tapering down to neat, narrow feet. They were
splayed before her; her gaze ran up from
wide-divided ankles to half-flexed knees to
softly-meeting thighs. She was sitting on her very
own brand-new bottom. She could feel the sand
underneath. In rolling, she had sat down on a small
stone that was pressing uncomfortably into her left
buttock. She could feel her legs all over, feel
with their covering skin, and when she moved, feel
the pull and flex of the muscles within. They were
a wonder to her.
Sylvie
carefully put her hands on her knees, as though to
make sure the whole arrangement was not an illusion
that would dissolve at a touch. There is hardly
anything more reliably real and ordinary than a
plain human knee.
'My
wish was granted,' she said aloud. It was
reassuring to hear a friendly voice at a time like
this, even if it was only her own. 'I prayed and it
worked.' That was an unnerving notion for someone
who had never thought too hard about the state of
her soul, beyond a certainty that she had one and
was looking after it quite nicely by herself, thank
you very much, without requiring any sort of divine
assistance. It was not that she did not believe any
gods existed, just that as far as she was concerned
they should be taking care of the people who needed
it and not bothering her.
She
realised with a little jolt that right then, she
had been one of the people who needed help, and
that now she had been given it she had no more
excuse to lie around on beaches crying. If God or
whoever helped you, it put you under an obligation
to start helping yourself, or they would have a
perfect right to take their gift back
again.
'I'll
have to get up on my own two feet and jolly well do
something,' she said firmly. Getting up was not
easy. It took some time and concentration to get
her legs under herself, and a surprising exertion
to stand up on them. As soon as she was upright she
sat down again very sharply. Obviously balance was
going to be an issue. Perhaps she should start with
something midway. Human babies went on all fours
before they learned to walk properly; Dryden had
had to explain that to her when she didn't get the
Sphinx's riddle. It would not be that different
from how she sometimes pulled herself around with
her arms, her hindquarters humping along like a
caterpillar. She tied her bag on her back as she
had done while swimming, so it would not get in her
way.
Crawling
was much more successful, once she had worked out
that you got the best results by moving the legs
separately, putting the right knee forward at the
same time as the left hand. It was a bit rough on
the hands and knees to crawl on sand, but it was
working, and she felt pretty proud of herself. If
she could crawl, surely she could walk, with a bit
of patience and practice. And her breathing was
wonderful, smooth and steady as the
tide.
It
occurred to Sylvie that being naked as a mermaid
and being naked as a human were rather different
things; you really had to have experienced both to
understand why. She did not feel embarrassed about
her body, but she also felt strongly that she did
not want just anyone she met to be able to see all
of it. Particularly men. Distasteful as it was to
admit, show most men a reasonably pretty young
woman, naked and on all fours, and they would think
of only one thing. It annoyed her to have that
interpretation put directly onto something that was
only a matter of practicality, but there it was. A
mermaid's private parts were truly private, nestled
low on her belly and covered by a sort of delicate
flounce of fishskin, not even noticeable most of
the time. Dryden had been surprised. She had no
such coverage like this and she could feel the air
touching places that would appreciate a little
protection from the outside world.
Dryden
would probably laugh when she told him about her
change of heart on the subject of clothes. Yes, he
would laugh, because she was just not going to
consider the possiblity that he might not be in any
shape to do so. They would have a good laugh about
it together. Somehow. Right now the pressing
problem was that, whatever the state of her heart,
she didn't have any clothes available. She crawled
around the bay, looking for anything she could
jury-rig into at least some kind of skirt or pants.
It was a pretty little bay, and people must use it
for sea-bathing, because, providentially, someone
had lost or forgotten a brightly-coloured towel.
She hadn't seen it at first because it was lying in
a heap and covered with sand, but once she had
shaken it out vigorously ... kneeling up to do so,
as balancing practice ... she had a quite
serviceable, if damp, clammy and sandy, towel with
which to do as she liked. First she tried wrapping
it around her waist like Dryden's skirts, but it
seemed hypocritical to cover her bottom half and
not her top, so she hitched the whole thing up to
under her arms, covering her breasts. It was a big
towel and the bottom hem still nearly reached her
knees. That was good. A further search of the area
turned up a long hair-ribbon, possibly lost by the
towel's owner, and ... well, perhaps people enjoyed
more than sea-bathing here ... a pair of women's
underpants. Sylvie was certainly not prepared to
put on the discarded underclothes of a perfect
stranger, especially when there were sandhoppers in
them, but she did use the ribbon to belt the waist
of the towel-dress so it would not gape in the
front when she moved, or hang down and get knelt on
as she crawled.
