

### The Wailing Ships

Jon Jacks

Other New Adult and Children's books by Jon Jacks

The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)

The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll's Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666

P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers – Gorgesque

Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent

Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak

Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife

Elm of False Dreams – God of the 4th Sun – A Guide for Young Wytches – Lady of the Wasteland

The Wendygo House – Americarnie Trash – An Incomparable Pearl – We Three Queens – Cygnet Czarinas

Memesis – April Queen, May Fool – Sick Teen – Thrice Born – Self-Assembled Girl – Love Poison No. 13

Whatever happened to Cinderella's Slipper? – AmeriChristmas – The Vitch's Kat in Hollywoodland

Blood of Angels, Wings of Men – Patchwork Quest – The World Turns on A Card – Palace of Lace

Text copyright© 2018 Jon Jacks

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Chapter 1

Cold blows the wind to my true love,

And gently falls the rain.

I never had but one true love,

And in greenwood he lies slain.

Cold Blows the Wind

She was called Cornucopia.

She brought to our small port all manner of exotic goods.

Spices the like of which no one living here had ever tasted.

Silks as smooth as water upon your skin, and as vibrantly coloured as the most glorious rainbow.

Fruits we'd never imagined could exist, let alone that we would one day slake our newly found thirst for their succulent juices.

Wine we could have sworn was meant for gods, not poor fisherfolk like us.

All at ridiculously low prices too!

Because the Cornucopia had also brought something else from abroad.

A disease.

*

We'd thought at first, of course, that the sailors so freely parting with their money had simply been at sea too long to spend it wisely, or sparingly.

Their parlour, their weariness, could also be put down, naturally, to an overly long voyage.

As for their retching in the streets, their staggering gait: well, they were overindulging in our public house and bars, weren't they?

It wasn't until we realised there were fewer of them showing up each day that it finally dawned on us that they were dying.

Those spared to live another day simply slipped the bodies over the side of the ship; but only on a night, and only on the side facing out to sea.

The Cornucopia's captain had been one of the very first to suffer such a fate, when the crew he had insisted on quarantining had mutinied and murdered him.

My childhood sweetheart Ben was amongst the very first of our village to die.

*

# Chapter 2

A merchant ship a long time had sail-ed,

Long time being captive out at sea.

The weather proved so unsettled,

Which brought them to extremity.

Nothing on board, poor souls, to cherish,

Nor could step one foot on freedom's shore,

Poor fellows they were almost starving,

There was nothing left but skin and bone.

The Ship in Distress

We set the Cornucopia on fire.

With their heavily pitched rigging, their wooden hulls, the vast canvas sheets forming their sails, ships are so effortlessly easy to set alight.

All it took was an old cannon, one used to defend the village years ago but now thought of as being redundant, loaded with metal shot heated in the blacksmith's fire.

The sailors that jumped ship and tried to swim our way were clubbed or shot as they tried to clamber ashore.

But it was all too late, of course.

The disease had caught hold amongst us.

Soon we were burning our own houses.

Next, we were burning the dead, many of whom had fallen in the streets, for fear that carrying them off to the graveyard only helped spread the infection.

News of the calamity besetting our small port soon spread wider abroad.

And we found ourselves quarantined.

No one from any nearby village visited us anymore.

The roads, the rivers, even those areas of reasonably passable countryside surrounding our port, were blocked and patrolled by wary, well-armed gangs of men frightened into being especially callous.

Our boats were prevented from leaving port, our harbour entrance blocked with deliberately sunken wrecks.

No more ships pulled into our port.

Until, one day, a vessel as silent as the night arrived.

And for its figurehead, it had a mummified mermaid.

*

The ship – appropriately enough, as its sails could have been black shreds of sky, its hull the dark pitch of looming storm-tossed waves – had appeared overnight.

Unheard.

Unseen.

It had carried no lights that might have made us aware of its approach.

The harbour walls, unused for so long, similarly carried no lights.

And yet this dark ship had navigated through their narrow opening, while also avoiding the supposedly impassable sunken wrecks.

Maybe the unseen crew, so careless as to let their ship fall into such a disgracefully unseaworthy condition, had merely let their already sorely damaged hull scrape over any obstacles.

Maybe it would sink before us at any moment, its bottom every bit as holed and rotten as its superstructure.

Most frightening and troubling of all, however, was that alarmingly morbid figurehead, the mermaid strapped and nailed to its front, where she had also been left to rot.

More disturbingly still, perhaps, was that no one else amongst my remaining friends could see it, this hideously shrivelled remnant of what must once have been fluidly gorgeous.

How could I be so sure it wasn't just a carving, as rotten and as uncared for as the rest of the ship?

Wasn't it really just some battered sculpture of a Queen of the Seas, a Fairy Princess?

It wasn't possible to tell either way, as long as the ship remained so far out at anchor, rather than pulling into the harbourside.

I laughed.

I had to agree.

And yet, deep down inside, where inherited, unconscious truths still reside, I knew I was right, and they were wrong.

The ship's figurehead was indeed a real mermaid.

One hunted, killed and filleted long, long ago.

*

# Chapter 3

And he took her by the lily-white hand,

Saying, 'Married we shall be,

Then you shall have a bold fisherman,

To row you on the sea,

To row you on the sea;

Then you shall have a bold fisherman,

To row you on the sea.'

The Bold Fisherman

There were still no signs of life aboard the silently anchored ship.

Even the lapping waves hung back from kissing its dark sides with their familiar smack and hiss.

No lights shone from its spars, or its cabins.

No strains of violin or trilling of the flute could be heard.

Sailors neither emerged to furl the ripped sails, nor to row to shore, to spend hard-earned wages in our taverns.

And yet, one night the captain of the ship appeared at the door to my house.

'I'm here,' he said, 'to carry away your mother.'

Without waiting for any invite, he stepped across the threshold.

*

My mother, I'd heard, had once quite easily been the most beautiful girl in the village.

So exquisitely beautiful that she thought herself far too fine for any simple fisherman.

Only a rich lord, capable of appreciating such beauty, would ever be good enough for my mother.

By the time I was old enough to be aware of such things, I couldn't see it myself.

No; not even a hint that, at some time in her past, she might have been beautiful.

Then again, life in a village such as ours is never easy.

Least of all for a mother with no one willing to claim responsibility for her child.

I'd also heard that she had the most beautiful singing voice.

Heard as in being told; not, unfortunately, in the sense that I'd ever actually heard her singing.

But I could believe this.

For my own voice, she used to tell me, is also dangerously gorgeous.

*

# Chapter 4

When shall we meet again, sweetheart?

When shall we meet again?

When the oaken leaves that fall from the trees,

Are green and spring up again.

The Unquiet Grave

It had been my singing that had drawn the captain to my door, I was sure of it.

And yet I'm also sure I had managed to avoid my usual, unintentionally seductive tones; the enchantingly exotic mingling of low and high notes my mother had so often warned me to be wary of.

This had been a lament, after all; a song full of tears, and sorrow.

The disease had reached out to caress my mother. And her increasingly pitiful condition had reached out to caress my voice, to add a trill of melancholy beneath everything I sang.

'If you have no one to care for you now,' the captain said, as his men bore my mother away, an upended tall, corner cupboard serving as a makeshift coffin, 'you are welcome to join us.'

'I don't know anything of ships,' I had to shamefacedly admit. 'I couldn't be of any use to you.'

'On the contrary,' the captain replied, a sparkle of intrigue flickering in his otherwise dead eyes, 'you can sing; and I've only ever heard mermaids sing as beautifully as you can.'

*

It surprises me a little when I hear the crunch of boots on cobbles and – later, as we board the boat tied up on the harbourside – the greedy glug of water upon the boat's hull and its oars.

I'd feared that the men around me were somehow supernaturally quiet.

But their silence, obviously, is the respect for the dead – and the dying – shown by reverential mourners.

Few lights burn in the windows of the houses passed as we'd followed the narrow streets winding their way down towards the water. Where a candle flickered, it was no doubt to illuminate someone's last moments.

My mother is laid lengthways along the boat's centre, still set between her pallbearers, now languorously pulling on the oars.

The captain sits at the stern, having shown and helped me into the prow.

'Sing girl,' he says bluntly. 'Your mother would be glad to know your days of gutting fish are over.'

*

# Chapter 5

Fair lady, lay your robes aside,

No longer glory in your pride.

And now, sweet maid, make no delay,

Your time is come,

Your time is come and you must away.

Lady, leave your robes aside,

No longer glory in your pride.

No more in life you may abide,

So come along with me.

Death and the Lady

My song ripples out through the darkness.

Could it be true that my mother also used to be able to sing like this?

If so, why did I never hear her singing?

Was she so unhappy that she couldn't draw on all the necessary emotions anymore?

Looking back at her now, laid out in what passes for her coffin, I can't help but think hers was a wasted life; if she really ever had been beautiful, then the unforgivingly freezing winds swirling across the harbour must have slaked it all away from her.

Her face is white, her features sculpted out by a life of worries and disappointments.

Her hands are red, as cracked as dried earth, the gutting of cold fish every bit as cruel for those taking on the task.

Her hair is bedraggled, knotted and dry, for she long ago gave up any ritual brushing or combing.

The only thing about her that still sparkles is the ring.

The ring she would never dare wear on her finger.

The ring that she wears instead strung about her neck, hanging from a filthy necklace of woven leather.

It's a ring that I once thought she had thrown away a while ago, casting it into the deepest part of the harbour.

For it was the ring that the Prince of the Stones had given me.

*

'Will we bury her at sea?'

The sea, once again, sucks and swirls against the sides now of both our boat and the dark wall of the ship we're clambering aboard. The men are efficient, silent, as they go about their appointed tasks, quickly hauling my mother's coffin up onto the ship's deck with ropes and pulleys.

The Sprig o' Thyme she's called, no doubt after the song, and despite being more of an old crone.

'We'll put her below with the others, for now,' the captain replies, gruff yet with a hint of probably rare consideration for my fears.

Others?

I didn't wish to trouble him further with any probing questions.

Clearly, this was a ship that removed your dead, when the dead weren't fit or safe for burial in your churchyard.

The sea would gladly take them, if the ground wouldn't. And their bodies would remain reasonably whole, in readiness for their resurrection, rather than being burnt to cinders.

Didn't these men fear that they would catch the disease, which usually seemed to be the fate of anyone foolish enough to agree to handle the bodies of anyone who had succumbed to a plague?

Perhaps this was a different kind of disease; one that wasn't passed on by the those already dead. There are, after all, so many different types of plague, each one spreading its works in its own personal manner

Even so, what were these seamen doing in a disease-ridden port anyway, when any sensible man would stay as far away as possible?

I had heard that some people thankfully remain free of plague; otherwise, how would there ever be any survivors?

A ship full of survivors; perhaps, yes, that's what this ship is.

They've managed to escape their own plagued port, only to discover that too few of them possess the necessary skills to maintain and run a ship.

So how would they continue to survive, unless they found another way of making a living? A living ferrying the diseased of other stricken ports out to sea, where they can be safely dealt with?

All for a substantial fee, naturally.

But then, what is their fee?

What, when, and how am I expected to pay?

Unless – I am the fee?

*

# Chapter 6

I am going across the ocean, love, to seek for something new.

Come change your ring with me, dear girl,

Come change your ring with me,

For it might be a token of true love while I am on the sea.

Adieu Sweet Lovely Nancy

Can this really be all I'm expected to do on this ship – to sing?

Of what use is that on any ship, let alone this one?

Whenever my singing comes to its end, I realise the ship is otherwise as silent as the grave.

With its cargo of sleeping bodies, should I be expecting anything else?

Doesn't anyone associated with caring for the dead go about their business in a respectful silence?

So, then, I have to ask again: why am I here, when all I can do is sing?

*

The ship, of course, is never completely silent.

Every ship suffers its own painful groans, the creaking of its bones, just like any slowly ageing soul.

Then there's the flap, the sharp crack, of sails obeying directions from the wind. The whistling of rigging. The never ending kissing of the sea.

Naturally, I've been paid before to lament the passing of the dead.

I've also earned a few extra coins singing as we sorted out the catch on the harbour's side, or as we gutted the fish, readying them for transportation and sale inland.

It was never enough to keep us, however.

Never enough, even, to spare me from suffering the cruelly hard tasks that had so rapidly aged my mother.

My audience was poor, with little to spare.

I had to wonder, as I sang, as my hands froze and cracked as they turned over and sliced open the fish, if one day – like my mother – both my beauty and my enjoyment of singing would begin to fade.

To break the gradually burgeoning connection between my singing and this arduous work, in my increasingly rare periods of rest I'd begun to seek out areas around our port where I felt I could sing more freely. Places where my songs blended and intertwined with the glories of a vibrant nature, taking on its life and gaiety rather than the harbour's aura of wholesale death and drudgery.

'Don't go by the Stones,' my mother warned me, a warning any parent of our port gave their children.

Girls, especially, were warned not to draw close to the Stones.

They would be regarded, they were told, as being tainted, no longer pure and marriageable, if it were ever found out that they had been there.

My mother's warnings, I was sure, had to be the most insistent of all.

'It's true what they say; the Stones are bewitched!'

I reserved a serious, agreeable expression for these moments when Mother would fly off into one of her rants about the unseen dangers of the Stones.

Yet, naturally, I would inwardly chuckle at her naivety, her belief in what amounted to little more than old wives' tales about how the mysterious circle of Stones had come to be.

They had once been brave knights, tracking down and encircling a powerful witch, their king courageously striding into the centre to strike her down; only for the witch to suddenly magically transform them all into the Stones, the king along with them, allowing her to escape her ensnarement.

Or they were all witches, every single stone, caught dancing under a full moon by some ancient Saint who had punished them for their evil deeds, freezing them forever in their poses worshiping the night.

Maybe, others said, they had simply been rather more innocent people, foolishly caught dancing on a Sunday, or young men lured into dancing to their death by Siren's from the nearby sea.

If such tales were true, wouldn't they have to be a touch more consistent?

Three of them at least cannot be true; and therefore why shouldn't the fourth also be a ridiculous lie?

Of course, I went up to the Stones.

And it was there where I'd met the Prince.

The Prince who had given me his ring; a ring of stone, glittering with ingrained flecks of gold and silver.

*

# Chapter 7

The cook is in the galley boys,

Making duff so handy,

Way, haul away, we'll haul away, Joe!

The captain's in his cabin lads,

Drinking wine and brandy,

Way, haul away, we'll haul away, Joe!

Haul Away Joe

There were more trips ashore for the captain and a select band of his crew, more bodies encased in makeshift coffins to store down in the hold.

Sometimes, however, it appeared that they had somehow persuaded the living amongst my townspeople to join the ship's crew. They came freely, too, rather than having been pressed into service; and, more strangely still, that didn't just include the fishermen – whose boats lay uselessly bobbing in our harbour – but even those like our butcher and blacksmith, whom I'd never have thought of as the seafaring kind.

What other option did they have, though, other than to wait around in a village of the dying, waiting until the disease decided it would now be their turn to be claimed?

Still, even if I could see that there were reasons for these people – and, I soon realised, it also included women and girls, not just men and boys – to join the crew, then I couldn't fathom why the captain should so willingly accept their enrolment. The disease still raged through our port, and so none of these new crewmembers could count themselves as fellow survivors.

They might still carry the plague, might yet succumb to it.

Wouldn't we be helping the disease extend its reach, spreading it abroad, enabling it to brutally rip through and devour our next port of call?

In fact – shouldn't I be including myself amongst those who still carried this evil plague?

*

As the anchor was weighed, and the ship was turned around in the harbour with surprising expertise by a handful of tautly roped rowing boats, what little remained of the sails was unfurled, the crew members rushing up the webbed rigging like dark spiders.

Once their task was complete, the boat teams clambered aboard the ship with a similarly impressive display of efficiency, the boats themselves being quickly hauled aboard and secured in place down the middle of the deck. In this, they were joined by the crew of the very last boat ashore, along with a group of young men and girls from the port who had come back with them.

Amongst these villagers there was a handsome boy I could be sure I'd never noticed before, for he had more than a passing resemblance to Lee. He could have been his brother, if Lee had ever had one.

Wondering how I could have managed to miss seeing or even hearing of this remarkable look-alike, I made to draw nearer to him, telling myself I was imagining things, that it was a trick of both the light and the misery I'd suffered when I'd heard how the plague had taken him, and that this dreadful illusion would fade once I could see the boy up close.

I never reached him.

Whereas he, like all new members of the crew, was directed off towards the stairs leading below decks – where he'd be doubtlessly set to fulfilling some of the simpler duties important to the running of a ship – the captain cut me off from progressing any farther with a curt command ordering me to take up position closer toward the ship's prow.

'We're sailing, girl,' he snapped authoritatively, 'and I need to see if your singing is up to the mark!'

'What song?' I asked, unsure why he deemed that such a role would have any importance at all.

'That's for you to work out,' he said, smartly turning around upon the deck to go about attending to his own responsibilities. 'You'll know if it's the right one or not!'

*

# Chapter 8

As he was a sailing from his own dear shore,

Where the waves and the billows so loudly do roar,

I said to my true Love, 'I shall see you no more,

So farewell, my dearest, you're the lad I adore.'

The Drowned Lover

Careless for the safety of his ship and crew in the close confines of the harbour, the captain allowed the sails to billow seductively with wind, the hull to rapidly pick up speed, and whip swiftly through the water.

We raced towards the gap in the harbour walls, where the blocking wreckage lying silently beneath the waves patiently slept, awakening only to drag down any other ships recklessly seeking to caress its many curves and angles.

I briefly wondered if this was why the captain had asked me to sing; to briefly, partially, drown out the unnerving crunching of wood as the ship once again navigated the harbour's blocked exit point.

The draught of such a grand ship had to stretch far deeper than any of our much smaller fishing vessels, and yet the fishermen who'd painstakingly sounded out the differing depths of the submerged barrier facing us – seeking a channel they might, perhaps, be able to weave their way through – had been frustratingly unsuccessful.

Even so, there was no slowing down of our great, charging ship. There seemed to me to be no attempt whatsoever to make our passage in anyway easier or safer.

