Island Read online

  First he took them into the rich sea-shallows and bade them watch the movements of the herring and the tuna and the mackerel and the silversides. “Do you see,” he asked, “how each group swims in a school and how each school’s members are equally spaced, all doing the same thing at the same time like one large body? Try it yourselves then.”

  “Who among us will be the leader?” Lillith asked.

  “There is no leader,” the great sawfish told the disappointed mermaid. “When the school turns west, the mermaid furthest west becomes the leader. When the school turns east, the mermaid furthest east … And so it goes for all points in between.”

  “But without a leader,” Lillith insisted, “we cannot know when to turn or in which direction.”

  The great sawfish laughed and his loving little protegées swam forward swiftly to pop his laugh-bubbles with their increasingly useful tails. “You will know,” he said.

  And sure enough, the fifteen mermaids found school-swimming not only easy but also practical, for their luminescent tails created in the waters a most forboding light which, when in danger, could be concentrated by tightening the spacing between them so that even the sharks would not dare approach.

  From the great sawfish the mermaids learned, too, how to hunt near the warm-water coral reefs, how to use their tails to cut through the vine kelp, and how to wrap themselves in the green sea lettuce and sit curled and silent among the wreathing ribbons of green sea grass, prepared to strike. And in a short time, the fifteen mermaids, Lillith and her fourteen nameless sisters, grew strong and healthy and brave.

  Then came the day when the great sawfish had the fifteen mermaids cease their games and sit for a time in a circle atop the brain coral around which swam all day and all night the tasty wrasse. “All you need to know,” the sawfish began, “I have taught you. Remember that the impulse which allows you to school-swim easily is likewise the key to your the powers. Stay close together so as to keep this impulse sharpened, and one day, if you are lucky, you will meet with a school of young mermen and form together an even larger body and perhaps bear young among the sturdy fingers of the pale sponge seaweed reaching for the light. As for me, the time has come to take my leave.” And turning his great body, the sawfish swam away.

  For a long, long time the stream of waters between the dejected mermaids and the departing sawfish was so well obscured by the bubble-laughs of the great sawfish that he failed to realize that he was being followed any more than the little mermaids knew that one of their number was no longer among them. But when the bubbles perished, the sawfish turned and saw Lillith, smiling sweetly and wrapping her locks ’round and ’round her two small breasts. He shouted, “What have you done? The sea is large and continuous. Your fourteen sisters may be already too far away for us ever to find them.”

  “We will find them,” said Lillith. “But for now there is one thing I desire more than to swim with my fourteen sisters, and that is to swim with you, go where you go, turn where you turn, eat when you eat …”

  The great sawfish laughed. “Why would you choose to go where I go, turn where I turn, eat when … when you have fourteen lovely sisters?”

  “I asked them a question for which they had no response,” Lillith said. “I have come to swim by your side and have my question answered.”

  “Did I not tell you already everything you need to know?”

  “No,” replied Lillith. And the great sawfish laughed in spite of himself, and Lillith had to wind her locks ’round his tail so as not to lose him in his effervescence. Then his laughter ceased, and he waited to hear the question.

  “Great sawfish,” Lillith began, “I have seen many things since my coming into this watery world. I have seen the dragon fish swim by with his mouth wide open and his solitary whisker ever extended. I have seen the snails with their caves on their backs—moon shell, tulip shell, bubble shell, star shell—moving along the algae-covered rocks when the sea is darkest. I have seen the wee seahorses dancing together, stiff and upright, in a circle in the seaweed. I have seen the red backs of the sockeye salmon searching for the river from whence they came. I have seen the great hawkbill turtles swimming in pairs tirelessly. I have seen the cunning blennies feigning to groom but then nibbling at the larger fish. I have seen the awesome mantra somersaulting, and the lionfish fanning his variegated spines, and the colorful starfish clinging to the rocks, and the filefish hiding in the seaweed he so resembles, and the comical trunkfish rocking himself through the water, and the eyes of the stingray protruding from his trench in the sand. All this I have seen, great sawfish, and more. And I have come to understand that within our watery world there lives every kind of creature. But yet there is among them all a similarity which my sisters and I have but little share in. Is there no other creature in this watery world, great sawfish, having long white limbs branching into smaller ones, as skilled and useful as my own? Is there no other creature with long curls flowing? With nippled breasts? With lips the color of the fairy bass?”

