A Fluke of Fortune

Clemens

She’s back today. She beckons to me from the water. Slender arms speckled with sea salt, glistening in the golden glow of sunset. Her emerald eyes shine brighter than the stars, glimmering like the ocean around her. Her hair is the color of precious coral, setting the water around her ablaze.

She beckons again, more urgently. I want to follow, but the rocks are slippery. I hesitate, and she disappears.

Someone grabs hold of my arm, pulls me back from the rocky shore. A woman – her face is familiar, as is the fear and anger on her face, but who is she? She is speaking angrily, something about leaving the house alone. I don’t know why she is mad at me. She’s not my Lorelei, certainly not.

But her voice is commanding, stern. And I feel like a child again, lectured and berated. What did I do wrong? I can’t remember. Some days, my mind is a deserted beach. Memories disappear like footprints in the sand – there one moment, then gone the next, erased by relentless waves. Like grains of sand in an hourglass – time turns, and they slip away. Or like water in my palms – no matter how tightly I close my hands, it still escapes my grasp.

Anton

“This place isn’t safe for him anymore. You need to do something,” the nurse speaks urgently.

I listen, but it’s not the first time I’ve had this conversation.

“I found him by the rocks again… This is the third time this month. He needs to be somewhere with twenty-four hour care.”

I don’t like the way she's emphasizing her words, but I try to keep my cool. It’s not like I have very many options – she’s the fifth nurse I’ve gotten for Dad and the only one to even last a month.

“Can you please say something?” she demands.

I take a deep breath. “I know, I get it. The dementia… It's hard. But my father loves it here. You know that. He won’t leave this place. The ocean, the rocks – they bring back his memories of mom.”

She’s quiet, eyebrows pinched in debate.

I take my chances and press on. “Imagine what the unfamiliarity of a new place could do to him. Just try to keep a tighter watch on him… Will ya?”

She purses her lips but nods.

I go outside to where Dad is sitting on the small covered deck. He’s staring absentmindedly at the horizon, where a grey column hangs over the choppy waters. He starts a little when he sees me, and for a moment, I’m worried that he won’t recognize me. But then he smiles, and I relax.

“Hey Dad, I, uh, heard about your recent escapade.”

He ignores me and asks instead, “Is she gone yet?”

“Sorry, your nurse?”

He nods vigorously.

“Um, yea, she just left.”

His face lights up like a small child’s, and he grabs my wrist, whispering excitedly, “Let’s go, your mother is waiting.”

“Wait, Dad, wha– waiting where?” I’m stuttering – I haven’t seen Dad like this before.

“Down by the rocks, you know, where we used to go to celebrate her birthdays. We’d look for mermaid’s purses together, and she would always find–”

“Dad, stop. Mom’s not here anymore.”

“I’ve seen her. She’s there, in the water. I know it. She is, she’s there,” He keeps insisting.

“Stop. Dad, she’s gone. You can’t go down to the beach anymore. Not like this. I’ve already told the nurse to watch you. No more solo trips to the rocks, got it?”

Dad shrinks away from my brusque voice, and again, I’m reminded of a small child. He turns back to the horizon, expression sullen. But a few moments later, his face relaxes, the exchange already fading.

I don’t know when Dad started deteriorating this quickly, but the fact that he thinks Mom is still alive is new and frightening.

I gaze out at the craggy shores where we used to spend so much time as a family. Mom, singing as usual, her voice sweet and melodic, her red hair long and flowing in the breeze, while Dad and I clambered over the rocks, searching for trinkets to give her. Mom's favorites were displayed on her night table – the crown treasure was the spiral-shaped egg of a horn shark that I discovered in a rocky crevice. She liked to keep the ocean close, she would always say.

And it would seem that the ocean had wanted to keep her close as well. We lost Mom to an unexpected riptide that swallowed her faster than we could react.

Dad wasn’t the same after. He spent years punishing himself for not protecting her. We even bought a sailboat, named it the Lorelei, and went around the coast looking for traces of Mom, but we never found anything. No body, no clothing, no jewelry, nothing.

Some days, I want to leave it all behind. These shores that carry so much pain, that bring back my mother’s death and my father’s dementia. But like Mom, I can’t seem to escape the ocean’s allure. She gave me her love of that great blue expanse, and when the shores become too heavy a burden, I take the Lorelei and escape out to sea.

Clemens

The nurse thinks I'm taking a nap, so she’s dozing off in front of the television. I quickly sneak out and make my way down to the rocky shore. I haven’t been able to see Lorelei in what feels like weeks. The nurse watches me all the time now, and I don’t like it. I don’t think Lorelei likes her either, because she never shows up when the nurse is with me.

It’s windy today, and it looks like it might rain later. Perfect weather for mermaids to come out and frolic, Lorelei would say. Oh, I miss her. I hurry my steps in case she is waiting for me.

