Hollins! And Short Story #4

I've spent the last week settling in at Hollins University in Virginia, where I'm officially working on an MFA in Children's Literature (because I apparently like to collect degrees). I'm still sorting out my schedule, but I promise reviews are coming. In the mean time, I wanted to share a short story I just wrote for my genre study in fantasy course, which was supposed to be a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid." I'm sharing it here because the stories I post on the blog are written and posted sans revision, and in this class we're supposed to be handing in first drafts, so I thought it fit the bill. So, without any further ado, I give you "Song of the Sea."

Song of the Sea

Once, a very long time ago, when the fish swam freely and the waters were deep and clear, there lived a family of creatures on the bottom of the sea. These creatures were not so different from people, in that they had eyes and mouths and hands, but they were not altogether human, nor were they entirely fish. These mer-folk, as people oft call them, kept mostly to themselves, not out of fear or anxiety, simply because they were different, and different does not always equal good.

Now, the eldest of the mer-folk had seven daughters, each of them beautiful and talented in their own way, but it was the youngest of his daughters that the mer-man loved most deeply, for she reminded him of his lost wife, who had died when the girl was still quite young.

Time passed, as it always does, and the mer-man’s daughters grew into beautiful young maids. Their moss green scales faded to pearly sheens on their torsos, some slate grey, others almost white, and their hair grew like kelp, with long strands of browns and greens billowing in the currents. As they grew, they began to favor singing, their voices maturing into haunting siren’s songs they used to tempt the sailors who passed overhead, obscuring the water with their great, hulking ships and tossing their waste into the clear seas. They adored this so much they would compete to see which of them could lead the most stubborn and determined astray, to dive head first from their ship into the waves to meet them. The mer-maids never kept them long and always sent them back to the surface with tales of water women on their lips.

One fine evening, when the winds were especially playful and the sun threw colors across the sky, the young maids spotted a small ship heading home to harbor. The waves danced on the surface of the water, tossing the ship back and forth and throwing foam and fish alike across the ship’s deck. On the front, holding tight to the rail with eyes wide and a laugh on his lips, stood a boy. His dark curls were plastered to his face, and the wind whipped water into his eyes as he smiled gleefully across the waves. They watched the sailors run about, tying things down and making for land, trying to outrun the coming storm, and they became entranced by the boy on the bow staring into the heart of the sea and grinning with a look of adoration.

So it was that the mer-maids found their new challenge. Each took her turn calling to the boy: heads broke the surface of the water, hair fanned out in the foam-tossed waves, black eyes fixed on the boat. The wind picked up their songs and carried them on the breeze to the sailors on the deck of the ship, until, one-by-one, they found themselves diving over the edge, drawn by the dark call from the deep. But the boy moved naught, nor did his mood fade nor his temperament change.

When it was the youngest’s turn, her elder sisters grumbled and glared, for if ever a song could sway a man’s heart, it was that of their baby sister’s. She lifted her sea-weed curls above the surf, her shimmering skin glinting in the moonlight, and sang to the boy so obviously smitten with her waters. She sang and sang of the darkest depths and the deepest waters, and still the boy stared on. She sang until the water was laden with his shipmates, their heads struggling to stay above the surface. Sang until her voice cracked and song turned to screams. It was only when the storm rolled in that the boy’s face fell, and his eyes drifted down to find hers staring back, and the littlest mer-maid, knowing she had failed, sank back beneath the waves, heart hammering in her chest and echoing in her ears, and left the ship high, high above her.

For weeks it was all anyone spoke of: how the young mer-maid had finally met her match. A boy barely older than she had not faltered at her siren song, had refused the call of the sea.

But thoughts of the unwavering boy consumed her. How could it be that one so obviously smitten as he could resist her song so ardently? So it was that the little mer-maid was captivated, and drawn inland like the tide to shore. Her eyes scoured the beaches and the hills for eyes the grey of the sea after storms. Until, one evening many weeks later, when she perched on a rock to watch the setting sun, she found herself face-to-face with him and promptly froze. Here was the boy she had been searching for, the sole object of her thoughts, not three feet from her, his long legs paddling wildly beneath the surface to keep him afloat. He stared back at her with eyes alight with wonder, and a dumbfound grin spread across his sun-kissed cheeks.

The boy spoke to her. His words gurgled in her ears like a fish crying for help from the sandy beach. She tried to speak to him instead, only to have her words pass right through him yet again. He shook his head and pointed at his ears, a sad sort of smile on his face.

When a man arrived on the beach, arms waving widely and voice carried on the wind, the young maid finally understood, for the boy took no notice of him. Not until he saw the waves slapping against the rock and the dark clouds racing towards him did he turn and see the man, who had since grabbed a small row boat and was paddling out to meet him. Then, the boy turned in the water to make his way back home. Halfway to the boat he realized the young maid was no longer with him and paddled in place looking for her, but she had slipped beneath the surface, where the waters were still and comforting, and watched as the man hauled the boy up into the boat and made for the safety of the shore.

