Chapter 2

Nocté scratched her foot and winced in pain. A great deal of time has passed since the sorcery, but she still walks on the ground as if on glass shards. Every step is a torture.

 “Sister was right. I put too much at stake and bit the dust. Why am I not as far-sighted as you, Erida?” The strange gulls’ behavior circling over the black reef attracted girl's attention. The birds attacked something hidden from Nocté's eyes, carrying away some pieces in their beaks. Putting the pain aside, the girl ran out of the bedroom, slid down the spiral staircase past Agnes carrying clean linen and got to the first floor. The maid shouted something behind her, but Nocté didn’t hear.

“Maybe there was a shipwreck somewhere nearby and the victim was washed up on the rocks? Or was it a monster that attacked?” Almost colliding with a cook holding a huge basket of fresh seafood, the girl ran down the steep steps to the beach.

“What a hurry!” the cook snorted, clutching the basket to his lumberjack chest and entering the kitchen filled with the aromas of spices. No matter how hard he tried to please his mistress, she met all his gastronomic specialties with indifference.

“The girl is completely famished,” Agnes grumbled coming in and then opened the window, letting a cloud of steam out into the street. “She has recently been ill and is barefoot again. Oh, the sea! Give me the strength to survive her next disease.”

The cook grunted contentedly and after pouring the clams into a basin of running water, sat down on a low stool holding a knife.

“Leave her. The lady is nineteen, and she has such a burden on her shoulders. Not everyone would survive after so many miscarriages. Maybe it's for the best that the king divorced her, left her here and stopped the tortures. If she failed to give an heir, then why torture her further?” the man frowned, deftly opening shells.

Agnes shook her head, narrowing her eyes to spy on the mistress.

“Well, you are right, but everyone knows what this love cost them. But what was it in reality? Would you be able to live underwater for a mermaid, Bastian?” the maid turned to the cook who was sucking on a bleeding finger.

“If my late Harriet had been a mermaid, I would have come to the sorceress without delay and given all of me, but it’s not our story.” He pursed his plump lips and puffed his rosy cheeks out. His once red side-whiskers were turning gray.

“Let me help you,” Agnes volunteered, waving at the sea. She thought, “Anyway, I can’t see anything. It is Nocté who has a hawk-like vision. She can see everything, especially at night.” But aloud the maid begged, “I hope our little mermaid won’t get sick” pulling another stool up to Bastian. The two of them will manage everything more quickly. “Maybe the mistress is also building up an appetite for dinner.”

Clutching a sodden hem in her hand, Nocté made her way between prominent stones. At the sight of her, the gulls flew noisily in different directions. There was a strong smell of seaweed and rotten fish. The girl frowned.  “Why do I smell death here?”

On the Black Cliff, people strictly followed the ancient rules of the sea sorceress, and everyone knew about it. Nocté had seen dead people: they swelled, turned blue or turned pale from being in the water for a long time. The current smell was alarming, making the pounding of the heart painfully reverberate in the chest.

Clinging to a ledge, Nocté peeked out from behind another rock. Her arm was numb from the strain, but the girl continued to hold on. The bowelled body of a newt laid in front of her. The dark scales faded, stopping to sparkle in the sun. The fin of the bifurcated tail was swaying from the rolling waves. His open mouth, where crabs were nestling, snapping their claws at the cracked male lips, were clogged with yellowish foam. Wide-open eyes that once were black now were covered with mist. Seaweed dangled from the broken temple, covering the eyelids with a greenish-blue bandage.

A long time ago, when her aunt taught her sorcery, Nocté saw her relatives from the inside, and then she learnt about people by reading and carefully looking through the pictures in the books of the royal healer. The newt didn't have the protective armor of the Northern Border Guards, but Nocté knew he was one of them. The girl carefully examined the mutated tail, similar to human limbs. “Did the stream bring him here, or was it monsters endeavour? This could not be done by a human.” Nocté jumped to the newt's body. She pushed the impudent seagull away from his side, removed the seeweed and closed his dead eyes. Once Agnes did the same with an old sailor, saying he would still need eyes in a place where his soul had sailed. A gray moth landed on a newt's shoulder. Light pollen flew from the fluttering wings onto the dried scales. In Sorfmarán, these insects were considered a death omen, a creature that takes the souls of all living beings. They always ended up on the bodies of deceased.

In Umbra, a dead were wrapped in wide laminarias and carried to the throat of submarine volcano. Criminals were given to monsters for dinner. Only the watchers knew with what pleasure their fellow guards fed the victim to the monsters, attentively watching how only bones were left and the torn out spines floated to the surface, breaking on the rocks of the Black Cliff.

