One:
The Mermaid’s Love
“the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look.
There are others besides you who have worn that look -
whose expression is no longer a protest; the fish no longer investigate them
for their bones have not lasted”
-“A Grave,” by Marianne Moore
Once they had at last crossed the ocean, men believed that they had tamed it as, long ago, they had tamed the land. Glorying in their power on the sail-speckled waves, they proclaimed themselves masters. They were wrong.
There is nothing about the sea that can be owned; nothing safe, or even familiar. The far fathoms of the ocean are as alien as the stars that glitter in the cold night sky, and no mind can pierce them to lay bare their secrets. The realms that lie in the deep places remain hidden from the reach of mortal eyes and the warmth of mortal hearts. Only once they are past all sight and mastery do men ever find their way to its shadowed fastness.
They sail above the glassy surface and fancy that by navigating this outer façade, they know the ocean well. They cannot comprehend the vast distances that lie below their hulls.
The night had been warm and clear. A thousand stars sparkled in the sky overhead, and on the prince’s grand flagship a merry party was under way. The deck was lit by many gay paper lanterns of yellow and green. Candle-light leaped and sparkled on the water, and a lively dance tune drifted out across the calm waves. Though it was many leagues distant from any shore, one listener took heed of the boisterous echoes that disturbed that unaccustomed wasteland.
The mermaid was slender and small, the trunk of her body very like that of a young girl just on the cusp of womanhood. Her pale, green-tinged skin was smooth and fragile as eggshell, but her long, twining tail was covered in shiny, dark scales, and crusted with barnacles and seashells. With all the curiosity of a seal pup, she swam silently up to the keel of the ship and, with arms that were surprisingly powerful for their slender shape, gripped the wooden planks and hoisted herself up to deck-level. She stared at the colorful dancers, fixing her wide dark eyes in particular upon the prince, whose laughing voice could be heard above all the chatter of his admirers. He was like a proud oak standing at the center of a garden of lovely flowers, though of course the mermaid could not make such an analogy, having never seen a garden.
She clung there for hours, invisible in the shadows, entranced by the raucous noise and flickering firelight. Her arms at length began to tire, and yet the revelry continued without slackening. Finally, she slithered her sinuous body back down the side of the ship and disappeared silently beneath the waves. The warm-blooded creatures on the deck, dizzied and further heated with much wine, never knew she had been there at all. Their voices, raised in song, heedlessly drowned out the sounds of the ever-changeable sea.
The wind was picking up, snuffing some of the lanterns, and clouds were beginning to race across the sky, blotting out the stars.
Swimming for the mermaid was not the simple side-to-side motion of a fish, but was rather more a matter of wriggling, like an eel or sea-snake. She slipped and darted through the fathoms of water that separated the surface from her home at the bottom, passing from the green half-light through successive shadings of darkness. Empty water spread itself out endlessly all around her. The silence was profound after so much noise, but as she traveled it sank into her, bone-deep, in a semblance of perfect, unbreakable peace.
That semblance slipped. An uneasy ripple shuddered through the mermaid, and her progress slowed; something in the character of the water had changed, so subtly that only a native of the element could have sensed it. She twisted and, having hesitated a moment, moved in the direction she had come, climbing up through upper water no longer lit by moonlight.
When she broke through the surface, her small body was immediately pitched violently this way and that. Since she had left the ship, a large storm had descended out of nowhere. The wind and rain beat the waves into mountains and sliced off the tips. Nearby, she saw the prince’s vessel just as it was falling into the large valley created by one such mountainous wave. Debris littered the water all around. A fragment of lantern-paper blew by her cheek.
Diving under the rampaging flood, the mermaid swam as close as she dared the ship, and floated there. The boats had fled far, oars toiling desperately. She ignored the shrieking of terrified human women in favor of the spectacle in front of her.
The sinking ship was on fire, and it was like nothing the she had ever seen. The flames danced in the centers of her eyes, the heat of the inferno kissing her clammy cheeks. She stared, rapt and uncomprehending, and barely heard the nearby splash. It was only some time later, when the prince’s form was carried right in front of her by a great swell, that she took any notice.
She blinked and looked at him, her mouth opening and closing, fishlike. He was not looking at her. His arms and legs were moving slightly, with failing effort, but in a moment they stopped. She cocked her head, her long neck arching gracefully. His face was underwater. As she ducked below him to look, the rest of him slid under after her.
Did he wish to come with her, down to her shadowy kingdom below? She invited, long fingers skirting over his forehead and cheek. He was strange, but he was beautiful. The corner of his mouth trickled a stream of bubbles that might have been a sigh above the water. They traced through his swaying hair and drifted up and away.
It seemed to her that he had agreed. Delighted, she took his large, limp hand in her own small pale one, which was webbed like a frog’s. Down and down away from the tempest she drew him. They descended together, princess and prince, her tail coiling gracefully, his limbs flung artlessly behind them.
Some human writers have told us that the homes of the merfolk are bright, gay places; fancifully skewed simulacra of our own habitations on land. What a comforting notion! How familiar, how safe would these creatures be if they were merely watery reflections of us. In truth, however, the sea-bottom where the mermaids live is dark and cold, lit eerily by only the faint, living luminescence of a few strange creatures. There is a sense of vastness that exceeds the compass of the human mind, for it stretches for miles and miles of nearly never-ending emptiness. The bright colors are pure mythology, for all things below are simply different shades of blue-green, washed out and pale in the absence of light. It was to this chilly, monochromatic dream-world that the sea princess led her handsome prince.
Within the rocky cavern of her palace, the mermaid made much of her new companion. His form was novelty itself: his build was thick, and his jaw broad and square. He had no scales at all, and no gills. His torso ended in strange protrusions which were completely useless underwater, but that was all right, since she could easily carry him with her in the near-weightlessness of the ocean bottom. The prince’s eyes were wide and staring, but this did not bother the mermaid, for her own round fish-eyes were much the same.
The mermaid took the prince around to the undersea balls and banquets, such as they were. He neither spoke nor ate one bite, but sat in seeming contemplation of the wonders around him. The little fishes nibbled at his ears and fingers by way of greeting, and the little mermaid smiled to see him getting along so well with her people.
If he never spoke to her as he had spoken to the human ladies on the ship, well, this did not daunt her. He was constantly in her company, and staring at his parted lips, she held the memory of his laughter.
In time, the prince’s skin grew pale, as all things do when separated from the sunlight. There was a softening to him, and he grew perhaps a little ragged around the edges. The mermaid had spent most of her waking hours with him at first, but as the muted days passed, her inquisitive nature had her straying further and further from her home once more. For longer and longer periods, she left the poor prince alone.
At last he was forgotten entirely, left sitting still as a statue on the ocean bottom. His white bones slowly amassed barnacles and sea-weeds, and tiny fishes swam in and out of his eye sockets. The mermaid, who went about her life as carefree and curious as ever, forgot that he had ever been more to her than an ornament. After all, three hundred years is a long time to live, and true love is but an eyeblink in all that enormity of time and deep, distorting water.
Sea Change I: The Mermaid's Love is ©2004 a. kleber