Something in the water catches my eye. I squint through the mist. A green light pulses gently underwater. “Lorelei?” I whisper. The light grows dimmer, and I panic, thinking that she’s leaving, until I see it grow brighter a few paces further down the shore. I follow after, but it stops, pulses brightly, then disappears.

I wait, confused. Where is Lorelei? I walk closer to the lapping waves, looking for a flash of red hair or pale skin. Nothing in the water, but tangled in a heap of seaweed on the shore, I find a small leathery pouch. A mermaid’s purse! I can hear Lorelei’s excited voice exclaiming. From its shape and curly tendrils, it’s the eggcase of a larger species of catshark. I stoop to pick it up, and pause. There’s still life in it. Through the translucent casing, I see a shape, a slender tail flicking back and forth.

I don’t know how long it’s been stuck on the shore for, but without the ocean, it won’t survive much longer.

Anton

A chalk-white skull pokes through the surface of the water and stares at me. Great, another one? Fredrik always knew the best places to find ghost nets, even in these misty conditions.

The upcoming frigid months mean fewer requests for research expeditions and shipment deliveries for the Lorelei. But it does mean more greedy fishermen out at sea. They say fish move slower in cold water.

Fredrik and I made a tradition of taking Lorelei out during the off season to find and remove abandoned ghost nets left by negligent fishermen, lest they wander and haunt the blue world below.

I hoist the lift bag over the hull, and the boat is suddenly flooded with a wave of marine corpses. Fredrik’s head emerges from the water. “Looks to be 10 meters or so, eh?”

“Just about.” I survey the net, combing through dead starfish and coral to find the sea turtle skull. “Third one this year,” I say to Fredrik as he climbs aboard.

He takes the turtle skull from my hand, shaking his head. “Poor lad. Bloody fishermen can’t take a break now, can they?”

“My mother would hate to see this.”

Fredrik glanced over at the carnage in the net. “Trust me. It’d devastate her more to see all that’s down there.”

“I know. It’s haunting,” I say, but the thought of her actually down there somewhere was even more haunting.

“Well, speaking of haunting,” Fredrik starts in his usual manner once the tone becomes too serious. “You know they say mermaids still roam the waters around here. Best be careful. A good-looking chap like yourself? They’ll want a bite or two.”

I chuckle under my breath, but mostly to humor him.

“Don’t start laughing now. Folklore, legends, they come from somewhere.”

“You’ve been out at sea too long, Fredrik. How about some dry land to help you sober up? Besides, the fog is coming in faster than I’d thought.”

I'm about to turn Lorelei around and sail back towards the pier when suddenly I hear a faint voice, muffled as though trapped beyond the dense mist. It could have been a foghorn, except it grows crisper, purer, and then it is accompanied by a chorus of voices like a torrent of winds rushing through a valley. Angelically harmonious yet eerily haunting. I can almost decipher their incantations and echoes, like a familiar but forgotten language. Yet the more I focus, the more discordant they become.

Then as rapidly as the harmony devolves into dissonance, the current changes direction and pulls us down the coast towards the beach. As though our sails were being buffeted by the very cacophony itself.

Like a fish caught on a line, we are reeled out of the fog, and I see a familiar figure out in the water.

Clemens

I must save her. I must swim farther out to sea. She’s there – head barely above water. I can reach her in time.

But then she’s gone. Lorelei’s gone, and I’m alone.

Save for the small creature in my palm. I start treading again, far from the rocky shores, far from the crashing waves, into stiller water. I release the egg case, and it floats there for a while, resting and breathing. The leathery case suddenly pulses, and the wriggling inside intensifies. I watch in surprise and delight as the shark begins to squeeze out of its casing. I want to watch as it swims away, so I dip my head underwater. The shark breaks free with a final flick of its tail, and I feel so much joy and elation that I start to laugh.

Water pours into my mouth and nose.

Anton

“Dad! DAD! STOP!” I shout and wave my arms, but he doesn’t notice me. He keeps going and going, and I see him go under. And now, I'm in the water. I couldn't save her, but I will save him. I imagine I have gills instead of lungs and fins instead of feet, just like Mom told me when she first taught me how to swim. I grab hold of him and push on towards shore. I want to yell at him, but I don't have enough air. He's laughing, crying, choking, and laughing again.

“She’s free, she's free," he says deliriously. I turn to look at the water, and I think I catch a glimpse of a tail disappearing into the ocean.

––

Her eyes glow brighter than any stars. They see through the oceans, across space and time. She dives into the water, and the sound of music surrounds her. She is joined by her sisters in a joyous chorus of celebration.

Here, hear the calling, the wailing of the

Sea, see how our kindred, is broken up and

Made, maids of the ocean, their duty is for

Peace, piece by piece, whether hand, fin or

Tail, Tales of woe, to cry, weep, and

Mourn, yet morn will rise, over the

Tide, tied forever to the shore