There was no one that I could see who appeared to be on the lookout for any of the more obvious obstacles to avoid, such as protruding spars, or the constant swirling of the waves, highlighting an obstruction just below the surface.

Neither was anyone readying the ropes to pull hard on the sails, should we unfortunately find ourselves running aground.

And yet, as we slipped over the wrecks, there was neither the shrieking of splintering wood, nor the ravaging gnawing of metal spars shredding the hull.

All I could think was that the ship's earlier and unexpected appearance in our harbour had resulted in the carving out of an unseen channel running through the wreckage lying below us; and now, by pure good fortune, we were smoothly sailing through that very same channel once more.

Surprisingly strikingly graceful and sprightly, the ship leapt out into the open water, an excitable horse abruptly let loose on its rein.

*

Beyond the sheltering harbour walls, both the waves and the wind became angrier, wilder. They crashed into our hull, whipped at our sails.

The dark hull cleaved effortlessly through waves throwing assault after assault at it, its plunging and rising hardly noticeable, as if it were half flying through little more than salty spray and surging foam.

The sails billowed all the more, as if the holes in them were nothing at all; which, I suppose, they really are.

And, sitting at the prow, I saw the bay opening up ever wider before us, the wave tops glittering like uncountable diamonds as the sun's rays split the veiling curtain of scudding clouds.

We could have been racing towards a heavenly paradise.

The wind striking my face was as cold as ever, but for once it seemed refreshing, not reddeningly painful.

The spray, dashing exhilaratingly against my face, gave me a taste of the sea, the faint scents of exotic lands lying far across it.

Why had I never done this before?

Why had I never set out to sea?

Around me now, in the surging waters closest to me, I caught the odd silvery flash of shoals of fish rushing alongside. Flashes that darted, that effortlessly weaved, through this dark yet incredibly malleable world of water.

Then came the dolphins, hurtling by us as rapidly as grey wraiths, fully visible only when, in a series of arching leaps, they sleekly broke the surface, sleekly briefly flew, sleekly re-entered their realm.

Were they as excited as I was by all that was happening?

It certainly appeared so to me.

My singing rang back to me, the smooth curves of their bodies perhaps reflecting, returning it, just as the artfully indented Stones had been my mirrors of sound.

My voice was beautiful.

The Stones had proven it to me!

*

# Chapter 9

'Twas Friday morn when we set sail,

And we were not far from the land,

When the captain, he spied a lovely mermaid,

With a comb and a glass in her hand.

The Mermaid Song

The port lay far behind us, small and inconsequential against the green-topped cliffs curving out like huge horns from either side.

Only one of the bay's partially enveloping headlands stretched out far enough to remain in clear view: and this was the headland crowned by the circle of Stones, glowing like huge blocks of gold wherever the sun caressed them.

From this distance, it seemed hardly bigger than the golden-hued stone ring I'd slung about my neck after taking it from my mother.

It was the only thing I'd taken of hers.

And that was because it was rightfully mine, not hers.

Not that you'd have thought that, of course, when she'd first caught me wearing it.

'Where did you get this?' she'd snarled, cruelly grabbing me by my hand, dragging me closer towards her with an violent jerking of my arm.

She glared at the ring, at me, as if it were something I must have stolen, or at least gained through unscrupulous means.

It was, of course, a piece of jewellery that, despite its strangeness (or, rather, because it was so unusual), was clearly beyond our means to afford.

Without waiting for any reply from me, Mother painfully wrenched my arm around, grasping my hand even more tightly as she prised my fingers open and pulled off the ring.

'It's not what you think!' I wailed, sobbing now through the pain of being held in this way, of being so badly treated and thought of by my own mother.

'I told you not to go up by the Stones!' she growled threateningly. 'It's for your own good; you just don't understand what goes on up there!'

Even now, she wasn't finished with me.

Keeping a firm hold of my hand, she dragged me through the door, out into the lane. She marched me down towards the harbourside, sternly ignoring the curious stares we were receiving from those who had flocked to their own doors to see what all this fearful caterwauling was all about.

'It's wickedness that created those Stones, and wickedness that comes from them!' Mother raged as she strode out before me, jerking my arm agonisingly whenever I tried to hold back or break free. 'They're responsible for everything that's wrong with my life...and yours especially, you little fool!'

'I haven't done anything wrong!' I continued to adamantly protest between my tears.

'Then if that's true,' she snapped distrustfully as we reached the water's edge, 'then let's make sure it stays that way!'

She finally let go of my hand.

I breathed with relief, as I could have sworn she was going to throw me into this, the deepest part of the harbour, where the waters never receded.

She showed me the ring once more, as if relenting, and preparing to hand it back to me.

But then, with a malevolent smile, she leant her whole body back; and threw my ring as far out into the sea as she could manage.

*

The waters are so deep here they have their own range of colours, colours I've never really come across before.

A ridiculously dark blue, close to yet in some way differing to that of the night.

The darkest of greens, one I'd never seen even deep amongst the leaves of the trees, where it was all simply shadow, a lacking of light.

These blues and greens swirled amongst each other, lightening as currents drew them up towards the surface, taking on yet other hues, but none that I'd spied in the sky or across rolling landscapes.

They were ungrounded colours; that was it!

They could never be firmly set but, rather, endlessly subtlety changed, so you could never quite be sure what it was you were seeing.

And then, with the whirl of a passing fish, the rise and fall of arching dolphins, the colours all abruptly changed, but this time completely, if only briefly.

Now, as if the deeper currents had spilled open chests of sunken treasure, the sparkling glow of so many gems began to rise up towards me: emeralds, sapphires, rubies, amethysts. Diamonds too; or was that simply the glistening of innumerable bubbles, of pockets of air disturbed by this mass of elatedly whirling fish, whose scales glittered more brightly than precious stones?

But what fish they were!

These weren't the fish of the catches I'd seen drawn ashore by our fishermen, the fish I'd come away stinking of after gutting them all day.

These fish were the size of men!

No, no; not men!

Of women.

Of girls.

For, as they began to excitedly break the surface, it dawned on me at last that these were mermaids!

*

# Chapter 10

One morning in the month of May,

When all the birds were singing,

I saw a lovely lady stray,

Across the fields at break of day,

And softly sang her roundelay:

The tide flows in, the tide flows out,

Twice every day returning.

Just as the Tide Was Flowing

No one had believed me when I'd claimed to see the dried husk of a mermaid on the fore of this ship.

I hadn't ever really believed it myself, of course.

Mermaids were simply creatures of the myths, weren't they?

Old wives' tales, and nothing more.

Old wives' tales like the one about the Prince and his knights, who had fooled themselves into thinking they had encircled the wicked witch.

And yet, here encircling us now, were what must have been at least five mermaids.

Their hair, long and flowing, was of a variety of colours, discernible even though it was obviously drenched; blonde, black, even gold, even green and blue. Their lithely curling tails likewise glistened brightly, as if made of jewels, of silver, rather than scales, each flash of iridescent colours like a stolen segment of an arching rainbow.

Were they beautiful, as mermaids are rumoured to be?

They moved so deftly, so furiously quickly, through the water that it wasn't possible to tell. But certainly, they had no shame in displaying their upper bodies to the full, their breasts bared, their elegantly slim arms tantalisingly full of the promise of embrace.

No wonder tales of mermaids were full of warnings against being entranced by these seductive creatures, who'll merely lead any besotted fool down to a watery grave. (Although why the mermaids should ever wish to do this is never fully explained.)

Behind me, there was an abrupt clamour of excited yells from the crew, who must have also seen the mermaids playfully flanking the prancing hull of our ship. They were eagerly, hastily, untying the boats strapped along the deck's central line, as if the madness that besets men merely on the sight of mermaids had already struck them.

And, far from being appalled by this strange turn of events, the captain was overseeing the hauling of the boats towards the ship's side, their lowering into the sea.

'Quick, quick!' he yelled. 'Before they have time to get away!'

*

Infatuation.

It can be such a terrible thing.

A thing that drives us crazy. That makes us act in ways we would have at one time dismissed as irresponsible, as foolishness.

All those warnings of my mother's, of every adult in the village, regarding the Stones only served to give them an exciting otherworldly aura; and another world had to be a better world, didn't it?

What was it about these Stones that the adults sought to deny us?

What harm could there be in simply approaching the Stones and observing them from a distance?

Yet even from a distance, as I made my way up the rising headland towards were they silently waited for me, I was struck by their strange, almost golden glow. That alone told me it was stone quarried from somewhere far from here, a land that gave up nothing but the more or less slate grey stones that made up our houses, our harbour.

Why go to the trouble of hauling such massive stones all this way?

And massive they truly were; as I drew closer, it soon became apparent that these stones weren't the size of petrified men or witches after all but, rather, shared the looming stature of giants.

Giants placed in a perfect circle, wheeling around the hub of the most gigantic stone of all.

Even using today's elaborate machines, it would take hundreds of men an age to set stones like this so perfectly upright, so perfectly encircling their king or queen.

For yes, I can see now why such apparently ridiculous legends arose about these Stones.

It is far easier to imagine that magic was utilised in the formation of this circle than to make any attempt at imagining the colossal effort that would be needed to erect these stones.

Some, I see now, are not perfectly upright after all. They've toppled slightly, leaning like a drunken dancer, a wounded knight.

All the more reason, then, to accept that these stones were once men, entrapped in an enchantment.

But just how effective had that enchantment been?

For, now that I stood so close to them, I was sure I could hear them whispering to me.

'Come, come my dear; for we have heard you have the most beautiful voice – and now we must hear it for ourselves!'

*

# Chapter 11

Her song it haunts me still this day,

Notes of uncertainty,

If heaven laughs at prayers of mine,

Then it never was to be, to be,

Then it never was to be.

The Ballad of the Sea

Is it my beautiful voice that the mermaids have come to hear?

It was a question I had to ask myself, for it seemed to me that, as they swam so gloriously, so smoothly by us, they spun slightly in the water, the way I'd seen so many people cock their heads slightly towards me, fully attentive to my singing.

It was an immodest thought, but one I was unfortunately prone to: for hadn't the Prince himself told me that my voice could charm the angels themselves down to earth?

And, indeed, the mermaids appeared so engrossed in my song, they remained blissfully unaware that the boats of the captain and his men were now almost amongst them.

The captain, along with similarly heavily built men in the other boats, were striding to the prow of the long rowing boats, tossing aside their jackets, even their shirts, stripping to the waist.

Were they about to leap in amongst the mermaids, allowing these beautiful creatures to drag them down to their cold, dark realms lying deep beneath the sea?

Stranger still, none of the powerfully straining rowers seemed ready to prevent these impetuous men from throwing their lives away. Neither did they seem willing to join them, so ferociously putting their backs into the chase that they could have been as oblivious of the mermaids as the mermaids were of the boats.

The captain bent his own muscular back, not to row but to reach down into the boat's hull, picking up and raising – and jostling in his hand, to get the balance right, and steadying his feet, accounting for the pitching of the vessel – a barbarous harpoon.

I'd seen such fearsome weapons before; massive spears, used in the whalers, to bring even the mightiest whale to heel, the seemingly endlessly coiling ropes attached to the harpoons forcing the poor beast to drag the boats behind it until it tired and weakened.

The men standing in the prows of the other boats had also hoisted harpoons up into their hands, flexing their muscles, their arms, readying themselves to launch their vicious barbs.

Did mermaids herald the arrival of whales?

Is that why the captain and his men had set out in their boats to follow them?

From my high vantage point on the ship, I tried to peer beneath the surging waves, seeking out darker shapes, unusual flows of water, wondering if the leviathan was already there, lurking unseen just below the happily frolicking mermaids.

One of the men must have seen what I couldn't see.

With a display of grunting exertion, the man hurled his great harpoon out before him, sending it hurtling through the spume-filled air.

Utilising the energy of a particularly high-rising wave, his target leapt up out of the water, oblivious to the danger.

It was a mermaid, gracefully arching up to meet the death silently darting its way towards her.

*

# Chapter 12

If you see a stable door settin' open wide,

And if you see a tired horse a lying down inside,

And if your mother mends a coat that's cut about and torn,

And if the linin's wet and warm, well don't you ask no more.

The Smuggler's Song

'No!'

I instinctively rose to my feet as I cried out in dismay.

Naturally, my song had also abruptly come to an end.

As if instantly awakening from a daze, the mermaid – aware at last of the danger she was in – deftly corkscrewed her body about her waist, twisting just enough to allow the evil barb to harmlessly whisk past her.

With another twist of her incredibly lithe frame, she dived back into the water, vanishing beneath the rolling waves with hardly a splash.

The other mermaids had also vanished, the sea suddenly emptied of their colourful beauty, their excitable cavorting, the duller, more ponderous boats of heaving men they had left in their wake a poor substitute for the magical qualities they had brought to the scene. Bereft of the energy of chase, overcome by an immediate sense of exhaustion, the rowers slowed, the boats no longer leaping amongst the waves but, rather, dragging as if sapped of life.

The captain was the only man still standing in the boats.

He was staring my way, glowering.

'Who told you to stop singing?' he ferociously hollered, indicating the bare waves lying ahead of him with a furiously waved hand. 'You're letting them get away!'

Stung by his incensed rebuke, I tried to pick up my tune once more; but the words were caught in my fluctuating, constricting throat, chocked back and swallowed along with my sobbing.

Is this what was to be made of my beautiful voice?

A lure for mermaids?

*

As I had at one time feared, the ship's figurehead of a mummified mermaid was no carving.

It had, at one time, been a living creature.

The most beautiful, the most magical, of creatures.

And now I was supposed to help the ship increase its haul of these fabulous beings.

How many more of them had the ship hunted down in its past?

How many more was it intending to kill or capture?

Spinning away from the edge of the ship's rail, I turned to rush back across the deck, my eyes already so full of tears that everything around me took on an indistinct, watery hue.

With my vision so blurred, my thoughts so confused, I ran into something, something fortunately not as hard as it might have been if it had been a part of the ship.

Instead it was one of the crew, someone trying to stop me from leaving my post.

'Stop! The captain says you have to keep singing!'

It was the first time one of the crew had bothered speaking to me. I'd accepted that they were incapable of speaking, but obviously I'd been wrong.

'I can't, I can't!' I wailed through my tears. 'Not to help you hunt down the mermaids!'

'They're evil, don't you understand!' he fumingly bellowed in reply. 'They'll drown a man as soon as look at him!'

Thankfully, he didn't seem overly intent in forcing me back towards the prow. Following his gaze out to sea, I could see why, despite the murkiness of my vision.

Out on the flowing grey and foaming white of the waves, the muddy brown hulks of the boats were hurriedly returning to their mother. They had given up on their task to hunt down the now long vanished mermaids.

What would the captain have in store for me for disobeying his orders?

Wrenching myself clear of the blocking crewman, I ducked down, slipped alongside him, dashing across the deck once more, heading towards the door leading down into the hold.

I needed to get away.

But how can you get away when you're on board a ship?

*

# Chapter 13

O the ocean's waves will roll,

And the stormy winds will blow,

While we poor sailors go skipping to the top,

And the landlubbers lie down below (below, below),

And the landlubbers lie down below.

The Mermaid Song

All I could do, I realised, was hide.

Hide until the very worst of the captain's fury had been spent.

Heading down into the hold, I was both surprised by and yet grateful for the abrupt change to a complete darkness. There were no lamps down here, I realised, wondering if anyone taking these steps leading steeply down into the hull were expected to take a lantern with them.

I was amazed, too, at how few signs of life there were down here, and those being little more than the scuttling of rats, the clicking wings of insects.

Didn't anyone come down here?

Where were all the people we'd taken on board from my village?

I would have turned back, if I hadn't feared the captain's wrath far more than I feared stumbling along in this darkness.

Even so, I immediately slowed my pace as I unsteadily made my way along the narrow passageway, recognising how easy it would be to barge into something – or even someone – when I couldn't see even a few inches in front of my face.

Feeling my way along what I assumed must be a passageway, wending my way around its many yet crudely made sharp turns, I began to wonder where my mother's body had been placed down here.

As I was down here anyway now, should I seek her out?

Say a proper goodbye?

Ask forgiveness, for all the things any wayward daughter puts her long suffering mother through?

At least I was beginning to detect, at last, the very weakest streams of light, apparently from portals lying beyond the stacked cases of the ship's cargo. As I drew closer to one source of this light, I could make out ever more details of these wooden chests, seeing that that their regimented placing formed what I'd erroneously taken to be the winding passageways I'd travelled along.

The cases weren't like the normal, regularly squared wooden boxes that usually made up a ship's cargo.

They were of many shapes, albeit generally long, low and narrow, such that I marvelled at how well they had been stacked, considering the difficulties involved in safely balancing hem.

Hah!

Fool!

They were coffins!

Makeshift coffins, in many instances; like the old cupboard my mother had been brought here in.

*

I stared, aghast, at the mountains of dead lying everywhere about me.

My mother may well be here, lying amongst them.

Or, maybe, she lay in some other hold, where even more makeshift coffins are stacked high into the darkness.

I could never hope to find her here, amongst so many other dead.

But what of the villagers I had seen come aboard to enlist as crewmembers? They must be down here too, somewhere?

Surely they'd shelter me for a while, at least until the captain's rage had cooled?

Using as best I could the faint light streaming in from the odd porthole, I once again steadily worked my way along the passageways lying between the stacked coffins, listening out as I did so for any noises – the ring of a hammer, the scraping of caskets being shifted, the chatter of complaints and commands – heralding people going about their shipboard tasks.

Yet I heard nothing, just as I saw no wavering glimpses of lanterns held aloft, even as I progressed farther along through the darkness. The weak streams of the portholes remained the only light lighting my way and, ahead of me now, even this seemed to be changing for the worse, the already faint rays becoming more broken and splintered.

The narrow passageway I was following was the next to change in its form, the more solid walls of stacked coffins abruptly opening up into what could have been closely set, sturdily constructed wooden shelving, yet in fact quite obviously serving as a means of providing a large number of beds, for many people lay asleep here.

I moved quietly amongst them, not wishing to disturb anyone.

As I threaded my way so carefully through them, they were all so still, so quiet, I began to wonder if these were yet more bodies of the dead, ones denied coffins; but then the hazy light of a nearby porthole picked out the almost scarlet tones of a red haired man from the village I'd seen boarding the ship of his own volition.

