by Alex Flinn
I dove beneath the waves to hide.
I swam very hard and very far. It was still early. I could have gone to another place, seen something else. It was my birthday after all. But I was too afraid of being found out. Besides, now that I had seen the angel, I wanted nothing more. Her jeweled image was printed upon my brain forever.
So I returned home.
When my sisters saw me, they said, “Ha! You’ve returned early. Nothing to see, eh?”
“No,” I said, “nothing to see.” I did not wish to tell them the truth, for if they knew how I longed to return again and again to the shore, they would watch me. If I pretended lack of interest, they would let me alone. I could go as I pleased.
Which is what I did. At first, I waited several days in case the boy had told someone about me.
But I heard nothing about it, so I began to return periodically to shore. My main—indeed, my only—purpose was to search for more angels. I became fascinated, obsessed by them. However, since I could not walk as humans did, I could only find those near the shore. Once, I saw one on the bow of a ship, a winged creature carved in wood. Usually, though, I kept returning to that one glass-jeweled image of the angel. On some days, early in the morning, I heard the most beautiful music emanating from behind the image. Singing. Not singing as merfolk sang, which lured men to their deaths. Instead, the voices I heard sang of worship and rejoicing, and they sang of heaven, the place in the sky where only humans could go.
Still I looked for sailors and the shipwrecks, still held their hands and comforted them, pretending to be an angel. But now that I had seen a real angel, I felt an emptiness at being a false one.
Our castle was located in the cold waters near Newfoundland. It was nearly spring, and we knew that the temperature would soon warm. But, for now, my sisters and I enjoyed playing amongst the icebergs.
But, one night, when the sky was clear and dappled with stars, I saw by their light the strangest thing, an iceberg with a bit of red upon it.
I swam closer to get a look. Was it blood? (I hoped not.) Or a bit of ribbon? (I hoped so.) Upon closer examination, I found that it was what my grandmother called paint, which humans used to color the hulls of their ships.
A ship must have struck an iceberg and left behind some of her lovely red paint.
And then, I heard the screaming!
Not merely one scream or ten, but hundreds; not only men but women’s voices too.
I could barely see in the star-spotted darkness but I plunged underwater where my vision was keener, and began to swim in the direction of the voices.
Yet, when I resurfaced closer, the voices were no louder, as if some of them had faded away.
Closer still, I realized why they had faded. The first I saw was a woman, sickly white and so cold, despite the shawl wrapped around her shoulders. The second was the same, and the third, a little girl holding a tiny animal. They were dead, floating, frozen. I closed my eyes. I could not look.
I reminded myself that this was a happy scene. These people, these humans, were gone to live with the angels, to inhabit the starry sky forever.
Then, I heard a voice, so soft I could barely recognize it was real.
“Can you … help me?”
I turned and looked across the still, black water. It was a boy, a boy near my own age, or perhaps a bit older. He was more beautiful, though, than any merboy I had ever seen, with light brown hair and eyes black as mussel shells.
I knew he was dying.
I also knew I should comfort him, should give him my hand and assure him he would live forever in the sky. Yet I did not want him to die. He was so beautiful, I wanted him to live. I wanted him to live with me.
Thus, with an instinct sure as the instinct that counseled me to fish or to swim, I plunged through the icy water and swam toward him. Once there, I seized the boy and wrapped my arms around him. He had on some sort of soft, white, cloudlike clothing, and through it, I could feel his heartbeat. So slow! Was it because he was dying?
My first instinct was to pull him beneath the sea, to take him home to our castle. I knew he could not breathe under the water. If I took him with me, I would gain nothing but a beautiful, frozen corpse.
And yet, his ship was gone. I could see it when I looked beneath the water, its golden contents still spiraling toward the ocean floor. The land was so far away that I was sure the boy, with his slow heartbeat, would die before we reached it.
That was when I saw a light.
