by Jane Thomson
He pointed to a scar on his hip, just where the tail fins began. “They can bite when they have to. I pulled him down though, and ate him just the same.”
Ate a human? I felt sick. Eating a human would be like eating a mer, but with legs. I was furiously glad that the human had bitten Guntur – or whatever he’d done to him. I wish he’d eaten him instead, or chopped him in pieces like Grandmother was always saying.
“That yours?”
Guntur looked over at me. I was too close to the males. If I wasn’t careful one would lean across and slap me flat-handed, or growl in warning. Mer females were meant to keep to their side of the beach, or mingle with the young males, eyeing one another up like shy sea turtles.
“Get back to your place, Melur.” My father glared at me.
“Don’t send her back yet.”
Guntur stroked his sheath, and he and Father exchanged glances, the glances of old males who’d known each other half a century, and believed each other’s tales. “My mate beached three months ago, and I’m lonely. Maybe your girl could keep me company.”
He reached out his arm towards me, beckoning. Father jerked his head, and I wriggled over the sand towards him. We don’t move much on the land, we can’t walk on flippers like seals, or legs like the turtles. But we have strong arms, and can use our tails for pushing. I didn’t want to.
“Melur needs a mate. She needs pups, she’s got far too much time on her hands.”
I knew he was talking about the last while, when I’d messed up so many hunts, and unbraided my sister’s hair, and put a crab in my brother’s ear hole when he was sleeping, and gone down to the caves by myself – yes and out to the Deep, too. I saw that Father knew that too, though he hadn’t bothered to say anything to me. He’d just planned – this.
“What is she?”
Guntur fingered my back. I shivered and shrank.
“Who knows! It’s nothing I’ve ever seen. Some fuck up Dry creature. She’s a handful. I’d be well rid of her.”
They looked me over. Guntur smiled and stroked himself. His penis grew out of his sheath and stood up at the base of his tail, like the tall tree on your floater. Around the base of his sheath, green algae sucked and clung. I don’t think Guntur scraped himself, or had his daughters do it. He opened his mouth in a yawn, and inside I saw four sharp teeth, pointed but slimed with grey. He didn’t use a tooth stick either.
“I’d rather mate with a…. groper!” I burst out, and then shrank and rolled to get away, because Father suddenly uncoiled himself and reached long arms towards me, snapping. It was only his heaviness and age that stopped him catching me right then – I think I slithered as fast as I ever had, that day, while I could hear Orggei cawing uncomprehendingly behind me. I jack knifed into the water, scattering pups on either side, and made for the open channels.
I was young and fast, but Father was old and cunning and angry. He met me as I rode the current out towards the lagoon. He took me by the back of the neck and bared his teeth in my face, and I thought he was going to kill me, and then perhaps eat me, for good measure. His breath stank. The yellow pools of his eyes burned in the sunlight.
With his great arms he pushed me down under the shallow water. I thrashed my tail and twisted under him, trying to come up. Compared to him, I was thin and tiny and weak. I breathed in the sand that rose from the bottom, spat, turned my head to the light. His bulk settled into me, pressing down. Time passed. I thought, now I’ll find out what it’s like to drown, like a human. I didn’t need to breathe yet, but I soon would. But so would he. I lay very still under him, waiting for a chance to slip out. If only I stayed very still, maybe he’d think I was already drowned, or, at least, submissive. My lungs became tight. I struggled and jerked. My mouth opened to the water and his hands closed like the bite of a moray, clamped to my throat. I flipped and scrabbled, and thought, now’s my time to die.
At last, when I became limp and blind to the light, he rolled off and I floated up, and gasped at the burning air.
“You’ll do as you’re told, daughter. Don’t think I won’t drown you, next time. You should think yourself lucky anyone’s interested in mating with you, with that thing on your back. Couldn’t even get yourself a proper totem, could you.”
