The Mermaid's Song
A tale of the sea, inspired by a mysterious rock I once found on a beach, as well as Waterhouse's paintings A Mermaid and The Siren, and the music of Holst's Neptune from the Planet Suite.
It was a place of long forgotten myth. Though not forgotten by him. For the old sea captain in the half-derelict house on the cliff had seen the creatures himself over the years. As a boy, he’d chanced to catch them at play, their sleek tails flipping over in the water, long russet hair streaming behind them, their song, high, melodic, unearthly, drifting across on a breeze.
One had sunned herself on a rock. Her small breasts drew his curious young gaze. On that long ago summer afternoon, she reclined, combing her hair, never once glancing his way. Her song played over and over in his head in the months and years to come.
As an adult man, away at sea, he’d seen strange shadows through the early morning fog, shapes flipping over in the water. His captain dismissed it all as whales or dolphins at play, but he’d not been convinced.
Coming home one year, he saw the creatures again and impetuously made his way down the crumbling cliff path. Down in the cauldron, the sea gods were angry, casting stinging sheets of salt water against the jagged rocks. But the creatures played beyond, their songs carrying to his wistful ears.
All his life, he’d been warned about the cliff path. Now a section crumbled away and he slipped, down, down, towards the frothing waves.
Frantically, he grabbed for an outcropping.
Could he summon the aid of one of those creatures? Too late. They pointed out to sea and with a flash of their tails were gone.
But he was young and not yet ready to die. His shoes, soaked by the sea, slipped and scraped against the rocks as he stretched a hand to grasp a small ledge above. His muscles screamed with pain. Spray stung his eyes. He blinked, took deep breaths, calming himself and taking his time, focusing only on climbing back up the path.
I will do it, he told himself. I will do it.
Ignoring his stinging, bleeding palms, he dragged himself over razor-sharp rocks. When he finally reached safety, his clothes and hands were torn and bloody. And somewhere behind him, the laughter of mermaids.
The old sea captain stood in his book-lined study looking out to sea. A storm was gathering. He pitied the men out there. Though he missed his days at sea, his aching limbs needed the comfort of home. He’d never married, though he’d been good looking, pretty some had said. Men had looked on him as other men looked on women, but he’d not shared their desires. Instead, on many a dark night, he’d stood on deck, gazing at the ocean of stars and the colder, darker ocean below, suspended between the chasms of water and air, between the unknowable and the infinite.
His dreams were filled with strange images: underwater towers, spires reaching up to flickering light beams on the ocean surface. Sea mosses crept up ancient walls covered in barnacles. Great archways looked down on meandering paths, along which silvery fish flickered and disappeared into the ruins beyond. He’d heard of cities submerged off the coast of Ireland, Britain and other places. Older seamen liked to tell him their wild tales when they realised they had such an appreciative listener.
When the ship put into port, he sometimes followed the other men, seeking out a woman for the night. He could snare female hearts, but his own was locked away with the image of an unearthly girl combing her hair.
On his infrequent trips home he’d caught rare sightings of her, playing off beyond the cauldron. He longed to see her at close hand, to look into her face, to hold her. He didn’t know if it was possible to love such a creature physically. There were not made as women were, after all.
In his thirtieth year, he came home and stood over the grave of his mother. She’d died alone, his father long gone. Now the cliff house lay empty, livened only by the ticking of clocks. Once it had been a place of warmth and childhood magic, often remembered in a fragment of Keats:
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Now, like the cliff-path, the house was crumbling away to nothing, slowly picked apart piece by piece by the elements. He could imagine small particles of it falling away into the cauldron below, like grains of sand marking the passage of time.
How suddenly it had crept up on him, the decay, the neglect. He ought to go back and take stock of what needed doing. Instead, he made his way to the thin stretch of sand below the graveyard.
As he walked the beach, his attention was drawn to a rock half-buried in the sand. It had the eerie appearance of a human skull, with dark fathomless eye sockets. It brought to mind all those mariners claimed by the ocean.
The sun was sinking over the horizon, shining over America somewhere out across the Atlantic. Did those sea creatures ever swim that far, venturing across oceans as whales did? Did they look for warmer waters, cooler waters, or did they remain in some underwater city off the coast of Ireland?
At the village inn, he downed a whisky. Sitting at the window, he watched the setting sun paint the sky in swathes of pink, orange and lilac.
