There she was.
Mila would have whistled – out of surprise that the rumors were true, not the lecherous howl of a sailor whose blood held too much drink and not enough decency - if it weren't for the fact that she had to be very, very careful with her entrance. After all, she had one chance to pull this off, one opportunity before she was stuck picking through garbage for the rest of her life.
This was her miracle. Mila wasn't going to let it – her – slip away.
She crept back to the base of the small, sandy hill, the air so thick with tension she may as well have swum through it, and began to hum.
The tune was soft and simple, sweet in its simplicity. It had been years since Mila had heard it in anything other than memories, but the melody did not waver on her lips.
It did sound strange, though, when it wasn't in her mother's voice. Mila shoved back the wave of sadness that struck her, and for a moment, wished she had picked a lullaby that wouldn't lodge itself so deeply in her heart.
She strolled, keeping her pace measured and her humming steady, until the beach came into view.
"Oh!" Mila gasped. She hadn't meant to, but the huge, dark eyes knocked the breath from her lungs. "I- um, I-"
"Please don't run away," the mermaid pleaded, shifting her upper body in a futile attempt to hide her sleek black tail. It gleamed in the morning sunlight – not the glitter of scales, but smooth and velvet-soft. "Your music. It was beautiful."
She echoed several notes, half-singing and half-humming, her voice high and achingly gorgeous.
"Thank you," stuttered Mila. Sweet mother, she thought, I definitely can't weave. But that didn't matter. Not to her, at least. Not right now. "It's a song my mother used to sing to me."
"A song?" The mermaid blinked. Her eyes were purple, and Mila noted with a start that she'd drawn nearly close enough to touch the long, dark hair. She hadn't even felt her feet move. "Can you… can you sing it, please? Just a few lines?"
Mila nodded, sternly forbidding her legs from moving her any further forward, and sang. The mermaid closed her eyes, swaying gently to the song and to the waves that crashed upon the shore.
"Thank you," she murmured. "My name is Sara."
"I'm Mila."
"Thank you for your music, Mila." Sara shifted, glancing back to the ocean, and Mila forced herself not to flinch or dart forward. "And thank you for not running away. I know I must be frightening." She turned back to Mila. Her expression was sad, trusting, and scared. "I- you see, I-"
Sara sniffed.
Then she broke into sobs.
"Hey, hey, don't cry." Mila took a hesitant step closer. Don't think, she told herself. "Sara, what's wrong?"
"I was so stupid," Sara wailed. "I only- I only wanted to see a little, just for a minute, I thought it would be fine, I didn't think anything could go wrong, but I- but-"
She hiccupped and gestured to her tail. Mila could make out dark cords biting into the silky skin – a fishing net, maybe.
"Oh, Sara," Mila whispered sympathetically. "You got stuck in this?"
Sara nodded. "I tried to untangle it but I can't, and I can't- I can't move. I think it's stuck on something."
"May I look closer? I'm sure I can help." Mila leaned in, trying to hide how her hands had begun to shake. She couldn't believe her luck. "Maybe I could cut it…"
"Do you- ah!" Sara shrieked as Mila yanked on the net, flipping Sara facedown in the sand.
At least, that was the plan. Sara slipped from her entanglements faster than Mila's eyes could track and bared her teeth.
Her pointed, razor-sharp teeth. Mila leapt back as Sara's tail, crested with now-unfurled knife-like fins, whipped towards her legs.
Mila was between Sara and the ocean. She smiled.
So did Sara.
"Tricky little liar, aren't you," hissed Sara. "I should just drown you and be done with it."
"Unfortunately for you, you seem to be a fish out of water right now." Mila tried to smirk, but her lip only twitched into a lopsided grimace. "I don't plan on becoming dinner."
"What?" Confusion flickered into Sara's glare, and then she spat, "We're not like you."
"Wait, what?" It was Mila's turn to pause. "We don't eat people!"
"Oh, so we're not people," sneered Sara. "That makes it so much better."
"Humans don't eat mermaids!"
"Liar."
"Bold accusation, Sara. I'm innocent and naïve and curious and got hopelessly tangled up in this conveniently anchored net! You really thought I'd fall for that?" Mila laughed, but her face was burning with anger and shame. Somewhere along the line, she'd lost her footing. "I wasn't even going to hurt you. You can't say the same."
