‘Male or female? The one who…’
‘I—‘ For a moment I’m unsure, then I remember their laughing faces as I huddled in the rowboat. ‘All female.’
She clicks her tongue.
I’ve never witnessed them up close, never had them approach in that way. The mer can sometimes be seen from the beach or the promontory at home, heads bobbing, some days difficult to distinguish from seals. But near enough to touch? Never. The silver bells around our necks are meant to mark out us as the oldest, to keep us safe.
‘I heard them sing, beneath the waves: When you are gone, then we shall be free.’
Aoife rises. ‘No. No.’
And then she too departs, leaving me to untangle and wash my own very long tresses for which I’ve not nearly enough hands. I stay in the bath until it’s so cool it begins to remind me of the harbour and with that uncomfortable idea I climb out.
My old black dress has disappeared, no doubt disposed of on Aoife’s orders. My boots... ah, they’ll be gone too. On the bed in the other room is the green brocade from yesterday’s shopping trip; it looks too fine for around the house, but there’s the reading of the will to attend. And there are tiny embroidered house slippers in golden silk, barely fit for walking in but there’s no choice, is there?
Someone has reinstated the maiden’s quilt on the bed and I stare at its patterns: bells and flowers, rabbits and doves, bows and horseshoes. I wonder what’s been sewn into it? Swans feathers for fidelity? Tiny silver charms in each corner for hope of a good match, a magnificent wedding. I can’t imagine that Brigid would wish me well on that account. Does she know what Aidan’s planning?
I think again about throwing it on the fire, sending all those yearnings and wishes up the chimney in smoke. But what might that do? For me forever? For someone whose only hope has been a quiet life alone I find myself unwilling to lay a curse upon my remaining years, however few or many they might be. No marriage ever perhaps, and would that be such a terrible thing? No Aidan, no one else to please or obey?
Yet I leave the quilt alone for the second time, merely pull it back until it’s a scrunched mess at the foot of the bed. I’ll remove it entirely before I sleep tonight. I towel-dry my hair then brush out its tangles before twisting it into a simple braided bun. As ready as I’ll ever be, I go to leave my room.
The door is locked.
I turn the handle again and again, bend to peer through the keyhole: an empty corridor waits beyond. I swallow down the panic. What is Aoife doing that requires me to be trapped in here?
Breathing deeply, I go to the window and look down: too high to jump down from my third floor room to the muddy alley between this house and the next. There’s no rooftop for me to leap to. Just the long drop below, where I’d break a leg or my neck, which seems a high price to pay.
Nothing to do but wait it out.
I sit by the hearth and fold my hands in my lap; I cross my feet at the ankles. There are no books in this room. I think of that thin sheaf of letters beneath my mattress at home. I wonder who wrote them to Óisín; I wonder why he hid them and if Aoife knows about them or not. I like the idea of having something secret from her. I wonder if I’ll ever return to Hob’s Hallow to read them. But there’s no answer to that and I’ll simply drive myself mad with what ifs, so I think instead about the O’Malley book of tales.
I have read them all; even before Aoife said I was too old to have them told to me, I would sneak into the library late at night and pore over them. There are so many, some merely margin notes commenting on another tale, some no more than a paragraph, some take pages and pages and might be a small book all on their own. No blank folios at the back for anyone to add new stories, nothing in there from Aoife or Óisín – or nothing they’ve admitted to – and whenever I’ve asked about the missing pages, Aoife always said it had been like that since she could recall. I love that book, those stories, because they made me feel… real… without siblings, without parents, I’ve always felt alone. Perhaps if my grandparents had been different, if Brigid hadn’t betrayed me, I’d not have needed those tales so desperately to ground me, to make me feel part of something.
Those tales, I remember them all and so I tell them to myself to pass the time.
A long time ago, the old people say, there were three mer-sisters, each with a dearest wish. But longing is dangerous and one heard tell of a fin-wife – not quite one of the merfolk, but the sort who sometimes walked the earth on two legs – and that fin-wife could grant wishes for a price. The sisters agreed that they would pay whatever cost might be demanded, and they sought out the one who could deliver their hearts’ desires.
The fin-wife was ancient and ugly, her life of wickedness laying heavily upon her soul – though it’s said sea-kind have no soul, this is a lie that makes it easier for humans to enslave them, to think them lesser as they make them into unwilling wives – yet she had no regrets and no wish to change her ways. She listened to the mer-girls, then gave them their task;
