I set out just as the sun rose over the distant mountaintops, filling the valley with cold light. I prayed no one would notice my absence; the winter had been hard on the settlement, and we were all working to the bone to survive this spring. I would have gone during the night, when all slept but the lookouts, but I didn’t dare visit the swamp in the dark. And so the sun sparkled on the deer entrails in my bucket as I slipped into the forest, towards the mist that rose from the valley.

Was it selfish to abandon my post? I wasn’t going for my own benefit, or at least I believed I wasn’t. I certainly wasn’t eager to visit the swamp in the trough of the valley. And yet, no one had asked me to make this sacrifice; I was choosing to abandon my duties to do so. I tried to brush away the thought. The woods provided a bit of a distraction; there were meandering creeks to ford in my boots so thick I couldn’t feel the cold and deer trails, barely visible on the pineneedle-strewn ground, to attempt to follow. And, as I grew nearer, there was fear to counter. The winter hadn’t exclusively been hard on the humans. We were omnivores, and could sustain ourselves on dried mushrooms and grains we grew in our farms halfway down the valley. The carnivores were less fortunate.

A few hours after my departure, the slope of the mountain faded to nothing and the underbrush grew denser. I could feel the ground turning to mud under my boots, could see the mosquitoes beginning to take note of me, struggling to bite through my thick wool clothes. The sun was halfway to the peak of the sky, burning away the midst and warming the air, when I found the first large puddle that marked the beginning of the swamp. A few minutes more and the ground was more shallow water than muddy land, every inch of exposed dirt crawling with bugs and bushes and huge, powerful trees.

I glimpsed something white in the corner of my eye. Under the shadow of willow, a head poked out from the swamp, thick hair floating around her shoulders like a cape. Her eyes met mine and she dove under the shallow water. The surface heaved with her movements, then went still. Though I was already standing on dry land I backed away several feet. All was peaceful.

And then she burst from the water’s edge before me, sharp teeth glinting in the sun, bony hands outstretched as though to grab me. But the mermaid hadn’t been able to see in the murky water, so she fell to the ground where I had been standing a moment before. With a snarl she threw her head back and made to lunge at me. I snatched a section of slippery deer gut from my bucket and tossed it to her. “Here. I’m a friend of Bedessa.” She grabbed the intestine and paused, staring up at me with narrowed eyes. She’d been a middle-aged human when she became a mermaid. Her hair, hopelessly tangled and crawling with leeches, was sprinkled with white, and her stomach was lined with stretch marks. Out of the water, the gills on her neck had closed. “I’m not here looking for a fight. You’d all win. I just need to talk to her.” Eyes still narrowed, she nodded.

“Bedessa hasn’t moved in the past ten years. I’d suggest you advertise your offerings preemptively. Some of us are preparing for a feast tomorrow, and any extra meat is appreciated.” With that she devoured the intestine in two bites, licking the blood from her forearms and fingers. She turned and dove back into the water, her huge, flat feet already beginning to shrivel from the contact with air, the webbing between the toes contracting. I was wrong; the carnivores were feeding themselves just fine.

A bit deeper into the swamp I found my old boat still tethered to a now-rotten dock, rusted but functional, and climbed aboard. A paddle draped in thick spiderwebs awaited me and I began to row into the heart of the swamp, the dead bug carcasses trapped in the web crunching under my fingers. It was loud in the swamp, far louder than our settlement up in the mountains; the birds, bugs, and frogs chortled in an energetic song punctuated by the screams of predators succeeding in their hunts, like a ‘hurrah!’ shouted in a folk song. I felt wonderfully hidden amid the noise, my boat practically silent in the water. A few minutes in, I noticed a male mermaid perched among the moss and leaves of a tree. When I made eye contact he grinned and hunched lower in the tree, preparing to pounce, the bones protruding from his gray skin and his wild mane of ginger hair giving him the look of a famished horse. He knew it was too late for me to turn back. I tossed him a gut, only to watch it brush past his outstretched hand and fall into the swamp below. He dove in after it, emerged victorious, and then swam to the side of the boat. “Is that payment for safe passage.”

“Yes.”

“Give the rest to me. I’ll distribute and tell everyone to leave you alone. Some will be better hidden than me, and you won’t see them until it’s too late.” I nodded and passed him the bucket. He swam away, stopping at an innocuous fallen tree to pass out a gut before disappearing from view. When I passed by the fallen tree the mermaid previously hidden there, an old female with green hair that had once been white, smiled at me. She then reached into the rotten wood to pull out a baby mermaid, almost cute if it weren’t for his sharp teeth. I felt bad for him, a solitary infant for life. Mermaids could theoretically die, but they couldn’t age or procreate; they depended on humans dying in the cursed water of the swamp to build their ranks. Few babies knew enough to crawl to the swamp when dying for a chance at a second life.

