Sea Changes by DarkBeta
(When you oppose an entire corporation of Evil Mad Scientists . . . some things don't fit on the insurance claim forms.)
The net rebounded as it emptied into the hold. The first bounce elicited a scream like a seabird's shriek, but too loud, too human. The crew looked up at thrashing forms still tangled in the net. At the second bounce they fell.
Somehow they swung wide of the hold, and landed on the deck beside it. The doors of the hold slammed down. Work was abandoned, as sailors gathered around the strange by-catch. Highet didn't try to order them back.
One dolphin-like tail was orca-patterned. The other was dappled silver-grey. One human torso was tan, the head black-haired and dark-eyed. The other was white, with ash-blond hair and blue eyes. At Highet's shoulder Niko crossed himself.
"Mermaids!"
The larger creature, the dark one, was coiled around and across the pale one. One arm and the tail propped its torso up, barely aided by a couple of sea-lion flippers. The hand of the free arm held a chipped stone knife.
"Mermen," Highet corrected. "Bent mermen."
Strange things came up with the nets sometimes. This was the strangest, but he had never doubted the sea held more than any man knew.
Matters didn't turn surreal until the dark creature frowned at him, slipped the knife back into a sheath on its forearm, and told him, "You make personal assumptions rather early in our acquaintance."
Before Highet could react, the merman looked at the newest crewmember. He smiled. His teeth were absurdly human, not pointed like a fish-eater's.
"My partner is somewhat accident prone. We need your first-aid kit. Now."
Van swallowed and ran, without looking at anyone else. The mermen disentangled themselves. Highet stepped back as the others did, while the thick bodies coiled across the deck. The human-looking heads and torsos were attached to three meters or more of tail. They'd weigh in at close to 600 pounds apiece.
They weren't fish. Their skin was mostly furred, not scaled. On the smaller one blood welled from several punctures, and it was red. It pumped even faster from a long gash on the forearm.
Looking up, Highet saw a line tangled in his net, hooks dangling from it like ornaments. They'd been trapped in that and then scooped up by the net, or snagged by the line after it tangled the net.
One of them had been snagged, anyhow. The darker one looked undamaged. He closed his hands about the gash, trying to keep pressure on it. The long fingers were webbed up to the second joint. The paler one cursed at him in a language that was human, but not English. Russian, maybe.
Van came back with the first-aid kit. Highet grabbed him before he could walk over to the mermen. None of the crew would go in reach of those things if Highet had his way. The dark one frowned at him.
A creature intelligent enough for speech should have been able to get out of the net before it closed . . . if it abandoned the trapped one.
Highet slid the kit across the deck. The merman sorted the contents as if familiar with them. Pads to stop the bleeding. Disinfectant. The silver creature cursed inventively. The dark one got the worst of the bleeding stopped, and examined the long wound.
"I need to sew this, Illya."
"Nyet. Tie it up. It will heal."
"And how long do bandages stay on once you're in the water?"
The smaller merman gave him a sulky look. The big one ignored him, selecting a curved needle, and sterilizing it and the cord. Finally, slowly, the patient held his arm out. He looked up at Highet watching them, and glared.
"Ai! Butcher. Amateur. You will make me the monster of Frankenstein."
The needle slipped through skin like sailcloth. Stitch, and tie, and stitch again. The pale merman leaned on the knuckles of his free hand, but a second knife was folded in his fingers. The big merman tied the last stitch and began to wrap bandages around the arm.
"You said they wouldn't stay on."
"They keep the wounds clean while you're still dry."
He turned toward Highet. The pale merman shifted position to glare at the sailors across the circle. He'd started to hum a vaguely familiar tune. For a moment Highet saw a smoky pub in wartime, and messmates back to back as the evening turned rowdy.
"Thank you for your hospitality, captain. Perhaps we could discuss terms for a brief passage on your ship? Deck chairs only, nothing elaborate . . . ."
"They would be worth money at a circus," Niko muttered, beside Highet. "Or maybe those crazy scientists with their little submarine would buy them."
"So-o-lo! So-o-lo!"
"I-i-ll-ya!"
Highet looked up at the gulls squabbling overhead, and risked turning away from the chimeras on his deck to check the horizon.
"Bird calls?"
Solo dropped his forehead against his palm.
"In a manner of speaking . . . ."
Something shot up with wave and foam alongside the railing and then fell in across it, balanced on belly and palms like a gymnast. Niko folded his arms.
"Mermaid," he stated.
"No frilly apron or little black skirt, alas. Not a maid," the bigger one murmured.
"And scarcely maiden . . . ." the pale one -- Illya? -- sniffed.
She was nakedly mammalian, dappled like Illya but pale gold instead of silver. Her green eyes glared at the dark one.
"Stupid American! You got Illya hurt!"
"Not entirely my fault, you know. Tell everyone to head for Majorca, sweetheart. We'll catch up."
Illya spat something Russian that sounded like a fire hazard. The mermaid spread her arms and spun backwards, dropping headfirst back into the water.
Given a choice between two mermen on the deck, and one or more mermaids in the water, the crew lunged for the railing. Highet was barely able to find a place.
Three apparently human heads bobbed together, the gold-furred one conferring with two others. A fourth floated on her back, the length of her tail trailing underwater like a dark gown, with a tiny fifth lying on her stomach.
The copper-haired one reared out of water churning to foam, and stared up at the railing with her hands on her . . . well, not hips. The junction between torso and tail, at any rate. Several men cheered. She did something Italian with her arms, spun about, and vanished in a green splash. Five wakes headed toward the setting sun.
Highet was not entirely surprised to find the deck empty of chimeras when he turned around.
"Wow," Van sighed.
Niko still stared across the railing.
"Likely they're on the sonar. We could go after them."
Highet finally put words to the tune the silver merman hummed. The song was called, he thought, the Golden Vanity.
"Or we'll sink you in the low, and lonesome low, or we'll sink you in the lonesome sea."
"Maintain the current heading."
Half a day later they found a school of pilchards, and something larger flickered at the edge of the sonar, but that was all Highet ever knew.