The Mermaid's Tale

by D. G. Valdron

  The Elder blanched, but held his ground.

  “What else can you divine?” he asked.

  “The knife was greased, animal fat.” I pointed to two punctures up by her collarbone. “See these marks here. These were the first wounds. Greasing knives is common enough among fighters, is to allow knife to be pulled quickly.”

  I turned her body on its side.

  “Few wounds in back, and those only punctures that went all the way through from the front. She was attacked from the front, probably on land or in a boat, lying on her back.”

  “No bruises,” I said thoughtfully, examining her shoulders, her biceps. I grabbed a handful of hair and tugged it; it was firm. “She was not pulled from the water. She was found out of it, or lured. The attack did not come until later.”

  I held up a limp arm.

  “She struggled. See the marks on her hands as she tried to stop the knife?”

  I bent the wrist back for them, so they could see the hole. There was a slight cracking as the bones moved.

  “Here the knife went right through the wrist, but was trapped by the bones. It had to be pulled back out. Must have been terribly painful. She must have screamed a lot.”

  I paused for a second. Waited. No one ventured anything.

  “So, she had been killed someplace where her screams would not have been heard. Or taken someplace.”

  I went on. “It was a very strong knife for its size, to go into the wrist like that. It should have snapped or bent. Not flint or stone. Those would have been short short blades, snap easily. Or inserted into a groove, it would have been jagged. Not copper either, too weak. Bronze, or something strong.”

  Iron, I decided. Someone had an iron knife. I kept that to myself. Iron was rare.

  “It takes a lot of strength to drive a knife between bones like this and then pull it back out,” I told them.

  “Who did this?” the Elder asked.

  Now we were getting down to the soft meat of the matter.

  I let the meat fall onto its back, and waved my arm from the uppermost injury, to the lowest stab wound.

  “Probably only one being. Just one weapon, no sign of any other person. Not Goblin,” I told him. “Not enough strength. Hobgoblins, Dwarves, Kobolds, might have strength, don’t have reach, the stab wounds are all over. Giants or Trolls: Too much reach, too small a knife.”

  I grinned up at him.

  “Humans perhaps. Could be Selks. You know Selks that do work like this?”

  They did not respond.

  “Probably not Selks. Selks probably do it in water.” My teeth bared with pleasure as they shuddered. “This was dry work. What do you think?”

  “No Selks,” one of the guards said. The Elders glanced at him. He bowed his head.

  The guards weren’t supposed to talk. I laughed.

  “Vampires,” I speculated. “But they kill different. And they wouldn’t come near enough water to fish a Mermaid out.”

  I waited.

  “Who did this?” I asked rhetorically. “Hard to say. Probably Arukh. One Arukh with a funny knife.”

  “Arash are known for madness,” the Speaker of the Elders said, pronouncing it oddly. Every race said our name differently. It didn’t matter. It always meant the same thing.

  I nodded. This was certainly the work of madness. Long after she had died her attacker had gone on stabbing. He had made a point of gouging out her eyes, and cutting out her tongue, and then he had gone through the effort of mutilating her sex and cutting her legs apart. Transforming her from a person into badly butchered meat. All unnecessary, pointless. It smelled of a particular kind of insanity.

  My kind: We are mad, bad and dangerous to be around.

  And whatever one of us did this was madder and badder still.

  “Arukh,” I said. “Orc. But you knew that?”

  “It has the stink of madness, there is no mistaking the odour.”

  That was why they kept their nostrils shut. I reached down to the corpse and spread its ragged legs apart, the red and torn meat between its thighs an awful parody of a woman’s sex. An Ublul moaned, behind me, voicing his disgust. I could feel them shifting around. I paid no attention.

  An Arukh had done it. All you had to do was look at the mess it had made of the body, and you could tell. They could tell.

  They didn’t need me to come and probe a ruined body to tell them what they knew. What did they want then?

  I shoved my fist up the torn raw meat, probed in its ruined abdomen until I came to a familiar slickness. A male Arukh then. I rubbed my finger in the trace, but did not bring it to my nose to smell. Decay would mask it.

  No bones broken, I noted with surprise. A small male then. We like to break bones whenever we can.

  They watched me for as long as they could stand it.

  “Can you find the one who did this?” the Elder blurted. “Make sure it is never done again?”

  “Arrah,” I said, grinning, rising into a crouch. My heavy sharp teeth flashed at them as I bobbed my head at the Elders.

  “You want me to hunt and kill my own people?” I asked him.

  “Look upon their work!”

  I glanced at the corpse.

  “Plenty of good meat there still,” I told them. “Good eating.”

  An Ublul, the one who’d spoken, stepped towards me, his weapon half raised. I bobbed my head submissively at him, ranging him.

  He was bigger than the others. Bigger than other Ublul the way Ublul were bigger than most Selk. They were some northern swamp breed. The thin fat layer that made Selk seem sleek was thick with them, heavy rolls of it hanging from their bodies. The slickness of Selk skin that made it shine in the light was a soapy oil on them. The Ublul were slow and strong, patient defensive fighters. This one had thick white scars on his body, with clumsy stitch marks.

