The ocean was calm. As calm as the ocean could ever be, at any rate. Much calmer than it had been during the storm a week prior. The furious waves had relaxed into gentle swells, and the sun shone down into the water, illuminating the area just under the surface. Reshel swam belly-up in this light-tinted water, eyes looking up toward the sky.
“The calm surface is not so bad,” she thought dully. Her mind was numb, and she swam without thinking about it, put into a trance by the sun overhead. “However, I think I prefer it during a storm.”
There was nothing quite like the surface during an ocean squall. Deep underwater, it always felt calm to a certain extent. Even panicked movements were lent a fluid grace by the water that surrounded body and limbs. Buoyancy was taken for granted. Weightlessness was the norm. During a storm though… Reshel shivered as she remembered the thrill of being plucked right out of the water by wind and waves, helplessly flipped around in the open air, and then thrown back into the deep water, where tumultuous forces carried her against her will… She had not felt fear. Only excitement.
After all, what would Reshel have to fear? She made her home far out in the open ocean. There were no rocks to be dashed against, no reefs to cut her… And of course drowning wasn’t a concern. Fish did not drown. She wasn’t like the men, who had to ride on whales of wood in order to get this far away from land. She wasn’t like them, who needed air in their lungs and saltless water in their throat and something under their feet in order to survive. She wasn’t like them…
The men. They were the reason why Reshel had come back to the surface even after the storm had ended, as she did every time there was a storm. It didn’t happen often. In fact, it had only happened to her twice. But the second time, at least, was enough to make her want it to happen again.
“No, I don’t want it to happen again,” she corrected herself quickly. “That would be cruel… After all, it hasn’t ever ended well… But maybe it will next time. And if it does happen again… Well then, I should be there. To help, in any way I can.” She forced her eyes away from the hypnotizing daystar overhead and flipped over so that she was swimming belly-down, the way she usually did. Her tail flapped at the surface of the water as she did so, sending lots of little droplets flying in all directions.
A fine tail, indeed. The best I’ve ever seen. The only I’ve ever seen. Its color reminds me of the autumn leaves in my own country. I’ve always loved the autumn… A pang of longing filled Reshel, and her face wrinkled in sadness. She pushed aside the memories and continued to swim, eyes scanning the surface above her for the shape of anything that resembled a—
There. There it was. Oh… It was one of the whales of wood. A boat. A small one, but then, both of the boats the others had been in when she found them were small, too.
We put the little boats inside the big boats so that if the big boats sink, we still have something to float around in. Not all of us are as proficient at swimming as you are, my dear...
“Do not think of him!” Reshel ordered herself sternly, moving forward with new urgency, toward the whale of wood. “There is no time for thoughts of him. This new man. You must get him to safety. You must.” She hesitated as she grew nearer to the boat, though, wondering. Would this man be like the second? Or the first?
She took in a large breath, let it out, and carefully arranged her hair about her so that it wasn’t floating in the tangled whirlwind it usually was. Then, before it rose back up again, she ascended, head breaking the surface of the water just a foot away from the side of the boat. The thing was low in the water, and it looked as if some of the ocean may have found its way in, wanting to see what appeal the wooden whales had for the men. The side was just low enough that Reshel could see the man lying in the boat, eyes closed.
“Dead?” she thought for a panicked instant. But no. His chest rose and fell as she watched. The man was alive, if only barely. His fair hair and eyelashes were crusted into clumps with sea salt, and there was a frightful red look to his skin that nearly matched the colors of Reshel’s tail. What was more, he had a number of small cuts and bruises. They would have looked harmless on their own, but with so many of them… The overall effect was that the man was in a bad way. His ribs stuck out, as did many of his other bones. “This man,” Reshel thought, “was starving even before the storm.” Sometimes that happened. The bigger wooden whales ran out of food, and all of the men on board went hungry…
“Still,” Reshel thought wistfully, moving closer to the side of the boat. “He is handsome…” She could see that even with his current poor condition. And as with all the other men, he had no tail. Instead, he had two long things like arms, but a bit thicker, with things not like hands at the ends. Legs and feet. They were so strange… Like the surface during a storm, there was nothing quite like them deep under the water.
