Do You Know What Good It Does?

Not being a huge fan of the ocean, my mermaids are never of the singing, starry-eyed fork-collecting type....

“By the late Tidal Era, two factors shaped mermaid economy worldwide. First, was the discovery of shark’s gill proleglyde, which revolutionized mermaid swimming speed and opened hitherto isolated mermaid communities to the broader connections of a worldwide network. With the increased financial security from worldwide trading came a cultural disinclination to engage in the ancient rituals, originally designed to protect the mer community from attack.

The solution, to many merfolk, seemed obvious. Instead of endangering the lives of merfolk; they would build traps to protect themselves. The ancient protective rituals had encouraged athleticism and courage in mer communities. These were replaced with the equally thrilling, but safer job of baiting the traps. The bait of choice was live humans.”

Enkai put down the shears that he had been using to trim the kelp beds. He glanced up at the bright gleams of light spangling across the surface of the water, picked up a small bundle tied to the bottom of one of the kelp plants, and quietly swam away from the kelp beds where he worked. He passed two other merfolk on his way. They both ignored him. What was there to look at? Just Enkai, the merman from another village, who’d come to stay with their Juno and never went back to his own people, even after she’d died.

He surfaced some five minutes later in a shallow bay, feeling the warmth of the shallow water. The dazzle of the full sunlight hit his eyes. For a moment, he stayed still, blinking, and then he swam forward towards the grey object jutting out into the ocean. The water lapped against the old posts that formed the pier and as he swam with his head out of the water his vision focused till he saw a shapeless lump sitting at the end of the pier. The only sign that the lump was human was the skinny bare legs that dangled down, the toes just barely brushing the water. It was whistling slightly, asleep.

“Ho, Grandfather! Have I caught you napping?” He said and waved. The bundle sat up, revealing a face full of grey whiskers, watery dark eyes nearly lost in wrinkles, and a half-toothless grin.

“Ho, fishboy!” The old man responded with a rusty chuckle. “And what have you brought for me today?”

He shrugged, pulling himself up on the pier beside his grandfather. “Just a nice sized tuna.”

He handed the old man the fish, and the old man handed him a pair of pants. The merman’s tail shifted, morphing, scales rippling down his new-formed legs as he pulled on the pants he’d been handed.

The old man was unbothered by this transformation, already busy gutting the fish with leathery, spotted hands. He was carrying on a creaky, wandering, one-sided conversation as he worked. “This is a nice tuna. They do raise ‘em up nice, those merfolk, despite them all being ….” He glanced guiltily over his shoulder, caught his grandson’s warning glance and muttered the next few words into his beard. Then he grumbled, “What? They think we’re stupid. We have the ships, we rule the world, and they think we’re animals?” He poked his grandson’s chest. “You tell me that’s smart people and I tell you this tuna has a college degree!” He sighed, and his face sagged into a million tiny wrinkles, his eyes peering up, pleadingly at the young man in front of him. “Why don’t you come home? Keep an old man and his pier company? That mermaid of yours died—why stay?”

His grandson smiled sadly and put his hand on his grandfather’s stooped back. “I made a choice, when I went with Juno, Grandpa. I can’t take it back. Now let’s grill up that tuna.”

But his Grandpa, unable to quite let it go, said, in a weary, wavering voice, a clearly well-worn phrase: “Well, well…I don’t know what good it does for man or beast.”

Enkai could not meet his sad old eyes. He just looked down at his hands and began preparing the fish. They ate, and Enkai stayed until dusk, when the setting sun tinged the ocean so it looked like flames crashing in waves and flickering above the deep, darkness beneath.

The next morning, Enkai was halfway out the door on the way to the kelp beds when the council representatives came to visit him. He saw them a long way off, Pacifico in the front, Riptide and Caspian, the local police, on either side of him.

Pacifico was the smallest of the three, but lean and fit, and renowned for his athletic prowess at gathering up human bait. Pacifico had never liked Enkai; he seemed to suspect there was something strange about him. They glided up to his entrance and Enkai met them, arms crossed, in the doorway of his coral home. He meant to look unconcerned; but his arms were crossed to hide that his hands were shaking. He had been expecting this visit. The fact that Pacifico was heading it meant bad news.

“Enkai,” Pacifico said, his hands behind his back, his face solemn, every inch the representation of the objective arm of the law. “It has come to the council’s attention that you have shirked your duty to fill the traps with bait for the past three seasons.”

