by Judith Field
The woman pulled herself up higher behind the barnacle-encrusted wood. Joe realised that she was topless. Another triumph for care in the community. Bloody social workers.
“Too cold for sunbathing, love,” he said, rounding the groyne.
Joe jerked to a gasping halt. His fishing rod clattered down onto the pebbles as he stared at the place where the woman’s legs should have been.
“Shut your mouth before a fish swims in,” she said, lashing her tail against the wet sand as she tried to sit up. “And don’t look so bloody surprised, we get old, like you land people. It takes us a lot longer but it comes to us all in the end.”
Joe opened his mouth again. She raised the palm of one iridescent-scaled hand to command silence.
“And you’re no young fry yourself. Now are you going to help me back into the sea or just stand there flapping your mouth like a cod?” She coughed. Water oozed from the slits in her neck.
“Jesus Christ.”
“Pleased to meet you, Jesus. My name is Lortedo.” She held out a hand. Joe wasn’t sure he wanted to touch it, but reminded himself that he picked up the fish he caught. Better not tell her about that. Her hand was warm and dry, with curved claws for nails.
“No, I’m Joe.”
She snorted. More water, running down her chin.
“That’s better.” She wiped her nose on the back of her hand.
An idea formed in Joe’s mind. First, better put her at her ease. “Nice name you’ve got. Unusual.”
She smiled and nodded. “Thank you. I’m called after the land men’s weapons that make ships sink. They move so fast...mother hoped I’d grow up to be the same. But I could swim even faster.” She smoothed the scales on her tail.
“What are you talking about, weapons? You mean torpedoes?”
“I know what my own name is. Mother thought it was exotic. We’re usually called after plants or fish.” She pulled herself into a sitting position, digging her tail into the sand to get purchase. “Enough of this chat. Help me back into the sea.”
“My back won’t let me, love. Like you said, I’m not as young as I was.”
“Don’t tell me!” Lortedo said, putting her hand behind her and rubbing the place where her tail met her waist. “Some days I can hardly swim for the pain.”
She looked towards the sea, grimacing, “You will be able to get me back in, I trust—what did you say your name was?”
“Joe. Have to ring my mate, get him to help. Put you on a tarpaulin and carry you between us, Bob’s your uncle, Fanny’s your aunt.”
Lortedo frowned and looked upwards, as though she was trying to work out a puzzle.
“I think you’ve mixed me up with someone else. And I hope a tarpaulin is something I can ease myself onto, I will not put up with being rolled about.”
Joe walked away to the next groyne. Turning away from Lortedo, he spoke into his mobile from the side of his mouth.
“Mike? Get the van down to the beach now. Never mind why. Let’s say the future has just got brighter. No, I mean our ship has come in. Still got those fluffy handcuffs that stripagram girl left at your retirement do? Yes, and bring bit of tarp as well. And your tow rope.” Mike lived on his own; he wouldn’t mind not being able to use his bath for a while.
Joe hunkered down next to Lortedo on the wet sand.
“Won’t be long,” he said. “Now what shall we talk about? Can’t have you getting bored while you’re waiting.”
“I’m just glad of the chance to chat. The time hangs since my Kohu died. Since our young grew up and swam away.”
“You keep them with you, once they’re hatched—I mean born—do you?”
“Of course! What did you think, I’d just leave them under a bit of seaweed?”
“Sorry. But I know what you mean. Since our lad set up on his own, Hazel and I have been rattling around the place, trying to find things to talk about.”
“At least you have your land woman.” Lortedo’s mouth buckled and her voice thickened.
“If you stayed ‘round here, you’d never be lonely.” The papers and TV would make sure of that. And, no more penny-pinching. No more make do and mend. No more fear of what the post would bring. Or the future.
“What do you mean?” Lortedo’s head snapped round to face Joe, and her eyes narrowed.
“Nothing, nothing, just trying to help, that’s all.”
“Help me? You’ll be doing that as soon as you get me back in the sea.”
The wind blew a dusting of sand across the pebbles into Lortedo’s face. She sneezed. Joe took his coat off and put it round her shoulders.