  “Ah, my poor Lillith,” the great sawfish replied, “the time has come for me to tell you what I did not believe you needed to know. You are not entirely of the sea, Lillith. Some of your ancestors, a long time ago, came down from the land.”

  “Land!” Lillith cried. “What is land?”

  “Land is the name given to the waterless world which lies above our watery one, the motionless world where the plants are deeply rooted and the creatures go tailless. Now ask me no further.”

  But a few days later, the great sawfish and his little companion came upon a school of flying fish who beat their tails and then, folding their pectorals against their sides, soared rapidly upward, breaking through the surface of the blue-green waters so suddenly that Lillith gasped. And just as Lillith was about to ask the great sawfish what had become of the little flyers, for it seemed that they were no longer, they re-emerged. And before they could prepare themselves for another ascension, Lillith swam over, crying, “You vanished from the sea. I saw you and yet saw you not! Where did you go?”

  “We flew in the air to look at the land,” said one.

  “Land is just south of us,” said another. “I saw there a fisherman readying his nets, and his young wife behind him yawning and looking at the sky.”

  “I will go to see it too,” Lillith told the great sawfish when the flying fish had gone away.

  “I do not advise it,” the great sawfish replied.

  “But the flying fish seemed to enjoy it so.”

  “The flying fish are creatures of the sea,” the great sawfish said. “They know they could never live on land and therefore are never tempted to try it. But you, being a creature of two worlds, may find yourself longing for the other, longing to know its creatures. I have seen mermaids longing before. It is a sad, sad sight to see. The land’s creatures are not kind to their sea sisters. You can from here see the clouds and the moon and the stars and the sun, even as men do.”

  So Lillith, who loved her watery world and did not wish to be tempted to leave it, promised to stay beneath the sea’s surface. But in spite of her resolve, Lillith was filled with a great curiosity concerning the land and its tailless creatures. She found herself full of many questions, and for each one that the weary sawfish was able to answer, there were born so many others that Lillith believed she would never be satisfied.

  So the great sawfish told her about the little mermaid he had once heard tell of who gave up her voice and her beautiful tail to pursue the man she had once saved from drowning, and how the man was a fool who married another, thereby depriving the poor little mermaid of her only chance to learn of love and to gain a soul.

  “But what is Love?” Lillith asked. “And what is a Soul?”

  So the great sawfish told her that love was a feeling not unlike the sort she had shared with her fourteen nameless sisters when they swam in a school, side by side, as though one great body. But on land, he warned, creatures were different and gained no pleasure going sid
e by side with their companions.

  “But what is a soul?” Lillith persisted.

  So the great sawfish told her that a soul was a fragile, eternal, invisible thing which men invented to balance the fear of the death of the body, a fear which resulted from their evil doings.

  “But what is evil?” Lillith asked.

  So the great sawfish told her that evil was that which was opposite instinct. And to help Lillith better understand the evil ways of the creatures of the land, the great sawfish took her to the sight of a wrecked brigatine and showed her all the black mouths of the portside cannons. “These,” he said, “can be made to spit a poison which is so powerful that one man can kill many at one time.” He showed her, too, a chest of gold pieces. “These,” he said, touching the gold with the tip of his saw, “are often the cause of such killings. No one knows why. You must be very careful. Because you are a mermaid, and thus related to these careless creatures, you have a potential for evil that the other creatures of the sea do not. Remember your mother.”

  “I will never leave the sea,” Lillith cried. “I will never even look at land. I am ashamed to be what I am.”

