by D. S. Murphy
I clenched my jaw to keep it from dropping open, and my fingers twitched as I typed out the word m-e-r-m-a-i-d-s. Coming from Sebastian’s mouth, it sounded so ridiculous I almost laughed out loud. Only the look on Sebastian’s face stopped me. “There’s no such thing as mermaids,” I snapped.
Was he making stuff up just to throw me off track? The thought of him lying to me made me furious, and my blood started pounding in my ears. I couldn’t explain what I’d done to Roisin, or how my arm had healed so quickly. But come on. I scanned his face for even a hint of humor, but it was as solemn as a grave.
“Wait, you’re saying… are you a mermaid?”
I pictured Sebastian with a fish tail, and the result was comical. My lips twisted up in a grin.
“Merrow is the gender neutral term,” he corrected. “Like human.”
I decided to humor him. “Even if I was ready to believe that mermaids were real, which I totally am not, how can I be a mermaid—a merrow? I can’t even swim.”
“Well, you aren’t really. Merrow are born in the sea, and have two merrow parents. You’re a mennow, a mixed breed, with some human and some merrow blood.”
“Shouldn’t that be womennow?” My attempt at a PC joke was feeble at best. Sebastian ignored me.
“As for not swimming, I’ll admit that threw me at first; most of your kind are drawn to the sea and love the water. But it seems your mother tried to keep you or anyone else from finding out what you really are. Besides, we don’t mature for sixteen years, so you may have always seemed perfectly normal—until recently.”
This couldn’t be happening. I was willing, momentarily, to accept at the very least that Sebastian believed himself to be a… merrow. Everything about him seemed flawless and magical. But me? There was no way I was anything other than exceptionally ordinary.
I thought about my childhood, searching my memories for any indication of abnormality. “My dad’s parents were definitely human,” I said. “They died when I was young. I remember visiting their house. My grandpa kept a jar of peanut butter cookies. My grandma collected little porcelain dog statues.”
“And your mom’s mother?” Sebastian said, with a knowing look. I remembered the pictures I’d seen of my grandmother. Those big dark eyes, the shiny black hair, the silky smooth skin. My mother had looked like that too. And now, so did I—except for the color of my eyes, which were Artic blue.
Could this really be the explanation—that my grandmother was a mermaid? I wasn’t quite ready to believe it. “At school, you said you hadn’t seen my kind in decades. Are there others like me?”
“It’s not uncommon, or at least it didn’t used to be. Merrow and humans have been interacting for thousands of years, and often produce offspring.”
“How is that even... biologically possible?” I asked.
“Want me to show you?” He raised one eyebrow with a smirk.
I’m talking to a mermaid, and the first question I ask is how they have sex? I changed the subject, my cheeks turning red.
“Before I was pushed into the water, the attacker cut me.” I rolled up my sleeves to show him my bare arm. “It’s totally healed. There’s no trace. That’s impossible.”
“Not for us,” he said.
I was feeling unsteady on my feet, and looked around for a place to sit down. But I had one more question.
“But even if all this is true, why would anyone want to kill me?” I had just arrived in Ireland. I couldn’t fathom why anyone would do me harm.
“Merrow blood is powerful, almost magical above water. There are still humans who remember the old ways, and they’ll stop at nothing to get it.”
“They tried to kill me… for my blood?”
“Actually, I don’t think they were trying to kill you,” he said.
“Sure, it was just a love slash,” I snorted. “Those happen all the time.”
“The knife, and then pushing you into the water—I think they just wanted to know for sure. They saw the lights, or saw you survive. And now they’re certain what you are, which means, they’ll come again. And next time won’t be a test.”
“Wait, but if they’re after me for my merrow blood, then you’re in danger too, right?” I asked.
“I can take care of myself,”.
“But why risk it? Why don’t you leave?”
I knew the answer before he said it, as he reached up and brushed his fingertips against my cheek. He was close enough that I could hear him above the howling wind and pounding waves.