"Like I'd believe that, coming from you?"
Neither of them had moved. They watched each other cautiously, and though pride – and, in Mila's case, desperation – had locked them in place, doubt had seeded and put down roots. Sara's gaze flicked past Mila and briefly fell on the water behind her before returning, and Mila mentally traced a path around the mermaid and back to drier land.
She could still try. If Sara dragged her beneath the waves, at least it wouldn't be giving up. And she might – just might – get to go home.
Mila sighed. Her plan didn't seem like such a good idea anymore.
A spray of sand arched through the air, whipped up by a flick of Sara's tail. Mila tensed, but Sara showed no signs of lunging towards her; Mila decided it must be the mermaid version of a shrug.
"I wasn't going to hurt you," Sara said. Her tail twitched again. Mila wondered if she was uncomfortable – how long could a mermaid stay out of the water? "I just needed to borrow you for a bit."
"Humans can't breathe underwater," Mila replied, a hint of reproach creeping into her voice. "I-"
Sara giggled.
"Drowning would count as hurting me!"
"Yes, I- it's-" The words dissolved into laughter. "Of course I know that, I'm not a baby. You thought I wanted to eat you, and that I didn't take your breathing thing into account- what did you want with me? Did you think we grant wishes, too?"
Yes.
That's what it was, really – a magic wish to carry her home. Stupid, hissed Mila's thoughts. Stupid, silly girl.
"No," she spat, and stepped aside.
Sara was in the water almost instantly, quick despite her relative clumsiness on land. She vanished under the waves after one last, lingering glance towards shore.
Mila exhaled.
Her hope ebbed with the falling tide.
Thoughts of Sara crept into her mind over the following week, even as Mila did her best to forget the entire ill-fated day. Her eye would catch upon a head of dark hair, only for the owner to notice Mila staring and turned away with a sneer. Glints of purple in the broken shells she pulled from the sand reflected the memory of Sara's eyes as Mila wiped away the grime; the sight of eels in the market square was a punch to the gut, and she nearly ran from the fish stall with nausea welling on her tongue.
As she scavenged, Mila watched the sea and told herself that she was only checking the tide, counting the hours until the sun sank behind the water.
She almost convinced herself – close enough, at least, that she jumped and dropped the wide, delicate shell she was holding when a familiar voice called out.
"No, no no no," Mila hissed. She lunged for the shell – nearly undamaged, aside from a few tiny chips, its interior shining smooth and pale as milk – as a wave lapped at her feet and tugged it from her reach. She followed for a few steps, but stopped short as another wave brushed her knees, fighting back tears of frustration.
Sara's gaze was heavy on Mila's bowed head.
Then, she dipped under the surface and disappeared.
Mila trudged back to the wet, pebbly beach. That was her dinner, or tomorrow's lodging, gone back to the ocean floor, echoed by Sara's laughter at her fear and surprise-
"You dropped this."
Mila stumbled. "What?"
"This." Sara lifted the shell higher. "Do you want it back?"
"I- yes, of course I want-" She bit her lip. "What do you want for it?"
"It's yours," Sara said, her fins breaking the surface and sending a spray of droplets into the air. "Anyway, I don't have a reason to want it."
She swam closer and held it out. Mila gauged the depth of the water – waist deep, at least, maybe up to her chin.
"Could you come in a bit more? I don't feel like taking a swim today."
Sara obliged. Mila edged towards her, but the waves lapped over her knees, threatening to tip her over.
"I'm not going to grab you," Sara told her, continuing sheepishly, "That was a… a bad idea."
"Right." Mila didn't – couldn't – budge.
"And no offense, but I don't want a repeat of our last meeting."
Mila swallowed hard. It wasn't that deep, she told herself. She'd just wait for a lull in the waves-
"Here, catch."
The shell flew through the air, too high and too far, landing on the beach. Mila darted back to drier land and picked it up.
"Sorry," Sara managed through a bout of giggles. "I didn't- I thought it- I've never done that before."
"You've never thrown something?" Mila started to laugh too, shivering from relief and the chilly water.
