Chapter Text
Gon counted that afternoon how many times he’d caught the heavy mast making its routine moan. This was the hundred-and-fiftieth one. Some people found the creaks of an old boat haunting, but to Gon they were rather soothing, harmonious; something in the background like a memory, like leaving the telly on whilst you make breakfast in an empty house. He checked his wristwatch, the hands reading twelve forty-seven, almost time for lunch. But the crew still had their work cut out for them if they were to get in a decent haul to last the markets until Sunday. They hadn’t been lucky that day, save for a few buckets of tuna. As Gon looked around the boat, he could see his comrades growing weary and grouchy. Most of them were men in their thirties with the exception of a few women likened to the seas. Gon was one of only two - counting himself - young assistants.
He was tidying the smaller nets from that morning when the commotion began at starboard.
It was Col who had called it out first, with a heaping cry, first of excitement, yelling: “We got one! A big one! Pull it up!” And a collection of men began to lift the purse seine. The hope was real in their tired eyes, like spotting an oasis in the middle of a desert. The number of sweaty bodies amassed as the net drew higher into the air, the weight of the water gushing back down as heavy on one’s ears as the drill of a waterfall. Curious, Gon placed down his handy work and pushed up onto the balls of his feet in hopes to see the success they had all prayed for.
Then, suddenly, the muttering and cheering drifted into silence.
There was the groan of the mast and the curious gawks of the gulls ahead, then there was the sea below. And there was the gentle whooshing motion of the haul, suspended close to the railing. Unable to see, Gon topped a wooden barrel.
There were fish, to be certain, in the bottom of the rig, flapping and gasping. But there was one big one, too, though no hussle of a school. One big fish; turquoise and cerulean, a mixture of greens and purples that reflected from the burning sun. Milky, porcelain skin. A man, but not quite a man. Half of him was… it looked like it’d been gobbled by the bottom half of a giant marine creature. But it was beautiful. And it was wide eyed, silent, still as a painting.
“What is it?” someone spoke up. Surprisingly, there were no exchange of looks or muttering, just that continuous silence.
It was almost dreadful.
“I ain’t sure…” another person said.
“Looks like a giant fish to me,” someone else said.
“But that isn’t a fish. Not fully a fish anyway,” said one of the women.
It seemed nobody knew what to do. Or what to say, for that matter. Everybody, as well as Gon, was speechless.
“Do we take it back?”
“That thing?”
“That’s a mermaid, you idiot.”
“A mermaid? You mean mer man , look at it closer.”
The creatures eyes stared fully at the crowd. Gon, despite how far he was from the railing initially, could catch the glint of fear and shock in its blue irises; they reflected the ocean itself, and seemed to be moving like the waves. It looked as though it was taken totally by surprise.
“Wait!” Gon interjected. Heads turned. He jumped down from his leverage.
The thing’s eyes were on him, thin and slitted like the light pouring into the crack in the door. “Put it back.”
Everybody took turns to share a glance.
“We need to release it.” There was no commentary, surprisingly. The spectacle still had its claws in them.
Gon rushed to the railing and stepped up carefully, catching the net in a hand to stable himself. The creature recoiled in a drastic panic. He pulled out his pocket knife that was tucked safely into his worn boot.
“The net! Don’t put a hole in it!” a voice said.
Never minding that, Gon snagged the rope at the gathers, working through the tough knots and diamonds. “It’s okay, there’s plenty more below deck. I checked this morning.” He heard one shuddering exhale tremble from the creature’s lips. He was close enough to see all the delicate, gentle scales on its face, darkening into its hairline of wet, drooping silver; sharp fins that sprouted out where its ears were; jagged gills that flared either side of its neck. Gon was probably too in awe of the thing to realise he’d slowed down his work.
He cut loose half of the netting from the other side. It should be enough for it to get away without catching on anything.
“Goodbye,” Gon muttered, waving gingerly.
Slowly, surely, the creature toppled back into the waves; a heavy splash. One after the other, the crew waved down at the pearlescent suds left behind.
⏅ ⤤ ⏅ ⤤
The crew hadn’t been the same since then. The day had been filled with empty silence; the crew starstruck by what they had encountered. Gon, on his way around the boat helping around, doing his thing, heard a few passing conversations about the creature - what it was, if it was real, if there were others like it, if they were valuable. That troubled Gon the most, that afternoon.
Most valuable.
Being the natural animal and wild creature-loving enthusiast he was, he couldn’t bear to think that his crew could be thinking of catching such a beautiful creature, but it didn’t come as a surprise. It was still like that as they pulled into the harbor, mutters and whispers passing between them, not entirely worried if someone overheard them.
He wandered home that evening, his bag over his shoulder and his coat hanging from the crook of his bent arm, hand comfortable in his front pant pocket. The cobbles looked harsher, he noticed, as he strolled with gentle, patient strides, back to his little semi-detached cottage that was settled in the village. The cobbles were roughened and scratched with time and age. Gon remembered them being a lot shinier when he was younger, a little sapling in such a great sea of opportunities.