“You. I’m here for you.”
19
There was a picnic table about a quarter mile away from the Runkerry House, on a bluff overlooking the ocean. Sebastian took off his jacket and put it over the wet wood so I could sit down. We were completely alone, and shrouded in fog. I felt like I was in a dream world, where nothing existed but the two of us.
I was glad that Sebastian was finally talking to me, but how could any of it be true? At first I thought he was just trying to impress me. But he’d avoided telling me any of this for weeks; I was the one pushing for answers. And what about all the things I’d seen recently? Things I still couldn’t explain. If he was crazy, so was I.
“You’re taking all this rather well,” he said, leaning his elbows against the table. The fog was clearing a little. I could see the Runkerry house behind us, and the rock cliffs up ahead, plunging into the foamy green water. A cluster of thin pine trees was on the other side of us, erupting out of a carpet of bright green moss.
“I’m probably just in shock,” I said.
Mermaids are real. My mind was still rejecting the phrase. I needed to see some proof.
“Okay,” I said. “I have questions.”
I got up and sat on the opposite side of the picnic table, leaning forward on my elbows, interrogation style. He smiled and crossed his arms.
“You’re a mermaid—a merrow,” I said.
“Yes… both my parents were born in the sea.”
I gazed down at his legs.
“But you look so… human. Do you have a tail? Like, half human, half fish?”
“More like a crustacean actually,” he grinned. “Picture eating a piece of shrimp. The outside is tough. Hard. But it slides right off, leaving the soft flesh underneath. It’s an exoskeleton—we call them exos—that must be moulted. It’s shed during growth, and remade in a process known as ecdysis. Ecdysis comes from Ancient Greek: ‘to take off, strip off.’ It probably originated with men who watched merrow come to shore, strip their exoskeleton and turn into men. It’s possible that the first men to walk on land were really merrow.”
“Wait, you mean Darwin got it wrong?” I tried to imagine what an evolution chart would look like with giant crustaceans instead of apes. Sebastian shrugged and continued.
“We have several exos when we’re young. We shed one, and go through a growth spurt until a new one hardens. Once we reach adulthood, we can remove it ourselves at will using a process called apolysis; the separation of the old exoskeleton from the underlying epidermal cells. We can do it consciously, with mental preparation. Then it comes off quite easily, like removing a boot. If we don’t do it, it has to be ripped off and is very painful, like cutting off our skin. If we come onto land and keep dry, we can pass as humans. But we’re weak, vulnerable.”
“You don’t seem weak to me,” I said, running my eyes over his chest and biceps. I felt like I was in science class. I wondered whether Sebastian had ever given a talk like this before.
“But in the ocean, with our exos on, we’re nearly invincible. Hardly anything can puncture our exos. Even our fists are protected by a thick layer of cartilage. Our shoulders are powerful because we use them to punch through coral reefs, crack open oyster shells, or fight off larger predators.” He held up his fists to show me, and took a couple mock swipes.
“Ever heard of the Mantis shrimp?” he said.
I shook my head.
“Its punch is as strong as a gunshot: so powerful and f
ast it boils the water around it. And their skin is so resilient, human military been studying their cell structure to make advanced body armor.”
“So what you’re saying, basically, is that you’re a giant shrimp?” I couldn’t help teasing.
“A very charming, handsome shrimp,” he replied. I blushed thinking about my next question. It was embarrassing, but I wasn’t going to settle for half measures. Now that I was in on the secret, I wanted to know everything.
“How do you… mate?” I finally blurted out,
His grin widened. He was enjoying himself.
“We come on land and remove our exoskeletons. Under our shells our organs are… nearly identical to humans. If we want children, the females will stay in caves near shore until the eggs are ready, then go into the ocean and give birth. After a few months, they’ll grow their first exo, but then they’ll need a new one every year for about twenty years. After that, they will stay virtually unchanged for decades.”
“Where are your gills? How do you breathe?” I asked.