"Not up here, no. I didn't think it would go that far! It's so- so inconvenient."
Before she could think about it, Mila tossed the shell overhead. She didn't throw it as high as she could have, but Sara gasped as it hung in the sky before dropping back into Mila's palm.
"I don't know, I think it's pretty fun." Mila grinned. She'd eat tonight, and somehow, Sara's giggles soothed the anxious writhing of her mind, though Sara had brought more worries with her. "To what do I owe this visit? I didn't think you'd want to chat."
Mila didn't want Sara to leave. It wasn't the terrified desperation of before, and it wasn't something Mila wanted to examine too closely.
"I had some questions." Sara had swum to shallower waters. She was nearly lying on the sand, her tail twitching languidly to keep her in place. "And you're my only human friend."
"I tried to kidnap you!" Mila exclaimed, gaping at her. "You tried to- what was your plan?"
Sara ducked her head. "This, kind of," she admitted. "It sounds really stupid now, but I was going to- well, I thought I would bring you to one of the rocks offshore where no one would see us, ask you some questions, then make you fall asleep and bring you back so you'd wake up on the beach and believe you were dreaming. Again, I am sorry."
"Oh." Mila blinked slowly. "That-"
"I know."
"You-"
"I know."
"So when you say human friend-"
"Technically, you're the only human I've talked to." Sara smiled. "But you tried to kidnap me, I tried to kidnap you, we worked it out, so now we're friends, right?"
"Sure," Mila agreed.
"Anyway, questions!" There was a small bag looped on a cord around Sara's waist, mostly hidden by her hair. She opened it and removed a transparent shard. "First, this. What is it, exactly?"
"Glass?" asked Mila, bemused. "It looks like glass."
"Yes, glass," Sara replied, gesturing absentmindedly as her voice rose with excitement. "What is it made of? How is it shaped? Where is it from?"
"Oh. Um." Mila frowned, trying to remember. "It's… sand, I think. They heat it until it melts, then shape it when it's a liquid, and it gets hard when it cools."
Sara frowned back at her. "Really? You're not joking?"
"I'm not! I've watched them do it! There's a glassblower in town."
"There is? Can they make something specific if you ask them?"
"Maybe. It depends what it is, I guess. He probably could."
"No, I mean, could you ask him to make something? For me?" Sara tipped her head, eyes sparkling. "I don't think it would be too difficult- I've found a lot of glass that was almost right, but it was broken or the wrong size."
"He wouldn't make anything for me," Mila said softly. She stared at her feet, bare against the sand, and the shell clenched in her hand. She could hardly keep herself fed and clothed, and glass… that was expensive. "I'm sorry."
"Oh." Sara bit her lip, gently worrying at it with her needle-sharp teeth. "I'll think about that."
"You had more questions, right?"
"Yes." Sara looked up at Mila, her purple eyes suddenly serious. "What did you want from me?"
A tear escaped, streaking down Mila's cheek before she could catch it. They didn't come as often these days, but it hurt all the more when something broke through the numbing effects of time and despair.
"I wanted to go home," she whispered. "I just wanted to go home."
Once upon a time, there was a girl.
The course of her story was set before she could have read it herself; she would trace the letters with tiny fingers, uncomprehending, just as she could not see the guiding hand of fate pushing her forwards.
It was a good night for the story to begin, on that night that wasn't a night.
The girl hugged her father's leg. She was afraid of being set adrift in the half-dark city, afraid of being swept into the noise and color and laughter that called to her so strongly. She was dizzy with sleeplessness – she should have been in bed long ago, but more than that, the never-ending cycle of day-dusk-dawn, free of darkness, left her reeling, exhilarated and unsteady.
Then came the dancers.
They whirled through the street, bright fabric and liquid limbs, and Mila had no choice but to follow.
Her own skirt was heavy and patched, an unnamable hue that rested between grey and brown, and her feet were clumsy in her heavy, sensible boots, but her hair flowed through the air like a sheet of fire, like the dancers' silken dresses.
She came to a halt, redfaced and panting. Her father had kept pace beside her in his loping, long-legged stride, and she beamed up at him.
