“Now don’ scare the girl,” someone shouted at him, and “girl” had too many syllables.
The red-bearded, big-bellied man laughed and looked at Jill. “I don’t think ya scare easily. Do ya?” Jill set her chin and shook her head. He bellowed with laughter and said, “See!”
So he set her on a stool beside him, and the tavern quieted down, and the man began to tell his story.
* * *
“Once upon a time,” he said, “there was a wee fishin’ village that sat next to the wide black sea, in the shadow of some high green hills.”
“They’re mountains!” someone shouted.
“Me foot!” called someone else, and everybody laughed.
“In the shadow of high green hills,” the red-bearded man repeated, smiling, and his Rs rolled like rowboats on the ocean. “And in this wee town there was a wee lass. Just about the size of ye,” and he poked Jill in the chest with a thick finger. Reluctantly, Jill smiled.
“Well, this lass loved the sea,” he continued. “She would go out and stare at it, drinkin’ in its vastness and its darkness, as if the black waves made some kind of mirror where she could see herself. At least, that’s what the villagers whispered to one another as they watched her, with the wind blowin’ her hair this way and that, at the end of the rocks.”
The tavern had gone silent now. Someone began to snuff out the candles, one by one, until the only light came from the flickering peat fire. The hairs on Jill’s arms began to rise and stand up.
“But thas not what the lass was looking at. She weren’t lookin’ at nothin’. She were listenin’. Listenin’ to the song of the mermaid.”
“I knew it!” someone shouted. “The man’s obsessed with the mermaid!”
“Shhhh!” hushed all the others. And the red-bearded man went on.
“The mermaid sings more beautiful than any mortal has ever heard. Her notes rise like gulls on the wind, and sink like the moon sinks into the sea. She holds ’em high, and sings ’em way down low, like the very sea itself. But no mortal can hear them save a young girl. And no young girl can ever resist their sound.
“Well, one day, the mermaid spoke to that little girl, her hair bein’ blown ’round, way out on the rocks. And the mermaid asked if the little girl wouldna like to come and live with her under the sea. And the little girl said she would. Well, tha’ night, as we sat here in this tavern, we looked out the window and saw a great black wave rise up out o’ the sea. And that wave swallowed the wee lass whole. And we ne’er saw her again. And that’s the truth.”
The tavern was silent now.
At last, Jill whispered, “Is that really the truth?”
“We don’t know,” the innkeeper said. “We did a lose a lass in the sea years ago. But all this mermaid stuff? That’s just a tale told.”
“It’s true enough!” the red-bearded man said. “There is a mermaid out there. I’ve seen her.”
“Have ye heard her?” someone asked.
“No, she sings only to the little girls,” said the man. “But she’s out there all righ’.”
“And how do you know it was she that took the girl and not jus’ the sea?”
“I know,” said the bearded man darkly. “I jus’ know.”
After that, the people of the tavern filed out into the pitch blackness, wending their way over stones and dirt to their homes that climbed the sides of the hills. Jill followed them out and watched them go. She watched the red-bearded man particularly. She saw that he lived all alone, in a small hut that stood closer to the rocks and the sea than any of the other villagers.
Jill wondered about the little girl who had disappeared. She wondered if she liked it under the sea, with the mermaids. She went up to her room, wanting to tell Jack the story. But he was still asleep. As was the frog, who was snoring ridiculously. She decided not to wake them.
The windows were like walls it was so black out. No moon, no stars, no light at all. The wind rattled the door on its hinges, and the sea spumed and tossed. Jill, lying on her little bed of straw, could hear the crash of the waves against the craggy rocks. She had never felt such a night, never known the fear and thrill of lying so close to sea and wild. Her body sang. She could not sleep.
* * *
Late, late that night, when the wind had died down and the crash of the waves on the rocks had subsided into a calm, rhythmic beat, Jill sat up in bed. Just above the sound of the waves, she heard a high note, held for an impossibly long time.
A weather vane, Jill thought. It must be the creaking of a weather vane.
The note fell—no, it swooned, as if fainting. Then it rose again, running in and out of the beating waves like a flute among a slow, funerary pulse of drums. Jill lay back down. Just a weather vane. Or hinges, creaking.
She lay in bed, listening to the long, plaintive sound. It stretched out across the darkness, and in the corners of the night it seemed to wrap into a pattern of words. Yes, Jill thought as she stared at the ceiling and listened. The notes had words. She sat up again and tried to hear them. She did hear them.
Come, come, where heartache’s never been, the song went.
And where you’re seen as you want to be seen.
Come, come, the place of shadow and green,
Where you’ll never cry no more, dear lass,
Where you’ll never cry no more.
Slowly, Jill got up from the bed and walked to the window. She looked out onto the empty, ghostly town. The dirt road led down to the rocks, where the water splashed black and white in spouting spumes. The sea was as dark as anything she had ever seen, but the obsidian waves shone white as they crested and caught the light of the moon now rising. Jill shivered. Again she listened to the word-like sounds.
