Mermaid_ A Twist on the Classic Tale - Carolyn Turgeon [7]
Her body began moving before the thought crystallized: she would save him, this one man.
She swam to him, pushing past bodies and debris, and he was frozen, staring at her, stunned, the rain pounding down. He was so strong, clinging to life so ferociously, his powerful legs kicking to keep him above water. She found it moving, his passion for life. This will to live.
“Come,” she said, holding out her hand.
He didn’t move.
“Come to me. I will save you.”
Her voice seemed to have some magical effect on him. He looked at her, his eyes wide with fear and wonder, a smile beginning to form on his face, despite everything. She smiled back at him. Her grandmother had told her this, how easily men were enchanted by mermaid sounds. How easily a mermaid could cast a spell on a man and lead him to his death. This made sense to her now. Her soft, beautiful tones in this harsh, loud world.
She put one arm behind his shoulders, the other winding about his waist.
“Let go,” she said. “Hold on to me.”
His face was right next to hers. She could feel his heart beating.
“My men,” he said, his voice rumbling into her. “My ship.”
“Shh,” she said. “I will take you to shore.”
He was wearing cloth over his chest, and the material felt strange under her palm. She loved the smell of him. Even over the sea and rain, she could smell his hair, his skin, feel the warmth of his beating heart. As she began swimming, she leaned her cheek into his wet hair, surprised at the feel of it. He was so soft, full of life. She had to stop herself from pulling him down to her garden and wrapping herself around him. He will die there, she repeated to herself. Take him where he will live.
She swam harder, pushing against the current, leaving the wreckage and the bodies far behind. She realized that she knew where to go, that her body could sense it.
It was wonderful, swimming for the first time between the two worlds, half in the air and half in the water, as the rain beat down against her. She liked the challenge of the crashing waves, the way the lightning cracked the sky open, the beauty of the night and the rain and the moon, faintly visible. She liked the feeling of him in her arms. For a human it’d be hard work, carrying a man of his size, but he felt easy in her arms. He had slipped from consciousness, but she was aware at every moment of his breathing, the air moving in and out of his lungs, how crucial it was to keep him above water and not let his breath stop.
She swam as her body told her to, slipping into a kind of trance between his breathing and the churning of the storm-ridden sea.
After a while, the rain stopped, the sea calmed, and there was no sound but the lapping of water and his faint breath. Above her, the black sky cleared, until she could see the thousands of stars strewn across it. Even in her most vivid imaginings, she had not understood the vastness of this world, how far it extended. She looked down at the man in her arms, his soft, perfect face, and a ferocious love moved through her.
I will save you.
She pushed her powerful tail behind her. She swam harder than she ever had, holding the man as if he could break, her arms under his shoulders. And then, finally, in the distance: the glimmer of windows. Humans. The way her sisters had described it. There was a wall of rock, and above it, a large stone structure. The sun was coming up behind the structure, on the top of the cliff, splitting the sky into pink and cream and blue.
“Look,” she whispered, and his eyes fluttered open. “Look at the sky.”
He turned his head, looked right at her, and, in the breaking sunlight, she could see the strange tawny color of his eyes. There was so little life in them now.
She shoved her tail against the waves and swam as hard as she could, to the shore, to where he would be safe.
Her eyes scanned the cliff, the building, and then rested on a lone human girl, standing on the cliff, near