Someone laughed, sharp and mocking, and Mila turned to find a boy her age staring, sneering, dreaming. His clothes were nicer than hers – he was clad in a gleaming-buttoned vest and gleaming-leather shoes – and the man standing at his shoulder was even taller than her father. He was not smiling.
She knew that the boy could not have danced, and she knew that he wanted to. But he had laughed at her, and so Mila stuck out her tongue and twirled away after her father.
Years later, when Mila was no longer a girl but not a woman, when she was the age of being and becoming and only just beginning to understand what it meant to have been, she danced in the parade. The street was not a stage, and no one had come to see her and only her, but it was freedom and it was glorious and for the moment, it was enough.
A young man called out to her as dusk turned to dawn turned to day. He wore a gleaming-buttoned vest and gleaming-leather shoes, and now he was taller than her father. He bought drinks for them both, steaming and thick with sugar, and told her that he lived on a ship and wintered in a place where snow touched the earth, even on winter's longest night. She laughed and talked about the deep groans and shrieks of sea ice that echoed through the air, and of the weeks in which the sun barely crested the horizon. Their conversation was slow and halting, his voice accented and tongue unsure, his thoughts ordered and his curiosity rigid and regimented. He would never dance.
He tipped his head as Mila pulled her heavy, patched skirt over her silken dress and stepped into her sensible boots. One of the cows was calving, she explained, and her parents would need her help – with a stubborn birth, or to milk the other cows and feed the chickens and bring in enough fresh water for them to bathe, while they collapsed, exhausted, into bed. They'd bid her to dance as day turned into dusk-dawn, but now it was day once more.
He wrinkled his nose and asked where else she danced.
Nowhere, Mila explained, aside from the classes she paid for with fresh milk and hours clutching a darning needle. Nowhere. She was too old, too poor, too coarse-mannered, with hands gloved in callouses and boots caked in mud.
But next year, she would dance through the dusk-dawn streets with bright clothes and liquid limbs, her hair flying out like a sheet of flame.
Next year, he said, he hoped he would see her dance.
The next year, he did.
He bought drinks, steaming and thick with sugar, and told her that there were dancers in his city without snow – dancers who would not care that she was too old, too poor, coarse-mannered and calloused, that her boots were caked in mud. Not once they saw her, and not if his father showed Mila his favor.
He asked her to sail to that city without snow because, he said, the girl who whirled through the streets with hair like fire should be on a stage, not chained to the frozen earth by heavy skirts and sensible, mud-caked boots.
But her parents needed her.
Mila remembered her father's smile as she'd beamed up at him, red-faced and dizzy, and her mother's tired eyes as Mila unwrapped the bright cloth bundle of her silken dress and slipped on her light, ribboned shoes. She would not say where the fabric had come from, but from then on there was one less cow to milk in the morning.
He would send them money before they left, he told her, and soon she could too – when she was dancing on a stage for an audience that had come to see her and only her.
And they would be back next year. They always came for the day-dusk-dawn of the northern summer's nightless nights.
Then there was only her choice that wasn't a choice.
There was no time, either: his father would not wait for longer than it took her to pen a letter of promises and clumsy apologies written in shaky, unpracticed letters.
He offered Mila a smile and a ring once the frantic work of setting sail had faded and the coast was only a patch of haze on the horizon. She recoiled, tried to run, but the girl who whirled through the streets with hair like fire was trapped on a boat by an offer she hadn't understood and the miles of water beneath them.
She could not swim.
The captain roared as his son hunched against her rejection, his eyes red and swollen. He did not accuse Mila or follow his father's rage, but he did not speak for her.
He did not say a word as she was escorted off the ship at the port of a tiny, isolated town.
She knew he would not – after all, he had never learned to dance – but hurt rolled over her like the waves that carried the ship away.
There were no dancers here.
Mila could not explain her appearance to the suspicious townsfolk, why she'd walked off the ship with her strange fire-bright hair and silken dress. Even if she'd spoken their language, she could not have argued away the captain's condemnation of this strange girl he'd left on their shore.
She did not watch the ship disappear over the water. With her back to the ocean, Mila promised herself that she would find her way home.