Gon pondered a lot about the creature. His memory was nearly photographic, only moving: the ripple in its wet, silver hair; the electric flicker of the sun’s reflection on its scales; the enchanting sea in its eyes; the nervousness of its breath; the fear that stared back with big, gaping sockets. It sent a chill down his spine. It was truly, intolerably encaptivating. It was troublesome for it to sink in. And he had no doubt that word would spread amidst the villagers on Whale Isle; maybe it’d reach his Aunt Mito by the end of the week; no, even less - a couple days at least. He would expect her arrival at his doorstep with a wicker basket of meadow flowers and groceries from the market.
His fingers twitched by his side. He needed to paint, get something down from what he remembered of that brilliant afternoon. The beauty of that haunting spectacle. He wanted it etched into his head; his every thought; every flick of the wrist as he’d paint what he saw.
The young man came up to his cottage. It was adjoined with his next door neighbour, a young woman who was possibly a little older than he was. She had moved to Whale Isle not too long ago, about a month. She was lovely. Her name was Naife and she worked as an assistant florist. He would occasionally bump into her on the street and was very insistent on befriending her, seeing she was his closest neighbour (sharing the cottage and all). She had a baby of four months. Gon didn’t know if there was another parent present, he guessed not; he hadn’t seen anybody visit poor Naife. Whenever he did see her, she was always dropping her shopping. He liked to hop over the picket fence and drop by, and help her with her baby.
Gon assumed Naife hadn’t come home yet from her shift. The florist was popular in the village - in the summertime they would showcase their flowers in the square, something about marketing, he overheard, after all, it was only a small island and there wasn’t a lot of work to go around - not if one wanted to go into business and banking and that sort of stuff. Pushing wide the worn, seafoam-painted picket gate to his small front garden, Gon leaned against the fence that separated them both barely.
“Mrs. Durral?”
There was movement behind the kitchen window, fogged as it was. He smiled as the babysitter opened the window and pushed it ajar. Her big bosom perched in her overlapped arms on the sill.
“Evening, young man!” She beamed her best grin.
He adjusted his bag strap. “Naife hasn’t come home, has she?”
Mrs. Durral shook her head of fantastic curls. “No, I’m afraid. The little n’ is here, come say hello once you’ve unpacked. I’d love some company.” Then she disappeared back into the kitchen, leaving the window on the latch. Gon resumed his advance into his home, the one key on his chain a pleasant little jangle in his hands.
The resting smell of his home warmed Gon. He set his bag down and sighed. He hadn’t realised how tired and weary his legs and back were from working. Rolling his shoulders, Gon kicked off his boots, struggling with the laces as they scattered across the floorboards. He dressed into something comfortable before he went out again and leaped over the fence, trotting into the kitchen via the front door.
“Something smells good,” he said.
“Beef casserole. Poor young lass was hot and bothered so I offered to make the dinner for her. Why don’t you join us? Kala would love somebody to play with,” Mrs. Durral said and gestured to the child sitting in the living room. She was playing with some colourful wooden blocks.
Gon gave his signature smile. “It’d be a pleasure! I can’t stay too long, though. I have some… things I wanna take care of, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, no - of course, don’t you worry. Stay as long as you like, love.”
He sat across from Kala, humming. She continued to play, oblivious to his being there until she finally decided to stop what she was doing and stare at him. Her eyes were icy, which complimented her bleach-blonde hair; whatever was starting to come through, anyway. Gon chuckled and leaned forward onto his arms.
“What you got there?” He tilted his head. She looked down to the blocks. For a moment, Gon caught the impression that she was wondering that as well. Kala wasn’t a vocal baby, but she would laugh now and again. Gon knew how to bring it out, by blowing on her stomach and pretending to munch on it. It’d make her laugh so much that she’d fart. He wondered, sometimes, if he’d like to have children. It was a promising idea, but he lacked a partner.
“Shall we spell your name? Here…” Gon took one of the blocks, the letter K . He searched around for the others and aligned them. A … L … A. Kala smiled, clapping. “Can you do it, too? Which one comes first?”
Kala winced and toppled over on the blocks. Gon laughed, bringing her into his lap, sitting her on one of his knees. She belched and giggled and patted his cheeks, and Gon made silly faces and bounced her to make her laugh some more. Mrs. Durral smiled from the kitchen.
⏅ ⤤ ⏅ ⤤
That night, Gon sat quietly in his room, working away at the latest loose painting in his lap, his hands clustered with blue and purple and green smudges. Papers laid scattered all around his feet. Twirling his brush in his fingers, he rubbed his eyes. He’d been fixated on recreating the creature from that afternoon on paper. He sat and stared at his sketches, dazed and exhausted, surprised he hadn’t fallen asleep on his desk. He started to brood as he gazed out to the ocean.
All the way through his childhood, Gon had often come across the old tales of mermen and mermaids; the folklore of the half-human half-fish people. They were both beautiful and cynical. It was only when he was pushing through his teenage years that, occasionally, he’d be told about sirens - the deadlier part of the myth, fish folk that were so beautiful and so angelic under the waves, fish folk that would lure sailors down into the water and eat them alive. It was terrifying and yet so very intriguing to Gon. He wondered if they really did exist. People would joke sometimes that he’d become siren food because he was a “young and strapping young man”, and that slight fear and curiosity stayed with him.
