Deeper by Jane Thomson Page B

None of them but Dayang could hide their disgust– and contempt for me too, though they didn’t say anything.  I could tell they were thinking, how stupid could she be, to tempt the spirits with such a question.  To ask Grandmother to take her tail and give her useless legs instead!  They didn’t dare say anything, because Grandmother sat there with her long knife beside her, and if Grandmother had done this to me, then perhaps I deserved it.  Still – to live without a tail for the rest of my life.  She’d be much better dead, muttered Azura, until Casih slapped her and hissed quiet.
    I could move.   I couldn’t walk or swim.  The most I could do was drag my new legs, painfully and slowly, over the rock and down to the pool. The feeling was coming back, slowly.  Grandmother had been right.  The pain was so much less at the beginning, when I had no feeling below the waist.  Now, it grew like a tumour.
    “When will she be able to walk like a human?” Dayang asked, watching me pull myself over to the water to piss.  At first she tried to help me, but I shoved her away.  I had to learn to do these things myself – or stay in the cave with Grandmother till I died or she decided to end me for good.
    “Walk like a human? What, on those?”
    Grandmother laughed her high, hissing laugh.  Dayang pulled her hair over her face with embarrassment, not looking towards me.
    Grandmother popped another oyster between her grey lips, from a shell-full which Dayang had brought her.  She sucked on it noisily, and swallowed.  I could see the lump travelling down her skinny, folded throat.
    “She’ll never be able to walk on them.  She’ll crawl, perhaps – like a bottom feeder.  If she’s lucky.”
    “But you said I would have legs like a human! You lied!“  I burst out, raising my face, rageful, to her.
    “I told you the spirits don’t give you something for nothing.  What do you think I am to get in the way of what they choose? The great sea-witch herself? Do you think I can just draw you legs like the ones on your back, stir the mud, and then pouf?  You’re more stupid than you look, little fish with legs.”
    Have you ever felt rage so strong that you feel as if you were a wave the size of an island, about to crash down on the thing that hurt you and crush it like an eggshell into the sea.  If she and I had been alone then, perhaps I would have wrapped my strong young arms around her throat and throttled her until her shrivelled tongue stuck out.  If I could have reached her.
    So I had my legs, but I’d never be able to use them.  What use would I be to you, with these ugly, useless legs? My silly dreams of walking down to the sand, of climbing the cliff like a human would, of mating like a human would – all these dreams died then. 
    “You stinking old woman,” said Che, sliding up beside me. “Someone should have strangled you and pushed you out to the Deep Sea for the sharks to eat.”
                  It took a lot of guts for him to say that.  I hadn’t even known he was there.  Dayang looked around and put her hands over her ears.  Nobody had ever said such a thing to Grandmother before.
    Grandmother’s eel head swivelled, and her few teeth bared in angry response.  I don’t think she could believe her ears either.
    “Did someone ask you to speak, cripple? It’s you that should have been put out in the Deep, when you were born with that twisted tail of yours.  Why don’t you come over here and I’ll cut it off for you.”
    Grandmother picked up the knife and lunged with it aimlessly. Suddenly, I saw her through new eyes.  It almost made me laugh to look at her, skinny, blind, evil old woman, strong only in her own head.
    Che slid towards her.
    “I can hear you, cripple-boy.  Come closer and I’ll cut you.”
    She swiped the air with the knife.  I realised she was actually scared, for once in her life.  I’d never before heard fear in Grandmother’s cracked