At first, I thought it was the moon, reflected on the black waves. But then, it hit me in the eyes, and I saw that it was a human light such as I had seen on ships that passed at night. Someone was there!
With not a moment to spare, I grabbed the boy tighter and began to pull him toward the light. He moaned softly at being wrested away. I took this as a sign of life, and I said, “Yes! Yes! Go ahead! Just another minute! Please, don’t die.”
“What? Who?”
“I am Doria. I will save you.”
He went limp in my arms. Still, I felt his heart beating. No time to speak. My arms gripped. My tail churned. I plunged forward through the icy waves.
The light? Where was the light? Was it merely an illusion caused by my own desperate hopes? I turned first one way, then the other, searching for a sign of it. Nothing.
“Who is that?” A voice!
“No one there,” another said. “None could live so long in such cold water.”
The humans! They were there! I splashed my tail, heedless of the risk of being seen, forgetting everything but the beautiful boy I held in my arms, everything but that he should live on the same earth I inhabited.
“There is someone! He’s splashing!”
With the boy, I swam closer to the little white boat. I waved.
“He’s there! Get him!”
“No, Mr. Lowe! He’ll capsize the boat!”
“We cannot just let him die!”
I swam through the black water, still holding the boy, shoving him ahead of me. They could not leave him. Finally, I reached out, and with one hand, touched the boat’s side.
“Hey, there’s two of them!”
They couldn’t see me, couldn’t find me. I tried to push the boy in front of me, concealing myself. As soon as they took him, I would swim away. I had done my part. I had saved him.
And then, I felt something, hands on my shoulders, lifting me, taking not just the boy, but both of us, onto the boat.
I tried to struggle, to keep from being pulled up. They could not see me. Yet refusing to go would give me away just as much. Finally, I let them take me up, and I tucked my tail beneath me, the darkness as my shield. The truth was, I wanted to stay. Most of the small boat’s passengers sat, eyes glazed with sleeplessness and maybe fright, staring ahead. A young woman with blond hair much like my own dozed in back. Only two men, the ones who had pulled us in, paid attention.
No. A third passenger, a young woman. Her eyes flicked downward. She had seen my tail. I was certain. I wanted to jump overboard. Yet, when her eyes met mine again, she gave no sign of anything awry. She said, “Oh, you poor dear, let me give you my coat.”
Before I could protest, she’d stripped it off and wrapped it around me. It was a long coat, which covered every trace of what I was.
“Poor dear,” she cooed again. “You must be half frozen. What is your name?”
I glanced at the boy. He was unconscious, it seemed. Yet I could see he was breathing, for his teeth chattered. “I’m fine. Help him.”
“I’ll help both of you.” She laid her hands on my shoulders, and suddenly, I felt warm, like a summer’s day in the Gulf of Mexico. “Better?”
“Yes.”
She did the same to the boy. His teeth ceased chattering.
“I am Bessie,” the woman said. Her eyes were lovely, green.
“Thank you, Bessie. You saved his—our—lives.”
The boy stared at me. To my amazement, he had recovered enough to speak already. “You saved mine. I was …
thrashing in that water, watching death all around. I had no time. But then, I saw your face, the face of an angel. Where did you come from?”
I was dumbstruck. How could I explain my sudden appearance?
Bessie said, “Silly boy. She was in the water the whole time. Where else would she have been?”
“I don’t know.” His black eyes shone. All merfolk have eyes the color of the sea. His were so beautiful. “She seemed to come from beneath the water.”
Bessie glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “Under this water? She’d be dead, sure as day!”
The boy shook his head. “It just seemed like she came by magic.”
Bessie laughed and turned back to me. “Did I clean your cabin, Miss? E deck?”
I recovered enough to say, “Oh, yes. Yes.” I had no idea what a cabin was. Or a deck. But I realized she was trying to change the subject. “Yes.”
“Not that it matters now, I suppose. Your cabin, everything in it is sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Lost. Lost.”
