Gifted

‘Here it is!’ said the witch to the princess, cutting out her tongue at the same moment.

-Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Mermaid

When reading aloud, use the following voices:

• The girl: small, underwater, very far away.
• The woman she becomes: the same.
• The guest in the suite: you will never hear them.
• The child in the park: bright, brief.
• The beast: silent, then not.
• All the women who stood at doors before her: yours, or interchangeable with the narrator.

THE car had rules I didn't make and couldn't shirk. Windows cracked, the damp of nearby water wafted in and down my lungs. His hands had abandoned the wheel. His hands were the size of the world.

Never forget how special you are. He said it, and I believed it in the way any child believes in the logic of adults. Wholly, and without recourse.

For decades, I told myself I gave it away. He didn't take anything from me. It made a difference that it was not taken and that it was given. I am still now trying to find it.

The water was his idea. The temperature was wrong. My muddied feet felt shrunk by its frigidity. The press of his hands on my shoulders, like how the passenger door held me before it locked.

I had my pick, you know. He said it to make me feel safe, to make me a distinction, and he wasn't wrong. Not about that. But I was wrong about what I was being saved from.

The shock sent ice into my adrenals, reaching nightmare status before I knew what happened. The cold came first.

*

THE hedges had been rolled out by the night crew and arranged to allow the utmost discretion, obstructing the breezeway throughout the day. The door across the cobblestone expanse was hidden. Its nightly code was set and done. The park was almost closed. The night's boxes had all been checked off. I waited for the guests of honor.

You cannot enter alone. The concierge never knocks. No one will bother you. Be at the door by 7 am else remain captive to the suite until closing again.

Rules required no reason. No one complained. Such a stay was not accessible to the masses. Not allowed to be wanted. Not even looked upon.

When the guests arrived, I bowed. Eyes closed, granting the utmost, I felt for the keypad and unlocked the door.

There was once a girl who lived beneath the sea and wanted legs. A woman with power gave them to her in exchange for her voice and other unnamed things. Every step upon land was shattered glass. She could tell no one. It was not tragedy. It was transaction. Acknowledged and agreed, the distinction between these and any other option was meaningful.

The last firework lit up the sky, followed by the buzz from above. I handed the guest over to the concierge and bid farewell, then returned to my inventory. The suite light flickered as the rest of the boxes were checked.

*

THE toddler was barely walking in its freshly AirTagged Nikes that morning. Such a small child, watching the bigger kids while velcroing and unvelcroing those tiny shoes. They were always small at this age, a smallness that moved me like a current. The tracker. The parents had no doubt planned to lose and retrieve the child with technology, an event made certain by their smallness. They were right, but not about their faith in safety's infrastructure.

I was that size once. A set of hands always knew where I was, too. That was my safety, and I, too, had been wrong.

Later, I crossed the bridge at lunch, noticing the water below. The ripples. The families watching me, waiting for me to entertain, as one must in this suit. I'm not there for them, though. I'm just the scenery.

The water splashed against the banks of the moat. Something moved in me.

There was once a woman who stood at a door with a key in her hand, telling herself she was only standing there. Holding the key was not the same as using it. There was a difference between an unlocked door and one that is open. Doors do not open themselves.

The park went quiet. Families fled the gates. My fingers knew the key. They'd held it my whole life.

I stayed. Waited.

*

ACROSS the bridge to the breezeway. The water surface settled, the moon a perfect sight. Into the hedges.

The door, as it was before. Wrong in an unnamed way. Familiar scents and the buzz from inside the tower.

I'm only standing at the door, I told myself. Nothing more.

There is a difference. I'm good at the difference.

The shoe was pink. Worn at the toe the way children wear things, completely, without thought of preservation.

The light on the heel blinked. It did what it was designed to do. It does not know it has failed.

The water was settled. It did what water does afterward. It settles. It holds its surface, keeping the tension. Hiding the things in suspension.

I stood at the railing and watched the light blink.

There was once a girl who learned that water keeps what it wants.

The park lights ignite in sequence, location by location, the way they always do, the way they are designed to do. No variation. No acknowledgment of the preceding dark. The music begins. Somewhere a gate opens. Somewhere a child toddles, trying to be bigger. The magic resumes as it always does, wholly, without regret.

The light on the small heel blinked and blinked and blinked.

Patient.

Precise.

Doing what it was made for.

*

THE dawn cold pricks me alive. The phone rings. All clear. Policy.

I was under just long enough, I remember. Not to surrender. Not to find peace. What I found lived beyond these categories. No hands reached through to pull me up. I think about him like this. Less and less. Still too much. An unknown quota.

He was certain about what water could do to small things. And I was so small. In the water, he was certain. But he was wrong.

When he smashed me through the surface and left me to drown, it was the first time I could breathe.