He hadn't enlisted as a crewmember after all, then. Rather, he'd simply booked a passage out of our stricken port.

Perhaps that was the case with all the villagers I'd witnessed coming on board. That would explain why I hadn't seen any of them taking part in any of the myriad of tasks involved in the running of a ship.

More or less directly before me now, there was another change in the quality and form of the light. For here it streamed in from above, its lower, dimmer sections barely enough to pick out the edges of the steps leading up and out of the hold.

Instinctively, I headed for the light – then drew to a sudden halt.

Was I really ready to emerge and, thereby, end up facing the captain's as yet untempered wrath?

And yet...

Would my hiding away down here in the darkness really lead to the assuaging of his anger?

Wasn't it far more likely that my cowardly actions would simply add spice to the stewing of his fury?

Yes, I would have to face him; there was no real choice in the matter.

Coming out into the pool of descending light at the base of the stairs, I prepared to ascend.

And then, behind me, coming out of the darkness, there was the sound of someone uncomfortably stirring.

It made me whip around, to peer once more across those dimly illuminated shelves of sleeping passengers.

Is that...?

No; it can't be!

My heart beating madly, I gratefully rushed up the stairs into the light.

*

# Chapter 14

His head was bald, his beard was grey,

His cheeks were like the mortal clay;

I asked him how he came that way,

All in the morning early.

Death and the Lady

The boats being hauled up out of their element are stubbornly, screechingly dragged across the deck, their tears of cold sea pooling over the wooden timbering. The men are as equally drenched and miserable looking, a furious disappointment etching already exhausted faces.

Thankfully, there's no sign of victory, of accomplishment, in those faces.

There's no sign, either, of any captured or lifeless mermaid.

The mermaids managed to escape, it seems.

'What's the point of her being here, if she's not going to sing?'

The fierce accusation is accompanied with a sternly pointing finger.

Another crewman proving he can speak after all.

Yet – I could be forgiving for surmising – only when angry with me for refusing to sing.

Although delivered far from loudly, the crewman's charge carried enough force to catch the attention of the captain; to cause him to turn around from his overseeing of the boats' storage, to make him aware of my presence.

His eyes instantly narrowed in fury.

His brow lowered, a bull preparing to charge.

He bellowed out his rage even as he heavily strode across the deck towards me.

'Yes, that's why you're here girl! To sing!'

'To draw the mermaids onto your harpoons?' I instinctively spat back, instantly regretting my foolish bravery, but too late to withdraw my reply.

'Yes, yes!' he declared unashamedly, briefly pausing in his approach, his eyes widening in surprise.

Was he surprised that I answered back at him? Or that I think myself clever for determining my role and his reasoning?

'They're vile creatures,' he insisted with the tone of someone who believes they're stating the unarguable. He's striding angrily towards me once more. 'We have to hunt them down!'

'They're not vile; they're beautiful!' I retorted, now going completely against my best instincts to submit to his rule, his commands.

'Hah! And just how many have you seen before today, girl?'

His snarl was full of amusement.

He knew the answer.

None.

Well, not unless you counted the husk he has tied to the front of his ship, her lips frozen forever in a cry of horror.

My own lips are equally stilled, only in a tight, beaten grimace.

And yet that give him his answer, the answer he'd been expecting.

'So, you don't know them!' he hissed triumphantly.

He spun about on his heels, heading back towards the men strapping down the last of the boats.

'But you shall!' he cried back over his shoulder. 'And when you realise what they're really like, well, then you will sing for us; and help us chase them from our seas!'

*

My voice, my pride and joy; and my curse too, it seems.

Wasn't it the praise of my voice, the flattery of the Stones', that drew me to them?

And didn't that in turn cause the opening of the ever-widening crevice between my mother and myself?

'Come, come my dear; for we have heard you have the most beautiful voice – and now we must hear it for ourselves!'

How could I resist?

A summons to sing! To release my voice, clear and loud, and in songs of my own choosing, as one at last lets go a too-long caged bird!

'Yes, yes – I'm sure I have heard it carried on the wind!'

'That was her? Are you sure it wasn't the angels?'

I was imagining it, of course.

I had to be, hadn't I?

It was simply what I wanted to hear, that's all.

And yet, what could be the harm in opening my voice up to a circle of stones?

I'd nervously drawn even nearer towards them, looking about me as I did so, checking that no one was around to witness my disobedience regarding my mother's stern instructions.

Then again, if anyone else was standing nearby, and they were foolish enough to inform on me, wouldn't they be announcing their own violation of instructions to stay well clear of the Stones?

Despite my apparently growing confidence, I warily passed through the nearest pair of twinned stones via their very centre, as if expecting them at any moment to spring into life, to reach out and make a grab for me.

Of course, I suffered no harm from them.

And, suddenly it seemed, I was standing inside the mysterious circle, viewing it from its very edge as one might look out over an auditorium's expectant audience.

There, too, at the very centre of the stage, stood my leading man.

Immensely tall, incredibly handsome.

And he was patiently waiting to accompany me in our dance through the entirety of our glorious opera.

A composition wholly dedicated to love.

*

# Chapter 15

'Oh where are you going to my pretty little dear,

With your red rosy cheeks and your coal black hair?'

'I'm going a-milking, kind sir,' she answered me,

'And it's dabbling in the dew makes the milk maids fair.'

Dabbling in the Dew

In spite of my misgivings – in fact, it may have been closer to a sense of terror, a fear of what my selfish foolishness might lead to – I continued to practise my singing, perched at the very front of the ship.

Now, though, rather than standing up high on the main deck, I'd found I could clamber down to one of the smaller platforms used by the riggers of the bowsprit, one somewhat precariously positioned just above the waters, such that the waves exhilaratingly rushed by little more than a few feet below me. I was soon drenched sitting here, of course, while any threat of a turn in the weather, and the subsequent increase in the pitching of the ship, would send me scrambling for the safety of the higher deck.

Nonetheless, it was here I chose to position myself while singing whenever I felt it was relatively safe, for the hovering, virtually angelic presence of the fearsome figurehead served as a constant reminder of the dilemma I faced: my singing could draw and ensnare other mermaids into sharing her miserable fate.

If any mermaid drew close, could I hope that the husk – or maybe, better still, even the spirit – of her withered sister could warn her off?

If not, if the mermaid remained close by, what should I do?

No; not should – I know what I should do.

What would I do?

If I had been the first, the only one, to espy her, I could simply stop singing.

Yet would that mean she would instantly leave?

Probably not.

And if others had seen her?

What then?

Would I be brave enough to disobey the captain and bring my song to an immediate end?

Would he forgive me as readily as before?

Obviously not.

Any violation of his rule was far more usually met with the most garish and imaginative of punishments, the overheard mumbling whispers of the crew had reliably informed me.

And amongst all this flowing back and forth of my anxieties, there was yet another nagging thought.

What if the captain and his crew were right?

What if the mermaids were indeed evil, murderous creatures?

But what if, before I had any chance of discovering for myself the truth about their natures, I was involved in the death of a mermaid?

And yet, no matter how many times I went over these troublesome thoughts, I realised I had to sing.

If I couldn't sing, I was the one who felt dead, overwhelmed and covered by the dampness, the darkness, of the earth.

It was my singing that made me feel alive, and free of the entrapments of a poor and miserable life.

Whenever it came to a sense of terror over one thing, and love for another, love would always win out.

*

My leading man beckoned me, calling on me to join him.

I stepped closer towards him, moving away from the encircling stones, moving instead now towards their very centre.

The Stones were silent, still: and yet, I knew, they were also full of life.

Within my mind, due to all the wild tales I had heard of their formation – their transformation! – they had taken on a truly magical status.

As far as I was concerned, they were far more entrancing than they were frightening.

I felt at home here.

Relaxed.

In my element.

I sang, sang the songs I had sung as the women about me carved out their fish with sore, reddened hands. But here I was singing for the dancers frozen in time, the knights who had long ago given up any hope of enjoying once more a courtly entertainment.

And the Stones, remarkably, unbelievably, answered back.

It was more than an echo, I was sure of that, even the very first time I heard it.

There were slight delays in its mirroring, allowing me, with a little practise, to accompany myself, to provide, even, a rich chorus.

The Stones, I would realise later, on closer inspection, had been diligently carved with indents as smooth as shallow spoons. More bewitching still, they pitched the voices forward into different areas around the circle, such that here a voice was loud, hear soft.

Is that why Mother hated this place so much?

Had she sung here too, only to wail in disappointment at the weaknesses inherent in her tones, her modulation?

Were the Stones responsible for her ceasing her singing?

But I...I delighted in what I heard!

I played with the nuances of the reflected, the slightly delayed, cadences. I appreciated the way the accompanying inflections soared here, or faded to a whisper there.

My voice was beautiful!

And I deserved the love and admiration of the Prince!

*

# Chapter 16

If ever I prove false to my soft little girl,

May the oceans turn desert and the elements move.

For wherever I shall be I'll be constant to thee;

My heart is all over if I rove through the sea.

The Crystal Spring

Just as the Stones, things supposedly dead, had suddenly seemed so alive to me, the people laid out below, soundly asleep upon their beds, could easily have been mistaken for the dead.

That's why, I suppose, I had briefly fooled myself into thinking I'd spied my mother lying amongst them.

It had been, of course, as I'd prepared to ascend the stairs. My eyes – already confounded by the change from a sheer darkness to the glow of beckoning light – had been fooled all more when I'd momentarily glanced back behind me into the darkness. Suddenly, I was seeing shapes in that darkness that couldn't possibly be there, ghostly white angles and dim flashes bearing no correlation to reality.

Added to the confusion of my eyes was the guilt one feels when someone close to you dies and, belatedly, you recognise that your goodbyes, your sense of remorse, had all been inadequate.

And so there she was; my mother, lying amongst the villagers I'd seen board the ship on their own two feet.

I'd gasped, wondered if I should approach her.

Then she'd stirred slightly in her sleep: and I'd immediately realised she couldn't be my mother after all.

The shifting of the sleepers in their sleep was subdued, hardly noticeable. There was no troubled mumbling, no signs of disturbed sleep, no kicking and cries brought on by the haunting, admonishing dreams of a bad conscience. It was as if the voyage had relaxed them all, bringing about a shedding of the anxieties they'd suffered while eking out a hard living as fishermen and fishwives.

How much harder had my mother's life been thanks to me, thanks to my obstinacy when it came to continuing my visits to the Stones?

If my mother had still been lying here amongst the living, what would I have said to her?

Forgive me, Mother, for disobeying you.

Forgive me for not being the daughter you would have preferred me to be.

But...I would also have had to ask her; Why did you really lie to me?

Why did you have to pretend that you had thrown away the ring that the Prince of the Stones had given me?

For, one day, as we slaved over the gutting of a fresh catch of a fish, as she had thrown back her head and her hair to clear her eyes of sweat with a back stroke of a hand, the ring hanging about her neck had briefly flashed brightly in the sun.

Naturally, I'd recognised it immediately.

It wasn't the kind of ring easily forgotten.

Either through some remarkable sleight of hand, or some even more amazing method of retrieving it from the deepest waters of the harbour, she had managed to keep the ring for herself.

I'd held my anger inside me a little longer, waiting until the day's work was over and, exhausted, we had arrived home.

I'd flung myself at her, trying to retrieve my ring, to tear it away from where it hung about her throat.

She'd fought me off.

She was used to it.

We had arguments, and vicious ones too, like fish had scales.

'Why did you take it from me?' I'd furiously demanded. 'It's mine! Not yours!'

For a moment, she'd had the rare decency to appear abashed by her theft.

And then, instantly regaining her composure, she had more characteristically snapped back at me.

'As a reminder: a reminder to us both that everything about and connected with this ring is wicked and evil!'

*

Close by me – so close I could have touched it, had I been quick enough – there was a splash, a sudden fountain of spray, all somehow different from the more rhythmically stabilised onrushing of the sea.

There's a flash of jewel like colours, of purest flesh, gracefully curling within the curve of a wave.

My song caught in my throat.

Is she wicked?

Is she evil?

Or is it the captain and his men who are the real demons?

This close to the surging waters, I could see the scales of her tail, glittering wildly, fluidly, as if made of sunken treasure. Her hair flowed as smoothly as spring water, sparkling with the tones of bright meadows.

Without a pause in her flowing movement, she turned her face towards me, smiling as if puzzled that I had brought my song to such an abrupt and unnecessarily early close.

She's beautiful.

How could something so beautiful be in anyway treacherous and untrustworthy, as the crew have claimed?

'Hey! Who told you to stop singing?'

The harsh cry came from high above me, like an irate admonition from the gods.

Carefully twisting around on my narrow perch, and looking up, I found I was under baleful scrutiny, a glowering red face as ugly as the mermaid was gorgeous.

Thankfully, it wasn't the captain, but one of the crewmen.

Thankfully, too, he was so intent on chastising me that he didn't appear to have spotted the mermaid, even though she only lay a few short steps away from me, albeit almost fully immersed by the rolling waves.

'My throat!' I hurriedly replied, grimacing as I rubbed my neck with a tender stroke of a hand. 'It's sore and needs a rest!'

He frowned, his eyes narrowing, yet nodded, as if in understanding. Even so, he bluntly snapped back, 'That's no concern of ours; sing!'

'In a moment,' I persisted, continuing to rub my supposedly painful throat, not only to garner his sympathy but also to ensure his attention remained fixed on me rather than the thankfully submerging mermaid. 'Just a short rest will be enoug–'

'No rest!' the man snarled, indicating the horizon lying ahead of us with a wild wave of a hand. 'A sail's been sighted, and we need to draw the mermaids away from her now!'

I glanced over towards the horizon where, I flattered myself, I caught a glimpse of the flowing pennants of a ship's higher masts.

'Why?' I asked, turning to the impatiently glowering man once more. 'Why would they be heading for this other ship?'

'Because they smell doom,' the man sternly replied. 'The crew don't know it yet, but their ship's being carried towards hidden rocks.'

*

# Chapter 17

'Oh are you blind, Lord Thomas?' she said,

'So blind that you cannot see?

For I fear, I fear my own heart's blood,

Run trickling to my knee?'

Lord Thomas and Fair Ellinor

Even from my lowly point on the ship, I could see more and more of the vessel we were eagerly charging towards.

It was leaning as if top heavy, its sails full and billowing, as if being pulled along by the very clouds.

Although I was still undecided as to whether I should sing or not, I heard on the wind the whispers of angels, the rush of sea through shingle, the melodic calling of waves rippling through caverns.

It was a song entrancing in its rhythms, as the steady flow of a night-time sea can gently lull you to sleep, matching your heartbeat, then slowing it down.

The mermaids were still in the waters, perhaps seated on the hidden rocks the crewman had referred to. About them rolled what could have been long, flowing sheets of the whitest lace; but it was spume, where the sea struck and rose up in fountains of spray around the sharp pinnacles of the rocks.

Is that why they sang so beautifully? To lure the ship up onto the rocks?

'Where's your voice, girl?'

The growl coming from above was even more furious than before.

'If the cat ain't got your tongue, then I'll have it later!'

Directly above me, the crewman's glowering visage had been replaced by the fiercely glaring captain. There were more sounds I was picking up now, too; the familiar scraping of the boats being dragged across the deck, the shouts and cries of excited men preparing to go out hunting on the waves.

'I can't drown them all out just through my voice!' I pointed out, hoping he'd recognise that this was true, that it was ridiculous to expect such a thing.

'Did anyone say that's what you're expected to do girl?' the captain retorted. 'Just sing, girl! That's what you're here for!'

And so I sang; as loudly as I could, as beautifully as I were able.

*

And so I sang; as loudly as I could, as beautifully as I were able.

That's what I was here for, after all.

The Stones appeared to shrug, to shiver.

Was it just the effect of my hazy vision, of the natural watering of my eyes as I sang as emotively, as tenderly, as I could?

My leading man gained a face amongst the contours of the stone. A handsome face. A smiling face, a smile urging me to sing evermore hauntingly.

Around me, the Stones flowed, as if I were the one whirling around in their midst, giving them a sense of movement.

They danced.

They cavorted.

They tripped merrily, they waltzed seductively.

And now my own partner stood before me, offering his hand, requesting that I give him the pleasure of dancing with him.

I accepted, of course.

His arms slipped about me, his body nearing and touching mine, chest to chest, heart to beating heart. His face drew close, though higher by a head than mine, his breathing warm and scented.

And still I sang.

Still I whirled and danced.

His laughter was deep and rich, quite musical in itself.

The gentlemen and ladies had halted their dancing, an audience for us now, clapping in increasingly fast time as we wheeled and leapt and spun. My breath was short, the excitement so great, yet I sang still, altering my rhythms to suit, choosing my lines to fit the shortened pauses.

I had never realised it was possible to feel such pleasure, to soar in joy, to tremble in ecstasy.

With a tender flexing of his arms, and a slowing of his own steps, my Prince steadied and slackened our movements until we were performing little more than an unhurried twirl. And then he took my hand in his, raising it as if to kiss it gallantly.

But then he withdrew his own hand, leaving my own hand dangling in the air before him. He slipped a ring, a ring of stone flecked with gold and silver, off his finger, then made to place it upon my far smaller hand.

The ring, I'm sure, shrank to fit around my slimmer finger.

Were we betrothed?

Had I accepted?

He smiled, his eyes twinkling with their own flecks of silver and gold.

And the watching gentlemen and ladies cheered; and took up the dance once more.

And what a dance it was now!

Far, far faster than it had been before.

Far faster than I believed it possible to dance.

It was a whirl akin to flowing waters, to the rising and falling of fierce winds.

It was our marriage dance; what else could it be?

I drew the dance with my Prince to a slower spinning, I drew him closer to me, my head a whirl, my heart a surging of hottest blood.

I reached up behind his crown, gently easing his head down as I raised my own up towards his.

I drew his lips to mine and kissed him.

My singing stopped; and so did the dance.

My Prince, and his court of gentlemen and ladies, were stone once more.

And yet upon my finger, I still wore his ring.

*

# Chapter 18

Then three times around went our gallant ship,

And three times around went she,

Three times around went our gallant ship,

And she sank to the bottom of the sea.

