“Don’t go near the edge.”
It’s what my dad always told me, whenever we went sailing. Out for fish, and it started off just me and him, father and daughter, but eventually he had to sell the boat and join a fishing consortium instead. Me, and him, and a dozen others, and the two of us started working further apart – me, climbing up into the rigging to tend to the ropes and sails. Another rigger, a young lad, was up there too, and the rest had various jobs.
I honestly don’t really know what they all did because I wasn’t really a sailor, but even while the years changed and the grey started to come into dad’s beard, as we went from just us to being two amongst thirty, as he went from being my captain to being first officer under a joyfully boisterous woman who captained the larger ship, he always warned me of the same.
“Don’t go near the edge,” he’d repeat whenever we had a chance to spend time together on the ship. The two of us alone had sailed out for a day or two at a time. The larger ship usually went out for a week or more, and we’d have mealtimes together most often.
There were lots of reasons. Storms. Winds. The way the ship would heel over. Tripping, slipping, sliding – all of the reasons added up to the same: the water. Just the list of the many different ways you could end up in there.
That was what I’d thought, at least.
Every time he said it – “don’t go near the edge” – I’d nod, when I was a kid. As I started to grow older and thought I was clever, I’d try to finish the warning for him.
“Don’t go near the edge,” he’d start, and I’d cut him off before he could get any further (although he never would get any further).
“-I could trip, and fall in, I know,” I’d answer with a roll of my eyes, and every time he’d shake his head with a chuckle.
“No,” he’d murmur. “That’s not why.”
I thought it was a joke about the one specific action, because the real danger was the water. I’d say “trip”, but of course the tripping wasn’t what was dangerous. It was the water. I’d say a gust could knock the ship off her level keel, but again that wasn’t dangerous. The water was. It was a running joke, and as time on shore started to mean suitors vying for my hand I found myself wanting more and more to spend time onboard the ship.
Away from them.
“Don’t go near the edge.” Half-asleep and slung over my shoulder as I helped him back to the cabin, the words barely tumbled out of my dad’s mouth, but they were enough for me to hear – even through his tongue’s thickness with a night’s celebratory whiskey, and even through my ears’ fuzziness with the same.
“I know,” I chuckled. “Drunk as I am I’ll prob’ly fall ass over teakettle right in! Swear the ship never swayed this much before.”
Dad, who’d had a good twice or maybe three times as much as me to drink, snorted a heavy laugh. “Nah,” he shook his head, like a giant hound trying to dry itself off after getting splashed. “S’not the reason. S’not the water gets you, girl. S’what’s underneath.”
“Und-” I felt my gut twist a little, and a breath of chilled night air felt especially cold all at once. Of course underneath the water was the actual dangerous part. Being up at the surface wasn’t dangerous. You didn’t start drowning until you slipped underneath.
Smirk coming to my lips, I hoisted him up a little more on my shoulder and twisted to look him in the eye so I could see the amused twinkle there as we stepped our long-running joke one more notch into complexity as we had for so long – it felt like a rite of passage, a coming of age thing. Like I was graduating through life, one stage of a lifelong silly joke at a time.
There wasn’t any twinkle in his eye, though. Something else. A fear. I couldn’t guess what of, though.
“I’ve seen them,” he whispered, swallowing as heavily as he had at the whiskey earlier. “Once.”
That was all he said, refusing to speak more and snoring loudly in his bunk after we got back, while I tried to fight off confusion and chills and a twice-churned gut, once for fear and once for liquor. In the morning, he laughed it off.
“Can’t even recall it.” One of his thick and calloused hands waved away my questions like they were flies around a cow. “Probably poking some fun at you, is all. It’s just ‘cause the water’s dangerous, is all, and-”
“Yeah, I-” I cut him off with a stuttering laugh, shaking my own head. “I know.”
Grinning, with that same twinkle he always had in his eye, he nodded. “Don’t go near the edge.”
I couldn’t help but see a hint of that fear behind it, though, after the night’s liquor-lubricated confession. Something he was so afraid of he couldn’t even be honest about it with me.
Maybe even with himself.
The thought came back to me from time to time as we set back in to shore and I stayed with the ship, cleaning and repairing and trying to ignore the suitors who went so far as to come out to the docks to try to offer me things: chocolates, trinkets, necklaces. They called out from the dock, tossed flowers onto the decks, insisted they’d never budge until I paid them the honour of accepting their affection.
“Suppose you should consider yourself lucky there’s so many?” The other rigger, the captain’s son who was nearly my age himself but had thankfully never pestered me like that, looked at me with a chuckle as we hung up in the ropes near the top of the mast and replaced one of the pulleys.
“Suppose I should,” I grumbled, “but that’s presuming I consider them good to start with! Fish in the hold, aye, lucky to have more of them. Holes in the hull? Ha! These lot are more the latter than former!”
He snorted a laugh and I giggled along, and every glint of the sun across the waves had my eyes trying to pierce their depths.
