“I have not traveled this route since I was such young mermaid,” Syrena said as she and Sophie swam south from the Jottnar. Her deep sigh blew bubbles of air from the gills behind her ears, making her look, for one brief moment, as if she were wearing a magnificent silver headdress. “I am much glad to see Ran and her daughters before we come here. Their love make me strong. This is sad place for me.”
“Is this—this is—”
“This where Griet lay, yes. Where she taken from me, where she die. Where she pushed out to the sea. Griet is all through the waters but here, here she is most strong. So I must be most strong too, ya?” Syrena looked at her charge and smiled at the girl. “You help make me strong, Sophia. You clean my heart, and you be here with me, you give me someone more to love. And love makes heart strong.”
From atop her platform of ocean, Sophie could hardly believe her ears. Did Syrena just say she loved her? A rush of emotion—excitement or anxiety, she couldn’t tell—swept the girl’s heart and she was speechless. Had she felt any such love back at the Ogresses’, when she pried inside the mermaid? She could not remember—all she dug at was the grief, the sorrow, feelings so mammoth they knocked her out. Without hesitation, Sophie plunged into the mermaid. She wasn’t looking for sadness now, but love—and love she found. Syrena’s interior was awash with it, completely flooded. A sea inside a sea maiden, it twinkled with salt and held currents of tragedy, tidal pulls of fearsome moods, but all of it within the liquid body of love. And Sophie found herself there, the tenderness the mermaid felt for her, the lessons she’d learned tugging her willful charge from the new world to the old. What was the flavor of this love? Pride, it was flavored with pride. Syrena was proud of her, and proud of herself, for the highs and lows of their unfinished journey. Their journey. Syrena’s love for her was tied to her love for herself, much the way her love for Griet had existed during their time together. She and Syrena were a team, a pair. They were partners now, sisters. And Sophie realized she did not need to push and pull against the mermaid for her respect and concern. The mermaid held her in highest regard.
She pulled away as they sailed through the water. “I didn’t know,” Sophie said.
“Well, has been complicated.” Syrena shrugged. “Love a living thing. Grows and changes. But we have arrived in this place, ya? We have arrived together, and we are good.”
“Yes,” Sophie nodded. She didn’t want to ruin the moment by, like, bursting into tears or gushing, I love you, too! The mermaid’s love was a noble love, and Sophie wanted to be worthy of it. “Yes,” the girl agreed. “We have arrived together.”
AS THEY MOVED toward the Baltic Sea, the water around them grew an icy shade of blue, and in the distance Sophie could see pods of beluga whales, white as ghosts, swirling together, creating whirls and currents. A school of cod came upon them, making their world momentarily silver, and Sophie, suddenly hungry, reached out her hand and snagged one. Like any other animal of the sea, she bared her teeth and ate.
She awaited the rest of the mermaid’s story. It seemed to Sophie then the most precious gift anyone could give another, their story. In a world where everything can be stripped away by the whims of fortune, it was all that remained, stuck inside your body like an organ. To offer someone your story was like offering them your heart, Sophie realized, and she wondered if she was beginning to think like a poet, and if Syrena would be pleased. She watched the mermaid regard the sea around them with recognition and wonder, reaching out her hands so that the waters streamed through her elegant fingers, twirling through her rings of shell and coral. It was as if Syrena was reading the sea, as if she could feel the difference between these waters and all the waters in their wake.
As she watched the mermaid, Sophie had a chilling feeling of someone watching her, watching them both as they made their way out from the Kattegat and into the sea that would bring them, finally, to Poland. She knew it was her grandmother, and that the eye had been upon her all the while.
I know you see me, Sophie thought fiercely inside her heart. And when you come for me, I’ll be ready for you, Nana. I may even come for you first. My heart is so strong, filled with stories and love. And whatever you might have to use against me, I know you don’t have that.
A chorus of squeals and coos broke Sophie from her thoughts of her grandmother, and she looked up to see Syrena beating her tail, swimming joyfully into the pod of beluga whales who welcomed her. The water of the Baltic seemed thinner, as if more of the sun could get through; the light lit up Sophie’s world in a heavenly blue, light as the sky. Flat-bodied flounders lay in the sand beneath her, looking upward with goofy eyes. A school of metallic silver fish shimmered past, momentarily blinding her. When her eyes adjusted, she could see the mermaid, one hand on the flank of a whale, the other beckoning her into the deep.