The Mermaid Song

As I had feared, my singing could never be so powerful that it would drown out the mermaid chorus.

The ship their song was enticing towards the rocks was in full sail, as if the people on board were eagerly rushing towards their deaths.

There were tears and sobs amongst my singing now, but it was all entirely fitting for the song I had chosen. I added my fears, my dread of what I would soon see, to the entangling emotions permeating my voice.

I could see now that a handful of the nearest mermaids were curiously peering my way.

Had my song really reached so far across the waves? Or was it that they had simply seen the arrival of our own ship.

Were they now in two minds as to which ship they should be luring towards the rocks? Were they contemplating an opportunity to bring us both to our doom?

Whatever the reason, there was a faltering in their singing. Some of the nearest mermaids even slipped down into the waters enveloping the rocks, swimming away from them: heading, it seemed, towards us.

'Louder girl, louder!' the captain hollered. 'It's working! You're a distraction to them, at the very least!'

I failed to see how that could be the case; my voice was too weak, surely, to cause these hideous creatures to be distracted from their aim. Wasn't it far more likely that they had sighted our ship, welcoming the appearance of yet more prey?

I sang on anyway, despite my doubts. My lungs were as fit to burst as unfurled sails in a storm.

Still the ship rushed towards the rocks, towards the scheming mermaids seated upon them.

Someone on board must at last have seen the way the waves broke and foamed around the hidden rocks. There was an obviously hurried attempt to reset the angles of the sails, the panic and horror of the bewildered crew tangible on the screaming wind.

The ship leaned over fearfully as it tried to urgently turn.

It bucked as it struck the first rock.

A mast and its sails toppled next, catching amongst its own web of rigging like an intoxicated spider.

Along one side of the hull, the wood shrieked as it was slit and gutted like a fish.

And suddenly, this proud ship was crumbling into nothing but its original timbers and canvas sheets, the wind pressing it ever harder against the immovable stone, the waves wrenching at it like dogs arguing over a dead rat.

*

Even once they had all stopped dancing, I could still make out the handsome features of my Prince amongst the Stones.

I had never noticed it before, of course.

And yet now it was all unmistakeable.

How could I have ever failed to see it?

There was his mouth, a definite indent in the face of the stone, surrounded by the mounds of delicate lips.

There the eyes, dark and brooding, yet sparkling with the flecks of precious metals.

The nose was strong, flaring a little too, in his pride, his undoubted sense of imperiousness.

Here – where I could now tenderly run my fingers without fear of being deemed a trollop – was the rising of his broad chest.

And here was his hand, tucked tightly against his thigh, as decorum demanded.

The fingers were plain to see, an undulating of the surface.

One of those fingers had a slightly darker band running around it.

The finger that had once worn his ring; the ring I now wore.

*

# Chapter 19

As I was a walking down in Stokes Bay,

I met a drowned sailor on the beach as he lay,

And as I drew nigh him, it put me to a stand,

When I knew it was my own true Love,

By the marks on his hand.

The Drowned Lover

With its every sail inflated like a vast lung drawing on the energy of the wind, its rigging thrumming with the effort of corralling it all, our ship surged towards the dying vessel.

Our captain seemed to have as much fear for the hidden rocks as he'd had for the sunken obstacles blocking our harbour entrance. He could have been doing the mermaids' job for them, willingly throwing our ship onto the treacherous rocks.

There couldn't be any mermaids who remained unaware of our presence. We were bearing down on them far too swiftly to be unnoticed or ignored.

One by one, the mermaids fled.

At least, then, they weren't to feed on the poor souls being thrown and dragged from the rapidly disintegrating wreck by the unforgiving pummelling of the waves.

There was no longer any need for me to continue with my singing.

It had all been all too useless, all too late to save anyone.

And yet I sang anyway.

A different tune now, of course.

It was a wailing of a song, a requiem for the souls who could not be saved.

*

We slowed only as we drew closer to the stricken ship.

We didn't move too close, however, but stood off from it, as if the captain feared we might be somehow caught up within its own sad fate if we drew too near.

The boats were swiftly lowered, the crew well-practised in their movements, just as they had been when they had set out to hunt down the mermaids. I hoped every mermaid had fled, not, this time, because I feared for their safety, but because I dreaded the consequences for those poor drowning souls if the crew became distracted from rescuing them.

As the boats touched the water, the men bent to their oars, pulling away from our ship's looming hull as quickly as possible to avoid being battered by the waves, waves already wreaking so much destruction upon the crumbling vessel pinioned upon the rocks. It wasn't towards the wreck that they rowed, however, but the bodies already strewn upon the water, a move that surprised me until I reasoned that they were hoping to save those close to dying before it was too late.

With long ship's hooks, they fished for and dragged the drenched, limp bodies aboard their boats, piling them up like an abundant catch. Only when it seemed their boats were close to sinking – so heavy were the loads – did they turn about and head back towards our ship. Here men on deck, grasping and pulling hard on the ropes thrown up towards them, hauled up the piles of dead in nets that had closed about them on the tightening of the cords.

But where were the living?

Those in the sea who still seemed to be clinging on to the breath of life were being ignored by the men in the boats. More than once, I saw a floundering sailor strike out for a boat, seeking safety, only to be firmly pushed away.

Only the dead, it seemed, could be counted amongst the 'saved'.

If there were any still alive amongst those spewing wetly across our deck from the nets, no one seemed to care. Rather, the crew approaching and hurriedly rummaging through these bodies were interested only in searching out their marriage rings (for every other ring was disregarded, unless they had no other, in which case it would be torn even from ear lobes), every one of which was casually tossed towards a waiting bucket as cruelly as I would once have disposed of fish innards.

There were still many aboard the crumbling wreck, clutching on to whatever they could – broken beams, shredding sails, unravelling rigging – to prevent being swept into the sea.

It appeared, though, that they would have to wait their turn.

The boats were returning to our ship.

*

# Chapter 20

I said, 'Old man, what man are you?

What country do you belong unto?'

'My name is Death—have you not heard of me?

All kings and princes bow down unto me,

And you fair maid must come along with me.'

Death and the Lady

With every fresh surge of a wave, more of the wrecked ship cracked and fell away.

The masts had all tumbled long ago, two of them still tangled amongst the chaos of dark rigging, the soaked sails billowing weakly every now and again and aiding the forces gathering together to wrench the vessel apart.

It was only when a collection of bodies washed limply away from the wreck, however, that a boat from the Sprig o' Thyme would once again be lowered into the water. And once again, the men would perform their grim ritual of fishing for the dead, hauling them on board, and separating them from their marriage rings.

Why would they need the rings?

I thought, maybe, I should ask the men as they rested from carrying the bodies below. But every question I had asked of the crew had been invariably met by surliness at best, and quite often an unbridled anger at worst.

Even so, now that I had clambered up on deck in search of answers, I had to ask at least one question.

'Why aren't we rescuing those who are still alive?'

The man's eyes curled up in curious surprise at my question, although I couldn't be sure if it was an expression of disbelief that I'd had the effrontery to talk to him or a frown of puzzlement that I couldn't see it was stupidly obvious.

'Who are we to deny them their fate?' he asked me in reply.

He turned away; that was the only answer I was going to receive.

*

As the sun itself vanished beneath the waves, we remained standing off from the wrecked ship.

In the darkness, I could only hear rather than see the battering of the waves, the cracking of wood, the crash and splash of overly strained and falling timbers.

There were no cries from the people. They were too exhausted for that – too resigned to their fate – I presumed.

I sang for them.

For now I knew for sure what type of ship I had boarded.

Yes, it is a ship of the dead.

But it is also, it seems, a ship crewed by the dead.

How else could you explain the callousness of the men?

How could I not have seen it earlier?

Is it because I, too, am dead?

*

# Chapter 21

Once I had a sprig of thyme,

It prospered by night and by day;

Till a false young man came a-courting to me,

And he stole all me thyme away.

The Sprig of Thyme

When the sea at last relinquished her hold over the sun, she had finished her work regarding the unsightly mess that had been the wreck.

Her rocks were almost pristine once more. Bar a few shattered spars, the last tangle of rigging, a drenched draping of canvas sheet, there was nothing left of what had originally been a fine ship. And all of this would undoubtedly be cleared by the next nightfall.

There was the matter of a littering of bodies, of course. Bobbing on the waves, the limp and now bloated forms bumped lazily against the rocks.

One of the larger boats was lowered, the men crewing it soon hauling on board the wilting corpses as they would gather flotsam blocking a harbour entrance. Once hoisted onto the ship's deck, the bodies were efficiently carted away to be stored safely somewhere deep below.

Each drowned soul had given up his or her marriage ring, perhaps in some form of payment, perhaps because their marriages had been annulled by Death.

I reached up for and nervously touched the ring that hung about my neck.

Undoing the chain, slipping the ring off, I slipped the ring upon my finger.

I wondered what might happen.

Nothing happened.

Did that mean I wasn't dead after all?

*

I had never taken the trouble to see if anyone else aboard the ship wore a ring announcing their betrothal.

But then, did they have to be dead anyway, to be fishermen of corpses?

Surely the answer is no?

This ring I wore had been meant for me and me alone. Ben had seen it, of course, smarting at what its presence meant.

In what had supposed to have been a playful tussle between us, he had cleverly slipped the ring from my finger. He had slipped it onto his own hand, onto his littlest finger; 'Trying it on for size,' he had smirked mockingly.

His grin was even more triumphant as he observed his prize up close, bringing his hand up towards his face so he could see the metallic detailing of the ring more clearly.

He grimaced, frowning in bewilderment.

Then his face contorted madly, as if in agony and horror. His finger reddened frighteningly, the flesh above and below the ring abruptly swollen, and rapidly becoming more bulbous still as if he had sorely injured it.

He shrieked in pain.

'The ring! The ring's shrinking!'

His eyes were bulging. Mine were wide in amazement and terror: if the ring really was shrinking, which really did seem to be the case, then it would soon snap and break off his finger.

In a frenzied panic now, Ben frantically tried to pull off the ring, but the end of his finger was now so swollen it was impossible.

He was weeping in frustration, wailing in pain.

I reached for his hand, wanting to help even though I couldn't see what I would be able to do. Just as he'd already tried and failed to do, I grabbed the ring with my fingers and hoped I could somehow force it farther up the sorely extended finger.

And the ring moved.

And effortlessly too.

It slipped off his finger as if there had never, ever been a real problem at all.

His finger was red, throbbing painfully too it seemed, but it was no longer bulbously swollen.

And in my hand, the ring was its correct size once more.

The correct size for me.

*

# Chapter 22

She cuts the grain and harvests corn,

The kiss of fall surrounds her,

The days grow old and winter cold,

She draws her cloak around her.

Nonesuch

Once again, the captain had sent me forward.

Once again, I was seated beneath the mummified mermaid.

Once again, my song rang out across the waves as the Sprig o' Thyme pounded her way through them.

The men, every one of the crew, wore no rings as far as I could tell, from what I had observed so far.

We never gathered for dances, the playing of shanties, for simple games or chattering, and gossip and tales.

We never ate.

We were dead; I was sure of it.

And yet – I still wore my ring.

*

The mermaids kept their distance, no matter how powerfully I sang.

Day after day, none could be seen.

None drew close.

Still the captain insisted I continue with my singing.

He directed his frustration at me.

Accusing me of being at fault; of choosing the wrong songs.

The wrong tones.

The wrong emotions.

*

# Chapter 23

I walked alone in foggy dew,

Just me and my memories,

A voice out seaward beckons thru,

A whistle of love for me, for me,

A whistle of love for me.

The Ballad of the Sea

There was a flash of emerald green, of sapphire blue, close by me in the water.

A mermaid!

As the Sprig o' Thyme's prow dug deep into the curve of a trough, there was a flowing shiver of ruby red, of hair rather than tail. As the prow rose, leaping up out of the water, the cloud of perfectly white spray contained a core of gloriously glittering silver, the water-sheened flesh of arms and body.

The mermaid was throwing herself, arms outstretched, towards me.

I recoiled in fear from her lunging form, dreading that she would grab me, pull me down into the darkest depths. Her clawing hands came perilously close, reaching out through the foggy dew; and then, thankfully, they fell away, as if she had missed me, her prey, and she would next drop away, back into the sea.

Instead, with a strength far from apparent in her slender limbs, she grabbed the supports of the small platform I was seated upon. And as our prow soared up and up out of the water, she now effortlessly rose with us.

A smile on her face.

A triumphant grin.

'You may as well stop your singing,' she trilled happily. 'For I've warned all my sisters away!'

*

As the prow plummeted once more beneath the surging waters, I felt sure that the raging force of it all would dash this terrifying mermaid away.

But it was nothing to her, it seemed, this violent crashing of the sea against the hard wood of our bow.

As the Sprig o' Thyme climbed out of the water once more, the mermaid again rose with us, no more disturbed than as if she had been caught in the briefest of light showers.

If she knew the captain and his ship were a danger to mermaids, why had she taken the risk of drawing so ridiculously near to us?

Why would she want to do so, too, to simply warn me that I'm wasting my time?

'Why are you telling me this?' I snapped aggressively over the roar of the sea swirling about us.

'Because – you're different to them, I see.'

As she said this, she studied me curiously. With amusement too, it seemed to me.

'Different? In what way am I different?' I demanded.

And then it struck me that I might – hopefully – know what she meant.

'Then...I'm not dead?' I added tentatively.

I glanced upwards nervously, gazing up beyond the large, straining sail of the bowsprit, abruptly concerned that the pause in my singing might be noted by a crewmember. If he looked down, to ask why I'd come to so sharp an end of my song, he would undoubtedly see the mermaid.

She would have to flee, before she could answer my query.

'Dead?' She chuckled, frowning a little in bemusement. 'The dead can't sing like you can! But then, neither have I ever heard anyone living sing so...entrancingly.'

She talked so calmly, so clearly, we could have been seated upon the edge of a harbour in summer. It was no struggle at all for her to cling onto the side of the ship, even as we pitched and plunged, and bounded and rolled.

She glanced up, sadly taking in the husk of her sister hanging above us.

'Can you see her?' she asked me.

'Of course I can see her.' I answered, wondering why she might have thought the mummified mermaid remained invisible to me.

She suffered another submerging in the roaring waters as if it were nothing more than a slightly disturbing breeze.

'I thought you might be able to see her,' she said, carrying on with our conversation as if we had never been interrupted, 'so I was curious; why would so gifted a child be helping Captain Adams hunt us down?'

I was trembling with excitement that I was alive, when I had seriously feared otherwise.

Trembling with a renewed fear too; what was I, someone who was living, doing working on a ship of the dead?

And yet this murderous mermaid had no right to demand that I answer that question.

'Shouldn't everyone be hunting you down?' I retorted irately. 'Why must you use your beautiful voices to entice men to their deaths?'

She laughed and frowned in bemusement once more, but this time with a hint of surprise.

'Entice men to their deaths?' she repeated with a mocking, sceptical tone, as if it were nonsense. 'No, not us!'

I wanted to spit back, 'Yes! You!' – but I had to wait before I could speak, as we once again suffered a steep plunging back into the foaming waters.

'I saw it for myself yesterday,' I at last spat at her angrily as the ship rose upwards once more. 'That poor ship, that the mermaids lured onto the rocks they were sitting on! Like murdering sirens!'

She lowered her brow and smirked in disbelief.

'We tried to warn them they were nearing the rocks!' she insisted vehemently. 'It was your singing – which is louder than you think! – that confused everyone.'

'You're saying I was responsible for their deaths?' I shot back furiously, annoyed that she was laying all the blame on me.

The mermaid shook her head, her sharply red air flowing about her in the wind like disturbed sea anemones.

'No, no; no one knows Captain Adams' purpose better than I do,' she said, turning away a little from me, adding as she sprang away from the platform, diving back into the sea below, 'Unlike you, I know the beauty of his own singing; for I was once betrothed to him.'

*

# Chapter 24

Down by a crystal spring where the nightingale sing,

Most pleasant it is in season to hear the groves ring.

Down by a riverside a young captain I espied,

Entreating of his true love for to be his bride.

The Crystal Spring

I had to quickly return to my singing, if only to ensure I didn't raise the crew's suspicions that I was disobeying the captain once more.

I needed to sing, anyway, to help me clear away the confusion from my mind.

I had caused the ship to be wrecked upon the rocks?

It was a dreadful accusation.

And yet – could it be true?

What had that sailor said when I'd asked why we weren't saving those who were still alive?

' _Who are we to deny them their fate?'_

*

No matter the song I sang, there were no more mermaids to be seen.

At least, then, she had told the truth when it came to her claim that she had warned all the other mermaids to stay away from our ship.

Warned them not to be entranced by my singing.

Even so, there were no reprimands from the captain.

I began to wonder if he no longer cared for hunting the mermaids, now that he had taken on an extra haul of the dead. But then, seeing in the distance the sight of land, I realised that it was because we were drawing close to another port.

Was he in mind to take on board another cargo of the dead? Surely, now, our holds were brimming with corpses?

As we drew closer, it soon became apparent that it was an island we were heading towards, one of heavily battered and well-rounded stone. On the largest of a series of rocks stretching far out from a jutting headland, the broken shell of a lighthouse stood as a forlorn testament to the violent storms this shore had suffered

And if there were no lighthouse to warn of hidden rocks and sandbars, then how many wrecks littered this coast?

How many souls were there waiting for us here?

The Sprig o' Thyme quivered like an energetically plucked harp, its whole being ringing with a trembling joy.

And from high up on its wheel deck, there came an accompanying voice.

A deep toned choral, that was full of emotion, that was finer than I had ever heard any man sing.

It was the captain.

Captain Adams was singing, his voice an overflowing of happiness.

*

# Chapter 25

She leaned her back against a thorn,

All alone and aloney,

And there she had two fine babies born,

Down by the greenwood sidey.

The Cruel Mother

The lighthouse is no longer shattered.

It stands tall, its beam shining out, warning of the dangers lying ahead of a young and sprightly Sprig o' Thyme.

The ship sings in her joy of being newly alive.

The tautly stretched canvas of the sails boom and crash like so many drums.

The rigging quivers and trembles as if made of the strings of cellos and violins.

