Yoon Ha Lee - [BCS298 S01] Read online

  The Mermaid Astronaut

  Yoon Ha Lee

  On a wide and wondering world in a wide and wondering galaxy, there lived a mermaid. She was not the only mermaid who dwelled in the deep and dreaming oceans of her world. An entire society of mers shared rule of the seas with the whale-sages and the anemone-councils, among many others. This particular mermaid had named herself Essarala, which means seeks the stars in the language of tide and foam.

  Essarala’s mothers and sisters and cousins understood the significance of her name, and they sometimes came to discuss it with her. On one such occasion, Essarala sat upon a rock jutting out from the sea, the waves lapping against her koi-spotted tail. It was nighttime, and she gazed longingly up at the constellations and the one bright planet that was visible to the naked eye. The stars in those constellations, she knew, were suns like the one her own planet orbited, a fact that fascinated her but which none of her relatives found of particular interest.

  “We are navigators true and fierce,” said one of her younger sisters, whose name, Kiovasa, meant the sea and the moon are partners—a standard, conventional name, resurrected every few generations by proper-thinking mers. She swam in lazy circles around Essarala’s rock, her striped tail flicking in and out of the waters. “But I fear, Essarala, that you mean something other than simple navigation.”

  “I want to visit the stars,” Essarala said. “There are other worlds out there. Why remain confined to this one, when I could see the plethora of galaxies that exist?”

  Kiovasa playfully splashed water at her. Essarala accepted the drenching with good humor. After all, she had nothing to fear from water.

  “I don’t think it’s about wealth, for you,” Kiovasa said. “If all you wanted were riches, why, we could find you plenty of plunder.”

  Essarala had to admit this was true. The sailors who plied the waters made copious offerings to the sea, either in exchange for good luck or, more tragically, when their ships sank and their cargoes spilled into the ocean. From the moment of her birth onward, Essarala’s family had not stinted with their gifts, and when she grew older and more adventurous, she, too, had participated in scavenging expeditions so she could give gifts back in her turn. Her own sea-cave was filled with asymmetrical crowns set with spinels and sapphires, gilt-edged chanfrons, scrimshaw depicting sacrifices to eldritch gods, and more.

  But these gifts, however well-intentioned and however gratefully received, did nothing to ease the itching in Essarala’s heart whenever she looked up at the star-wealth of the night sky.

  Kiovasa spoke with Essarala a little longer and found that Essarala would not be dissuaded from her desire. Having established that, Kiovasa called out a song of farewell and dived deep, swam fast, leaving Essarala behind.

  Essarala might have remained suspended in the land of dreams forever, coming to her rock on clear nights to gaze fruitlessly skyward, if not for the arrival of the traders.

  The traders came from the sky in a great ship made of metal. It did not look like the galleons or junks or outrigger canoes that the mers were familiar with. But then, mers had little expertise in shipbuilding, so this did not alarm them unduly.

  The ship landed on the coast of an island above the coral reef where Essarala’s family held their ancestral seat. From it emerged creatures the likes of which the mers had never seen before either; no two of them alike. Some of them walked on two legs and some on six, some of them had six fingers on their hands and some had tentacles instead, some of them had friendly waving eyestalks and others no eyes at all.

  The mers’ interpreters worked day and night to communicate with these newcomers and find out what they wanted. Their visitors cooperated with this process, making offerings of shimmering metalweave fabrics and curious tools for capturing fish more efficiently. The mers found the former of more interest and smilingly declined the latter. After all, they had treaties with the fish nations and no desire to overstep them.

  Essarala learned of the traders from her cousins’ gossip, and she lingered near the interpreters, watching and wishing. She longed to explore their ship and ask them to take her with them to the stars. But the more she listened, the more she learned, and one thing became obvious: their ship might carry water for its crew to drink, but it didn’t contain water for a mer to live in. Saddened by this obstacle, she withdrew, and at first no one noticed it.

