Venice has always seen them.
She had seen them when she was little, and he, and with his Grandfather Rome, and then they had been beautiful women in the waters, more beautiful than Hellas and Kemet and Iberia and Dumnonia. The beautiful women would call out to Venice then, and wave to him, and say beautiful child, one of us, come, and though Venice cried at Rome's stories of other things and vengeful spirits the beautiful ladies of the water never scared him.
Rome could not see them, no matter how much Venice pointed and told him they were there, right there, ave can't you see them they're waving at you too - no matter how, Rome would not see them. Venice would wonder sometimes if it was like Britannia who kept saying he saw little winged people, but obviously not. Britannia's little winged people were barbarian superstition, Grandfather Rome said. If you're seeing water-ladies, nepōs, at least there's precedence behind that.
And Venice had grown older, from the salt-rolling Venetii, and Britannia with his little winged people that only he could see had left a long time ago, and Grandfather Rome had melted away like too little wine in too much water.
She still sees the water-ladies, only they are different now - sometimes with long fish tails, and they swim to her eel-fast in the channels of the lagoons, and tell her of beneath the sea, of the boats that lie at the bottom with amphoras spilling from rotted hulls, boats with eyes on the prow - Venice hears, this way, of the dragon-head boats that attack Britannia and his brothers, and Gaul and Hispania who's Al-Andalus now. Venice hears from the water-ladies in the rivers and the fishtail people of - of everything.
The eel-catchers and fishermen like to have Venice with them when they go out on their boats. She's good luck, they say. She brings them to us, the eels, the fish, she draws them.
(She goes out beforehand, to the bank of one channel or another, and leans over the side and asks where will the eels be soon and the mermaids answer in their high chittering voices and Venice does not tell the eel-catchers and fishers how she knows where to go.)
When Venice is great, when she sails the Mediterranean, she sees Thessalonike asking is King Alexander alive and shouts yes over the side of the boat as the mermaids tell her. One of the deckhands looks at her oddly, and she only shrugs. The ship passes unharmed, and Venice watches Thessalonike sink back beneath the waves. When Venice is great, she sails the North Sea and sees the red-caped merrow and the grey finfolk, and sees Dahut in Douarnenez Bay from the corner of her eye. When Venice is great, she sees the sirens on the rocks (from far away - she knows where they are, tells the captains to steer far around them) and when she travels far enough inland from Byzantium's cities (and hers on the Adriatic, hers now) she sees rusalka in the lakes and rivers.
The morganezed flock around her boat at night and Persia tells her of the sea-people and Djullanar the sea-girl, human forms who breathe beneath the waves.
It is not long after that Venice is married to the sea, and sometimes she sees the golden rings on the fingers of the mermaids and the naiads and nereids. There is one on the finger of the one she speaks to one night, kneeling at the edge of a canal.
"What's it like there?" She asks.
Dark, the mermaid chitters. Dark and beautiful and lit sometimes by animals, flashing on and off - child, there are cities there beneath the waves and great towers of rock, your grandfather and your kind set their boats against our home and we have the remains of the losing. She smiles up at Venice, lips skinning back over teeth just a little bit off. We do not keep yours, child. You see us and know us, you have wed our home to yourself. We do not take from your losing.
Venice shudders back a little. She has heard enough times the rites of burial at sea, of how at the End of Days all the dead of the sea will rise out of it, and she had wondered how many there would be, shell on bone. She had wondered what would happen to the merfolk, whether their dead would rise. (The Vatican said no, said they had no soul, said they had sinned and transgressed and they would be cast out - looking at the mermaid before her, Venice can see why he would say so.)
Ah, but child, the mermaid says. There is beauty.
And Venice sits at the edge of the canal for hours as the mermaid speaks of the lighted fish, of animals growing color where none could see it, of things that did not need the sun to live, and the spoils taken from drowned ships, gold and jewels and cloth and spice, of enormous beasts as long as any galleon. The mermaid speaks of light on waves from underneath in the shallows and of the vast pitch-black plains out at sea, and Venice listens.
