Chapter Text
They come at sunset, bodies slicing through the waves with the quicksilver shimmer of a harpoon.
“All hands on deck!” the Captain roars.
His crew grab the nets – the lines they’ve been preparing since they made the voyage.
“Starboard side!”
The ship rolls with the weight of another great wave, and Captain Locksley takes the wheel to his chest – coughs out his winded response to the concerned hand that his first mate lands on his shoulder.
Thunder cracks the sky, lightening slithers through.
They’re gaining on us, he thinks, and turns to his first mate. “The nets!” he demands, and Jones secures his hat with one hand and lumbers towards the starboard side of the ship. Captain Locksley clings to the wheel, unsure which is grounding the other. He watches, against wind and rain, as his crew resist gravity and hoist the great bulking nets up.
A heave, a communal groan, and the nets slip down one side of the ship like a veil that catches the ocean. The weight of them momentarily balances the deck, and Captain Locksley thrusts himself away from the wheel. He has to see for himself the dreaded sirens that plague these waters. He lands against the starboard side of the ship with a thud and peers out across the ravaged sea, searching for their attackers.
Lightening strikes like a match, lighting up both sky and sea, and Captain Locksley finally sees their approach. He’d seen salmon fight their way upstream as a boy, their silvery bodies resisting the water, and thought them unstoppable. It had horrified and inspired him, but the sight of the mermaids does only the former.
He was a fool to cross these waters. Everyone had warned him – he’d heard the stories. Now, he looks upon his approaching doom and feels his bones shake. His crew – how many lives has he endangered with this voyage?
There have been survivors, he insists. He can get his crew past this. The mermaids shift the water, creating waves against their silver-green tails that rise as tall as his highest mast, and crash against the side of the ship with enough force to knock even the sturdiest of his crew back.
“Secure yourselves!” he orders, and twists around to find Jones. “The ropes!”
Like rats, they scurry towards the masts. The Captain watches them tie ropes around their middles and hopes he isn’t binding their fate. He turns back out to water. “Captain!” he hears, and ignores it. He watches the approach of the mermaids through the waves, some leaping, others nothing more than rippling trails beneath the surface of the ocean. Unstoppable, he thinks, and clings to the deck against the onslaught of another wave.
“Captain!” again, but Captain Locksley is transfixed.
As they approach, the tide bubbles up beneath his ship. The sirens have brought the sea to life, and it sees him, now, sees his unwelcome ship and threatens to consume them all, but he cannot go. He must see.
“Captain, a rope!”
He’s aware it’s Jones calling, now. He turns to him, desperate, beseeching. Jones has secured himself, and holds out a rope for the Captain. They’re only feet away, but Jones’ rope is already straining, he cannot reach him. He holds the rope out desperately. Captain Locksley thinks he even hears him beg.
He turns back to ocean, the roiling sea, the creatures that have taken down vessels larger than his. They reach the edge of his ship in a great wave. Captain Locksley has to cling to the deck to secure himself against it. His knees buckle, and he struggles to regain sight over the edge of the ship, where the waves have begun to screech.
No, not the waves. He looks over the edge and sees them – out of the water, their faces finally revealed. Wide eyes stare up at him, enraged, and Captain Locksley gasps in horror. They are women!
He has to shake himself. Not women, no. He mustn’t think of them as that. But the Captain is caught, transfixed. Their approach has stopped, and with only a brief flicker of victory he realises that the nets have worked. Fearing entanglement, the mermaids keep their distance, and wail up at him like distraught children.
There’s a change in the noise – too high pitched for him to translate – and the mermaids face each other. They’re communicating, the Captain realises, and wishes Jones would stop calling his name. He must find out what they’re saying – he must hear for himself. He leans closer, drawn into the waves, and the sirens face him once more as if aware of his intent.
If he could just slip down there with them—the nets! he thinks, triumphant, and prepares for his descent.
“Captain, no!”
Suddenly, a hand is upon him. The Captain turns into Jones with a snarl, pushes him back. Jones has untied his rope and now struggles with Captain Locksley’s body.
“We must secure ourselves!” he urges, and staggers back with his Captain’s shove. “Captain—?”
But it is not Captain Locksley who stares back at him. There is a look in his eyes – a wild, savage thing that suddenly makes Jones fear for his life. He tries to speak again – the ropes, if they could just secure themselves – but his voice is stolen by the roar of the sea.
