A Mirror of Mermaids

My little sister had been obsessed with mermaids all her life. She loved them, even when I gave her the real stories of mermaids and sirens. Apparently, I was just being mean and nasty to her. She was my little sister after all.

I sat out on the rocks and stared out at the cold, ever-moving sea.

I had won my scholarship to come out here. It had been hard fought, with way too many late nights studying. But I was here…

And Janey. I wished she could have seen this. She always said she wanted to see a mermaid.

I told her she wouldn’t like their teeth.

A tear slipped down my cheek. I guess I didn’t realize how far out I was leaning because it fell and hit the water with a splash.

I pulled up my glasses and wiped my eyes with my sweater sleeve. Replacing my large black frames, I pulled my yellow rain slicker tighter. It was cooler than I had expected this morning. The sky was a slate gray that made it look like dusk. It must have been dark because the lighthouse still had its lantern on, the beam shining brightly in the overcast ambience.

I watched the horizon. The weather forecast hadn’t called for rain… but it sure looked like it.

I drank some of my vanilla London Fog. Janey had hated the smell of it. It was Earl Grey, double strong, mixed with lavender and steeped in steamed milk.

I loved these things. I lived on them and bread through college.

I wished Janey were here to grouse about the smell and to see this view. She loved overcast days and the sea and the cold. Mom used to call her a duck.

The nickname couldn’t be removed once it was said. Janey had all kinds of duck-themed clothes as a kid, and Mom and Dad still got her duck-themed stuff as she got a little older. She took it with good humor and a lot of love. Mom had even painted her bedroom door with the words “The Duck.”

I don’t think I could have been that good-humored about it. Good thing it had been her.

I never really had a nickname growing up. If I had had one, it probably would have been “The Adult.” Everyone said I was too grown up, even as a baby.

Janey would say it was because I was a Capricorn. I told her astrology was a bunch of hooey.

I also snuck her astrology books and read up on Capricorns. By the end of that summer, I could write and interpret a full natal chart… not that I ever let on. It was still a bunch of hooey, but it was extremely interesting hooey.

Mermaids fit Janey well. She was a free spirit—not like a fairy—but someone who let things roll off her and marched to the beat of her own drum, an ever-moving, always constant drum.

Like the sea.

I pulled at the pearl that hung around my neck. Janey had gotten into macramé and had found a black pearl—God knows where she found one this big—which she had given me for safety when I was out on the ocean.

Apparently there was a legend that said if you were stranded at sea, drop a black pearl into the water and Poseidon would take it as the price for your life.

She was like that.

Ironic that she had been the one to need it.

I hated pearls and myth nonsense… but it struck me that it was gorgeous, and she had done a spectacular job of caging the large pearl. I loved it and wore it often.

It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I found out she hadn’t had the money for string or thread that wouldn’t snap… so she used her own hair.

Her long black, almost iridescent-sheened hair.

YUCK.

I told her it made her a sheep.

It was disgusting, but now I felt it kept us closer. I rubbed the pendant between my thumb and forefinger again. It had become a habit.

I would need to get back to the wharf soon. I shipped out this afternoon. We were a science vessel studying a professor’s whims until we could get our own research grants.

Janey loved mermaids.

I loved the sea and had decided to make a career out of it. I wanted to study what was out there. There was so much of the ocean that we hadn’t even begun to figure out.

I wanted to know what was out there.

I enjoyed the solitude of research and the process of it. It was a great fit.

I checked my watch. I had a few more minutes… and the sky seemed to get darker.

I wiped at my glasses. Maybe it was smudging.

Nope.

And then I looked at the water.

Really looked.

The water that lapped at the barnacled stone retaining wall was glowing.

It glowed a bright blue.

Thinking about it, it was bleeding out from the spot where my tear had fallen in.

And then I saw dark shadowy shapes moving through the water toward that glowing spot.

Toward me.

What the hell was going on?

I involuntarily ducked down closer to the retaining wall to make myself less noticeable.

I was being silly. What were some fish going to do—jump up and attack me?