Come, come, where heartache’s never been.
And where you’re seen as you want to be seen.
Come, come, the place of shadow and green,
Where you’ll never cry no more, dear lass,
Where you’ll never cry no more.
It was no weather vane. It was a song—sung by a voice unlike any Jill had ever heard. Like a gull rising on the wind, or the moon sinking into the sea.
She turned to see if the song had woken Jack. But he slept on, heavy and senseless to the music amid the black, still night.
Suddenly, she shook her head and laughed at herself. It’s the villagers, she realized. Playing a joke on me. Tomorrow they’ll ask me if I heard something strange in the night, she thought. Just wait and see.
She got back in bed. It was a haunting voice, whomever it belonged to. The voice of a girl, Jill thought. She listened to the words: where heartache’s never been; where you’re seen as you want to be seen; where you’ll never cry no more. As Jill slept that night, she dreamed of such a place, a place of shadow and green.
* * *
In the morning, the innkeeper rapped loudly on the bedroom door. “Up! Work!” she shouted.
Jill sat straight up in bed. She looked over at Jack. He smiled wanly at her.
“Hi,” he said weakly.
She leaped up and threw her arms around him.
“Sorry,” he said. “for being so stupid, up there in the clouds.”
“It’s all right,” Jill laughed.
“No it isn’t!” said the frog.
“Wish I could help with your work,” Jack said. His voice was thin and tired.
“You rest,” Jill smiled. And then she said, “Did you hear music last night? Singing?” Jack shook his head. Jill shrugged. “You slept heavily.”
“I didn’t hear anything either,” said the frog.
“You were snoring your head off,” Jill replied. She went downstairs.
All day, no villager said a word about any song in the night. As the townspeople gathered for dinner and drinking that eveni
ng, Jill tried to detect hidden smiles, or signs of a communal jest. But there were none.
* * *
That night, as she lay in bed, she heard the song again. She looked over at Jack. He was sound asleep. The frog was buried under the covers, but she could make out his even breathing as well, in tiny syncopation with Jack’s.
The song reverberated through the timbers of the old inn. Jill covered her head with a straw pillow and tried to ignore it.
A minute later, Jill was out of bed. She slipped silently down the creaky wooden steps of the inn, out the door, and guided her bare feet down the dirt path to the rocky shore. In front of her, the waves heaved against the crags of rock, shooting their white foam high into the black air. But off to the right, down a little ways from the village, there was a calmer spot, where the water rolled into and spiraled away from a ten-foot-wide rock harbor. Jill walked out there. Above her, the night was clear and very cold, and the stars twinkled sharply. Jill came to the little harbor. She felt faint spray on her face and smelled the heavy salt of the sea. And she heard the song.
Come, come, where heartache’s never been.
And where you’re seen as you want to be seen.
Come, come, the place of shadow and green,
Where you’ll never cry no more, dear lass,
Where you’ll never cry no more.
She sat down on the black rocks of the little harbor—it would have looked like a wide crescent bay to a toy ship—and she watched the rolling foam swirl in and away. And then, rising out of the sea, sending shivers up and down her back, green as the ocean by day and black as the ocean by night and capped by white foam and moonlight, came a mermaid.
* * *
That’s right, folks. A real live mermaid.
Don’t ask me. I’m just telling it like it was.
* * *
The mermaid placed her body on a flat stone just a little way into the tiny harbor. Her body—at least, all of her body that Jill could see—was beautiful and naked. Halfway down her moonlight-hued back, green fish scales, lined with shadow, began. Her eyes were black and green with no whites at all. Her hair was the color of the night water reflecting the moon. The singing had stopped. Jill stared.
“A beautiful, beautiful girl,” the mermaid said, her eyes so wide set and luminous she looked like a creature from a dream, “You are a beautiful, beautiful girl.” Jill was unable to answer her.
“Yet you are sad,” the mermaid said, and then she gasped, and her shoulders contracted as if in pain. “So sad! Beautiful girl, what could cause you such pain?”
The wind off the sea blew the spray into Jill’s eyes and face, and her hair whipped around her like a rope on a sail. “How can you tell that I’m sad?” Jill asked, and she felt that she was shivering.
The mermaid looked at her with those wide, black and green eyes. “I come from a place where there was once no sadness. Now that I know sadness, I feel it too strongly to be borne. Tell me, beautiful girl, tell me: why are you so sad?”
Jill looked down. The mermaid said, “Something to do with your mother,” and it was not a question. There was a pause in which only the crashing waves spoke. “Let us talk about other things,” said the mermaid.
So they did. They talked about the mountains, and the stars, and the sea. And after a while, Jill began to feel better.
Jill looked up and saw the first streaks of pink in the sky out over the ocean. The mermaid felt them without seeing them. “I must go,” the mermaid said. “But come tomorrow if you like. We will talk some more.”