Belaying pins rattle cymbal-like, the gaps between timbers joining in with a flute's jaunty whistling

As for the woodwinds of the decks and holds...

They cry out with pain.

They reek of death.

They are stained berry-red with blood, slimy already with the fatty waste of shredded flesh.

And behind the stern, there streams the gore of so many severed carcasses, frenziedly plucked from the waves by a whirling cloud of insatiable seagulls.

For the Sprig o' Thyme is a whaling ship.

And the captain's fine baritone celebrates a fruitful catch.

*

The mermaids wail.

No one should be allowed to tear apart such wondrous, such magnificently imperious creatures.

And not, especially, simply to light lamps in the darkness of man, to create perfumes to wash humans of their stench of death.

Their song today is one of vengeance, of punishment.

It urges the sea into one of its customary rages, cajoles the wind to storm at this injustice with all its might.

The men of the Sprig o' Thyme have weathered such squalls many times. Besides, they are almost home, and they know the moods of the sea, the way the winds swoop down from the warmer land.

The dangers of the rocky headland are easily avoided, when you have grown up with and become accustomed to the undercurrents shifting endlessly about it. Besides, beyond a certain point, the jutting headland becomes your friend, sheltering you from the worst of the wind, slowing the surging of the waves.

The crew set to their appointed tasks with joy rather than fear – rapidly scrambling up through the webs of rigging, edging carefully along the extending spars and hurriedly furling the sails – confident that they will soon be home.

They are not to know this is no normal storm.

*

The song of the mermaid can only be heard by those close to death.

And so, at last, the men begin to hear amidst the wailing of the wind, the booming of the sea, the most beautiful singing they have ever heard.

They know what this means.

They know, now, that they are in danger.

*

The sea lying ahead of the Sprig o' Thyme is restlessly changing colour.

It shifts from the brightest of greens to shredded crimson, from murky brown to flowing yellows.

The seabed is being torn away from its rocky base, the gardens of seaweed and coral uprooted and given a false sense of whirling life even as they die. Islands form where once it was open sea, unpredictable currents rush along newly created furrows.

'I've never seen it like this; this can only be the work of the mermaids!'

The lighthouse keeper surveys the churning sea like a condemned man miserably watches the swift construction of his gallows. The waves are pounding remorselessly against the stones of his charge, weakening the mortar with every harsh blow, the cracks rushing down the interior like deadly lightning strikes.

'We could take the boat,' his wife anxiously agrees, even though she knows it is an option almost as equally dangerous as staying in their crumbling home.

Their daughter Meredith is every bit as fearful as her parents, but the cause of her fear lies elsewhere; after all, hasn't their home resiliently held off all previous storms?

'But the ships depend all the more on our light in dark storms like this!' she insists, anxious for the safety of the Sprig o' Thyme, whom she has eagerly been watching draw nearer home.

'The light will shine even when we are gone,' her father points out, knowing full well that his daughter's real concern is for Captain Adams, with whom she so elatedly sings along with in church.

Merry had bought a brand new red dress, one she had sworn she wouldn't wear until the captain was home and safe once more.

Yet even if the captain survives this storm, the keeper morosely recognises, he will never see his Merry wearing her new dress.

*

The Sprig o' Thyme finds she is unexpectedly expected to navigate unknown waters.

Unknowable waters; for they are constantly, rapidly changing.

And worse still, the warning light of the lighthouse has been abruptly snuffed out, as effortlessly as a candle flame is extinguished by a cold draught.

No longer singing, anxious to know what might have befallen his love Merry, the captain is trying to bark out orders over the howling of the storm. Snarling at clumsiness and ineptitude, he hides his roaring fear and despondency behind growls of disdain.

And yet there is an echo of his song.

It lingers now, even though Captain Adams brought an end to his song over half an hour ago.

No; not lingers.

It grows stronger.

It continues where he left off.

And the voice is more beautiful, more entrancing, than ever.

*

'The mermaids are mocking us; throwing the captain's own song back at us!'

'It's death for sure to hear a mermaid's song!'

The captain catches the fearful muttering of his crew.

'Not for sure!' he scowls back. 'To be at death's door means you can shut it: if you've got the sense!'

He pauses, glancing up slightly as if cocking an ear to fresh sounds he can detect amongst the wailing shrieks of the wind, the chaotic roars of the sea.

'Listen,' he says. 'Can't you hear it?'

The men about him grimace worriedly. They can hear it all right; the chorus of mermaids, announcing their deaths.

He sees on their faces that they have misunderstood him.

'Not that!' he scoffs. 'I said listen; listen to the emotions of that other song! My song!'

They all discontentedly glower back at him, fearing he has lost his mind.

How, after all, can they possibly hear what he has somehow sensed within this echoing of his song?

Love.

A love that, in its way, turns the meaning of the song, The Cruel Mother, into self-admonition.

How can we bury children, simply to fool ourselves that we are still spotless?

'It's Merry! I'm sure of it!'

The crew slyly exchange anxious glances: is the captain mad?

No one could have survive the destruction of the lighthouse.

And Merry, despite the beauty of her voice, had never sung this entrancingly.

It was a mermaid, sure enough; a mermaid luring them to their doom.

'We must follow Merry's singing!' the captain insists. 'Were the lights of her father have failed, she means to lead us to safety through her singing. I am sure of it!'

His scandalised crew equally vehemently disagree.

'That can't be Merry, captain!'

'It's a mermaid, more like!'

'A mermaid's song comes from where danger lies!'

'We must sail away from it!'

*

Once again, the captain appeared to be straining to hear things denied his crew.

As if he believed that their ears had been deliberately bound.

'There's love in that song, foo1s!' he spat back at his mutinous men. 'If it is a mermaid rather than Merry, then there's one amongst the mermaids who still wishes to aid us!'

He had hoped to instil in his crew a reassuring if false sense that they had some say in the way their lives might end.

He had wasted enough time.

'Follow the strains of The Cruel Mother!' he blared up towards the higher deck, where men tied to the wheel grimly tried to guide the ship despite the powerful battering of its rudder, its sides, its still unfurled sails.

With a crack worthy of the splitting of the earth, the lighthouse suddenly shattered about its middle, along its height. The weakened stone and mortar were unable to bear the storm's remorseless assault a moment longer.

There was a tumbling of most of the upper level's stones, three quarters of it falling aside, its skeleton bared, its head almost entirely shorn.

Its light, already dimmed in the darkness of storm clouds swirling no higher than the wave tops, was snuffed out in an instant.

The lament of The Cruel Mother was now the only thing that could offer a form of guidance, whether the crew of the Sprig o' Thyme chose to follow it or not.

*

They followed wherever the lament went first.

At any moment, they feared, they would strike one of the freshly formed sandbanks.

The stones and pebbles in an instant grinding away their keel. The wind pushing hard even on furled top sails, sending them lurching off to one side in a tangle of shattering masts and shredding rigging. The sea eagerly gnawing at everything flung into its teeth.

Yet wherever they went, it seemed, the newly created islands lying just beneath the surface failed to materialise.

The Sprig o' Thyme could have been blessed with a charmed life.

Not that the crew felt any more reassured that their captain was being wise in placing the safety of his ship in the hands of a mermaid.

Where was the calming of the storm that they had come to expect once they had passed into the area of relative shelter offered by the extending headland?

Were they missing the shifting banks only because they had somehow been fooled into heading even farther out to sea?

Certainly, the storm appeared to be endless. There had been no sign so far of the reassuringly looming walls of the cliffs enveloping their port's natural harbour.

And then, suddenly, there they were; veiled by waterfalls of grey mist that almost undetectably merged them into sea and sky.

The storm, then, had struck their port hard, rather than sparing it, as was more usually the case.

They saw now the dark shards of ships torn from their anchors and flung solidly against each other, the masts and spars woven together like a crazed woof and weft. The buildings too, especially those down by the shore, had suffered damage, the stone, brick and timbers reduced once more to materials.

And yet the song had begun to wane.

The Sprig o' Thyme had arrived safely home.

*

The next morning, when the storm had finally exhausted its last breath, the families of the whalers wearily inspected the damage to their once thriving port.

They mourned the loss of so many lives.

They saw what little remained of the once proud lighthouse, stripped as completely as one might rip a corn cob from its sheath of leaves, and lamented the loss of an entire family.

And yet, according to Captain Adams, his Merry still lived on.

Singing more ethereally in death than she had ever sung in life.

*

# Chapter 26

I was coming home to make up the last,

When the winds did blow, and the seas did roar:

And they cast me here on this foreign shore.

Isle of France

The stones of the crumbled lighthouse no longer sang for me.

They stood as anyone else would see them; silent, forlorn.

But was it true what the stones had told me?

That only those close to death could hear the mermaid's song?

Then I...?

Then I am surrounded by death, as I had already surmised.

How much closer to death could anyone be?

Around the Sprig o' Thyme, the sea flowed in ever changing colours; a rotted green, a dulled crimson, the churned yellows of endlessly swirling sand and gravel.

Of endlessly shifting sandbanks.

They whirled in the sea about us as if alive, moving by some combined intelligence as great shoals of fish dart and swoop as one. They settled, abruptly dark and menacing, like the resting of brooding leviathans this ship once hunted down.

It was of no concern to either the captain or his crew, it seemed. No one made any attempt to furl the sails, to proceed cautiously, to take constant soundings.

We rushed forward with the wind, like a race horse heading for the line.

*

If we passed over a sandbank, I never realised it.

We must have powered through it as easily as we did the rolling waves.

Soon the cliffs I had seen earlier in the lighthouse's retelling of its own history appeared as a mistily grey line on the horizon, followed a fraction of an hour later by my second sighting of the Sprig o' Thyme's port.

The thicket of masts rising up from within the harbour was, of course, no longer the tangled web it had been after the storm. Neither, though, was it formed from the more regularly ordered spars and jibs of the well-maintained ships that had once graced the harbour of my home; it was, rather, an unruly jumble of broken and lazily patched masts and sails.

By comparison, the Sprig o' Thyme was as sprucely shipshape as a Man o' War of Her Majesty's Navy.

Going by the state of every ship we passed as we drew closer to the shore, the storm that had raged against this harbour could have been a recent phenomenon, and not the long past history revealed to me by the stones of the lighthouse. Timbers were dark and rotted, in many places broken and holed, such that I found it hard to believe certain ships remained afloat when I saw similarly gaping wounds within their hulls.

It seemed to me at first glance that this fleet still hunted down whales for their oils and ambergris, for huge dark shapes forlornly lay in nets along the sides of many hulls.

These were not the sleekly smooth forms of captive giants of the deep, however; they were the angular, jutting twists and snarls of wrecks dredged up from the seabed.

And on board the ships themselves, as if rescued at last, long dead souls massed aimlessly upon the decks.

*

# Chapter 27

And all in the churchyard these two were laid,

And a stone for remembrance was laid on her grave,

My joys are all ended, my pleasures are fled,

This grave that I lie in is my new married bed.

The Drowned Lover

The souls gathered together on each ship were different in their ways.

In some cases, their clothes were like none I had ever seen, apart from in classes at school, when we were shown illustrations of men in tricorn hats, in helmets of iron, with flowing plumes.

And they weren't milling aimlessly at all, I realised now. They were waiting their turn to clamber down into rowboats taking them ashore.

Some ships were already emptied of their cargo, their crews now busying themselves with scrambling across the netted wrecks as industriously as they would once have carved apart the great whales, hacking off pieces, throwing aside things of no use. And yet other parts of the wrecks were being curiously repaired, patched up with wood cannibalised from less important areas, a forlorn hope it seemed to me to once again make seaworthy ships that had already sunk long ago.

Like the Sprig o' Thyme, many ships had only a cargo to unload, rather than being encumbered with a Siamese-twin of a wreck. And like the Sprig o' Thyme, these ships pulled up alongside the harbour's quay, throwing down rickety gangplanks their passengers unhurriedly and silently streamed across.

On hitting the cobbled quay, each soul unhesitatingly made their way towards one of the many narrow pathways leading up and away from the harbour front. Here they vanished, disappearing behind the walls of the small stone houses and larger warehouses, but doubtlessly following the meandering ginnels taking them higher up into the town clinging to the side of the looming cliffs. And beyond the original stone houses there now lay an ever expanding suburb of homes formed of the dark wood of recovered wrecks, houses so grey they merged seamlessly into the misty cliffs, such that I had been unable to see them while the Sprig o' Thyme lay far out in the harbour.

If each soul had been given a purpose and a direction to take, I failed to see what it could be based upon. For those disembarking from our own ship, rather than staying together as one might have supposed, split up into groupings that themselves had no real sense of cohesion, for they appeared only to be individuals unaware of anyone about them, even though they shared a common course.

There were people there whom I had seen willingly walking aboard our ship.

There were also those whom I knew had died earlier though contacting the plague.

Now they were of one kind.

And then I saw her.

My mother.

*

# Chapter 28

O don't you see that milk-white dove,

A-sitting on yonder tree,

Lamenting for her own true love,

As I lament for thee, my dear,

As I lament for thee.

The True Lover's Farewell

At any other time, I would have naturally thought it impossible that I could catch a sight of my dead mother.

But this, of course, was a land – or at least a harbour – of the dead.

Where else would she be but here?

Hurriedly clambering up from my perch on the Sprig o' Thyme's bow, I rushed across the deck, unhesitatingly heading towards the gangplank I had seen her descending. Yet on reaching the deck, and scanning the crowded quay, I found that I was looking down on a sea of similarly dressed women, the glimpse of the bedraggled waterfall of hair that had originally drawn my attention having vanished.

Had I imagined it?

Had she simply raised her shawl about her head, as almost every other woman here had? If so, she now blended into the mass of grey souls as if she had never really been there.

'Mum! Mum!'

I ran down the gangplank, pushing my way past uncaring people who appeared to be every bit as unaware of my rude presence as they were of every other soul about them. Weaving in and out of them was therefore thankfully reasonably easy, for I could pull or push someone aside without them caring the slightest.

It was as I hit the point where gangplank became quay that I stumbled, the abrupt change from smooth, steeply angled wood to uneven cobbles causing me to briefly lose my footing. I barged violently into the back of a boy who had also just stepped onto the quay, his head jerking so suddenly that his hat flew from his head.

I know of no boy who wouldn't have whirled on me angrily for clumsily powering into him and knocking his hat to the floor.

And yet this boy acted as calmly as if it had merely been a brush of wind that had removed his cap and tossed it to the ground.

He bent to retrieve it, silently, unperturbed.

As he rose once again, he slipped the hat back on top of stubbly hair crawling with maggots.

But he had been without his hat long enough for me to recognise him.

'Ben,' I said.

*

'It's me, Ben; don't you recognise me?'

Grabbing his arms, I shook him a little, demanding a response.

When I'd first spoken his name, it appeared to me that there had been the briefest glint of recognition in his eyes, a registering of my presence that hadn't been stirred in the slightest amongst the people filing down the gangplank, even as I'd charged into them, or dragged others aside.

But that momentary sparkle of understanding in Ben's eyes had vanished as quickly as a candle flame snuffed out in a violent storm.

'Ben!' I persisted, still eliciting no discernible response. 'Do you know who you are? What happened to you?'

I tightened my grip on his arms, shook him a good deal harder; then instantly regretted it, recalling that he had been buried now for a number of weeks, and his body must be weak and fragile.

And yet there seemed to be no difference that I could detect in the width and substantially of his arms.

Neither were there any signs of rotting, or disfigurement in his face, that I might have expected in a corpse.

The maggots still fell from beneath his cap, but this was because, I'd noted at last, many seemed still and lifeless themselves now.

Could it be that they no longer had anything to feed on, yet had simply remained there because they had been trapped by a firmly settled hat?

Certainly, Ben's flesh seemed to be recovering from any harm his burial might have brought about. And why shouldn't that be the case, of course, if those who had perished on the sea eons ago had now regained their flesh?

As if...as if it were the time for the Last Judgement.

But if I am still alive...then what am I doing here?

*

# Chapter 29

A cherry when it's blooming, it has no stone;

A chicken when it's pipping, there is no bone;

A baby when it's sleeping, there's no crying,

And when I say I love you, it has no end.

I Gave My Love a Cherry

'Of course I know why I'm here!'

The blaze in Ben's eyes abruptly quickened, as if suddenly granted consciousness, understanding, once more.

He whirled into angry movement, gesticulating with his arms and hands, almost snarling in his fury.

'You shouldn't be here!' he sternly growled. 'You're not one of us! Not really!'

*

Ben delivered his last rebuke more hesitantly, his anger fading a touch, perhaps as he noted the fear and confusion in my eyes.

As his eyes fell away from mine in embarrassment, he seemed to catch a glimpse of the ring on my finger, for he suddenly lifted his head to face me once more.

'You used to go up to the Stones all the time,' he said, his voice carrying tones of hurt as much as accusation. 'I followed you once.'

His shame returns.

'I...I'm sorry,' I blurted out, realising for the first time that it had been my visits to the Stones that had come between us; I had begun to regard him as childish, naïve.

Slowly, I had drifted away from hmi, a part of my foolish childhood I was willingly leaving behind, casting off even.

'What...what did you see up there?' I asked curiously.

Had anyone else witnessed the Stones leaping into life? Surely it couldn't all have taken place in my imagination.

I felt for and gently rubbed the ring on my finger. No, it couldn't have been nothing but my imagination. Even if no one else had witnessed anything.

Again, he shamefacedly turned away from me.

'Things no man alive should see,' he whispered fearfully.

'What? What did you see?'

Now I'm more curious than ever. Had he seen things I had missed in my joy to be amongst the Stones?

'You...you were like a princess. A princess at a court.'

'A princess?' I snorted in disbelief, wondering how he could ever think of such a stupid thing.

I was a poorly dressed girl, even I recognised that, even when I was losing my self singing amongst the Stones.

Was that it, then? Was he mocking my pretensions of dancing at a royal court, when I had only been foolishly traipsing around a circle of Stones?

'I realised then that you were too good for me,' Ben admits sadly. 'When I'd seen you in all your secret finery; dancing amongst those of the fairy realm.'

I grabbed him by his arms and shook him once more, only this time in the hope that I could get him to see sense.

'Ben! There were no fairies up there! It was all a silly story to keep us away from the Stones – that's all!'