Suddenly the man’s eyes opened, and Reshel flinched. He gazed at her unseeingly for a moment, and then his eyes focused on her and widened in surprise. The man’s dry tongue flicked over his cracked lips in a vain attempt to wet them. Then he gathered what seemed like all of his strength and forced himself to sit up, the water in the bottom of the boat sloshing. The tiny vessel wobbled, and Reshel grabbed the side to steady it, not wanting the man to capsize the craft and go pitching into the sea.
“A woman?” the man rasped. He coughed weakly, not taking his eyes off of Reshel. “What… Where did you...” He spotted her tail then, and Reshel was able to see him go pale, even with the sunburn. “I’ve gotta be dreamin’... This can’t be real… I can’t be seein’ what I think I’m seein’… It’s a hallucination. The sun’s finally got to me. I-” Reshel put a finger to her lips, and the man trailed off. She gave him a gentle smile and shyly raised her hand toward him. He looked at it stupidly, and then fixed his gaze on his own palm for a moment before reaching out with it and unsteadily touching his fingers to hers. His eyebrows shot up, and he grabbed onto her hand, squeezing it more tightly than was comfortable, though Reshel did not complain. He touched it with his other hand, too, tracing the lines on her palm. Then he looked up at her face, and she gave him another cautious smile.
“You’re really real,” he said, bewildered. And with those words, he passed out and slumped back into the bottom of the boat, making a small splash in the water that rested there.
When Reshel finished propping up the man so that his head was out of the water, she took stock of all that he had in the boat with him, which wasn’t much. A battered metal compass, two soggy biscuits and a third floating ruined in the water of the boat, an envelope sealed with wax and dampened by the ocean – any letter within most assuredly ruined. No water. That was the most worrisome thing. No water… Food, she could get him. Water… It was everywhere. But he could drink none of it. It would make him sick… And if he was like the first man, it would make him cruel.
She shuddered.
~
The first man that she had ever seen had not been a man at all, but a monster. She had been a young girl, just departed from her mother and her mother’s mate, and still reeling from the fury of her first storm. She had come across a wreck. One of the big boats, thrown against a stand of rocks and dying even as she watched, sinking lower and lower into the water. At the time, she really had thought it to be some kind of whale, and she had wondered why it was taking so long to submerge itself. When she had realized that it was caught, she had thought to help it somehow, but then something had happened on the deck, and the wooden whale’s death was sped onward by something Reshel had never seen before. Fire.
You’re lucky to not have it very often on the water, Dear. It’s a frightful thing. Always hungry, and too much like a man. Greedy for air, harmful to most other things, and it can’t live in the water. It absolutely hates the water…And the water seemed to hate fire right back. Such a dreadful hissing and such a fearsome steam filled the air as flaming boards fell to the water, followed by flaming men, trying to escape by bailing out only to be dashed against the rocks by the angry waves… Reshel had never seen so much death. She’d turned tail and had swum as if her life depended on it.
Only to find a smaller boat between herself and the open ocean. A man had taken one of the smaller boats and begun to paddle away from the wreck, alone, even though his little boat might’ve fit several of his comrades. In order to move away from the wreck, he had to paddle while facing toward it, which meant that he watched it burn as he rowed away. He watched his shipmates die. And it also meant that he spotted Reshel as she tried to swim away against the current, crying, her tail moving jerkily and flying up out of the water in her panic. His eyes had gleamed, and he’d beckoned her close.
“It’s not safe in the water!” he’d called. “The waves will carry you right up against the belly of the ship! Come here! Grab on to the back of the boat, and I’ll help you!” Without thinking, the little mermaid had done as he’d asked, swimming closer and grabbing onto the stern of the boat, swimming with all her might so that – with him paddling and her powering forward with her tail – they finally managed to get a safe distance away. She’d stopped swimming then, clutching the back of the boat for dear life, sobbing. She had never seen a man before. She hadn’t known what they were. She had never heard of men, or of the wooden whales, or of fire. She had only vaguely heard about death, and had certainly never thought about it as something that could apply to her or other creatures like her.