  Easy to hurt, hard to stop. Let him move, I thought. Let him move and see what an Arukh can do.

  “Slal,” the Elder commanded. The big Ublul backed up.

  I turned back to the Elders.

  “Do you know which of you did this?”

  “I can find him,” I told them, thinking myself clever for my answer.

  “We pay in gold. Three pieces now. Twelve pieces later.”

  “Pay me all now.”

  “No.”

  I shrugged and waited.

  “Forget it then,” I said, “all the world cheat an Arukh.”

  I watched them.

  “We’ll pay to the Troll, Iron Pants. He can hold between us.”

  I thought about that. Trolls often acted as go betweens, holding money. They were big enough nobody would take it from them, and honest enough not to cheat.

  “I’ll bring you his head,” I told them finally.

  “Then we are finished here,” the Elder said.

  “Wait,” I said.

  They looked at me.

  “Why me?”

  They looked at each other.

  “There are stories,” the Elder said finally, “of an Arukh. An Arukh that gambles with High Gnomes.”

  A chill ran up my spine.

  “There are many stories,” I said, trying to grin. “Nothing to stories, just wind and farts.”

  I watched them, trying to look stupid, teeth barred in a half grin.

  “You will do what will be done.”

  Without a further word they gathered up the corpse and carried it away. I watched with mild disappointment.

  There was still good meat on that body.

  Which was why I was stuck on a chunk of rock in the middle of the water with the city’s lights far off in the distance, and mermaids dancing in the water around me.

  They were a strange people. Their heads and voices would bob above the water for a moment. Then they would
disappear and my heart would surge, my guts would coil. Suddenly, they’d surface somewhere else. I didn’t like it, it was too much like magic. They should stay where I could see them, I thought.

  They were disappointed that I did not drink blood. I think they were on the verge of asking me to drink some anyway, right there, and show them. But they quickly got over it.

  Soon they were talking about my ugliness.

  “She isn’t ugly,” a young female called out. “She’s fierce.”

  “And she has very nice breasts,” a male, the one who brought me here, added.

  I could hear them arguing back and forth around me. Others swam up in ones and twos and asked me questions.

  “Mira is dead,” a young female told me soberly.

  “I know. Your Elders have set me to find her killer.”

  “Nobody here did it,” the young female had vanished, and was replaced by an older male who surfaced a few feet from where she had disappeared.

  “I know. But I want to know about Mira, so I can find who killed her.”

  “What will you do when you find them? Will you drink their blood?” This came from a couple who surfaced farther out. They dove and surfaced a few feet apart for my answer.

  Meanwhile the debate around me had reached a conclusion. The consensus was that I was ferocious-looking rather than ugly. My breasts were still an open question.

  A Mermaid, a female with long hair and pert breasts, heaved itself out of the water onto the rock close to me. She sat there looking at me. I didn’t move.

  “Can I touch your teeth?” she asked, wide eyed.

  I grinned for her, black lips tight across my skull, exposing as many teeth as I could. She reached out tentatively. I felt a trembling finger moved along my heavy jaw, trace the line of a fang. Abruptly, with a squeal and a splash, she was gone. The others hooted and splashed and leapt completely out of the water, excited by her reckless bravery.

  A chorus of “Show us your breasts!” rose up.

  They’d never seen anything like me. They’d never seen another Arukh.

  Except for Mira.

  Mira had seen another Arukh, I thought.

  I could see how it might have coaxed her close enough to grab. These creatures showed no fear of me. No wariness.

  I found myself relaxing. There was no danger for me in these people.

  Rather, they showed a strange fascination with me, swimming close and asking all manner of questions.

  At one point a child Mermaid, I could not tell its age or its sex, but it could have weighed no more than forty pounds, came swimming up and without a word offered me a comb carved from a seashell. I accepted it gravely and held still while the child creature reached up to my mouth and felt my lips and teeth.

  A half dozen different conversations wove together from a score of them. They swam and danced in the water. Once or twice, I saw couples join and swim twisting through the water, as they had sex.

  Questions and comments came and went in no particular order.

  They asked about my race, my life, other races. They asked if I had dreams, and what I thought that particular cloud looked like, and if I had ever killed anyone, and how many. They told me about the Selk and themselves, and they told me about Mira.

  The Selk were a water people. They lived in and through the water and were more comfortable swimming than walking. They inhabited rivers and marshes, living off the bounties of the shores and waters, building elaborate lodges away from land.

  They had dammed great rivers to make places where they could live, and had once had a mighty civilisation that had spread across the known world. It was all gone now, except for a few places like here. Outlying clans and villages had filtered in to join the community in the city, making the Selk a diverse and fractious people within their territories.

  Mermaids were born to the Selk from time to time. Children whose hind limbs had failed to separate and became tails. The Selk revered them as holy beings. It was forbidden to harm one. They lived their entire lives at play and without fear, in the waters where their handicap did not hinder them.