It was three days later we headed out again, for what was to be one of the last sailings of the season. The weather was slightly on the turn, but not properly bad yet – in a hope to have more reliable income, we’d put out some crab pots, and this was to be our first time harvesting them.
The ship wasn’t really designed for the shallows, I suppose. I hadn’t thought it was that shallow, but up in the rigging looking down I could see some through the water. Could see lighter patches showing sandbars, that could shift over time with the tides, all around where our buoys bobbed.
Down on the decks, the men and newfound women (at least, historically new) of the crew started hauling in the pots, reaching out with long hooks on poles to nab the buoys up and pull their attached baskets onboard – pulling out the catch, baiting them, tossing them back in again.
We didn’t have as much to do, but one of the sails had caught a little as we’d unfurled it leaving harbour, so he and I had climbed up the rigging and worked to repair the patch that had rubbed through before the hole got any bigger.
Apparently, he’d misjudged how much of the thick waxed thread we used was in his bag, because he ran out after two minutes, needle held between his teeth as blush slowly spread through his cheeks.
“I’ll get more,” I sighed, doing my best to sound very weary and disrupted by the whole thing. The better to tease him, of course.
As I touched down on the decks again, of course I stayed away from the edge. It was dangerous – the edge, the water, under the water, it didn’t matter. It was dangerous, so I stayed away.
Good thing, too, as a jostling lurch shot through the ship.
“Sandbar!” A cry from the aft went up, and another – louder, but not in the form of any words – came from above.
As I looked up, I could see him falling out of the rigging. Off of the side, a massive splash going up as my eyes widened and my heart clenched. I didn’t even think about it.
I leapt in.
I knew how to swim, quite well even if I only ever swam in the harbour or in the lakes and rivers, but I also knew he was likely to’ve been hurt or knocked out outright by the fall. The impact. Water gets hard from a height. Couldn’t just throw him a line or a ring, because he might be in no shape to grab it.
That was about all the time I had to think as I leapt, aiming myself for the still frothed patch of water and the dark shape below it.
My arms wrapped around him, my shoulder striking him fairly firm and making a noise lurch out but that was alright – meant he was still alive – and I quickly shifted him into one arm alone and dragged the other back toward the air, kicking with my legs. He was limp and heavy, and I hadn’t had much practice swimming holding someone else, but I managed and within a few seconds I broke the surface and gasped in air again.
The ship was about fifty feet away or more, coming around in a circle with crewmembers at the sides and they threw out a ring for me. It landed about twenty feet off and I lurched out toward it with all the strength I could manage, trying to hold him up enough to breathe although I didn’t know what way his mouth was pointed.
It was all going fine until something pulled him back under. Something caught on his leg maybe, or a shark or something like that – I managed to keep my arm’s grip around him but that jerked me under the surface as well and I didn’t have time to breathe, just let out a tiny yelp. I yanked back against whatever it had been and must have pulled him free, because the air returned and I was close enough to catch the ring.
They started pulling us in, and I tried to get him through the ring a little. Stuffed one of his limp arms in and he groaned, not completely out of it but not really in it either, and with the ring floating us I had an opportunity to take a nice deep breath. One that I planned to use to tell him not to ever do that again.
I didn’t get the chance.
Water replace air in an instant, so swift I couldn’t even react; I was above, and then I was below, twisting around like I was caught in a maelstrom but it wasn’t – not thrown around by a storm or by a vicious shark’s teeth, but as if by hands, and then just as suddenly as it started, it stopped.
Two hands, clutching me by the upper arms, but I was still below water and my eyes opened out of confusion to see another face looking back at me.
Not exactly human.
Not exactly not.
Greenish-blue skin, a little darker in the cheeks and looking smooth like dolphin skin was. She had dark eyes but they reflected in a way, like opals I’d seen through shop windows, blue and green and orange shimmering in their depths, and her parted lips showed long sharp teeth like I’d expect from any fish – she wasn’t a fish, obviously, but a glance down showed she had some aspects of one with a powerful-looking scaly tail despite the very human-like hands she held my arms with.
She. I presumed as much, at least, because of what was between her face and her tail, first catching my eye and then making me look sharply away with my cheeks heating in the lukewarm water which was suddenly uncomfortably hot.
No shirts underneath the waves, I suppose.
A brief, tiny moment of incomprehension and stillness came out of the chaos, and her hands on my arms loosened their grip as she swallowed. “Oh. I… I didn’t know there were- ones like you up there.”
My eyes widened a little further. Like me? She was a mermaid, a siren, something like that, and she was in disbelief? I shook my head – then, pointing to my mouth and the surface, I grunted as best I could without letting any air out.
“Y-yeah uh sorry, sorry I-” She shook her head, long dark green hair waving; it seemed thick, slick and glossy like slender but smooth kelp, and my eyes caught on the sunlight reflecting off of it for a moment as she gave me a push toward the surface. “So sorry. Um.”