She stays there until light comes, until the mermaid slips back beneath the water and makes for the Adriatic Sea.
She sees them, again and again, and waves to them from the Bucintoro, and even when Netherlands and England take the waters, Venice is wedded to the home of the merfolk, Venice can see the Oceanides and ben-varrey and the thousand others that live beneath the water.
It is years later, and Venice sits by Holy Rome in his bed.
Holy Rome stares at Venice, dry cracked lips like Grandfather Rome, and asks if Venice knows any stories. Venice does, and tells him of the mermaid of Zennor and the adventures of Abdullah the fisherman with Abdullah the merman and what little Siam told of Suvannamaccha, and of the finwives that wave to sailors and take fishermen for husbands back to Finfolkaheem and Thessalonike beneath the sea and how Dahut sank Ys. Venice speaks into a sore throat, and Holy Rome's pale eyes do not stray from Venice's face.
"I see - things like that," he says hoarsely. "In Bühl there are women at the bottom of the lake, and I see them and Austria says I'm making them up but I'm not."
"I know," Venice reassures him. "I saw them."
And even later, and Veneziano watches the water over the side of the destroyer. He doesn't like it - where it's bound and what the people on it are bound to do, how the merfolk do not swim up the canals of Venice in the darkness of blackouts. He doesn't like to think of how many more people will have the rites of burial at sea and how many more will rise from the seafloor at the End of Days. He doesn't like to think of Bretagne who told him of Dahut (Bretagne spitting defiance, kentoc'h mervel eget bezañ saotret in the line with the other régions) or of Greece whose mother gave him names for the nereids (Greece stick-thin and sullen, and the dead at Kondomari).
Germany stands next to him, pale eyes on the horizon, dry lips in a thin line.
Veneziano has always seen them, in the waters, but he does not know if they want to see him.
(And years later, Veneziano fumbles and nearly drops her phone into a canal, and when she reaches to pick it up from the edge she meets shining flat eyes and the mermaid smiles at her and turns, and Veneziano sees a gold ring on her finger.)
In case it wasn't obvious, Hellas is Ancient Greece and Kemet is Ancient Egypt. Iberia is Mama Spain and Dumnonia is Cornwall.
Ave means "grandfather", nepōs means "grandson".
Thessalonike was Alexander the Great's sister; there was a story of her becoming a mermaid after her death and asking sailors who passed by whether Alexander still lived. If they answered yes, she let them pass; if they answered no, she sank the boat.
The merrow are Scots-Irish merfolk and the finfolk are mythical creatures from the Orkney Islands. Rusalka are an Eastern European river spirit, usually the spirit of a woman who died early for some reason to do with love. Morganezed are an all-female type of merfolk specific to Brittany; Dahut (or Ahès) is arguably the most famous. (She was responsible for the sinking of the city of Ys in what is now Douarnenez Bay, and became a morganès (or mari morgan/vorgan) as punishment.)
Djullanar the Sea-Girl and Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman are both stories from 1,001 Nights.
The mermaid of Zennor in Cornwall fell in love with a man from Zennor because of his singing. She married him and took him to her cave, where according to legend they can still be heard singing.
Suvannamaccha is a folkloric Thai mermaid who figures in the Thai and Cambodian Ramayanas, where she falls in love with Hanuman.
Nereids, naiads, and oceanides are all ancient Greek water spirits. Ben-varrey are Manx mermaids (from the Isle of Man).
The Bucintoro is the boat the Doge of Venice would use during the Festa della Sensa, where Venice would be symbolically wedded to the ocean as a symbol of Venetian naval power.
The lake of Mummel near Bühl is supposed to have nymphs in it.
Kentoc'h mervel eget bezañ saotret was the motto of Brittany, and means "rather death than dishonor". Kondomari was one of the Wehrmacht's massacres in Greece.