The ginger mermaid moved quickly. I had no more interactions with his species, though I saw many. There was a small island where two older male mermaids had created a nest in the raspberry plants that filled every inch of land, the two chatting as one gutted fish with rusted tools and the other dug through a pile of mud for bugs. As I drifted past, I heard one asking the other about how best to arrange the fish scales around the meat, to make it appear most festive. I also passed a stagnant pool somewhat detached from the rest of the swamp, populated by three mermaids, an old female and male kissing in the muck at the bottom of the pool and a younger female decorating her hair. The latter glanced up at me, but she quickly lost interest. I passed only one more mermaid, a solitary old male who glared at me from a bay almost hidden by branches, before reaching Bedessa’s shack. I jumped into the water below, tied the boat to what remained of the shack’s deck, and waded around to knock on the door. My fist broke through the rotten wood. “It’s Alexey,” I called.

Silence for 15 seconds. Then the door swung open and she beckoned me into the dark.

I stepped inside and was hit with the smell of fish and mud. The shack was still somewhat situated on its foundation, so only a few inches of swamp water covered the stone floor. In the beams of sunlight that spilled through the cracks in the roof I could make out a small bed of leaves and rotten linens--human clothes, blankets, pillows--on an elevated platform in one corner, low enough that her feet and hands could rest in the water while she slept. Most of the furniture had been piled into one corner, but she’d left out a table, on which sat the gut the ginger mermaid had distributed along with some pretty rocks and a few human tools. She’d also left out two metal folding chairs, one of which she perched on.

“Alexey.” Her face, angular as a knife, was unreadable. “You’ve gotten old.”

“You haven’t.”

“How long has it been. I didn’t expect to see you so decrepit, so soon.”

“Bedessa, it’s been almost 20 years.” I stared down at her, so tall but looking so weak, the skin on her bones pulled tight enough to make visible a worm wiggling under her flesh. It was only the two human skulls arranged carefully on her mantle that reminded me of her power. “I have a son now. Your daughter married a man from the Avtokladbishche settlement last year.”

I expected a reaction. She raised a single eyebrow and said, “I’d almost forgotten about her. I thought she would still be young enough to miss me. All for the best.” I pursed my lips but said nothing. “You said you couldn’t see me again. Why did you lie.” I couldn’t read her expression, with her intense staring and relaxed jaw.

I sighed and sat on one of the folding chairs. “I thought I was telling the truth, at the time. I don’t think you realize how much you changed when you died." Her silent stare left me second-guessing my words. "The woman I loved...well, you weren't gone, that would have been difficult, but to still have you and not know you, to travel through a dangerous swamp only to find you with a squirrel tail poking from your lips...it was nearly impossible.”

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“Why did you bring me back. You knew what mermaids were like.”

I lowered my eyes. Sometimes, when sleep and wakefulness blended together in the early morning, I could still remember the night I saved her. The smell of crushed pine needles and vomit as I dashed through the forest, the horrible vibrations of her shivering in my arms, the pounding of my heart as nightmares of being discovered by our townsfolk flashed behind my eyes. The water of the swamp felt just as cold now as it had when I lay her near-dead body in the water. No moment in my life could match the bright, brilliant relief I felt as her eyes opened.

Nor the confusion as she didn’t jump into my arms in joy, didn’t do anything but watch in mild amusement as her body shifted from that of a dead human to a healthy mermaid. It was when I saw her teeth growing long and sharp that I first felt the fear that she wouldn’t care about me at all, that she’d tear me limb from limb and devour me. But no. She remembered me, and thanked me, and caught a fish and ate it alive in front of me. “I thought you’d be different. Do you remember the old medicine man? He told me that the true essence of a person remained unchanged, even if they were turned into a mermaid. I thought I could save you. The real you.”

“The living Bedessa was just as real as I am now.” She stood, as did I. I was a tall man but she looked down on me, her height unnerving on such a thin body. Her cold hand brushed mine, the plaid gray of her flesh and webbing contrasting sickeningly with my healthy tan skin. I took it and she tugged me to her. The darkness around her milky eyes gave the illusion of them glittering, as they’d glittered with mischief when she’d been human. “You risked exile from the settlement to bring me back; I know they’ve outlawed the creation of mermaids. I’m surprised you gave up on me so easily twenty years ago.” Up close her breath was rancid, fresh blood barely masking the scent of decades spent in stagnant waters thick with dirt and decay.

“I...I just realized then that you weren’t the Bedessa I knew. And were living in a world that wasn’t made for me. Did you actually miss me? I hadn’t meant to hurt you. I’d assumed you wouldn’t care that I was gone.”

She brushed a strand of dark hair from her eyes with webbed fingers. “I liked having you in my life. You’re interesting. But I didn’t need you.”

“I’m glad.”

“Really. You didn’t want me to value you to the point of hurting when you were gone.”

I smiled sadly and shook my head. “Bedessa, what life could I have lived with you even if you hadn’t changed? I was almost eaten multiple times just trying to visit you. When I brought you back, the most I should have hoped for was that you would be happy while I lived out the rest of my life among my people. I have a wife now, and an amazing son, and my parents to support.” I hesitated, face flushing. Steeling myself for the next question, I began “W--”

But she spoke first. “Why the change of heart.” She stroked my cheek with one cool finger, intense if not affectionate. “Why come visit me now.”

