Adrift: A Little Mermaid Retelling

35: Agnes

We had to move on. We could be found along the road; we had narrowly escaped with our lives this time, but if more soldiers came it would mean our end. Aroc had said they would not hang me for adultery, but I knew they would for murder.

Together, we stood on the path, dazed. My clothes were soaked in blood. Dannie's shirt was ruined. He went bare-chested. I could not think on what I had done, or I would break from it. I tried to push it from my mind, tried to be practical.

Dannie dragged the two men away. I watched him pull their bodies over the grass, taking them as far from the road as he could. There was a little copse of scraggly bushes some distance away where he hid their bodies as best as he could. I was no good to follow him. Neither of us had thought to unbind my hands, and if I took a step, my head swam and the world threatened to go black.

I had never been able to ride a horse, and it would not do to be found with those horses, equipped as they were with military tack. I knew it was only a matter of time before they went back to Annisport, and we had to be gone by then. I turned back toward Dannie, watching him walk back from the copse wearing Lerrick's overlarge shirt.

We began to walk, not knowing what else to do. I felt as if I were watching my life from outside myself. I felt splintered, as if I were nothing but a broken china cup lying in shards on the ground.

Dannie snatched his satchel up off the ground where it had fallen. Almost as an afterthought, he took up the knife I had used to murder my husband and cut away my bonds. I took the knife from him and, as we walked, I tried my best to clean it on the tail of the man's shirt I wore. I do not know why I did this. It seemed important at the time.

I realized after we had been walking for a while that I was a widow. Suddenly, a heady wave of emotion washed over me: relief, gladness, triumph. I looked up at Dannie, wishing badly that I could speak to him. Tears threatened again.

How had I gone so long as a hollow shell with no tears to cry, when now they came in such abundance?

Dannie put his arm around me, although we did not stop walking. "We will find a way, Ness," he said, as if reading my thoughts. "We will find a way."

We made camp as far from the road as we could walk before it got too dark, too numbed and cold and in pain to journey on through the night. We had no means to make fire, and even if we had, we did not wish to be detected. Somewhere nearby, we could hear a stream.

Dannie and I found it. I stood for a moment, watching the peaceful water rioting over smooth stones in the light of the moon, and I thought of the sea. We knelt to wash our faces. I gently rubbed the dried blood with my fingers, wondering how I had gotten so much blood on my face.

Now that we had stopped, every few moments I felt a shattering residual fear that threatened to paralyze me, and I would look around. I am not sure what I expected; did I believe Aroc's specter would be standing there, ready to wreak vengeance upon me? I know only that I was not yet in full possession of my faculties.

I had scrubbing at my face and my arms for several minutes when I noticed Dannie staring at me.

I knew I must have looked a fright, but his expression was strangely soft as he gazed at me. Then I suspected what he saw. I had been scrubbing without paying attention what I did; my mind was too far away. Now, I held out my hand. There, in the moonlight, it gleamed like a beacon; the fingers were webbed, the flesh gleaming, iridescent, like the inside of a shell. I looked away from him and folded my hands against my chest to hide them.

Dannie crept toward me on his hands and knees. He reached out his open hands toward me. I looked up at him without moving for a moment. He raised his brows, inviting me. At last, I extended my hands, and laid them gently in his palms.