False Mermaid

She thought of the book she’d stolen from the library, and began to imagine its story played out on this beach. She could almost see the strange seal woman being rowed to shore by the fisherman, helping him to pull up the boat, going home with him and becoming his wife. She tried to summon an image of how exactly someone changed from seal to human. Did it hurt to slip from your sealskin? Was it as simple as taking off clothes, or was it messier and more complicated—like that film she’d seen once on television, of a calf being born? All that icky wetness had made her feel strange. She tried to picture a woman oozing from a sealskin, strange and slippery, her new skin underneath as pale and tender as a newborn baby’s. If you got your old skin again, like the boy’s mother did in the story, how exactly would you go about putting it back on? What if it didn’t fit? The book hadn’t bothered to explain any of that.

The weather was warm here, not at all what she’d imagined. She sat down on a flat rock and removed her shoes and socks, then stood at the water’s edge and closed her eyes, putting her hands to her face and tasting the salt and seaweed on her fingers. There was no mistaking it now. This beach was just like the ones in her dreams. The ones where she walked with the red-haired stranger out into the water, out past the rocks and down through swaying seaweed to where the sea people carried on, safe in their secret, hidden world. She had seen it all in her dreams.

Nora shielded her eyes to watch two huge brown sea eagles flapping and fighting over something at the edge of the precipice. She had been watching Elizabeth explore, but her attention had been pulled away for a moment by the birds. When she looked back to where she’d last spied the child, all that remained was a pair of empty shoes and socks. Elizabeth was walking out into the water. Waves were breaking at her chest, now over her shoulders, and all at once, her head disappeared behind a rising swell.

Nora stripped off her pack and began to run, the round stones slowing her progress. It felt as if she were moving through some awful dream. Finally she splashed into the shallows, and flung herself into the waves, head down and arms churning, until she felt the wake of Elizabeth’s flailing limbs. “Put your arms around my neck,” she shouted. She felt the child’s sharp elbow deliver a solid blow to her cheekbone. Somehow she managed to hang on through an exploding field of stars. “It’s all right—I’ve got you. Just hold tight.”

With one arm, she clasped the child to her side and took long, even strokes with the other until they finally reached a spot shallow enough to stand up. She seized Elizabeth by the arms. “What the hell were you doing out there? Do you not know how dangerous it is—”

She watched the child’s huge eyes fill with tears. “Please don’t be frightened, Lizzabet. I’m not angry with you, love, I promise. I was just scared, that’s all. If anything were to happen to you—” She felt Elizabeth begin to shiver. “Promise me you won’t wander off like that again. Will you promise?”

Elizabeth nodded. Nora looked around, spotting a ruined cottage just above the beach. “Come on, let’s get out of the wind.”

They made their way up the steep bank to an abandoned house. A fisherman’s cottage, Nora thought, as they crossed the threshold. Decaying nets hung from the roof beams. There was a washbasin beside the back door, and a rude sideboard with bits of broken crockery and piles of limpet shells stacked where cups and saucers had been. The little light that pierced the room came from a gaping hole in the roof at the far corner of the house, and the relentless wind that came through shattered windows had reduced the curtains to gray tatters, airy as cobwebs.

She settled Elizabeth on a low chair beside the hearth. The child still shivered violently. As her eyes grew accustomed to the light inside, Nora could see that the abandoned house was strangely intact—furniture, candles, bedclothes, even a pipe on the mantel. The effect of everything left in place was quite eerie, as if the occupants had simply walked away. She spied a basket beside the hearth and opened the lid. “There’s a little turf in here. I’m going to try building a fire.” Gathering a few handfuls of straw from a ruined mattress and a candle stub for a firelighter, she dug in her pack for a couple of strike-anywhere matches and managed to get a small blaze going, astonished that the ancient peat was still dry enough to burn. She beckoned to Elizabeth to come closer. They sat in small chairs pulled up to the fire, and Nora alternated rubbing Elizabeth’s arms with blowing on the meager flame.

“D-does s-s-somebody live here?” Elizabeth asked through chattering teeth.