His wide, dark shape flowed away. I lay there, too weak to swim, drawing painful breaths. I wished at that moment that I had been drowned. I thought, soon, I’ll swim away to Deep Sea, and never come back. Never. I’d rather die out there.
Chapter 8
It was only Che that I stopped for. I somehow knew that if I left the pod, I wouldn’t be back. Not for Casih, not for any of my sisters. Not even for Che.
I didn’t like the idea of going away without saying goodbye. Tell the truth, I didn’t much like the idea at all, but the line that bound me to home was weak and fraying. Once, when I told you this story, Daniel my lover, you thought it was about being forced to mate with an old man I didn’t love. But love is rare among mer, despised even, and no mer female expects it. When it happens, it brings destruction, jealousy, and fights between pods. We don’t look for love or welcome it, like you do.
In your human world, the sea is the great freedom, where humans go to be away from the rules of the Dry. To me the sea was bruises, and rules, and dying in pup while Guntur looked about for his ninth mate and Grandmother dribbled over her spirits. To me, you were freedom.
I’d made it too hard to stay, anyway. I’d questioned Father in front of grown males, and for that, I’d have to obey or leave. If one mer, and that a female, insulted the leader of the pod and got away with it, who would follow? Father wouldn’t have been the leader if he hadn’t known how to stay on top.
So I went to find Che, to tell him I wouldn’t be back. He was lying on the sand, a little separated from the others of his pod. In the moonlight he looked like a lonely bird who’s forgotten to migrate with the others.
“You’re really going to Deep Sea? You can’t live out there on your own!”.
“I’ll be alright,” I lied. “I’ll swim to the Trapped Moon and my human will look after me.” As if I’d rely on you, who didn’t even know I existed.
Che just looked at me. I don’t know what he was thinking, but it must have been hard for him. He put an arm around my shoulders and we looked out towards the dark. Mer don’t like to swim in the night, when you can’t see what’s circling underneath.
“Sometimes I wonder if you want to be one, really. Ever since you saw them you’ve been different.”
That was a thought I’d had before.
“I don’t belong here really. Maybe I’m a human in mer shape. Maybe some humans are born in the sea and all they want to do is be human but they’ve got their tails and so they’re just stuck – like this.”
Che laughed shortly. “And maybe some poor mer are born in the Dry and all they want is to get back to the sea and be with their own kind.”
I liked that idea. Maybe you were really a mer. Maybe that’s why I wanted to be near you, why I desired you. It made a sort of sense. Or no sense at all, really.
“You should ask Grandmother. She could speak with the spirits, maybe ask them..”
His voice trailed. I smiled crookedly. For almost as long as I could remember, I’d sneered at Grandmother and her spirits. I’d never seen a spirit or heard one or had one pull my hair. And yet our world was crowded with them. The Rain Spirit, of course – where else would the life giving rain come from – and the spirits of the Air, that called storms and then flattened the winds on the surface of the sea – and the Crusher – Father’s guiding spirit, who chewed up rocks and spat them out as sand, and crushed the bones of mer among the bones of fish and the shells of little soft things.
“Ask them what?”
“Ask for help,” said Che. Maybe he hoped they’d help me become an obedient, dull witted mer female. If so, he was dead wrong. “The spirits know things that we don’t. If you ask, maybe..maybe..”
I think Che’s maybe was
different from my maybe. But he got his wish in the end.
Chapter 9
She didn’t look at me as I swam in, but turned her head blindly, like a white worm without eyes.
“Who’s that?”
A long skein of webbing covered her tail. While her nostrils twitched from side to side, searching for the source of the noise, her hands picked at the threads.
“It’s Melur.”
She snorted, and pushed a damp grey strand out of her cracked mouth.
“Hold the end of this for me, little fish.”
I sat beside her, taking care not to touch her slimy sides, and took the end of the skein.
“What is it?”
“It’s a net. Haven’t you seen a net before?” She lifted it, wet-gold and diaphanous. “A net for catching the littlest fish.”