For a time, the girl was both saddened and vindicated by her time with the boy: she had not failed because she was somehow unworthy; the task they set was simply impossible. Not that knowing this truly made her feel better. She wept, in a way that is not so unlike humans, when she thought of his adoration for the sea and all that he could never know of it.

No matter how hard she tried, the littlest mer-maid could not expel the human boy from her mind. She returned to him night after night, and they sat in the shallow waters in companionable silence, drawing figures in the sand and communicating as best they could, until she became the only family he had left, for the sea was a dangerous place, and sailors are easily swept from their ships and dragged down into dark depths.

Reality crept back into the world.

The boy was an orphan and not yet old enough to hold his own on a boat; besides, sailors needed more than just a good pair of hands and keen eyes, but a good set of ears and means of proper speech. For a while, the sailors took pity on him, trading food for skilled knot-work, but he became a burden quickly, and the young maid watched from the shallows as her only friend languished away on the shore.

Yet there were tales in the deep of mer-folk who walked on dry land. They sang of them sometimes, their stories of dry rocks and fish in the sky, their curse to never return. Tales, she was told, that were older than time, merely myth, a dream of another world. No magic they possessed could transform one so completely. So the boy withered in the sun, and the young girl filled the ocean with her tears.

With a heavy heart she returned to the boy, sitting in silence in their cove by the light of the full moon drawing figures in the sand, when, by chance, they crafted a plan.

Over the seven mountains and beyond the seven seas, lay a small village on the edge of the water. In this town, they said, in a little house by the docks, was a water woman, a witch from the sea, who enchanted all who looked upon her. They came from far and wide to see her, locked in her giant glass tank with a tail as green as emeralds and hair made of seaweeds and foam, shimmering in the light of the moon. A monster, a freak, an abomination. Still they came, and they filled the boy’s pocketbook many times over and his heart felt a little less heavy.

On particularly nasty nights, when the children jeered and the men leered, the littlest mer-maid would lift her head out of the water and sing, always sad, always soft, always for him. On nights like these, the boy made extra, for men are careless and clumsy under a siren’s song.

Within her glass walls, her love for the young boy grew. He was different from every soul she had ever known or seen, and it broke her heart how little she could do for him. She saw his love of the ocean written in the lines around his mouth and the sun on his cheeks, in his spirit shining through his eyes when he looked out at the cresting waves. And she wanted to show him all of it, to sing him to the farthest reaches of the sea. But every evening her song fell on empty ears, and every night her heart broke a little bit more.

Another year passed, and the boy was nearly a man. He looked at the young maid in the glass, the small window looking out at the sea behind her; he looked at the world around them, at what she had become for him, and his heart sank in his chest. What kind of person was he that he could keep her here, locked away from the sea, from her home? He would set her free. As much pain as he would feel at seeing her go, he could no longer bear her this way.

The jostling of the tank woke her. He had leveraged it onto a large cart with wheels and maneuvered her down the wharf, when a rock lodged under the wheel and sent her crashing onto the beach. Her tank was knocked over, and the tide lapped at it; they would wait here, until the sun lowered on the horizon and the water rose to welcome her home. He sat with her, his legs slowly disappearing as the water crept slowly up the sides of the tank, cooling the water inside until the little mer-maid had re-acclimated to the open sea. She stared at him all through the day and into the evening, when he clambered up and out of the water to unlock the hatch.

He would open the tank soon, and she knew he meant for her to leave him. If that’s what he wanted, she would give it to him; his happiness had come to mean more to her than even the sea itself. She lived for the glean in his eyes when a storm rolled in and the slight twitch of his lips at great forks of light that lit the sky. His once muddled voice warmed the deepest parts of her.

The lock, which had always been there to keep others out rather than shut her in, clicked above her, and the great hatch slid off into the welcoming waves, the mer-maid following suit. Home. The word felt wrong here. The sea was where she belonged, but she was meant to be with the boy, always. He was the only home she would ever need.

His eyes finally met hers, and the tears she found there confused her.

If this was goodbye, she would tell him, not with words, for they had none; still, she would try. Her hands slid gently over his cheeks and she raised her head to his own, their lips meeting briefly and only once, before she sank back into the sea.

She watched beneath the surface as he stood to go, staring out at the choppy waves, the wind blowing his dark curls across his eyes. And she was struck so suddenly by the memory of a small boy staring into the water that she rose up from the depths one last time.

Her eyes met his in the setting sun light, and she sang. Of the darkest waters and the deepest depths and above all else she sang of him.