Short story: Mermaid Graveyard

Something other than life here… An elegy for the ocean

Come down to the water, gather on the shore and listen. I have been swimming these seas for a thousand years and have much to tell you.

Tide follows tide, water ebbs and flows, and I dive to stir the depths with my arms. I glide over coral gardens, the marine forest, mouths of giant clams trapping sunlight in shallow water. A flick of my tail and the current changes. I scatter seahorses and darting silver darlings, iridescent rainbows speckling seaweed pastures. I hunt for pearls in underwater caverns and rest, suspended in rising bubbles inside my endless silent world.

A turtle glides past and greets me with a slow blink. He knows me well. I have been swimming these seas for a thousand years.

But, hark. Today, the water is different. There are things other than life down here; things that bowl along the ocean floor, cluster in filthy flotillas, snaring and tearing fins and tails, and choking sandpipers on the shore.

I stretch out my fingers and dare myself to touch slithering bubbling rags, bobbing alien vessels, the tangled twine of the fisher-people, fake and unbelonging in the water.

And I don’t belong either.

I push for the surface and break through the surf. Noise and violence crowds the space above. The calls of seabirds like grinding machines, the crashing and breaking of waves over bare-toothed rocks. Two fathoms below I am weightless, and all is without sound. But up here, salty air punishes me. The sun burns, a fierce glare. Rotting fish, a shoal-full, slip by belly-up and with eyes like glass.

I head for the shallows and drag myself ashore, inch by inch, my fingernails raking sand. Waves haul me back, crashing over my head and along my spine, tugging at my body, lashing my tail. But the tide, no longer my home, gives up on me and spits me out.

Beached like wreckage on the gritty strand, I’m whipped by the winds and my scales dry stiff. Breathing air feels like suffocation but somewhere inside I find my voice—rich, full, and low, blossoming in my throat—and I send my song to you down the shore, the notes and incantation rising. I must lure you, and I must bear witness.

Come down to the water, gather on the shore and listen. I have much to tell.

My lament fades and I wait for you.

I have been told that the earth is green, and the sea is blue. But stranded here, on this desolate shore, the sand burns and the beach is barren. The sun desiccates, and I long for it to set. I’ve heard tales of this arid coast, littered with whale bones and empty turtle shells. Something other than life here.

At last, you arrive, amassed, and silenced. You look like you understand but I know you’ll look away, eventually. For you always thought the earth is green and the sea is blue, but you don’t realise that the sea is all the colours, all the life, all at once.

You walk away, the long night falls, and darkness sinks into the water. The distant moon pulls a pale path across the surface. The sea is black, invisible, and yet something is being born from the waves: the little blunt snout of the turtle.

He makes his last visit to the land, jerking his steady way up the beach with a yoke of plastic around his neck. I watch his progress for a while, then, beaten and drowning in air, press my face to the sand.

This story first appeared in Seaside Gothic issue six: Pelagic Grip (April 2023)

For more tales, non fiction and poetry from the water’s edge, click here Seaside Gothic

Image: Naja Bertolt Jensen/Unsplash