Page 12 of Oceansong
“I heard it was like that for the last few weeks.” Angie drew her shoulders together, posture wilting in confusion. She’d give the measly amount in her savings to find out why the mer were so intent on starving them.
“There’s not nearly enough to feed everyone. I heard the other fishers have gotten similar catches.” Bàba crossed his arms over his chest, his square jaw set. Sporting a faded mustache and the shadow of a soul patch, Angie figured he hadn’t shaved in a few days. “They will blame me, more than anyone else.”
“I saw Jenny and Dave the other day picking berries and mushrooms,” Angie said, her voice low. “Nobody’s going to believe us when we tell them about mermaids. I didn’t even believe it until I saw them.” She set her lips in a tight line.
“I saw that video from the divers, and you told me you saw the mer, but to see them in the flesh is something else.”
“What are you talking about?” Angie drew her shoulders back and looked at him with wide eyes. “In the flesh?”
“Two were killed earlier today, and the divers brought one to the surface. It is here now.”
“Dead mer? Here?” Angie nearly choked on her own words. “Can I see?”
“Yes, when you are done with taking inventory, come find me or Nick, and we’ll show you.” Bàba left, and Angie checked her watch. Lunch break was over, and she carried on looking over the last of the inventory on theMV Arctic. The next ship to leave would take Luke with it.
“Got everything written down?” the ship’s captain asked.
“Yup.”
Luke crept up behind her and tapped her shoulder, a sparkle in his bright blue eyes. “Hey, I’m gonna go see the mer they got. Want to come with?”
She nodded and followed Luke.
What would the merfolk look like up close where she could see everydetail of them? What could she learn and, more importantly, what kind of insight could she get as to why they would need so much fish? Maybe they were strict fish-eaters and couldn’t sustain themselves on anything else.
Angie and Luke found Bàba and Nick amongst a throng of other workers by the east fishery, the murky waters barren of life. From the back of the crowd, Angie could see a limp tailfin hung off a table. Angie squeezed her way past them to get a better look.
A merman lay flat on his back, a sunburst of blood coated his chest. The end of his iridescent fishtail and long caudal fins brushed the smooth, slippery floor. One rugged hand lay on his chest, the other arm like a pendulum at the table’s edge.
Angie couldn’t tear her gaze from him. The mer had been killed hours ago, and somehow, the blood on their chest was still wet and red? How? It should have browned and dried by now.
From beside her, Luke sucked in a sharp breath. “Woah. They’re real. They’re actually real. Wait until I tell my brother and my parents! They’re going to want to know. Probably come see it for themselves. Wonder what they’ll do about it.”
Angie kept her eyes trained on the merman, Luke’s words drifting in one ear and exiting the other as she replied with a breathy, “Yeah.”
Her gaze trailed to below the mer’s torso. A serpentine, bisected dorsal fin reached from his waist to just beneath where the knees would be on a human, slack and faded, as lifeless as its owner. A dim overhead light gave off an ethereal, canary glow to the room. His skin was hairless, and her gaze trailed to the half inch of webbing between his thick fingers.
Obscure markings of faded brown semicircles and wavy lines wove together in an intricate pattern across his arms and chest, their meaning and symbolism foreign to her.
A glance behind his ears and at his neck revealed four closed gill slits, nearly imperceptible to her eyes.
His teeth revealed a similar structure to her own. So, her hypothesis about themneedingto eat fish wasn’t correct.
Two divers stood at the corner of the room, one man and one woman, beaming at their handiwork. A small group headed by Nick surrounded them, congratulating them and shaking their hands.
Luke bounded off to join them, and Angie slowly followed. He squeezed in between the group to talk to Nick and the divers, making excited gestures with his hands. Nick broke into a bright, toothy grin when Luke approached him, and they slipped into their own conversation.
“When did you find him?” Angie looked at each of the divers. “Where?”A pang of envy struck that she wasn’t the one to find the merman laying before her.
She certainly wouldn’t have killed him. Not before trying to understand him first.
“We found two of them when we were out scouting.” The female diver’s gaze slid toward Angie. “Crazy that they’re real, right? I could hardly believe it, myself.”
“But why is he dead? Can they not survive outside the water?” Angie struggled to piece together how the merman was found in the water and was now dead on land. “We could have tried to see if he could speak.”
“We brought it back alive like Zixin and Nick wanted. Tried to talk to it, but it just spouted unintelligible gobbledygook.” The diver pointed an accusing finger at the merman. “But the minute we put it on the table, it lunged at us, so we had to put it down.”
Angie shuddered at the diver calling the merman “it.” They were still part human to her eyes. “He was probably terrified.”