He laughed, his brow furrowing in bemusement.

'Don't lie anymore to me!' he said firmly. 'Didn't I just tell you I saw you?'

'Yes, you saw me,' I agreed. 'But what did you see me doing?'

'You were with the Prince,' he answered assuredly. 'You were with the Lord of the Dance.'

*

# Chapter 30

That's not the promise you gave to me,

When first you lay on my breast.

You made me believe with your lying tongue,

That the sun rose in the west.

Blackwaterside

Although I knew, of course, that I had danced with the Prince and his court, I was still taken aback to learn that someone else outside the ring had seen what had taken place.

Why hadn't Ben told anyone of what he had seen?

He could have betrayed me.

Instead, I was the one who had betrayed him.

I had brought our young and burgeoning love to an end without a word, without any hint of apology or explanation.

And yet he had known all along why our love could never be. I had left him – simply put him aside – for another.

Now I had at least been given an opportunity to apologise, maybe even make an attempt at an explanation.

But Ben was no longer there.

As I had been briefly lost in my thoughts, contemplating my own shame, he must have sadly turned and walked away. And now he was just one of many similar figures streaming towards the many lean alleyways leading off from the quay.

With his back to me, with his cap and clothes that looked like those of so many others around him, he was just another grey shape blending into the massed crowd, just as my mum had done earlier.

Mum!

It had been my mother that I had come ashore to find – not Ben.

I spun around, rushing off in the direction I thought I had last seen her heading in.

*

The town was a labyrinth of winding ginnels, of the narrowest of snickets.

Ramshackle houses appeared to have been crammed into every space available, in many cases arching over the alleys, blocking off all light. Steps wound up and around some buildings, or delved deeper into other areas, frequently taking you into closed off courtyards that sent you turning back upon yourself, retracing your steps.

It was a strange, dim light that pervaded the town, one that could only remind me of sunlight evenly yet weakly suffused throughout a mist, or a fog. At times, I oddly felt this light striking me, as if it possessed a physical presence, a solidness akin perhaps to water; for it frequently swirled about me, as the sands of the shifting shallows twisted and turned beneath the waves.

Throughout my unintentional exploration of the town, I passed many more dark souls, apparently wandering through the maze of the streets far more aimlessly than I was, as if seeking something important to do, to occupy them, or as if so deep in thought they had no real recognition of their surroundings. I began to see, too, that there were differences between the newer arrivals and the older inhabitants of this town, for the latter sported a glittering jewellery the likes of which I had never seen before – for it glittered as if it were made of the stolen segments of rainbows, flashes of the most iridescent colours amongst so much grim greyness.

I found myself back on the quay on a number of occasions, marvelling at the industry of the dark figures still crammed there as other ships arrived to unload their passengers. As with the Sprig o' Thyme's own disembarking of its passengers earlier, these were also being allowed to simply wander off, seeking a home amongst those being freshly built higher up the cliffs. Yet it appeared to me that those who had earlier taken up residence here had either found or had been given ways to make themselves useful, as timber from the wrecks being brought into the harbour was carried ashore and stacked in piles. Here they awaited the carts – drawn by teams of men rather than horses – that would crawl up the winding roads towards where materials were needed for the new homes.

It was on one of my many returns to the harbour that I saw that not all of the wrecks were being brutally reduced to nothing but their original timbers. The most substantial amongst them were taken aside to shallower or even dry docks where cannibalised parts of less fortunate vessels were being transplanted onto their new hosts.

'New' was undoubtedly the wrong word here.

No man of even rudimentary intelligence would sail on the ships being constructed here. These so-called vessels were, rather, a concoction of ill-fitting parts. Any one of which would sink in moments in even the calmest waters, I was sure of that. And yet the ships in the harbour were hardly any better, and they somehow remained afloat.

The Sprig o' Thyme now lay at anchor a little way away from the harbourside. It was growing darker now, but just as the ship had remained dark and silent while anchored in my home port's harbour, no lights were being lit here too.

Not one ship had bothered to light even the smallest lantern.

There were no lights, either, across the full length of the quay.

And no lights, too, in any of the buildings and houses.

The whole port was slowly slipping into an impenetrable darkness.

*

# Chapter 31

There's tinkers, tailors, shoemakers, lie snoring fast asleep,

While we poor souls on the ocean wide are ploughing through the deep.

There's nothing to protect us, love,

Or keep us from the cold,

On the ocean wide, where we must fight like jolly seamen bold.

Adieu Sweet Lovely Nancy

It was no longer possible to tell if I were alone or not.

The dark souls I had seen so industriously milling around here previously could imperceptibly merge into this darkness without me being in any way aware of their presence.

Weren't they of the darkness, anyway?

And they were silent...as silent as the grave.

The only sounds discernible were those of the waves lapping at the hull and harboursides, my own unevenly echoing footsteps on the cobbles, the creaking of the unsteady piles of broken timbers, the squeal of hanging, windblown metal elements.

There was another, more rhythmic squealing of iron; one more away from the harbourside, and coming from somewhere higher above me.

Wasn't that the sound of a lazily swinging sign? Was it coming from a shop or a tavern, maybe?

Certainly, there were none of the other signs you would expect of a tavern; the blazing lights of a well-lit interior, the rumbustious singing and playing of fiddles and flutes, the drunken caterwauling and cries.

Despite this, I followed the sound of the swinging sign, having very little else to guide me. The moon was nothing but a shard of its usual glory, and this too was shrouded by veiling dark clouds. Its reflected light was greyer still, a mere difference in tone to the prevailing darkness.

It was in this dimmest of lights that I at last made out the sign swinging high above me.

The Blue Cockade.

Yes, despite this place being as lifeless as any corpse, it was indeed a tavern.

*

Of what use is a tavern where you can't forget your woes, and merrily sing and enjoy yourself?

It was nevertheless as crowded as any inn I had seen back in my home port. There was also some kind of drink being either bought, or perhaps even offered free of charge.

I recognised some of the crew from the Sprig o' Thyme, wondered if this was – for them – some way of entertaining themselves.

I wondered, too, if the captain might be here with them.

Would he be able to explain what I was doing here? And where 'here' actually was?

*

'I don't think I should be here.'

'Don't you now?'

The captain grinned even as he furrowed his brow in puzzlement.

I had found him at last, morosely seated on his own in a corner, doubtlessly mulling over bitter memories as he supped a dark ale swirling with badly stirred residues.

'Well, I'm not dead – am I?' I asked more uncertainly than I'd intended.

He chuckled, downed another deep draught, and said:

'Aren't you now? Then what are you doing here, girl?'

*

# Chapter 32

I hope you n'er do well;

And the very ground you walk upon –

May the grass refuse to grow,

Since you've been the (since you've been the),

Since you've been the (since you've been the)

Very cause of

My sorrow, grief and woe.

The Blue Cockade

'Is this... I think I know what this place is!'

'You do?'

Again the captain grinned, richly amused by my confusion.

'The Last Judgement; it's the Last Judgement

'The Last Judgement is it now?' he laughed, yet more hesitantly this time. 'Perhaps I should be the judge of that, don't you think?'

His reply left me aghast.

'You? No! You can't be the Judge!'

'Well, and who else do you think might be the judge of all these poor souls?'

'God; only God can Judge us!'

'Can he now? And how would he do that, justly, when as far as I'm aware he's never suffered on this abomination of a world as every soul here has?'

'His son; his son was sent amongst us to suffer with us.'

'Now having had no son, I can't say for sure I wouldn't send him to suffer in my place...and yet, I don't think any man worthy of judging others would do such a thing, would you?'

'God suffered through his son!' I retorted angrily, adding even more furiously, 'Why do you answer all my questions with your own questions?'

'My questions? But aren't they really your own queries, girl?'

I snatched at and pulled away his churning ale, demanding that he treated me seriously.

'How can they be my questions when you're asking them?'

'Ah, now that would be something I'd be asking my very self.'

'Riddles?' I snapped scornfully, almost causing his eddying drink to slop over the goblet's edges as I trembled with rage. 'Is that all you can give me; stupid riddles?'

'Why aren't you asking yourself these questions, girl?' the captain surly growled back. 'Is it because you know you might be scared of the answers?'

'Why can't you just give me a straight answer?'

'Because you're not prepared to give yourself one!' he snapped. 'You see, most of us wouldn't treat a brother in that way, let alone a son!'

'Oh, we're getting nowhere with this!' I wailed in exasperation, spinning around on my feet in readiness to leave him to his sour drink.

'Keep the drink; it's yours,' he said as I made to put it back down on the table in front of him.

'Mine? But...'

He already held a drink in his hand.

When had he picked that up?

Where had the drink I held come from?

The captain had risen from his table.

'Here's something to remember me by,' he said, cruelly grabbing me by the hand that still held the goblet, forcing me to raise it up to his lips.

But he didn't drink from it.

He spat in it.

Then he let my hand go.

'Use it girl, to find your mother!' the captain said, acridly adding after he'd taken a quick slurp of his own bitter ale, 'Not that she'll be pleased to see you here!'

*

Stepping outside the darkened tavern was like stepping out into the light, the sliver of moon abruptly bright to my slowly adjusting eyes.

The mercurial light licked at the surface of the drink I held, the captain's disgusting gob of spittle still floating there as if it were the moon's own reflection.

No one had tried to take the goblet off me as I had made my way back through the crowded inn.

I had not thought to leave it behind.

I had forgotten, in fact, that I still so angrily and firmly held onto it.

I suddenly recalled, though, that last glimpse of my mother as she had walked away from the Sprig o' Thyme.

The way that, on bringing her shawl up about her flowing hair, as I'd briefly looked away, she might as well have abruptly vanished from sight as she instantly blended seamlessly into the throng of other dark souls making their way away from the quay.

And yet other eyes were following her for me this time.

The captain's eyes.

Eyes that saw so much more than mine.

He saw the lane my mother approached and slipped down.

And now, even in the dim light, I could see the lane she was turning into; and I elatedly headed towards it.

*

# Chapter 33

Drink to me only with thine eyes,

And I will pledge with mine;

Or leave a kiss within the cup,

And I'll not ask for wine.

The thirst that from the soul doth rise,

Doth crave a drink divine;

But might I of Jove's nectar sup,

I would not change for thine.

Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes

Almost as soon as the lane spun away from the quay, it began to rise steeply, to meander crazily.

As I ducked into its entrance, I saw my mother begin to once again fade away before me.

This time, as if into the darkness itself.

So, not even the captain could clearly see beyond this point, where the harbourside becomes the widening lanes of the town.

Unless...

I gazed uncertainly into the goblet of darkest ale I still held.

The captain's phlegm swirled there upon its surface, breaking up now, settling deeper into the drink. Becoming just one more constituent of its poorly filtered deposits.

Do I have to drink it in to see her again?

It wasn't something I looked forward to; rather, my whole being screamed against being so foolish.

It was a disgusting mess, best thrown away.

And yet, without it, I realised, I would remain forever lost.

*

I took a small sip of the bitterly disgusting drink, hoping it would be enough to grant me another sighting of my mother.

Even so, I still gagged a little as I tasted it on my tongue.

And there was no discernible change in the darkness lying about me.

I took a deeper draught, forcing myself to take it in, to glug it down.

My mother was there before me once more, walking away from me, unhurriedly ascending the winding lane.

These were no longer recollections of the captain's, I realised.

They were the memories connecting me with my mother.

*

# Chapter 34

Mother, don't be so cruel to send me to the field,

Where young men may entice me and to them I may yield.

Oh, mother it's quite well known I am not too young grown,

And it is a pity a maid so pretty as I should live alone.

Whistle, Daughter, Whistle

Arguments.

There had always been so many, many arguments with my mother.

About anything.

Everything.

Don't do this.

Do this!

Don't dress like that!

Dress like this!

Dress like me!

All dowdy and miserable.

Don't put flowers in your hair!

Don't let it hang down!

A boy might begin to think you're attractive! And how awful would that be?

So mother, how did you come to have me?

Where's my father?

Did he leave you?

Of course he did!

Who wouldn't leave such a sour harridan as you?

Is that why you're so bitter, why you seek to punish me for your mistakes?

'It's your mistakes that worry me!' Mother rages. 'Don't go up to the Stones! They are such wicked, wicked things, where all sorts of mischief takes place!'

'All right, all right! I shan't go up to the Stones! Not if it's so important to you!'

'Swear on it! I want your vow!'

'I swear – I shall find my enjoyment elsewhere!'

I storm out of the house. And head off towards the fields of hawthorne.

*

And I was a damsel fair,

But fairer I wished to appear,

So I bathed me in milk and I clothed me in silk,

I put the sweet thyme in my hair.

The Sprig of Thyme

And she shall bring the birds in spring,

And dance among the flowers.

In summer's heat her kisses sweet,

They fall from leafy bowers.

Nonesuch

O stay, o stay, you handsome maid,

And rest a moment here.

For there is none than you alone,

That I do love so dear.

Searching for Lambs

The violet I forsook,

Because it fades too soon.

The lily and the pink, I do really overthink,

And I vowed I'd wait till June.

I Sowed the Seeds of Love

She leaned her back against an oak,

All alone and aloney,

First it bent and then it broke,

Down by the greenwood sidey.

The Cruel Mother

*

# Chapter 35

She wept, she cried, she tore her hair –

Ah, me, what could I do?

So all night long, I held her in my arms,

Just to keep her from the foggy, foggy dew.

The Foggy Dew

No!

That hadn't happened!

I'd never let myself...

No!

Not with Ben, even!

And certainly not with that man, whom I couldn't even recognise, whom I'm sure I can't recall!

I had been with no one in such a way!

And yet...there it was.

Once buried deep within my memories, and now unfortunately recalled.

It had to be a mistake!

I furiously tossed away the disgusting brew I held in my hand, letting the ale spill across the cobbles, the goblet to rattle and clang as it bounced, glittering in the moonlight, from stone to stone.

Yes, yes; I'd argued with my mother. I was angry with her for always treating me as if I were a child, with no understanding of such things.

But I had enough sense to recognise that, in this case at least, she meant well. She meant to warn me of the dangers an attractive young girl could get herself into.

And so I had always been wary, always been careful; even when singing in the Ring of Stones, when dancing with the Prince and his Court.

I remained pure: untouched.

I would swear that upon my life!

*

Mother still walks a little way ahead of me.

Winding up the ginnels.

Turning around the tighter corners.

Coming from farther ahead of her, I begin to pick up the faint strains of what could be an accompanying echo of my own singing.

Yet as I continue to follow on behind my mother, the tune rings clearer, louder.

It's a mournful tune, sung quietly.

It's the only singing I've heard here, apart from the tunes so briefly conjured up into life in my memories.

It has to be my mother.

Who else could sing like that?

Like me?

I'd never heard her sing in life, of course.

But yes, I'd heard it was beautiful. Ethereal.

And that is what I'm hearing now; an unearthly song.

Drawing me on.

Leading me closer.

My motherly wraith slips through a door standing before me as if it had never really existed.

The singing comes from within here.

I knock on the door. The singing stops.

Mother answers the door, her eyes widening in horror when she sees me standing there.

'You!' she breathes irately. 'Can I never get away from you?'

*

# Chapter 36

The river never will run dry,

Nor the rocks melt with the sun;

And I'll never prove false to the girl I love,

Till all these things be done, my dear,

Till all these things be done.

The True Lover's Farewell

Despite her cold welcome, my mother stepped aside to let me enter her home.

Could you call it a home?

A wooden chair. A simple bed. A rudimentary table.

And on that table, nothing but a goblet of darkest ale. Swirling with unwanted but irremovable residues.

And somewhere along the way here, my mother had regained or brought together her own residues of beauty.

So like me; she's so like me.

Without even thinking clearly about what or why I was doing it, I gratefully threw my arms around my mother's waist, embracing her as if we had always been so, so close, always been so, so affectionate towards each other.

My enthusiasm wasn't returned, but then neither was it rebuffed.

Affectionately, she was still as cold towards me as she had always been. And yet she didn't feel as cold – feel as hard and lifeless – as I might have expected, if I'd stopped to think about it before meeting her.

As she shut the door behind me, she indicated with a lazy wave of an arm that I should take the one and only seat.

I refused; it wasn't right, to sit while my mother stands.

She didn't take the seat herself, but remained standing. She sighed exhaustedly, even though she no longer appeared anywhere near as wasted as she had while alive.

'I had to expect it, I suppose; especially when I woke up on the boat, woke up here. Only here, I thought it would be your brother.'

'Brother?' I hissed in surprise.

*

I'd never had a brother.

Unless, of course, he'd been born and died before I'd arrived. Or, maybe, he had still been around while I was alive, only I'd been too young to remember him.

If the death had been too painful to deal with, Mum might have deliberately made every effort to pretend he'd never, ever really existed.

It happened.

Happened all the time.

'That's why you're here isn't it? To make sure the punishment never ends?'

She must have misinterpreted my surprise. She probably believes that, somehow, I'd found out that I'd once had a brother.

That happens all the time too.

'I'm here to punish you?' I gasped in bewilderment. 'Why do you think you're being punished? You're not dead, like you should be. You're still alive, in a way – because here we are together again! I mean, the fear of death; isn't it really fear that we're going to be torn apart?'

My mother didn't appear to be listening to my surprisingly heartfelt plea to rejoice at the fact that we were together again.

I'd always been angry with my mother, but I'd never really hated her.

She'd brought me into the world, after all. I wouldn't be here if she hadn't carried me, given birth, raised me.

I owed her for all that at least.

She was staring at the table. At the goblet of darkest, bitterest ale.

Even though neither of us were standing close enough to disturb it, the ale swirled remorselessly.

'There's to be no respite, no rest, for me then? Even now?' Mother intoned morosely. 'I'm still to be haunted by things I'd hoped I'd buried long ago.'

Her eyes widened with horror once again, but this time even more bulbously than when she'd first greeted me.

She glanced about the darkened room fearfully.

'Your brother; he'll be here too, won't he?'

'I had a brother? You never said.'

My matter of fact tone seemed to help bring her out of her abrupt, panicky terror of the surrounding darkness.

She nodded ashamedly in reply to my question.

'I...I thought you must've known. Yes; you had a brother. But...he died. Died in...in...as a child, when very very young.'

