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Augustine was seven when he made his irrevocable decision to befriend a mermaid.
«Where are you going?» his sister Martynia asked, pressing a hand to her wide-brimmed hat to keep it from blowing away
«There! To the rocks! Maybe there's a mermaid!»
«A mermaid!» Martynia laughed, narrowing her eyes; she was thirteen and thought she'd long since left her fantasies about fantastic creatures behind, so she found her little brother's new intention very amusing.
«Mermaids always hang around rocks, right?» Augustine said «I saw it in the book auntie gave me. Even the bad ones: they live among sharp rocks, so when sailors are captivated by their song, they crash against the rocks»
«What kind of books do you read?» Martynia joked «But mermaids, if they existed, were in Greece about three thousand years ago, maybe even longer»
«I didn't read anywhere that they're extinct!» her little brother replied, puffing out his cheeks a little in disappointment
«Okay, okay. But don't feel bad if you don't find any mermaid friends, okay?»
«Okay. Scientists don't get sad when they don't find the fish they're looking for» the boy said philosophically.
Martynia didn't reply that she thought they did, but she watched him run across the sand, to the edge of the sea, not far from three rocks that emerged from the water, jagged and dark, like small monoliths.
Augustine was a lively boy, his back sallow from all the sun. In the winter, he became so pale, almost milky, that it was hard to recognize him. He had curly black hair, tied in a small ponytail to leave his neck exposed and reduce sweating, and he wore a blue speedo decorated with red staryus and rubber-soled rock shoes. Over his shoulder, he carried a bag that seemed too big for him, made of leather, with a rusty buckle bigger than his fist: it had belonged to his great-great-grandmother, then to his grandmother, then to his mother, then to him, but only because all his sisters had thought it too ugly to carry.
To him, however, it was beautiful.
He waded into the water, reached the rocks, and climbed to the base of the largest one. The water collected in small pools in the hollows of the rock, and he, almost on all fours, peered into it: tiny fish pokémon, the size of his fingernails, swam away from his face, greenish-shelled shellos covered in algae moved lazily.
Augustine reached the other side of the rock, facing the open sea, and stood up straight to peer out at the waves.
«Mermaid!» He exclaimed, fiddling with the clasp to open his bag «I brought you a gift! I know you don't trust me yet! It's normal, don't worry! But I'll show you that you can trust me, you'll see!».
From his bag, he pulled out a small plastic surprise, the kind he'd found in potato chips, which he'd tied to a rock.
«Watch out, mermaid!» He exclaimed «I'm about to throw you a gift!».
He pulled back his hand, his shoulder tensed to the max, then threw the stone (and the surprise) with all his might, watching them trace a long, high arc until they hit the water.
Augustine cupped his hands around his mouth.
«That's for you, mermaid!» He shouted «It's all for you! Let me find something too, if you want to exchange gifts!».
He waited for almost an hour, partly because of the wonder he felt as he searched for little creatures on and around the rock, but no mermaids appeared; Augustine then returned to shore.
Martynia was sitting under an umbrella, reading a novel (and occasionally keeping an eye on her little brother to make sure he didn't get hurt or lost).
«I threw a gift to the mermaid» Augustine said proudly, advancing all covered in sand
«Oh yeah? And what gift did you give her?» Martynia sneered
«A plastic baby I found in the chips»
«But you're polluting the sea!» his sister scolded him «I get it, you want to give things to your imaginary friends, but if you really have to, it's better if you make them yourself, with things you find on the beach»
«Did I... did I pollute the sea?» Augustine squeaked, his eyes instantly watering.
Martynia sighed, put down the book, and went to hug her little brother.
«Don't worry, it's just a little plastic toy» She said, stroking his salt-heavy curls «It'll take about a million years to melt. And it can't choke turtles like plastic bags do, so I don't think it's a problem, but don't do it again, okay?»
«Okay» the boy replied, sniffing
«And besides, your mermaid friend might like a little project you made with your own hands a lot more, right? Otherwise, she'll think you're trying to give her the ugly toys you don't want»
«You're right!»
«Don't worry, nothing happened. And then, how do I know? Maybe your mermaid friend might even like this... maybe she has weird tastes»
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Lysandre was a shiny young pistrix. A sliver of curiosity, silver from face to tail, his fins crimson. If Augustine had seen him, he would surely have thought he was a mermaid.
That morning he had wandered toward the beach, hunting for krabbies, when suddenly he saw something fall from the sky and descend before his eyes. A stone? Who threw stones? Perhaps some weird wingull?
