Girl at the Bottom of the Sea by Michelle Tea

this be tough for spoiled human girl from the land. To bring you into Maumarr .”
    â€œTo bring me where?” Sophie asked, confused.
    â€œMaumarr,” the mermaid repeated. Her voice in the first part of the word sounded low and sonic, like a whale, then ending in what soundedlike a growl. “This place is Maumarr. Mermaid word for the sea.”
    â€œMaoooooo,” Sophie began awkwardly, and Syrena shushed her.
    â€œDon’t,” she said. “Human girl cannot make mermaid sound, cannot speak mermaid language. I use your words for things, so you understand. But mermaids have our own words, you know. Older words than your human words. We be down here longer, we know it all forever. Humans not understand life here. Is cold, and hard. You must be strong.” The mermaid shook her head, remembering that she was annoyed with the girl for biting her tail, and even for riding along on her body in the first place. “What am I, a bus?”
    â€œWell, I don’t know,” Sophie tried not to whine, not to be “very much baby.” The octopus had drifted up her neck, tickling as it moved into the salty tangle of her hair. “You really can’t carry me?” she asked the mermaid. “Am I too heavy?”
    â€œNo, Syrena sighed. “Very light. Tell truth, can’t feel you at all. Is just principle. I am not donkey. I was told—when I come for you—that you are magic girl, and I think magic girl can swim.”
    The octopus had settled itself on the top of Sophie’s head, sort of off to the side like a little hat. It nibbled some crab larvae from her hair, its many legs burrowing into Sophie’s snarls. She reached up and gingerly stroked the tiny beast the way she had taken to stroking Livia’s feather, wound in her curls. Her hair was becoming a real catchall.
    Syrena sighed deeply, releasing a chain of shimmering bubbles in the water. “Okay,” she thought out loud. “You are part girl, which cannot swim like mermaid. You don’t have this,” Syrena stretchedthe marvel of her tail before them, gathered it into her arms, petting herself. Frowning, she picked at some scaly bits that hung from her long appendage. “I am mess,” she said grimly. “When all is over, I get my tail fixed. Anyway—girl part cannot swim with girl body, ya. But Odmieńce has magic.” The mermaid’s flashing eyes lit upon Sophie. “Do not try to swim like girl. Swim like Odmieńce!”
    Sophie gathered herself in the water. Swim like Odmieńce? She tried to feel powerful. She would charge powerfully forward, like a superhero bursting into the air! She counted to three in her head and lunged forward sloppily, tripping over her feet. She sunk into a hot cloud and emerged with her face sooty from minerals. It was even more bumbling than when she was simply trying to swim. Syrena cringed and covered her face with the tip of her tail.
    Gritting her teeth, bits of sand and minerals crunching beneath, Sophie hurled herself through the water again and again. But each time she just flailed, lacking even the grace of slapstick. She kicked the underwater geysers and muddied the waters. Syrena grew weary. It did not take long; patience was not one of the mermaid’s magics.
    â€œListen, I told you are big special! I not abandon my river to the Boginki unless you real big deal! But this? This, how you say—bullshit!” Syrena’s hands were balled into fists, planted on her hips above her little fins. “You want to go against Kishka? Kishka command the water into a fist to pummel us! You can’t even swim through it!”
    Sophie remembered her terror as the creek rose up at her grandmother’s command. What she saw as she was punched into thesky—her grandmother’s many faces reflected in the water as if in a million shards of glass. Kishka did not move through the water, she made the water move. She