The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2018 Edition

The Little Mermaid, in Passing ^{Angela Slatter}

“Go on. It’ll hurt for a while. For your whole life, really, but there’s always a cost, isn’t there? Go. Go on, up to the surface. Up, up, up, you silly flighty little thing. To the beach, when the sun hits you… well, you’ll see soon enough. Off you go.”

I watch as the girl hesitates, looks at the pretty amber bottle clutched tightly in her webbed fingers, face caught between gleeful longing and uncertainty. She opens her mouth to say something, ask a question she should have asked earlier, but all that issues is a wet puff of blood that dissolves in the water around her. Ah. My suturing needs work.

But it’s a small thing, I tell her, part of the bargain. I don’t say, but perhaps I should, that the price for something you want desperately, but should not have, is always red “Go on now, away with you.”

And, voiceless, she goes.

The tail is magnificent, a glimmering limb of now-green, now-blue, now-stormy scales, reflecting the glow from the phosphorescent sea creatures that pass through this place, lighting the rocky cave entrance as they come and go. I’d have contracted for that if I could, if she’d not required it for her own ends. The hair, too, is lush and dark with bright points as if stars rest there; it won’t look so wondrous out of the water, but she’ll need it all the same. No matter; what I have is superb enough. I’m just being greedy, greedy as a mortal, coveting what I’ve not got whilst forgetting what I do have.

I watch until she’s no more than a speck against the watery sky of my kingdom, nothing more than a black dot against the flickering light that drifts down from the above-world. It’s so long since I’ve been there, since I’ve bothered to breathe the salty air instead of wetness. I’m not sure I’d even be able to use nose and lungs in place of gills anymore. Anything you don’t value, don’t use, don’t exercise, will desert you.

Just a dot, now, just a mote, then gone. She’s broken the surface. She’ll head for the beach, if she’s smart, before she opens the bottle and drinks the contents. If she’s stupid she’ll do it in the wrong order, and will likely drown. When the legs come through, they will hurt. She’ll feel cleaved, she’ll panic. When you panic, you drown.

Still, I did warn her.

Didn’t I?

Sometimes I forget the script, the patter; I’m so very tired. I always warn them, but perhaps I omit some of the lines, through boredom or forgetfulness. Sometimes spite. Sometimes these girls are so… haughty. Demanding. Entitled. Mean. An almost unending list of sins, I suppose. Those who look down on me as if I am somehow less, as if refusing to live as they do, where they do, makes me questionable. Refusing to be one with the Mer Queen’s safe, tidy little enclave.

They don’t know—care?—that I was like them once; that, though changed by the things I do, I share their blood. My true history has been lost, I imagine, fallen through the cracks between years as those who knew me have disappeared or died, for we are immortal but not invulnerable and can be killed. Only one remains of my contemporaries and I doubt my name passes her lips too often.

I am made pale, yes, by my acts: bleached as whale bones on a strand. White as if the water has washed much of me away, but whatever I lost of myself was replaced by something stronger, a power and pragmatism that others have envied and feared, sought and bought. I have become a concentration of prices paid, of deals done, of treasures left behind. I am the place where folk come when they have nowhere else to go, when their wants and desires get the better of them.

Like that silly little girl. A granddaughter, no doubt. Or a great-grandchild, perhaps. I can see her bloodline in the cast of her face, the tilt of her head. An echo of my sister’s cheekbones, the pout of the lips. The girl who is gone and will never be again, not as herself. She’ll be something else, something new; something less. The joke is not lost on me.

I recall the object in my hands, clutched as tightly, as greedily as the girl did her amber bottle. Mine is a purple jar, fat as a glutton’s belly, a silver lid firmly holding down the contents, which would otherwise float and flee, perhaps follow its former owner, try to reunite with that little fool. It swirls inside the colored glass, like a fog trying to blow itself out.

Her voice, so lovely, so perfect.

So lightly held.

So unvalued.

So easily bargained away.

Little fool.

All for a man, and not even one who lives beneath, not one of her own kind who swims the ocean. A man who moves by legs alone, who breathes air, whose near-dead face was apparently so beautiful its sight knocked the sense from the girl’s head, put a cloud of idiot desire in her mind and set her heart’s course askew. So that nothing else would inhabit her thoughts, so she’d be haunted by it until, at last, she went and begged.

I wonder how long it took? How many days, weeks, months of pleading and whining until her grandmother’s patience wore out, heart wore through, until it was obvious to the old fish that the girl had one final decision to make, one chance left, one last hope. I can count on five fingers the number of maidens who’ve come to me and, in the end, not gone through with their plan. So few who hesitate, take a moment to think, realize that the price is always too great, that their lives are not over if they do not have this purported heart’s desire, the absence of which has been tearing at them. So few who say “no” when I’ve named the price, who’ve bent their heads and backed away, swum off with nothing more than their gods-given gifts and my grudging respect.

So few, so rare.

But enough. I have matters to which to attend. A twitch of my own tail, I knife through the water, back to the deep cave from which I reign. Make my way to the place where my magic resides.