"I just wanted to go home," Mila repeated. The refrain was safer than anything else she might have said – that she wanted to go home, yes, that she wanted to embrace her parents, to dance through the streets on the summer solstice, but that she still yearned to take her place on a stage before a rapt crowd. She wanted everything this town couldn't and wouldn't offer her, and for a few shining moments, she'd thought that at least part of it might be within her reach. "I sell what I find on the beach. No one will give me work, but sometimes they'll pay for what I find – unusual shells, or trinkets that wash up after a storm. It's not even enough to eat some nights. Anyone can pick up shells. I'll never be able to buy passage home."
Sara's expression had grown sympathetic, then wary.
"There's a song," Mila continued, desperate to stop the caution on Sara's face from shifting into fear and betrayal. "A sailor's ship sinks. He swims to shore, but everything he owns is gone. Then he sees a mermaid on some rocks near where his boat went down, and she's wearing a hat- his hat."
There was a soft snort from Sara, and Mila managed a small smile as she pictured Sara donning a sailor's cap.
"He catches her and she calls for help. Her sisters come and he tells them that he'll let her go if they bring him certain things from the shipwreck, and eventually, they pull the entire boat to the surface with everything on it and he sails away."
"We couldn't bring you a boat," murmured Sara. "You know that."
"Of course I know that!" Mila snapped. She dragged her palm across her forehead. "I'm sorry. I know. I can't even sail. But there would have been other things, smaller – from shipwrecks, maybe lost items, or just bigger, stranger shells than would ever wash up on the beach."
A gull cried overhead.
"Would it have worked?" Mila asked as the bird's screech faded.
"No." Sara did not look at her, and Mila was grateful; she did not want to be seen. "I was alone."
Alone.
The gull's cry rang out once more.
"Can you climb?" asked Sara suddenly.
"Climb what?"
"The cliffs-" she gestured northward to the craggy rocks. "Can you?"
"I'm not sure." Mila's gut lurched at the thought, as if she was already climbing and had slipped, plummeting towards the water- no, she told herself. She was still a dancer, with liquid limbs and lean muscles, and her hands were rough with callouses. She would not fall, nor would the sharp rocks cut her palms. "Yes. Yes, I can climb."
"Go to the cliffs tomorrow when the sun is… hmm. About there, I think," Sara said, and pointed at the sky. "Walk along and look down until you see me. I'll show you where to climb. Bring glass and something that can burn, if you can find them, and I will seek out something you could sell."
Mila nodded.
The next day, she wrapped her scant few finds in her skirt and tied the bundle around her waist. She stood on the edge of the cliff in her drawers, desperately glad that there was no one in sight, and peered down to the water until she spotted Sara in the waves.
The climb was not so taxing as she had feared it might be, though the ocean below gripped Mila's mind with icy, crushing fingers. Her own hands found grooves and notches in the cliff. She lowered herself slowly, afraid to look down as she placed her feet.
A spray of water hit her legs and she froze.
"You made it," came Sara's voice, over to one side. Mila forced herself to look over, and Sara smiled. "It's okay, the water isn't deep."
She tested it, letting one foot break the surface, and found sandy gravel underneath.
"Please tell me you had a good reason for this," Mila said shakily. "I would like to sit down now."
Sara laughed. "And if I only wanted to watch you climb?"
Mila glared back at her, cheeks flaring red, bare legs prickling in the breeze. "I-"
"Oh, I'm joking, don't look at me like that," Sara said with a giggle. "Over here."
Behind another jut of rock lay the entrance to a small grotto, carved deep into the base of the cliff. A channel of water cut through its floor, but Mila sighed with relief as she saw the nearly-dry rock around it.
Her breath caught.
"This is underwater most of the time, isn't it?"
"Yes, but don't worry – we'll see the water rising and you can climb back up." Sara tipped her head. "Or if something went wrong, I could always help you swim around to the shore."
"I can't swim," blurted Mila. "Not at all."
"Well," Sara said, hesitating, and flicked her tail. "I don't mean to be rude, but I don't think any humans can actually swim. Some of you take slightly longer to fail than others, is all. I could get you to shore safely. It would just be a little awkward."
"No drowning."
"Definitely no drowning."