The wave is upon them before they can see it, and their untethered bodies take flight.
# # # #
She’s there for their arrival.
The land-walkers come on great bulking wooden vessels that rock and churn above the sea. She wonders if they keep earth up there for them to walk on. She wonders if it’s difficult, with all that rocking and churning, for them to walk at all.
“Regina!”
She hears the hiss through the water, and her body shimmers around to face her mother. Her mother’s scales have darkened with age, while her father’s have turned an almost colourless silver. Regina’s own are still the vibrant green from her youth – an embarrassment to her mother and their clan. Her algae-coloured scales blend in with the water only on certain sunsets of certain summers. She’s an easy target, especially here, with the land-walkers so close.
“You will stick to the reef,” her mother warns her.
“Mother,” she scoffs, she is too old for this, “I have a duty to our—”
“You’re far too vulnerable.”
Her mother floats past her, taking a strand of Regina’s hair in her hand until it slips through her fingers. It’s not a lingering touch; in one of her more rebellious moves, she’d hacked at her hair until it barely covered her face. Her mother hadn’t spoken to her for three days, and when she had, ‘Are you purposefully trying to embarrass me, Regina? You will grow it out, or so help me… I will not tolerate this disobedience!’
There’s a sneer on her mother’s face when Regina turns to follow after her, to where their clan are preparing their attack. Hair floats around her mother’s face and shoulders like the fibrous strands of toxic tentacles. Regina’s tail instinctively sways, one way and then the other, carrying her closer. A hand to her shoulder stops her – forceful, unresisting. Regina turns her glare on her mother.
“I have a right to protect our people.” There’s enough venom in her words to mask their untruth. “I should be out there with you!”
“Look at yourself, Regina.” Her mother casts a gaze over her, resentful, and Regina feels hate and hurt coil within her stomach. Her tail tenses; she falls back, away from her mother’s touch. “If the light hits your tail, you’ll be a shining target for the land-walkers. You’ll ruin the chances for the rest of us. Is that what you want?”
Her eyes are hard, accusatory, and Regina clenches her fists and tries to hold onto her anger. Self-hatred comes stronger, like a tide, and washes her out. Her body sinks – her tail has stopped moving, she realises, as she falls a head beneath her mother.
“No, mother.”
“As I thought.” She casts her eyes behind her, to the awaiting attack, and doesn’t bother to grace her daughter with another glance as she instructs, “The reef, Regina. We will address your disobedience upon my return.”
Regina’s leaden tail carries her down, and she lets it. She treads water once she’s down deep enough that not even the lightening from her clan’s oncoming attack can bring a shimmer to her tail. Then, she waits. All around her, the sea churns and roars. She keeps her eyes open, aware that she is alone and vulnerable, but she cannot will herself to turn back.
Up there, somewhere on the surface, the ocean is consuming another vessel. She looks on ahead, unable to see the bodies that her people will claim. Her stomach clenches. She presses her hands to it and tries to steady her heart. My home is graveyard.
Long after the ocean has stopped churning, she reveals herself. Down in the darkness, she had gone relatively ignored as her people had returned. Their numbers were untouched; the fight had been one-sided. Regret coils in her stomach, and she pushes herself faster through the water, only able to imagine what had happened to the land-walkers. They must have been so unprepared… Why do they still insist on trespassing?
Regina thinks of her mother, back at the reef, likely searching her out already. The thought only inspires her, and she speeds through the water, towards the island that has so often drawn the attention of cursed land-walkers. They come for the stones, is all she knows, though cannot understand how the gaudy little rocks are worth these land-walkers’ lives.
She’d have thought by now, as their collection of sunken vessels had grown, that the land-walkers would realise their stupidity and give up. Still, they prove her wrong.
As the shoreline comes into view, she swims closer to the sand, dragging her fingers through the easily-dislodged top layer of it. It clings to the underside of her nails, and Regina grins despite the events of the evening. By the time she reaches the island, the sky is dark and overcast. There is nothing here to attract her tail, nothing to light up that gaudy green and give her away. She plants her hands in the sand and, finally, finally, surfaces among the rolling tide.
Her first gasp of air stings her lungs, and she has to blink her eyes until the second set of protective eyelids slides back. Her vision clears with it, and she sees the island how she thinks the land-walkers would, if they’d ever manage to make it this far.