  Mira had been one of them. She had laughed and loved with them. Coupled with most of the males, and a legion of others besides. Everyone had loved Mira, she had no enemies that anyone had ever heard of. A few days ago, she had vanished.

  “I found her,” Cara said. Cara was the female with pert breasts who had amazed the others by coming out of the water to touch my teeth. “Upriver in the reeds. I was looking for sweetgrasses to burn for the full moon. She was in the mud. I swam away quickly and called for Venn and Gari.”

  “Was she in the water?” I asked.

  “No, the best sweetgrasses grow in the mud shores; that’s where she was.”

  “Did she like to go there?”

  “No,” Cara replied, “never. She didn’t like to go on the mud shores. Besides, the sweetgrasses weren’t ready yet. I could hardly find any. That’s why I came so far out and found her.”

  “Aaah.” So she’d been left there.

  “Can you show me the place?”

  Excited by the idea, they all clamoured to go. I climbed into the coracle again and felt it move upriver. As the boat started and stopped, drifted and lurched forward again and again, they clustered about, telling stories about Mira.

  By the time we arrived, I thought I knew Mira very well indeed.

  Dawn was starting to break as I stepped into the mud. I sank past my ankles, and floundered forward. Cara and a couple of others half swam, half pulled themselves across the shallows around me. They giggled and played with the viscous stuff, spattering each other with handfuls, squealing at the feel of it. It would wash off when they returned to the water, I supposed. Maybe that was their secret, everything washed off, nothing really touched them or stuck to them.

  Well, not for Mira.

  “This is it.” Cara, hauling herself agilely on her arms, led me to a small area of flattened and broken grasses. I knelt. There were a few strands of hair. Mira’s. I was impressed that they’d been able to find it again.

  They hadn’t struck me as very clever.

  “It was her hair. I didn’t know her at first, and then I recognised her hair, and I knew it was Mira.”

  Her voice seemed to crack. Her face tightened.

  Distantly, I kneeled in the mud and ran my fingers through Cara’s hair. She seemed to take comfort from my touch. This was the place. I could see trails leading from this place out to the water. Cara’s trail, other Mermaids, finally the Elders who had come out to take the body. There was the mark of another flat-bottomed boat, one that had been dragged much closer. Not what I was looking for.

  There was only one trail remnant leading farther onto land.

  There wasn’t much blood, I noticed. Not in the place they’d found her. Not on the trail out to land. Some, but not enough. The killing had been done elsewhere. The body had still been leaking a little. That meant it had been brought not long after the killing. Why bring it here? Had he meant for it to be found by the Mermaids? Probably not. By the Selk?

  But if he came by land, perhaps he’d not meant the body to be found at all? Drop it in a marsh, far from anywhere, let the carrion creatures have it.

  There wasn’t much else to see. The Mermaids had grown sombre around the site where the body had laid.

  I left them behind and followed the trail inland. When I came to firm ground, I found a trampled spot with a little more of Mira’s blood. There were hoof marks from a pair of horses. You could see where they’d grazed a bit as horses do, slightly apart, but keeping an eye on each other. A spot where one had urinated. Did that mean there were two who had killed Mira? Two with that stink of madness? Or had he used a second horse to carry the body? Where did the two horses come from? Did this signify wealth? Or connections to the Vampires?

  I couldn�
�t be sure. I thought about the odd knife that had been used. Small, strong, two bladed. The common metal was bronze.

  Iron was much stronger, but rare and expensive. So much more so that iron knives tended to be smaller than ordinary bronze or copper ones. They were good knives though.

  I suddenly wanted to meet its owner.

  I saw carrion birds descending into the mudgrasses a hundred yards away from where Mira’s body had laid. I walked over.

  It was another body. I scattered the birds to see it better. Female. Severely mutilated. Its eyes had been gouged, its tongue torn out. The knife had cruelly cut its sex, sliding in and tearing open. I squatted to examine it carefully.

  It had legs, so it wasn’t another Mermaid. Long limbs, but flat teeth. Not a Dwarf then, or a Vampire.

  Human or selk? Its feet were narrow, not wide for swimming, its fingers showed no trace of webbing.

  Human.

  By the look of it, the body had lain here for several days. Decay and the carrion creatures had been at work. Its wounds could tell me nothing. There was little more to learn from it. I sniffed. It was no longer even useable meat. The rags it had been left with reminded me of the Street of Joy. It wore a copper armband with a rough but elaborate design scratched into it. Her own work probably, whoever she had been.

  I took the armband and walked away, carefully turning around to sweep the sky. There was no other place carrion birds seemed to be circling. Any other bodies were too old to arouse their interest. I suspected that there were others here. They had not been meant to be found. That Mira had been found was just fortune.

  I met the Mermaids at the coracle. I had little to say. I didn’t tell them about the second body. Subdued by their proximity to Mira’s resting place, they took me back to the wharf, stopping only a few times to play.

  As I climbed onto the dock, I felt a hand on my thigh. It was Cara, looking wide-eyed and earnest.

  “You will find the one who did this to Mira?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I told her.

  Her face lit up in a glow of absolute trust and faith. She allowed herself to fall back into the water and splashed away.