Thank you to my wonderful reviewers, Anna Craft, LazyChesnut and Leah Day! Your wonderful words of support have managed to motivate me to continue writing this story in spite of my laziness (and probably to the detriment of my school work).
Ch. 1
A Beginning
I started early, took my dog,
And visited the sea;
The mermaids in the basement
Came out to look at me,
And frigates in the upper floor
Extended hempen hands,
Presuming me to be a mouse
Aground, upon the sands.
-Emily Dickinson
When I was young, the waters I swam in were green, warm and sweet. Currents of brightly colored tropical fish would weave in and amongst our homes and wreath themselves like brilliant garlands through our hair. Jellyfish floated like translucent pillows, clouds in our skies, grouping together and drifting past. Eel- like sea snakes drifted in and out of the coral with the occasional sea turtle wending its steady way past.
There were plenty of dangers to be had in this haven of my youth, even in spite of it's beauties, and the abundance of vicious and poisonous creatures made venturing away from our homes a thrilling dare. Portuguese man o' war jellyfish and blue-ringed octopus could be found in the coral beds that lined our shelter. Sharks too, were profuse, and more than willing to snatch the unwary wanderer or the occasional youngling, escaping the watchful eyes of parents and neighbors.
The things we feared the most, however, were also the things that held the most fascination in our eyes, namely the passing of ships, their dark bulks hanging low in the water, their wakes stirring sand and plants, and scattering fish. We would group silently under the storm cloud of the ship, and watch in terror and greed as the ships passed, our mouths and eyes opened, reflecting the dark passage.
Men, we knew, were aboard these ships, and that thought thrilled and terrified all of us, young and old. Knowledge of men had passed from mouth to mouth over the centuries in an effort to preserve our ties with them. Ties we felt with the very blood in our veins, we felt as brothers separated at birth; they on the land and we at sea.
Men had many names for us, from the days when they knew us; Lorelei, Mermaid or Siren, from when we would sing to them from our treacherous rocks, forgetting their delicacy and mortality. Some of our own legends told of mermaids and men living together as men and women, women and men; begetting children and living as one. Nothing like this had occurred in our recent memories, so we could only skeptically take these tales as being true. Though unproved, they served as temptation for all who heard them; temptation to defy expectations of parents and live amongst the humans. Relationships between men and Mermaid were not expressly forbidden by any rules that we knew of, nor had our king, Triton issued any decrees pertaining to the matter. However, forbidden or no, contacting a human or being seen with one, was generally considered taboo. Proscribed enough so that any sensible Mermaid dared not broach the subject with anything but the utmost subtlety, when questioning their elders or parents.
In my own investigations, I had more than once heard humans referred to as 'Hunters'; a word gleaned from tales passing nomads told of the wicked spears and nets that men were said to use on the creatures of the sea. Some told of the torturous deaths of whales, prized for blubber, oil and ivory all occurring in colder waters than I had ever known.
From time to time, items from the world of men would float down in and around our homes; the flotsam of a forbidden world; combs, mirrors, broken barrels, pots, candlesticks and other objects of fascination. Amongst this innocent matter were sometimes found darker riches; coffins, broken, with white shards of bones peering through weed and wood to glow faintly in the dark water. Cannonballs and wreckages of masts and sails, crumpled and white, like the bones of an ancient and enormous creature.
I, like most of my companions, was naturally curious about these treasures, as we all considered them to be. As we grew older, braver and more foolish, we would wander further away from the safety of our homes in search of newer and more interesting finds. Spent in this fashion, my adolescent years were happy, but mostly uneventful. It always seemed to me that the joy I gleaned from life was mostly in the form of leavings from the human world. In time, the eyes of my former playmates turned away from the darker waters, and they began to plan for lives with each other. We, who had once been so close, began to drift away from one another, they to husbands and homes, and I to unexplored shipwrecks. I could not even pretend to be interested in the pursuits they had taken up. All I wanted was to continue in my childish pursuits that had always afforded me such pleasure. I had never been interested in the men of my kind, and frankly, they had never been interested in me as anything other than a comrade in the pursuit of forbidden games.
I was not blonde or voluptuous, but rather thin, with large, black eyes. I had heard before that I was unusual looking, but it had never meant much until I reached adolescence and realized that the qualities I had to offer were unappealing to a man searching for a wife. I was long and lean and dark, and my hair was as black as the deepest waters, floating around my head, weed-like. I was a storm cloud amongst my fair, silvery friends, and it was a difference that I felt rather more acutely than they. Had I perhaps a personality more suited to put myself and others at ease, I might have eventually married, made a home for myself and had a child. But I was quiet, and prone to secretiveness and as time went on, I found myself more and more alone in my pursuits.
Subsequently, I grew even more daring in my pursuit of the elusive figures of men, and as a result, it was not long before I began to surface above the water to view my strange surroundings. You will think me foolish for this, and I do not disagree, but consider if you will, my deep loneliness in a world of family and friends that I believed to be indifferent to my very existence. I thought perhaps that I could find my place amongst the objects that I found so fascinating. Perhaps, like the mermaids of legend, I could join the world of men. If these thoughts are foolish, think of your loneliest hours and tell me of the darkest of your thoughts, and perhaps they will not be so dissimilar.
