SECRETS OF BLOOD AND SONG
By Dorothy Pensky
Chapter Three
Grandmama approaches holding the kraken’s eye and we pause. Her
Queenspearls recorded the eye, but not me passing it to her. Amber stops
mid-bite and lets go of the herring, and she wipes her hands on her
smooth blue belly. We blow beads of air in greeting.
Amber purses her lips at the sight of the eye.
I start to tell Grandmama that I proved I can handle my blood around
Amber, and can join the elderkin dance. But before I can speak,
Grandmama says, “We don’t have much time to check the orb.” The wrinkles
around her mouth deepen. I nod and Grandmama’s eyes meet mine, then
shift to Amber’s where they linger. A smile that only Amber elicits
lights Grandmama’s face.
Perhaps once Grandmama sees how much larger the eye is than the Orb, she
will smile like that at me.
Amber nods, then surfaces for a breath. Grandmama hands me the eye, its
delicate surface showing wear. When I hold it in my hands, the top
reaches my elbows, large concentric circles of blue and black form its
iris and pupil. My fingers dent it.
When Amber returns, Grandmama nods at Amber in dismissal. She lowers
herself, then leaves.
Grandmama takes a breath to prepare for the trip to Hollow Stones. I
wait politely and then take mine. Following her indigo tail, I dive
through fronds of kelp, light filtering through in shafts at first,
bright spots of plankton floating in the water. We swim past schools of
herring and cod, past pipefish hiding in plain sight, their tails
wrapping around the stalks of kelp. I shift the eye against my chest, so
it pulls less against the current.
The fronds change from the bright yellow and green of the surface to
darker green and almost brown as they soak in less and less light. We
sink into gradually cooler water, where the light becomes thinner and
fewer fish swim. We are within arm’s reach of the branching yellow
holdfasts which anchor the kelp. The light is so dim Grandmama’s eyes
shine.
We reach Hollow Stones, the place where the kin keep the Orb. To keep
the kelp fronds from tangling with my hair, I hold out an arm. The
clearing, covered in silt, looks undisturbed, except one place—the
disk-shaped rock that holds the Stickleback Orb.
The Orb gone. The empty hole glares at me and I flinch.
Grandmama jerks around to look at me. We have only one enemy who could
have done this.
Clam-diggers!
I freeze; my fingers numb. The kraken’s eye tumbles to the seabed. What
if Grandmama thinks I, with my mixed birth, have collaborated on this?
My head spins as wildly like a loose kelp in a storm. We can’t call the
seals without the Orb and without the seal blubber, we will starve this
winter.
The Cockle mer don’t need the Orb. They eat clams all year.
“Despicable,” Grandmama says. “This is what comes of their hatred of
us.”
“What can I do? I’ll do anything.”
“Go, retrieve it, and murder as many of that cursed kin as possible.
Naturally, since we can’t compare the size of the eye, this will be your
true test to be anointed Protector.” Grandmama puts her hands on my
shoulders as if to wish me well. It’s the briefest gesture. My shoulders
warm, and I close my eyes. A small sign of respect?
But her dismissal of my Protectorship is such a betrayal, that I almost
refuse to retrieve the Orb, but all the Stickleback kin will die this
winter if no one does.
“The Strongest and me, against sixty mermaids?” It seems terrible odds.
Grandmama pauses, then strokes her Queenspearls, luminous to me even in
the dim light, and says, “Just you, Between.”
I swallow hard. I’ve never even tried to fight Kelp and her crew. One
against ten. Difficult. Ten against sixty. Terrible. But one against
sixty? Impossible.
I must have flinched because Grandmama continues, “Have you forgotten?”
Her voice is slick as a wave-tumbled pebble. “You’re the only one who
could survive. The others would be poisoned.”
I lift the tips of my fingers enough to twirl and untwirl my hair.
Yes, only I will be immune since I share their blood.
#
Amber raises an eyebrow at me as kelp fronds flow one way and then the
other in the shifting current. “No one else is fighting beside you?”
My hair droops. I shake to awaken it before my shame is obvious to
Amber. It can be annoying to have living hair, but that’s my fate as a
mermaid. “They could be poisoned by Cockle blood.”
“No, I forbid this quest.”
“You can’t forbid an order by Grandmama!”
“I just did.”
“Think like a Queen!” I say. “The Orb is necessary. This isn’t even as
hard a decision as giving Kelp more territory.” Besides my place in the
long stream of Stickleback heroes could be above even Kelp.
Amber pinches my arm, hard.
“I can save the kin! If I make it back.” And Grandmama’s voice will lose
its deliberate smoothness; will no longer be as slick as wave-tumbled
pebbles.