“Do you remember Darya?”

“No.”

“She’s about your daughter's age. You’d sometimes babysit her, remember? She was premature, and has terrible eyesight--”

“I dimly remember a human that matched that description. She was stung by a dozen bees and nearly died.”

“Yes, her. Well, one of our women mistook her for a deer and shot her. They doubt she’ll make it.”

She frowned, though I doubted it was out of sympathy. “My condolences.” She nudged me backwards and I followed her lead, allowing myself to be herded back into the folding chair. I shuddered at the feel of the rotten padding of the seat leaking liquid as I sat on it. She stood above me, one hand still in mine. “Did she remind you of me. You are a mess of guilt; it would make sense if her accident made you crave resolution.”

I swallowed, stomach fluttering. “Not exactly. I’m just...yes, she does remind me of you. She’s nearly the age you were when you…you know. She’s so afraid of death too, always avoiding the shooting range and the sick. I just...I needed your insight.”

“Oh Alexey.” She sat on my lap and firmly brushed one lock of hair from my eyes, so focused that it felt as though she was genuinely concerned about my messy hair. “You doubt that you made the right choice.”

I tentatively wrapped a hand around her back and pulled her close, until my face was just inches from her neck, her cold breasts pressed against my collarbone. “Yes,” I admitted.

She laughed. It was the first time I’d ever heard a mermaid laugh. The sound was lower than a human’s, and seemed to lack the joy. “You brave man. I still remember your strange human purity customs, you know. I understand why you would have wondered if I’d been better off six feet under. And wonder if Darya, and you one day, would be too.”

I felt my heart skip a beat. “I never mentioned myself.”

“There’s no shame in self-interest.” She reached behind one ear and detached a leech, held it before her eyes for a moment. She ate it in one bite. “You didn’t come visit me as I was dying. Not until I was safely in a coma and my parents asked you to bring me here.”

“I tried to, but your parents told me that you were sleeping.”

“You infer too much. I was not accusing you; I told them to lie to you. Illness is not ladylike, Alexey, and fatal illness even less so. At the time when I needed you most--” she tilted my chin up to hers and kissed me. Her lips were as slick and soft as an overripe plum. She tasted like salt and rust, like fresh cranberries and rotten meat. I recoiled, paused, and then took her neck in one hand and pressed her to me, kissing her back for a single, tender, horrific second. Then she pulled back. “--when I needed you most, you would have been disgusted by me.”

My cheeks reddened. She was right. “So you’re happy now?”

She stood and led me outside, to the rotting deck overlooking the swamp. The sun sat directly overhead and the whole wet world gleamed white and gold. Off in the distance I could still see the two male mermaids working together in their nest to prepare for the feast, while nearby a female mermaid child wrestled with a beaver. A second later she tore the mammal’s throat out and called to two nearby mermaids, a preteen male and an elderly female, the latter of whom presented the child with a shiny trinket that made her smile, before both joined her in devouring part of the creature. Bedessa wrapped an arm around me, pulling me to her, and pointed off in the distance. A male mermaid was dragging a log to a site where a few other mermaids stood, their specific actions unintelligible from this distance. “What are they doing?” I asked.

“Melana’s shelter was destroyed by a falling tree, so a handful of us are helping him build a new one. It will be nice, a reinforced cave under one of the islands, big enough for a few more mermaids to move into when the need arrives.”

“They’re so generous.”

“Perhaps. For a few of them it’s repayment of past generosity. And for all its fulfilling.” She brushed a strand of hair from her mouth. “We aren’t a pack, not like you humans. But it’s still satisfying to work together.”

“You never answered my question.”

She spread her hands. “This is Darya’s future, if you so choose.”

I looked, truly looked, at the mermaids before me. At the ripples that barely danced on the surface of the swamp as they flew under the water, webbed feet effortlessly propelling them at twice the speed a human could run. At their eyes, faded and glossy from life underwater, some half-closed in the content of menial labor performed with acquaintances, others open in the thrill of the hunt. At the blood running down the chin of the mermaid child as she peeled the beaver’s muscle fibers from the tendons, at the smile on her face as she filled her stomach. At the graceful twist of a mermaid female’s body as she sifted through rocks at the shore of an island, selecting the shiny ones to keep. At the lump I first mistook for an animal carcass that was truly a mermaid male sleeping half-out of the water, smiling as the sun warmed his pallid skin. At the young mermaid, covering her ears with her hair and scrunching her face in annoyance as the two mermaids kissing besides her increased their passion and, with it, their volume. At Bedessa besides me, crawling with parasites, her every muscle relaxed, awaiting my reply with the patience of someone who had never once seen a calendar.

“I will deliver Darya by dawn tomorrow,” I said. “Treat her well.” And once my promise was fulfilled, I walked away from the swamp and I never looked back.