I groaned and slapped my forehead.

What the hell was happening to me?

Then the shapes coalesced under the glowing patch and rose from it.

Janey would have been overjoyed.

There in a circle, holding hands, were what could only be described as mermaids.

Not the cartoon version, but ones with scales, sharp fins, speckles—and when they opened their mouths… very, very sharp teeth.

They started softly at first. It was more like a low hum… then a soft keening.

Once they harmonized, they began to sing in earnest.

Their song made my heart feel everything that it had felt when I found out that Janey had died.

It felt like they were singing the way that I felt—my pain put to song with no words. Just sound, vibration, and energy.

The glow in the water grew brighter and brighter.

White bled in from the edges.

The creatures swam in circles within the patch and sang higher notes that kept escalating.

I was glad there wasn’t any glass close by or it would have shattered.

As they sang, I felt the pain start to bleed out from my chest and drain away.

Like their song was cleansing my heart.

The tide washed out, and a chunk of the heavy weight in my soul went with it.

My breathing became easier.

As my pain ebbed away, so did the blue glow.

It grew lighter and lighter until it was almost completely white.

My tears ran freely, blurring my vision so that I couldn’t see that the group—a mirror of mermaids, Janey would have corrected me—had swum off, save for one.

And she was coming closer.

She was terrifying.

But her expression was so somber I couldn’t help but wait to see what she would do.

She stared at me as she floated right at the edge of the water, eyes black as obsidian.

“Sister, your heart is broken. Come to the sea with us. In the sea all things wash away.”

A tinkling melodic voice wound through my mind like music.

I was truly scared. I’d read about mermaids, sirens, and the like. They were ruthless, predatory—often murderous beings.

And this one wanted me to drown myself in her waters.

I should have run.

Instead I did something that had more to do with Janey than myself.

I spoke back.

Albeit verbally.

“I don’t think so. Not that great of a swimmer.”

She blinked at me—both sets of eyelids—and came just a little closer.

“You were born for the water… as was your sister.”

“What do you mean?”

She half-smiled.

“Tis how we found you. Your pain called to us through the water. We come to our own kind when they are in turmoil. We can find you by your nature. Your grief was so strong… it was unbearable. All of the ocean felt you. Your water was filled with heartbreak. It was full up, making you sick with it.”

“My water… my—MY TEAR!”

She nodded.

This was revolutionary data.

“You can do all that from one tear?”

She smiled at me as though I were a bit behind.

“Your water tells your story.”

This was revolutionary data.

“You can do all that from one tear?”

She smiled at me as though I were a bit behind.

“Your water tells your story. You had a younger sister. She is no more—was sick and then taken by the waters of your home. You wish to study the sea’s depths and unlock its secrets… and you miss her so much it clouds your judgment and steals your life. You believe that if you had been there, she would still be here. But this is not true. It is your grief manifesting through your need to control your surroundings.”

I blinked at her. I swallowed reflexively.

I had wondered if I was hallucinating. Well, if I was, might as well go for broke.

“You’re supposed to be a myth… you’re here, so… how much is myth and how much is truth?”

She sighed, the gills at the sides of her neck frilling out and retracting. Then she flipped herself in an impossible arc to land on the retaining wall beside me.

She was quite a bit longer than she had looked and even scarier up close. Where her nose should have been was flattened, with only small slits. Her hands were long and webbed with clawed tips. She had several frilled fins and dark speckles covering her smooth (like a manta’s skin) greenish skin. Her tail ended in the traditional fluke—much bigger, but still a fluke. Her teeth were sharp and white, and upon a closer look I saw a couple of rows behind the front row, probably like a shark’s now that I looked at them.

She was definitely a carnivore.

“You wish to know our story, do you… all right, scholar sister. Then you shall have our unhappy tale.”

She knew how unsettling she was up close and was doing it on purpose.

My confusion must have shown on my face, as she addressed it.

“But keep in mind, once you hear some things, it will change your thoughts.”

She took a breath and launched into her story.

“We are not native to your world.”

