I remember that question distinctly; big, unanswerable question. And I remember their answers – how small and serious they were.
“Disappointed,” Randal had guessed.
“Plum terrified!” James had suggested.
And when they pressed Gerard, he said, “A bit wiser, would be nice. But totally unsatisfied would be my guess!”
I knew the philosophical question they were considering, but I chose to take it differently.
“Wealthy,” was my answer. “If I have my way, I’ll finish wealthy!”
They laughed at me then, as I expected them to. And the talk had gone on, long into that night, while the stars slid away into the west. At a point, a second aura of listening overtook us and we fell silent, all together, straining to discover what it was. An odd slithering noise, like a stream suddenly come to life in the midst of the sea; then a plop and a movement of the boat against the anchor; and silence.
Before we slept, Gerard, ever the dreamer, had been moved to speak of real explorers; men of the past whose dreams were connected by hull and by water to the songs of whales; of how beneath their feet, they believed, were flights of dragons; of how they saw, sometimes, mermaids in the leisurely roll of a dugong. Unbelievable! That we came to the very topic! As easily as stumbling over a rock! Of course, we laughed the idea to scorn. All except Gerard.
“Well why not?” he demanded of us. “Why not mermaids?”
All we could answer was that, if they existed, there would be evidence – not just stories. The stories were only evidence that some people, in some times, (people like him, we were implying) saw what they wanted to see instead of what was really there.
I remember I went to my bed thinking what strange uncertain creatures men can be: how so many flounder between fear and faith and desire. That was the last night of ease that I can remember.
* * *
We were barely abroad, the mists still lingering in the coves, when I spied the strange, slow roll – the shock of flesh in the cold sea. How I wish it had been one of the others at the helm, perhaps to miss her, or dismiss the sight out of hand. But the sighting and the decision to investigate were both mine.
I approached, as always, too eagerly, too carelessly – preoccupied with the power of the boat. A collision occurred and the creature disappeared from sight, though a bloom of blood remained, as though the sea itself had been wounded. And moments later we saw it again, lying on the surface nearby.
We’d hit a dugong; that was what I thought. If I’d thought otherwise, I never would have shot it. But shoot it I did. Maybe that was wrong. But it was already wounded and probably suffering! And I wanted to try my aim. So I shot it.
The impact of the bullet visibly moved it, as I knew it would; but then it cried out – a high despairing sound, shockingly human! And when we approached where it lay, still floating, still alive, we saw that it was a woman! A woman with streaming green hair! A woman of the sea! A mermaid.
I know! I know! We all knew! It was impossible! It IS impossible! But I tell you, she was there, shattered and bleeding, in the water by my boat. Without hesitation, we dragged her aboard, reaching for her as we’d reach for a strange, gleaming jewel. She seemed barely conscious but, even doubly wounded, she was so beautiful! So exotic! So vulnerable.
As we settled her on the deck, that was when I touched her breast – to somehow verify her reality. My hand had been on her for only seconds – long enough to sense the warmth within – when her eyes flickered open. Those flat, cold eyes! And she lashed out at me! I staggered away, grabbing up my rifle in the same movement. It was a reflex. I didn’t intend to shoot her again; only to warn her. To secure her.
Before I regained my balance, however, her great tail swept my legs from under me and I fell forward, on top of her. My first thought was of her size and strength. I knew I had to pin her arms immediately or face the consequences of those nails. I needn’t have worried. Weakened and in shock, as she must have been, her struggle was short and feeble. She settled, and I looked in her eyes, expecting to see submission. But there was none. No anger, no fear. No emotion at all.
I remember thinking how unbelievably alien she looked – how detached – how remote. And how exultant I felt as I pressed my knees into her; that I dominated! That she was mine!
Only slowly did the noise around me begin to seep through. I seemed to remember the explosion from the rifle and the sound of something large hitting the water. I scrambled to my feet and saw James, floating face down, scant metres from the boat, the back of his head an explosion of blood and bone. The shot had caught him full in the face; the impact had lifted him over the rail.
The others were howling, calling, reaching for hooks to draw the body near, but I stood back. I was so clear. So calm. It was obvious he was dead. And something in my mind croaked at me that a man lost at sea is easier to explain than a man shot through the face. Poor James – left peering through his smashed eyes into the trackless depths. Flights of dragons beneath his feet. Already, they were coming for him.
I say ‘poor James’ but, in a perverse way, of course, he was ‘lucky James’ – not to have to know the terror he’d prophesied for all of us. Randal, Gerard and I, with the creature sprawled between us – perhaps in that way, we were the less lucky. At any rate, the creature’s blood had already summoned the sharks and James was what they found when they arrived.
