The sea monster’s song

The sea monster’s song is the closest thing Marie-Josèphe de la Croix and the captive creature share as a language, but it never becomes a simple code with settled meanings. Marie-Josèphe listens for intention, answers with melodies of her own, and gradually makes music part of their feeding and trust. Yet the song that draws them together can also unsettle her, and a later warning reaches her without being understood. Its significance lies in this double possibility: music makes contact across their difference, but cannot ensure that a message will arrive in time.

Listening for Meaning

Early on, Marie-Josèphe hums a melody the sea monster has sung and wonders whether its songs mean anything, as the cries and yowls of her cat, Hercules, might. She imagines that the creature could be expressing relief at escaping its basin and canvas covering, but recognizes that this interpretation may be confusing or wrong. From the beginning, then, song invites her to imagine another mind while exposing the limits of what she can know about it.

The exchange takes place in an artificial enclosure, not in the sea. The fountain water glows with phosphorescence, recalling the glowing ocean at Fort-de-France on Martinique; Marie-Josèphe supposes that barrels brought the luminous water to Versailles. Against the gilt dolphins and tritons, the creature’s song belongs to an environment assembled from fragments of its distant home. The setting makes listening feel like an attempt at contact across captivity, even as the basin and the bars separate the singers.

When the sea monster sings a few notes, Marie-Josèphe answers as she would to a cat. She thanks the creature for bringing a piece of fish and tells it that it may eat. The creature says “Fishhhh,” pops the morsel into its mouth, and crunches it, with part of the tail briefly visible between its lips. The exchange is small and practical: song and speech accompany an offering, a response, and a meal. It does not establish that the creature understands her words, but it gives Marie-Josèphe a way to treat its sounds as part of an encounter rather than as meaningless noise.

Song, Trust, and Fear

That trust remains precarious. As Marie-Josèphe prepares to leave, she pets the sea monster goodbye; the creature takes her wrist and sings while drawing her toward the water. Its grip is gentle but firm, and its insistent singing continues as it pulls her hand beneath the surface. Marie-Josèphe struggles, frightened by the claws pinioning her, and tells it to let go. The creature releases her, but the moment turns an apparent musical invitation into a frightening physical encounter.

Afterward, the song reaches her less as a tune than as a bodily vibration. She feels it through the water and stone and against the wooden platform, where it trembles like a primitive drumbeat. Shaken, she shuts and locks the cage, takes her lantern, and hurries from the tent. The contrast is sharp: music had accompanied food and tentative understanding, but now its force is inseparable from the creature’s hold on her wrist and her fear of being pulled into the water. The scene does not clarify what the sea monster intended; it makes the uncertainty itself part of their relationship.

Learning One Another’s Music

In later encounters, Marie-Josèphe deliberately uses song while feeding and taming the sea monster. She compares its interest in licking salt from her skin to that of her old pony, then offers fish as she tries to accustom it to her hands and voice. She prompts it to say sea monster, and the creature parrots “Fishhhh” before its imitation dissolves into a long, complex song of melody and whistles. When she asks it to say her name, it again answers with “Fishhhh.” Speech appears within the creature’s repertoire, but it does not develop into a reliable exchange of names; its singing exceeds the lesson Marie-Josèphe has set.

Marie-Josèphe also sings the wordless melody she had played for Louis XIV. The sea monster drifts closer and hums a second melody, described as exotic and haunting, that breaks every rule of music. Marie-Josèphe begins to cry, though she cannot settle on a reason. She considers whether her time of the month explains the sadness, then recalls that it has previously made her impatient with inconvenience and restrictions, not sorrowful. The episode gives the song an effect she feels before she can account for it: the creature’s melody moves her, but neither its meaning nor her own response is fully explained.

Their musical exchange becomes more coordinated as Marie-Josèphe continues singing. The sea monster embroiders variations on her melody; when she waves a net for the guard, it appears to see the morsel, ends its song, accepts the fish delicately between its claws, and submerges. Music here accompanies an increasingly practiced routine of attention, reward, and feeding. The sea monster’s variations are not merely echoes, while Marie-Josèphe’s song gives it something to answer. Their communication remains incomplete, but it has acquired a shared pattern.

A Warning Without an Answer

The sea monster’s song also carries a warning that does not reach Marie-Josèphe in a form she understands. From the creature’s perspective, the woman of land walks bleeding toward predators whose roars and snarls fill the darkness and dawn. The sea monster crawls up the steps to the edge of its small pool and cries out in despair and warning. It echoes Marie-Josèphe’s simple song of childish babble, but only silence replies; its own warning song bursts through the gardens and fades away.

The failure of this exchange gives the earlier scenes a darker counterpoint. Marie-Josèphe has learned to sing and listen during moments of feeding, and has felt a melody vibrate through the structure around the pool. Yet neither familiarity nor musical response guarantees that she will recognize a danger communicated by the creature. After the warning, the sea monster washes salt tears from its eyes, sings a different, soft and lyrical song, and swims for shelter beneath the hooves of Apollo’s horses. Song has been invitation, accompaniment, and warning; at the end of this sequence, it is also what remains when the warning has passed unanswered.