The Sea Witch’s Song, Part 2
Okay.
Perhaps the merpeople didn’t just show up and take control by virtue of their high and mighty-ness. I just prefer that version of the story, and believed it for many years, but my therapist says I need to learn to deal with things as they are, and not how I want to see them.
Let me try, then, to tell the truth in the least biased form I can.
There was a battle. At a certain point, battles are inevitable, aren’t they? There was a whole ocean but the best place was at Atlantis, built up over eons. Everyone wanted to live there, and at a certain point, everyone wanted to own it.
It started with constant skirmishes, then someone took it too far and the skirmishes developed into all-out war. Species against species. Ours is the only kind fit to rule, and all that.
It was a stand-off, until the merpeople changed the game. Nobody knows where they got it from, though most people say the humans. From what I know of the humans now, it seems highly unlikely, but maybe things were different a thousand years ago. Either way, the merpeople got their hands on it.
Magic.
And once they did that, the war was over. They were the most powerful, and so it was their world that reined, Atlantis their city, the ocean their playground. The powerful get to decide how life should be, and so they did. They were rich, and in control.
In school the official story of the war was that the merpeople were the only people strong and fit enough to control magic and therefore they were the just choice to be rulers, as only the strongest should rule.
Whatever they said, however they called it, it was simple. They said how it would go, and the rest of us worked. That was the way of things. We didn’t have magic, and thus we couldn’t fight back, couldn’t even dream of accessing the merpeoples’ riches. As such, we didn’t have time for operas, for art. We worked to maintain the city, keep the walls from rotting away from the barnacles. We built the theatres where they sang; where, fatefully, I fell in love with the voices.
I’m not sure where I got the idea.
It was the year I turned twelve, still naïve but old enough to consider myself invincible. I wasn’t even sure that we’d get to go to the opera that year. It had been a lean year and Grandmother had to use our special fund just to get through the cool season, when the currents ran from the North. Every year the fund got smaller and I knew one year would be the last we could go. I was terrified that year would be the year, but then one day Grandmother came home with a large smile and the two, precious tickets in her hands.
“Looks like we have some luck yet, my dear!” she proclaimed with a smile. “The lionfishes bought these but they can’t go this year.”
My heart unclenched and I hugged her tightly. I waited for the day with great impatience, and we dressed in the best we had and climbed up to the top rungs of the house, the only place anyone but the merpeople could afford.
The show was even more spectacular that year, or maybe that was only because I had been holding a memory of the last show in my mind every day for a year. I hummed myself to sleep by the melodies but my thin, tone-deaf voice was no match for the reality and it exploded around my desperate, grateful ears.
I don’t even know what the show was about that year; I didn’t watch any of it, nor did I listen to any of the lyrics. My eyes were closed, squeezing tight against the tears as the melodies and harmonies cut through my soul. I remember thinking that beauty doesn’t have a form, it has a sound, and that was it.
When we left the theater, I was very thoughtful and was silent the whole swim home, a long way from the center of the great city to the outskirts. Finally my Grandmother looked at me and asked, “What is it, Ursula? I know you’re usually quiet after the show, but not this silent.”
“Grandmother,” I said slowly, “do you think the merpeople use magic to make their voices that way?”
She was surprised by the question. “How should I know? I shouldn’t think so, but should it matter if they do?”
It did matter, I thought. It mattered greatly. Perhaps my voice could not sing, perhaps I could never make it there. But if theirs could not either, but for an enchantment in their throats, then there was hope for me.
I thought long and hard about the matter. It seemed incredibly likely, come to think of it, for surely no natural voice could possibly be so wonderful. Suddenly my way seemed perfectly clear. All I had to do was figure out how to get and use magic, and all my dreams would come true.
I knew Grandmother wouldn’t approve and kept it from her. I knew that if I were to get the secrets of magic from the merpeople I’d have to be careful, stealthy, for they would perceive it as a threat.
I began by quietly befriended my merpeople classmates, or more precisely, a single classmate. The merfolk were hard to get close to and kept to themselves, avoiding the few other species in the classes. But there was one, a young merboy named Llyr, who was just as much of an outcast as the rest of us non-merfolk. His hair was a strange blue-ish color, his skin a smooth silver that gently sparkled with scales. His tail was a brilliant purple, instead of the standard green.
The other merchildren called him a fish, and loved to tease him by saying his father must have mated with a shark, thinking she was prettier than a merwoman. Generally speaking, he was ridiculed and thrown aside simply for what he looked like, despite being quiet bright and thoughtful.
He served my purposes exactly, and I suppose, despite my personal conviction that I could never possibly befriend one of the merfolk, he was also my best friend.
I didn’t ask about the magic right away, biding my time. I didn’t even tell him about the music. We just bonded over the fact that neither of us fit with the beautiful, flashy, tail-flipping popular crowd.
“I have scales and you have tentacles. Between the two of us, we make quite a fetching sea-monster,” Llyr used to say with a laugh, unblinking, enormous black eyes laughing with him.
As I said, despite myself I liked him. I told him about the music, and he understood. “You know, I always wanted to be a model,” he said. “I guess both of us will be equally successful in life.”
“But I think you’d be a fine model,” I said. The scales weren’t ugly by any means, and the fine bones of his face were quite striking, even as a young boy.
Llyr laughed. “Tell that to them,” he said, jerking a thumb at our fellow classmates, who were busy admiring each other before entering class. “But thank you. I think you’d be a fine singer.”
I shook my head. “I can’t sing.”
My friend surveyed me for a long second at that, going very still as he did when he was thinking. Very slowly, he blinked. “Well, have you ever tried?”
“I have. At home. It sounds awful.”
“Maybe you just don’t know how.”
I shook my head again. “Grandmother says cecaelia can’t sing.”
Llyr shrugged one glittering silver shoulder. “Maybe no one ever tried, either.”
I was angry with him for that; didn’t he understand that if I thought I could do it myself, I would? I left him in a huff for implying I hadn’t tried, and we didn’t speak for the next weeks.
You’ll have to excuse this small interlude. Going back and writing this was recommended by my therapist, but in doing so, she said I should take the time to think about the various assumptions I built my life — and my mostly regrettable decisions — and try to let go of the negative emotions associated with them. Let go of what I wanted to see and learn to see what was there.
It’s harder than it sounds.
But since I’m trying, I have to say here that I don’t think I was actually angry at him for suggesting I hadn’t tried, but because he’d touched on a very embarrassing truth. I hadn’t tried. Not really. Humming into your pillow isn’t really going to cut it.
And yet, if singing was the only thing I loved and wanted to do, you ask, why not try? What’s the worst that could happen?
Well. The worst that could happen would be that I would open my mouth for real, try to reproduce the melodies haunting my dreams, and what came out was a butchery, a mockery, a poor half-excuse for music, and then everything would be ruined, forever.
That was the worst that could happen, and I was afraid of it.
Magic — cheating, really — was easier. It was safe. It was to ensure that when I did open my mouth, no butchery would come out but pure beauty. Somewhere in my mind, I had convinced myself that it wasn’t just the safe way, it was the only way.