When the outcome became obvious, we all turned away and Randal (who had prophesied disappointment) before we could stop him, fell on the creature, flailing with fists and feet, screaming that he would kill her; that she was responsible for James’s death. It was all we could do, Gerard and I, to drag him off and hold him.
Stop! Stop!” we shrieked in his face. “Look at us! Listen to us! Get a grip on yourself!”
When at last his attention was regained, he collapsed in Gerard’s arms.
“James! James!” he bawled and Gerard consoled him. “My God! Oh my God! It was an accident, Randal! A terrible accident! No one’s fault! Nothing we could do!!”
I let them work it through. Yes, certainly, it was a terrible accident. But the real centre of our focus, I knew, could not be James. James was gone. The creature, though, so huge and strong and mysterious, was still in our grasp. I’ve already described her to the best of my memory, but I could add this. She was fully nine, perhaps ten feet long, from the tip of her translucent flukes to the top of her head. We hadn’t been able to lift her, only drag her over the transom, such was her weight. Had she been fully conscious and uninjured, we could never have contained her.
As Gerard and Randal consoled one another, she raised herself somewhat on her arms and turned her eyes on me a second time, fearless and unblinking. It’s possible, I think, that she had some mesmeric power. Something endemic to her kind! How else had they escaped detection for so long? I dropped my eyes, unwilling to risk what I knew; that she was mine, to do with as I pleased.. I had captured her and I would bring her to the world.
The lamenting of the other two had faded nearly out of my hearing before the words, ‘Let her go,’ began to ring alarm bells in my mind. It was Gerard. (He who expected, for humanity, little wisdom and even less satisfaction - the concept of ‘taking’ being obviously beyond his feeble imagination!)
“She can’t survive!” he was saying. “Not with those injuries! And anyhow, if we took her back, it would be the end of all creatures like her! They’d be hunted down, captured, displayed, dissected! We have to put her back!”
I believe I could have dealt with him alone – reasoned with him. But not under the pressure of Randal’s continued weeping and pounding on the gunnels.
“It doesn’t exist!” he kept repeating. “It’s a fish, that’s all! A monster! Kill it! Shoot it! Feed it to the sharks!”
He feared her; feared her mystery, her size. Her congealing blood. Her power! The very things I revelled in. He even, to my amazement, tried to act on his fear, swinging a kick at her tail.
He was slow, though, and she, despite her wounds, was so quick – fighting for her life, I suppose. She twisted her flukes and struck him – only a glancing blow. But combined with the heaving and buffeting of the boat, caused by the feeding frenzy over James, it unbalanced him.
I might have caught him. I don’t say that I refused. Only that I . . . failed. He tumbled over the edge. Randal could not swim. How often we’d laughed at his obsession with life jackets. Always they had to be counted, reviewed and placed within reach. Never close enough. I reached for one now as Gerard snatched up the gaffing hook.
I didn’t actually think about what followed. It simply blossomed in my mind that this was a possibility – an opportunity! Randal was unbalanced! He wanted the creature dead. He wanted her over the side for the sharks. You see what I mean about her mesmeric powers? It must have come from her!
At any rate, in moving for a life jacket, I stumbled and the butt of the rifle, which was still in my hands, clipped Gerard at the base of the skull, stunning him. He dropped to the deck. I looked at him there and then at Randal, flailing and choking, his great mouth agape with horror, and all I could think was, “You expected disappointment? Well here it is!” Beneath him, bullet-like shapes were circling. For a second, I hoped it might be more creatures like her. But it wasn’t, and I looked away. I have no stomach for such things.
* * *
The creature, then! Alone with her on the deck, I felt even more strongly the power that emanated from her. Her very shape seemed to waver before my eyes. For the first time, it dawned on me that, without the distraction of the others, I could be in danger. That I, perhaps, almost as much as she, was vulnerable!
She was nearly still by this time – all but dead, I feared. I spoke to her; feeling a fool for hoping for a response and an even bigger fool for not having tried earlier.
“Can you speak?” I asked. “Who are you? What are you?”
I hardly know what all I said. The words were irrelevant anyhow. But I hoped my tone, at least, would reassure her. I won’t hurt you again, I wanted to say. I promise you. Only don’t struggle against me.
I knelt, just out of her reach, soothing, and she opened her eyes suddenly. She sucked in a great breath, causing gill-like feathering on her neck to flash red blood and, in the same instant I became aware of a shadow moving over me. In spite of myself, I dropped to a crouch, covering my head with my arms. Gerard!
He hovered over me, the gaffing hook clutched in one hand, the other gripping the gunnel for support. I felt immediately the guiltiness of my response and tried an expression of relief.
“Gerard! Thank God! I tried to . . . !” I began to rise.
“Stay there!” he commanded. The hook nodded in his hand and his face twisted with a confusion of anger and distrust.