  And thus it was that a few days later, when the great sawfish was chatting with some green sea turtles who were telling of the hardships they had experienced in going to land to lay their eggs, Lillith swam off and happened to find a rapidly moving basket star whose pink arms branched out in all directions, thinning and curling in on themselves, not unlike the tendrils of her own golden locks. And she lifted the star, and thinking to show it to her friend, she began to swim in his direction—when all at once, from out of the sea grass there shot a lamprey who coiled himself about her so suddenly that she dropped the star and let out a scream.

  From his companions the sawfish turned quickly, his angry eyes glowing, his blade already pointed in the direction from which had come Lillith’s shriek, but seeing that her tormentor was the dangerous lamprey, he stopped himself short, for to strike the thing so tightly coiled around his friend would be to strike her as well. “Swim up!” he cried, knowing that the lamprey was known to release its victims when they were able to break through the surface and rise out of the water. “Swim up!”

  And even as she ascended, Lillith’s eyes fastened on those of the great sawfish, and his on hers, and in that brief engagement all their fears and affections were accounted for. Then Lillith flipped her beautiful tailfin and burst through the surface of the water and the lamprey released her and fell back while she was still ascending. And falling back herself, she re-entered the sea and saw that the dangerous lamprey was already in pieces and now being fought over by several noisy roncos who had been watching the ordeal from the first.

  “I have seen the other world,” she said to the great sawfish when the commotion was past. “The sun I saw looking down on the land was rounder and brighter than the one that looks through the sea surface, and its rays on my shoulders stung like those of the ostracod. The clouds we see from here are mere shadows of true clouds. The sky we see from here is a mere fragment of the dome that stretches from horizon to horizon and binds two worlds together as one. I heard birds calling in the distance, and beyond them was a strip of land, and from the land came men in boats with faces like my own, staring at the horizon and holding long poles that bore long lines that fell from their world into ours as if they understood that the thing they lacked was here with us.”

  The great sawfish nodded and made no response.

  And later that day, while her companion was feeding on the dull mullets who swim head down in the mud, Lillith, who was crying, swam away in the direction of the strip of land that she had seen. She swam and swam until she came to the place where the sandy floor and the watery surface met, and there she lifted her head and saw that the sun was swollen and very red and would soon fall down beyond the horizon. And the clouds in the sky were purple and pink, and the palms were dancing about their stalks, and the wind was singing some sweet sweet song about the ways of men. And Lillith lay in the surf watching all this, and wondering if Night littered the sky with flashing stars to make up for the fact that she had moments before sucked up all the color from land and sky and sea alike. And when the stars had departed, one by one, just as they had earlier arrived, and the sun was rising on the opposite horizon, and the sky, land, and sea had fetched back their colors from weakening Night, and the creatures of the land, men, women and children, were emerging from the little shacks which dotted the hills of the little island, Lillith saw coming down the winding path from one of the shacks on the hill nearest an old fisherman.

  He stopped when he saw her and gripped his gray beard. “Aye!” he called. “What have we here? A mermaid? Can it be? I’ve heard tell of such things to be sure, but I never thought to see one for myself. Stay here, little mermaid, I beg you. I’ll run back to my shack as fast as these old legs can carry me and get my wife. She’d be the one to say for certain whether you’re real or I’m crazy.”

  And although Lillith had not understood the fisherman’s words, she understood that he meant her no harm and she was therefore content to remain in the surf while the fisherman ran up the path he had come down when first he had approached her. And in a few moments, the fisherman reappeared coming down the path, followed by a woman of many years and with unkempt gray hair. “Well well well well well!” the old woman called as she passed her husband and hurried to bend over the mermaid.

  “I never thought to see such a creature,” said the fisherman.

  “The sea is full of them,” said the old woman as she poked at Lillith’s tail with a stick.

