Yes, They Can Drown

    Deep sea fish swam leisurely over her, a few of them giving her hair some experimental nibbles. Lucila summoned up the strength to hiss at them. They darted away, all long tails and grotesque jaws. Aesthetics weren't very important at the bottom of the sea. Up on the surface, of course, it had been crucially important to look good, what with the bright sun bleeding golden light everywhere, and her husband - the sweet little fool - always taking her to every important occasion. Apparently the life's work of a human queen was to show her face around a lot and act pretty. It was very tiring work. Lucila only put up with it because her husband was a sweet little fool, and also because, according to everyone she met, she was very good at looking good.

    "Fat lot of good that did me," she said out loud, just to make sure she could still talk. She could. She immediately regretted the action, though - the water tried with every ounce of its strength to shove itself up her throat and make her drown.

    If it was even possible for her to drown. She wasn't sure. Her father, as she recalled, had tried to make her take lessons on basic anatomy, but she was too busy exploring wrecked ships and stalking wayward fishermen to pay attention. There were two worlds, of this she was perfectly clear: the dark, violent seas, and the bright fresh air of land. What she never could quite understand was the fact that the two worlds were separate, and were meant to stay separate.

    A deep sea ground-dweller, rather resembling a prawn, shuffled up to her ear and pinched it. "Ow!" She jerked her head, but the chains kept her from moving far enough. From the corner of her mouth she spat a glob of water into the prawn, gently propelling it back into the darkness.

    And now her cheek hurt. It was bruised where the chains had bit into her scales. I got done in by a prawn, she thought, and almost laughed out loud.

    Her husband loved to dance. He had taken lessons, he had told her gravely, and the first time he had taken her hand in the ballroom he was very particular about following his teachers' instructions. Right hand here, left hand there. Follow my movements. Apparently he had practiced many hours for this moment.

    It took him thirty minutes of stops and starts and nearly constantly getting his toes stomped to give up. He threw back his head and laughed, and then drew her into an embrace, saying, "You dance like an elephant, you know." They just swayed to the music after that, easy. Lucila only stepped on his feet again once.

    The constant pressure from the ocean's entirety was beginning to get to her head. She thought she saw a bright light coming towards her, and she opened her mouth and cried, "Father, father! You came!" remembering too late how hard it was to keep the water out when she was speaking. But the light was not her father's crown. It was only a tiny luminescent creature, and it landed on her forehead, a very faint warmth between her eyes, and then left. Her body grew very cold, then very hot, then progressively colder again. She barely felt the sharp bite on her tail scales. With a sluggish effort, she pushed her tail up against the chains and then slapped it down, rattling the anchor she was strapped to. Something disturbingly large surged away from her tail - and then all was darkness once more.

    She remembered, hazily, that for the longest time she thought her husband was referring to a geoduck. She had heard them referred to as elephant-somethings before, and besides, geoducks couldn't dance for their lives. But eventually her husband found out. She remembered his laughter, his long, bright laughter, and then he had taken her to a zoo. In the zoo were two elephants.

    They were old, wrinkled things, doomed to live the rest of their lives in twenty square feet of dusty enclosure. They looked at her with wide, accusing eyes.

    In an instant, she forgot completely the spell to change her tail into human legs. She crumpled to the floor, half fish again, her webbed hands gripping the bars of the elephants' cage, and for some mystifying reason she was crying a river. Her husband - she didn't know what happened to her husband. She only knew that in an instant she had ceased to be the country's queen, and instead had become a witch. The people panicked. They stabbed at her with swords and pitchforks, tried to drown her in the river her tears had made, but her scales were hard and the saltwater river was nothing compared to the sea. Next they bound her in ropes woven from vines and threw her into the clearest river they could find, but the vines came back to life and unraveled themselves from her arms, instead weaving into her hair, and she swam back to the surface. Finally they put her in a cage and carried her on a ship to the deepest part of the sea, and with metal chains they bound her to an anchor and cast her over the side. The chains were not her friends, and the sea, once her home, was cold now. She sank slowly to the soft sand floor.

    Yes, she decided then, lying under the sea. Mermaids can drown. She was feeling it already. Her body had stopped feeling cold - now it was just numb. She couldn't tell how many creatures were scavenging at her flesh, but from the corner of her eye she saw some bizarre, nightmarish creature attach itself to her bruised cheek and start to suck. Her vision blurred. There was no pain. She wondered, in a last-ditch, aimless sort of way, whether her husband missed her. Or perhaps he thought she really was a witch, and he was mourning for her apparently possessed soul? Oh, well. It had been fun while it lasted.

    And now something was eating her eyeball. These little buggers really worked fast. They probably didn't get a proper meal very often, down here where the sun never shines. She was glad that at least her body would be put to some decent use. Lucila closed what was left of her eyes and gave herself up to the sea.