Transporting the equipment I needed into the cave was awkward and time-consuming. Setting up was also difficult. Luckily, the narrow entrance was big enough to angle the metal grate I had bought at the hardware store down into the cave. I needed several drill bits and batteries to bore holes into the rock above the second, underwater entrance, and the noise it made echoing through the cave was mind-numbingly loud. I’d started first thing in the morning and by the end of the afternoon I was exhausted, sweaty and drained, but I couldn’t wait any longer. I’d assembled my trap. On my last trip I brought down the tape player and the last of what I needed.
The cave was lit by three camping lanterns. I kept a flashlight clipped to my belt though and spare batteries in my pockets, I didn’t want to get left down there in the dark. Salt filled the air. Waves lapped constantly. Tides might rise and fall but down in the cave it didn’t matter if it was day or night, everything else was the same.
At the sea entrance to the cave I had built a gate, hinged to the uneven rock wall and weighed down by cinder blocks. It was propped open for the moment. Actually I really only had one shot when I dropped it, the weight and awkward spot it was in would make it difficult to reset. Directly across from the sea entrance I set up the boombox I’d bought online. The tape with the mermaid’s death song was already inside it.
Simple as it was, I went over the setup again and again. I was waiting until dusk before starting the song after all. Dusk and dawn were when the mermaid seemed to be most active based on everything I’d read and heard. When the fishermen saw her leaping or singing. After looking over my arrangement for the fiftieth time, I checked my phone impatiently.
Weighing a chain in my hand, I looked over how it led to the metal pipe I’d used to prop up the gate. One hard yank, the pipe would come free. The gate would come crashing down and seal the entrance. Anything in the pool bigger than a fish would be trapped. In my other hand was a smooth, cool shaft. A cattle prod I had bought from a farm supplies store, it had almost been too easy. It looked like a black baton almost three foot long which ended in a forked tip. Touched to skin, or a conductor like water or metal, and triggered, it could deliver a shock up to six thousand volts. Enough to stun a human and deliver an incredibly painful jolt. I didn’t want to use it, of course, but according to all the stories the mermaid didn’t give up her tears easily. I needed that tear, just one. Nothing else mattered. I would not leave this cave until I had it, and neither would the mermaid. I flicked my finger along the handle. It was heavy, inert, but full of potential.
An alarm chirped on my phone. Nothing in the cave had changed but outside the sun would be setting. Light filtering over the land and the sea going dark. My heart was leaping in my chest. Maybe this would all come to nothing. Maybe I’d be at it for days. Maybe something would happen as soon as I hit play. I paced over to the boombox and, with a trembling finger, pressed the play button. I turned the volume up as high as it would go. The buzz on the tape grew loud and those indistinct voices in Spanish or Greek or whatever were as loud as they would be if they’d been standing in the same room shouting at me.
“Show time,” I said.
The cave acted as an amplifier. The mermaid’s death song started echoing off the walls, haunting and alien. I retreated across the cave to sit near the sea entrance. It was still loud. A diamond drill boring into my skull with its dark beauty. I had a set of protective headphones I’d worn when using the electric drill, otherwise I’d have gone deaf, but even they didn’t seem to do much. Cusping my hands over my ears, I waited. So much pain, so many memories. By the time the sound died down and all that was left was the whirr of the empty reels of tape going through the machine I was sobbing. Tears rolled down my face. Water lapped the sides of the pool, no change. Wiping my tears, I crossed to the player, rewound, and pressed play again.
Over an hour later, I was empty of grief, of feeling, as if it had all been hollowed out of me. I’d lost sight, really, of what I was even doing. Tears dried on my cheeks, indistinguishable from the salt already in the air. Routine kept me going. Rewind, press play, wait by the trap until it was over, return to the player, rewind, play, wait by the trap. My head throbbed from the sheer wall of sound even with the headphones and I felt half-insane but clung to the routine and to hope. It would be fully dark outside by now but my camping lanterns lit the cave warmly.