Only as I gasped air again did I realize how very odd it was that she had been able to speak. All at once I heard plenty more though, crew voices shouting out – my father’s chief amongst them – and another ring was thrown, and they hauled me in swiftly to lay gasping on my back on the decks beside the other rigger who was sluggishly recovering from being stunned.
“Oh g-” my father pulled me half upright, wrapping his arms tightly enough around me that I might as well have been underwater again. “I was so worried! What happened? And how many times do I have to tell you, don’t go near-”
“-the edge, yeah,” I croaked with a weak laugh. “You know, I always thought you were full of it before. I believe you now.”
The crew laughed, and so did he, and I shuffled over to lean back against a crate and focus on breathing with the occasional pause to cough out some water, but my eyes kept stealing back over toward the water.
Back toward the edge.
That night, I waited until my dad’s snores were loud and rhythmic, with rising tension inside me. Fear. Excitement. The rest of the day, nobody had let me work, insisting I rest and recuperate, and it had left me a lot of time to think.
Not that that had done much.
Every time I’d closed my eyes, I’d seen hers again, colours shifting in their inky depths; every time I tried to think about something, anything, it would get interrupted by the way her lips had shifted when she’d spoken. They way she’d looked. The way she’d spoken, the fact that she’d spoken, what she’d said.
The apologies. The way her hand had rested in the small of my back as she’d pushed me back up toward the air.
Of course, I didn’t want anyone thinking I was crazy, so I didn’t go around saying I’d seen a mermaid, but how was I supposed to think about anything else?
How was I meant to focus on anything other than her?
It made me feel tight in the chest to do. A shifting squirm worked its way through my gut, slowly spreading throughout the day, and bringing with it a twitchiness to my muscles and a spreading warmth. I fidgeted constantly, picking at my fingernails or playing with my thumbs, chewing on my lip, and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know what was happening – I’d heard of siren’s songs before, of course, but she hadn’t really sang to me.
She’d spoken, though.
My dad’s snores pulled me out of the thoughts, and it should’ve been a cool night but I hadn’t been able to bear having a blanket over myself in my bunk. Warm enough to be lightly sweating, but also shivering as if I’d come down with the chills. I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew one thing: I wanted to know more.
Maybe I’d even be able to.
Slowly, I pulled myself out of my bunk, and the creaking of it was only a drop in the bucket of the ship’s general creaking anyway. I crept out between sleeping men and women in hammocks of their own – there’d been a time when women had been considered bad luck on ships, of course, but I was glad it was starting to change. Some of the folks back at port still made a big stink about it, of course. Maybe even most of them.
As a matter of fact, we were the only crew of a larger ship I knew of that I could have even sailed on.
Step by step, I snuck out through the sleeping quarters to the deck, and my heart hammered harder with each one. Every instinct in me except for one I couldn’t name told me to turn around, to head back to bed, not to go toward the edge, but I went anyway.
Ropes hung over the ship’s sides, ready to be tossed to dockhands or hanging down in the event that someone went overboard, and I was well-practiced at climbing lines like that. Down was as easy as up, maybe even easier, and something in my gut clenched up very hard as I hung in the ropes and looked down at the water’s surface easily within reach. The ship sat still, at anchor as the winds had died down toward evening, and I peered into the depths.
Hoping.
Nothing but the night’s darkness greeted me, nothing but the moon’s reflection over the water’s unsteady surface, distorted and disturbed and it felt like every ripple shot through me as well. Like they were in my gut and my chest and my very mind, in my thoughts. I felt like I was trembling, all throughout, as I reached out my hand.
Gingerly, I stroked at the water’s surface. Cautiously, I slipped my hand under and wiggled my fingers. Gently, I swished back and forth a few times, holding my breath behind my teeth.
When I felt webbed fingers interlace with mine, a squeak escaped my nose.
Her face surfaced alongside my hand, close enough I could’ve stretched out my thumb and stroked her cheek and the realization of that made my heart clench almost painfully in my chest. Eyelids closed on her face, but clear ones, and I thanked the stars for that so I could still see the gorgeous colours of her eyes.
My breath slowly leaked out of me, and brought a soft laugh as it did, which jogged me into action. “I-I um.” I cleared my throat with a soft frown, warmth flooding my cheeks, and for all the thinking I’d done, I hadn’t really planned much.
I’d thought lots about how to get there. When people took watch, where they tended to congregate, how long it would take my dad to fall asleep enough that he wouldn’t notice me leaving. I’d thought a lot about how I could hopefully get down to the water’s edge to see her again.
…I hadn’t really planned what to say.
“I- I…” I shook my head softly, and I couldn’t seem to look away from her eyes. All I’d been thinking about was her, not what to do, but that did give me kind of the perfect answer. The perfect thing to say.
“I didn’t know there were ones like you down there,” I giggled softly, and saw her eyes widen slightly at the words. Saw her cheeks darken, felt her hand in mine twitch a little and suddenly became very aware of that: of our hands, fingers intertwined, holding at one another.
One thing was sure: I knew I’d be spending a lot more time at the edge.
I hope you liked this short story! Feel free to leave any comments below! <3
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