Someone tapped him on the arm. He turned to see an old friend of his father’s. Invited over to another table, he accepted, glad of the company. But his new companions looked on him with narrow, measuring eyes.
A lad was lost in the cauldron, they said. The fool had taken the cliff path despite all their warnings. No one had seen him, nor was there any sign of a body, not in two weeks.
“Damn it to hell if there isn’t a curse on that place,” one of the men burst out. “Aye, I’ve seen them, heard them too. Out beyond the rocks. Shameless they are. Evil, luring men down to them like that. Take a gun to them, that’s what I say. Keep a lookout and then…”
“Ah, now you’re talking rubbish,” another said in disgust. “Had one too many, you have.”
“You live up there,” said a third, turning to the seaman. “When you’re home. You must have seen them, heard them. Don’t tell us you don’t know what we’re talking about.”
He feigned ignorance and muttered about superstitions. They wanted him to keep a lookout and then, when the creatures were out on the rocks sunning themselves, they’d take some shotguns and blow the demons to hell.
He’d no intention of going along with them. He could forbid them to go on his land, since the path began there, but they could do what they liked when he was gone. As he made his way home, sobered by the impending hunt, he tried to think of a way to avert what he felt in his heart and soul to be disaster. And when he awoke the next morning, there was a heavy air looming over the house.
Outside, the morning sunshine did not penetrate his chilled skin. Water churned down in the cauldron and out at sea a ship could be seen as a distant speck. There was no sign, however, of the ethereal sea creatures. Perhaps they played out beneath the waves, innocently, unsuspecting, like children. And yet, if the villagers were to be believed, these creatures were anything but innocent. What was the truth?
The cliff path was now even more treacherous. It should have been fenced off years ago. It began innocently enough amid a riot of flowers, and seemed to promise a pleasant walk for anyone out for a quiet stroll. Who but the knowledgable could predict the hazardous twists and turns and the crumbling of the path further down? He had a vision of laying dynamite and blowing up the edge of the cliff, except he knew nothing of explosives. Or perhaps he could drive the creatures away for good, warn them this place was no longer safe.
He paced the cliff that day, looking out to sea, so that any watching villager would think he was searching for mermaids, ready to raise the alarm.
He was home for three weeks, and eight days had already passed. There was no sign of the creatures. Perhaps they scented danger and stayed out of sight.
The men turned up, armed with guns and binoculars, and one of them, impatient to catch their prey, decided to descend the path. The others held him back.
“Godless creatures!” he spat.
They waited all day, then went home, disappointed and grumbling. “We’ll get them yet,” an older man cried, waving a gun. “And you, young fella, you keep your eyes and your ears open. And come tell us soon as you see anything, mind.”
One morning, he woke from a dream of ghostly-white arms and long russet strands entangling him like seaweed, pulling him down into the chilling, churning unfathomable depths of the cauldron. Sitting up, gasping for air, he heard it. Their song. He tossed off the bedclothes and went down to the garden where he stood with a pair of binoculars, looking out to sea.
There they were, lying on the rocks, singing, and it was sweeter than early morning birdsong. And there she was, sliding a comb through her hair as she had all those years ago. The years had not changed her, her song had not dulled, and her hair was as beautiful as the fiery setting sun. If she had a name it would be ethereal and strange to human ears. He sensed that no man could ever really know them. They were not as humans, perhaps did not love as humans did.
Returning to the house, he pulled on his clothes, contemplating his imminent return to sea. When he was gone, who would help those creatures out there who stretched and sang, languishing without a care in the world?
“So they’re back are they?” The voice called from outside.
He went out to find the men from the village squinting out to sea.
“Listen to their voices,” the youngest said, a glassy look in his eye. “Have you ever heard music like that? Angel voices, that’s what it is. Angel voices.”
“You step back from there, lad,” the oldest said, pulling the younger back.
“How can anything that beautiful be godless?” the lad went on. “It makes me want to lie right down and sleep. Lie right down on the water…”
“Get him away from here. He’s no good to us. Lad, you go on home now.”
Another man had an unmistakable glint of lust in his eye. “They’re comely creatures right enough. I wouldn’t mind catching one of them in my nets.”