Something missiled through the mouth of the underwater entrance, so fast water sprayed from the surface of the pool. I jumped as the splash hit me. I got a glimpse of pale flesh, arms, and long, dark fins. The arrival pulled up hard at the far end of the pool, splashing more water. I saw dark hair draped over ivory shoulders. It was real, the mermaid, brought here by the song! I was so stunned, I almost froze. Remembering the chain laying across my lap, I gave it a hard yank and pulled the pole out from under the gate.
With a rattling crash, the gate, anchored by chains and cinder blocks, fell and hit the water. It sploshed, sending up a small tidal wave. The reaction in the pool was electric. The creature whirled, sending another spray off the surface, and darted back toward the entry. They realised immediately it was a trap. Once it hit the water, the gate and cinder blocks slowed slightly, water billowing outward, but the gate sank into position just in time. Something hit the metal with a clang. The hinges shook. I stared in amazement for a few moments then scrambled to pick up the metal pole. There was a latch attached to the metal grid and the rock wall. I wedged the pole through it and padlocked it. The cinder blocks were too heavy to lift and the latch would hold the gate.
I could see movement under the water’s surface. It really did look like a creature with the upper body of a woman and a serpentine lower body graced with fins, but it was hard to fully make out. The gate shook with shocking strength. It was a good thing I’d drilled the holes for the bolts so deep, and chained on the cinder blocks, because the metal grate slammed back and forth as far as what little wiggle room there was would allow. The mermaid was strong but I guess it would have to be to swim inside as fast as it had.
“Stop that!” I said. “Get back from there!”
The tape with the other mermaid’s death song wailed with all its intense, agonising beauty, loud enough to cut through my head like a buzzsaw. I couldn’t think. Hurrying back to the tape player, I hammered the stop button. Silence loomed, filling the cave. At the entrance, the gate and chains attached to the wall clattered. Ripples flowed across the pool, violent and uneven, splattering the sides.
“Move away from there! Stop it!”
Seeing how strong the mermaid was, I was genuinely afraid the gate I’d built wouldn’t be enough. If I let her get away, I’d never see her again. To brush against this whole other world running alongside the one I knew and then to lose everything I’d worked towards would be devastating. The same bait would never work twice.
In my hand, the handle of the cattle prod was dense and smooth. Running across the cave, I jammed the forks of the baton into the metal grate where it stuck out of the water. Sparks crackled and zapped, filling the air with the smell of burnt ozone. In the water, the dark silhouette of the mermaid thrashed, sending up plumes of spray, and flung itself backward. I stopped triggering the prod and drew away, breathing hard. My heart was pounding in my chest and my mouth tasted like copper.
The mermaid shot back into the main body of the pool. It reminded me of a Siamese fighting fish, all swirling, dark and diaphanous fins as it tucked itself into a ball in the deepest corner. I pulled my headphones off and tossed them across the cave as I circled the pool.
“Hey, hey, come up here,” I said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to hurt you but you made me! I need you, I couldn’t let you leave!”
Pacing, I continued to talk to the mermaid, trying to apologise and cajole her. Beneath the water, in the low light, I could just barely see the creature. Any picture I might have taken would have been denounced as fake and impossible to make out. But the reality slowly settled on me. A mermaid, I’d really caught a mermaid. I’d always been convinced that there were other things out there, and the alien sound on the tape Jim had given me was proof of something inhuman. But a real, live, mythical creature, here, in front of me. And I was so close to what I needed from it, for Astrid. For over ten minutes, I tried talking but the mermaid didn’t move. It was as if the mermaid thought if it ignored me for long enough I would just go away. In frustration, I raised the cattle prod and shook it over the pool.
“Don’t make me hurt you! I don’t want to, but if you won’t come up here I’ll have to zap you.”
No reaction from beneath the pool. Waves swelled from under the surface, through the bars of the gate, and lapped the surrounding rocks. Eventually, I applied the forks of the cattle prod to the surface and triggered it. Sparks exploded backward with a nasty, sputtering bug zapper sound. It was hard to say if it did anything or if the water diffused the shock too fast. The mermaid didn’t move.
