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A thousand stars fill the bowl of the sky, but not a single soul can
be found on the beach. The islanders, who know the ways of water and
wave, who daily breathe in brine and the austere beauty of the sea, have
long been tucked into their beds. The tourists have all staggered back to
room or cottage as well, salt covered and slightly drunk on rum punch
and sea air.
It is then that the mermaid winds her way to the beach, where she
haunts the tide pools, wet-limbed, scales glistening. The world is quiet as
she props up her head, one hand tucked under her chin while the other
traces figures in the sand; winged creatures, all. The drawings are
intricate, detailed with fine lines and passion and longing. They are
worthy of display in the finest museums, but they will, of course, be
washed away by the tide before morning. Still, the mermaid comes back
to the shore again and again and every night she sketches under the
stars. By day she looks to the sky and dreams.
***
Greta did not believe in miracles, but she did believe in myth. Like every
fisherman's wife, she knew all about sea lore and superstition, manatees and
mysteries, griffins and gargoyles and banshees. She'd heard the tales,
read the fat, dust-covered books that were piled on her shelves. Greta
knew about charms too, and bargains with the gods, and prayer, but
none of those were worth much after the sea had swallowed her
husband. She was left with a closet full of woolen knotwork sweaters and
a thoroughly broken heart.
And so she walked the shoreline daily, talking to ghosts and
gathering stone and shell, bone and feather and brightly colored glass.
Eventually Greta took to making small sculptures from her sea-found
objects. It served to pass the time and supplement the small income from
her husband's pension when she sold her creations to the stores where
all the tourists shopped. Greta's days were cut from a simple pattern of
ocean songs and solitude. Her nights were mostly quiet.
Everything changed when Greta discovered the mermaid lounging
in the midnight dark, right beyond her own dune-covered backyard. She
watched from the window while myth solidified and lingered, and on that
night the widow remembered magic. She barely slept and went down to
the beach while the sky was still bruised with purple. When she came
upon the drawings in the sand, Greta remembered all about charms as
well. In a single instant, she decided to make one more bargain with the
gods.
Each morning, along with the usual ephemera, Greta collected the
mermaid scales left littered upon the beach. As the days passed, the pile
of necessary objects grew. She shaped the scales into a gown that echoed
the design of her wedding dress, though this garment was sequined with
unearthly blues and greens, trimmed with sea glass and heavy shells.
Greta also took her salvaged feathers and twisted and glued and twined
until her fingers bled. At night she fell into bed exhausted. She was
rarely awake long enough to spy upon the mermaid, but Greta felt the
kinship of longing deep in her bones, and so she dreamed of love and
flight and myths that had gone before.
Finally the day came when Greta's work was complete. She tidied
up the cottage and spent one long afternoon rocking on the porch in the
sun, her wedding photo clutched tightly to her chest. If anyone were
near, they might have heard her chanting softly as twilight fell in crimson
and violet streaks across the sky. Greta dozed through most of the
evening, and shortly after the clock chimed twelve times, she carefully
smoothed on the dress of scales and arranged a wreath of flowers atop
her head. Then she gathered up the bundle that was waiting by the door.
The widow walked cautiously in the moonlight, loathe to further
alarm the legendary creature that had curled into a ball at the sound of
her approach. The mermaid made a small cry when she first felt the
widow's touch. Greta gently slid the wings she had crafted over the
mermaid's shoulders. She tied the bindings just above the elbow and
there again at the wrists. The mermaid stared at the scale-sheathed
apparition who had swathed her in softness, and froze when the woman
captured both of her hands and raised them high above her head. Shards of light bloomed around their entwined fingers. When Greta finally stepped
away, the creature's arms fell with a whoosh to her side. Recognition
gleamed in the mermaid's eyes and the women shared a long moment of
silent triumph.
And then Greta began her walk into the sea.
She called out her husband's name as the waves crashed over her.
By the time she was drenched to her waist, she believed she could hear
the whisper of a response. She pulled the flowers from her hair and
scattered them across the water, smiling. On the beach there was chaos.
Bone snapped and sinews shriveled and stray feathers swirled upon the
sand. Transformation was neither gentle nor pain free. The last thing
that Greta was aware of before she slid beneath the waves was a loud
cawing and a strong updraft of wind.
The widow did not know that the single note she'd left behind had
gone unnoticed. A ragged piece of parchment fluttered along the ground.
"Fly," it admonished in ink crusted script, "But do not fly too close
to the sun."
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