Member-only story
At the Mercy of Mermaids
I’ve got a tale of the ocean deep to tell you. Think you’re ready for it?
Never let the waters call you too close. Be careful about the songs you listen to on a night like this when there’s no beginning or end to the ocean and that horizon.
The elders continued to warn me, boy-child that I was, about the dangers of the open waters. But what did they have to fear? They never neared the shore, not even on the netting excursions, so the ones who really had to worry were the young men who had to wade into the ocean to retrieve the nets and their bounties.
Boats? No, we didn’t dare. The mermaids liked to play games with overturning the vessels, and then they would laugh in their high-pitched voices as they pushed the floating bodies to and fro — as if the only thing a man could ever be to them was a simple plaything.
I never saw a merman. Only the mermaids, with their flowing hair and their silver-sheened skin. I wondered what it might be like, to be a man able to command attention from such beautiful yet deadly creatures.
Once, when I was even more a child, a mermaid almost lured me into the water. Her eyes had been glazed white, as pale as the moon, and the fright of seeing such an inhuman quality was the only thing that kept me from crossing the sand and…