I couldn’t go in after her, I’d be in her element then. Behind me, at the back of the cave, was a big canvas bag. It rattled as I turned it and pulled the zipper open. Inside were tools that I didn’t want to use but had brought with me, just in case. From within, I removed a machete in a hard plastic sheath. A short pole with a hook attached to one end, meant for snaring fishing pots, and a brand new speargun. All things I’d bought at Sirendale’s biggest hardware store or various camping and fishing stores. The speargun was made of plastic with a long rubber hoop that had to be pulled back and latched to a trigger device. It came with several short harpoons, metal with barbed heads, that could be tied off at the end to a thin rope. Clumsily, I loaded one of the spears, pulling the rubber hoop back. I’d practiced loading and firing a bunch of times to get some idea of how to use it. I stood over the pool, speargun pointed down.
“Come up, you’re mine now!” I said. “I don’t want to hurt you but-, you’re going to make me if you don’t come up! I’ll shoot you with this and drag you out.”
The mermaid stirred. I saw what seemed to be her head lift, dark hair wafting through the tidal pool. I couldn’t be sure if she could really hear me or understand me. The pale flesh of her back became clearer, however. She curled and rose to the surface as I stepped away warily, not wanting to be within arm’s reach of the pool.
Dark hair pasted across her head and shoulders, the mermaid surfaced. Beautiful, she was beautiful, but in a dangerous way. Beautiful like a chemical fire. Beautiful like the pattern on a venomous snake or some kind of deadly sea creature. The hard, sharp face of a catwalk model with an expression almost alien in its severity. Her eyes were too large and the green of her irises and black of her pupils crowded out almost all the white. A small mouth, angular cheekbones, and pointed chin. Tangles of hair, black as ink, draped her collar but didn’t reach far enough to cover her breasts which were small and high and firm, tipped with dark nipples. Pale, her shoulders were broad and arms muscled for an otherwise small woman.
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Water lapped around the mermaid’s midsection. She regarded me with a cold fury in her alien eyes. Cradling the speargun in one hand, I backed up even further and fetched one of the camping lanterns. Beneath the surface, I could see her stomach and hips blend into a fishy lower body. From the waist down, a serpentine tail coiled under her, scaly and so dark green it was almost black. Billowy fins fanned off the sides like veils. My heart was pounding, mouth dry. The mermaid didn’t move as I observed her, only turning her face ever so slightly to watch me with those big, green eyes, like one of those paintings that faced you no matter where in the room you stood.
“Alright, alright, I’m sorry I had to trap you, but-, you’re real. You’re really, really real.”
I was so excited I could hardly speak. I had proof of something not of the known world. I could keep her chained up in here. I could sell tickets. I could drag her out and show the news. I could be rich and famous, all on the strength of my own belief and determination. But it wasn’t riches and fame I’d come here for. I’d come for my Astrid. With shaking hands, I pulled a tiny plastic cup out of my pocket, like a specimen jar.
“I need a tear, just one tear,” I said. “It’s for my girlfriend, you see. For her, I just need one tear from you.”
Sinuous, the mermaid swayed from side to side on her muscular tail. Her eyes were cold, and she made no reply. I wondered again if she actually understood me. Certainly the song on the tape had contained no human words in any language, it was possible she didn’t speak or understand any English.
“Can you understand me? I need a tear, just one, and I’ll let you go.”
I mimed the passage of a tear down one cheek, frowning exaggeratedly like a sad clown. The mermaid’s thin lips quirked in contempt. She turned, swimming back to the gate covering the cave’s sea entrance. Wrapping her hands around it, she rattled and yanked at the chains.
“Hey, no! No!” I shouted.
Crossing the cave again, I fumbled with the cattle prod. Ramming it into the gate, I hit the button to trigger it and the mermaid went rigid. She hissed with pain until I stopped. Nursing her hands, the mermaid shot back across the pool. They were webbed, I realised. Thin films of skin ran between each digit on her hands. She sank low in the water until waves lapped at her chin, glaring at me. I held the baton loosely as I considered my next move.
“I didn’t want to hurt you, I’m a good guy,” I said. “I just need one tear from you.”
The mermaid drew herself up on her powerful tail and spoke in a voice that barely rose above a rasp, as if it were rarely used. “I will never,” she said. “I will not cry for you.”
“You can talk, you can understand me,” I stammered.
