Page 70 of The Girl with a Thousand Faces
When all of that is done, the bottles get returned to the carry bag and you stand, striding toward the beach. Splash back to the ocean with these newly made prizes.
This is the sort of kindness you are capable of, and as a goddess of mercy, I have always loved that trait in you.
Sea Sister appreciates it, certainly. She trembles like a reed when you handher the bottle with its preserved pictures inside. A picture frame for ocean dwellers.
“Yours forever,” you say. “Bottles will last a long time.”
She turns it over and over in disbelief, handling it with amazed reverence. Finally, she traces a finger over the scrap of paper, with its small message.
“A message from me, in case you forget,” you say, and can’t quite meet her gaze.
Sea Sister whispers the words you have written:
From Shore Sister to Sea Sister: may we always be friends forever.
Sea Sister looks at you for a long moment from beneath the water. Then something extraordinary happens: she lurches out of the ocean, crouching on the rocks under the sun’s bright gleam.
You yelp and fall backward, more startled than afraid. The entire time you’ve known her, she hasn’t surfaced, and the natural assumption has been that she can’t.
Quickly, you realize why she doesn’t. That beautiful, pale-green skin begins to dry out, tiny cracks forming at the creases of her joints. Just like a stranded jellyfish. Her pearly eyes turn red and veiny, as if exposed to a hot oven. This creature belongs in the ocean, and being out of it surely causes her pain.
She presses a clammy palm to your sunburned cheek.Thank you, Shore Sister.Her touch drops away, but the coolness of it lingers.
“Do you like it? Is that okay?”
I love it, she says, in a voice like foam on rocks.No one else gives me gifts. No one else remembers me. Everyone left me.
“Who left you, Sea Sister?” Strange chills are going through you, despite the warmth of the day, despite the soupy water. There is something here, a moment happening and you do not want to miss it. “Who forgot you?”
A question for a question.There’s a challenge to her voice.Who do you think I am? When you know that, you will know who left me and forgot me.
“I think,” you say, carefully, “that you are the reason my mother warned me against swimming. I think when she speaks of sharks in the water, she is thinking of you.”
Sea Sister makes a strange noise, low in her throat; after a moment, you realize she is laughing.What doyouthink, Shore Sister?
“I think you are like nothing else on this island. Everything here is so dead,but you are so alive, so fierce.” You pause, searching for the words. “I wish I was like you. I wish I could be free and strong, swimming the waves as a jiaoren.”
Is that… what you want?Sea Sister peers from beneath the sweep of her kelp-tangled hair.I can make that happen, Shore Sister. I can make you like me.
“Really?” Astonishment blooms in your heart. “Do you have that power?”
I do. If you trust me, if you want it, then come with me.And she extends sleek green fingers, skin frazzling in the sun.
You don’t even hesitate. Her hand fits neatly against yours, and you squeeze it tight.
Sea Sister smiles and murmurs,Hold your breath!as she tucks the gifted glass bottle under her other skeletal arm, and pulls you into the water.
Sea Sister swims a long way.
Amidst the whirl of water and fish and sunlight and coral, you become disoriented, losing all sense of direction. The shore is visible to one side but she’s swimming so fast there’s no time to gauge how far it is, or which bit of the island.
One last surface breach for a gulp of air, and then she dives a second time.
This is deeper than you’ve ever gone, ears popping. Fifty feet? More? Hard to say. Strangely, it’s easy to hold your breath, easier to see than it was before you met her. You’re getting used to doing that, after all these months. Still, the suddenness of the descent is a little unpleasant.
Your lungs are beginning to ache again by the time she starts angling up and it is hard, hard, hard not to panic because she’s drawn you somewhere with a strong current and no light. Rock walls scrape your arms, and the space is extraordinarily narrow.
She has pulled you into some kind of undersea tunnel. The realization is alarming. Press tight against her, not wanting to be smashed against the sides, trying not to flail in that deep-set darkness, the cold salt, the long slow crawl. As if you are passing through death itself.
