Adrift: A Little Mermaid Retelling

5: Agnes

As spring planting closed and the field turned green with the first shoots of indigo, my father turned his attention to the summer months to come. He was a forward-thinking and enterprising man, and as could be expected, he had plans.

My parents, my brothers and I were at dinner. I was swinging my legs and tracing the pattern along the edge of my plate with my fork. They were pretty things, those plates, imported from the Crown City in Oranslan, where Father had lived once.

"You're twenty now, and if you're wise, you'll do as I did at your age. You've to look to the future, Wylliam. That future is here in the colonies," my father said.

Wylliam, my eldest brother, was a handsome lad with the glossy, black hair that was my father's mark in all his children. He seemed interested in whatever my father was saying. That was enough to pique my curiosity, and I began listening.

"You know, of course, that the first step any young man should consider when seeking a foothold in the world is to take a wife," Father said.

I looked at Wylliam. He was nodding his head, a nervous smile tugging at his mouth. I wrinkled my nose. A wife. For Wyll? But that would make him old.

"It's the matter of securing a wife for you that presents the problem," Father continued, spearing a slice of lamb with his fork.

"I had noticed they're in rather short supply in the colonies, wives," Cuthbert laughed. He was but a year Wylliam's junior, although his banter and games always made him seem younger still.

Mother, sitting in silence as normal, glanced at Cuthbert and then away.

"One could send a son back to Oranslan, if one were serious about the matter," Father mused—or pretended to muse. I could tell, knowing his fancies and his manners, that Father had thought long and hard on this matter already. "There are plenty of eligible ladies there, and the Allore name carries weight; your uncle is an influential lord with extensive holdings."

"I thought Oranslan ladies don't like to come here?" I asked, interjecting myself, as usual, into a conversation not meant for me. "Can't he find a wife here? Like Dervin did?"

Cuthbert choked on his wine, laughing. Again, Mother glanced his way. Her glance, I thought, was unusually sharp. Maybe she was upset with his poor manners. If she was, she wouldn't say it. Mother seldom said anything at all.

"A woman of Sorla's ilk would be ill-matched to your brother, my dear," Father explained. "You're all of the Allore blood, and fit to marry nobility back home. It is still true that women aren't often eager to come to the new world, but matters now are much improved over what they were when first your brothers and I arrived. I had hoped that there would be eligible girls of proper station here, born and grown these fifteen years past, but ... well. Few wives, fewer children."

Father put another sliver of lamb into his mouth and paused for a ruminative chew before continuing. "Yet we've had success here, and are not lacking in comforts. I think Wylliam could find a lady willing to come to this land of plenty and promise."

Sybill came through the room with her pitcher of water to refresh our cups. She poured with a careful, steady hand despite her age. I smelled the rain on her and saw her shoulders were damp. A shower had begun outside.

I was not old enough yet for wine. I glanced at the untouched glass standing in front of Mother and reached for my water with a frown.

"I know no one in Oranslan," Wyll said. The nervous smile had gone; he looked serious now. "How does it benefit me to go courting in a land of strangers? I'll be a fool, and a lost one at that."

"We could send you to live with your uncle there, as I said. You'd stay in the Crown City, on his estate. He has sons of his own and an ear to the ground, I'm sure. It would be a good time for you to go; the season of social gatherings and courtships has ever been the heat of summer."

"And if that fails, you could buy a wife," Cuthbert quipped.

The effect on the atmosphere in the room was instantaneous. A silence descended that was so tense I felt it trembling in the air. I looked first at Father, whose mouth was half open in surprise. Then I looked at my mother. I knew something was not right when I saw the look on her face.

She spoke not a word. She was gazing down at her plate with such a look of fury that I thought the plate must shatter. Her beautiful lips were pressed together so tightly that they were white.

"I am certain that won't be necessary," my father said. He spoke a little loudly, I thought. He reached out to fold his large hand over my mother's small fist, which was clenched, trembling, on the handle of her knife. "Things in the colonies are good now, Wyll. It's not an unattractive option for a girl with a bit of boldness in her. Is that not right, my sweet?"

Mother's accent, normally musical, seemed to chop the words into shards. "Wylliam. Do consider Father's offer to stay on mainland. Perhaps you meet a lady there, and be happy."

It was ever one of my flaws to ask the wrong question at the wrong time. Now, I sensed that there was something there, some secret about my mother hanging just out of reach. I knew so little about her. Could this be my chance to pull back the veil?

"How did you and Father meet, Mother? In Oranslan?" I asked.

The look my mother gave me then was too complex, too deep, for a child's understanding. It was full of bitterness and love ... and something else. Maybe disgust. I was pinned down by that look like a rat by a snake's hungry gaze, and I regretted my question immediately.

That look was an answer—a fragment of an answer.

"May I be excused, Husband?" Mother asked.

Father glanced at her, his hand still covering hers. "You've not touched your food."

She did not look at him.

"Just because your ugly face will force you into buying a wife does not mean I shall have to," Wyll said. His tone belied that he was only trying to break the tension that had turned the mood so brittle and strange. He looked at my mother and smiled. "I can only hope to be so lucky as to find a wife as beautiful and good as you, Mother. I shall take your advice and go to Oranslan."

I gazed across the table at my parents' hands, feeling confused and somehow betrayed, and I tried to digest what Wyll had said about Mother being good.

Beautiful she surely was, but good? I could not see goodness in that cold woman.

Now, I am a woman myself, and I know that what my brother meant was "beautiful and beautiful," or perhaps "beautiful and obedient." That is what most men mean when they call a woman good. For those two things, Mother was. She never disobeyed my father in anything, no matter how small.

She was beautiful and good. Beautiful and sad. Beautiful and terribly sad.

Despite how far I was from her unreachable heart, I felt a helpless wave of love come over me, threatening to drown me all at once. Without my knowing why, my eyes flooded with unhappy tears.

I rose abruptly to my feet and pushed my plate away. "I wish to be excused, too," I said. "Please."

Father had denied my mother, but he could not deny the both of us. He sighed and nodded his head.

My mother left the room in a rustle of skirts. I trailed after her, a few paces behind, and followed her up the stairs into the music room. We sat there on a cushioned bench, far opposite one another, not touching. I sat with my harp hugged to my chest, resting my forehead against the smooth, familiar wood, and wept.

Mother was turned toward the window, staring out at the rain. It had become a steady downpour. She pressed her white hand against the glass of the window pane and she, too, wept.