The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea

by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

Mermaid caught Returned to Sea By witch taught To be free Two souls bound By love, by knife True love found Restored to life Two souls fight For love, to be True love’s might To save the Sea

“I know, Florian. And that’s a good song for the work.” The name rang like a bell. Flora smiled. It was magic, the name, a spell that kept her safe. And when Rake used it, it sent a shiver of something rare through her. Pride. Florian was never a better man than he was in Rake’s regard.

“Know your truth, not your story,”

She was not a creature of courage, but she was one of spite. This one little rebellion would sate that, at least.

“Ah.” Evelyn held her hands aloft, both stained with ink. “Any suggestions here? I’m out of my depth.” The girl looked at her with obvious disdain. “I’ll send your boy along, my lady.” Evelyn narrowed her eyes at her. “Yes, thank you. Please do send Florian along, and please send the Lady Ayer my regrets tonight. I’m just so very busy, as you can see.” The girl bowed, her face sour. She obviously didn’t think it was proper for Evelyn to decline the offer. She was right, of course: it wasn’t. But the last thing Evelyn could stand at the moment was making more polite conversation with her mother’s friend. Not this night, the first night of the voyage. She needed more time to be angry. “What a little —” Evelyn muttered, but she didn’t finish. The girl wasn’t Imperial. That much Evelyn could see straightaway from the spattering of freckles across her nose, the point of her chin. She may have lost her accent — Evelyn suspected Quark — but she could never escape her face. She’d done a great job adopting the judgmental nature of Imperials, though. Evelyn’s mother would have loved her.

He stopped himself. As soon as he said it, Evelyn could see he regretted it. It was not proper to joke with Imperial ladies; Evelyn knew this. But he was right. She laughed, and as soon as she did, she could see relief spread over him like a sunrise, his gray eyes alight. She liked him, even if he didn’t like her yet.

“Secrets?” “No, better. Stories. There’s freedom in stories, you know. We read them and we become something else. We imagine different lives, and while we turn the pages, we get to live them. To escape the lot we’ve been given.” Florian picked up a book and idly flipped through its pages. “My life is fine,” he said. “I’m sure yours is. You live on the open sea! You have the kind of life I read about in my books.” Evelyn took the book back from him and flipped to a page where a drawing showed a soldier, his hands to his belly, which bled from a mortal wound. “We don’t just read to imagine better lives. We read to be introduced to all kinds of lives. Any kind. Not just for ourselves, but for everyone around us. To understand others better. It’s escape, and it’s also a way to become more connected to everyone around you. There’s power in that, you know. In understanding. It’s like magic.”

“That’s the way of it, though.” Florian shrugged. His hand rested on the opposite page of the book. “But maybe that’s focusing on the wrong part.” Evelyn said nothing but looked at Florian. His eyes were still on the page when he spoke. “They’re reaching. Right?”

“There are guns aboard this ship?” she asked. Not so much because she cared — she didn’t. But it was something to talk about. Boys liked guns, and she could tell this boy was all boy. Not like Florian. “Yes, my lady. As a precaution. Pirates in these waters, after all.” “I’m glad to be in safe hands,” Evelyn said politely. The boy laughed far louder than was proper, necessary, or sane. His aim was off, indeed. “Let’s take a look at those dolphins!” He was practically shouting.

“You think the world of men is so complicated? It isn’t. You’re all the same. Weak, and small, and eager to push your own failure off on others while pretending I couldn’t possibly understand the great forces at work that forced your hand. Half of a woman’s life is spent pretending she doesn’t notice just how stupid and prone to failure you all are!”

And though she cannot say what memory she no longer holds, she knows something is gone. What pain it is, to know a memory is gone but not what it is.

“It doesn’t do to pretend this life isn’t what it is.”

“Your tears,” she said, “were the price of my spell. Pain begets life, Your Majesty, and life begets pain.”

Perhaps the pirates and the witches were right to worship the sea. The sea did not die. The sea was no man.

She was not capable of love, apparently, and so she could not receive it.

I knew that was what Xenobia took from her

And without being told, Flora knew. That was the price of the stew. It was appetizing and perfect. But Xenobia had given up her appetite for it.

But the hardest reason, the one Flora struggled with the most, was the malleability of reality. For that was what magic was — it was understanding the truth of something, and then changing it. Reality, Xenobia said, was created by belief, and as such even its most fundamental trappings could be altered. Magic was at its core, she said, a kind of madness. It was a willingness to look at the corporeal world and to see it only as the story up to that point. That everything that followed could be changed. Rocks fell because the belief that they would fall was so strong. But that belief wasn’t binding. It didn’t have to be binding anyway. For a price.

Nothing will believe you if you do not fully believe them yourself. You cannot make a new reality if you do not even understand your own.

“There are those who are neither a man nor a woman. Those who were born and called the wrong gender and must reshape their story for those around them. But you. You’re something else. You’re whatever is safe. Both, maybe, but not neither. Or interchangeable. Names are funny things, because they can feel like lies but tell our truths.”

“Think of the song,” Xenobia said, and there was a note of pleading in her voice that Flora had not heard before. “The only one you know.” “You speak nonsense.” “It is you. The song is you, if you would just —”

This is so perfect!

It would lead them to the Dove, she said. If she could do the spell. It did not appear to be working. Part of Evelyn was nearly thankful for that. She knew, of course, that basically everything she’d been taught as a child had been a lie. But it was hard to shake the notion that witches were evil, especially since one had just sold her out so coldly. It seemed impossible that her beloved Flora would be one. “Listen,” Flora said. “You are a knife that binds, and you bind me to my brother. You will take me to him. You will put me where I belong, at his side, together again as we are meant to be.” But nothing happened. They were not, in fact, close to Alfie, nor the Dove for that matter. They sat in the boat, Evelyn playing her game of silence, as the sun beat down on them, the winds picked up and then died again, and the sun set. But still, Flora chanted. “You do not cut anymore; you will never cut again. You bind me to Alfie, and Alfie to me.” It was just as Evelyn thought it may be time to gracefully break the bad news that Flora was not, in fact, a practical witch when it happened. “I can’t believe it!” Evelyn cried. Which was true. She couldn’t. “Neither can I.” Flora looked around, bemused.

“You’re going to do well,” Flora said. She gripped Evelyn’s hand and squeezed reassuringly. “I wish I shared your confidence.” Evelyn tried to smile, but it didn’t take. “You just escaped an Imperial commander to come find me. And you doubt yourself now?” “I’ll just say you’re somewhat more equipped for this than I am.” This time the smile did take. “You’re the smartest person I know, and I need you if we’re going to pull this off.” “Do you need some flowers arranged, or — ?” But Flora cut her off with a stern look. She took Evelyn’s hands in her own and held her eyes meaningfully.

“You are my love and my equal, and we will see each other through this. If you had not been here to remind me of my conscience, we would not even be here. We’re in this together. Yes?” “Yes,” Evelyn said. She kissed Flora’s hand. Then up they climbed.