  “We could keep her,” said the fisherman. “Though we tried our best, we failed to bring children into the world, wife. But here it seems that the world deems it fitting to give us a chance to be parents anyway, and at our late ages. I don’t care that she’s somewhat less than human. Let the others laugh at me. I shall love her as though she were my own daughter.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” the old woman shouted. “You can’t keep a mermaid. They can’t be trusted. It’d grow lonely for its own kind, and one day you’d wake up to find it gone, and who knows which of our few possessions along with it, into the sea.”

  “But wife, there must be some way to keep her.”

  The old woman considered. “Aye, there’s a way,” she said at last. It could be kept if it had legs instead of a tail. With legs, not only would it be reluctant to return to the sea, but it would also be of some use. We grow old, husband. It would not hurt to have some help around here.” The old woman laughed and added, “And wouldn’t it be lovely to let Hatra know that a bit of the magic which had its source with her has found its way to me, her enemy? And furthermore, that I have me a mermaid to work it on?”

  “What magic is that, wife? And how did you come to acquire it?”

  “I’ll tell you, old man. Many years ago Granny found a merboy washed ashore just like this one, and thinking he might be useful to her, she went up the mountain and consulted with Hatra. For a fee, Hatra told her to take a sharp knife and cut off the merboy’s tailfin and then leave him bleeding in a hole, wrapped in sea grass, under the moon and stars. All this Granny did, and in the morning the last of the merboy’s scales fell away revealing two fine-looking legs, just as Hatra had promised. I was but a small girl then, but I remember the incident well. I was there when Granny took up the knife.”

  “And what was the merboy like afterwards?” asked the fisherman.

  “Well,” said the old woman, “that’s hard to say. He was slow in the mind and he never learned to speak, though I do recall that he made grunting sounds when something displeased him or when he had to be whipped. And he never learned to use his legs properly. He could get around, mind you, but he was forever tripping over things, and oh so slow to get from one place to another. Still, he made a useful errand boy. And Granny was good to him, feeding him twice a day, even in summer, and allowing him to sleep indoors in the winter and during the rains. And when
he died from unknown causes ten years later, Granny took him down in her own two arms and threw him back into the sea.”

  “But did the merboy mind giving up his tail for a set of legs?” the old fisherman asked.

  “Fool!” cried his wife. “Would you want a smelly old tail if you could have legs?”

  The old fisherman looked at Lillith’s powerful tail and then at his own thin legs. “Could we keep her then?” he asked, looking back at his wife.

  “Take it up to the shack,” the old woman said. “Lay it outside, beneath the window. Then come back here and gather sea grass. You’ll need quite a lot of it. Then you’d best get into that boat of yours and catch some fish to sell in the market tomorrow. We’ll soon have three mouths to feed here and we’ll need every penny we can get. Let’s just hope it’s worth the trouble.”

  The fisherman watched as his wife turned to climb the path that would take her back to their shack. When she was out of sight, he bent over the mermaid and said, “Little mermaid, do you mind if we cut off a part of your tail and arrange for you a pair of legs and keep you as our own, though in truth we know you don’t belong to our world?”

  Lillith understood that she was being questioned, and that the doubt and kindness she saw in the eyes of the old fisherman meant that his question had something to do with her care and safety, and so to show him that she trusted in him and trusted too in whatever decisions he might come to make regarding her welfare, she put her small hand into his larger one, touching, for the first time, the flesh of a creature of the land, an experience which brought on a wave of happiness. It suddenly occurred to her that the sawfish she recalled—as one recalls a dream—was a truly evil thing who had told her all that he had because he envied her ability to live in two worlds while he could live only in one.

  All that day Lillith lay on her back in the shadow of the fisherman’s shack, watching the sea birds flying in circles and listening to the wind running through the trees. And every few hours the old woman appeared in the window above the spot where Lillith lay and threw out on her a bucket of water. And when Lillith flinched, because the water was cold, the old woman called, “It’ll do you good to keep that tail of yours wet until we’ve freed you from it.” And though Lillith found the woman’s ways brusque, she was also flattered, for she understood that the watering-down was somehow a kindness.