“See!” Now Amber’s chin rises. “Don’t die trying to go up in rank, Bett!
You have a permanent role already.”
That permanent role will suffocate me. I let out a single bead. “Sharks
usually hunt alone.”
“So now you’ll attack the Cockle kin alone every time there’s a
problem? That’s the worst plan Grandmama has ever come up with.”
I pull back, but Amber takes my hands and squeezes so tight that my
fingertips turn mauve.
I jerk away. “What about when you said it was Grandmama’s worst plan
when she wanted feed the mer of highest rank first?”
“It was!”
“I think you don’t understand the meaning of worst.” I fidget with my
plain amber shard, turning it over in my hand.
After a moment, Amber forces a smile. “You’re my best friend. I don’t
want anything to happen to you.”
A little of my hard-heartedness softens at her words. Perhaps her view
of me isn’t one of a lower class, as it sometimes seems. “Maybe we
disagree about the mission,” I say, “but this is important. Can you tell
the kin of my coming-of-age? You saw that I can control my blood.” If
Grandmama knows my news is public, she’ll have my shard carved for sure.
Amber rubs her face with her hands. “All right, but then it’ll just be
me and Kelp who need to prove ourselves.”
“I know it’s unpleasant, but do it.”
“How will you fight the Cockle kin?” she asks.
“To mete out justice for their thievery, I should slaughter them all.” I
twist my fingers together and clench my fluke to override the
uncomfortable feelings.
Amber frowns.
“But,” I say, “simply taking back the Orb isn’t an act of war to them.
They’d kill me, but murder is different. Their revenge would include us
all. They’d simply spill their blood in the kelp forest. Everyone would
die. So, I’ll get the Orb, but I won’t kill. Is that cowardly?”
“I wish you were cowardly!”
I hope the fact they share my blood isn’t part of my reasoning for
sparing them. “All right,” I say. “Give me a bit of time alone before I
leave.”
“May the sea hold you.”
“And you.”
#
If anyone sees me travelling this way, I don’t want to explain. But
everyone is busy—the Hunters hunting; the Strongest patrolling, the
Healers healing and those of good breeding eating their fill. Only Amber
worries about my whereabouts.
At times, that’s useful.
At the far edge of the kelp forest, I come to a bare area in the mud,
the spot where I place a stone on each of my birthdays, the anniversary
of Mama’s death. The barnacled stones lie silt covered and still. Anyone
stumbling into this barren place would think the pile random: good.
I beat my fluke against the current, hovering above it. One stone each
year, traditional for any daughter, but my eyes dart.
I’m honoring a Cockle mer.
“Mama.” I rest my forehead on the rough stones, palms on the muddy bed.
“I’m not cradling my head here. Don’t think I still need you.” Of course
not.
“Would you have stolen our Orb, Mama? Even all of the Stickleback, my
sire and I, would have no seal fat next winter?” Perhaps she had had no
love or respect for him or me.
I knock the pile over and scatter the stones around the muddy ground. My
hair is twisting and turning, tangling and untangling, finally, it hangs
limp.
Among rocks I’ve thrown two smooth clean stones gleam.
I clear a small area in the center and place one of them there. I tuck
the other at the top of my shard’s braided hilt. I may not be back for
any more birthdays.
#
Grandmama asked me to stop by before my quest. When I reach her, she is
sitting with Shard in her large territory. There are so many herring, I
can barely see Shard braiding Grandmama’s hair. Light filters down
through the green and yellow leaves of the kelp with shadows of darting
herring above.
It takes all my energy to keep my face blank, only allowing the unseen
hair on the back of my head to twitch. She doesn’t meet my eyes, talking
to my ear, my cleft chin, my wide lips.
“What can I say that will help?” Grandmama asks. “They have those
evil-looking shards they use for opening clams. Nothing like our decent
herring-shaped shards. Just the fat appearance of them gives me the
shivers, like bloated sea cucumbers. I’m sure they’d be happy to slit
your neck with one of those.”
How is that something that will help? I tilt my head and turn, hiding a
frown. When my back is to her, Grandmama barks air beads with
uncontained mirth until she needs to rise for a breath. Why? Is it funny
that I’m about to die?
Even Kelp and the rest of the Strongest would be afraid under these
conditions. I don’t wait for Grandmama to return, though I haven’t been
formally dismissed. My back to our forest, I begin the strong rhythmic
beating of my fluke that I adopt for a long trip. The Strongest can’t
call me clam-digger if I return with the Orb. They’ll know that I’ve
chosen my loyalties.
