Adrift: A Little Mermaid Retelling

29: Agnes

I was not well—that much even I could see, although I cared so little about my own appearance now that it was often Tana who pointed out a shortcoming. She reminded me to comb my hair and made me aware of the spots on my clothes. I was so weary I drifted through the days without so much as seeing myself in the mirror.

I felt as if something within me were sapping my strength. I think it was a raw wound, opened by my own body's treachery and the monstrous claws of the parasites Aroc had put inside me. Now, after so long, nothing even seemed to catch.

I was barren, thank the gods. But I almost wish I had not been, for I think my barrenness destroyed the last affection Aroc had ever had toward me.

I was sitting in my darkened chamber one day, holding my harp close to my chest. It had been months since I'd brought any music out of it. I do not think it was even in tune, but I sat there, hugging it to me, just as I had embraced the instrument that day long ago when my mother and I had excused ourselves from supper to weep, each of us keeping to herself, nursing her own secret pain. The wood warmed as I held the harp. It was soothing to rest my cheek against it.

I heard Aroc's boots on the floorboards. I could not feel the fear of it any more; now, I only feared him when he struck me. When the steps stopped, I looked up at him and smiled. "Hello, Husband."

He gazed at me, seeming not to like what he saw. "What are you doing in here in the dark? Why are you sitting here, all alone?"

I closed my eyes and put my head back down on my harp, my fingers running over the smooth wood. "I am feeling a little ..." I hesitated, but this much was the truth. "I am feeling a little unwell."

He plucked the harp from my arms. It was not a large instrument; it was a comfortable size for me to hold and play, but in his hands it looked small and fragile. I reached for it, my heart hammering in my chest. He said, "You do not even play for me anymore."

"I—I will. Only tell me what you want to hear."

Aroc handed the instrument back to me and gestured. "The song about the cat and the fish," he said. He went to the door and called for Tana to bring tea as I hastily tried to tune the instrument, fumbling with the wrench. Each discordant note seemed to irk my husband. He stood looking out of the window, frowning.

Tana brought in the tea and set it out on the sideboard, and Aroc stood across the room, his back straight, every inch the captain of men that he was. He regarded me coolly. If ever he had cared for me, he did not any more. My body had killed all his children, and my heart had never belonged to him, and he knew it.

He resented me. I could feel it every time he looked at me.

I strummed out the first few notes on the harp and hummed along, struggling to remember the lyrics to the song. That even music had become a challenge for me is the best illustration of my state of mind in those times. I managed my way through the song with few mistakes, but again, with his eyes upon me, I felt as if I were stripped bare for his amusement, as if I were making of my passion something vulgar and cheap.

I hated it, and I hated him.

My playing softened him toward me a little. When I glanced up at his face, I saw there a look I'd seen long ago when I had played for him in my father's parlor. The slightest of smiles hovered somewhere around his lips as the last strains of my song died away, but when the song was gone, the smile was, too.

"It is not the same as it was when first you came here, is it?" he asked. There was something almost sad in his tone.

"I am sorry, Aroc. I shall practice more. I know how you love to listen to my music. Perhaps it will ... cheer the house."

He shook his head with a sigh. He moved half a step; now, I could not read his expression, for he stood silhouetted against the window with the moonlight flooding past him, making of him nothing more than a shadow. "I should never have brought you here, Agnes. It was a mistake. I should have left you to your brothers. Perhaps it would have been better for you, too; you are unhappy here."

In these instances, the rarest times when he suggested that he had done something wrong, I could sometimes lie; the words to reassure him and keep him sweet—as sweet as Aroc could be—would come to my tongue, although they were not true. It was the self-serving deception that was forbidden; every word I spoke must serve my husband. I bit my tongue and looked away.

Something in my silence rankled him. He expected me to speak as I had so often before, to show some remorse, to soften his own sadness with the words of a "good" wife, a "good" woman.

Aroc set his tea cup down, almost gently. I heard it tinkle against the saucer. He crossed the room in two short strides. I shrank back, and the harp tottered in my lap.

He grabbed it with one strong hand by the pillar and swung it, hard, against the bedpost. I shrieked. The instrument gave a horrible, crunching sound as the sound box broke into pieces.

He swung it again, and the neck split from the column with a crack. The strings hung limply from it. The music in them was gone.

I stared at the instrument hanging from Aroc's hand. It was my heart hanging there, crushed into pieces. It had been so cold for so long that it did not even bleed.

He did not say anything. He dropped the splintered, ruined thing onto the floor. He stood watching me as I cried. I crawled to it and pulled the pieces into my lap.

I think Aroc hid his misery in his disgust for me; I think he was sad and full of regret, a man growing older with no one to carry on his name, no son to be a proud soldier in his wake. So he lashed out, jealously hurting me to draw feeling out of me because he could not have my love and he knew it.

He wanted me to know his pain a hundredfold because, to men like him, is not right for a man to hurt. Pain is women's work.

Had I not been bound by whatever evil spell made me his servant, I would have shown myself truly my mother's daughter.