The Mer Girl - Selkie Tales Short Stories

Chapter 1

"I have heard the mermaids singing,

Each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me."

-- T. S. Eliot

Wales, 819

I dove hard through the roiling surf, desperate to stay away from the battering force of those sharp rocks in the reef. Lightning flashed in blinding staccato overhead, as if some deranged god were playing drums at a boisterous May Day festival. But this was no night of rich passion to steal away a land-lad and stir up his musky heat. This was the worst storm I'd seen in my entire twenty-two years of life – and I was caught in its teeth.

A thick wave swept up from beneath me and I thrummed hard with my tail, twisting so I stayed in line with its direction. Trying to cross its force would be sheer madness. That was how mer-folk ended up broken on the rocks, their bodies fading to seal, dolphin, or whatever their totem was when their soul was shattered out of its living cage.

But I would not let that happen.

I cursed my sister for the twentieth time as the surf rolled me in a loop. She had known this storm-of-the-ages was descending on us. Everyone in our pod had known. And yet she had insisted I personally take a message to our elder sisters to the far north. Alone. The message was tucked in a clam-shell pouch, tied to my waist by the sturdiest of seaweed belts. But if I was pummeled into a bloody pulp against the rocks that wouldn't matter much.

And I had not even one land-gift in the nursery to show I had existed. Not one child to carry on my name, my waist-long dark hair, or my glimmering green eyes.

Thunder shook the very water around me and I swept in a circle, straining to see in the pitch darkness. Were the rocks behind me now? If I misjudged I could break every bone in my body – some twice. I had roughened my skin to the thickest I had ever made it, but even that might not save me from the tempest. A desperate voice inside my head pleaded with me to fully go seal – to lose the arms and long tail which could be easily shattered. I could see why so much time was spent on training mer-children to resist. For if I changed now I would lose the advantage of my mental acuity. I would drop into a lower, instinctive level, and while it might seem an escape, it was a sure route to destruction.

Countless mer-folk had found that out the brutally hard way.

I drew in a long gulp of water, my tail driving hard against the current. Just one minute. All I needed was one minute of calm, to get my bearings, and then I would know –

Lightning flashed, long, hard, bringing the sky into full summer's day.

A monstrous wave towered high above me. Higher than the highest fence around the clustered Welsh shore-towns. Higher, seeming, than the mountains which gathered clouds in those far reaches of the too-dry inland.

My mouth fell open –

A clang of metal sounded from behind me, and I spun in shock.

A sleek currach skin boat was powering through the water. The man was about my age, perhaps a year or two older, with rippled muscles of iron clearly visible through his soaked linen shirt. His dark hair was plastered to his head. But it was his eyes which caught me. They were the rich blue of the sea, and they were focused ahead, always ahead. The wave could have been a feather drifting in the breeze, for all the mind he paid it.

I turned and followed his gaze.

There was a boy there, perhaps ten, in a smaller currach caught in the rocks. The lad was hauling with all his strength on the oars but his slim arms were no match for the strength of the surf. He looked up and saw the man coming for him. He screamed in desperation, "Conor! Conor! Help!"

Conor's muscles bulged with effort, his arms pumping in fierce rhythm, but I knew. There was no way Conor would reach him in time. The surf had the power of a grey whale and the humans simply could not stand up against it. No one could, save the Kraken himself. It was folly.

Conor turned his head toward the scream, his eyes desperately searching the source. "I'm coming! I'll save you, Ryan. I'll save you! I swear!"

I should have dove deep into the depths. Left the humans and their egotistical ways to suffer their fates. Why were they out in this maelstrom to begin with? This Conor seemed to be the older brother of Ryan. If Conor truly cared for his younger sibling, then why had he let the lad head out in this nightmare? They deserved what they got.

That was my older sister talking.

I tensed my skin to the thickest it had ever been. To a level which made me feel as if I were coated in leather several inches thick.

And then I drove.

I came up behind Conor's currach and grasped onto the edges of the hull. I thrashed with my tail, driving it forward. His arms lifted in surprise as the boat plowed ahead, and then he redoubled his efforts, driving toward his brother.

The wave hit.

Conor flung himself flat within the currach. Good man, he had some sense after all. I twisted hard, letting the water drive alongside the hull rather than broadside. It was several long moments as the wave cascaded over us, but then we popped up on the other side. I gave a last heft and the currach drew alongside Ryan's.

Ryan flew into his brother's currach and twined himself around his older brother like a piece of seaweed around a well-seasoned driftwood. His voice was a high babble. "You came! You came for me! I was so scared!"

Connor didn't bother to try to unwind his panicked brother. He grabbed up the oars and hauled with all his strength.

I thrashed with my tail, turning the craft, and between the two of us we pulled off of the rocks. And then there was that awful groaning noise that I knew too well.

I turned.

The massive wave reached toward the very stars. It blotted out the sky. It was a force of nature that could not be undone.

I cried, "Get down!"

Connor flung himself over his younger brother, shielding him with his own body. His hands firmly latched on to the struts in the boat.

I spun the boat so it was aligned.

Then I prayed to every god of the sea I had ever heard of, great or small.

Crash.