“Lost,” I repeated, remembering the great ship I had seen, still sinking, down, down. How many were on board when it sunk? How many went to sleep, never to awaken?
“Two thousand two hundred twenty-three,” Bessie said.
“What?” I said.
“How many were on board,” Bessie said. “And us few on the boats, seven hundred and six in all, we are the only ones who survived. The rest are sleeping, deep, deep under the waves.”
“Their souls gone to heaven!” I could picture them, their souls white as angels, flying up through the air, looking nothing like the bloated, floating cadavers I’d seen around me.
“I would be there, but for you, my angel!” the boy said.
“Oh, no, no,” I protested. Mermaids were not supposed to save human lives. We were allowed only to watch, barely even that.
“You did!” he said.
“No!” I wanted to leave, to jump, to leap from the lifeboat and swim away. Yet I didn’t want to because I wanted to sit longer with this boy, this boy whose face was more beautiful with every passing moment.
Instead, I did the only other thing I could think to do.
I sang. I sang one of the songs known to the merfolk, my high, clear voice sounding through the cold, starry night.
Under the ocean, seaweed for a bed,
Shells for a pillow, cradle his head.
My lover is resting on the ocean floor.
Soon, he’ll turn to seafoam, and I’ll see him no more.
Eyes were so lovely; Now, they’re fast asleep,
Underneath the ocean, dark and deep.
My lover is resting on the ocean floor.
Soon, he’ll turn to seafoam, and I’ll see him no more.
The merfolk surround him, sing a lullaby.
Hush, my dearest darling, don’t ye cry.
My lover is resting on the ocean floor.
Soon, he’ll turn to seafoam, and I’ll see him no more.
As I sang the refrain for the third time, Bessie joined in, then the boy, then the others. They joined in too. When I looked around, I saw their eyes were shining, and they wiped away tears born more of weariness from what they had faced than from my song. Soon, only the blond girl in the back remained asleep. I wondered if she was all right.
“That was beautiful,” the boy said when I had finished. He reached for my hand and—Poseidon help me—I let him take it, though my mind screamed that it was wrong and wronger.
“Yes, beautiful,” Bessie said. “A song like that … it is unforgettable.”
Something about the way she said “unforgettable” made me glance at her. She smiled.
Slowly, shivering, we all dozed off, first the boy, his hand held in mine, then the other passengers, then Bessie. I knew I should jump overboard then. No one would notice. I extricated my hand from the boy’s icy grip. He moaned in protest. I waited, breath held, but he stirred no further. I braced my hands on the edge of the boat. For an instant, I thought I saw Bessie’s eye twitch. No. My imagination. With a final glance at the boy’s beautiful face, I made to dive.
Just then, a horn blared.
I jumped. We all jumped. It was a ship, large and black, barely visible against the night sky. We were saved! They were saved. I was doomed.
I could dawdle no longer. I plunged into the dark, suddenly cold water. It grabbed me as my mother used to when I swam too close to the surface and pulled me deeper, deeper into its arms, past the doomed ship, her contents now strewn across the ocean floor, past the bodies, half sunk, floating like waving angels. I tried not to look at them, but their dead eyes stared at me.
When I had swum a suitable distance, I reemerged from the water. Now, the air was colder than I remembered. It was still dark, but I could hear sounds, the yells of the rescuers, the shrieks of the rescued. It was too dark to see. Still, I searched for the white shape of the boy’s lifeboat, his lifeboat, for one last look. The black ocean tried again to pull me away.
Hours later, when the sun rose, the boy was gone. Still, I watched longer, until the rescue ship was out of sight.
Only after it left did I once again plunge into the inviting water, no longer black but dappled blue by the morning sun. Down, down I plunged, down many fathoms, past the angels until the water was, once again, dark and cold, cold and murky, deeper than I had ever been or wanted to be. But now, I did want to. I wanted to see it once more, his ship. Finally, I found the hull. It was broken in two. I entered the larger part, careful to disturb nothing and to avoid the staring eyes. I knew their souls were in heaven now. Yet, I was still sad.