I drew back in shock and disbelief.

She gave a chuckle.

“THIS surprises you… this you disbelieve.”

She shook her head and went on.

“We were much more like the people that populate this world. We could live among land or sea or move between the two with freedom. Our people became very sick. We thought it was the end of us—of our people. We had made peace with the end. We did not relish it, but we understood it was the way of things.”

I stared at her, trying to puzzle out what might happen next. Perhaps a miracle cure?

She smiled ruefully.

“No, sister. At least not a cure as you would see it. Yes, I can read your thoughts. You have experienced this yourself.”

How could she have known? I had never told anyone. Janey talked about it, but I had maintained my ignorance.

I chewed my bottom lip and looked down.

She looked at me empathetically.

“It is all right. This is alien to the people of your lands. It would have done you no good to be honest.”

I looked down.

She continued.

“Our people were dwindling and making peace with our end when we were… saved… by another species. They saw the end as a final farewell. We knew that it was not. But in their fear and their well-intentioned desire to help… they rounded us up and began testing us, conducting experiments. Grafting parts of other species—sometimes sentient, sometimes non—into our basic structure.”

She held her webbed hand up to the sky for me to see the underlying bone structure. It was eerily similar to a human’s.

“But they saved you.”

She shook her head.

“No. They saved a version of us. For them, death was unbearable… frightening… something to achieve control over. We understood that death is natural. Without it there is no life. Cyclical in nature—one feeds the other.

This species held no such beliefs. They believed in life at any cost.

The more unpleasant details are not relevant to the story at this time. Suffice it to say we could no longer return to our world.The species that “saved” us had no thought beyond keeping us from death and so were unprepared—and uninterested—in where we would go. They found most other races unequal to themselves intellectually and felt we should be grateful for their intervention. So they picked a mostly compatible world, traveled there, and rid themselves of us, leaving without understanding what they had done.”

She paused , her chest glowing abit, and then continued “Yes, they technically saved us… and they did find us a livable home. But what they damaged was far worse. Many went mad from the dysmorphia after our engineered change. The trauma from the experiments… many of us died horribly from the process of them saving us. We could never go home again, even if we had the technology, due to being incompatible physically with our homeworld. And we were marooned on this alien world, where we fought to adjust and survive not only our change but our new home.”

I looked at her. I didn’t even know what to feel about what she had told me. It was so sad and wrong, but I could understand what the other species had been feeling.

Something struck me through her story and I decided to ask.

“You talk as if you experienced it yourself… do you have racial memory?”

She smiled.

“No, we do not. I was among the first batch of us to be grafted. It has been thousands of years… and I still remember those times. Sometimes I wake in the night and believe that I am back on board their ship in that health bed. It takes much time to ground myself in the present.”

She twitched and her fins shivered.

I felt horrible for her and her people. She answered the question as it formed in my mind.

“We are the same as the group that was ‘saved,’ for the most part. We are now unable to have children among ourselves. Some have had children with the people of the land and have had measured success. Our nature is stronger in some than in others. Sometimes it lies dormant for a generation or two, to blossom fully seemingly from nothing.

But we are still nothing like we once were.

But that too is part of nature… change.”

She watched me.

I looked at her and thought of Janey. It wasn’t fair that I was here and she wasn’t.

“You said the genetic coding can stay dormant?” my mind jumped to the impossible.

It had been that kind of day.

She smiled, pressing her lips into a thin line.

“Yes, Cecelia. Dormant.”

I blinked at her. Of course she would know my name. It paid to be able to read minds.

I saw my own desperation reflected back at me in her ebony eyes.

“You call me sister. You found me through a tear… do I have mermaid in me?”

She held up a finger and wagged it side to side, clucking at me.

“That isn’t what you want to know… now ask me what you want to know.”

I looked at her. It felt like everything depended on her answer.

“Did my sister have your DNA? Was she part mermaid?”

She smiled wide, showing off those unsettling teeth.

“There we are. I should think so, considering your water… it is highly probable.”

