Read Fathomless for Free Online Page A

go—
    “Do you, Lo?” Key asks.
    “I…” I look at Key, who draws closer to me. We look so different than humans, don’t we? I’d forgotten till I saw the girl, but now, compared with Key… you would never know we were once like them. What did my hair look like when I was Naida? What color was my skin? I look down at my arm, at the milky-blue color. Key’s is milky-green. But when we were humans, we must have been bronze or golden or some sun-kissed color. I haven’t thought about these things in ages, yet now I stare at my forearm in wonder, in sorrow that I can’t remember what it once looked like. Who can’t remember her own body?
    “I was telling her that you didn’t want the boy’s soul anyhow? You sound like one of the old ones, Lo. Should I hold on to you if a hurricane passes through?” Her words are teasing, but the humor doesn’t reach her eyes. I do sound like one of the old ones—they don’t listen. They don’t care. They’re as quiet as the sand, letting the water push them around like branches of seaweed. Getting their attention is hard.
    But I don’t feel old. I feel like I did when I was new, when I was younger than Molly, even.
Naida. Naida. I can’t forget it again. Naida.
    They’re staring at me, waiting for me to answer. “No.No, I didn’t want his soul. I just see no point in needless death,” I say, waving my hand in Molly’s direction. It’s not a lie. I don’t care about the boy—I liked his eyes, the way he looked at me, but right now I care about my name. I care about how a human girl knew my name…. Did I know her when I was like them?
Please, Molly, let it go. I just want to focus on my name—
    Naida.
    “He might have loved me. It might have worked,” Molly hisses. Her hair is red—or, it was red. It’s now faded and darkened by the sea. Still, it’s the most vibrant hair among us, and it blossoms around her face. It never mattered to me before, but now I scan my sisters, picking out the differences, the tiny differences between us. Darker skin, longer torsos, fuller lips. Only the old ones look the same, like the ocean beat their differences out of them, made them all equally beautiful. I’ll look like that eventually. And so will Molly. I look back at her, suddenly envious that her hair is still so red. I notice calluses on each of her left fingers. What did she do as a human to earn those?
    “I’m sorry,” I tell her, drawing closer. “I didn’t mean it. Forgive me.” When a sister asks forgiveness, there’s really little choice. We have to forgive one another, the old ones say, because none of us can get by alone. We don’t lie to one another, we don’t hold grudges, we don’t hate. It wouldn’t make any sense to.
    “It was my one chance. My only chance to escape. I couldhave gone back! I could have fought, could have gotten revenge for what happened to us….” Her words are mournful, but her face is not. I raise my eyebrows—I don’t understand what she means by revenge, and from my sisters’ confused expressions, neither do they. It’s something we’ve forgotten, and it’s hard to care about things you’ve forgotten, I suppose. Molly sees this and exhales, shakes her head like we’re too stupid to understand. Just as I’m about to ask her to explain, she swims closer to me, and the water around her feels hot. I watch, waiting, wondering if she’s too young to understand forgiveness. Was I ever this young?
    “Forgive me,” I repeat. Molly stares at me for a long time. Her eyes flicker, pools within the ocean that seem so shallow, yet so dangerous.
    “It’s a good thing, Molly,” one of the other girls says. “It wouldn’t have worked anyhow, and now you can be happy with us. Your sisters.”
    “Exactly,” I say, voice unconvincing—last night I would have been able to persuade her, to tell her how beautiful it is under the water when a storm passes overhead, how perfect we all are together. Those things are still true,