Gray

My island is painted in shades of gray. In smudges of light and dark. Making up everything from the rolling, pulsing currents of the deep sea, to the white crested waves that crash against the basalt cliffs. Stone so dark, it’s almost black, rising up in dizzying columns that lord over the ocean, damp and inky with sea spray.

In the distance, is another, larger island.

That’s where the monsters live, my mother says—one of the only things she ever does—before disappearing into that endless smudge of charcoal beyond the reef. Leaving my siblings and I to fend for ourselves.

What’s a monster? I want to ask, but don’t get the chance.

I watch the large island, hoping to catch a glimpse of one, and see many strange creatures walking on two legs and four. But, of course, I don’t even know what I’m looking for.

One by one, the vast, gray sea swallows each of my siblings, too, until I am alone. Left behind to keep watch over my tiny island.

I don’t mind, though. I like the solitude.

Prefer it, even.

Under the moonlight, I patrol the waters of my domain, ensuring that all is well before I hunt. I smell the briny, tang of the salt. The dirt crusting the rocks, and the mushy, mound of forgotten kelp, left behind after high tide. Feeling the water for hints of incoming storms, and listening to the sounds of my island. To the wind rushing through the sea grasses atop the basalt pillars, trading secrets with the waves. Their gentle undercurrent punctuated by seal grunts and tiny pup squeaks, the beach crowded with plump, soft seal bodies. Above them, feathers rustle, and beaks clack, as puffin parents settle their chicks in for the night.

The only part of my domain that I ignore, is the channel. A winding tributary gouged into the rock by centuries of tidal waves and storms and rough seas. An underwater path that leads straight to the heart of my small island.

That’s where the mermaids like to play.

***

For the most part, they ignore me, going about their business as though I’m not even there. Gathering trinkets; empty shells and glass bottles. A small, metal box etched with patterns. Treasures they glean from the ocean floor. Unearthed from beneath rocks. Rescued from the slick clutches of the dark, kelp forests. Snatched from the cavernous hollows of the shipwrecked vessels that litter the seabed.

Most of these are inspected and discard. Left to languish in a graveyard of broken china and cracked shells at the mouth of the cave.

Only the best make it inside.

Sometimes, a mermaid leaves with one of these chosen vessels, and sets off toward the large island. Her jaw set. Hair billowing around her face like tendrils of fine seaweed. The bright, iridescent glitter of her scales flashing in the moonlight.

When the object returns to the cave, it is no longer empty, but alive. Pulsing with a strange warmth. A light that shines brighter than the glint of sun off an errant wave of an otherwise calm and gentle sea.

***

Once, I saw it happen. Watched a mermaid pull the light out of one of the peculiar, two-legged creatures.

She used her voice to do it.

I don’t know what to make of this strange, ritual—can’t decide if it’s something I should allow.

For now, I let them believe I’m a magnanimous guardian. That I care nothing for their shells and bottles and trinkets, and the light they fill them with.

However, the truth is, they terrify me.

Unlike myself, mermaids aren’t afraid of monsters.

***

I’m circling the puffin roost one night, hunting for squid, when the smell hits me. Thick and viscus. Like the fatty, fish scent of seal blubber, but different, somehow. Glittering with strands of something else I can’t name.

Curious, I abandon my meal, and set off to investigate.

My sleek, muscled body slices through the water. Weaving through the invisible currents swirling beneath the surface. Heading toward that bright spot of color in my otherwise gray world. The only thing powerful enough to draw my curiosity toward the large island.

Blood.

***

The mermaid drifts in the warm shallows off the big island. She lies in the water, face down, eyes closed. Hair billowing around her crown like a cloud of ink. The soft underside her of breasts and stomach scraping against the pebbles with each pull of the waves. Her spine thunking against the hull of an old boat crusted with barnacles.

Around her, is a silvery, iridescent pool of blood.

It spills from her tail, oozing from around the girth of a thick, rusted hook that punctures her delicate scales. Dripping in heavy coils to the ocean floor. Mixing with saltwater. Staining the sea with that strange, unnamable scent.

Painting the beach around her with the color of starlight.

Revulsion fills me.

I have no taste for mermaid.

Swimming forward, I carefully bump my nose against her pale, smooth palm.

She doesn’t move.

This worries me.

Mermaids are not easy to kill—even harder to surprise.

A deep sense of unease fills me. I think of the shells and trinkets they bring back, and wonder if they’ve finally gone too far.

To my left, I catch a faint, high-pitched keen. Similar to the sound the seal pups make, but lighter… thinner. It’s followed by a splash. The tremor of something small and awkward moving through the water.

Cautiously, I slip beneath the relative safety of the boat’s shadow, and lift my nose. Trying to feel out the smell of the ripples; unable to detect anything beyond the silvery aroma of the mermaid’s essence.

An instinct—strong as the draw of blood—tells me to flee. Retreat for the safety of the smaller island. Back to the black rocks, with their seals and puffins. To the reef, where I am king, and there is no such thing as monsters.

The keening grows louder, morphing into a wail, and the ripples around me shorten. Getting stronger, as the thing draws nearer. Heading for the boat, and the mermaid tethered to its hull.