She cackled. I didn’t see the joke but laughed dutifully. I wanted something from her, this time.
“But you don’t want that kind of net,” she added, blinking in my direction. “You want a net to catch humans.”
“We don’t catch humans,” I said flatly. I wasn’t in the mood for her old woman antics. I knew she put them on like a necklace, and could take them off just as easily.
“That’s just the point, little fish, they catch us.”
She bared her three remaining teeth, green with old scum, and added, “But you already know that.”
She stuck her eel-like head out towards me, grinning. I thought, could this creature ever have been beautiful enough for anyone to mate with? Is this what I’ll become, one day, if I’m lucky and stay in the channels and do what Father wants?
“I want to talk to the spirits.”
“And?”
“Ask them..something.”
“What’s that then? Want a nice strong male to put you in pup? But you’ve already got one, I hear.”
“I want to be with a human, and live on the Dry”
She nodded. So she already knew that too, of course. Still, she doubled over, clutching her own withered, shrunken tail in faked hilarity.
“Oh you do, do you? How do you think you’ll mate? Do you think he’ll admire your long fishy tail? Or are you going to swim between his long pink legs and suck the seed out of him?”
She picked up the net she was weaving. It had strands of different colours – browns, black, gold, and dark blonde.
“What is it made from, Grandmother?”
“Hair. What do you think!”
It was too fine for mer hair, too feathery.
“What kind of hair?”
“What kind do you think?”
She pulled a fishgut bag over, tipped the contents. A skull rolled out, two. The hairless, white bone shells looked oddly like my grandmother’s balding head.
“The best kind. Fine but strong as spider’s web. Hard to get now, though. Maybe you can bring me another one.”
I jerked my hands back from the net.
“You want to mate with a human? Pull one down, as the crocodiles do, wait till he’s stopped thrashing, and he’ll be all yours.”
She smiled again, dry, rotten breath. Bubbles from her wide nostrils were pale green and hung in beads from her nose until they fell into her lap.
“I don’t want to mate with a dead human.” My voice sounded sulky, even to me. “I want to live on the Dry. Why shouldn’t I? I’m not a fish, who drowns out of water.”
We both knew the answer to that. I could only drag myself on my elbows, not even as graceful as a seal and that’s saying something. How would I run after my human without legs!
“You want legs! Of course, little fish! Do you want wings as well, while we’re at it? You think I can work magic?”
“They all say you can. Casih, and Suria, and Azura, and Che..”
“That lop-sided dolphin. You talk too much, for a fish.” My grandmother’s voice scraped like surf over coral. “So you want me to ask the spirits to give you two nice pink legs, so you can fuck a human on the Dry? Is that it?”
“Yes.”
I waited for Grandmother to tell me to go fuck one of my own kind instead, that there was no magic in the sea, that the spirits had much better things to do with their time. I should go live in Deep Sea and maybe find a dolphin or a narwhal to mate with.
I waited a long time. Grandmother sat coiled, bony fingers working blindly on her net, wheezing a little with each intake of breath. I smelled her farts hanging in the still dark air. I tried not to breathe too deeply.
I thought how very old she was. So old I couldn’t ever imagine her being young. It was as if she’d sat here, slimy, noxious, since the Sea and the sky parted ways.
At last she hissed through her remaining teeth, and started to speak, in the high, cracked voice she used for telling tales of long ago to us as child-mer. Tales to frighten us into obedience and respect, full of all the terrible things that had happened to mer who left the pod, disobeyed the pod leader, came to close to humans, thought beyond the Channels, got curious...
“A long time ago,“ said Grandmother, in her story voice.
I thought, I’ve heard this story. I didn’t dare say anything.