“Yes.” The mermaid glared back.
“Please, be reasonable, I know we’ve gotten off on the wrong-, foot, but all I want is one tear! You’re trapped, you won’t be able to leave until you give me what I want. And I don’t want it for some evil reason, I’m not a bad guy! My girlfriend-, died. She took her own life. I searched and I searched for a way to bring her back. I won’t let her go, and I won’t let you go. Your tear is the only thing that can bring her back to me.”
The mermaid said nothing. Her eyes simmered with anger and contempt. As she sat above the water, steadying her breathing, I noticed her gills for the first time. Pinkish slits started behind her ears and curved down the sides of her throat like scimitars. They parted as she inhaled and exhaled, inescapably sexual and all the more disturbing for the connotation.
I pleaded with the mermaid, I begged. I cajoled and reasoned, and ultimately threatened. Waves flowed in and out of the barred gate, rising and falling. I kept her away from the entrance and she stayed low in the water as if taking a bath, still as a lizard, but beneath the water I could see her finned tail furling in agitation. The cold in the cave didn’t seem to bother her at all. Nothing made any kind of impression on her. She was as stubborn as granite. It seemed like the walls of the cave would erode under the battering of the sea before her resolve would erode from my pleading.
In the story of the fisherman and his dead son, the mermaid hadn’t given up her tear no matter how long he begged either. It was only once he let her go she rewarded him. But the fisherman only caught the mermaid by accident. I doubted the same tactic would work when I had trapped her deliberately. I considered the cattle prod, the speargun, and the other tools. Suddenly, I had a flash of inspiration. I crossed to the tape player, which had been ignored since I trapped the mermaid.
“Okay, okay, you don’t want to listen to me?” I said. “Listen to this.”
Rewinding the tape again to the beginning, I pressed play. Each time I had listened to the tape it had driven me to sobbing. The pain, the loneliness, the alien despair. Surely it would be worse for the mermaid because it was one of her kind. It was what had brought her zipping into the cave after all.
I held the blaring boombox dangling from one hand and pointed it at the pool. Pointed it at the mermaid herself. I had worn myself out on the song before, poured out all the pain that came with listening to it, but I’d had some time to recover and the sound shook me again. I managed to avoid crying but I started shaking, breathing hard, as the voice unloaded a lifetime through the speakers. A whole lifetime and a very, very long one, not all of it sad, not all of it lonely, but all of it lost now. Memories surfaced unbidden, bubbling to the front of my mind and popping open.
Unfortunately, the mermaid kept from crying as well. She had circled the pool to keep me right in front of her, staring. It was her first time listening, the sound must have been hitting her harder. Her angular model’s face had been totally stoic but it shook, bottom lip quivering, but she did not cry. I waited until the song ended and there was just the soft hiss of the unused portion of tape feeding through then I stopped it and rewound.
“I can see it’s getting to you,” I said. “I can do this over and over again. It’s sad, right? Well, just let it out. Let it out, okay?”
The mermaid gave no reaction but her jawline was quivering. I pressed play and the tape started. Setting it down, I kept watching the mermaid for a sign and covered my own ears. It did little to block the sound and the sorrow cut through me. The mermaid made no attempt to block it out. She bore it all. Staring at me, trying to set her jaw, she wouldn’t cry. I repeated the process several times. As I’d hoped, the first few times seemed to wear down her resistance but the mermaid didn’t cry and instead began to regain her composure. Her face returned to its stern expression, beautiful and stoic as a marble statue.
“Fuck me.” I hammered the boombox’s stop button. “Okay, so you’re a pretty tough cookie, huh?”
In spite of the fact I knew the mermaid spoke and understood English, she made no reply. I hugged my knees and we regarded one another. I’d told her over and over that she wouldn’t leave until I had a tear but she didn’t seem to care.
Looking over at the bag of tools, I considered my options. Alien as she seemed emotionally, I knew the mermaid could feel pain. She had backed off, nursing her hands, when I shocked the gate. Torture, I’d come prepared to go all the way if I had to but now I didn’t know if I had the stomach for it. I imagined carving bits off the beautiful creature, dark blood mingling with seawater. And something told me no amount of pain would make the mermaid cry or beg. There was too much wild animal in her even if half of her looked human. She might sing beautifully and rescue children but at the core of her was something as tough and cruel as the sea itself.
