Adrift: A Little Mermaid Retelling

17: Agnes

I could feel nothing. Nothing at all.

The days passed in a blur of gray, one after the other, and sometimes it was all I could do to raise myself up out of my bed. I couldn't take interest in anything. Every small task seemed to be too much. I couldn't even bear to look at my harp, a beautiful instrument Father had given me. It was a part of my soul, but seeing it made me think of him and all I had lost.

Over time, the yawning emptiness inside me began to fill—with anger. I was angry at Mother, but Mother was dead, and so I turned my wrath upon those who were closest to hand: Sybill and my tutor, Master Leisher. I think he gave up on me, for after a few weeks of my moods and my refusal to mind him, he never came back. Wyll never sought another tutor to replace him. I was old enough then that I suppose my schooling was over.

Poor Sybill did not have the luxury of going away. I was not kind to her in those days.

I ignored Dannie, although I sensed that he longed to be a comfort to me. We had been friends, but I couldn't bear him now. I couldn't bear the way he looked at me, with those soft eyes and that little frown. In the empty days after Father's death, I had tried once to conjure a feeling—any feeling—by kissing him out there on the cliffs.

But that kiss was hollow, just like everything else. My lips felt it, but never my heart.

I hated being in that house where Father had died. I hated sleeping just down the hall from where his guts had spilled onto the floor. I spent every moment I could out-of-doors, each day an endless haze punctuated only with the acrimony I hurled at my family, at the servants, at anything in the world that seemed to be moving on while I still grappled with the horror of what had happened. They started to hate me, I think, and I started to hate myself.

One night, I decided I would leave forever. I struck out toward Annisport in the early evening. Wyll had asked that I be watched, and he threatened that if I stayed away from home another night he would lock me in my room. But I didn't believe he'd do that to me.

It was impossible for the servants to watch me all day long, and the field hands were at supper when I left. I found it easy enough to slip away.

I was not certain how far away Annisport was, having never been there, but I knew folk could go there and come back in the space of an afternoon by cart. I thought I could reach the city on foot, however long it might take me.

There were ships there. On one of them, I might sail away forever.

I was used to walking and wandering, but not quite so far. My feet began to ache after I had been on the road for a few hours. I was terribly thirsty, for I had not thought so far ahead as to bring anything with me—no cloak, no food, no water.

It was very dark by then. I saw a crossroads up ahead. Although I walked on, I was trying to decide whether I should go on to Annisport or abandon my plan and walk home; I could gather supplies and make a better attempt another day.

That's when I saw the horses. There were two of them grazing off to one side of the path, near an outcropping of rock that jutted up from the ground. They wore saddles, but there were no people in sight.

I had never ridden a horse before; the few my family kept never seemed to like me, and I had never had interest enough in riding to try to win their trust. I knew that they made much better progress than a person could on foot, though, and I thought that there could be water in the saddlebags. I would get a drink, which I sorely wanted, and then I'd figure out the business of mounting a beast whose shoulder was as tall as my head. Without stopping to consider whether what I intended to do was right, I walked toward the docile creatures across the grass, licking my parched lips.