When moonlight glimmers dim
I pass in the path of the mist,
Like a pale spirit by spirits kissed.
At dawn I chant my own weird hymn,
And I dabble my hair in the sunset's rim,
And I call to the dwellers along the shore
With a voice of gramarye evermore.
And if one for love of me
Gives to my call an ear,
I will woo him and hold him dear,
And teach him the way of the sea,
And my glamor shall ever over him be;
Though he wander afar in the cities of men
He will come at last to my arms again.
From The Sea Spirit by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Captain Sherlock Holmes valued cold, hard, rational thought above all else. He scoffed at sailor's tales of the kraken, of sea monsters, ghost ships and most of all mermaids. What manner of creature could exist with the head and torso of a woman and the tail of fish? How could such a creature come into existence? Did she lay eggs for some male version of her species to fertilize, or did she have some form of mammalian uterus and give birth to a live half-fish child?
Such were the mocking questions he'd laid at the feet of Anderson, the coxswain when the idiot had been expounding on the dangers of such creatures. Questions he'd uttered rapid-fire without waiting for answers, confident that none were forthcoming.
Ah, how the fates - if such existed, which he doubted somewhat less now than he had only days ago - must be laughing at him now. A fierce battle with Jamaican rum runners, a freak storm, and here he was, thrashing about the ocean, grimly resigned to his death, when she appeared.
He was positive she was nothing but a waterlogged hallucination, the last gasp of his dying brain offering up some ridiculous form of hope, but that belief vanished when he felt her strong arms around him, tugging him back up to the storm-topped surface of the water. As he coughed up the seawater he'd swallowed she brought him to a drifting bit of wood - no, it was a rowboat, no doubt torn from its moorings against the side of the ship and fortuitously near enough to serve as his savior. Still semi-conscious, eyes bleary from being beneath the tumultuous ocean's surface for so long, he managed nonetheless to capture the details of her face as she literally shoved him into the rowboat: long, flowing chestnut hair, enormous brown eyes, brow knitted with either concern or concentration as she pushed his legs over the edge to join the rest of his body. Her skin was pale, nearly luminous in the flashes of lightning, but as he tried to croak out a thank you, she pulled away, smiled, then dove beneath the waves.
The last he saw of her, this mythical woman who couldn't possibly exist, was her tail, iridescent reds and yellows striped with darker blue or possibly black, like some impossible, water-dwelling tropical bird.
As darkness overtook him, his last thought was one of determination, a silent, private vow to himself.
I will find you.