We have all suffered. We have all lost precious things. We have all been faced with the choice of losing ourselves to gain an idea of love.

My mother made her own such decision. Destined to marry one man to please her father, she went to the Sea Witch of old who then ruled this dark corner of the ocean, and she overthrew everything fate had intended for her. She got the man of her dreams and much good it did her: he was a wastrel, cared not a jot for her heart once she’d brought him the pearly crown, the coral sceptre. She thought, poor fool, that if she could have children, ensure their grasp on the throne with a dynasty, he’d love her again—which presumed he ever loved her in the first place.

But the price she’d paid in return for her heart’s desire was her ability to bear children. She was as barren as a desert is dry. She tried everything she could, enlisted every sorceress and enchantress, but they had no power against such a sacrifice, no way to undo what had willingly been given away. And so back to the Sea Witch at last she went.

There was nothing she could do, the dark queen told her, tail slowly batting back and forth as she sat on the throne of bones and shells and coral and such. But something about the Sea Witch’s smile told Mother that the old woman wasn’t being entirely honest, so she pressed: she’d give anything. Anything.

Anything?

Anything!

I will name my price later, then. Are you prepared for that?

And my idiot mother nodded and agreed to a bargain, the cost of which she did not know.

The Sea Witch gave her two pearls, one milky-white and twisted, the other smooth and black, and instructions to take both but choose only one; swallow only one. She knew enough about my mother from their brief encounters to understand that she would not listen, would not honor their pact.

Mother gave birth to twins, myself and my sister, with little difference in our appearances except our hair—hers was noticeably darker, mine lighter—and we were loved equally. We shared a cradle made from a giant clam, strung with shells and things that shone; together we breathed the same water, learned all the things we might ever need in order to rule when our turns came, shared all our toys, clothes, eventually lovers. She was my sister and my other self, no two could be closer, more loving, more devoted.

Until…

Until one day Mother died, and that loss changed my sister. Where once possessions had been ours, they became mine and yours; she held all things tighter, lovers included. We fought as we never had, items were snatched from my hands, beaus seduced away, kept at her side by sheer dint of tantrums and bribes. And the kingdom we were meant to rule month about, the throne we were both meant sit upon? She gave it up at the end of her cycle only unwillingly.

Perhaps we’d have come through. Perhaps with time she’d have softened, loosened her grip. Perhaps she’d have come to her senses, apologized, and we’d have been as we were before.

But then the message came from the Sea Witch to say there was a debt owing and we must answer for it. That this was the one true inheritance left to us by our mother.

She’s a beautiful thing that I’ve made, though patched and stitched. Sometimes I close my eyes, run my fingers over the skin just to feel smooth then coarse, the ridges where cuts have joined as if living flesh had healed. All those given-up bits and pieces, all those crimson-colored tithes, all tacked together into a whole of sorts.

All those things that silly little girls don’t value until it’s too late. All the things they sacrificed for one stupid reason. They all come for the same thing: for love. For something selfish and venal. Make him love me. Give her to me. Give me, give me, give me. Never once do they think what the other might want. That love, if it were true, if it were right, would find its own way. And, sometimes, they leave debts others must pay.

When the missive arrived, my sister and I talked long into the night, and it was as if the past months of discontent, of selfishness and spite had not been. The bitterness was gone, the competition. She was my other half once more, and I hers. We were one and we would go together to the Sea Witch. We would face her, for we knew from the old tales that if we did not she would come hunting, and her rage would be all the greater.

Alone we departed, leaving advisors and friends behind. We swam for days, into the darkest part of the ocean, but nothing harmed us—why would it? We were daughters of the seas, mer queens in our right. Who would dare? Yet we were afraid: afraid of what we might hear, might find, might have to pay. We swam until at last we came to the rocky overhang that hid the entrance to the cave of the Sea Witch. Clasping hands, we drifted into its maw, deeper and deeper until we found the place she called her own.

She sat on a massive throne of bones, skeletal limbs clasping each other in a tight embrace, cemented in place with coral. A tall woman, pale as the watery moon, she waited, watching as if our appearance was no surprise. Her tail was so long and thick that it curled three times around the base of her seat, and then some. Hair the color of a storm played about a face haughty and scaled, and her eyes were so black they seemed like nothing so much as holes. But they caught us and held us, drew us in. She nodded as if pleased, satisfied. “You came.”

“You called,” we replied.

“So I did.”

And we waited a while for her to speak again. We’d agreed not to ask. Not to show weakness. Not to beg

“Your mother died owing me,” she said, and we trembled. All the tales told of the terrible things that came when a debt was outstanding; by her death Mother had cheated the Sea Witch and left only my sister and I to answer for her. Then the old woman told us how we’d sprung from a broken bargain; how we belonged, now, to her. “But,” she said, one finger raised to forestall any protest, “I am not an unreasonable woman. I only want what’s necessary to balance the books. So, I give you a choice: one of you must be the forfeit.”