As the seaman watched, confusion and awe broke out among the men. They argued about the rights and wrongs of killing such creatures. If they had the voices of angels, perhaps they were angels of a kind.
“No, that’s blasphemy!” cried one. “You call those mermaids angels? Aye, as the devil was an angel before his fall.”
The debate raged on. The heavenly song grew louder, and the men inched their way to the edge of the cliff. He was torn between ordering them off his land and warning the creatures who lay oblivious on the rocks beyond. The young lad started down the path, followed by the fellow with the glint in his eye. They carried guns. They wanted to go down for a closer look, they said. Heedless of the warnings that followed, the two of them picked their way down. The three remaining villagers appeared to be in two minds what to do next, finally deciding to go down themselves.
The seaman knew he should stop them, warn them of the places where the path had worn away to nothing.
“Don’t be fools!” he called to the men below, stepping closer to the edge to see their bobbing heads.
They pointed out to the rocks. One lifted his gun, took aim, only for another to wrestle the weapon away. There was a struggle over another gun. Further down, the young lad was hardly paying attention to where he placed his feet.
Perhaps it was the hypnotic song that took them out of their senses, but as the seaman watched, he knew there was nothing he could do for them. They were dead men even as they stood with the wind in their hair and the sea spray in their eyes.
Gunshots rang out, followed by cries as the men tumbled down towards the frothing, lashing waves below.
Out at sea, two silvery-blue tails flickered and disappeared into the ocean. Only one creature remained, still with the comb in her hand, paused in mid-song, her face turned towards the cliff at last. She watched placidly as the men plunged into the cauldron. Then she slipped from her rock and dived between the waves hurtling towards land.
The young lad was the only one left below, his attention not on his fallen friends, but on the empty rocks beyond. He seemed to be talking, gesticulating in conversation with a spirit only he could see.
The seaman knew he had to help him. As he looked down, debating what to do, a face looked up at him from the frothing cauldron. Her face. Her hypnotic melody began again.
He started down, feet scraping and sliding on loose stones. It didn’t cross his mind to worry about how he’d get back up. As the path twisted and turned, he drew closer to her, closer than he’d ever been. Her song was all around him, pure and golden. Her face was upturned and the sun shone full on it and her eyes were as deep and fathomless and as cold as the sea. She was smiling now and, as her mouth widened, beyond the pale lips were two rows of razor-sharp little teeth. Her hands stretched out and he could see that her fingers were webbed, the wrists decorated with shell bracelets and twisted lengths of seaweed.
God, the inhumanity of her!
The young lad let out a cry at the sight of her. The seaman too staggered back, lost his footing, crashing down into the sea. The cauldron caught him up and sent him hurtling back towards the rocks. Death lay moments away but all he could think was what a fool he’d been. A fool like all the rest. Then he knew only darkness.
When light returned, he found himself on the beach, alone. He coughed, spat out the brine of the sea. His clothes were torn and bloody and beside him lay a strange looking comb with long teeth and a large and very beautiful conch shell. There were indentations in the sand where some creature had dragged itself to and from the water. She had delivered him up on the beach alive. He could only wonder at her reasons.
When he opened his eyes again, villagers stood round his bed. The young lad had not been found, no doubt drowned in the cauldron. The men had been drinking the night before, they said, and had gone off on some fool quest to catch mermaids. These people had seen generations of kinsfolk claimed by the sea. The men were not the first fools to think they’d seen mermaids. The sea had a way of playing on the fancies of humans. There was nothing superstitious about grown men imagining they saw half-naked sea women. Wishful thinking was a better way to describe it. The sea had taken more hapless victims, and their families would grieve and be poorer for the loss of a breadwinner.
No one wanted to ask him what had really happened. People came and went from the old woman’s house, staring down at him as if afraid he’d say something they didn’t want to hear. He could have told them about the creatures he’d seen who came from a world whose very edges lapped at their beaches and hurled against their rocks. But he kept silent, falling into dreams of a Medusian creature with hair coiling and streaming from her head.
In the morning he was wakened by the smell of breakfast. On the bedside table lay the comb and conch. He couldn’t remember carrying them up the beach, but they lay there with his sea-sodden watch, a ring he’d worn that had once belonged to his father, and a cross his mother had given him as a boy. He shunned the comb and conch. Because of Her, those men were dead. He wanted no part of her, had not asked her to save him and not the others. When he returned to his house a few days later, he left the gifts behind. But the old woman sent them over in the care of a young boy.
