But the price she’d paid in return for her heart’s desire was her ability to bear children. She was as barren as a desert is dry. She tried everything she could, enlisted every sorceress and enchantress, but they had no power against such a sacrifice, no way to undo what had willingly been given away. And so back to the Sea Witch at last she went.
There was nothing she could do, the dark queen told her, tail slowly batting back and forth as she sat on the throne of bones and shells and coral and such. But something about the Sea Witch’s smile told Mother that the old woman wasn’t being entirely honest, so she pressed: she’d give anything. Anything.
Anything?
Anything!
I will name my price later, then. Are you prepared for that?
And my idiot mother nodded and agreed to a bargain, the cost of which she did not know.
The Sea Witch gave her two pearls, one milky-white and twisted, the other smooth and black, and instructions to take both but choose only one; swallow only one. She knew enough about my mother from their brief encounters to understand that she would not listen, would not honor their pact.
Mother gave birth to twins, myself and my sister, with little difference in our appearances except our hair—hers was noticeably darker, mine lighter—and we were loved equally. We shared a cradle made from a giant clam, strung with shells and things that shone; together we breathed the same water, learned all the things we might ever need in order to rule when our turns came, shared all our toys, clothes, eventually lovers. She was my sister and my other self, no two could be closer, more loving, more devoted.
Until…
Until one day Mother died, and that loss changed my sister. Where once possessions had been ours, they became mine and yours; she held all things tighter, lovers included. We fought as we never had, items were snatched from my hands, beaus seduced away, kept at her side by sheer dint of tantrums and bribes. And the kingdom we were meant to rule month about, the throne we were both meant sit upon? She gave it up at the end of her cycle only unwillingly.
Perhaps we’d have come through. Perhaps with time she’d have softened, loosened her grip. Perhaps she’d have come to her senses, apologized, and we’d have been as we were before.
But then the message came from the Sea Witch to say there was a debt owing and we must answer for it. That this was the one true inheritance left to us by our mother.
She’s a beautiful thing that I’ve made, though patched and stitched. Sometimes I close my eyes, run my fingers over the skin just to feel smooth then coarse, the ridges where cuts have joined as if living flesh had healed. All those given-up bits and pieces, all those crimson-colored tithes, all tacked together into a whole of sorts.
All those things that silly little girls don’t value until it’s too late. All the things they sacrificed for one stupid reason. They all come for the same thing: for love. For something selfish and venal. Make him love me. Give her to me. Give me, give me, give me. Never once do they think what the other might want. That love, if it were true, if it were right, would find its own way. And, sometimes, they leave debts others must pay.
When the missive arrived, my sister and I talked long into the night, and it was as if the past months of discontent, of selfishness and spite had not been. The bitterness was gone, the competition. She was my other half once more, and I hers. We were one and we would go together to the Sea Witch. We would face her, for we knew from the old tales that if we did not she would come hunting, and her rage would be all the greater.
Alone we departed, leaving advisors and friends behind. We swam for days, into the darkest part of the ocean, but nothing harmed us—why would it? We were daughters of the seas, mer queens in our right. Who would dare? Yet we were afraid: afraid of what we might hear, might find, might have to pay. We swam until at last we came to the rocky overhang that hid the entrance to the cave of the Sea Witch. Clasping hands, we drifted into its maw, deeper and deeper until we found the place she called her own.
She sat on a massive throne of bones, skeletal limbs clasping each other in a tight embrace, cemented in place with coral. A tall woman, pale as the watery moon, she waited, watching as if our appearance was no surprise. Her tail was so long and thick that it curled three times around the base of her seat, and then some. Hair the color of a storm played about a face haughty and scaled, and her eyes were so black they seemed like nothing so much as holes. But they caught us and held us, drew us in. She nodded as if pleased, satisfied. “You came.”
“You called,” we replied.
“So I did.”
And we waited a while for her to speak again. We’d agreed not to ask. Not to show weakness. Not to beg
“Your mother died owing me,” she said, and we trembled. All the tales told of the terrible things that came when a debt was outstanding; by her death Mother had cheated the Sea Witch and left only my sister and I to answer for her. Then the old woman told us how we’d sprung from a broken bargain; how we belonged, now, to her. “But,” she said, one finger raised to forestall any protest, “I am not an unreasonable woman. I only want what’s necessary to balance the books. So, I give you a choice: one of you must be the forfeit.”
We stared at her. We stared at each other.
“We will not—” I began, shaking at the thought that all our mother’s love had meant nothing; that she had left us to this.
“Wait, sister,” my other self interrupted, her fingers tightening around mine, grip solid, stable, assured. “What if…”
“What if…”
“She will never rest until this is settled. She will haunt us, blight our kingdom; our subjects will suffer. But we have ruled together. We have shared our throne. Let us share this punishment, bear this burden together. Let us take it in turns, sister, one shall rule while the other pays this tithe. Then we switch. If this Majesty,” she tilted her head to the Sea Witch, “is willing, I will go first.”
“No,” I said. “I have just completed this cycle of my reign. You return alone. I will pay this first month. If this Majesty will allow?”
And the Sea Witch looked at me as if I were a fool, as if she knew my sister better than I, but she smiled and nodded. My sister held me for so long yet so short a time then swam away, out of the cave and up, up, up. I imagined her as a speck against the watery sky of the kingdom, nothing more than a black dot against the flickering light that drifted down from the above-world. She would return. The old woman knew nothing of the shared blood that ran in our veins, of the invisible cord between our hearts, of the thoughts that began in one mind and finished in the other.
I raised my chin, arrogant, even as I submitted to her will.
My sister did not return.
The Sea Witch was not kind, but she was never unnecessarily cruel. She did not say my sister’s betrayal was only to be expected, did not say her word was as weak as sunlight on the bottom of the ocean, an unfaithful, feeble thing. For the longest time I dreamt my sister had met with some terrible fate on her way back home, without me to guard her. And the Sea Witch tethered me so I could not flee, could not go looking for either my sister or her corpse; she would listen to none of my entreaties. After a while, however, after the first of the little mewling maids came to beg bargains in the name of love, sent by her Queen, I at last understood that my sister bore more of our mother’s blood than I did.