Lysandre approached, tail wagging, arms outstretched in front of him, clawing at the sand and looking down. That thing was... too colorful to be just a stone. There was something stuck to it! The young pistrix took the object, turned it over in his hands, untied it with no small amount of difficulty, and tied the piece of string to his wrist: he would need it later. Only later did he analyze the toy.
What was it? It looked like a pistrix, up to the waist, but below its tail it split in two and ended in flat, swollen, red fins. Lysandre had never seen legs, jeans, or shoes.
He decided he would take it home to show his grandmother, who would surely be able to tell him what kind of fish it was.
«It's a human» She said, towering over him, her enormous, bright eyes that, because of her dark head, seemed to float in the darkness of the lair «A statue of a human»
«It fell from the sky» Lysandre explained
«Oh, that's where humans live. They breathe out of the water; they don't have gills»
«And how do they breathe, without gills?»
«They're magical»
«And how do they swim, without a tail? Or dorsal fin»
«They walk, like tripod fish, but they only have two filaments to stand on, instead of three»
«Wow».
Lysandre looked at the toy, its roughly sketched face with large blue eyes, and it seemed to him the most intriguing mystery ever. He would discover, one day, what humans were.ù
His grandmother, tired, went back to sleep, crawling into the dark depths. Blue lights flashed and then died behind her.
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«Mermaid, I'm back with a new gift!» Augustine shouted, standing on the rock «I'm sorry for polluting your home, which is also the home of so many pokémon!»
He opened his bag, then took out a necklace he had made himself, with shells he had collected on the shore, held together with string he had threaded through the holes he had made in each shell. In fact, some of the shells already had holes in them when he found them: a predator, a mollusk from the naticidae family, had "drilled" them using enzymes capable of dissolving calcium carbonate and the use of a robust mouth called a "radula." Augustine was ecstatic to understand why some shells were already perforated.
Martynia certainly knew a lot about predators.
The boy clutched the necklace in his fist, hoping it wouldn't break on impact, and then threw it with all his strength.
«Mermaid!» He shouted «I know you left me nothing because I dirtied your sea! Forgive me! I want to give you another gift, this time one you can use! You can wear it and tell your friends your human friend gave it to you!».
No response from the waves, which today were a little rougher than usual, a little grayer. Augustine waited, waited, waited. Nothing happened.
The boy walked away, thinking of a better gift, of what he could give that mermaid.
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Lysandre found another of those strange things, more or less in the same spot where he'd seen the little statue of the boy fall. They were... shells. Tied together with string, to make them an ornament of some kind.
He picked them up, examining them. Had a human made that? Or a merfolk? Merfolk were more than capable of making such things, but theirs were usually more complicated, and they didn't have shells all different sizes, different colors, without a theme.
Either it was the work of a human... or it was the work of a young man, someone inexperienced.
Lysandre draped it around his neck so he could carry it without keeping his hands busy, then swam up, toward the sky.
His head broke through the waves, a red dot in the gray. There were dark rocks in the distance, but no human being. Who knows if they were real.
And was it right for him to take those things, leaving nothing behind? After thinking about it for a moment, he decided that perhaps it wasn't the right time to show himself yet. Deep down, those humans scared him so much... at least as much as they fascinated him.
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«So, how's it going with your mermaid?» Martynia asked, helping her brother rinsing the sand from his feet with the hose
«She's not answering me»
«Have you thought maybe he doesn't exist?»
«Who?»
«Your mermaid. Maybe she doesn't exist. I mean... we have no proof that mermaids exist»
«The kraken did exist, though. It was a very, very big squid»
«What if your mermaid is just a fish?»
«I like fish! It would be nice, to be friends with an intelligent fish»
«I'll tell mom to buy you an aquarium» Martynia sighed
«Yes, yes, please, yes!».
Augustine forgot about his mermaid for a while: the prospect of receiving a real aquarium was new and exciting, and it wasn't hard to distract himself from a friend hunt where the friend wasn't answering at all.
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Lysandre swam back and forth, sifting the sand with his eyes and hands. Nothing, there was nothing new.
It seemed the humans hadn't lef any object this time. But then, did these humans really exist? Or was it just a story his grandmother had told him? A legend... maybe that figurine had been made by other pistrix, or by merfolk.
He didn't believe in these things until he saw them. They were fables for fry smaller than himself: stories of land monsters, walking on dry land, intelligent like pistrix, gifted with magical powers. He had told his brothers about them: they didn't believe it either.
