The Mermaid

by Christina Henry

They wanted the moon, but they didn’t realize it cost the earth.

Do not mistake the revelation of my body for the revelation of my heart. My heart keeps its own secrets, and they don’t belong to you or anyone else just because you’ve seen me with a fish tail.

It had never occurred to her before that eyes could be terrible things. Eyes that turned toward her, every one. Eyes that tried to pierce her, divine her, know her. Eyes that judged and, almost worse, eyes that hoped. Eyes that said they would wait and see before they decided. Eyes that wanted every bit of her, especially the secret longings of her secret heart.

“Yes,” Charity said. “But after he died, you could have returned to your own people. You could have had the life you had before.” “I don’t think I could have,” Amelia said. “I left because I wanted something I didn’t have, and once I loved Jack and lost him, I wasn’t the same as I was before. Love does that. It changes you in ways that can’t be undone.” “Yes, it traps you,” Charity said. “It puts you in a cage that you can’t escape.”

Humans often valued what they should not, she reflected, and most often they did not value what was right before their eyes.

“A bird in a cage still knows it’s in a cage, even if the bars are made of gold,”

The ocean was a violent place, yes, but it was violence without malice. When a shark ate a sea lion, it did not hate the sea lion. It only wanted to live.

Savages, the white men called them. But there was less savagery in them than ever she saw in a civilized country.