Macalester College DigitalCommons@Macalester College English Honors Projects English Department Spring 5-1-2015 A Song Only Dead Men Know Cassidy Foust Macalester College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/english_honors Recommended Citation Foust, Cassidy, "A Song Only Dead Men Know" (2015). English Honors Projects. Paper 32. http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/english_honors/32 This Honors Project - Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the English Department at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Honors Projects by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1 A Song Only Dead Men Know Cassidy Foust 2 One In old maps, the sea drips off at the edge of the parchment in what is supposed to be the end of the world. Mapmakers would draw monsters here: great sea beasts and serpents with mouths tall as a ship’s mast; winged harpies, their talons raised; beautiful sirens, selkies, and mermaids, their soft lips parted in deadly song. These were always Marin’s favorites, these wicked women, these horrible temptresses. Her grandfather, a grizzled old man who had once served as a mapmaker to the King of England himself, would set her down on his knee and unfurl long parchments of map, teaching her the names of all the waterways as her fingers traced the faded ink. “That’s the Irish Sea,” he would say, “It swirls down towards Europe right past the Salinges.” “Have you ever seen a selkie, Granddad?” Marin would ask, thumbing over the creature’s hair as if she could draw it into life. “I might have,” he replied solemnly. “You could walk right past them and never know - human or seal, they look same as all the rest. The only way to really tell the difference is to catch one changing, and you need to be mighty tricky to do that.” “Oh,” Marin had sighed. “Mermaids, though... now those I’ve seen.” Marin sat up straighter. “You’ve seen a mermaid?” “I have.” 3 “A real mermaid...” Marin’s mouth dropped open and her tiny fingernail crept up to scratch at the ink-and-paper mermaid’s tail. “What was she like?” “She was the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen,” her granddad said. He too stared at the mermaid smiling coyly on the map, but it seemed to Marin that even though they were looking at the same thing, they were seeing something entirely different. “Prettier than Mum?” Marin asked. Marin’s mum was the most beautiful woman in the world. Marin’s mum had long brown hair that made every woman in town go pale with envy, and cheekbones so high that Marin’s dad teased they were reaching up to God. Marin couldn’t imagine anything being more perfect than that, but then her granddad replied, “Prettier than your Mum.” He paused, and added, “But also more dangerous.” Marin nodded sagely, then scrunched up her face. “What d’you mean?” “Her eyes were wide, so wide, and violet, impossibly violet. They were beautiful and deep, and they made you want to trust her. If she asked you to join her in the deep, you would follow without hesitation. Her neck was slender and fair, but just below the water you could see that she had gills bright as blood. And her smile...” Marin’s granddad took a long, shuddering breath. “Her smile was all white fang. It caught the sunlight and glittered and you could not look away. You knew those teeth would rip through your skin as easily as splitting silk, and you also knew that you would let them. “She was the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen, yes. But mermaids are things, make no mistake. There is nothing human left in them to find.” Marin gulped. 4 “What are you scaring her with now, Dad?” Marin’s mum bustled into the room, bouncing the baby on her hip. “Mapmaking,” Marin’s granddad replied with a stone face, at the same time that Marin chirped, “Mermaids!” Marin’s mum sighed. “And now she’ll be having night terrors about drowning, I expect.” “Rawr!” Marin growled in response, trying to smile and bare her teeth just like a mermaid would. “Very frightening,” Marin’s mum assured her. “Now come on, supper’s on the table.” It had never occurred to Marin to doubt her granddad’s account. She learned, as she got older, that the earth was round and nothing ever trickled off the edge, and rarely ever did anyone disappear to a sea monster. But sure as she was living, she knew her granddad had seen a mermaid and lived to tell the tale. Sometimes, she found herself murmuring the story of the violet-eyed siren. She would wake up dreaming of fins and flashes of white fang smiles, and she would swear that in her dreams she could hear their song. Now, she bares her teeth at her reflection in the glass window. She grips a knife in one hand and her thick dark braid in the other and imagines what it is to be less human more creature. The knife seems to snarl as she saws it through the braid, hacking off the length of her hair. It drops to the floor with a heavier thud than Marin expects. She blinks at her face in the makeshift mirror and raises the knife to her head once again. This time, her strokes are smaller, more deliberate. The knife is not a razor; it is meant for coring 5 apples and peeling potatoes, but it serves its new purpose as good as anything else. Soon, Marin is surrounded by a pile of her shearings. She looks in the not-quite-mirror again and is left with a feeling of dissatisfaction. The girl who stares back is still undeniably her. Her hair is ragged short and sticks up in every direction, but there is no radical transformation shining in the window. At its most extreme, Marin could pass for a relative, or a sibling, removed from herself but still there in resemblance. She scowls and the not-quite-new Marin scowls back. In one manner, however, has her project been successful. The cut-away hair accentuates the squareness of her jaw, draws attention away from the softness of her lips. It makes her nose look more angular and reveals the natural broadness of her shoulders. In short, Marin looks like a boy. She grins at her reflection and grabs a broom to sweep away the evidence. She opens the door and watches the shorter strands of hair skate off on a breeze into the dark. The braid she kicks into the bushes. She doubts that anyone would connect the pieces, even if they noticed, and they probably wouldn’t be able to stop her, but she figures it is much better to be safe than sorry. Back inside, Marin peels off her nightdress. The fabric flutters to the floor and Marin has the fleeting image of her soul leaving her body. Don’t be silly, she tells herself. It’s only a nightdress. She takes the cloth strips she had torn earlier from an old muslin skirt and wraps them tightly around her bare chest. The rough fabric itches and bites her skin, but she ignores it, yanking the strips tight and securing them with the best knot she can muster. Her breasts are not entirely flattened, but they will likely pass as such. 6 Marin looks down at the rest of her body, shadowed except for the light of a single candle. She has never been dainty and feminine like her mother, nor soft and plump like memories of her grandmother are. Instead, she has always been too much muscle and too much angle. Now, Marin thinks that maybe she was born to play through this boyish masquerade. In the next room, her little sister coughs. Marin freezes, naked in the candlelight. Go back to sleep, she thinks. Go back to sleep, go back to sleep - Cora hacks and hacks and hacks. Marin closes her eyes, tries not to imagine the way her sister’s rail-thin body trembles under the threadbare blanket of the bed they share, tries not to think of the spots of blood that come up with every painful cough. More than anything, she wants to run to her, hold the body that is so so so much smaller - so much more breakable - than her own until its shivering subsides. But she has already cut her hair and cut her ties and - No. She has to do this. Marin closes her eyes and breathes a silent prayer for Cora to rest again. Slowly, the coughing turns from panicked to faltering, and then, after a hundred painful heartbeats, from faltering to absence. Marin swallows and continues with her task. She hurriedly slips into the loose shift and trousers which she stole from her father’s room. She feels a momentary twinge of guilt - it’s not as if her father has the money to spare for another pair of trousers - but she shakes it off. She is doing this for him, and her mother, and her sister, and soon enough she will be able to pay them back for much more than the trousers are worth. Before she steps out into the night, she does a mental inventory: hair cut; chest bound; trousers and shirt on; and, around her neck, a thin braided leather cord onto which Cora had 7 strung a series of seashells.