As much as I’d begged and bargained, I hadn’t really tried explaining just why I needed the tear in the first place. Maybe I just needed her to understand what had happened to me. If I just told her the truth, the whole truth, maybe that would be enough?
“Astrid, Astrid was my girlfriend, I met her when I was in university,” I started to explain.
I didn’t plan what I was going to say, it just flooded out of me. I told her everything about my relationship with Astrid. Our first meeting, pursuing her, how hard I’d had to work to convince her we had something special. Our first date, other dates I’d taken her on. Ups and downs, moving in together, almost breaking up and making up, convincing her to stay. On and on until I reached the night I’d come home to find her in the bathtub. I told her about the incomplete mermaid tattoo, the pinkish water. I told the mermaid everything I’d done in the belief I could bring her back. How hard I’d worked to track down a solution until I found her.
“So, here we are,” I said. “Please, you’re my only hope.”
My mouth was dry from talking. I had zoned out, staring into space and not thinking about anything except the words tumbling out of my mouth. Blinking, I refocused and looked down at the mermaid. She was standing straight, waves lapping around her breasts. Her face was stiff as ever. She had listened to my story intently, however, and I saw a glisten in one of her eyes that hadn’t been there before.
“Wait, are you-, is that?”
The mermaid didn’t reply but I could see her bottom lip quivering. My story had won her over. My love, my obvious dedication. Shooting upright, I scrambled for the small plastic container I’d stuffed into my pocket. It was round and clear with a screw top lid, like a specimen jar.
“Yes, yes, thank you,” I said. “Just one tear, just one tear for me and you can go.”
I pressed the container against the mermaid’s cheek, her flesh pale and cold as a fish. Her right eye glistened. A single, perfect tear slid loose. It dribbled down her face and into the specimen cup. Fat and glistening, somehow ripe with potential.
“I’m not crying for you, I’m crying for that girl,” the mermaid said, her voice ethereal and watery and not of this world, like fracturing ice.
“Yes, yes, of course,” I said.
Whatever she needed to tell herself, I thought. Wild and tough as she may have been, the mermaid was a woman. My love had touched her and her emotions had gotten the best of her. I retracted the jar carefully, desperate not to spill it into the water. The mermaid made no move to stop me although her stare was as hateful as ever. Carefully, I threaded the lid back onto the cup.
Retreating across the cave, I stuffed the cup safely into my pocket. The mermaid watched with no sense of expectation. I had the tear, and I still had her. I suppose a lesser man might have gotten greedy. The thought did occur to me, to keep her trapped would mean the possibility of bargaining more wishes from her. But I had gotten what I came for, and got the sense I would never, ever get any more, even if it meant killing this beautiful and astonishingly rare creature. I even suspected there might be some form of karmic retribution in store if I was too tempted by greed, like a character in some kind of fairytale. Best to tell myself I’d won, and be gone.
Before I did anything else, I repackaged the tools into the canvas bag. I took the tape player and one of the camping lanterns as well. The other two lanterns I left behind. The mermaid had returned to her living painting act, watching me from the pool without really moving. One tear and her eyes had dried up, her lip had stopped shaking.
I fished a metal loop with several keys out of another pocket. “These are for the padlocks, you can unlock the bar attached to the wall, and chains around the cinder blocks, and you’ll be able to lift the gate and leave easily.”
I lobbed the keys gently toward the mermaid but she made no attempt to catch them and they fell into the water in front of her. Clearly the mermaid could find them for herself after I left. Those big eyes were made for much deeper, darker water than in this cave. I spent a few more moments taking her in, as if painting a picture in my memory. The wet hair, the beautiful and indifferent face. Broad shoulders, high breasts, dark tail coiled beneath her. I might never see a thing like her ever again. My mind, however, was already on another miracle. The thought of my Astrid returning to me.
“And thank you, again,” I said. “That may not mean anything to you but you’ve given me a second chance. I’ll never forget about you, until the day I die.”