A Study in Drowning

by Ava Reid

What is a mermaid but a woman half-drowned,

Men liked to keep mad women locked up where everyone could comfortably forget they ever existed.

I will love you to ruination, the Fairy King said, brushing a strand of golden hair from my cheek. Yours or mine? I asked.

Moving water is healthy; stagnant water is sickly.

They were not touching, not quite, but she was close enough to feel the heat of his body, and see those two little grooves that his glasses carved into the bridge of his nose. She still wanted to ask him if they hurt. Or if they had hurt once, but he’d grown so inured to the pain that he didn’t even notice it anymore.

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Even though she was afraid of living, she didn’t want to die.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m not afraid to care about you, Effy.”

I was a woman when it was convenient to blame me, and a girl when they wanted to use me.

“I thought you weren’t a romantic.” “I wasn’t,” Preston said, cheeks still pink. “Until you.”

The architecture of her new life was taking shape, and there were windows and doors.

But if fairies and monsters were real, so were the women who defeated them.