  In the meantime, the mers and visitors learned to speak to each other. They planned a grand feast, featuring the fish nations’ best offerings, as well as tasty morsels of sea urchin or sea cucumber and the finest kelp salads. The visitors, for their part, ran curious tests—to make sure they didn’t accidentally poison anyone, they said—and contributed strange delectations of their own, some resembling fruit, some resembling fish, and some concoctions that the mers had no word for other than delicious.

  At last Kiovasa realized that she hadn’t seen Essarala hanging around the traders for some time. Concerned, she secured her sister an invitation to the feast. It wasn’t hard—no one would have thought of leaving her out—but Kiovasa made sure it had been handwritten upon a sheet of magical ice by one of the mers’ master calligraphers, all the better to reignite Essarala’s interest.

  Kiovasa found Essarala on her rock as usual. The weather had been unusually fine, courtesy of the local dragon-spirit, yet Essarala had hardly interacted with her family at all during the past week. Still, she couldn’t refuse to welcome her sister.

  Kiovasa presented the glittering invitation to her. “Come,” she said coaxingly, “you’ll hear more stories from the far-travelers, of the places they’ve seen and the things they’ve eaten. They’ve even brought foods from the stars.”

  Essarala didn’t react with the delight that Kiovasa had expected. “Sister-sweet,” she said, turning the invitation around disconsolately in her hands, “I have heard their stories. What’s more, I have been listening to the murmurs of the waves and the wind about this ship of metal, and they have confirmed what I thought. This ship of metal is full of travelers from the stars, yes—but the ship itself has no water for a mer to live in.”

  Kiovasa, who had been swimming clockwise around the rock, reversed direction, thinking. Her sister was right. All of the traders were land-dwellers.

  “You should come anyway,” Kiovasa said. “At least you’ll get a glimpse of the faraway worlds that you’ve always loved.”

  “No,” Essarala said, turning her face away. “I’m afraid that once I hear more stories, being left behind when the visitors leave—and they will leave, won’t they?—will be all the more unbearable.”

  It was a young mer’s logic. But the only cure for that was time, and time was what they had so little of. “In that case,” Kiovasa said, “we must take more drastic measures. We must visit the witch beneath the waves, and she will have a solution.”

  The witch beneath the waves lived at the bottom of a great chasm, one so vast and dark that even the mers visited it reluctantly. Swarms of lanternfish lit the way down to the witch’s dwelling, and even so, Kiovasa and Essarala struggled to see anything in the murky gloom of the waters.

  At last they reached the witch’s dwelling. Strange phosphorescent worms and rocks indicated the entrance. “We have come to ask a boon of you,” Kiovasa called out, her voice distorted by the pressure of the waters.

  For a long time all they heard was silence. And then the witch’s voice emerged from within: “I would hear from the one who wishes the boon.”

  Essarala let go of her sister’s hand and swam toward the voice. She could not see the witch, and it made her afraid. “It’s me,” she said, almost in a whisper. “I wish to petition the travelers from the stars and ask to j
oin their crew.”

  A soft glow lit the witch’s dwelling from within, more worms waking and wriggling. The witch herself, however, only manifested as a sketch of inky lines, like half a silhouette. She was smiling, but her smile was sad.

  “You would give up the sea you know, and your family, and the songs of gulls, to explore the worlds beyond?” the witch asked.

  “I don’t think it’s such an evil thing,” Essarala replied, “to want to see new worlds and taste their waters.”

  “Evil, no,” the witch said. “Difficult, yes.”

  “If you can’t help me—”

  “That’s not the kind of difficulty I meant,” the witch said. “I can give you two legs like the humans, that you might walk on land, or upon the deck of a starfaring ship for that matter. The rest, though—the rest is up to you. For there’s more to starfaring than having legs. You’ll have to familiarize yourself with their alerts, read oxygen gauges, watch out for toxic atmospheres and flesh-eating pathogens, and that’s just the beginning.