I saw in her eyes the bleakness that fell over me as I sagged against the retaining wall.

My heart broke all over again.

Janey should have been here. She should have found all of this out. She would have been so happy.

She had connected to a heritage I couldn’t even have fathomed as if by instinct.

Janey was meant to be here, not me.

God, life wasn’t fair at all.

The mermaid pointed a claw at my neck and I flinched.

She gave me a look.

“Scholar sister, if I had wanted to feast upon your flesh, I would have. I do not eat land folk. Some of us went down that path, but it is a very dark road and has unpleasant consequences.

That necklace… may I see it?”

I grabbed the pearl.

“It’s my sister’s… she gave it to me. Is there anything else I can give you for all that you have given me?”

I couldn’t part with it, and I knew mermaids loved shinies.

She gave me an exasperated look and shook her head.

“I only wish to see it. I do not covet it. I feel your sister’s song from it. And there are a few benefits of all the experimentations and graftings.

May I see it?”

In answer, I slipped it over my head and passed it to her.

She held it up and ran her hands over it.

She looked at me.

“You say your sister Janey loved mermaids. Would she be able to weather the changes to become one?”

I laughed.

“Janey would have done anything to be a real mermaid. She always said she felt out of sync here.

Why?”

She seemed to weigh something, nodded as if coming to a decision.

“Are you sure?”

I nodded.

“100% sure.”

She looked at me.

“Do you truly wish for your sister to be here?”

I blinked.

“More than anything.”

She smiled softly and nodded.

Then she threw the pearl into the ocean.

I yelped and tried to dive after it.

“Why?! That was the last thing I had of her! WHY?!”

She schooled her expression, keeping her face impassive against my onslaught of rage and indignation… and betrayal.

I couldn’t believe how stupid I had been.

Then the waters that had turned glowing white bubbled, swelled, and coalesced.

Something moved beneath the surface, long and dark, rising slowly through the glow.

Floating along in the water was my little sister Janey.

But as a mermaid.

She floated there, the black pearl merged with her and giving her a dark iridescent sheen—like the top on an oil slick.

She opened obsidian-black eyes and sat up in the water.

She saw me and grinned ear to ear.

“Sissy!”

She did a loopy cartwheel in the water.

I stared, mouth hanging open, happy astonished tears running down my face.

“Like a starfish!”

The mermaid beside me nodded.

“Mm-hmm. As I said… there are some benefits. And you were correct. Your sister was born for this life.”

I smiled, then thought about it.

“Mom, Dad… they will never know. They will think that she is still gone. I—”

She nodded.

“Yes. But YOU will know your sister has met her destiny… a destiny that YOU carried her to, Cecelia. She is happy and here. Isn’t this what you wished?”

She gave me a questioning look.

I smiled a little sadly.

“More than anything.”

It came out so softly… but Janey heard me.

She grinned big and leapt up to hug me with astonishing strength.

She looked at me in all her finny glory.

“Sissy! I’m back! I’m happy… this is so much better than I ever thought! I’m a real mermaid! And I’m back! Oh Sissy, don’t cry… I’m okay. And THANK YOU!”

She wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged me.

I hugged her back like when we were little.

I heard a splash and looked up to see the mermaid out in the water an impossible distance away.

I knew Janey would have to go with her.

I hoped she would be okay.

I was scared.

The mermaid spoke in my mind.

“Fear not. We will care for her and teach her our ways… they are her ways as well. You will not be separated forever. Just long enough for her to adjust to her destiny.”

Janey nodded.

“And Sissy, I will visit a lot once you get your own boat! I can scout cool stuff for you too! This is gonna be great!”

With that she flipped off the wall and landed farther than the other mermaid, who smiled the smile of someone very old who is entertained by the antics of someone very young.

Janey waved and swam off to follow where the other mermaids had gone.

The elder mermaid floated for a moment and stared at me.

Then nodded.

Then slid beneath the waves, catching up to Janey with grace and ease.

Janey had a great teacher.

She was home.

And I had a feeling I would see her soon.