by A. L. Knorr
Following the choking scent of diesel, the tapping of water against a hull, and the frequent splashing, it didn't take long before the vessel became visible to my eyes. I could now see the underside of the vessel floating above its modern anchor.
Splash. I heard again the sound of something being thrown or falling into the water and I saw a white torpedo as it drifted down to the seabed. Curious, I swam closer, staying near the bottom. I was caught up short by a stronger whiff of the metallic taste and I realized what it was. Blood.
I was close enough now to see that the white shapes weren't torpedoes. Little clouds of blood were coming from each form. As I drew near I could now see hundreds of these white and grey bodies littering the ocean floor. My skin prickled with horror as I swam to the nearest one.
It was a small shark. Its dorsal fin and both pectoral fins had been sliced off at the base and the corpse tossed back into the ocean. My horror turned to outrage when I realized that it wasn't a corpse. It was still alive. This one was female and she looked at me out of a terrified, rolling eye. She couldn't swim, couldn't move. She struggled for breath. She was going to suffocate if she couldn't swim forward to keep the water moving across her gills. Blood drifted up from her wounds, filling my nostrils with the scent and bringing more sharks and carnivorous creatures from miles around.
I laid a hand on her side, feeling her agony and confusion. As I lifted my eyes and saw the hundreds, maybe thousands of finless bodies dotting the seabed, an indescribable fury filled me. My flesh crawled and my mouth filled with acid. My eyes felt hot with unshed tears and my fists clenched so tightly that the webbing between my fingers protested.
Suddenly, the engine of the boat rumbled to life and a new burst of diesel fumes filled the water. Whoever they were, they were going to drive away and leave this massacre behind, taking the fins that belonged to these creatures with them.
Thirty-Five
Reason and I parted company.
I shot straight towards the boat. For the first time in my life, I was ready to kill. Whoever these evil bastards were they were about to breathe their last. I envisioned tearing heads from necks with my bare hands.
As I shot towards the surface, intending to fly out of the waves like an avenging angel and land on the deck ready to mete out justice, a net was thrown over the side directly over my head. I swam straight into it at high speed. The thick rope pressed hard into my head and face and encircled me. My neck creaked in pain and instinct told me to thrash. I whipped my tail back and forth, the sea frothing around me. Like an animal caught in quicksand all I knew was the desperation to free myself, but for all my efforts I only became more tangled. Gone was the feeling of power I had only just discovered, I felt as helpless as a child.
Through the water my siren ears picked up male voices from the boat speaking in tones of surprise but I couldn't make out what they were saying.
I pulled a big draught of water through my gills and greedily stored up the oxygen it gave me. Then I willed my tail back into legs and prayed that they hadn't gotten a good look at what was thrashing in their net.
My mother had seared into my mind that my identity had to be protected, unless I wanted to spend the rest of my days in an aquarium, a laboratory, or floating in formaldehyde.
I held the breath that I had taken and waited to be retrieved from the water. Oh mother, what have I done? I need you now.
I felt the vibration more than heard the sound of a winch running as the net dragged closer to the boat. The engine died and the only sound was now the whir of the winch.
The net tightened around me, pulling me through the water towards the surface. I felt my weight as the net lifted me out of the water and up over the deck of the boat. I took a deep gulp of air with my human lungs.
With every breath of the open air my mermaid instinct dissolved. The outrage about the sharks was still there, but my mind was also racing to find a way to protect myself, free myself. What story could I give? That I'd been snorkelling completely naked and miles from shore? That I'd stowed away on their boat, hid myself in some corner and then gone for a swim when they'd parked? Everything I came up with sounded ridiculous.
Why had I never thought to bring a weapon with me when I went out swimming? Because I'd never once felt in danger of the ocean's creatures. It hadn't ever crossed my mind that I might have to defend myself from people. I was the one who had powers over them, not they over me. Until now. All the power I had been playing with seemed useless.