  “You are well-educated in the ways of your people,” the witch went on. “I have no doubt that you can identify every fish in the sea by the way it swims, and the birds of the waters by their silhouettes. You know the language of the moon when she sings to the waters and how to read the writing of every civilization that has ever built ships. You can read the wind and the waves. But where you are going, it’s darker even than the chasm I call home, and there’s no wind in space, nor waves other than the spiral density waves of the great galaxies themselves.”

  Essarala trembled, for while she didn’t understand much of the terminology that the witch had used, she recognized that she was out of her depth. If only she had spent some of that time star-gazing instead learning about the strange and chancy technologies that land-dwellers had invented, and which might keep them alive in the hostile void. But it was too late now. She had to choose, and choose soon, for the traders would not remain indefinitely.

  “Tell me your price,” Essarala said, speaking more loudly.

  The witch nodded. “Someday you will want to come back home,” she said. “When you do, visit me, and we will speak of it then.”

  “Is there nothing else you would accept of me?” Essarala asked, for the thought of returning to the chasm filled her with a nameless dread.

  “That is the price,” the witch said. “Take it or leave it.”

  “I will come with you,” Kiovasa said to Essarala, “when you return. You won’t have to do it alone.”

  Much later, Essarala would remember the witch’s expression and the grief in it. At the time, however, all she knew was her gratitude for her sister’s kindness and loyalty. She reached out and pressed Kiovasa’s hand.

  “I cannot do it here,” the witch said. “The depths would kill you before you could ask your boon of the spacefarers. But I can give you the means.”

  The dark lines of the witch’s figure shifted and stirred. For a moment she resembled nothing so much as the abstract patterns that moonlight makes over the waves, except in reverse. Then the patterns reassembled, and the witch held out a knife, hilt-first.

  It was made of shell, and in the eerie light of the worms and rocks it had an iridescent sheen. “It will hurt,” the witch said. “Certain kinds of desire always do. When you are ready, cut your tail in half, and your legs will emerge. If you change your mind”—and Essarala opened her mouth to protest that she wouldn’t, except the witch’s stern look quelled her—”then throw it into the sea, and it will find its way back to me.”

  “Thank you,” Essarala said in spite of her trepidation, for a favor given must always be acknowledged. She did not speak the rebellious thought in her heart: that she would journey among the stars as long as possible, and perhaps in that time she would find a way to cheat the witch of her price.

  The next night, Kiovasa and Essarala attended the feast. The sentinel sharks and dolphins recognized their invitations and let them in without comment. On any other occasion, the two of them would have noticed the splendid decorations that the creatures of sea and shore had labored over. Bright banners of fabric woven from hippocampus manes and the mers’ own long tresses waved in the wind; lanterns containing glowing fungus and dancing fireflies illuminated the long tables. The platters, of lacquer or beaten gold, carved jade or peerless celadon, contained every form of delicacy the peoples of the sea and the peoples of the stars knew how to prepare.

  But Kiovasa could only think of how she was going to lose her sister, and Essarala felt the weight of the witch’s shell knife, carried in a pouch of gold-washed chainmail, as though it would drown her.

  “Come join us!” the other mers called from their seats by the lapping waves. They were already drinking and singing, exchanging stories of navigators and mapmakers, and the occasional ballad of island-dwelling lovers. Kiovasa waved back, heavy of heart though she was.

  “I must do it now,” Essarala whispered to her sister, “or I will lose all courage.” For beyond her many relatives she could see the visitors from the stars, supping in their various fashions, and even past them, the long silhouette of their far-voyaging starship. And the longing burned even more fiercely in her heart.

  Mers have little notion of privacy, since everything that happens in the sea is known to one and all in short order. Even so, Kiovasa nodded and took her aside, a little way down the shore from the feast. Gulls and terns wheeled overhead, and the sandpipers cried out, whether in warning or welcome. No one watched, and why should they? They had other matters on their mind.

