by A. L. Knorr
Feasting on these omega-rich fish, I explored the dark interior of the ship and became captivated by the play of sunlight coming in as sharp lines and illuminating the inside in an interesting way.
Satiated, I soon fell asleep, nestled in a bed of seaweed.
The distant sound of voices woke me and drew me to a crack where I witnessed the evidence––though not the ship itself––of a much larger vessel sailing past. I watched the shadow of it passing, ears perked to the sound of humans laughing and water sliding along the expansive hull and carried underwater to me.
When the wake hit my wreck repeatedly and the ship groaned as it shifted, I barely noticed. I feasted on another serving of sardines, and when I had grown bored of the interior of my little wreck, I looked for a way out.
Only now, there was none.
Seven
To this day, I could not tell you how much time passed as I swam back and forth, slept, and lived in the hold of that old wreck. But I’ll never forget the day I was discovered by humans who’d come into my territory (for by that time, I thought of the tiny space as ‘my territory’). Looking back––once I’d been freed and returned to myself again––this feeling of territorialism helped me understand Apollyona’s determination to keep the Atlanteans from sharing our resources, for if any creature––human or otherwise––made an attempt to fish near my wreck, I was overcome by a fierce desire to protect my food source.
I heard them before I saw them.
Men’s voices. They sounded relaxed––laughter and levity in their tones. I retreated to the darkest shadow of the wreck and became still, the sharp stones and coral of the reef pressing into my back. Seaweed cradled me, swaying gently to cover me. I listened, my gills moving minimally as I drew water through them.
When the voices drew close and the splashing sound of feet wading through the rocky shallows told me they were drawing nearer to my hiding place, my heartbeat accelerated. The pace of my breathing increased and my hands tightened into fists, the now long and sharp nails of my fingers cutting into my palms. I could see nothing but shadows moving across the cracks in the hull. I was afraid, but also curious, and these two battled inside me, for I wanted to get a look at my enemy, to determine whether they were larger and stronger than me.
Staying in the darkest shadows, I inched my way along the hull to peek through a crack, my head breaking the surface. Between the soggy wooden slats, fuzzy with years of algae growth, I saw a pair of ankles. The voices had grown conversational. They seemed curious about the wreck––my wreck.
One of them dropped something into one of the larger cracks on the other end of the broken old ship. Silver flashed in the sun, passing through a small shoal of fish. Some part of my brain recognized the hook shaped metal. They were after my food!
Darting forward, my desire to stay hidden completely forgotten, I grasped the line and yanked. The shoal of fish darted in every direction and there was a cry of surprise from above as a rough wooden rod was pulled from its owner’s hands. The fishing rod flew toward the wreck, became wedged in the crack and snapped in two as I pulled the rest of the fishing kit into the water with a snarl.
Splashing sounds approached as the man who’d cried out called to his friends in excited tones. Three heads blocked out the sun at various points in the hull. There was silence as they squinted in at me, then hushed and excited chatter.
Nothing about their language was familiar to me, and their features and faces were barely visible with the morning sun at their backs.
I retreated to the seaweed-riddled shadows again, my fear returning.
One of the men left, but the other two continued to look in at me at intervals. As the sun moved across the sky, more faces appeared, followed by more excited talking. But the energy seemed to change when a man with a very large head—he blocked out much more of the light—arrived. Then there was a lot of movement: splashing footsteps around the shallowest parts, the coming and going of shadows and voices, the sounds of work being done.
I hissed, startled when they dumped a bucket of water between the planks and it splashed overhead. It was the first of many. Confused and frightened, I pressed against the furthest depths of the hull as the splashes became frequent and steady. Bucket after bucket was deposited into the wreck.
Soon the water began to change. I sensed it with my tail first, then my gills. Slowly the texture, taste and tone of the water I was breathing was being transformed.
My fear began to dissipate, and I wondered what they were doing. Curiosity drew me from the depths to taste and smell the water.
Sweet water, tasting of cold stones and minerals, had begun to permeate the briny seawater. A current moved through my wreck, driven by the repeated pouring of water into the top, which brushed over my skin and tail and slowly pressed the saltwater out through the cracks in the wreck’s frame.
The intrusion of sweet water continued. Men came and went, the voices changed as they took turns at this chore, talking amongst themselves and stepping carefully with bare feet among the sharp rocks.
I became conscious of my own thoughts again and a panic that I’d been seen by humans in my siren form rose. But as the freshwater wore away the animal instinct, I recognized that there was nothing to be done about being discovered, and these men were actually rescuing me. Further to this deduction, I realized with no small amount of exasperation that I had had the power to free myself from the wreck the entire time. I had only been lacking the human intelligence required to conceive of a plan and execute it. At high tide, there was no air in the wreck at all, but at low tide there was a small amount of space above the waterline. If I had had enough intelligence to stick my face above water and take a few breaths, I could have solved my own problem.