I sank to the bottom of the net as it dangled low over the deck. My limbs stretched painfully at awkward angles. My back creaked in protest. I couldn't see well through my tangle of hair and the netting that obscured my vision. The net was swinging and I felt someone put a hand on it to steady it. Then I felt it lowered to the deck slowly and my body came to rest on the floor of the boat.
I pulled my limbs toward me, disentangling them from the net and covering myself as well as I could, just the way a human girl would. I took deep breaths to calm my racing heart. I still couldn't see anything other than the wet and bloody deck of the boat and the net cutting across my vision.
"What have we here?" said an incredulous male voice. "I thought I'd seen everything. Never in all my life did I expect to catch a mermaid in my net."
I prayed to God that he was saying that as a metaphor.
"She's naked!" said another male voice, this voice was full of phlegm. The sound of wheezing and coughing blended with nervous laughter.
That last statement revealed something in my favour. If they'd seen my fins then they'd know what I was and being naked shouldn't come as a surprise. Or was he just a guy who liked to state the obvious?
I struggled to clear my vision but in the tangle of netting I couldn't reach up to brush my hair away from my eyes. I was not ashamed of being seen naked, that modesty had died in the Baltic when I did, but the cold air against my skin and the scraping of the net made me feel vulnerable. I fought against the fear that was threatening to overwhelm me.
"What the hell?" said a new voice, approaching from the boat's cockpit. Why did that voice sound so familiar?
Suddenly, the net was opened and pulled away from me. The sun glared down at me from the cloudless sky. I felt more exposed and more afraid than I had ever felt in my entire life. I was finally able to brush my wet hair away from my face and squint up.
"Targa?" said the voice.
I didn't know whether to be relieved or more afraid as he stepped into view and I was able to look him in the eye. It was Eric.
Thirty-Six
"Grab me those shorts and that shirt, will you Donovan?" Eric said, holding out his hand towards them. "I know this girl."
As far as I could tell there were only three men on the boat. It was a fishing vessel with a closed cockpit at the bow, but it was too small for more people to be hiding somewhere. My mind skittered around for ideas of what to do next. For a moment they lay purchase on a strange looking gun leaning up against a red plastic box near the cockpit. A speargun?
"You know her?" Donovan replied as he handed Eric a lump of clothing which Eric passed to me.
"Yeah, help her up out of that mess. I'll be right back." Eric went to the cockpit.
The other two men lifted away the net and one of them used the winch to lift it so it hung over the water at the back of the boat.
I had expected jeers and comments but Donovan and the wheezing man actually turned their backs while I pulled the clothes on. The shorts were men's red swim trunks and the shirt was a dingy, ripped tank top with stains on it. The smell of body odour hit me and I made an involuntary face of disgust. It was bad enough I had to accept help from these monsters, but I also had to wear their reeking clothing next to my skin.
Eric came back with a pair of old deck shoes in his hands. He put them down in front of me saying, "Better put these on, this deck is slippery."
I ignored the shoes and glared at him. "The deck is slippery because it's covered with blood
." I gestured to the bins full of freshly amputated shark fins. "What the hell are you doing, Eric?" There were surely hundreds of pounds of fins in the bins that these men had stolen already.
I knew that shark-fin soup was a specialty in many Asian countries and sold for a disgusting amount of money. I also knew that it was illegal in these waters, and further to that, it was completely immoral. Not only did I plan to shame them until they felt like the pieces of crap that they were, this was also a tactic to direct the attention away from myself and what I was doing so far out to sea, naked and all alone.
Eric looked surprised, and then angry. "What do you mean what the hell am I doing? What the hell are you doing? You're miles from shore!" So much for the distraction tactic. "Where are your clothes? Does your mom know you're out here? How the hell did you even get out here?" He scanned the ocean surface. "Where is your boat? What are you, an Olympic swimmer? I know you like the water, but jeebus."
"You're going to have a lot bigger problems than catching a skinny dipper in your net. Don't you know that shark finning is illegal?"