“Don’t want you catching a cold.”
She tugged it round her shoulders, her claws catching on the fabric. “Very thoughtful. But don’t you need it?”
“I’ll be OK. What we need is a nice cup of tea.” He took a flask out of his rucksack.
“Hot…” Lortedo stared at the rising steam.
“Careful!” Joe passed her a cup. “Just a little bit at a time.”
She spread her fingers apart to take it. They were webbed. Her hands looked like paddles.
“What a curious sensation! I can feel it going down inside. But very refreshing. I could get to like this ‘tea’.”
“There’s plenty of it round here, it’s great. Keeps you warm in winter and cool in summer.” Joe dipped into a plastic bag. “You hungry? Have a scotch egg.”
She grabbed it and pushed most of it into her mouth, clamping pointed teeth around it. She tore a lump off, grimaced and spat it out. Gobbets of egg and sausage plopped onto her tail.
“The scotch must be a very peculiar creature.”
He rummaged in the bag again. “Try an apple instead.”
She bit into it like a conger eel snapping at a freshly caught mackerel.
“Juicy. Sweet. That’s better. You have a bite.” She held out the half-eaten apple.
“Not for me. Hazel put it in my bag, but they make my teeth hurt.”
“You should pull the sore ones out and wait for the next set to grow. Let me.”
She grabbed his chin, pulled it down and pushed a finger into his mouth.
Joe tasted fish. “Get off!” He grabbed her wrist and pushed her hand away. His arms flailed and he fell backwards. “Our teeth don’t work like that.” He sat up and spat onto the sand in front of him. “We’re meant to look after them. Hazel’s always on at me about healthy eating. But give me a good fry-up any day.”
Lortedo raised her eyebrows. “Fry? Of what?”
“No, sausages, bacon, that sort of thing. Cooked in hot oil.”
Lortedo shuddered.
“I have never heard of such fish. And you eat oil, that black stuff that pours out of your ships. You’re like Kohu, he liked nothing better than to chew on a piece of blubber. I told him it was bad for him, but would he listen?”
Joe smiled and nodded. “We males cock a deaf ‘un when it suits us. I bet he didn’t say no to a beer; oh, never mind…”
She looked out to sea. “When I was young, land men tried not to hear me. But my song was too powerful. I used to have golden hair, can you believe it?” She ran her fingers through the white-green wisps on top of her head. “And I wore a sparkling golden chain I found in a wrecked ship, ‘round the neck of a dead land woman. I would sing. Listen now.” She cleared her throat and took a deep breath. Opened her mouth. A thin, piercing wail, like a seagull.
“Doesn’t do much for me, I’m afraid,” Joe said.
Lortedo’s mouth turned down. “I can’t do it out of the sea, now. But then, ah then, I would sit on high. Land men would rather look up to me than down at the rocks. Devoured by the waves. Drawn down, the water closing over their faces. A time of joy.”
“I’ve met women like you before,” Joe said. “There’s plenty of them on the land. Heartless. Man-haters.”
Lortedo frowned and shook her head.
“No, you don’t understand. The joy was for them, if they would embrace the
kind sea. Deep water closing over your head, holding you, soft on your skin. You look up and see nothing but blue. Breathing slowly, water flowing over your gills.” Lortedo looked at Joe and sighed. “Why don’t you come with me? Up here, you get old, you die, you rot. But come down with me to the soft sand and I’ll show you coral made of land men’s bones. Land eyes turned into pearls.”
Joe felt hot fluid rise up his throat. He swallowed and shuddered. “I’m not dead yet. A few years ahead of me. I hope. The sea’s too cold for the likes of me. And we can’t breathe water like you.”
Lortedo shook her head. “True, I’ve never drawn a man into the sea who did. But they never tried. Perhaps you’re different, perhaps you can. Let silence clog your ears as you drift alone, deep in the ocean darkness. Changing you into something new.”
