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unknownfateMary swore that it had been an accident, but that didn’t make any sense.
We were all there the night she joined us. She had been safely strapped into her chair and it pulled her down with it. She struggled as we all had. We all remembered when it had happened to us. Not many memories lasted in the cold deeps, but we all remembered sinking. There was nothing we could do for her but wait. When the last of the bubbles left her, the water poured in and filled her up.
When her eyes opened again, her strength came back and she was able to thrash out of the chair. That was as much of a shock to her as the rest. She had been in the chair because she couldn’t move on her own, and now she could. Her knee and ankle joints had fused together, but she was free of the chair, free of most things now.
The twins reached out to her first. Charity and Chastity had been too desperate to cling to each other to even try to swim when they were dunked. Their scales shone silver on all the places they had been pricked and burned. They were gentle and even with all that had happened to her, Mary wasn’t afraid of them. They took her hands and led her away from the chair. She looked back at it as they went and when she turned, we could see a row of shining scales down her back as well. She had been hurt badly and tied to the chair and left for the tide. She was one of us.
As strange as it was, there wasn’t much to explain. This is what happened when they wanted rid of us. The water took us in and made us its own. We were not entirely forsaken. Mary shook her head. Her brother would never have left her on the beach deliberately. He loved her and she loved him, and he would be heartbroken to find her gone. He would never forgive himself for leaving her there so long.
Adelpha, with her row of scales high around her throat, led the way to the surface to watch and wait for this brother to return. We hid in the waves and waited. Whatever had kept him from getting back in time to save Mary, kept him away for the rest of the night. Mary was distressed. She was certain something had happened to him. It was the only explanation, she was sure. He had met with some peril or he would’ve been back by now.
We let her say it, let her worry and fret as the sun went down and the high tide began to pull back from the rocks again. It had been such a lovely day, Mary told us. The air had been so fresh and the sky so blue. Some time to breathe in the sun and sea air had done her so much good, but the tide had come, and her brother had not. When finally even she admitted that he wouldn’t be coming to scream and call her name on the sand as he looked for her with desperate hope, we sank back down.
She was still sure that only death or imprisonment would’ve kept him away. She wondered what happened to men who drowned. Where did they go?
Not here, we told her. Not like us. Eliza, her hair still braided into a noose around her neck after the rope had rotted away took her to see the old bones and belt buckles. When we see sailors drown , the bubbles escape, but they do not. They are all warm and sunburned, but it didn’t last. Wherever men went when the water was finished with them, it wasn’t here.
It didn’t take long for Mary to wonder about souls. It had occurred to all of us at one time or another. Mary had heard the holy men say we had no souls. We all had. They made crosses at us when they saw us and condemned us to be nothing but sea foam. They were wrong. The crosses didn’t hurt us and we had certainly outlived them. They were the ones dissolved and forgotten in the ocean. We remained. Souls were all we had now. We didn’t need anything else.
They were afraid of that, and afraid of us. They were right to be. Guilty consciences were more honest on the inside. They had done this to us. Out here, on the water, away from their stones and homes, they were at our mercy. Not that they mattered to us very much anymore. It was just that sometimes the song came out on its own. Sometimes it just happened. The shadow of a boat would catch our eye and the song would pour out of our throats.
Maybe when Mary sang, she would know for herself. There would be no need to force it. We all had a song that only certain people could hear.
Adelpha sang down fathers. There might be dozens of sailors on a ship, but only the ones who had left daughters behind would be moved to jump in after it. The twins sang down lawmen. Eliza sang down the captains. I, with scales in the shape of the hand on the back of my head, holding me under, affected clergy. When Mary sang, maybe it would be younger brothers who threw themselves in after her. She had handprints too, gleaming bright as silver on her shoulders where he had pushed her down to the beach in that chair to wait for the tide.
That's how we knew it couldn’t have been an accident. This only happened when were cast in, thrown overboard, pushed. So while Mary insisted that her brother had just lost track of time, that it just been a mistake, we all knew that he never intended to come back for her. We let her think it, let her believe it. None of us had wanted to believe that those we had trusted would do this. The scales on her shoulders shone gleamed, the ones down her spine glittered.
In time, she might realize. Or she might just stop caring. She was free now, in every way she hadn't been before. We all were. Once cast, we owed no one and nothing. We remembered for awhile, but we weren't haunted. None of us ever honestly wanted to go back. The water had taken us in. It had crystallized our scars, pin pricks, and lash marks into diamonds and whatever had been done to us before, it made us beautiful and new.
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