He glared at me. "Yes, I know it is. Don't you rain your little girl judgement down on me. You have no idea the trouble I'm in." He actually waved a finger in my face. His voice became more threatening. "You're not going to tell a soul about this if you know what's good for you."
"Like hell I'm not. You leave hundreds of sharks to die on the ocean floor to line your pockets and you think I'm just going to let you sail off into the sunset? You're a butcher and a criminal." I took a step closer to him, vaguely aware that the boat had started to turn. "You and your buddies..." I took another step and shoved my nose into his face. We were eyeball to eyeball, "...are finished."
He jerked back when he heard the multidimensional sound in my voice. I hadn't meant to use the violins but I was so emotional that they'd come out of their own accord. The look of fear that crossed his face was very satisfying. I noticed that the shadows on his face were moving as the boat turned under us.
"Uh... Eric," said the wheezing man, "We've got a problem."
Eric and I turned our heads towards him. Both he and Donovan were peering over the side of the boat into the water. We went to the railing and looked over the side.
Fish and sharks, thousands of them, were swimming around the boat in a perfect circle. Then I noticed there were turtles, squid, and dolphins in the crowd of fish as well and more were coming by the second, they could be seen swimming towards us from the surrounding waters. It explained why the boat had started to spin. The fish were creating a whirlpool.
I saw a flash of black hair and pale skin amongst the thickening crowd of sea-life. My heart jumped and then hammered hard, almost painfully, in my chest. My mother was here. The two other men must have seen something strange because they turned their heads toward each other in shock.
"Did you see that?" said the wheezer to Donovan. The whites were showing around his eyes, his irises were small blue circles of fear. He looked back into the water, bending over the railing of the boat to get a better look.
Suddenly, my mother leapt up from the water, grabbed him by the back of the neck and pulled him into the ocean with her. The sea closed around them and the surface went calm again. Eric and Donovan went stumbling back from the railing edge, yelling curses.
I waited, heart pounding, my eyes darting around for a glimpse of my mother or the wheezing man. They had disappeared completely into the thick mass of circling creatures.
I put a foot up on the railing to leap in when a hand grabbed my upper arm and pulled me back. "Where do you think you're going?" Eric said as he yanked me back. I sprawled in the boat and we both toppled over. I landed on Eric's chest and he exhaled sharply. We went sliding across the slippery deck.
We both scrambled to our feet, skidding in the slurry. "What's going on? That thing..." Eric yelled, "...that thing looked like a M..." He looked like he wanted to say it but couldn't get it out.
My mother shot out of the water a second time. She came flying over the railing and into the boat, landing on human feet in a crouch.
Eric and Donovan both screamed in terror. She slowly stood upright and with a sinister hissing rattle, a sound I had never heard from anything aside from maybe a rattlesnake, she faced the men.
She looked as I had never seen her look. Her skin reflected the sunlight as though it was still covered in scales. Her irises had grown in size and had changed from her beautiful bright blue into a golden colour and the pupil was a vertical black slash, not unlike a shark's eye. Inch long razor-sharp white fangs had appeared in her open mouth. She lifted a hand and pointed it slowly at Eric and I saw that she now had talons instead of her usual blunt fingernails, and her hands had retained their webbing.
A breeze blew across the boat, touching my skin and raising gooseflesh. For the first time in my life, I was afraid of my own mother.
Thirty-Seven
"What the hell is that?" Donovan yelled, his voice cracking. He moved to cower behind Eric. Before I realized what was happening, Eric had a forearm across my neck in a vicelike grip and his fillet knife at my throat.
"So that's how you've been doing it this whole time, you freak," he hissed over my head at my mother. "I knew there was something off about you, but this..." he seemed to be at a loss for words.
The creature that was supposedly my mother didn't respond. She didn't look afraid. It was hard to tell whether she'd even understood Eric's words. Her mouth was open in a snarl, her white fangs just visible.