We stared at her. We stared at each other.

“We will not—” I began, shaking at the thought that all our mother’s love had meant nothing; that she had left us to this.

“Wait, sister,” my other self interrupted, her fingers tightening around mine, grip solid, stable, assured. “What if…”

“What if…”

“She will never rest until this is settled. She will haunt us, blight our kingdom; our subjects will suffer. But we have ruled together. We have shared our throne. Let us share this punishment, bear this burden together. Let us take it in turns, sister, one shall rule while the other pays this tithe. Then we switch. If this Majesty,” she tilted her head to the Sea Witch, “is willing, I will go first.”

“No,” I said. “I have just completed this cycle of my reign. You return alone. I will pay this first month. If this Majesty will allow?”

And the Sea Witch looked at me as if I were a fool, as if she knew my sister better than I, but she smiled and nodded. My sister held me for so long yet so short a time then swam away, out of the cave and up, up, up. I imagined her as a speck against the watery sky of the kingdom, nothing more than a black dot against the flickering light that drifted down from the above-world. She would return. The old woman knew nothing of the shared blood that ran in our veins, of the invisible cord between our hearts, of the thoughts that began in one mind and finished in the other.

I raised my chin, arrogant, even as I submitted to her will.

My sister did not return.

The Sea Witch was not kind, but she was never unnecessarily cruel. She did not say my sister’s betrayal was only to be expected, did not say her word was as weak as sunlight on the bottom of the ocean, an unfaithful, feeble thing. For the longest time I dreamt my sister had met with some terrible fate on her way back home, without me to guard her. And the Sea Witch tethered me so I could not flee, could not go looking for either my sister or her corpse; she would listen to none of my entreaties. After a while, however, after the first of the little mewling maids came to beg bargains in the name of love, sent by her Queen, I at last understood that my sister bore more of our mother’s blood than I did.

My years of servitude became an apprenticeship of sorts. The Sea Witch taught me true, every spell, every magic, every enchantment under and over the waters, all the knowledge she had gathered in her very long life because she knew, even when she’d called us to her, that her time was coming to an end. She desired a daughter, a successor. In me she found a willing student. Betrayed, lost, I needed a place to belong and the Sea Witch, with her heart of salt and seawater, gave it to me.

When at last she wore out, I did as instructed. I removed her flesh, stored it in jars and bottles and tubs for use in spells, then took the bare bones and wound them into the body of the throne, adding to its height and breadth, as every new Sea Witch’s had done for millennia. And it became mine.

I could have returned home, then, but to what end? I could have revealed my sister’s treachery, claimed what she’d stolen from me, but I had been long gone from the kingdom and had begun to change in both appearance and temperament well before my mistress died. I would not have returned to any good purpose, and I’d have had to witness so many faces frozen in terror at the sight of what I’d become. Besides, I’d found a love for the power, the knowledge, the darkness to which I was heir, and the patience to play a long game.

I have never seen my sister again, but she sends me tribute. I know she still lives, for the girls keep coming even after all these centuries, and I ask them who rules. She sends me all those little girls and young women who want too much, who long for things they cannot have, whose yearning makes everything else in their lives appear insignificant. She has sent daughters and granddaughters, nieces and great-nieces. Fools all. Perhaps it’s a test for those silly little things: if they’re willing to trade with me, they get what they deserve.

But perhaps she simply fears if she didn’t send them, I’d return home.

I think about the latest child, with her lovely hair and lovelier voice. I wonder how long before disappointment strikes, before realization hits, before she or someone who truly loves her comes to me, begging a solution. I’ll give them the knife, the same one I always do, I’ll tell them their choices and we shall see what we shall see. Whose blood she’ll choose to spill, her own or his—I suspect her own. Not out of love, no, but shame; it’s easier to die than live on under the weight of humiliation. Again, I can count on five fingers the girls who’ve come limping home, who are strong enough to bear the burden of consequences.

In the deepest darkest part of the cave, in a tiny alcove, on a bed of coral lies my own child, my own successor, the work of my own hands, the sum of those silly little girls. Over the years I’ve cobbled their pieces together to make one being, a daughter of stitched-together sorrow, made with all the things those girls discarded as unimportant: their very best gifts, the cores of their secret and best selves. An amalgam of sacrifice and loss and pain.

In all my years I’ve never seen a girl worthy to take my place, never saw in another face whatever the Sea Witch saw in mine. Whether that’s good or bad I do not know, I only know that a broken bargain will make a witch do terrible things. Like this.

She’s ragged and lovely, my daughter; at last I have her voice. When I put that inside her she’ll lack just one final thing: life. And when I breathe that into her—when I give up the core of my very best self—she’ll take my place.

Imagine: all that loss, all that sacrifice and grief, all those pieces of self, exiled from their very being. Imagine: all that rage. Imagine: my last breath, my last desire, my final instruction and knowledge of my home; my sister, the broken bargain.

Imagine her, my child, my girl, my successor.

She will be terrible.

And I will be free.