It looks like the sky is bleeding, too—cobalt veins ripped open and spilling crimson into the sunset.
I let go of my knees, my hands falling to my sides, my nails digging into golden grains, and I let my spine hold me. I don’t cry, though. Mermaids don’t cry.
I can feel Mom walking up behind me, but I don’t turn to look at her.
She sits right next to me, and we’re both quiet as we stare out past the border. Notes of sea salt and brine are sewn in every cruel wind, icy air striking our raw cheeks. The lighthouse beam spins, casting its light across my face.
I wish she would leave and not poison my sacred place.
A beat of tension passes, and then—“Have you ever seen a fish drown, Adora?”
Her voice is tranquil, soft. Almost a whisper.
“Fish can’t drown, Momma.”
I see her from the corner of my eye. She isn’t looking at me but still looking at the ocean. “It’s heartbreaking to watch. A fish belongs in the water, but if the water doesn’t move across the fish, it can’t breathe. Panic sets in, and the fish darts here and there, eager for a breath, thinking, this is my home, this is what I’m supposed to do, I belong here, why can’t I breathe? Gills flap slower, hope drifts from its eyes. The one place it’s bound to squeezes around the fish tighter and tighter until finally, the fish gives up, lies on its side, and dies.”
That’s when I look at her. “Are you drowning, Momma?”
“Yes,” she takes a deep breath, “and one day, you will, too.”
CHAPTER 27
STONE
Circe returned the following day,swathed in layers—a fur coat, knitted scarf, and jeans so tight it could break the skin. She’d explained that the person who showed up was a maid named Alice. She’d insisted she wouldn’t return.
While we searched for dry wood, the only sound was our footsteps in the snow. As I walked behind her, I wondered how small and delicate a person could be and yet still take up so much space in the forest, on the island, in my world.
She was the sun, who shone a light on me, making me question if she were gone, who would I be, and would I exist at all?
Without her, there would be no ears to hear me.
No fingers to touch me.
No lips to taste me.
No memories to mark me.
No smile. No smile at all.
I would become smoke. Dust.
And it was unsettling to think I’d come into her world unknown, and she was leaving her mark on me, shaping me in more ways than one.
Circe could not understand this. Before me, during me, and, no doubt, after me, she had and would always have a family, a lover, friends, memories, secrets.
So many secrets.
I’d read the letters addressed to her beloved black sea—the ones that I was sure were difficult to write—with thick ink blots staining the corners of the paper, and the ones where she got carried away, telling stories and pretending to be someone different. I’d read how she was disgusted with the way her father worked himself to death, and how her imagination often tempted her to want the kind of sex she could feel deeper than flesh. She knew of her beauty but loathed being complimented for it and cherished the touch of silk on her skin. I’d read on as her years passed by, her confessions turning darker. How she refused to let anyone see her cry. And I’d read the letters of when she did cry because she was alone, tears smearing ink into permanent black puddles.
I didn’t simply understand her rage. I felt it in the palms of my hands, seeping into my chest with every letter I’d touched. I would never tell her this, but I read them all and thought to bloody hell that I could know everything there was to know about her. I understood why she was running to me and away from Weeping Hollow each day, but I couldn’t figure out why she was returning to that town each night.
I looked up, and Circe turned her head, looking over her shoulder at me.
Despite the letters tucked away in a box, despite the memories tattooed inside my palms, she was so much deeper than one could grasp. But I feared, like the envelope Ambrose had gifted, the only thing that was ever important to me, she’d one day slip through my fingers.
“ ... the red dress was on me, and my sister didn’t believe any of it,” she continued. “I’d forgotten how much I loved that dress, too, but my mother hated seeing me in it. When I was little, I thought I’d turn into a mermaid if I never took it off.” Her older self laughed, finding the idea preposterous. “I would wake up on shore in red, certain a prince would appear in the middle of the night, waving a flag with a skull and crossbones to take me away.”
