Legends of the Deep

They say mermaids are born of the deep, emerging from the seabed, the sand, their voices fully formed and deadly, seeking ships sailing overhead and their prey aboard them.

We all remember the burning. The last human sensation we had. The fear and agony. The overwhelming, unrelenting, pressing need for air, air, air. Tongues of fire searing our lungs as they as last gave out and sucked in the only thing around them. Water. Salted water, thick and pounding. Drowning. We remember the drowning and it’s fire as we breathed it in and couldn’t get it out. The story is the same for each of us. How we clawed at our skin in our desperate need for air, the slits we made along our necks or sides becoming something else entirely. The panic as we kicked against the rope and stone dragging us oh so slowly down to the bottom of the sea, our strength declining with every meter lost. The despair as the light we so loved gets further and further away, mocking us from the other side of the sea. Never to be felt on skin or face again. Until sea became air and feet became fin.

Why did we never learn? Why did we stow away on departing ships, hoping for a better life across the sea? Why did we think we would be the ones who made it? Who hid well enough? Who wouldn’t get tossed and thrown overboard? Women weren’t allowed on ships. We were bad luck, they say. But I’d hoped, dared just enough, hated the life I was in enough to try. To fail. And now to drown on the bottom of the sea floor.

But I didn’t know. Nobody did. The secret guarded too sacredly for risk of discovery. No one knows how legends are born. Until they are. Not every woman thrown overboard becomes a mermaid. Only those with iron will and a desperate need to live can trigger and survive the transformation. The muffled thump of the stone hitting the sea floor, such quiet finality, does one of two things to a woman. Those that give in to despair become a floating garden stretching across the ocean floor. But those who fight. Those who glare at the sparkling sun above them and tug harder, even as their lungs give out and their vision fades. They are the woman who begin to itch and squirm as their legs fuse under the pressure of the ocean, as scales peel out and encircle their legs and their middle, as their ankles knit together and fins blossom where feet used to be, as slim, sharp fins erupt out of their forearms, and the places they scratched at their sides or necks become gills, transforming water into oxygen and inflating crushed lungs, giving life once more. As mortal women become something else entirely. That burning consuming every inch of them, rewriting their very cells and soul, turning them into weapons of song and razor sharp fins. Into the immortal fae of the sea. Mermaids, some call them. Legends of the deep. Female sirens who sprung from the sea floor sand, voices fully formed and deadly, not muffled by the sea’s waters, but clear and cutting and enticing, crafted for the heart of men, all too easily swayed by the beautiful and alluring. None but those who burned in water know how these legends are born. The sailors think it's the women on their ships that are bad luck. It’s only in their last minutes of horror that they realize. They are now the prey, and the men who threw those once-helpless women overboard to this fate, never live to tell the tale of how the woman he ravished and tossed to the waves returned, more beautiful than any woman had a right to be, her voice more deadly than a sharpened sword.

It wasn’t for a few minutes as I floated there, tethered to the ocean floor, that I realized I hadn’t died. That I could smell the blood seeping from my wounds. Smell them. Because I was breathing. I brought my hands up to my neck and found the cuts I’d made as I clawed for air, opening and closing like gills on a fish. Moving my fingers down, I found the same was true for my sides. My eyes opened in shock, and the salt didn’t sting them, didn’t blur my surroundings. I kicked back in surprise, only to find my legs didn’t move as expected. Because they weren’t legs anymore. The rope was still fashioned around where my ankles used to be, but they’d fused, and instead of feet I had…fins. Flippers. And my legs. They’d fused, too. Scales ripples over them in deepest blue, sparkling in the faint light from above. I ran my, hands over the scales, finding them webbed, and marveled in awe and horror at the transformation. Mermaid. I was a mermaid, if the drawings and tales were to be believed. I pulled my dress up to my navel, finding the scales encompassed me all the way up, stopping just shy of my belly button. Reaching down, I pulled at the knot around my ankle-fins and startled once again. I had fins coming off the side of my forearms! These were a light blue to match the fins that had replaced my feet. And they were sharp. So I used them to cut the rope. And was free.

I pulled off my ruined dress and tried moving, finding the movement easy and light, feeling the water cut passed the slight dorsal fin on my back and those on my hips to help with turning and speed. A laugh escaped me, and immediately cut off as I heard it. No longer deadened by the weight of the water around it, it was like the sound cut through the water around me. Like whales or dolphin music did. So I tried again, speaking this time, and marveled at the clarity and richness of my new voice. “I am alive.” The sound pulsed out of me, lyrical, powerful. A wicked grin stole across my feature as I looked up to the ship still crossing overhead. The ship that had tried to sink me. And the men aboard it who’d had their fun with me first. The sea had gifted me with the tools I’d needed to escape before being remade. The tools I needed to stay free, to…my eyes found the bottom of the ship again as it made its way toward its destination, and my grin broadened into something more feral.

Mermaid did indeed appear out of the deep, emerging from the sand with their voices formed and deadly. And they were about the hear my song.