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“Guard,” Marie-Josèphe said, “kindly call the lackeys, to pour the fish-barrel into the Fountain.”
“Give the fish to —”
She gave him a haughty look. He bowed.
The lackeys tilted the barrel. Sea water and live fish gushed over the rim of the fountain. With a shriek of pleasure, the sea woman burst through the river of sea-water. Terrified, the lackeys dropped the barrel; it tumbled into the fountain. The sea woman dived to evade it. The servants fled, ignoring the curses of the musketeers.
The visitors laughed and applauded. They might as well have been watching an Italian comedy. Her back to the rabble, Marie-Josèphe scowled.
“Now you’ve got no fish to throw to the monster!” a visitor shouted. “We want to see the sea monster!”
“Throw the monster a fish!”
“She’s no monster!” No one heard her. Water rushed; the sea woman leapt, flung a fish, and splashed flamboyantly. The fish flew through the air, between the bars of the cage, and hit the visitor in the chest. Water spattered Marie-Josèphe’s face and her riding habit. Waves surged over her feet, soaking her shoes.
Delighted, the visitors laughed. A child scampered forward and snatched up the fish and flung the flopping creature back through the bars. The sea woman leapt again, caught it, and ate it in two bites. The tail vanished last. The child laughed; the sea woman trilled at her.
“The sea monster wishes to train us!” said the child’s mother. All the crowd and the musketeers joined her laughter. The sea woman flipped her tails and vanished.
The floating barrel bobbed. The sea woman pushed it around the fountain. She made it turn and spin; she rode the spin upward and launched herself, flying into a dive. Her audience applauded.
“Stop it!” Marie-Josèphe cried, humiliated for the sea woman, furious. No one paid the least attention.
“Mlle de la Croix, control yourself, I beg you.”
Count Lucien stood by the Fountain, frowning, leaning lightly on his walking stick.
“Make them stop, please, Count Lucien.”
“What are they doing, that upsets you so?”
“Teasing her — baiting her, like a bear!”
“I doubt you’ve ever seen a bear-baiting, for this is nothing like. Your sea monster plays for them, as she plays for you.”
“It isn’t fitting.”
Count Lucien chuckled.
“Please don’t laugh at me.”
“I had no intention of doing so. On the contrary, I’m sad for you, if you don’t know the pleasure play can bring. To people as well as to animals.”
“She isn’t —”
The barrel bumped up against the platform, interrupting Marie-Josèphe, thudding loudly again and again. Water splashed on Marie-Josèphe’s shoes.
Marie-Josèphe knelt and plunged her hands into the water. The sea woman left off battering the barrel and swam to her, sleeking past her fingers.
With one short burst of song, the sea woman sketched her life. She caught her food, she swam through bright coral reefs in tropical seas. In the north, she capered among inverted iceberg mountains. She traced the depths with an exploration of sound. She played with the children of her family. She swam among the tentacles of a tame giant octopus with her friend — her friend, the man of the sea who lay dead and flayed on the dissection table. She and her friend made love, love for pleasure’s sinful sake with no thought of procreation, in the illumination of the octopus’ spark-spotted skin. When desperate danger threatened, the sea woman sank into the lightless depths and nearly ceased breathing. Ever, and always, the touch and the songs of other sea people surrounded her.
“I only thought of your fear,” Marie-Josèphe whispered. “I didn’t think of how bored you must be. How lonely.” She sat with her wet feet on the water-level platform, her elbows on her knees and her chin on her fists.
The visitors grew impatient. “Make it leap! Make it scream and laugh!”
“Sing your story again,” Marie-Josèphe whispered to the sea woman. “So they can hear it.” She rose and spoke to the visitors. “The sea woman tires of leaping, but she’ll tell you a story.”
The sea woman sang, not the story of her life, but a story from her people’s history. Surprised, apprehensive, Marie-Josèphe described the images with inadequate words.
“Four hundreds and three thousands of years ago, the people of the sea first met the people of the land.”
An entrancing ship, its sail painted with octopuses and fish, glided graceful as an albatross. The sea people watched, unafraid, curious. Handsome, narrow-waisted youths — boys and girls alike, their hair curled in ringlets — threw off their short belted kilts and dived from the ship to meet the people of the sea. They played and sang together. The people of the land were like no others Marie-Josèphe had ever seen or heard of, exotic and dark-eyed and unimaginably lovely, graceful as the wind.
We gave them songs, they gave us stories, the sea woman sang, that cannot be taken, only given. We met as friends.
The sea people accompanied the ship to an island, gold in the shimmering heat of the sapphire-blue Mediterranean. The ship glided into a harbor. A stone palace spread across a cliff. At the harborside, bare-breasted women in bell-shaped skirts, their hair dressed with gold, led the way to greet their visitors. The children threw flowers into the water; the sea people twisted the blossoms into their hair.
“The sea people entered the chief city of the land of Atlantis,” Marie-Josèphe said. “We rode in pools painted with dolphins and squids. The sea people and the people of the land exchanged shells and flowers.”
The song changed. The melody grew dark, the harmonics threatening. Marie-Josèphe fell silent as an immense explosion wracked the ground and whipped a hot wind across the island. Burning cinders and molten stones rained down. Ash rolled over the sea-people’s chariots.
The eruption ended. The city was destroyed.
We searched for our friends, the sea woman sang. We saw them no more. They were the first of us to perish when we met the people of land.
“That is all,” Marie-Josèphe said, leaving the sea people as they accepted flowers in the lost city of Atlantis. The visitors applauded.
The sea woman snarled and splashed her angrily, demanding an explanation.
“How could I tell them — ?”
You must always finish the story, the sea woman sang. Promise, or I’ll tell no more. You must always finish the story.