“She says you shouldn’t be so careless with another’s gifts.”
So the old woman knew, he thought.
“She says you should be more grateful. Funny gifts, if you ask me,” said the boy.
But he wasn’t listening. He stood looking out to sea and then his gaze fell on the cliff where the path began.
“My mother says this whole place is going to collapse into the sea one day and take your house with it, mister. You’d better watch you’re not inside when it happens.” The boy left then and he retired to bed, staring at the strange gifts left by that creature, as if they conveyed a message of infinite importance.
Nothing more was said about the whole affair. The villagers kept to themselves. He knew that when he was gone, some other fool might think to hunt down those sea creatures. He hardly cared. He felt strangely detached from it all.
The old sea captain looked out at the gathering storm clouds moving in from the Atlantic and imagined he heard the house tremble in anticipation. The boy’s mother had been right about the cliff crumbling away into the sea, but the house still stood, though a little closer to the water’s edge.
He’d returned home more than a decade ago and there was no more talk about mermaids luring men to their deaths. The villagers had forgotten, the old taking their memories and superstitions with them to the grave. Few people ventured near the cauldron, put off by the unstable rock face and the unfriendly old man who lived in the house there.
She’d left him alone too. What had that creature made of him, a human tumbling into her world? And why had she left him on the beach? Why not one of the others?
Another thought plagued him of late. Was she still the same, still as young and ageless with her eyes as deep and dark as the ocean itself? He still listened for her song, now more than ever at the end of his life. And beside his bed lay her gifts, the comb she once pulled through her russet hair as she lay sunning herself on that rock, and the conch shell that was surely an object of great beauty and value to their kind. He liked to hold it to his ear and listen to the sea. He used to think she might come back for them some day, and then would castigate himself for being so foolish. Foolish and old. A sad old man who’d never loved as a man should. Who’d loved the sea and chased an elusive childhood dream. No human woman had ever touched his heart. Perhaps after his first sighting of that creature, no human woman ever could.
And as for the horror of her, the danger, the soulless eyes, he could see now that she and her kind were different and not to be judged as humans. For what human could really imagine the life of a creature of the sea, evolved over millions of years in places no human had visited?
Thunder rumbled in the distance. The cauldron would be wild tonight, spitting and seething like a maddened demon caught in a bottle. The woman from the village had left early, wanting to get back before the worst of the storm came. Darkness was coming down quickly with the gathering leaden storm clouds.
As he sat in bed, he picked up the comb that had once sat in her webbed hand and drew it through his own white hair. A few russet strands still clung to the long teeth. Now they were wedded with silver.
It seemed only minutes since he’d closed his eyes, but he woke to find the storm gone and a stillness hanging over the house.
What had pulled him from sleep?
Then heard it, drifting through the night. Somehow he left his bed, his room, hardly knowing how he made it down to the cliff in the darkness. He couldn’t see Her, could see nothing in fact, but the crystal purity of her voice reached up to him from beyond the cauldron.
She was out there somewhere, waiting. Perhaps like him she was old and withered now. Somehow he knew she would look the same, if only he could see her.
The cliff path had mostly crumbled away years ago. There was only one way down now.
Her song ceased, and then it began again, closer this time, calling him down, soothing, comforting. He had a sudden memory of another time, when he’d slipped beneath the crashing waters below, in those last few seconds before darkness set in, a pair of arms had pulled him away from the sharp rocks of the cliff face. Just a flash of memory, a brief contact with Her before he’d fallen unconscious.
Now he was floating down through the darkness. Then icy coldness engulfed him. Panic rose and he tried to cry out for help, but water rushed into his mouth. In his final moments he felt the long strands of her hair winding round his neck.
She was taking him out to sea. To a beautiful underwater city, perhaps, with spires and moss-covered walls. The wrecks of old ships would lie scattered, playgrounds full of the bones of old seamen. A graveyard only those of the sea could ever truly know. A fitting resting place for a retired sea captain haunted by a mermaid’s face and a mermaid’s song.
This is a very old story of mine from 1996, inspired by paintings, a strange rock on a beach, and Neptune from the Planet Suite. The title image at the top is a public domain work by JW Waterhouse, A Mermaid.