Another startlingly logical question struck my mind. How did these men know that sweet water would save me? They had to be aware of the existence of mermaids already. Could it be that our world was not as secret as we thought it was?
Drifting in that empty and ruined hull, as more and more human thoughts and emotions forming in my psyche, a whispered name came from all around, pressing in on me like a blanket.
Bel.
Startled, my head jerked up and my ears perked. Had I imagined it? My name passed by my ears again like a warm current.
Bel.
“Yes?” It took me a moment to realize the ocean was speaking to me. No, not speaking to me. Naming me.
Sybellen.
My siren name settled over my shoulders like a cloak, familiar and special. Mine. I became so excited I began to swim in loops and figure-eights, tight ones, which I realize now probably made it appear to my rescuers as though I was having a panic attack. Grinning from ear to ear and full of grateful joy that I had finally acquired my siren name, the desire to share it with someone, anyone, overcame me.
I broke the surface and said my name aloud, it bounced off the hull and echoed around me, and for the first time since I had become trapped in that wreck, my human lungs filled with oxygen. In an aching and violent reaction, I began to cough. The tickling in my throat and the pain as my lungs expanded seized control of my body.
Alarmed, the men reacted.
A great cracking noise startled me back underwater. The coughing ceased and the pain in my chest eased as I breathed through my gills again, but by then the oxygen in my lungs had returned me to a near fully human mind.
I watched with curiosity as one of the men pried lose several planks from the hull, making a hole large enough for me to pass through. The crack and groan of soggy wood and rusty nails giving way filled my hollow. Fear was nonsensical. These men were freeing me, and even if they had some malignant ulterior motive for doing so, I did not need to be frightened of them. I could make them do whatever I wished with my siren voice.
The man with the large head peered into the hole and then reached in a hand.
“Nikt cię nie skrzwdzi,” he said. He smiled and his eyes crinkled, transforming his face into somethin
g beautiful. The sun passed behind his hat, giving his whole countenance a corona of warm yellow light.
My heart rang like a bell and the vibration ran along my spine and to the very ends of my fingertips and tail. I had no idea what he said, but it didn’t matter. He was to be my mate.
My face broke the surface and I looked up into the eyes of the man who owned the voice. I realized his large head only looked so because of the hat he wore. None of the other men wore hats. Somehow, this man was set apart from them.
“Jesteś wolny.” He continued to smile and beckon to me. My heart felt as though it had tripled in size and become soft and juicy, like ripe summer fruit.
“Sybellen,” I croaked from a raw throat.
His brows drew together momentarily in confusion. “Sybellen?”
“My name,” I clarified. “It is Sybellen.”
He didn’t say anything at first, and I didn’t know if it was because he was startled that I’d spoken, or startled that I’d introduced myself. I actually hadn’t meant to, I had only been reacting to my oceanic christening, but it must have seemed like an introduction to him. Given the choice, I would have given him my human name, but it was too late for that.
Then he gave a delighted laugh. In a richly accented voice, he said, “You speak English! My great-uncle was right.”
I didn’t properly process the latter phrase––which was so oddly out of place––because my eyes were taking in his features hungrily. The attraction I felt to him was steadily warming my body, right through my soul. His proportions, symmetry, frame, features, kind expression––his every detail screamed that he was perfect for fathering my child.
I reached up a hand, and even though help was now the last thing I needed, I allowed him to pull me from the wreck. As I passed out of the water, I shed my mermaid’s tail and crawled from the wreck with long, pale legs. Naked as the day I was born, and about as slimy, I got to my feet.
Only then did I see the crowd of men who had gathered to watch.
The man in the hat spoke to one of them in his foreign tongue. The fellow produced a lump of dingy white cloth, which was taken and then handed to me.
Standing there in the shallows with the sharp stones cutting into the soles of my newly formed feet, I stared at the cloth stupidly.
“It’s all we have on short notice,” the man in the hat said, shifting from one leg to the other to move between me and the staring crowd.
I looked into his face, quizzically.
“Here, let me help you.” His voice was so gentle, and it made my insides vibrate in a way nothing else had (at least that I could remember at the time).
He shook out the cloth and looped it over my head. It was a shirt to cover my naked body, and reminded me that humans were ashamed to be naked. I put my arms through the billowy sleeves. The shirt, smelling of sweat and beer, fell to just above my knees. The gaping collar fell over one shoulder, and the man in the hat laced up the thong at the chest to tighten it. His fingers brushed my skin and nearly set it to flaming.
My recent state of affairs––trapped in the wreck, salt-flush, living on instinct alone––was not really something I felt the need to process any further. All of my concentration was now centered around this man, and I had already begun to think of him as mine.
The object of my affection, as you know, was Mattis Novak––shipping magnate and ambitious businessman. He took me to the rooms he’d rented at a tavern in a nearby port town, and sourced me a dress that fit. But before I was allowed to put it on, I was offered a bath to wash the salt from my body and hair. The soap I was given––stinking potently of artificial perfume––I declined, but the bath I gratefully accepted.
