The change had occurred just as smoothly as it did in the ocean. Amelia didn’t like the seawater in the tank—it tasted old and stale, and it lacked the swirling little animals that humans couldn’t see without microscopes but that she saw with clear eyes. But it was seawater, and when she emerged from the tank and pushed her hand into the jar of sand placed on the platform, she’d turned right back into a human woman.
Levi checked his watch. He’d been compulsively doing so all morning, often enough to make Amelia glad that she didn’t carry one. It seemed once you had a watch, you became inordinately fond of examining it.
“It’s nearly noon,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. She could tell by way the sunlight no longer slanted through the windows in the hall that it was almost exactly overhead.
Levi paced in a straight line, then a circle, then checked his watch and paced back to her in a straight line again. She watched all this with a bemused stare. Walking about like that wouldn’t make the time go any faster, though she decided he wouldn’t thank her for saying so.
“How can you be so calm?” he asked.
“What else should I be?” she said.
He opened his mouth, seemed to think better of it, and turned away. Then he came back and spoke with such force that she took a half step away from him.
“How can you be so mild when everyone is going to see what you are? After today there won’t be any more secrets. Doesn’t that bother you at all?”
“It’s very late in the day for regrets, Levi Lyman,” she said, feeling a little temper at his tone. “And you are wrong, very wrong, to think I will have no more secrets. Yes, everyone will know I am a mermaid—or at least they’ll know of the existence of someone called ‘the Feejee Mermaid.’ They won’t know Amelia Douglas, or even the creature I was before I met Jack. Do not mistake the revelation of my body for the revelation of my heart. My heart keeps its own secrets, and they don’t belong to you or anyone else just because you’ve seen me with a fish tail.
“Besides, this is what you wanted, isn’t it? When you came to my cottage so many months ago you wanted me to exhibit myself. And here I am, doing just that.”
He looked stricken for a moment, then looked away and murmured, “I don’t know what I want anymore.”
“Well, I do,” she said firmly. “And as I’m the one who will be onstage, it’s my wants that matter.”
They might have gone on like that for some time, but the clock struck twelve, the doors opened, and Levi was left to swallow the bile of second thoughts.
The crowd seemed to swell like an ocean wave as it entered, the noise pushed before it as people stomped down the aisles and filled up the seats closest to the stage.
Amelia let their mingled breath and murmurs break over her. They were only a different kind of sea, one she’d never been in before. She only needed to swim in it, and swimming was more natural to her than walking.
Levi stood stiffly beside her, the words said and unsaid pooled in regret at his feet. She could feel them there, waiting to climb back into his mouth.
Then it was time for him to walk onstage and he was gone, and she hadn’t wished him luck as she’d meant to. She meant to do the proper human thing, to behave the right way, but they were not as easy with each other as she’d thought they would be.
All the world narrowed then to just his figure onstage and the words he said in a voice that was not his. She didn’t listen to them, not really, not the shapes, only the noise. She was waiting for her cue, for the words that meant she couldn’t hide anymore in the wings.
“Please observe, for the first time in the civilized world, the Feejee Mermaid!” He swept his arm toward her, but he didn’t meet her eyes.
The limelight appeared just past the curtain that hid her from view. She was supposed to step into it, like a net that would catch her and pull her across the stage.
The crowd drew one long collective breath, leaving no air for her.
Amelia stepped into the light.
Her feet were bare, her hair unbound, and the dress she wore little better than a shift. She didn’t glance at the audience, who’d broken out into excited whispers at her appearance, but she felt the sheer weight of their numbers pressing on her nonetheless.
It had never occurred to her before that eyes could be terrible things. Eyes that turned toward her, every one. Eyes that tried to pierce her, divine her, know her. Eyes that judged and, almost worse, eyes that hoped. Eyes that said they would wait and see before they decided. Eyes that wanted every bit of her, especially the secret longings of her secret heart.
All of them were there, and she could not meet them as she usually did. The ladder seemed a long way away, a mountain to climb on a far-off horizon.
Three more steps, two, and then she turned to climb the ladder and now she saw all the faces, all the hungry faces, so she tipped her gaze up and she climbed, climbed, climbed until she reached the little platform at the top.
Then the screen hid her from the faces, and she dropped her dress to one side and dove into the water.
The change rolled over her skin and she arched up but not far enough to break the surface. She wanted to stay in the water, feel the comfort of it pressing all around her.
There came a tremendous swell of noise from the crowd, but it was muffled inside the tank. She looked through the glass and saw that many people were standing and pointing.
One woman in the front row had her hands clasped before her and tears running down her face. Her mouth moved rhythmically, like she was saying a prayer, and Amelia didn’t know if the woman was thanking her God or cursing the devil for the mermaid’s existence.
A general commotion broke out near the back. Amelia couldn’t tell exactly what it was—the rear of the theater was dark—but suddenly several people ran into the aisles and toward the stage.
Amelia realized with alarm that they intended to climb up to get a better look at her. Then they were on the stage, pressing in and shouting, pushing up against the glass and banging it with their fists and their eyes were bulging and their mouths were open.
For the first time in her long, long life, she felt ashamed, ashamed because her body made them gape and shout and press up against the tank with their fingers grasping.
She saw Levi pushing people out of the way and his mouth making the words Get back, get back, but nobody listened, nobody wanted to know or hear.
They only wanted to see her, see her, see her, and she didn’t want to see them anymore but there was nowhere to look where there were not faces, ravening faces now, their hunger not sated by the sight of her but rather whetted instead and they only wanted more and more and more and she should have known this would happen and Barnum should have known this would happen and Levi tried to tell her this would happen and she didn’t want to see them anymore so she curled into her fin and covered her face and wished she’d never left home.
CHAPTER 7
PANDEMONIUM AT CONCERT HALL! Many people injured in quest to see Feejee Mermaid.’ ‘UNBELIEVABLE BUT TRUE—We have seen the Mermaid!’ ‘MERMAID IN NEW YORK—One woman killed—All the details.’”
Barnum read each successive headline aloud with increasing relish. The fact that he was enjoying this and nobody else seemed to didn’t appear to register at all.