But when he remembered the creature - the merman - from that afternoon, he couldn’t recall feeling scared , or terrified, or any of those things. In fact, he was taken back to see that it was the creature that was indeed scared; the look in its eye… as though it had broken a sacred boundary, some promise.
He scratched at his stubble. I need a shave , he thought. It was certainly time for one.
Gon picked up and stacked his observations on the desk, done for the night. The chime of the wooden wind charm hanging at the window sent a chill across his being, the faint taste of salt on his lips as he licked them. It will be another sunny day soon. He planned to visit Mito up on the hill in her still-standing house. He planned to tell her about the merman.
⏅ ⤤ ⏅ ⤤
Something bothered him, however, as he was making the trek to Mito’s house. It wasn’t the satisfying crunch of dirt under his boots nor the song of the gulls overhead, but the thought that people would get curious. What if they tried to search for the merfolk? What if news reached places beyond Whale Isle - what then ? There will be tourists and trophy hunters wanting to get a piece of the myth for themselves. But surely, Gon thought, that merfolk were smarter than that; how else would they have been able to stay unknown for the past few centuries?
It was a great discovery, but at what cost? They could have gone on living without knowing merfolk exist without causing harm. Now that people could find out about it, something was bound to go wrong.
“Gon!” Mito cried atop the hill, catching Gon out of his train of thought. He smiled and waved, rushing up to rush his aunt into a tight hug.
“Good morning,” he kissed her cheek.
The thirty-four year old woman cupped his cheeks, kissed his forehead, and wiped sleep from the corners of Gon’s sleepy eyes. “How have you been? And Naife - how is she and Kala?” Mito pulled her nephew into the kitchen, tugging out a chair at the rounded dining table for him. He sat down with a small “thank you” and dusted his knees.
“I’m great. Naife’s working hard. Kala’s as quiet as ever. I got her to laugh yesterday. Mrs. Durral was babysitting, she invited me ‘round to dinner.”
Mito attended to the soup sitting on the hob. “Oh, bless her. She works so hard, poor soul.”
“Actually, we pulled up something yesterday afternoon,” Gon muttered. He spaced out, tracing his index tip into the wood grain. Mito acknowledged him with a gentle hum, hand poised on her hip. She turned when he didn’t speak. Gon’s brows furrowed. “There was a big fish in the net. Well, it wasn’t a fish. I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you we caught a merman.”
Mito’s stirring of the soup slowed.
“I guess you’ll hear about it around town sooner or later. But we all saw it. It was huge! And it was beautiful - so, so beautiful, Aunt Mito!” He reached into his backpack to retrieve the paintings.
She echoed, “A real merman?” Gon didn’t think she really believed him with that look on her face. “Those are myths, aren’t they? I used to tell you stories about them when you were younger. You loved them. Don’t you mean a siren?”
“I know, but they’re real! I swear - I wouldn’t lie to you. But it wasn’t a siren, I don’t think it was at least. But it looked so afraid, it barely moved a muscle!”
She hummed again, resuming to her soup. “And then what happened?”
“I… I cut the net. The day wasn’t the same after we let it go, all anybody could talk about was that creature. I’m not sure if I was just daydreaming.”
“It’s for the best. But what do you know, a real merman in our waters! I wonder what it was doing so close to the surface… did it speak?”
“No, no it didn’t. I want to find it again, I want to see if it can speak.”
Mito didn’t reply, she continued to stir and hum a sea shanty. Gon wondered again, did it have a name? Where did it come from and why was it swimming around Whale Isle? He had to find out.
Mito, leaving her meal for the moment, leaned over and left a kiss on Gon’s crown. “If you do, please be careful. I don’t want those nasty myths to be true. I’d like you to come back alive, please.”
He chuckled, “Don’t worry, Aunt Mito. I’ll come back safe and sound, hopefully with some success.”
“I’m assuming you’ll take the team with you?” she said as she took a seat opposite him.
“Of course. I think that’d give me more of an excuse to put forward some restrictions on boats going on search parties. Truthfully… I don’t want anybody to find it. I hope it doesn’t come to that. I’d like to meet it, if it will let me.”
She smiled. “If it hasn’t retreated deeper into the sea, you mean." Mito takes one of his paintings and fiddles with the corners. “If you do, you must tell me all about it.”
Gon eyed the counter where an assortment of flowers laid useless in the light cast through from the window. His shoulders sagged a little. He assumed she was going to visit grandma Abe’s grave up on the cliff. She always said she wanted to rest there and look over the ocean and the island, to watch the generations go by. Gon had never seen his aunt so depressed in his lifetime. He felt that all the island had been hit by the loss of Abe.
“Can I come with you?” he asked. They didn’t need to confirm what he meant by that.
“Of course. We’ll go together and tell her all about this creature of yours.”
Gon, buzzed and brightened at the idea, blushed softly.