The Line Between

gets so he can breathe out, «Aren't I being punished enough?»

«Not nearly," I says. But Julia Caterina makes that sound again, and all on a sudden I'm so rotten sorry for her and Henry Lee I can't barely speak words meself. Nowt to do but rest me hand on his shoulder, while he sits there by his wife, and her turning under his own hands. Time we leave that sea–smelling room, it's dark outside, same as in.

And I didn't stir out of that house for the next nineteen days. Seems longer to me betimes, remembering — shorter too, other times, short as loving a wall and a barmaid — but nineteen days it were, with all the curtains drawn, every servant long fled, bar Gopi, him who'd come for me. That one, he stayed right along, went on shopping and cooking and sweeping; and if the smell and the closed rooms and us whispering up and down the stair — aye, and the sounds Henry Lee made alone in the night — if it all ever frighted him, he never said. A good man.

Like I figured, she never lost speech. I'd hear them talking hours on end, her and Henry Lee — always in the Portygee, of course, so's I couldn't make out none of it, which was good. Weren't for me to know what Henry Lee was saying to his wife, and her changing into a mermaid along of him getting rich. He tried to tell me some of their talk, but I didn't want to hear it then, and I've forgot it all now — made bleeding sure of that. I already know enough as I shouldn't, ta ever so.

Nineteen days. Nineteen mornings rising with me head so full of that sea–smell — stronger every day — I couldn't hardly swallow nowt but maybe porridge, couldn't never drink nowt but water. Nineteen nights lying awake hour on hour in one of the servants' garrets — I put meself there, 'acos I don't dream in them little cubbies the way I do in big echoey rooms such as Henry Lee had for his guests. I don't like dreaming, to this day I don't, and I liked it less then. Never closed me eyes until I had to, in that dark house.

Seventeenth night … seventeenth night, I've just finally gotten to sleep when Henry Lee wakes me, shaking me like the house is afire. I come up fighting and cursing — can't help it, always been that way — and I welt him a rouser on the earhole, but he drags me out of the bed and bundles me down to their room with a blanket around me shoulders. I keep pulling away from him, 'acos I know what I'm going to see, but he won't let go. His blue eyes look like he's been crying blood.

He'd covered her with every damp towel and rag in the house, but she'd thrown them all off … and there it is, there, laying out on the sheets that Henry Lee changes with his own hands every day, and Gopi takes to the dhobi–wallah for washing. There it is.

Everything's gone. Legs, feet, belly, all of it, everything, gone as though there'd never been nothing below her waist but that tail, scales flickering and glittering like wet emeralds in the candlelight. Look at it one way, it's a wonderful thing, that tail. It's the longest part of a mermaid or a merrow, and even when it's not moving at all,

like hers wasn't just then, I swear you can see it breathing by itself, if you stand still and look close. In and out, slow, only a little, but you can see. It's them and it's not them, and that's all I'm going to say.

Now and then she'd twitch it a bit, flip the finny end some — getting used to it, like, having a tail. Each time she did that, Henry Lee'd draw his breath sharp, but all he said to me as we stood by the bed, he said, «It's made her more beautiful, Ben, hasn't it?» And it had that. She'd always had a good face, Julia Caterina, but the change had shaped it over, same as it had shaped her body. There was a wildness mixed in with the old sweetness now — mermaids is animals, some ways — and it had turned her, whetted her, into summat didn't have no end to how beautiful it could be. I told you early on, they ain't all beautiful, but even the ugly ones … see now, people got ends, people got limits — mermaids don't. Mermaids got no limits, except the sea.

She said his name, and her voice were different too — higher, yes, but mainly clearer, like all the clouds had blown off it. If that voice called for you, even soft, you'd hear it a long way. Henry Lee picked her up in his arms and put his cheek against hers, and she held onto him, and that tail tried to hold him too, bumping hard against his legs. I thought to slip out of there unnoticed, me and me blanket, but then Henry Lee said, quiet–like, «We could … I suppose we could put her in the water tonight, couldn't we, Ben?»

Well, I turned round on that fast, telling him, «Not near!» I pointed at the three double lines on both sides of her neck, so faint they were, still barely visible in her skin. «The gill slits ain't opened yet — drop her in a bathtub, she'd likely drown. Happen they might never open, I don't know. I'm telling you straight, I never seen this — I don't know!»