“They healed over, but will open again once I grow back my exoskeleton. Our lungs function both ways; on land, we breathe through our noses and mouths. Underwater, that windpipe closes and we breathe through our gills, through a separate chamber.”
“Show me,” I said. I was tired of the biology lesson. I wanted to see it for myself.
He lifted his shirt, and I saw a series of thin horizontal lines that looked like healed scars on both sides of his abdomen. Then he leaned down and picked up a small pebble. He set it on top of the wooden table.
“Ready for the fun stuff?” he asked, with a twinkle in his eyes.
I nodded.
“Keep your eye on this. Don’t blink.”
For a second, nothing happened. Then a flutter of wind pushed my hair back and the rock vanished. I hadn’t seen Sebastian move a muscle.
A second later, it was back; then it disappeared again. Sebastian’s grin grew wider as he held the rock up for me to inspect.
“We can move fifty times faster than you can blink. Not all of us, just our arms and hands. Underwater, we need that strength to overcome the water pressure and resistance. But up here, we move so fast it looks like magic. It’s mostly good for cheap parlor tricks, but it often comes in useful.”
“It’s like stopping time,” I breathed.
“Sort of. I couldn’t catch a bullet. But I could shove someone out of the way. Or reach over and take the gun. I can break through this wood—” He smashed his fist down on the end of the table and broke off a section of the rotting plank. “But if I tried to punch a metal door, I’d break my hand. Still, I’m dangerous. If I got angry or in a fight, I could put my fist through someone’s skull. I actually have to restrain myself from moving too quickly, so I don’t accidentally hurt someone.”
“That’s how you threw the ball so far,” I guessed.
He nodded, then held up his hand. I gasped when I saw it. It was bloody, with chips of wood sticking out of it. “You see? Weak.” He walked over to the edge of the turf and jumped down to the water’s edge. He leaned down between the rocks and put his fist in the water. I could see the rainbow colored lights and sparkles shimmering under the water’s surface. Then he shook his fist, and came back to show me his hand. It was flawless.
“Ecdysis also allows damaged tissue and missing limbs to be regenerated. That means we heal quickly, if we can get back to the salt water.”
“So when the attacker cut me and pushed me into the water…”
“That’s the process you saw happening, the lights—ecdysis will heal any wounds first, before it starts regenerating your tail.”
A tail?
“Holy crap, I’m a freak.” I said, sinking my head into my hands.
“Mennows don’t always transform all the way. It depends which genes you’ve received. And you’ll never be as fast as I am, only native merrow are, who grew up underwater and built body mass to counteract the water pressure.”
Something Sebastian said earlier was tugging at my brain. Virtually unchanged for decades. It suddenly dawned on me that Sebastian wasn’t as young as he looked.
“How old are you?” I asked, pulling away from him and tensing my body for the answer.
“About seventy-eight. Still young, for a merrow,” he said.
I tried, unsuccessfully, to keep the shock off my face.
78 years old.
I felt dizzy. This was too much to take in.
He reached out and put his hand over mine, squeezing it gently. I ripped it away.
“Are you… immortal?” I asked.
“No, but we live a long time. On average three hundred years, though some merrow are twice that. If we live on land, we age much faster. We need to spend several hours a day in the salt water or we’ll start aging.”
“Are there more, like me?”
“Not with as much merrow blood as you have.” He frowned. “It’s illegal for merrow to mate with humans—it has been for centuries. Of course, some merrow still spend time on land. But if they fall in love or want to start a family, they’re risking their lives.”
I felt my blood chill. “What happens if they’re caught?”
“Mating with a human is considered treason. Punishable by death,” Sebastian said.
I felt sick to my stomach.
“What if they kept it a secret? What if nobody knew?” I asked.
“After a merrow sleeps with a human, their scent will be altered for months. If they go back into the ocean, they’ll be found, arrested, and executed.”
“And if they stay out of the ocean…”
“They’ll grow old and die,” he said.