“Yes,” Jill said, “I would love to come. Thank you.”
The mermaid smiled. She was about to slide down the rock and back into the sea when she said, “Jill, do not tell the villagers that you spoke to me. There is one who would harm me if he could.”
Jill stared at the beautiful creature. Who could ever want to harm her? She nodded. “I will not tell. I promise.”
* * *
The next morning Jill slipped out of her room with no more than a syllable to Jack, and all day she was unable to keep her mind on her work. She dropped two glasses to the floor and then cut her hand as she cleaned up the shards. The innkeeper spoke to her sternly about her carelessness. Jill just wanted night to come.
At last, the villagers had gone home. Jill went to her bedroom.
“Did you break two glasses today?” Jack asked as she walked in. “That’s what it sounded like from up here.”
“I just want to go to sleep,” Jill said sharply. Jack looked surprised, and then away. The frog stared at Jill.
Jill got into bed and turned her back to Jack. “How are you doing?” she asked without feeling.
“Fine,” Jack said as he blew out the oil lamp by his bed. He didn’t sound fine. He sounded angry. Jill didn’t care.
* * *
She waited until she heard the first note of the mermaid’s song, checked that Jack was indeed breathing softly and evenly, and then hurried straight down to the little harbor. As she hurried, she sang along with the mermaid:
Come, come, where heartache’s never been.
And where you’re seen as you want to be seen.
Come, come, the place of shadow and green,
Where you’ll never cry no more, dear lass,
Where you’ll never cry no more.
When the mermaid rose out of the sea and onto the rock, Jill marveled at her moonlit body, her blacks, her greens, her eyes, her hair.
“There is my beautiful friend,” said the mermaid. Jill shook her head in the strong wind, but smiled anyway.
“Mermaid,” Jill said, “you told me last night that you came from a place where there was once no sadness. Is there sadness there now?”
“Yes,” replied the mermaid.
“But why?”
“Do you remember,” the mermaid asked, “that I told you there was one who would harm me if he could?”
“Yes.”
“Once upon a time,” she said, “there were seven sisters who lived beneath these waves. I was the youngest. Each of my sisters was more beautiful than the last, and each more kind and more good. We would rise up on this rock and sing to the people of this village, and they loved us. Indeed, there was a little girl who loved us more than anything, and she wanted to live with us, down in the dark and green sea, where there is no sadness. You see, her mother had died of a great sickness, and she was left alone with her cruel father. When she asked if she could come to live with us instead, we told her no. A little girl, we thought, should live with her kind above the waves. But then we learned that she too was sick, and if she stayed in the village she would surely die. So we relented, and one night she joined us, and then there were eight sisters.
“But her father was furious with us. He cast a net and caught my oldest sister and cut her throat, so her blood, dark and green, flowed over her beautiful smooth skin. Some weeks later, he caught my second eldest sister in his net, and again he cut her throat and spilled her dark green blood. Again and again he caught my sisters, until at last there were only me and his daughter left, living here under the sea.
“The little girl was so sorry for what her father had done that she became sick with grief. After seven days and seven nights of pining, she died from her sadness.”
The mermaid’s wide-set eyes and moon-hued lips looked like they might burst with sorrow. But she said no more.
“That’s terrible,” Jill cried. “Oh, it’s awful, it’s awful!” Suddenly, her sorrow for her own troubles seemed so small and stupid. “Let me help you!” Jill said, “Please! What can I do?”
The mermaid shook her head sadly. “What is there to be done?” she asked. “They are all dead. There is nothing to be done but weep.” And Jill could see that rivers of tears had been steadily streaming down the mermaid’s face for many years, and had dug shal
low canyons in her cheeks.
“Who is the man? Does he still live in the village?” Jill demanded fiercely.
The mermaid nodded sadly. “I don’t know who he is. I cannot see the faces of men. Just beautiful girls like you. But he still comes out some nights with his net and tries to catch me. I never know when. I believe he will not rest until I am dead. But what does it matter? My sisters, my sweet sisters, have all died already.”
“He will not kill you,” Jill swore, her teeth set, her hair blown back, her forehead shining high and wet with sea spray in the moonlight. “I will not let him do that.”
When pink began to streak the east, Jill blew a kiss to the beautiful mermaid and went back to the tavern.
* * *
The next morning, Jack was awake before Jill. She got up, and he smiled at her.
“I’m sorry for last night,” she said.
“You were tired from working all day.”
“Yes,” she said. “Very tired. Are you feeling better?”
“A little bit better each day,” Jack replied. “But sitting here is boring.”
Jill was humming a slow, sad tune when she slipped into the corridor.
As Jill scrubbed the tables in the tavern and the innkeeper shined the scotch glasses, Jill said, “Whose daughter was it that got lost in the sea?”
The tavern mistress stopped her shining and looked at Jill curiously. “Now what made ye think o’ that, lass?”
Jill shrugged and went back to scrubbing. “Dunno. Just thinking.”