The Mermother

Once there was a boy who went fishing when the moon lay on the water. This was when the best, fattest whitings came into the bay to feed, but also when the merfolk rose up to sing poor fishermen into their graves, or so the stories went. The boy knew the stories, but had a sweetheart whom he wanted to marry, and there was no money in their purses. He said to himself, "I'll only go out this once and work all night, and I won't look up and I won't listen to anything I hear. I'll sell the catch in Friday's market, and then we'll have enough to buy a bed and a kettle."

So one night he crept out of his mother's house and untied a boat from the pier and rowed out into the bay. The moonlight coated the water thick and glossy, and the fish flashed like mirrors all around. He worked hard, dragging the nets up and hurling them out again until the sweat collected in the corners of his mouth and behind his ears, then dripped from his clothing like rain, warm and cold at once. A terrible shivering took hold of him. He stripped down to the skin and felt better. Once or twice he stopped to listen, but there was nothing to be heard. The moon shuffled slowly west until it stood behind his back.

Then the net snagged. Something seemed to ripple in it for a moment, then went heavy. It was his best net so he couldn't cast it away. He put down his heels and pulled, hoping it wasn't a shark or other toothy thing. Then, as his catch rose and clunked against the vessel, he thought it must be a body, maybe some girl who'd killed herself because she was going to have a baby. Then he got the net over the side and saw his catch entire.

On the heap of still spasming fish, she panted with her mouth open and her tongue slightly out, the way an animal will when it is hot and desperate. Her skin was dark and dappled. Thick oily sheaves of hair hissed through the hempen cords as she pawed out blindly. When he leaned closer to get a better look at her face, she flinched and sizzled with fear, trying to roll over by flailing her powerful tail. He jumped back too and sat down hard. The boat rocked, but being heavy-bellied with fish, did not turn over.

He looked at her and tried to think. His imagining had been of a blushing torso blooming out of a glamour of blue, like a rose in a colored glass, not anything like the long dun creature before him. He saw she had all the parts a woman does, only smaller and hairless. She began to squirm again, the tail slamming the wooden side like a colicky cow kicking in a barn. "Stop that," he said and leaned closer again. The best thing he ever sold before was a six foot conger. He wondered how he could get her to the city.

Her sawing back and forth rocked the boat more and more wildly. Her tail smacked on the heap of fish, sending some leaping into the air as if alive. "Stop it!" he cried and jumped on her to flatten out her movements. She screamed, a real scream this time, like a cat being boiled. Her flesh was slick and hard, both warm and cold as his own. His sex stood up as he wrestled back the hands hooked as cruelly as iron. He found one of her nipples through the mesh and sucked at it as if he would pull the breath from her body. Her tail jerked and jostled against his lower parts as they sifted deeper through the pile of fish, until her back grated against the wood of the keel. He pushed himself into the little hole that clamped so tight he thought he would pass out. Her mouth opened and shut soundlessly, roiling under him like a dream. Then when he shot wet into wet, his grip loosened from her upper body, and she lashed. His skull met a plank. The fisherboy's body rolled free and moved no further.

Her breath came too quick and too hard; blood scrambled through her veins without leaving any strength behind. Red stained the white bellies lying between her and the other. She closed her eyes, felt for the side and pulled herself up. Leaning her face to the water's surface, she heaved forth a plate's worth of bright green bile. She leaned further and felt the sea on her palms. She dipped, slid, and was taken in.

The merwoman -- maid she could be called no longer -- was very young. She didn't know what had happened, that it was anything more than fear and pain and a pattern of burns left on her skin from fighting the net. But the fisherboy's seed found a root in her. Her belly swelled, then her tribe drove her out as a whore. Her mother and sisters littered the waters around their dwelling with hanks of her hair. She begged to know what she had done. Folk sniggered and pelted her with rubbish, coral and fragments of oyster shells, thrown harder with each one. Bruised, trailing little feathers of blood, she fled up an estuary, for the sea would never be safe for her again. When her pains took her, she did not know that a child was coming out of her body. She thought she was dying and was glad of it.