She looked more ashamed than ever.

Had she blamed herself for his death? That would be perfectly natural, going by what I'd seen back in my home town, where women suffered many stillbirths, or the deaths of freshly born babes. And toddlers, young children, were so easily and often taken by Death to be his playmates.

Had Mother loved my brother more than me?

Had she always regarded me as being a poor substitute?

A disappointment in every way?

'I never knew; I'm sorry,' I whispered.

She frowned, puzzled, perhaps even a touch irate.

'But when you turned up...I mean, surely you–'

Her gaze had latched onto my hand.

Onto my ring.

She looked up, more confused than ever.

'But how ever did you...?'

Her own hand suddenly rose up towards her neck. She must have realised for the first time that she no longer wore her necklace.

She furiously scowled at me.

'You took it!' she declared accusingly.

'It's mine!'

'No; it's mine,' she insisted, striking out with a hand to firmly grab mine. 'I always loved you enough to try and save you from this!'

With her other hand, she grabbed the ring, obviously with the intention of taking it back.

And suddenly, I once again seemed to be arguing with my mother in another time, another place.

*

# Chapter 37

'Daughter, I was twenty before that I was woo'd,

And many a long and lonesome mile I carried my maidenhood.'

'Mother that may be, but it's not the case with me;

For I'm young and merry and almost weary of my virginity.'

Whistle, Daughter, Whistle

The Stones; I must not go up to the Stones!

I must not even go near the Stones!

The Stones are wicked. Evil!

Haven't I heard any of the tales the other villagers tell?

It is the abode of the Lord of the Dance himself! Entrapping innocents; especially innocent young girls, who return innocent no longer!

What does any young girl do when faced with such a barrage of unfair orders from her mother?

She storms out, of course

*

'How old are you my fair pretty maid,

How old are you my honey?'

She answered me so cheerfully,

'Well, I'm seventeen come Sunday.'

I'm Seventeen come Sunday

The Stones draw a young girl to their happy embrace like pollen attracts fat bees, like juicy insects attract birds.

Or as flames draw moths, as Mother would more likely put it.

Here a girl can feel joyously free.

She can sing.

She can dance

*

How gloriously the sun doth shine,

How lovely is the air.

I'd rather rest on my true love's breast,

Than any other where.

Searching for Lambs

And when your Prince gives you a ring; why, then surely everything must be right.

Which young girl wouldn't wish to throw off the cares of a bitter life and enjoy such a wonderful distraction?

The courtiers are so courteous.

The Prince; well, he is so Princely.

So handsome.

So attentive.

So easy to fall in love with.

*

Now thou art mine and I am thine,

And no man shall uncomfort me.

We'll join our hands in wedlock bands,

And married we shall be.

Searching for Lambs

A ring is binding.

A ring declares your bond.

The marriage of one with another.

I have been alone too long.

*

She loved him up, she loved him down,

All alone and aloney.

She loved him till he filled her arms,

Down by the greenwood sidey.

The Cruel Mother

It isn't me.

It's my mother.

*

# Chapter 38

My garden was planted well

With flowers everywhere;

But I hadn't the liberty to choose for myself,

The flowers that I loved dear.

I Sowed the Seeds of Love

I'd thought, as I'd followed my mother's dark image up through the lanes, that I had been retracing the memories of a connected life.

But it seemed, perhaps, that they had been the memories of the half of me that had come from her: the links naturally created at birth that had nevertheless remained buried deep within my soul, seemingly unimportant and unneeded.

Perhaps, too, the stone ring I wore had directed my thoughts down those dark and crooked alleyways.

This ring is hers; not mine.

*

I let her take the ring.

If she desires it so much, she can have it.

'It's yours,' I say, recognising that it was hers to do with as she wished.

She grasps it tightly in her hand, but her face is etched with loathing rather than triumph.

'It's of no use here to me!' she growls, tossing it with disdain towards the dark ale swirling in its goblet. 'Neither should it be of any use to you, no matter where you go!'

The ring sinks into the ale with a dull plop. It sizzles, froths, until it resembles nothing but a bubbling blob of disgusting spittle.

On its dissolving in the swirling ale, it feels, too, as if some barrier that had lain unseen between me and my mother has also abruptly vanished.

She regards me cautiously through tearful eyes. It could be the very first time she has looked at me so intently, rather than giving me only the most cursory of glances, as if she would prefer that I wasn't there.

'You're so like I was, aren't you?'

There's a sternness to her voice. I can't be sure if she means it as praise or as an angry admonishment of both of us.

She steps closer towards me, reaching out with her hands before her. She grabs me tightly by my arms.

I still can't be sure what she's intending to do.

'You must go!' she insists.

Is there a flicker of tenderness in those glaring eyes?

I don't know.

I don't know what a tender look in my mother's eyes looks like.

'You shouldn't be...'

She pauses, as if gulping down what she meant to say: as if she's not certain what she should be saying. She briefly looks away and down a little, as if ashamed once more.

'No: you shouldn't be here!' she finishes forcefully, resolved, it seems, to say her piece after all.

'Where can I go?' I ask as her tight grip on my arms relaxes, becoming more caring in its gentleness. 'How can I leave?'

'How did you get here?'

She wouldn't know, of course. She must have assumed I had arrived here by some means I can so easily return by.

'On board the same ship that brought you here,' I say, surprised a little as I see a look of fear return to her eyes. 'I can't – I don't want to – re-join her!'

She nods, apparently understanding and agreeing with the wisdom of this.

The firmness of her grip on my arms returns.

'But you're not supposed to be here, I'm sure!' she whispers determinedly.

She kisses me on my cheek.

It's the very first kiss I've had from my mother, as far as I can remember.

'You can find a way,' she says. 'I know you can!'

*

# Chapter 39

What makes you rise so soon, my love,

Your journey to pursue?

Your pretty little feet they tread so neat,

Strike off the morning dew.

Searching for Lambs

I had been in my mother's 'house' longer than I had supposed,

When I stepped outside, the moon was fading, the sun just beginning to rise and take her place.

In the narrow lanes, it remained dark, in shade, but the rooftops were glistening with a dew sparkling with the morning's ruddy tones.

'She didn't tell you everything, you know?'

It could have been my own thoughts.

It could have been a query emanating from the surrounding darkness.

I walked a little faster.

'Don't you want to know the truth?'

This time the voice was louder.

It had come from somewhere deep within the shadows.

I stopped and looked nervously about me.

'Who's there?'

'You should know me.'

The darkness fluctuated, swirled. From its movement, a boy seemed to take shape, to step towards me.

Of course, he was carrying before him his goblet of bitter ale.

He handed it to me.

'This is yours.'

Without thinking clearly about why I did so, I took it from him, stared into it. It was brimming to the top with ale.

It couldn't be mine; I had drunk from it.

I had spilled it. Thrown it away.

'It isn't mine...'

But I couldn't return it to the boy.

Nothing but the darkness lay about me once more.

*

# Chapter 40

As I roved out one May morning,

Down by the riverside,

There I beheld a bold fisherman,

Come rowing by the tide,

Come rowing by the tide;

There I beheld a bold fisherman,

Come rowing by the tide.

The Bold Fisherman

As I ran down through the web of interconnecting ginnels, the ale slopped out from the goblet no matter how I held it.

Yet each time I took the trouble to look, it was full, brimming to the top once more.

I didn't want to drink from it again.

Surely I didn't need to?

I'm not sure I wanted to remember anything more of my past life anyway; best forgotten, really.

I threw the cup away once more, watching with satisfaction as the dark ale splattered against the wall, as the cup clattered across the cobbles.

*

Down by the wharf, only the smaller boats are now bound to the quayside, the larger ships having pulled back to sit at anchor farther out in the water.

There's no movement amongst the boats yet, as there would have been amongst the fisherfolk of my village, who always prepared to sail at dawn, the tides and winds permitting.

No one has bothered lowering and securing the masts, although the sails at least have been furled, doubtlessly because the wind still exerts some control over these ghostly vessels.

One boat, however, has left its triangular sail in place, flapping with a crack and a slap in the breezes coming off from the sea.

That makes it the easiest one for me to take. I should be grateful for its owner's carelessness.

*

The boat's owner is seated in its stern, by the tiller.

He looks up, sees me standing at the edge of the quay, sees me disappointedly staring down at him.

It's a boy.

The boy, I think; the one I'd met in the lanes.

He can't fail to spot my hesitation.

I'm not sure whether to ask him if he'll take me away from here.

Of if I should just walk away, accepting my fate; a fate that has decreed I must live forever amongst the dead.

He waves a hand before him, offering an invitation to board, to take one of the two simple seats lying towards the boat's middle and prow.

Or is he simply drawing my attention to a goblet of dark ale that has been placed upon the plank that serves as the middle seat?

'It's the only way,' he says. 'You must know that.'

*

# Chapter 41

'A sailor's wife at home must bide.'

She halted heavily, she sighed,

'He parted from poor me, me a bride,

Just as the tide was a-flowing.'

The tide flows in, the tide flows out,

Twice every day returning.

Just as the Tide Was Flowing

'It's the only way. You must know that.'

Had the boy meant that I should drink the ale?

Or was he implying that his boat was my only route of escape?

The second meaning was my favoured one.

Clambering down into the boy's boat, making my way towards its small seat in the prow, I made sure to avoid disturbing the goblet of dark ale.

Even so, the increased bobbing and rolling of the boat on the waves as I made my way towards the front naturally caused the goblet to wobble precariously, the ale to spill and slop across the seat.

Even so, the goblet instantly refilled, its contents never really dropping lower than its brim.

Were these the boy's memories, not mine?

Certainly, I couldn't see any drink in the boy's hands.

But then, the boy who had handed back my own drink a moment ago hadn't seemed to hold his own goblet either.

The boy pulled the boat away from the quayside without a further word.

I wanted to talk to him, to ask him questions.

And yet I feared his answers every much as I feared stirring the dark memories in the goblet.

*

Once we were outside the relative shelter of the harbour walls, the wind swelled our raggedy sail, the boat nimbly picking up speed even as it rushed through waves that were now larger and more regular.

The goblet seemed about to topple on a number of occasions, yet each time it managed to right itself, the ale that had slopped over its sides instantly replaced.

I still hadn't talked to the boy, who also remained grimily silent.

My mother had mentioned a brother...could this be him?

Yet wouldn't he be younger than this? He was around my age, from what I could tell (his features were strangely undefined, fluctuating just as a massing of dark clouds flow into ever different shapes).

Then again, hadn't my mother appeared to me to be younger than she had been when she had died? Why should the dead be confined to the constrictions of age that we suffer in life?

So, could he be my brother?

I should ask him.

And yet I daren't.

If he answers 'Yes'; then what do I do?

What do I say?

So – for now – I say nothing.

*

# Chapter 42

Babes, oh babes, if you were mine,

All alone and aloney,

I'd dress you up in scarlet fine,

Down by the greenwood sidey.

The Cruel Mother

We were heading now for what remained of the once proud lighthouse.

About us, the sea churned wildly, throwing up its disturbed bed of many colours, everything swirling as uncontrollably as ship's sheets in a storm.

Sand rushed about us, the land made fluid, earth on the move. It thickened in substance, an island forming about us, created as if out of nothing but the gradual stilling of the waters.

There was little to worry about.

This instantaneous creation of shallows, this endless shifting of islands, had presented no trouble to the wraith-like Sprig o' Thyme. It had flowed through them as effortlessly as it cleaved through the towering waves of the most irate sea.

A ghostly presence can't be limited in its actions by the merely earthly.

And what was this boat but a haunting memory of a long-dead brother I'd had no idea had ever existed?

And yet...there was a juddering, a creaking of timbers, as the accumulating sand solidified around us.

A teeth-clenching grinding as we scraped across hard shingle.

A sudden pitching forward in my seat as we brutally struck immovable ground.

*

The wind and waves still pushing hard on the boat from behind caused it to violently skew, the stern acting as if it wanted to carry on regardless of the prow's abrupt immobility. The hull leaned as far as it could into the freshly created island, the wind-filled sail toppling completely as the mast cracked under the strains imposed upon it by the jolting halt.

The black sail fell over me like an impossibly heavy shroud, plunging me into an impenetrable darkness.

*

A soaked canvas sail, even one from a small boat, makes for the heaviest shroud I could imagine.

It took me a while to free myself, and even then this was only because the wind helped me a little, picking the sail up by its edges every now and again, and taking most of the burden off my shoulders and arms.

Why hadn't my brothe – the boy – helped me?

Did he want to see me suffer?

Had he fallen overboard when we'd struck the island?

Looking about me now, it seemed that this last option was the most likely.

He was nowhere to be seen, the boat empty but for the goblet.

And the goblet, of course, had managed to fall against the inside of the sloping hull so that it remained upright. As the boat rocked and rolled to the surging of the waves, ale wildly slopped everywhere, only to be instantly replaced in the goblet.

I anxiously glanced about me, hoping to catch a sight of or hear a call coming from the boy as he bobbed somewhere amongst the waves.

Yet even here I couldn't see the barest trace of him.

'Boy! Boy! Where are you?' I cried out worriedly, precariously standing up in the rocking boat to give myself a better view of the surrounding sea.

Why hadn't I at least asked him his name?

It somehow seemed so callous to be calling out 'Boy!' as I increasingly fearfully sought a sighting of him.

And if he had been my brother – well, that was even worse, wasn't it?

My yells were met with a roar of the wind, a growl of the fiercely incoming waves – and the boat swayed violently.

I lost my footing, tripping over my own ankle. And as the boat suddenly listed even more perilously than before, I was pitched backwards over its side.

*

# Chapter 43

Her golden hair in ringlets fair,

Her eyes like diamonds shining,

Her slender waist, her heavenly face,

That leaves my heart still pining.

Ye gods above oh hear my prayer,

To my beauteous fair to find me,

And send me safely back again,

To the girl I left behind me.

The Girl I Left Behind

I tumbled into the cold, cold water.

And then, just as I thought I would continue to sink beneath the swiftly enveloping waves, I felt my back strike something surprisingly solid.

The newly formed island of sand.

Of course.

If we had run aground, then there must be a ground that we had become stuck upon.

I picked myself up, standing in the shallow waters.

Towards and beyond the stern of the boat, I presumed, the land must quickly fall away, the sea abruptly becoming deeper.

But heading out before its prow, there must be this newly formed land, most of it lying hidden just below the sea's surface.

How far did it stretch?

Did it reach out towards the crumbling ruin of the lighthouse?

Is that where the boy (my brother?) had headed?

I stepped away from the boat a little, gingerly placing my feet to check how firm it remained underfoot. It was unexpectedly stable, as if I were walking in the waters lapping at a beach.

I walked a little farther, marvelling at this strange sensation that I was walking on water, in the midst of an angrily rolling sea. There was even a pleasantly faint tickling about my ankles, as the uprooted sand swirled around me in the surging waters.

The waves continued their battering of the partially wrecked boat, tipping it a little, then briefly righting it.

And taking advantage of that short shrill of movement, the boat slightly twisted around.

And then it backed away from where it had been grounded.

Realising I was about to be abandoned here if I didn't quickly get back aboard the boat, I began to anxiously run towards it.

But my feet felt now as if they were fruitlessly treading air, the sands supporting me shifting once more, giving me little purchase, while the thickened clouds playing about my ankles were slowing me down.

And then the boat, as the waves carried it, and the wind sucked once more at the remnants of its toppled sail, started to move away from me.

The ground moved sickeningly loosely beneath my feet.

The island was on the move once more.

*

# Chapter 44

Why do you sit there lady fair,

All in your robes of red,

I'll come tomorrow at this same time,

And have you in me bed.

The Two Magicians

I sank deeper into the sand that only moments before had been an island.

It swirled about me, a whirlpool of yellows and dark greens.

And these shifting sands, like the Stones, like the crumbling blocks of the lighthouse, had their own tale to tell.

For they hadn't always restlessly moved in this way, of course.

They had been disturbed. Given a life they had neither craved nor had originally been even aware of its possibility.

They moved as the sea, the wind, told them to move.

The mermaids gave the sea and the wind their instructions.

And so the islands would swim once more like great shoals of fish, hoping to block men from launching the ships that hunted down the great whales.

*

The men and the women of the port had been far more resourceful than the mermaids had anticipated.

They had buried their dead.

They had mended their houses.

They had made their shameful ships seaworthy once more.

The only thing that remained unrepaired was the lighthouse. No one thought it wise to build a lighthouse where one had vanished overnight.

Besides, it was a grave, now, in its way.

A grave for the keeper and his family who had perished that very same night.

They shouldn't be disturbed from their rest.

And the light of a lighthouse was no longer useful or necessary.

A light could give no warning of shallows that shifted as if alive, as if deliberately threatening any ship that dared to set sail from the port. A light could not control the waves, even the meandering sea beds, as the ethereal voice that now emanated from the ruined lighthouse could.

It was the voice of Merry, the lighthouse keeper's daughter.

Or at least, it was the lamenting of her ghost.

Everyone agreed on that now.

From the deck of a passing ship, peering through a telescope, you could see her seated at the top of what remained of the lighthouse. Wearing a red dress.

The red dress she had bought at great expense to finally entrap her love Captain Adams.

Who else could it be but Merry, ensuring the safe passage and return of the man she had hoped to marry?

*

Merry sang, of course, only when the Sprig o' Thyme put to sea. Or when it returned, fully laden with the treasures stripped from stinking corpses.

And where the Sprig o' Thyme went, the other whalers could follow; provided, of course, they remained close and were quick about it. Otherwise, they would end up grounded on a sandbank abruptly blocking their way. And no one dared turn back to attempt a rescue of the poor souls caught up in the waves that lashed at and brutally pummelled their tortured bodies.

As long as you kept the Sprig o' Thyme in close sight, however, you could be sure that Merry's otherworldly tunes would guide you through the shallows far more effectively than her father's light had ever done.

Captain Adams would sing too. Indeed, it could well be argued that it was his booming baritone that brought Merry back into the world of the living, for he appeared to be the one taking the lead, she the one who would accompany him, taking up his choice of song.

And once she appeared, arrayed in her dress of billowing red silk, Captain Adams would view her through his own telescope.