“But I’m not human,” I said.
Oops. I just admitted I was thinking about the two of us having sex. My cheeks burned, and I looked away.
“You’re not entirely merrow either,” Sebastian said. “But, at this point, I’d be killed as a traitor anyway, since I’m not supposed to talk about any of this stuff.”
“Wait, they’d kill you just for telling me this?” I said. One of Sebastian’s earlier comments clicked into place. You don’t know what you’re asking. I held my breath as he nodded.
“Talking like this to you, about us… it’s an open defiance of the laws.” He looked away, but not before I saw the sadness in his eyes.
I stood up and pushed away from the table, trying to hide my shame. Sebastian hadn’t wanted to tell me any of this, and I’d pushed him for answers. Now he was a traitor to his own kind, and they would kill him for it.
“But, why would you do that?” I asked, horrified.
“Because you asked me to,” he said.
The butterflies I usually experienced around Sebastian felt like they’d turned into worms, eating through my abdomen.
“They would kill you for being here with me,” I repeated, “But you’re here anyway?”
I thought about my mother and Colin; my grandmother and Father Murphy. It seemed that romances in my family were doomed to tragic endings. He nodded, and reached out for my hand. I didn’t pull away this time.
“Wait, is that what happened to Bedelia? Was she a merrow too?”
A look of anger flashed over Sebastian’s face, and he let go of my hand.
“No, that’s not what happened,” he said quietly.
“You know who did it,” I said.
“Not exactly. But I know why they did it. A long time ago, that was the way some merrow would mark their territory. They’d claim a piece of land. If they didn’t want other merrow getting involved in their business, they would put bodies out to warn others away. It’s a barbaric custom. It was outlawed by the royal family a long time ago, when the merrow decided to disappear, and prohibited interaction with humans.”
“Wait, there’s a royal family?”
“There was… for thousands of years. Descendants from Poseidon, the first of our kind. But they disappeared, decades ago. Nobody knows what happened to them.”
“A twisted merrow,” Sebastian said, clenching his fists. “One that enjoys killing. Decorating his kill like that, exhibiting it almost, to the sea. He was daring anyone to stop him. And he knows that nobody will. Without the royal family, nobody cares enough about the humans to interfere.”
“But you wouldn’t do that?” I asked.
“What, kill humans for sport?” He looked hurt. “No, because I’m not a psychopath. Besides, I’m not really interested in humans. I usually keep to myself. I observed, without getting involved.”
“Until me,” I said.
“Until you.” His confirmation flooded my body with warmth. “You, I can’t stay away from. When I saw you on the cliff, at first I was just curious. Like I said, there aren’t many mennows around anymore. But there’s something different about you. What you did to Roisin… I’ve never heard of a mennow with that much power. It shouldn’t have been possible. And that’s why you’re in danger. Until you can control your powers, you’ll be a target. Although it seems like it’s too late now. Somebody already knows what you are.”
I nodded. As crazy as it sounded, what Sebastian had told me so far seemed like the most plausible explanation for the things I’d experienced lately. But now what?
“So let me get this straight,” I said, my need for order prevailing. “Somebody is trying to kill me for my merrow blood, and some psychopath merrow is killing human girls to mark his territory. And now you’re in danger from both the humans, who would drain you, and your own kind, who would execute you.”
It all seemed so hopeless, and yet a tiny part of me was thrilled. Sebastian was putting his life at risk, for me.
“The law is a little gray in that area, actually,” Sebastian said. “If you were a normal human, they’d kill me for sure. Since you’re a mennow, they’d probably stay the execution and just punish me. If you could change all the way, and become a full merrow, then I wouldn’t have broken any laws… but like I said, that may never happen.”
Finally, a solution that didn’t involve either of us dying. I didn’t care if I was grasping at straws; if changing fully meant saving Sebastian, it was the only option. Besides, what girl didn’t dream of becoming a mermaid?