The sea villagers have learned to create strong combs, hairpins, jewelry, household utensils and cosmetic, healing products out of the bones of dead newts and mermaids. Nothing was wasted. However, people couldn't kill a sea dweller, sacredly keeping the deal inked after the war, when Nocté's great-great-grandfather almost destroyed the land with storms. Humans underestimated the water, as well as the bloodlust of the old king of newts.

Nocté couldn't bury the dead properly. She turned back to the castle, looked around the cliff — she had no one to wait for help from.

The cliff was skirted by a path washed by waves and led to a stone bowl with a hot spring. The Black Cliff was located next to the underwater volcano, but it was so deep under water that its warmth reached only the bowl, heating water inside it. The sea itself remained cold, resentfully hitting a rocky prominence fencing off the bowl. There was a narrow strip of land stretching along the cliff and leading to the spring. At high tide, the strip was flooded, blocking the way to the hot "bath".

The tide didn't scare Nocté, nor did the possibility of being cut off from the shore for the whole night. The sand there was always pleasantly cooling her feet. The path went down, and waves reached her knees, soaking the dress but allowed Nocté to pass to the bowl. Whitish steam rose from murky turquoise water. The girl could still see it from behind the rock. The invisible bottom of the bowl was marked by numerous cracks with the width of an index finger. Nocté adored lying under the water, feeling with the whole her body the invisible tentacles of hot rising streams.

Now she really wanted to break through the bottom of the spring, take the newt to the volcano and bade farewell. She didn't hear how a strong wave crept up from the behind. It drenched her from head to toe and then, embracing the dead body, carried it away. Nocté held out her hand, but it was too late. The newt disappeared in the dark mouth of a silently swam up moster whose body merged with water.

“You take away from me even this. Do you think I'm not worthy of burying him?” the girl sobbed in her thoughts, turning to the element, shivering from the cold. Her wet dress was sticking uncomfortably to her body, the wind was lashing at her face, making her teeth chatter. Wrapping her arms around her shoulders, Nocté squatted down and buried her face in her knees, silently twisting her mouth with grief, but not a single tear rolled down. If at that exact moment the monster had returned, she would have been glad to see it. But the monsters never attacked. They only carefully watched the one who managed to tame them when she was a mermaid. Over and over after returning to the Black Cliff, the girl felt their invisible eyes on her, saw the fins of sea monsters rolling like needles among the waves. The wind carried the stench of the remains, rotting in the fanged mouths. For her people, Nocté became a monster worse than those that lived here in the northern waters. Maybe that was why monsters didn't touch her: they considered her as their own kind. The splash of water made the girl look up. She did notice how the blue-tinged fin of a living newt disappeared into the water. The Northern Guards were watching her. She knew it. “Erida would never miss an opportunity to gloat.” Nocté got up and, straightening the hem that stuck to her leg, began to climb the stone. An inky-black gaze followed the traitor to the castle stairs. Malice lurked in the dark pupils.

***

Under the surprised looks of Agnes and Bastian, Nocté drank a full cup of water then another one, and, wiping the drops from her chin, looked at the clams, shook her head and went to her room.

The cook threw another empty shell into trash and sighed heavily, “We cleaned the shells — and that's enough. She won't eat anything again. I can say it from the look of her eyes!” He and the maid had already learned to discern the wishes of their silent mistress.

Agnes rinsed the knife and answered, “This was to be expected. Okay, let's have dinner alone.” Groaning, the maid got up, her knees cracked. Agnes hobbled out of the kitchen after her mistress, but when she looked into Nocté's bedroom, she saw her lying on the bed. Black sand stuck to the girl's feet.

Every day Agnes had to shake out the sheets, but she would rather continue to do it, so that the mistress would not fall ill. The maid went through each mistress’s illness as her own. Her heart sank seeing Nocté tossing in a feverish delirium.

“Poor thing. No one knows what fate has been prepared for us, not everyone is given to live happily ever after.” After closing the door, the maid left.

Nocté were staring at the bowl of peaches for a while until she approached it. She took a fruit and bit it. The juice spread over her fingers. The aroma of fruit intensified. Putting down the half-eaten peach, Nocté leaned over the windowsill, stuck out her hand, feeling the breeze blowing through her wet fingers. If the magic had remained with her, a wave would have instantly reached her palm.

“All the magic is gone. I gave it away, traded my nature for floaty happiness." Melancholy flooded her heart.

She’d been sitting near the window till late night. The cold light of the moon peeking out from behind the clouds illuminated the path to the hot spring. The girl was watching as in the shadows a familiar path was enveloped by sparkling waves. Her servants were long since asleep.

When Nocté stepped onto the path, the water peacefully flooded her feet, allowing her to pass to the bowl. The girl didn't need eyes to see. She could walk in absolute darkness and never stumble.

The usual warmth radiated from the bowl, steam rose into the air, blurring the boundaries between the shore and the sea. Throwing the dress on the rocks, Nocté dived into the warming pit.