“Nah,” Joe said. “Not today. Hazel will have me tea cooking. Better stay here. Home’s best.” He took a hip flask out of his pocket. “Don’t want you freezing up. This will give you some internal warmth. It’s a different sort of scotch.”
Lortedo grabbed the flask. Shoving a corner into her mouth, she bit down.
“No, stop, it’s a sort of bottle—you drink out of it.”
She held the flask up to the few weak sunbeams that managed to force their way through the cloud.
“A smooth, shining shell. What are these symbols?” She looked at it with one eye closed.
“It says ‘To Joe, from all your pals at Bateson’s Engineering.’”
“Earrings? Like these?” she flicked the shells hanging from her ears so that they clattered.
“What? No, it was where I worked. But I got to 65 and they threw me on the scrapheap. Suddenly it was ‘thank you Joe, now sod off.’ I could have gone on for years, I knew my stuff. But there’s no room for old buggers like me in their world.”
Lortedo put her hand on Joe’s arm. The coat slid onto the sand.
“I know. I used to teach the young to sing. But when I got old they made me stop, too. No more golden jewelry for me.” She flicked at the shell earrings again. “I decided to swim the seven seas, don’t ask me why, because there was nothing there for me. I missed my home. But I couldn’t find my way back. Everything looks strange. We’re not so different, you and me. You understand.”
“Yes, I know what it’s like. I can’t be doing with gallivanting about either, when I’ve got everything I need right here. You are a long way from home, aren’t you?” Joe pulled the coat onto her shoulders. “Give me the flask, let’s have a little drink together,” he said. “Just don’t tell anyone else. Don’t want them thinking you’re some old boozer.”
Lortedo threw the flask onto the sand.
“What do you mean, ‘them’?” Her eyes narrowed and her voice grew hard at the edges. “I won’t be meeting anyone, except for your friend. Will I?” Straightening her arms, she pushed her hands down on the sand like crutches and shuffled forward a few inches. “Enough is enough. My scales are drying, you have kept me waiting for too long. The sea calls me.” Her tail beat against the sand.
“No! Stop it, you’ll do yourself an injury. People like us can’t be too careful, not at our age.”
She leaned back, panting, against the groyne.
“That is true. Now listen. I need to tell you,” she paused, pursed her lips and looked upwards. “No, it’s gone. This stupid old brain of mine can’t hold onto what it should. My thoughts are like jellyfish bobbing across the sea. I can’t catch them.” She smacked her hand against the side of her head.
“Give over.” Joe pulled her hand down. “Life can be tricky enough for people like us without making things worse ourselves.”
“But how else can I get back? I want to go home. Your world is not my world. I have no place here.”
“We’ve got to wait for my mate…”
Not so different. People. Like us. Joe looked away from her. Mister Big, with his get-rich-quick scheme. A wave of shame washed over him. In the distance, he saw Mike’s van coming down the road. He would have to park at the end of the beach and walk the rest of the way, but there wouldn’t be long to wait before he got there. Joe knew what he had to do. Tearing the coat from Lortedo’s shoulders, he flung it onto the sand.
“Quick! Hotch onto that!”
“But—”
“Cut the gabbing, just do it.”
The van pulled up at the far end of the beach. Joe bent down to the elderly mermaid on the sand.
“Put your arms round my neck,” he said. “Not like that, I can’t breathe!”
Joe tied the coat sleeves round his waist, turned round and shuffled towards the sea. Razors of pain shot through his back as he dragged Lortedo through the icy water. As it reached his waist the waves lifted her, suspended beside him. Joe undid the coat, let it go. She lashed her tail and dove under the waves.
Joe began to wade back. From somewhere, a voice sang his name, blown away on the bitter wind. He stopped and turned back towards the horizon, up to his thighs in water, a hand cupped round each ear.
Mike yelled from the shore. “Joe! What the hell did you drag me down here for?” Joe shook himself and turned towards him.
“Don’t just stand there, get out! Your arse is all wet,” Mike shouted. “What’s Hazel going to say when you get home?”
Hazel. Land woman. Mike called his name again. Joe looked far out to sea, where a hand protruded above the water. Waving. Saying goodbye.