The man had whispered calm things to her, in a soothing voice, coming closer and closer to the stern of the boat until finally he’d grabbed her arm and hauled her out of the water, shouting in triumph. Realizing the danger she’d put herself in, Reshel had screamed and tried to get away, lashing out at him with her muscular tail, but the man was just too strong for her. He’d pinned her down and pulled a rope from the bottom of the boat, tying up her arms and her tail and fixing the rope to one of the oarlocks.
“Now, Mermaid…” He had smirked down at her in triumph, obviously not the least broken up about losing his shipmates less than an hour before. “Take me to the shore! You know the seas! Which way?”
“I don’t know!” Reshel had screamed, sobbing and struggling. “I don’t know where the land lies! I know only the ocean!” He had hit her.
“Which way?”
“I don’t know!” He hit her again. And again. Until she slumped in the bottom of the boat, huddling in a ball with her tail pulled up to her chest as best as she could. She shivered and sobbed, afraid and missing her parents more than she had ever missed anything in her life.
“Useless fish,” he had said in disgust. Then he spit at her. “Cousin said your kind granted wishes. I said it was nonsense. You’re a bad omen, you are. Wouldn’t be surprised if you caused the storm that sunk my ship. Eh?” He spit at her again, and Reshel cowered. She was confused. Wishes? Omens? She didn’t cause storms… She could tell when they were likely to appear, but all merpeople could do that… She wished she had never found the human.
He had begun rowing again, in the direction he thought was probably toward the shore. He had verbally abused her. Physically, too. He had kept her tied up and out of the water. She had begun to dry out. Her scales had begun to flake away. He hadn’t let her eat, either.
Days later, his food had run out. He’d rearranged her ropes so that she was attached to the boat by a single harness-like loop around her torso, and then he’d thrown her out of the boat. She’d tried to swim away, but hadn’t gone two feet before he struck her on the head with an oar, shouting. “Stop that! You’re dragging the boat, Fish! Get me some food! Now!”
Terrified, the little mermaid had swum beneath the boat, catching fish as they strayed by. She had eaten the first one herself, taking rebellious pleasure in the fact that she had her fill before him. Then he had yanked on the rope, dragging the fibers across her skin, and she had hurriedly caught the man his own food without any more delay. He’d pulled out a thing that made fire, to Reshel’s shock and horror, and had cooked the fish over the blaze he made in the depths of a big old pot. Then he had thrown the bones at her, holding the rope taut enough that she couldn’t duck under the water, and when he’d finished with the fire he emptied the pot into the water, too, ignoring the way the girl cried out when the flame hit the water mere inches away from her.
He hadn’t made her get back into the boat. Instead, he made her keep fishing for him, and when he grew tired he made her pull the boat in a direction of his choosing. She was the man’s slave for nearly a week. And then his water ran out. Two days later, he grew desperate. He drank of the ocean, and the sea storm’s rage was nothing compared to him. He was unbearable.
Reshel took to swimming back and forth along the boat’s edge - acting as if she were trying to catch fish - and rubbing the rope against the splintery side of the boat. It grew weaker and weaker, and slowly – all too slowly - it began to fray, even as the man grew meaner and meaner. He had a knife, and he pointed it at her angrily and often. Then, one day, weakened and sickened by the saltwater that he was never meant to drink, his grip loosened and the knife slipped out of his hand, piercing the water not an inch from Reshel’s shoulder. She dove for it, swimming after it so hastily that she nearly capsized the boat. She managed to grab the knife just before it fell out of her reach and began to saw at her harness with careless, frantic sawing motions. Finally, the rope snapped, and she was free!
She was off in a flash, desperate to get away from the boat – away from him. Only a few feet under the surface of the water, she still heard his yelling. And she heard when he fell out of the boat.
The man was sickly. He was weary from rowing. He could not climb back into the boat. And like many sailors, though he made his living on the water…
He could not swim.