The infant was whole and straight and pretty, with limbs as rosy gold and fine as a newt's. The mermother marvelled over the translucent fingers and toes curling and uncurling as it nursed. They lived in a deep pool by an abandoned mill. For nourishment, the mermother cracked open crayfish, and as soon as the little boy could walk, he climbed and rooted for acorns, wild yams and blackberries. His climbing threw her into a frenzy; she whipped back and forth across the pond grunting in frustration while on a limb above he laughed and dropped walnuts into the ringing water. Before long he ventured himself farther into the forest to follow the woodmen and poachers, and learned their talk and ways. He stole breeches and bread and beer until it was said there was a ghost out by the old mill. The boy hooted in delight when he heard that. He grew bold enough to make himself known to the peasants nearby.

The mermother was wrapped in a cloak of misery while he was gone. Sometimes she ruched herself halfway out of the water to wait. The unsalted water gave her skin the feel of an orange rind; her breath pulled in her throat like a comb through tangled hair. When the boy found her snuffling in the mud, he was very tender. He picked her up and scratched her scalp, singing until she smiled and slept. Then he undressed and waded into the black mud to pull her back into the thickest water where it was hard to tell where her hair ended and shimmering cress began.

He was nineteen when he found her on the bank one day -- neither complaining nor wheezing, because she was dead. He had been at a tavern where some passing gentlemen had taught him the way of the dice. It had ended with him travelling up the road with them a week or two. Luck was with him, as it was in everything -- his pockets were so full of coins they slapped his thighs like horse's hooves as he walked back. He was surprised to find how light and brittle his mother's bones were when he picked her up; the flesh had already begun to peel away, revealing brown and crumpled organs. He knew that she had received nothing but sorrow in this world, and grieved, and felt his loneness more than he might have expected.

He shook the breastbone free of flesh and set it to dry on a stone beside the mill wheel. He returned to what remained and sorted out twelve of the longest, thickest strands of hair. Putting these aside, he went out and searched until he found an unguarded square of picnic linen in the forest. What was left on the bank of the mill pond he gathered up into the center of it and bound tight. Squatting atop the warm millstone, he strung the clean bones with the beautiful, long hair, and setting his new harp on his shoulder, headed for the sea.

On the way, he passed through a village where a wedding was being celebrated. The young bride was dancing when the merwoman's son came through. She had a lively round figure, sparkling eyes and a neat foot, and the young man decided to linger awhile. He knew two of the musicians, who invited him to sit down and play with them. He brought out his curious instrument and began to play an air that could have made God stop judgment to start dancing. The bride's laughter foamed up like a fountain. Her parents smiled on her fondly from the feast table.

The mermother's son heard that the bride's father was the richest man on the coast. They called him the Lucky Fisher because of an adventure in his youth. He'd been found one morning after spending the whole night in his skiff, half dead from a hole in his skull and more than half crazy. A miracle he hadn't drifted out into the wildest seas! Once he got his head whole, from that day to this, his affairs had prospered. Married the girl he loved before the bandages were off, got a legacy from a long-lost cousin while his hair was growing back, bought a bigger boat for next to nothing, fathered the bonny lass you see there, the apple of his eye, and never gave a day's worry... It was said that the scar -- no, you can't see it, it's under the hair - was shaped like a porpoise.

Wine flowed, and the boy's fingers flew without pause. The older folk dropped one by each into dozes or stories. The younger people turned amorous, and couples began to ebb into the shadows. The hot black eyes of the bride turned to the strange harper again and again. Her bridegroom was asleep in the straw by the door. The queerly shaped harp poured music, as the musician's eyes poured fire. She'd never felt so hot in her life. Her breasts burned, her neck burned, her face burned, it was as if all the lace on her fancy gown licked flames of shameful pleasure up her skin. Then he picked up the linen bundle by his side and left. She followed him into the dark. The fiddles had a reedy, faraway sound, as if they were already lonely for the white harp.

"Would you like to go down to the beach, pretty?" said the harper.

"Wherever you will," said the bride.

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