Two men appeared from behind the rocks. Moving their half-fins half-legs, the newts watched the exile. Her delinquency was much heavier than theirs.

“See, who we have to look after?” the first one noted with disgust, resentfully tossing his dark hair, and they, like seaweed, flowed over his broad, white-scarred shoulders. The newt pulled himself up on the rocks. His sharp black nails grated. Needles protruded from the elbows and along the spine where the smooth fins used to be.

“Our father had an audience with the Queen. She refused him again.” The second newt answered calmly, looking steadily at the pale female hands rising and falling into the water of the bowl. The steam made it difficult to see her perfectly, but he had heard from his brother that the exile was terribly ugly, even for a human. “Bipeds are disgusting by nature.”

“I would have given anything to change places with Geras and serve in the southern waters, but the Queen forbade us to leave the Black Cliff. They even outlined additional protection on the water. Chaos[1], you managed to get back in time, otherwise you would have had to swim back to the south,” Newt smiled mirthlessly.

“What is this nonsense, Aether[2]? It's like we were trying to escape before. I counted the successful days and quickly got downstream.”

“It's a shame it moves only in one direction. It takes about a week to get to the southern lands, and you can swim here in a day or two without much effort.”

The one whose name was told to forget and not even have in thoughts, came out of the water and rose to her full height. The wind pulled off her veil of steam, revealing the very ugliness of a human body. The newts shuddered with disgust.

“I've seen naked women. The water on the southern border is warm, and they like to swim naked there.” Chaos noted, trying not to show himself from behind the stones.

“All of them are nothing compared to mermaids. No veined tail to pass on to spirita, no scales. Even what humans have between their legs resembles a clam closed in a shell under the curls of hair. This one,” Aether nodded in the direction of the girl, “looks more like a pale branch of a dead tree. Her skin is too light and smooth, and her eyes are black, like those monsters that swim near her.”

Chaos raised his eyebrows in surprise. Waterdrops rolled down his temples.

“Even after losing her magic, she still attracts sea creatures. They curl around her like moray eels around the tail of the Queen. If it weren't for the monsters, I'd be happy to rip our prisoner open from the perineal shell to the throat, as we do with monsters suitable for dinner.”

“Does she know we are here?” A wave washed over Chaos from behind and black strands fell over his forehead, hiding his dark eyes. Scales appeared on his temples.

Aether shrugged his shoulders, “Maybe, but she’s never made it clear for sure. She is constantly near the water, even in bad weather, and then disappears and returns even more exhausted, pale and disgusting. It's not very pleasant to watch her. She’s torn between – goes into the sea, then comes out. However, you can't order the element. It accepts her, drives her away and again it fwans on her feet with waves.” The newt spat into the water. “To exchange the beauty and essence of a mermaid for this life. Death is better.”

“However, the girl is still alive. And Erida assigned us to her. Why would such attention be paid to exiled sister?” Chaos wanted to swim closer. Watching a princess without a tail was more interesting than bathing naked female humans.

“Ask her,” Aether snapped back. “Let’s go! I saw enough to write a report. At least there are octopuses here, whose ink doesn’t blur.”

Chaos nodded, but as he swam away, he saw the princess standing motionless and looking in their direction. There was a mist in her eyes, wet ash-colored hair stuck to her back, the nipples of her high breasts were pointed, and long scars ran down from her flat stomach. Similar ones were visible on the inner side of her thighs.

“Once this part of the body was a tail,” Chaos thought and dived after his brother.

Nocté watched the newts swam with an indifferent look and doused in the water. Hot streams burned the scars on her stomach. Sometimes it seemed to the girl that scales were showing through the wounded skin, but when she ran her fingers, she felt the usual roughness of seams. Her last pregnancy lasted five months — a little more and she would have given the king a cherished child, but a sharp pain pierced her body. Nocté woke up with an empty abdomen, bulging seams and the healer who were bending over her carefully. He was saying something, but the girl couldn't get a word. She just saw the movement of his thin lips. She realized her uselessness and inferiority in the world of humans. Her fairy tale was over. The child died.

Nocté surfaced, and clouds of steam rose into the air. Pulling the dress over her wet body, the girl wandered back to the castle. The rest of the night was spent in nightmares that brought with them the appearance of a dead newt – crabs crawled out of the torn belly, clicking their claws. They devoured the dead flesh, and gray moths landed on the newt's eyes and mouth. The clicking grew louder until Nocté woke up. A day was breaking outside, gulls were screaming loudly, waves were beating noisily against the rocks. The air smelled like freshly baked bread. For the first time in forever, Nocté felt hungry.

[1] Chaos — primary state of the universe, the formless totality of matter and space (as opposed to order).

[2] Aether (mountain air) — in acient Greek is the personification of the "upper sky", the abode of the gods, as well as his personification - the deity Aether. According to the most popular version, God Ether was the son of Erebus.