"Mom?" I said, fearfully. I was more afraid that I'd lost her than I was of Eric's knife. Was this what salt-flush looked like?
"Now you listen to me," Eric continued, his voice in a low growl. If it wasn't for the quivering of his forearm under my chin I wouldn't have known that he was afraid. "If you want your daughter to live you're going to dive for me. We're going straight to The Republic. Today. Right now. And you're going to bring up every ounce of gold you can find. We'll wait for you. Just. Like. This." He pushed the tip of the knife into my throat. I gasped and instinctively drew back from the point. "And when we're done, I'll let her go and you can both swim off into the sunset never to be seen or heard from again. Understand me?"
She'd had her predatory gaze set on Eric's face during this speech. After he'd finished, I thought I saw the corner of her mouth go up. Could that be right? She was amused? Her face was so foreign, so devoid of human expression that it was impossible to say.
Her eyes twitched upward and focused on something behind Eric and I realized she was looking at Donovan. She turned her head towards him and cocked it, like a predator evaluating her prey. She drew in a long, slow breath. It looked like she was getting ready to make a huge blast of air to hit the men with but instead she breathed out a single word, "Juuuuuump." Her siren's voice filled the air with a smooth, unbroken sound. It came from everywhere around us. I felt the metal of the boat vibrate underneath my feet with the power of it, even though she hadn't raised her voice.
I couldn't see what was happening behind me but I felt the shift in Eric's body as he looked towards Donovan. I heard the sound of Donovan's knife hit the deck.
"No!" yelled Eric. "Stop it!" Eric turned us enough for me to see Donovan put his foot up on the railing.
"Mom, no," I said. I wanted these men stopped, but not like this. It was bad enough that one of them was more than likely dead.
Donovan hopped over the side as serenely as though he'd decided to take a nice, refreshing dip in the ocean. We heard the splash as he hit the water.
Eric was now alone. He was panting behind me. I could feel the shock coursing through him and his heart pounding far too rapidly than was healthy. I wondered if he'd have a heart attack. I probably would have if I were in his shoes.
The mother I didn't recognize turned her focus on Eric. Eric must have realized he couldn't fight the power of her voice and he dropped the knife away from my throat and shoved me towards her. I stumbled forward and slid on the deck, fa
lling to my knees and then to my hip. Eric backed himself against the railing, his eyes darted side to side, towards the cockpit, back at us. He looked like a caged animal.
"No, Mom!" I reached towards her. "Please don't do this," I begged.
She looked down at me and for half a breath it felt like she didn't know me. But as I watched, her eyes slowly returned to the bright blue ones I knew and her fangs receded. Her face became the one I loved. It was only then that I realized she'd been perfectly lucid the whole time. I then recognized fear in her eyes. My mother, afraid? She reached down and helped me stand.
"I'm ok, Mom. There's got to be a better way," I said.
She gave me a nod then focused on Eric. He was cowering against the railing, his knife on the deck at his feet. His chest moved visibly as he breathed; he was hyperventilating. Sweat poured down the sides of his face and neck.
She pulled in another big breath but before she released anything, Eric gave a horrific yell of absolute panic. He leapt towards the cockpit, slipped on the slurry and slid across the deck. His hands reached for...
"Mom! Dive!" I cried, and reached to push her out of the way of the speargun. I slipped on the slurry again and fell at her feet. I heard the sound of the trigger, and the thud as the spear hit my mother. I screamed as she fell back over the railing. I tried to grasp her legs but she slipped through my fingers and disappeared into the crowd of fish with a splash. Blood bloomed in the water where she fell and its red cloud was swept along with the current.
I screamed again, unable to think, unable to form words. I barely registered that Eric was loading a second spear. I scrambled up and dove into the water before he could aim, landing awkwardly in the midst of the circling fish. I bent and ripped the shorts off, and took a breath through my gills. My legs transformed. Fins and scaly bodies bumped me from all sides.