231. The Wobbling Theatre Seat

231. The Wobbling Theatre Seat

Patty and Parrot told us that the best way to avoid the press was to chase it instead of being chased by it. They suggested Alpin and I go to the Sweet Voice of the Siren recital in their company. We could sit with them in the box reserved for the press. I, however, thought that would look too pretentious of us, and even if it probably would be of help to me, making me too available and therefore of no interest,  it might not do to show Alpin the unchangedling so brashly to the press and the public. So, since the recital was to be held at the Apple Island Auditorium, I suggested Patty and Parrot be the ones to join us in my parents’ box. There was a lot of room there, because only my sisters Heather and Thistle were assisting.

Marina appeared on stage within a great pink shell that emerged from an onstage ocean. She was mounted on a hippocamp, and she opened the recital with a few beautifully spoken words about her fabulous school and wonderful pupils. Then, four and twenty girls swam onto the stage wrapped in flowing green and blue gauze and began to sing. I think it may have been a mistake to open the show with these girls singing “Come, come, I love you only!” because part of the audience got up and would have flung themselves onto the stage if there hadn’t been an invisible barrier, which all these people got stuck against as if they were flies before a glass window, knocking and flailing and trying to obtain access to the sirens.  I was able to remain in our box, clutching my seat desperately and almost pulling it completely out of the floor it was screwed to, but Alpin was among the first to be banging silently on the invisible barrier. Parrot and Patty, unaffected, were filming the rapture and proving they loved their profession beyond siren allure. When the song was over, most of the audience was too dazed to clap, and those who had left their seats wandered back to them toppling and hobbling. And I sat down again on my own now wobbling chair. It limped annoyingly for the rest of the recital, but that wasn’t the poor thing’s fault. I kept telling myself I had to remember to have it repaired.

Marina spoke again, this time about the power of a well-trained voice. She had proved her point, I suppose. So perhaps it wasn’t a mistake to begin with a number like that one, but I think we were all dizzy after it and throughout the recital, and couldn’t concentrate much on the mermen reciting excerpts from Shakespeare’s The Tempest and other pupils' reciting poetical gems about the sea, or on the efforts of the soloists and the duettists. The closing number, apotheosical and with all the participants dancing on the stage, was “She wore red feathers and an emerald green tail.”  The pupils all flung their red merrow feather caps up in the air at the end of it. Their sealskin coats they had already dropped off long before.

“It’s a good thing my brother-in-law isn’t here,” said Alpin, meaning Uncle Richearth. “He would have fallen in love with that Marina for sure.”

“The fertility demon, eh?” said Patty. “I suppose when you are one you can’t help being amorous. I also suppose  he’s a good bargain for his wife anyway because of and despite that.”

“Are these girls all really merrows?” asked Alpin.

“I don’t think so. But ask my sisters. They know a couple of them or so,” I said. I had recognized one or two friends of my sisters and these spirits were more aerial or terrestrial than acquatic. Still, they had made pretty convincing mermaids up there on the stage.

“I want a real merrow for a girlfriend,” said Alpin. “To sing me to sleep at night. And they’re all rich, aren’t they, the ocean ladies? Owners of sunken treasures. So they wouldn’t need for me to enslave myself working to support them.”

“Mostly they make their mortal fishermen lovers lucky when fishing. That’s the dough they contribute to most of their unions,” said Parrot.

“Nah, nothing to do with smelly, uncooked fish!” said Alpin. “I want a merrow as rich as Lira. I suppose her daughter Marina is already taken. It would be impossible for her not to be.”

“Their teeth grow sharp when angered, you do know that, don’t you?” said Patty. “It’s like marrying a shark.”

But we went backstage to congratulate the teacher, and maybe meet some of the pupils. It was probably a mistake to do this, but it couldn’t be helped. I couldn’t spend the rest of the night clutching my damaged theatre seat.