  Essarala drew out the knife and passed the pouch over to her sister. She steadied herself with a deep breath, tasting the salt spray in the air, the sweet ether influence of the star-currents. Then she brought the knife plunging down.

  The pain of the cut almost caused her to faint. But her sister caught her in her arms and steadied her as she swayed. The beautiful koi-spotted scales of Essarala’s tail peeled away, and she emerged with two legs, like the humans of her world.

  Kiovasa kissed her on the brow. “Go,” she said to Essarala. “The stars are waiting for you.” And she watched from the shallow lapping waters as Essarala took her first uncertain steps.

  One by one the mers noticed; one by one the traders noticed. And they all stared, murmuring in wonder among themselves, as Essarala made her way to the starship’s captain.

  The captain dined at the head of the aliens’ table. They were a tall creature covered with downy feathers, and their head sported a magnificent crest that Essarala had originally mistaken for a hat. When they saw Essarala approaching, they nodded at her in welcome. “Have you had a chance to enjoy the food?” they asked her in her own language.

  For her part, Essarala was embarrassed that she could not speak the captain’s tongue, although she knew very well that it contained sounds that no mer could make. “My name is Essarala,” she said, “and like my name, I wish to seek the stars. I beg a boon of you—that I may join your crew, and travel to distant worlds with you.”

  The captain glanced at the koi-colored scales that clung still to Essarala’s bare legs and knew the sacrifice that she had made. “Of course you may,” they said kindly. “But you will start as the least among my crew, not because we wish to insult you, but because there are a great many protocols involved in life on a starship that you will have to learn before you can be trusted with more.”

  “I do not mind,” Essarala said, her heart leaping within her.

  “You will,” the captain said, “but no matter; you will also have friends and comrades to share the journey with you.”

  And with that they invited her to squeeze in to their right, and to join with them in the feast.

  The next morning, the captain and their crew prepared to say farewell to the mers and the people of the sea. Essarala, however delighted with her good fortune, was not so overcome that she forgot her sister. She sought Kiovasa out by the ocean’s edge and ran out into the water to embrace her one last time.


  “I hope you see every world around every star,” Kiovasa whispered into her ear. Kiovasa, who had never thought much about the sky except the fact that her sister yearned after it so much, had no idea how many worlds there were in the universe, or stars either. But Essarala accepted the blessing in the spirit in which it had been given.

  “I will sing your name to each of them,” Essarala promised.

  “I will listen for it every night,” Kiovasa said. Then she shoved Essarala lightly. “Go! I don’t want you to miss your opportunity.”

  Trepidation seized Essarala’s heart, but she had come too far to turn back now. She ran through the splashing waves to the starship, which gleamed pink and orange and silver-bright in the sunrise. Already she was acclimating to her new legs, and to the sensation of her feet in the wet sand, and then on the cold metal of the starship’s ramp.

  The captain welcomed her aboard and introduced her to the crew members who would show her the basics of life on a starship. “Listen always to Ssen,” the captain said, indicating a snakish alien whose mechanical suit provided them with tentacle-like grippers in the place of hands. “They will watch over you. I will see you at ship’s mess.” And the captain dismissed her.

  “Come with me,” Ssen said through a translation device. They showed Essarala how to strap herself into a couch for liftoff and warned her not to panic when the couch engulfed her with oxygenated gel to cushion her from the ship’s acceleration. “As a member of the crew,” they added, “you will have to study the fundamentals of physics, and the functioning of the ship, and how to help with its maintenance. We’ll speak more of that after we’re underway.”

  As a kindness to her, although Essarala would not realize it until later, Ssen had given her a couch across from the viewport that would give her the best view of her world as she left it for the first time. Her heart beating rapidly with mixed worry and excitement, Essarala braced herself for liftoff. Ssen need not have been concerned about her reaction to the protective gel, for it was not so different from the waters she had swum in all her life.