The journey is long. Whenever a stray thought about sea cucumber-shaped
shards at my throat slows my fluke, I repeat—I am like a shark. I will
be Protector. Grandmama will lose her slick pebble voice. I won’t slow.
If I do, that will give the Cockle mer the time to hide the Orb far from
the clam beds, perhaps, or master a new way of slitting throats.
Sharks never stop. They move forward or sink, then die.
I rise for a breath. The surface heaves rough and windy, though the area
around me is free of boats. In the distance, fishermen pull a dark grey
dolphin from the sea. The net digs into its flesh. Even this far away,
its writhing brings sandbumps to my arms. Dolphins play with us often;
they are our sisters.
But what can a mermaid alone do? Those brutes will eat that dolphin, and
never pause to imagine the life they are cutting off; the hunting with
friends; the playful leaps, the loving motherhood. They have no respect
for dolphins, who have souls? Do makers have them? It almost seemed the
singing in the ship did, but no, he too would have plunged a harpoon in
me if I were a dolphin.
I sink. With little time to eat, I slow my heartbeat and try to forget
the dolphin. A brown lobster lifts a claw out of the grass, and I stab
it with my shard, killing it. I’m cutting off her natural lifetime, but
at least her eggs drift off with no need for their mother or friends.
At first, I use the tips of my fingers, delicately taking one edge of
the claw’s shell and pulling it gently away from the meat inside. But
there are some advantages to being alone. Here, a drop of my blood will
murder no one; my hair smooths, and my heart lifts. I crush the tail and
other claw with my bare hands and grab chunks. I’m still hungry, but I
have no more time to waste.
I surface on the far side of an island near its sandy shore.
The screeching of an eagle startles me. I am like a shark. I will be
Protector. Grandmama will lose her slick pebble voice. I hug the coast,
keeping the sandy banks one fluke’s beat away.
The Cockle mer will soon click and then I will be seen in the echoes.
The short sandy passage between the island and the coast, three breaths
long, is the last thing between me and the clam beds.
The sun turns the sea crimson. At sunrise and sunset, the Cockle Queen
uses her Queenspearls to sing stories for the merlings—a bad time to
swim in for the Orb. Their Queen will be sitting right on the clam beds.
The Cockle Kin would guard the Orb day and night. But at night, most of
them are on the Journey of Sleep. They will only be dimly aware of the
sea around them. The guards will be tired, waiting alone in the dark
water, likely to be less alert.
I lie hidden behind a large pile of discarded clamshells. I peer toward
where the clam beds must be, until the first star pierces the sky. The
star gleams the silvery gray of twilight, and the waters around me
deepen to gray. It’s hard to see the Cockle kin without clicking and
giving myself away. I grip my shard, the handle digging into my palm.
The sky and the sea darken. It’s time. I rise to swim toward the clam
beds. Something slippery touches my back, and my head jerks up—a slender
sea-blue fluke moves back and forth just above me, one of a long line of
tails reaching into the distance. The Journey of Sleep.
The endless rows of mermaids, six across, move their tails in unison.
They could grasp me with their lazy fingers and slit my throat. I sink
deeper into blackness. At home I’d be separated during the night’s
journey, but none of them are. They don’t have to be alone. All of
them are poisonous and that’s not fair.
But my mother’s death wasn’t fair either. You can’t count on fairness in
the sea. Sharks never follow rules.
I sink even deeper. No one follows me, but without echoes to guide me, I
must hope no guard lurks at the sea floor. As tense as herring wrapped
tight in hair, I wait for a click from the guards. When my outstretched
hands scrape the seabed, I know I’m deep enough. I slide my palms along
the rough rasp of gravel, then over the sharper clams: no Orb. Did I
think this was going to be easy?
I click, turning my head side to side to pinpoint the returning echoes’
origins. In an instant they ring out: the round sound of the Orb,
distinct from the clear-but-rough sound of the shells around it.
In front, the dim echoes of three guards sound on my forehead. Their
bones are ominous: thicker than a Stickleback’s by a worm’s breadth. One
has a bone broken, then healed. The three huddle around the Orb upright
in a triangle formation: the largest and thickest in front, a thinner
guard with stringy muscles to my left and the healed-bone guard on my
right. Now the echoes must have showed them I am here, my eyes shining
in the dark.
Is Mama watching from deaths cavern?
I slip my shard from my thick braid, wrapping my fingers tightly around
it. I beat my tail hard enough to burn.
A click from the guards taps me for a second but also shows their exact
position. “Stop! You cannot approach,” she calls.
I shift my trajectory, beating my fluke even harder, and drive my head
into the front thick guard, doubling her over in a spray of air beads.
Her lungs are empty.
Success. Now, she must rise.