Enkai nodded.

“You will be required to fill the quota this season.”

Enkai did not react. He had known this was coming. He did not know how he would respond. He still didn’t know, and the panic began to build slowly. And then, he noticed a repressed intensity to Pacifico’s stern facade. There was something maliciously excited about him, a gleam in his eye as he added, casually, “Since you have proven yourself to be remiss, the council has assigned you your first bait catch.” He held out a picture.

Now the two mermen on either side of Pacifico sniggered, but Enkai watched Pacifico’s face as he took the picture from Pacifico’s hands. He looked at it, cleared his throat and managed a bark of a chuckle. “It’s an old man. On a pier. Are you kidding? That guy hasn’t got any meat on his bones left to make bait!”

“It’s an insult, because we all know you’re a coward,” Riptide said, displaying a smile full of sharpened teeth, as was popular among the mermen. “He’s probably going to beat you off with an oar or something.”

Caspian scowled at Riptide—neat and tidy Caspian would never be so tacky as to explain an insult to the insulted person.

But Enkai hadn’t stopped watching Pacifico. Pacifico’s smile grew, his eyes dark with dislike and Enkai knew—it was not to mock Enkai that this particular old man was chosen. Pacifico was targeting Enkai’s grandfather. He knew Enkai’s origins. No doubt he’d not told anyone else—yet. He was not the kind to take lightly the idea of a human and a mermaid marrying, even if it had been something done years before.

Enkai could see the disgust on his face and ached, even more, for Juno to be alive again, to be standing with him, her cool palm on his shoulder, just being there, doing this strange life with him, helping him navigate a culture totally alien to him.

Pacifico allowed himself a smile. “Just for you Enkai. Tie the old man up in the traps and you can take your pick of whatever human you’d like for the rest of the season. It’s gracious of the council, really.” Pacifico stared Enkai down, sensing as most bullies do, the fear and the panic behind Enkai’s blank expression.

Because it would be no light matter for Enkai to announce that he was human turned merman. It would mean death—the worst kind. They would send him out of the water and not let him back in, and slowly, slowly, he would drown in the air that he once belonged to. He swallowed.

Even Riptide and Caspian began to be uncomfortable with the silence that stretched between Pacifico and Enkai.

“Look, once you do it, you’ll realize it’s not that bad,” Caspian said, trying to be encouraging, and Riptide shouldered his partner aside with a gruff, “You moron, you have the guts of a jellyfish. This isn’t anything like what they used to do—actually fight the sharks and squids and stuff. You’re honestly scared of an old man? Try fighting the sharks.”

Enkai moved, abruptly. He swung to his left and picked up the spear leaning up against the door. His face was pale, and his voice was calm. “Excellent idea, Riptide. Since I will not bait the traps, gentlemen, I’ll do the next best thing.”

And he swam out the door.

--

The initial decision was a snap quick rush as soon as he’d grasped the true choice before him. He’d felt a brief flash of satisfaction at seeing Pacifico’s blank stare of shock. The buzz of conversation as he swam through the village and his own flush of fear and embarrassment had drowned out any other emotion, but now he was on the shelf, alone, facing the dark.

The water was cold and just in front of him the warm blue eased into pitch black. This was where the shelf dropped off into the true depths of the ocean. The merfolk lived in the sunlit waters. The same waters many sharks prowled.

Enkai stopped at the edge of the shelf, floating in the water, feeling the cold caresses of the true deeps swirling around him. He could hear, just faintly, miles away, the eerie call of a whale. He should be patrolling—but what was the use? In the old days, bands of mer people did this—not one, alone, with one spear, and—he checked—oh joy, he did have at least a single knife strapped to his side. Though it was something he’d use to lever a clam open, not protect his life with. There wouldn’t be many sharks at least—the baiting grounds were placed far to the north to keep the bulk of the predators fixated far away from the village.

Then in the depths, he saw a curve of silver, a flash of light, and then, silently, a shark was there, cruising past. A black tip shark, its dark, round eye rolling at Enkai as it passed, gently swaying, towards the village. Enkai moved, too afraid to think, batting the shark away from the shelf with his spear butt.

“Go back.” He said, as if he could order a shark around. It swung around, blindingly fast—and then swam away. “Just showing off what you could do if you wanted, huh?” Enkai said to its retreating silhouette.