As I washed myself and soaked in the sweet, rapidly cooling bathwater, an excitement to begin the next phase of my life infiltrated every fiber of my being. This time would be different. This time, I’d found someone really special, someone I would stay with until death parted us. Let the woes of the Atlanteans and the sirens of Okeanos sort itself out, I had found someone I believed would make me deliciously happy. This time I also had Nike’s enlightenment that avoiding the use of my siren voice would allow wonderful things to happen. And after three failed Dyás, I needed any wonderful things nature might see fit to give me.
Mattis was a man who had the ability to get things done, to motivate others and to make them like him at the same time. The clothing, the bath, and a room on the top floor were all taken care of within a matter of minutes. This was a quality of his which may not seem directly important to the story, but I am certain that if Mattis had been a less ambitious, less organized, or less driven type of person, my story and his would have turned out very differently.
“Are you hungry?” he asked as I entered his room on the top floor––the quietest and least bothered by the smells of cooking, hops, and the unwashed patrons in the tavern below. He gestured that I should take one of the chairs near the small fireplace. “I can’t imagine you wouldn’t be. How long were you trapped inside that ship?”
“I don’t know, and yes, I am hungry.” Point of fact, I had smelled the savory scents of fried fish and potatoes (mingled with everything else I chose to ignore) when we’d entered the tavern, and it had set my mouth to watering furiously. The intervening time for the bath had only heightened that hunger.
Mattis pulled on a thin rope hanging near the door and distantly, in some lower floor of the building, a bell tinkled.
“I suppose you had no ways of marking the days.” He sat across from me. “Not that you were in any mind to be making sums.”
“How do you know this about us? How do you know,” I amended, “about us at all?”
“Your kind is legendary among my kind.”
“Your kind?”
“Sailors.” He smiled as he pulled off his knee-high leather boots and wriggled his toes. His eyes rolled up in his head as though in some kind of ecstasy. “It feels so good to be released from those boots.” He shot the offending footwear a distasteful look. “I had them made when I was in London last. I think I’ll keep the shoemaker I have in Gdansk.”
“Is that where you’re from?”
He nodded. “But we are getting off track.”
A knock at the door interrupted us. Mattis sprang to his feet and opened it to greet a server from the tavern. “Bring us two plates from the kitchens, whatever you have that smells so wonderful. Two pints of light ale, please.”
The server answered back in a different language and they conversed for a moment in a friendly way. The server peered in at me under Mattis’s armpit and I caught a flash of dark, curious eyes. He departed with Mattis’s request and Mattis closed the door and returned to me.
“Many seafaring men believe you to be creatures of myth, but there are a surprising number of them who watch for you diligently while sailing. My great-uncle Gerhard told me stories when I was but a young boy.” He eyes swept over me, sparkling. “Kept me hanging on his every word, so he did. According to him, his brother had a mermaid for a wife.”
Another knock preceded the same servant entering with two dripping mugs of ale, which he set on the small round table between us. His eyes lingered on me as he and Mattis spoke in the local language again. He backed out of the room, never once showing me his back.
“That is until she disappeared one day, taking some family jewels and gold with her.”
“Did you believe him?”
“Only when I was a small boy, but when I grew up, I realized he was having fun with me.”
“He was,” I agreed. “Mermaids do not need to take treasure from men. We have enough riches.” I pinched my lips shut, realizing I was saying too much. No one was supposed to know about my kind, and here I was confirming everything and adding to his knowledge. If I had been my mother, I would have befuddled Mattis with my voice there and then, followed by systematically erasing the memory of every man who’d worked on the freshwater line to save me.
“Those men, the ones who helped p
ut freshwater into my wreck, do they all work for you?”
“Most of them. Some of them are sailors, and others work at the dock here in St. Croix. A few were villagers who got caught up in the effort to free you.”
“But it was you who knew what to do?”
Mattis took a long swig of the ale, leaving a thick foam moustache on his upper lip. He wiped it away against his sleeve. I watched the gesture with a hungry gaze, my eyes lingering on his full red lips and white teeth.
“Uncle Gerhard told me that saltwater makes mermaids unfriendly.” Mattis seemed to choose his words carefully. “And freshwater does the opposite. I didn’t know if it was a bit of fabrication, but I thought it worth trying to help a beautiful creature such as yourself. Men do not so often get to see mermaids close up.”
“But you are not afraid?”
His brows drew together. “What should I be afraid of?”
“This Gerhard did not warn you of our mystical powers?”
“That you can change from human to mermaid and back again at will? Certainly. That you have the most beautiful voices ever heard by men and that your singing has been known to lure men to their doom?” He waved a hand and his blue eyes caught mine. “If you were going to do such a thing, you would have done it by now.”
So, he was not aware of the power of my voice, then. If he had been, perhaps he would not have rescued me, for fear I would have swindled him out of his sense and his belongings.