~
Reshel fished for the new man, too, but by choice, just the way she had fished for the second man. Two biscuits and a soggy third one did not last long on the ocean. This man did not have any flame, which she was thankful for – like the rest of the sea, she hated it – except for the fact that this meant he had to eat his fish raw, as she did. This didn’t seem to agree with the man, and the first time she tried to feed him he spat out the fish flesh, sputtering. The second time he seemed to make a conscious effort to swallow, but it came back up a moment later. Before long, though, it was nothing for him. He would accept the fish, place it far back in his mouth, and swallow, dully and deliberately.
So he had food… But water was still Reshel’s concern. He could not drink the saltwater. She would not let him. But they were so far from shore… Ever since the first man’s anger at her ignorance, she had made it a point to know where the land lay closest to any place in her part of the ocean, so she knew which way the land was, and she pushed the boat steadily in that direction… But it was so far off. And the man was already so weak… And even if she got him to land, she didn’t know if there was any fresh water there…
But she had to try.
So she pushed the boat, and she fished for the man’s food, and she sang as she did these things, trying to keep the despondent man’s spirits up.
You have the voice of an angel, my dear. I can see why the legends have said that your kind can lure ships onto the rocks… Sing that one about the sea storm again, and teach it to me, if you please.
The second man had been in possession of a voice like a barking seal. But Reshel would’ve given anything to hear those warbling attempts at song… Or even that amused tone of voice. This man hardly spoke at all, except to ask for food… It wasn’t his fault. He was dying of thirst, after all… But still. It broke her heart every time he asked for water. She found herself shedding tears, the sea she lived in leaking out of her eyes.
“I’d let you drink my tears if it would help!” she cried out once when she could bear it no longer, just after he asked for water for the hundredth time. “But they’re saltwater, too…”
Later, he’d tried to lean over the side of the boat and drink straight from the ocean. Reshel had turned into a madwoman, screaming and hitting at his head until he fell back into the boat, stunned. Sobbing, Reshel had dove underneath the boat, hiding from him. Until the silhouette of his head appeared at the side of the boat again, about to make another attempt to drink. Then the crazy woman had reappeared, and again she’d forced him back into the boat. She’d long since gotten all of the standing water out of the bottom of the boat, and no more water had come in, which was good. It meant that the water had come from waves, and not a leak. Every time the man tried to lower his face to the ocean to drink, Reshel attacked, forcing him away. He finally gave up, and Reshel shivered underwater, remembering…
~
“You’re making this tragic turn of events all too pleasant, my dear,” he had said as she sang to him one day, pushing the boat toward land. She’d flushed with pleasure, but hadn’t faltered in her singing. The man had leaned back in the boat, eyes turned skyward, hand closed around a flask of water. The second man had possessed plenty of water. It was food that he’d run short of… But Reshel had easily remedied that with the fish. “I think I’ll almost be sad to leave when we reach land.”
“Then don’t leave,” Reshel had thought longingly. But she hadn’t said the words aloud. If he wished to stay with her upon the sea, he would tell her so. Still, she dreamed as they went, fantasizing about what kind of life they could have together. She could find an island for the man to live on, with a deep lagoon. He could rest on the land, and she in the water, and they would talk, and sing, and tell each other stories for all the rest of their days…
It had been hard to believe that upon seeing him the first time, she’d been afraid of him. Remembering the first man, she’d stayed far away from the boat, following behind but not daring to go and see what the human was like. She only came to the surface to peek at him a few times, always staying far off. He never saw her. He had seemed unusually calm. He’d slouched in the boat, but not from exhaustion, but boredom. He’d drink his water, look around disinterestedly at the ocean, and then up at the sky. He spoke aloud to himself a few times, wryly. Things like, “Well, this is some mess you’ve gotten yourself into.” Or, “Sign onto the oldest ship in the harbor! It still has a good number of years left in it, and the pay is good… Well, now you see where that type of thinking has gotten you?”