Judith Field lives in London, UK. She is the daughter of writers, and learned how to agonise over fiction submissions at her mother’s (and father’s) knee. She’s a pharmacist, medical writer, editor and indexer, and in 2009 she made a New Year resolution to start writing fiction and get published within the year. Pretty soon she realised how unrealistic that was but, in fact, it sort of worked: she got a slot to write a weekly column in a local paper shortly before Christmas of 2009 and that ran for a several years. She still writes occasional feature articles for the paper. She has two daughters, a son, a granddaughter and a grandson. Her fiction, mainly speculative, has appeared in a variety of publications, mainly in the USA. When she’s not working or writing, she’s studying part-time for a degree in English. She speaks five languages and can say, “Please publish this story” in all of them. She blogs at www.millil.blogspot.com.
“Full Fathom Five” was inspired by a Charles Addams cartoon of two men finding a gorgeous young mermaid on a beach. Judith wondered what happens when mermaids get old.
BONE MOTHER
By Torah Cottrill
BONE MOTHER WAS TIRED. The hut caught a deer in the night, and the doe’s shrieks and the crunching of bones kept the old woman awake long after the last of the hot blood seeped into the yard. Years ago, when the world was younger and her heart was, too, she tried to pry the forest’s wanderers out of the hut’s ivory-toothed maw. It was never any use. The deer, the rabbits, even the men that slipped through the hut’s ragged fence always paid with their lives. She put their skulls on the fence posts, to discourage others.
She threw off the covers and rose, lighting the candles with a reed kindled in the fireplace. Bone Mother wrapped herself in one of the blankets she wove from the soft fur of the goats the hut let her keep in the yard. It was time to draw water from the well. No matter the day, no matter the season, she always knew when it was time to raise the iron-banded bucket and fill the clay cup.
Outside, her breath frosted in the dawn air. Bone Mother hauled on the rope, pulling the full bucket to the lip of the well. She filled the cup and placed the bucket on the ground at her feet. Then she waited. Her wet fingers grew numb in the morning cold.
As the sun crested the far-off hills, Bone Mother heard hoofbeats. One moment, the yard was empty. The next, a rider loomed above her in a swirl of cloak and a stamping of hooves. Bone Mother waited while the rider brought the black horse to a halt.
“Greetings of the night to you, guardian,” spoke the rider, hidden in the shadows of a black cloak.
“And als
o to you, rider,” she replied. “Refresh yourself after your labors.”
The rider drained the cup while the horse drank deeply from the bucket. The rider returned the cup and pulled at the horse’s dripping head, and with no further word kneed the horse into motion. In a moment, they were gone from the yard as imperceptibly as they’d entered. Bone Mother returned the cup to its shelf and poured the rest of the water into the garden.
Bone Mother fed the chickens, gathered the morning’s eggs, and milked the goats. She patted the warm flank of her favorite, a mottled tan and white nanny with a broken horn.
“Ah, Tsvesti. It’s starting to get cold again, isn’t it?” Bone Mother finished the milking and checked the bramble for late blackberries before returning to the warmth of the hut for her breakfast.
She was drowsing before the fire, feeling winter’s approach in her aching joints, when a shout startled her awake.
“Old Witch, come and let me in!” a man’s voice boomed.
Bone Mother peered through the crooked gate. “What brings you to my house?”
The man beyond the gate was in ripe middle age, white linen and rich velvet stretched across a generous girth. “Soothsayer,” he boomed, speaking as if for an audience, although the forest around them was empty. “I need the answer to a question. Advise me well, and I’ll reward you well!”
Bone Mother snorted. Tsvesti ambled over and poked her nose into Bone Mother’s hand. “If the fool knew enough about me to come here, he knows the nature of my advice,” she muttered to the goat, scratching absently between the long ears.
“Stranger,” she said more loudly, “my guidance is what you make it. My words bring rewards to the pure of heart. If you are not, they bring ruin. Only you can choose.”
She waited. Many who came with previously urgent questions left after this warning. Bone Mother guessed that this one would stay.