Down the hallway and grand staircase I flew. My hands found a metal piece covered with the pattern of earth flowers. My tail kicked up sand and other small objects. Around me, sea creatures feasted on bits of what must have been food. Was this where they had dined? I knew that the sharks would come later. Finally, the waves brought me what I sought, something white and small and billowy with a picture of the great ship as it must have looked. I took it, heedless of my father’s warnings to take nothing. After all, I had given something. I had saved a boy’s life.
Hand on my prize, I swam for home.
I did not tell anyone what I had seen and done and risked. I knew they would be furious. Yet, in the next days, the great ship’s sinking was the talk of the merworld. Many went to visit its carcass, which they said was more beautiful than our most glorious castle. I learned that the dead ship’s name had been Titanic, and that it was thought unsinkable.
“’Tis tempting fate to say a ship is unsinkable,” my father said. “And fate did not like it.”
The dead, too, filled our conversation, so many dead. I listened to each discussion, rapt with attention, yet pretending to know less than I did. Still, I could think of nothing else. I brought up the subject every day, every hour, asking about the jewels and hangings my sisters had seen, the rumors they had heard. Always, always, I thought of the boy, wondering what had become of him after I had left. Finally, one day, as my sister Marina described the efforts to recover the dead, I asked, “What of the survivors? Were there many?”
“Fewer survived than died,” she said. “The humans did not take care.”
“Yes, yes,” I agreed, remembering the waterlogged, white, waving bodies at the ocean’s floor. “But did any survive? Where were they taken?”
Marina said she did not know but could find out. I asked her, you see, because I knew she would.
Still, it could not be quick enough for me. I had to find the boy, had to know he lived still, even though I could not be with him. I had to know he walked the earth yet.
The card I had taken with the picture of the ship and the writing I could not read I placed in a sack that had been Mother’s. It was made of the body of a dead octopus. It was there I kept all my treasures. It protected them. But this card I took out so many times it wavered and faded, as I knew his memory of me would fade to nothing also.
The next day, Marina swam to me, t
ail fairly shaking with excitement. She had information.
“It is the talk of the human world, so I eavesdropped on some who came to salvage. They said the survivors were rescued by a ship called Carpathia. They were bound for New York.”
New York, I had heard of. Though it was a bit of a journey, I was a strong swimmer. I would visit New York and look for the place where the great ships went. I would wait on the beach there, and surely he would happen by sooner or later. If I could see him safe and sound, I told myself, I would be satisfied.
The next day, while my father and sisters and grandmother still slumbered, I left our castle, taking only the octopus bag and the picture of the Titanic. I started in the direction in which I had seen the great ship leave. It was a long journey, and I knew my family would be furious. Yet what harm was there in it? I did not intend to reveal myself, merely to look. Besides, I had been gone so long by that point that I was already in grave trouble. I might as well move forward, for there was no turning back. I rested one night and the next morning swam farther.
Finally, I reached it. I need not have worried about anyone noticing me. The place where the ships went was home not to one or two but to thousands of boats. Each had hundreds of people, embarking or debarking, carrying suitcases or packages.
To one side of the seaport was a statue of a woman. At least, I thought it was a woman, though she was monstrous large and green. To the other side, on the shore, were the castles, taller than any I had seen before, some reaching into the clouds. Could all those castles be full of humans? If so, I would never find the boy. Never.
I sat on a rock that was square, like no real rock I had seen before. I began to cry. My arms and tail and entire body ached. I had swum two days to no avail, and now, I would have to swim two days back and face my father and sisters. A ship’s horn blared, mocking me. I slid from the rock, which scraped my body. I hung in the water, weeping. I had no place to go.
The sky darkened, and the air grew cold. Still, I hung near the shore, the dock a barrier I could not breach. Yet I wanted to stay there. I wanted to be near him.
A voice interrupted my churning thoughts.