And then, one day, he’d begun to sing. His voice was awful, the song was crude, and no one was around to hear except for Reshel. But the man didn’t seem to care. He sang long and loud and his spirits seemed to genuinely lift after a while. Then his food had run out, and he’d stopped singing. He took to laying down, facing the sun, his eyes closed.
“This man isn’t like the first,” Reshel had told herself firmly. “And he needs help.” So she’d caught a fish, swum up beside the boat, and thrown it into the small craft, ducking back under the water before the man’s eyes opened. He’d jerked up to a sitting position with a cry, hands closing around the flopping fish in his lap before he’d even recognized what it was. Watching from a distance away, eyes just above the waves, Reshel had seen him look around in bewilderment.
“The fish are jumping right into the boat now?” he’d said aloud in disbelief. Shaking his head in puzzlement, he’d set about preparing it to be eaten, whistling as he went about his work. Later, Reshel had brought him another fish in similar fashion. Two days passed in this way, until finally the man feigned sleep and grabbed her arm as she threw another fish into the vessel.
“Got you!” he’d crowed in triumph. Then his expression had turned to one of shock. “A woman?” He’d caught sight of her tail, and he’d whistled in surprise. “A mermaid… Well. I always knew the tales were true… But my goodness…” Reshel had struggled, clawing at his fingers on her arm, and she’d fallen back into the water in surprise when the man released her arm without a fight. “Don’t swim off, now!” he had said when she began to submerge. “Wait! Stay for a moment. Give me some company! I’m more likely to die of solitude here than I am of starvation… Although I do thank you for the fish.”
Reshell had hesitated, but before long she had swum alongside of the boat, a few feet out, listening to the man’s constant jabber about nothing in particular. His home on land, the circumstances that had forced him to sign onto a ship, the storm that had caused that ship to sink, stories and legends about mermaids and other ‘fantastic creatures,’ as he put it… Songs, poems, myths… Jokes and anecdotes… He was never without a word to speak, and yet he was always urging Reshel to speak to him, too. It was a rare thing; someone who was just as good at listening as they were at speaking.
He was a kind man. Nothing like the first one. Reshel had found it difficult to believe that the two were of the same race. He was never angry. He was always smiling, despite the circumstances, and never raised his voice except to sing or to compliment her, as he did often. He was a hopeless flatterer…
And slowly, Reshel had begun to believe in something ridiculous.
She had begun to believe that they were in love.
She knew that it was the case for herself… She had never been in love before, but what else could it be? So she longed for him to say “I want to stay,” and she pined after him, planning their life together, always keeping an eye out for the island they would call home... But because she loved him, she also kept his boat moving toward land. She knew that – at that moment at least – he wanted to return there, to his homeland, where people gossiped shamelessly about all their neighbors, where there was meat other than fish (“Not that there’s anything wrong with fish, Love…”), and where autumn leaves turned the color of a mermaid’s tail…
She had always thought for sure, though, that he would eventually stop her and ask her to bring him in the other direction, back towards the sea, where they could stay together. She had went on believing that until one day, they came within sight of the land itself. The closer they got, the more excited the man got, and the more he rambled on about his home and his friends until finally, he said something that made Reshel’s blood run cold.
“- And when Elizabeth hears what happened to me, she’ll never believe it! She’ll-”
“Elizabeth?” Reshel had asked sharply, the smile dropping off of her face.
“My wife,” the man had explained quickly, his face lighting up. “Oh, I’d love it if you could meet her… I know! I’ll bring her to the docks one day and you can pop up and surprise her! Oh, she’d faint dead away, I tell you!”
“Your wife,” Reshell repeated, feeling heat rise to her cheeks. Wife? Wife? He had never mentioned her before…
“Yes, yes! Elizabeth!” A dreamy look had fallen across his face. “She’s a wonder… A real wonder… Almost as pretty as you, though she can’t sing to save her life… Cooks the best potatoes you’ve ever had, and stubborn as a mule. Won’t stand for anything she don’t like… She’ll like you, though. You’d be the best of friends…” His face had brightened at the prospect, and he’d taken up the oars, rowing to speed the progress of the boat. He hadn’t yet noticed that Reshel’s swimming had stalled, and she was watching him with a hurt expression on her face.