Lysandre lifted his head out of the water and looked at the golden line of the beach in the distance, where the waves crashed. There was no one there except the wingulls. He turned and headed back, toward the depths.
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Augustine climbed up the rock, careful not to knock his bag against the rocks.
«Mermaid... maybe you don't want to be my friend» He said when he reached the point furthest out to sea «Or maybe you don't exist» he chuckled «It's not your fault if you don't exist. But I wanted to give you one last thing... one last thing. Because, if you do exist, I don't want to be your friend so you can give me my gifts back. I just wanted to talk. I'll give you the gifts».
He opened his bag, slowly, methodically, and took out a velvet bag. He loosened the drawstrings and let some colored glass marbles slip into his hand, inside which were visible the images of some of his favorite cartoon characters. He had bought them with the money he had saved from doing chores around the house, and he would have liked to keep them, but he thought it more honorable to give them to a friend (even if she didn't exist) rather than keep them for himself.
He hoped, deep in his heart, that a sacrifice, a true sacrifice, would finally make the mermaid appear.
With all his strength, Augustine threw the marbles, which scattered and sank into the water like projectiles.
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Lysandre, a few meters deep, raised his head. What was that sound? He saw, not far away, objects sinking. Objects fallen from the sky.
He waded as fast as he could, peering through the sand, moving a pair of struggling hermit krabbies, and grabbed one of the transparent spheres. It was beautiful. Inside was a creature he had never seen before, a kind of blastoise, but red, with a longer snout and horns (obviously, he had never seen a charizard).
He searched for more, his hands pressed against the sand, raking the bottom. There they were! Transparent spheres, they seemed to have been made with magic, each containing a colorful image. How had they managed to put an image inside a sphere? And those objects seemed solid as rock!
Lysandre searched and searched until he was convinced he had found them all. Then, like a bolt of lightning, he remembered: they had fallen from the sky!
Swimming like a madman, he broke the surface of the water, the crest of his dorsal fin pointing skyward, vibrating with excitement. That's when he saw him: he was moving away, it was a human. He was tiny! With a dark mane, a shoulder bag, and... legs. They were real, they were real! Magic existed!
Lysandre didn't know what to say. Paralyzed, he watched the little guy go. He couldn't even scream: above the water, his voice didn't travel as easily, it came out faint, it came out wrong, the human would never hear him.
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«So, did your mermaid show up this time?» Martynia asked, sipping a juice while playing Tetris on her phone with her other hand
«No. Maybe you're right and she doesn't exist»
«Maybe. Or maybe she's just very shy. Maybe that's why mermaids are so hard to see»
«Come on» Augustine laughed, a little bitterly «I'm not four anymore»
«Sorry. You're right»
«Maybe mermaids don't even live so close to the coast»
«Uh. It's true, maybe they're in the deep»
«But I know there's a really deep depression, not far from here. Maybe we'll go there someday?»
«Oh, I'm sure Mom will take us if we ask»
«Great!»
«Until then, mermaids will remain a mystery, like the sea» Taking a deep breath, Martynia turned toward the water, ready to say something philosophical, but what came out was «What is THAT?!».
Augustine turned. The thing was too far away to make out, but she could see a tall red crest, a fin, sticking out of the water like an antenna, and emerging from... a head... that looked almost human.
«THE MERMAID!» Augustine shouted.
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Lysandre looked back, her heart pounding in her throat. «THE MERMAID!» The little human had shouted, in perfectly understandable French, like the one they spoke at home. So they were smart! And not only were they smart (and probably magical), but they were also warning him: there was a mermaid nearby.
She probably wanted to attack him.
The young pistrix didn't have time to say thank you, but dived as quickly as he could, swimming home, his mouth open, his heart almost aching. Thank goodness the little human had warned him! By the ocean, a mermaid!
He would never return to that part of the coast: he knew all too well that, if he was spotted, they would come hunting him again. He was sorry he would never see the human again, but now he knew they were real.
His grandmother was right.
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«The sea gives, the sea takes» said Augustine, sitting on the sand, his little legs stretched out in front of him and his eyes sparkling.
Martynia laughed.
«It was you that gave her all those gifts. And maybe she was just a fish»
«I gave her the gifts, but she...»
«She took them»
«... She's a mermaid, or a fish, and I saw her» Augustine smiled, as if he were a grown man, deeply satisfied with having climbed Everest, or been the first man on the moon «In a friendship, it doesn't matter who takes or who gives, right? And we'll be friends forever»