Towards me.

My unease grows.

Tense and alert, I weigh the benefits of retreat against the inherent risk of curiosity, when suddenly, I see it. A creature.

One of the two-legged ones.

Its limbs are creased and dimpled with fat, and connect to a round, protruding stomach. Above it, are two, additional appendages, along with a neck and head that roughly resembles the top half of a mermaid. Except sloppy and misshapen—grotesque, even. The mop of curls atop its head looking more like the plants sprouting from the scummy bottom of a tide pool than the long silky tendrils flowing behind the merfolk.

It isn’t as large as I originally thought—or as strong.

A gentle wave knocks against the creature’s legs, and the thing wobbles, misses a step, and falls down hard in the water, just as another—much larger—wave rushes up to meet it, crashing over the creature’s head; rushing to fill the wide-open cavern of his mouth.

At least, I think it’s a he—it’s difficult to be sure, but he feels right.

A second later, the ocean retreats, revealing wide, startled eyes; tiny nostrils dripping with mucous.

Two more crash over it in quick succession, before the creature reacts.

Sputtering and screaming—much louder than before—the creature stands, finally lifting himself out of reach of the incoming tide.

I expect him to withdraw back to the beach, but he doesn’t.

He stands there, screaming and wailing and dripping, clearly distraught, and lifts his arm. Stretching it out toward the boat, opening and shutting his fingers in a grasping motion.

“Mum mum mum mum mum,” his cries turn to a murmur. “Mum mum?”

Beside me, the mermaid twitches.

I reel back, startled.

Alive?

She tilts her ear towards the strange, sorrowful cry. Listening. Then her eyes open. Lips part. And a hum ripples through the tide.

It starts in her chest, and curls outward. Following the motion of the sea onto shore, spilling over pebbles, then pulling back. Sinking through the waves to weave around the kelp forests. A sound that reminds me of the eerie rise and fall of air sprinting over the wind caves. Of salt-soaked breezes and the laughter of waves crashing into basalt cliffs. A lullaby that beats in time with the ocean’s heart. One that starts somewhere deep inside the mermaid, and reaches out for this strange, blubbering creature. Calling out to him. Soothing.

Calming his fears with a love song from the sea.

***

The cries stop, and I drift beneath the boat, lulled into contentment by the mermaid’s song.

I’m not paying attention. Don’t notice the danger until it’s already too late.

“Callum!” A sharp, angry shout lances through the calm. “I told ya to stay on the beach!”

Footsteps. A splash. Something big lumbering through the water. I peer out, and see another of the two-legged creatures rushing towards us. Huge and muscled. With dark, leathery skin and a mouthful of teeth upturned in a snarl. He raises his arm, and a flash of metal catches the sun.

The mermaid whimpers. I taste her fear. Bright and sharp. Cutting through the smell of her own blood like a light flashing in deep waters.

I don’t blame her.

The creature is drenched in her blood.

Panic fills me. I bolt from underneath the boat. Into the sunlight. Electric with the need for open water, and that’s when I hear it. Coming from the high bluffs above the beach. A second voice, laced with threads of terror I don’t understand.

“SHARK!”

***

Shark?

I don’t recognize the word, but the fear?

That, I do.

Frantic, I turn, searching for that unknowable danger, and see nothing but tangles of kelp and the terrifying form bearing down on us… on her.

“SHARK! SHAAARK!”

The enraged figure doesn’t seem to hear. Too many sounds, perhaps. All that splashing… shouting… crying.

The blade arcs, down. There’s a wet pop. The snick of serrated teeth tearing through flesh.

A scream.

“Aye, that’s right, lassie,” he bellows back. “Sing… SIIING!” Crazed laughter spills from his chest, a thick vein pulsing at his throat. “I can’t hear yer devil voice, anyway—not with the cotton in my ears.”

The blade jerks up. Comes down again.

I swim back and forth, desperate for the freedom of cool, deep water.

“TAVISH, YA DAFT IDIOT, THERE’S A SHARK IN THE WATER!” The second voice is closer. More urgent. “BY THE BOAT!”

The boat?

It doesn’t make sense. It’s just me here. Me and the mermaid, and…

It hits me like a typhoon.

I stare at huge, blood-soaked beast. Slaughtering a mermaid in the chest-deep shallows off the big island. And I realize that this must be it. This. This hairy, muscled thing… the monster my mother warned me about.

Shark.

The mermaid slows. Twitches.

Goes still.

Shark lets out a ragged breath, and hangs his head, as if it suddenly weighs too much. “I told ya…” He glances back at the chubby, not-mermaid thing, still mewling among pebbles frothed by salt and blood. “I told ya to stay away from him.”

I don’t know who he’s talking to.

My nostrils are filled with blood. An essence shimmering with magic, sparkling like the flecks of olivine imbedded in the basalt columns of my island.

The mermaid island.

Her island.

The same mermaid Shark just stole from the sea.

The second voice is still shouting. Bellowing about Shark. Trying to warn the small, not-mermaid creature of the danger the Shark monster poses. It’s alright, though, because I already know.

And I am the protector of my domain.

Slowly, I turn, and do the only thing I can think of.

I charge.