Light-sensitivity is not something she has considered before; the ocean is murky and dark, and Regina only ever comes to the surface once the sky and its sun and moon and all of its stars are covered. She is not thinking of how much better she sees in the dark than the land-walkers when she spots it, lying strewn across the beach.
A slab of wood.
Regina’s heart clenches. The vessel, she thinks, and imagines the sea like two great, grasping talons, tearing it apart.
Instinctively, she moves forward, discarding her crawling stance and pushing into slightly deeper water. She swims quickly, and then pauses, hands planted into the sand as she pulls herself up through the water, until the tide barely hits her uncovered back.
The slab of wood is not all that the tide has brought in, but a body, too – a man. A land-walker! Regina inches closer, holding her breath. She searches him for signs of life, but his body is unmoving. If she goes any closer, she’ll be out of the water. Her tail flicks in response to the thought. But the man – the land-walker – she might be able to save him.
She wonders what her mother would say, if she could see her here, crawling up a beach to the very man who had likely done his best to take out as many of her clan as he could. She feels something warm in her chest – hatred, not for him, but for this war between the land and the sea that she has never been able to understand.
Regina knows the real reason her mother does not allow her to join them on their expeditions to the land-walkers’ vessels. If she was ever caught like this, she’d never be allowed off the reef again. Still, she inches on.
She’s close enough to touch his foot, now, and Regina does so tentatively. It is hard and black, and Regina marvels at it in horror for a second or two. Perhaps if she can drag him closer, she will be able to help him without fully emerging from the water. With all the strength she has, she wraps a hand around the limb and pulls.
The foot resists, and then, to her horror, detaches itself in her hand.
Regina falls back with a squeak, dropping the foot. She stares at it, at the land-walker, and the new, pale appendage that has been revealed. Gods, what has she done? She feels faint, suddenly. Has she hurt him? Has she broken his wonderful feet?
She cringes, but the land-walker remains unmoving. Perhaps it is too late, she thinks. But she has to try. Gulping in a breath, she heaves herself forward. Her tail works against her, splashing too loudly in the shallow water, and she falls down by the side of the wooden slab, exhausted. When she turns to him, the land-walker’s face is hidden from her.
Regina assesses him. He is not bleeding, at least. She reaches out, so carefully, and touches his back. Almost instantly she draws her hand back. He is cold, not what she had been expecting. She has come too late, he has already passed. She should leave him, now, to whatever animal will happen upon him. Perhaps the sea will claim him first, she thinks, and it calms her slightly.
Still, she waits. Perhaps it is penance that has her reaching out to him again, grasping him by his muscular shoulder, and rolling him onto his side. She must see his face; she must take this one with her, to make up for all those her clan have stolen from their vessels. She pushes too hard, and the land-walker falls heavily onto his back.
Regina winces again, but stops once she sees his face. He looks – perturbed. She imagines this look on his face, this angry look, as he walks across his vessel and stares out at the onslaught of mermaids, and she frowns with him. Slowly, she inches closer, until she is supporting herself partially against his body. Her face hovers over his. She considers touching him, tracing his jawbone, but her hands do not move from his chest.
What happens next, Regina is unsure of. A noise comes from him, something deep in his throat, and water bubbles up past his lips. Regina freezes with fear. He is alive? She grips at the layers of his chest, her webbed hands turning a fierce white.
Beneath her, his body coils and churns like the sea, and she feels sick. He is alive! She must leave, quickly, but her body is heavy out of the water and all she manages is to push herself away from his chest before his eyes open. He sees her. Regina gasps and freezes.
He looks up at her, gaze unwavering, and that frown on his face gently eases. He is a handsome man. He is a dangerous man. Regina wills herself to move, to leave him to the island and whatever fate awaits him here, but he looks so tame. She knows how this works – how some fish that lurk in the darkest waters have lights above their heads to draw in their prey. They look unassuming – pleasant, even – until they have their jaws around you.
Regina feels like one of those stupid, ignorant fish that gets drawn in. She stares into the open face of this land-walker and thinks her clan must be wrong, they must be so wrong, to think that he could do her harm.
He watches her, and Regina watches him, and then he sees her. He jolts beneath her, gasps at the air like he has not been breathing, and shudders away. Regina snaps out of her daze. Her tail smacks the sand, her arms flail. It is painful – she will have bruises – but her return to the sea is over in seconds.
She dives into the waves and claws at the sand until she is in deep enough water to swim. On the shore, the land-walker stares into the ocean and weeps.