Where
to go now? There was only one path up from the
beach, leading off into those trees. The path was
paved with crushed white shells, which, as Sylvie
discovered after a few metres, were extremely hard
on the knees. She could not go far like this, and
the end of the path was not visible among the
trees. She tried again to stand up properly, but
balance still eluded her and she toppled sideways.
This time she caught hold of the trunk of a tree
and leant against it, clinging. Its smooth upright
support made her feel much more stable. This
feeling of being unable to support yourself
properly must be why Dryden found it a relief to
hang on to her in the water, trusting her to be the
stronger one.
Hang
on. There was another part to the riddle of the
Sphinx ... which, as she had complained to Dryden,
wasn't a particularly amusing riddle. At the end of
life, a man walks on three legs, using a stick.
Three legs would be a good intermediate phase
between all-fours and two legs, she thought. She
might be getting it out of order but if any
Sphinxes felt like complaining they could take that
feeling and stuff it up their noses for all she
cared. She was on her way to find Dryden. And she
could see what looked like a really good, sturdy
stick lying on the ground between two trees just a
couple of metres away.
It
turned out to be half-rotten and snapped when she
leant on it, but after a more thorough search she
found a dependable one and made her way carefully
back to the path. Walking with a stick was still
not easy, but if she kept leaning forward and used
it as a prop, she could avoid falling over most of
the time. It was painfully slow progress for
someone used to flying through the sea, but it was
progress all the same. She could hardly get over
how well she was breathing. The effort of moving
like this was making her pant a bit, but she didn't
feel dizzy or weak. These legs might be brand new
but they were strong and sturdy; when she had a bit
of time she would admire them properly. It was a
shame that the knees were already a bit dinged and
grazed, but they would heal up.
The
trees petered out and the path came to an end in
someone's back garden. Knowing how territorial
drylanders were, it made Sylvie nervous to be
there, but there was no-one in sight and she was
prepared to explain herself if anyone turned up to
challenge her. If they wouldn't accept her
explanation, well, perhaps she'd be able to stand
up without the stick long enough to thump them with
it. The other thing she couldn't get over was how
purposeful and determined she suddenly was. If her
tail could turn into legs, anything was possible.
Hope so strong that it was almost certainty was
driving her on.
The
house in the garden was quite a small place,
probably just a holiday home, and it seemed to be
shut up, with bars across its lightly blistered
blue-grey shutters. Sylvie stick-walked around it,
finding a well, a small open-fronted shed with
canoes inside, a swing-set for children to play on
and finally a shell-paved driveway. There was her
direction. She would get onto a road and follow it
until she came to a place where there were people,
and there she would get someone to take her to
Pallas ... how didn't matter, she would think of
how when she got there ... and there she would get
someone to direct her to the royal castle, or
wherever the Prince and Princess lived, and there
she would walk right in ... probably after all the
practice of getting there, she would be able to
walk all by herself with no stick, but she might
carry it just the same, because really this stick
was getting to be a friend to her ... and demand to
see Dryden. And they would sort something out. The
Princess could go whistle. She hadn't gone
through all this to get her man. If Dryden wasn't
there she would find out where he was and go to
him. If he was in any kind of trouble she would
help him. If he was sick or hurt she would nurse
him. If he was ... she had to stop for a moment,
leaning against the small letterbox nailed to the
gate at the end of the driveway, and refuse with
all her might to cry. He would not be dead. Now
that she had her land-legs he would not be dead. It
would not make any sense, it would just be too
cruel of the universe.
Sylvie
took a better grip on her stick and stepped out
onto the dry, hard dirt of a country road. She knew
generally in which direction Pallas lay from here,
and this road seemed to run towards it. Everything
was on her side. Even the thunderclouds were
clearing, drifting back out towards the sea. The
distant echoing racket of battle had been gone for
some time, she noticed now that she was less
preoccupied and could spare it some attention. She
rather thought that it had stopped while she had
been teaching herself to crawl. She tightened the
ribbon around her waist, made sure the towel was
well tucked-in at the top and kept
moving.
After
a little while she began to sing.
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