“A long time ago, we all lived in the sea, human and mer, no difference. Then we climbed out onto the Dry, grew legs, long hair, big heads, teats – all the things we both have, that make us different from the sea creatures – and legs too, yes, we had legs once. You don’t have gills like a shark, do you! You don’t have razor sharp teeth like the dolphins? We don’t dry out on the beach, like the whales?”
“No, grandmother.”
Actually I’d never thought about it before, any more than you’ve thought why you’re different from a horse.
“You ever wanted to know why not? Because after we lived in the Dry for a while, we looked back at the shining sea, and we missed her. So we came back down to the shore and we slipped back in, and we’ve been here ever since. But the stupid humans stayed on the Dry, and their females had pups, and they forgot how to swim and catch fish and live in the Deep - and there they’ve been ever since, too, walking around on their silly little legs. And you wish you’d stayed with them, don’t you.”
Grandmother poked me in the chest, hard enough to hurt, her eel’s face keen with malice.
“So now you want legs. You have legs. We all have legs. They’re hidden inside that lovely tail of yours that feels so strong and makes you so swift in the water. Cut the tail open, and you can still find the weak little legs, all wrapped around one another.“
I looked down at my tail, clear and shimmering like the water.
“Legs? Inside my tail?”
“Oh, not legs like the humans have them. They’re just bones, stuck together like oysters on a rock. But we peel the oysters off the rock, and then we can see them, those puny, wretched human legs you have inside that beautiful tail. You want to see?”
I stared at her. It was as if her malice turned the air around her a deeper shade of clear, like the faint shadow of a shark circling above.
Grandmother groped around her.
“Here. See the legs on this one?”
It was something shrivelled and tiny, with a big head and two curled claws below. Its eyes were black like a prawn’s.
“What is it?”
It smelled of dried fish.
“Dawii’s pup. You remember she went on the sands last month and came back with nothing to show for it? It was too early, it should have been born next season, but it’s just as well, it would never have lived.”
She threw it towards me.
“See the legs.”
What I’d thought were little claws, four of them, but two were longer than the others, and already twisting about one another in a fusion of flesh and bone. A little human, Dawii’s little human.
“And this one.”
She pulled out a small skeleton. She’d had this one longer, and the bones were fused together, two columns running side by side and a pair of stubby fin-bones sitting out from the bottom.
A mer skeleton, I’d seen them sometimes.
“You want legs? I’ll find you legs. With this.”
She took out the long knife she used for making totems, and ran it over her thick-skinned thumb.
“It’s sharp enough. Here, put your tail on the rock here beside me, where I can feel it, and I’ll cut you some beautiful human legs.”
By instinct I coiled my long, shining tail away from her. She heard the movement, laughed.
“You can’t bear the pain – is that it? You don’t want to suffer for your desire. Not much of a wish then, is it, that you can’t stand a few little cuts! You’d better mate with Guntur, little fish, and forget these human dreams of yours.”
Blindly, she felt out for me with the tip of the knife, grinning. I slid away, knowing she couldn’t see me, afraid she’d hear me and reach for me anyway.
She hissed and spat, foamy yellow bubbles which sat on the dirty sand beside her.
I twisted round on myself and thrust out from the cave. The sea felt clean and salt-clear. I turned and turned again, trying to wash the smell of Grandmother and her words off my body, taking pleasure in the power of my strong tail pushing back the water. I would’ve liked to go back in and take that knife and slice her shrunken tail from fin to navel. I was so consumed with hatred and anger that I almost barrelled into Che as he caught my arm and pulled me back.
“What did she say? Did she speak to the spirits?”
I bit him hard on the shoulder, drawing blood, and spat.
“Keep away from me, I never want to see you again. I never want to see ANYONE again.”
I swatted the water as hard as I could with my tail fins, to keep him off me, and felt the cold rush over my sides as I raced away. This time it didn’t take me so long. The sun had hardly started to dip before I saw the white sand, and the line of green, and the cliffs with the Trapped Moon perched on top. I came within sight of the rocks, and swam in place, squinting up at the island.