Someone was clapping behind him. “Wow, look at the great warrior.” It was Pacifico, alone, holding a bag, his arms crossed. “Seems a little boring, honestly. If you ask me, all that stuff about how great the ancients were was a lot of garbage. Let’s liven things up, hmm?”

And he opened the bag. Blood wafted out onto the water. Pacifico pulled out a chunk of fish and chucked it towards the village. In the darkness, Enkai saw dark shapes gathering.

Pacifico grinned. “Uhoh, Enkai.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Enkai roared. “You just endangered everybody!”

Pacifico leaned towards him, his smile slick. “I intend to see one human get sacrificed for our community, one way or another, Enkai.”

Then he was gone with a flash of scales, and Enkai was alone facing the black shapes filtering out of the darkness, silent, quick, deadly. He sprang into action, whipping his spear sideways, beating aside a slim shortfin, spinning it round and prodding it into the gills of another silhouette gliding past. He did not relish killing even a shark—on one hand, he respected living creatures. On the other hand, if he killed one, all the others might turn on it, and simply mow him down in the process.

And then—teeth, a wide darkness, and before he could think, he had plunged his spear straight into the shark’s mouth. Blood filled the water; bodies slammed against him, turning on the shark he’d killed. At any moment they would turn on him. He was flailing, lost—

A voice shouted a wordless battle cry and suddenly there were scales flashing through the sharks, spears being flung, knifes glittering blue in the water and blood—everywhere. Enkai had no idea what was happening or who was helping him, but he saw sleek shapes darting towards the village and he shot after them, not worrying about blood as he plunged his spear into them.

“Get the carcasses away from the village!” He shouted back at the melee, not knowing if anyone would listen. “Use them as the bait!”

It might have lasted hours. Maybe it only took minutes. Some of the fastest mer people followed his instructions and dragged the bulk of the dead sharks away, out into the deep water.

The rest ringed the village, turning back any other curious predators that tried to nose their way in. When the water was clear of looming shapes, Caspian swam up to Enkai and thumped him on the shoulder, his usually reserved features in a ear-splitting grin. “That was the most amazing thing—the bards will sing of you, friend! Now go take a rest; I have reinforcements from the police coming to patrol the border until…” he hesitated, didn’t want to meet Enkai’s eyes. “Until we decide what to do.”

Enkai swam into the village and to his amazement, found himself a hero. The merwomen who had ignored him for years smiled at him. Everyone looked happy to see him. He looked around. “Where’s Pacifico?”

It turned out that Pacifico had not successfully given Riptide and Caspian the slip when he had gone out to put blood in the water for Enkai. They caught him dragging a half disemboweled tuna back to the village and forced the whole story out of him. He seemed to think that they would feel the same as he did if he told them that Enkai was a human turned mer.

And maybe, thought Enkai looking at the wild, scale-flashing swirl of his adopted people as they sang and danced in celebration, maybe if they had come out and found him standing in empty darkness, doing nothing, they might not have found it in themselves to be so open minded.

Riptide came up and thumped him on the back so hard he nearly fell over. “My dude! Have one on me!” And he handed Enkai a shell full of something that bubbled and hissed—mermaid alcohol. Enkai downed it, feeling the bubbles heating his insides. Well, what of it? He could forgive them for trusting too much in their own preconceptions. After all, he was only human himself.

Enkai never lost his standing in the village after that day. With Riptide’s enthusiastic assistance, he formed patrols, just like the ancient mer people, to protect the borders of the village. They continued to use the bait grounds, but instead of human bait they used the sharks who had strayed too far inward.

The worldwide mer standards never changed, but most eventually heard of the lone village, where all the merfolk were proud and self-reliant, where they held to the old traditions, and fought for their own people.

And a few times a week, an old man sitting at the end of a rickety old dock greets a merman rising out of the water and hands him a pair of pants. “What do you got for me this week, fish boy?”

At some point during the evening, maybe in the reflective orange glow of the sun on the water, or maybe as they warm their hands over the cook stove and the sizzling fish, the old man asks, “Ever think of coming home to live with your old grandpa?”

And Enkai gives him a sad, quiet smile. “No, Grandpa. I have to stay in the sea. I made a choice.”

“Well, well…I don’t know what good it does for man or beast!”

“I do, Grandpa. I do.”