“Gerard!” I began again. “Gerard, look at her! Look what we have! The rarest creature . . . !”
“Shut up!” he shouted. “Shut up!”
I lowered myself back to the deck and watched him, wavering over me like a long strand of kelp. He clutched at his head and searched the waters all around the boat. I knew what he would see: the great gash of mingled blood from men and mermaid; the tumble and flicker of forms, deep, deep down.
“Gone!” he moaned. “Too late! Too late!”
“Yes, they’re gone! Awful terrible accidents! We tried, didn’t we? Not our faults! We did everything! Nothing could have saved them!”
“God in Heaven!” he wailed. “We could’ve saved them! You and I! At least Randal!”
He was clearly in shock; not able to find perspective.
“Listen to me, Gerard!” I whispered. “We can still manage her! The two of us, we can manage! We have to take her back, Gerard!! You can see that, can’t you? What she’s worth to us? Dead or alive, it doesn’t matter! She represents . . . maybe one of the earth’s last and greatest secrets! And we have her! You and I, Gerard! She’s ours! We can’t let their deaths be for nothing, can we?”
I put a hand on her and came away with blood. And yet again, her eyes flicked open, so astonishing were her strength and resilience. I became convinced, in fact, in that moment that she would live! Gerard shook his head.
“We’re putting her back. She might live, she might not. But she won’t be real anymore. For my part, I never saw her. Just a dugong!”
I couldn’t follow him.
“You understand, don’t you, that she could set us up for life? We can’t just throw away an opportunity like her!” I was desperate for some way to smash his resistance. “A little bit wiser? That’s what you said! The best we could hope for? Please, Gerard!”
He was adamant – unreachable.
“Look at yourself! You’re out of control and you don’t even know it! And two of our friends are dead!”
He gestured me aside with the hook and moved to her, placing a hand beneath her head.
“We’ll take her in close to the island and slip her over,” he said, as though the argument had been won. “There’s a chance she’ll make it in her own environment. Then we have to go back . . . and answer for our friends!”
I knew he was right in at least one thing: I had lost control. And I needed to regain it. I drove the boat carefully, cautiously, as we neared the island, where I suddenly gunned the motor and swung the helm into a tight turn, lashing out at him with my foot. I wasn’t close enough to do serious damage, but I did take him off guard with a blow to his cheek. Following the rifle jab to the back of his head, it was enough to tip him off balance.
The gaff clattered out of his hand and I leapt after him – too quick again – always too eager. He was still rolling. His knees came up, catching me under the ribs and carrying me against the gunnels. I heard my wrist snap and, in one of those terrible time lapse sensations, I felt skin being flayed and the hot prickle of blood puckering free from capillaries.
In moments, the motor stalled out and the boat settled back into silence. Gerard’s breathing came to me first, racked with moans and sobs. He was moving and I could not. I saw him grapple with the rifle, first cocking it over me, then flinging it far into the waves. I saw him stumble toward the creature and, amongst the stars that swirled across my vision, I saw her raise her arms to him!
He lugged her to a sitting position that allowed her arm to dangle over the transom. How could he do that unless she helped, unless she trusted? She had struck out at my every attention, but she leaned into his! I couldn’t have it!
Clutching my shattered wrist to my chest, I gathered what strength was left to me and picked up the gaffing hook. The creature, looking over Gerard’s shoulder, I’m sure knew my intention even before I did. She was teetering, ready to roll back into the sea, but she waited, clinging to Gerard with her broad, short arms.
He made no effort to turn and the hook caught him at the nape of the neck, driving deep and holding in the heavy muscle. He made a sound – a small sound, like a man winded by a blow to the gut. But the creature! For the second time, she cried out in that far too human voice of despair!
I was so stunned that I let go the hook; left it protruding from Gerard’s shoulder like some garish epaulette. She stared at him, the ululation dying slowly in her throat. A few brief seconds was all it had taken. The swing of the hook, the gasp, the cry! And my sudden realisation of what I’d done!
I’d have done anything in that moment to take it back – the treachery I’d dealt him. Before I could touch him, however, the creature rolled him, unresisting, into the sea. I started forward but the look she turned on me stopped me in my tracks: appallingly cold and inhuman and yet, I thought, defiant – suggestive somehow of a victory! She blinked and I looked away. When I looked back, she too was gone.
Neither of them came back to the surface. I waited. I called. I searched. I would have dived after them but for fear of sharks. I’ve circled this island for days now, by sea and by foot; to no avail. The hook I found, floating beyond the rocks, washed free of blood, but no trace of either G
erard or the creature.
Nonetheless, I will not leave – not abandon hope that he somehow lives, in her care. And her! I know she’s there, somewhere, her and her kind. How can I sleep ever again without dreaming of dragons and weeping for the nearness of mystery?
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