“I can’t wait to be home!” he had said, turning his head to look over his shoulder toward land.
Reshel had taken a deep breath, forcing away the tears that prickled behind her eyes. She’d placed her hands on the stern of the boat, looking down at the water carefully as she spoke, forcing a joking tone into her voice. “I thought you said you’d be sorry to leave…” This was accompanied by a short little laugh, but it sounded false even to her.
“And I am, a bit,” the man said quickly, still looking over his shoulder, and not at her. “I will miss you, but it’ll just be so good to be back on land, at my home, with Elizabeth…” He said the name so reverently, Reshel felt the rage rise up all at once. She felt betrayed. Deceived. Humiliated. I thought that he… He made it seem like...
She’d stopped pushing. In fact, she’d yanked the boat to a stop, causing the man to lurch forward and finally favor her with a confused glance. “Reshel, what are you-?” he’d stopped, taken at her expression.
“You want land so much? Fine!” Enraged, she’d begun to move his boat in another direction. Toward a wicked stand of stone columns and cones jutting up out of the sea, large waves crashing against them with a roar. “There’s your land!” She’d pushed him toward the rocks, ignoring his shouts of protest and pleading. When he tried to use the oars to row against her, she ripped them out of his grasp and threw them away from the boat, furious beyond reason. She’d pushed the craft onward, and when he tried to grab her arms and force her away from the boat, she’d ducked under the water and guided it from underneath. All too soon, the current had caught at it, dragging it toward the jagged rocks. She’d powered away with her tail, and eventually the man had jumped out of the boat in an attempt to get away. But the current had caught at him, too, and dragged him back.
The waves had thrown him against the rocks and pinned him there, forcing their way into his mouth, choking him. He’d called Reshel’s name, desperately, begging her to help him. But she hadn’t.
She had swum away, crying angry tears, never giving him a backwards look.
Later, regret had come. But it was too late.
~
Reshel lay in the third man’s boat, tail curled around his lifeless body as she combed her fingers through his salt-encrusted hair. She had been out of the water for a long time. She had dried off in the warmth of the murderous sun, and the dryness was uncomfortable. Still, she didn’t go back in the water. She touched the man’s face, wishing.
They had not reached land. She had kept him from drinking the saltwater, but that hadn’t been enough to save him. Like all the others, the third man had died.
And they all lived happily ever after… That had been one of the second man’s favorite phrases. He ended every story with it. He had claimed that every fairytale had to have a happy ending. But according to him, mermaids were the stuff of fairytales.
So why was it that Reshell and the men she found floating in the whales of wood had never lived happily ever after?
“Maybe…” She said, her voice sounding odd, even to her. It was hollow. Dead. Just like the men. “Maybe mermaids don’t get happy endings.” This thought resonated within her, and without dwelling on the past any more, she slipped over the side of the boat, back into the ocean.
She kept pushing the boat toward land, and it broke her heart all over again when she saw the broad expanse of land just the next afternoon. She pushed the boat onward. When she reached the shore, she dragged herself onto the desolate beach and used her arms and tail to sweep sand away. She dug a hole, grunting with exertion as she pulled the sand away, gritty sand getting under her nails and making them sting. She didn’t care. She kept digging, further and further down, until finally it seemed deep enough and long enough. Then she pulled the man out of the boat and into the hole, noting absently that at some point tears had begun to fall down her cheeks once more.
Then she pushed the sand back into the hole, and when that was done she overturned the boat and dragged that overtop of the third man’s grave, marking the spot. She set the ruined letter on top of the boat and weighed it down with the battered compass. Maybe someone would find it someday. Maybe they would open it. Maybe the letter within was still readable, and they would bring the letter to the person it was meant for.
Would that give this tale a happy ending?
Reshel dragged herself back to the water and swam away. Away from the land and away from the grave. Away from the memories and away from the regrets and wishes.
Away.