Mila exhaled, stepped into the cave, and unwrapped the items rolled into her skirt. Tinder and flint, wrapped in waxed cloth and held carefully from the damp; a few shreds of kindling; a handful of empty bottles and glassware collected from waste piles.
She lined these up. There was a whiskey bottle from behind the pub, a chipped tankard, a milk bottle, and a ceramic pepper mill with a crack down the side. Mila grimaced, ready to apologize-
"I couldn't find much, I'm sorry," said Sara, wrinkling her nose. She'd laid out a handful of shells, a saltwater-blackened coin, and a lumpy, greyish pearl. "You did much better."
Mila huffed a laugh, glancing down at her pile of garbage and back to Sara.
"Then I guess we both did pretty well." Sara beamed at her. "It's so hard to find glass that isn't broken, and- is that for the fire? That isn't exactly easy to come by."
"If you say so," Mila replied. She couldn't tear her eyes away from Sara's slim fingers as she turned the whiskey bottle over in her hands. They were webbed: a thin membrane reached to the first knuckle of each finger, translucent in the dim light. It looked too fragile to withstand the slightest force, but Sara's movements were deft and sure. Her fingers were tipped with short claws that echoed the spines hidden in the fins of her tail.
"Can you make fire?"
Sara watched Mila's hands with a familiar, curious intensity. Mila wondered if Sara was fascinated by the fire, or the strangeness of her body; if she was merely intrigued, or if she, too, had been caught by some spark of unfamiliar beauty.
A few flames finally rose from the kindling, their light dancing in Sara's wide eyes.
"I think this should work," Sara said, and she uncorked the whiskey bottle with a pop. Her free hand twisted and her lips moved, but the soft clicks and hums sounded nothing like speech to Mila's ears.
A trail of fire snaked into the bottle and she jammed the cork back in.
Mila gasped.
"Yes!" Sara grinned, then frowned at her hands. "Oh."
"Put it down, you'll get burned," Mila told her, common sense taking over from disbelief. It should burn itself out, but… "Oh no, Sara-"
Sara looked at her, questioning, and Mila knocked the bottle from her hands and into the pool of water in the grotto's floor. It sparkled as it sank, and Sara twisted, ready to retrieve it.
"No, wait," insisted Mila.
A moment later, the light disappeared and a sheet of water soaked them both.
Sara blinked slowly.
"It exploded," Mila explained. "The heat. It should have just gone out, there wasn't- how did you do that?"
"Oh, I didn't mean to break it! I'm so sorry!"
"I'll find you another one, don't worry" Mila said, "But again, how?"
"It was just a spell." Sara flicked her tail. "You don't-"
"No, we don't." Mila swallowed. "We don't have magic."
"Not at all?"
"No. I didn't think it was real."
"Wait, really?" Sara smiled again, bemused. "Then how did you think we were talking?"
Mila froze. "With… our mouths? Language?"
"I can't speak your language." Sara giggled. "I've been using a translation spell."
It took a few seconds to sink in – too long for Sara to wait, apparently, because she dipped her hand into the water and splashed Mila.
"Oh," Mila finally said.
"I mean, it wouldn't make sense, would it? Sound doesn't carry the same way underwater, and there's no way to make your words without air."
"I suppose not." Mila gazed at the woman in front of her, Sara with her sleek black tail and webbed fingers, her wonder of fire and glass, her nonchalant magic, her soft laughter and quick, bright moods.
Sara stared back at Mila. She'd pulled herself from the water and was perched on the side of the pool, lying propped on one elbow with her tail still in the water. She moved it lazily, sending ripples across the calm surface. "What are you thinking?"
"That I don't understand how I found you," Mila whispered. "How I found you, when all I was looking for was a way to leave."
She leaned forward, hand outstretched, and brushed the silken strands of Sara's long hair.
Sara cupped Mila's cheek with cool, wet fingers. Saltwater dripped down Mila's chin. She brought her hand back to cover Sara's. The soft webbing between her fingers was smoother than the finest satin.
Mila kissed her, felt Sara's smile against her mouth, and licked the salt from her lips.
"I'll help you find your way home," Sara murmured.
Mila's hands shook.
"And then," she replied, "a way back to you."