From Beneath the Brine
by Anna da Silva
In the month of June, when monsoons arrive on the island and the mermaids come ashore, the village rests. A stockade of fishing spears thrust in the sand lines the coast. Pearl divers’ baskets swing idly on listing palm trees. No one ventures out to sea, not a soul braves the depths. Instead, perimeter fires are set up, separating the village from the beach. And while a lavish festival careens on land from one hut to the next, the mermaids emerge from beneath the foamy brine. They clamber ashore, dragging silky ribbons of seaweed on their meaty fish tails and snake up the sandy paths between wild beach-rose bushes. There they lie in wait, awash in torrential downpour caressing their breasts and flowing through their braids. They never advance past the fires, trusting instead that their prey will come to them.
And indeed, one young man or another on a dare or lured by lust, downs one more swig of something strong for bravery and saunters beyond the fires. In the mermaids’ rainswept lair, their raspy moans can hardly be drowned out by the festival’s booming pipes and drums, not even by the mournful strings. Some men return, others don’t. The ones that drag themselves back inside the village circle are incoherent, satiated, spent. They come to their senses soon enough, but can never recall their own ravaging. Yet henceforth, their dreams are haunted by the seaweed’s iodine smell and they find human girls inexplicably lacking in sexual charm.
The few that don’t come back are never seen again and never found. Not their remains in July, when the mermaids retreat and setting foot on the beach is safe again. Nor their souls in December, when ancestral spirits descend upon the isle for the reunion and the living can commune with the dead. Those souls are said to be forever trapped beneath the waves.
Months later, when sweltering daytime heat evaporates all courage and swarms of black flies decimate flesh at dusk, the mermaids’ gifts show up overnight. One morning during the month of March, a crop of squirming newborns appears laid out on the sand, just above the high tide marks. They are all fleshy perfection and vigor, not a fish-scale on them, nor a pearlescent fin. All boys to the last of them, all ocean-eyed mermaids’ sons.
The lonesome fishermen’s widows come to claim them, one by one, and carry them back to their huts, each baby cradled sweetly in their weathered arms, each lashed instantly to a mother’s heart. They grow to be good sons and decent husbands, but in truth, they only have eyes for the sea. Their women endeavor in vain to sweeten their blood with mother’s milk or lover’s kiss. But these boys are bewitched by the depths and the color of their eyes changes to match the ocean’s hue on any given day.
Invariably, they disappear into the same salty brew from which they’ve come. Some vanish while still young, on treacherous dives or during stormy nights. Others wade into the surf for the last time when their hands are gnarled and their eyes have gone cloudy. The land-women weep for them and their tears flow back to the waves across the scorching sand, carving intricate paths crusted with salt that glistens under indifferent sun.
And when the heavens darken, and the beaches are caressed by the rolling swells – each a heartbeat, the island spins. It whirls gently round, propelled by the mermaids’ undulating fins, the kelp carpet upon which it floats tangled in the mermaid’s flowing hair. Together, they careen through the green of the sea and into the void, through the scalding meteor rain, as a thousand suns crumble out of the inky firmament above. And from beneath the brine, it looks like shimmering star dust is fluttering down from the skies and settling on the ocean skin.
Anna da Silva is a writer and a sociology professor at Lehman College, CUNY. She is the co-founder of The Salty Quill writing retreat and is currently working on her first novel. One of her short stories was recently published in Juked and another one is forthcoming in an OCWW anthology on Meaningful Conflict.