And he would think fondly, and sadly, of the beautiful girl – the girl he had intended to make his wife – that he had lost to the storm.

To the vengeful mermaids.

*

Could he rekindle his relationship with his Merry?

Captain Adams often wondered this, especially when he saw her there, seated on what was now the top floor of the ruined lighthouse.

She appeared so real.

So alive!

Somehow, his Merry had managed to breech the supposedly impassable wall standing between the world of the living and the realm of the dead.

If he could see her once more, if he could hear her – well, then why couldn't he hold her too?

This was no wraith, no cloudy spirit, the likes of which so regularly appeared in childish ghost stories!

This was his Merry, as plain and alive to his senses as she had been while alive.

If she could make her way across the deepest divide – well, then why couldn't he cross a few hundred yards of broiling water?

*

Naturally, Captain Adams was no fool.

He well understood the dangers of the sea, of underestimating its power and cruelty.

Despite his obvious strength and renowned steely determination, he was modest enough to recognise that on his own he was no match for the fury of the waters separating the mainland from the lighthouse's small island.

On being told of his purpose, a dozen of his bravest men volunteered to accompany him on his short yet perilous odyssey to the rocky outcrop. They would take two boats, with each one then being on hand if the other ran into unexpected difficulties.

Six rowers to a boat, with the captain standing in the centre of one of them, maintaining his balance by tightly grasping ropes that had been tied to the gunwales for support, they set off across the raging divide. And as the boats tossed and rolled on the surging waves, he burst into his siren call of a tune, one he had begun to regularly sing since his first sighting of his Merry returned to him.

There was delay to her accompaniment.

Perhaps, on her first hearing of his voice, she had eagerly gazed wide over the sea, seeking a sighting of the Sprig o' Thyme, perhaps wondering how she could possibly have missed its leaving of the harbour.

Perhaps she hadn't been fooled at all, and she resolutely remained on her own side of the greater divide.

Then he caught the first strains of her surprisingly unsure voice, with its oddly trembling touches, the uncertainty of someone worriedly searching the horizon as she sang.

She was there; waiting for him. Only a few hundred yards ahead of him now.

Singing their song of magic and spells.

*

As soon as his boat pulled alongside the first rock of the island, the captain threw aside his supporting ropes and leapt ashore like a man possessed.

Without waiting for his men to safely secure the boats, he made as quickly as he could towards the crumbled ruin, leaping from rock to rock as if with a newly found grace.

He reached the lighthouse's shattered door before the men had had time to row and push and pull their boats into a relatively calm breach in the labyrinth of rocks.

He charged up what remained of the spiralling stairway two, even three, steps at a time. Passing rooms where a table was set for food that would never be served, where books remained opened but unread, where shoes lay in pairs, unworn. Rooms of long lost spirits.

He came out onto a floor that now formed the very top of the lighthouse, one almost completely open to the elements and therefore shrouded in a wraithlike mist, a cloudy mix of rain and spume thrown up high by the ravaging waves.

She was seated amongst this ghostly haze in a chair as sadly broken as the lighthouse, her back to him as she still forlornly searched the sea for a sighting of the Sprig o' Thyme. Her hair was more glorious, more fluidly flowing, than ever, even spiritually alive in the wind, even if it was now tainted with colours of the sea.

So close, her music was overpowering, a luxurious embrace that went on forever and ever, that made the bodily elements tremble, the soul soar.

'Merry!' the captain gasped, breathless yet also elated.

Midsentence, the song came to an abrupt halt, its vanishing as painful as the sudden removal of our every sense and memory of wellbeing and comfort.

She sharply turned, her expression one of shock and horror.

Even so, her beauty was so remarkable it couldn't be spoiled in this way.

Yet it was not the beauty of his Merry that he remembered.

This was a girl shining with a beauty that no mortal woman could possibly hope to attain.

It was his Merry, but one made more beautiful than ever on her exiting of this sad world.

*

I went unto my own love's chamber door,

Where I had never been before.

I saw a light springing from her clothes,

Springing from her clothes,

Just like the morning sun when first arose,

Just like the morning sun when first arose.

The Flandyke Shore

Merry tried to leap up from her seat, perhaps to greet her Capitan Adams, perhaps to try and flee – as, surely, the living and the dead should never meet.

Yet she stumbled, almost slipping and falling from her chair. It was a failure to smoothly rise that the captain instantly recognised, having witnessed it many times before; it was the frustrating stumbling of a man crippled in an accident, briefly forgetting that he could no longer use his legs as sprightly as he once could.

Is this why his Merry had stayed here, in the otherwise abandoned lighthouse? Had she survived the ravages of the storm after all, only to be so badly injured that she had had to remain on the island?

Despite obviously suffering agony and frustration in her attempts to stand up, Merry tried once more to rise up from her chair, this time frenziedly throwing herself forward towards the remains of a nearby wall, scrabbling for purchase with her hands on its top as if she would leap over it.

Captain Adams dashed forward, his arms already outstretched to catch her should she fall back. But, wide eyed with terror at his approach, she tried all the more to haul herself over the wall, her intent to throw herself to her death on the rocks below now proven beyond doubt.

Hindered by her billowing red dress, which snapped in the wind as fiercely as any sail, she struggled in her attempt to flee the captain. Recognising that her experiences had left her crazed, Captain Adams brought his arms tightly about her in the hope that he could offer her reassurance that he wasn't here to harm her.

With a resigned, thankful sigh, Merry relaxed in his arms, letting her head gratefully fall against his chest, happily letting herself be his.

Despite everything that had happened to her, Captain Adams joyfully realised, he could still rescue his Merry after all.

The stern wind that continued to whip and lash her hair crazily about her face still caused, too, the great red silk sheets of her dress to flap almost uncontrollably, as if it had a life of its own.

In a well-practiced move, one garnered through years of hoisting up and carry great slabs of whale meat, of furling vast, lively sails in fierce storms, the captain dropped and spun around an arm, bringing it up behind Merry's legs, collecting up as he did so the swelling red sheets, forcibly cracking the hoops that gave it shape.

As he picked her up off the floor, Merry hungrily threw her own arms about his neck.

And merging together at last like this, they moved as one towards the stairs leading down and away from this whirling mist of spray, this sad gathering of long lost spirits.

*

The shrill wind continued to shriek, and the pounding waves still boomed and crashed.

But cutting through it all now, cutting through even flesh, even bone, there was another, far less definable sound.

And yet as it gained in intensity, it seemed to make the blood broil, as the moon so effortlessly forces the great oceans to rise and fall.

It bludgeoned the mind, shaking every thought, every long-held belief.

It wrapped around the soul, and wrenched it hard, painfully.

It turned over and tossed anew the elemental substructures, it called to our rudimentary beginnings.

All this from nothing but a song.

But it was the song of the mermaids; and such a song can tear at a man's mind and make him bestial once more.

*

Fortunately, the song's intention determined other effects.

It wasn't the primary forces of man that was to be affected, controlled, changed, but the fundamental elements themselves; the wind of the air, the surging of the waters.

As Captain Adams rushed down the path leading from the derelict lighthouse, the waves besieged the surrounding rocks more ferociously than ever, throwing up a thick swirling of spume as impenetrable to the eyes as any fog. The screeching gusts tore at Merry's tightly furled dress, as if wishing to strip it fully from her, yet had to make do with using her own long-flowing locks to endlessly lash her face.

Suddenly, just ahead of them, there was an abrupt thinning of the mist; and from the wall of spray on the other side of the clearing, the captain's men began to appear, coming up from where they had at last managed to secure their boats, themselves wraithlike in their piecemeal and silent approach.

Captain Adams felt his Merry start in his tightly enveloping arms.

'No, no!' she wailed fearfully. 'They must not see me!'

'Why not?' he chuckled bemusedly, presuming that she was once again hoping to keep her injuries a secret. 'We're here to rescue you; and we've all seen men cripp–'

The wind no longer blew the long, flowing hair so wildly about his Merry's face.

And, he realised, it wasn't his Merry after all.

*

If his Merry had been beautiful, then how could you describe this girl?

Just as her singing was far more ethereal, far more angelic – far more emotionally wrenching – than his Merry had ever been able to attain, her beauty was on a wholly unattainable level for any living woman.

Her eyes had the surrounding colours, the interior darkness, of gorgeous lakes.

Her hair flowed about her as if it were flowing streams of water glistening in the sunlight.

And instantly, he now knew who – or rather what – she was.

Horrorstruck, he immediately thought of disgustedly casting her aside, of killing her right now with a shot from his gun or a brutal hack of his sword.

But no man was capable of wilfully bringing to an end such womanly beauty.

Such entrancing beauty.

Yes; entrancing.

Had she bewitched him, this sea bitch, had she put a spell...?

Her song had been so full of love.

Hadn't he commented on that himself? Hadn't he been surprised that his men couldn't hear it too, couldn't feel it?

They hadn't sensed it, of course, for her love had been directed only at him.

In those eyes like lakes, he saw that love now: it glittered brighter than any star, it asked of him to come now and share that love, to let himself go, to sink fully into and be entirely embraced by it.

How could a woman so impossibly beautiful possibly be in love with him?

No matter the inherent danger of such a love, it was one no reasonable man could hope to resist, or to willingly shun; not, assuredly, if that man believed he could make this beautiful woman his.

He lowered his head as she raised hers. Their lips drawing closer, meeting.

Touching.

Tasting.

Melding.

Cledlialle; her name was Cledlialle.

They were no longer two; they were bonded now as one.

*

In June the red roses in bloom,

It was not the flower for me.

For I plucked the bud and it pricked me to blood,

As I gazed on a willow tree.

The Sprig of Thyme

As the Sprig o' Thyme eagerly bounded across the tumbling waves, a voice as luxurious as warm water flowed from deep within her.

Captain Adams was a happy man, having hauled alongside his ship catches that, stripped of everything valuable, would ensure the wealth and prosperity of his mother port.

Cledlialle smoothly swam alongside, joyfully joining in with his singing, at once both saddened and reassured that she would remain unheard, for no peril presently threatened the Sprig o' Thyme.

She kept a good few lengths ahead of the glutinous slicks of blood that could so easily chokingly envelope her, that so relentlessly poured from the Sprig o' Thyme as if the ship itself were sorely wounded. The ship appeared aflame too, perhaps even something given form in Hell, for smoke rose in great dark plumes from fires raging upon her deck, the stench dreadful as hunks of whale flesh were boiled until they released their treasured oils.

No one could remain unaware of this beautiful ship's evil purpose; to hound, harry, and hack at the queens of the deep. And all so that man and his ladies could make sport layered in heady perfumes, sparklingly lacquered top hats, and heavily boned corsets and dresses.

Like every one of her sisters, Cledlialle was appalled that any creature – let alone ones of such obvious intelligence, capable, even, of remarkable kindness – could be treated so callously.

Yet if it is right to recognise the profound awareness of such creatures, Cledlialle reasoned, then shouldn't we also give credit to those amongst man who could produce something of great beauty, even as they inflicted their carnage on others?

And didn't Captain Adams' heartfelt, almost spellbinding singing make him as worthy of admiration as the whales?

How could it be possible that a man who created such beauty from the depths of his being could be wholly beyond redemption?

Surely he himself must realise that, deep within him – from where that glorious voice, that wonderful understanding of emotions, emanates – there is a part of him that rebels against his own actions, his destruction of these wondrous creatures for nothing more than fancy baubles?

*

As the Sprig o' Thyme neared her harbour, Captain Adams broke into another familiar tune: The Cruel Mother. And he sang this tune as they neared their port for no other reason than that he saw his home as just such a mother – one who sent out her children to cruelly fish the seas, to painfully die out there too if needs be, their lives of no real importance unless they brought her joy.

And, naturally, it could not be a tainted, sordid joy.

Knowing this, the captain had already ordered the dousing of the fires that created such an eye-watering reek. Not that his ship could ever rid herself of such a penetrating stink, just as her sails would never again be their originally fresh cloud-white.

The crew had already jettisoned, too, the many unwanted parts of the carcasses, feeding them to the swiftly eddying tides of hungry fish, the swirling mists of ravenous seagulls.

It was enough to fool the port's inhabitants – who, of course wanted to be fooled – into thinking this was an honourable trade.

It could never fool Cledlialle's sisters, however.

Already, those men and women who would perish today (including a lighthouse keeper and his wife and daughter) had begun to pick up the very first strains of the song that would ultimately be responsible for their deaths.

*

Cledlialle recognised the song of her sisters.

She instantly recognised, too, its intent.

It was a song that swam through the waters, that breezed swiftly and surely through the air.

It was luscious yet cloying, calming yet threatening, reassuring yet terrifying.

It stirred whichever emotions it chose, its probing tendrils tweaking or bludgeoning, depending on which was easiest.

But the pretensions and stupidities of man were not its real target.

It said to the air; do as we wish.

It said to the waters; you are ours to command.

And they replied; what is that you wish us to do?

*

The wind swirled across the surface of the water.

The waters churned, as if in their primal state once more.

They worked together, these elements, spurring each other on, adding more and more to the forces, the energies, unleashed.

And now the earth itself weakened under their combined battering.

Beneath the waters, the beds cracked, loosening their grip on the garden that had long ago taken hold there. Then came the fracturing, wholly releasing the very first of the underwater plants, whose roots had so tightly bound everything else together. And as these plants were torn away and lifted up by the furiously twisting undercurrents, others soon followed, then more and more.

Next there came the sand and the earth itself, rising up in the unrelenting grip of the surging flows of water, being carried off as massed, shimmering dark shapes that replicated in colossal size the great denizens of the deep themselves.

In this way, whole undersea landmasses began to unpredictably drift or even hurtle from one place to another. Deep trenches became shallows. Shallows were scooped out, deposited elsewhere, enough sand accumulating at times to form new – if only temporary – islands.

Cledlialle recognised that this was the work of her sisters. That its purpose was to stem the regular passage of the whaling fleet from port to high seas and back.

That, too, it could only result in the foundering of the Sprig o' Thyme, embroiled as she was in this deliberate manipulation of elements, this wilful shifting of all that had previously been stable.

And so she sang her own song.

Fortunately, her sisters had not fully determined the settling of obstacles that could bar the ship's way. Rather, they had left it to fate, for the chances were indeed great that the Sprig o' Thyme would soon strike a freshly created sandbank lying unseen just beneath the waves.

Hers was a melody that mingled with the captain's own song, such that it seemed to be nothing but an accompaniment, if one full of love and care and kindness. Yet just as with her sisters' singing, it twisted the forming and flowing of the elements, redirected them to other purposes of her own direction.

And in this way, the Sprig o' Thyme had been granted a charmed life.

*

Naturally, Cledlialle's sisters were furious that she was helping the Sprig o' Thyme come safely home.

They took out their wrath on the lighthouse and the keeper's family, whom they might otherwise have spared.

The waves rose up on the mermaids' irresistible commands, lashing at the lighthouse's stubborn structure with all the force they could muster.

The wind gusted fiercely about its very top, shattering the glass panes, the reflecting mirrors, and snuffing out the lights.

The binding holding the lighthouse's many stones cracked, fell apart, releasing the blocks so that they tumbled and shattered themselves upon the rocky floor.

Somewhere amongst all this chaos, three lives were caught up, and dashed away.

*

Despite the regular rebukes of her sisters, Cledlialle continued to help the Sprig o' Thyme safely navigate the ever-shifting shallows.

Just as the captain's richly soothing tones had stirred her soul, so they now, bonded with her own voice, controlled the elements themselves.

Within Cledlialle, there gradually grew a need to be seen and recognised for her help. Of course, as long as the captain and his men were traversing the treacherous shallows, they were still essentially in peril, despite her aid; and therefore they would be capable of seeing her, if she chose to swim so close that she would be revealing herself.

But what would they think when she was revealed to be a mermaid, the very ones who had caused such a huge loss of lives amongst their families?

They would hate her.

They would no longer trust her.

How could Captain Adams love her as she loved him, when he saw that she was a hated mermaid?

She had seen the captain stare with his telescope towards the ruined lighthouse, as if he somehow believed that – just as the light had so often guided them to safety – this ethereally guiding voice must also be somehow emanating from its fallen stones.

If she could only position herself on what had now become the lighthouse's top floor, hiding her tail behind still encircling low wall of stones...

Why, then the captain could see how beautiful she was!

*

Cledlialle sensed the lingering of the spirits within the ruins of the lighthouse.

They were bound to this place, then.

They still fearfully clung to all the ties that held them here.

Such can be the case, unfortunately, when a passing is so traumatic.

A table had been prepared for a serving of food, even though earthly sustenance was no longer required.

Books had been left opened, there to be read by spirits reluctant to leave what had for so long been their home.

Shoes lay neatly in pairs, waiting to be worn again, as if feet still needed to tread the ground.

Cledlialle glanced quickly about her, searching out certain items she would need: more personalised objects, those things partially granted shreds of their owners' lives.

A pipe, with its tin of harshly round shag, its box of long matches.

It had given the keeper enjoyment, a brief but happily appreciated period of comfort and content in a life that was otherwise harsh and hard.

With a strength that was not at all obvious in her slender limbs, Cledlialle broke the pipe, tin and matches in her hands, crumbling them to a pungent dust. She presented this dust to the tip of a high wave she beckoned to reach out towards her through a hole in the wall. She asked the waters to relieve her and the stones of this lighthouse of this burdening bond of memories.

'Go,' she said quietly, tenderly, to the still lingering lighthouse keeper; 'There is a new beginning awaiting you.'

Next Cledlialle sought out the knitting basket with its needles and balls of wool that she knew would have been placed alongside the base of one of the reasonably comfortable armchairs. Even as she picked up the basket, Cledlialle felt the resigned sigh of joy Maud had experienced every time she had picked it up – for this had been her only true outlet for her talents of creation, the way she would bring together multiple strands to clothe her family and keep them warm and safe in a cold, hostile world.

Cledlialle unravelled the balls of wool, let free every thread that had been twisted and spun. She unwove the woven basket. She clicked the needles, clicked them again and again faster than they had ever been used, until the web of their own structures collapsed and disentwined.

This time, she let the wind discharge her of any duty to retain these memories, letting it carry away the strands of an existence.

'Go,' she said quietly, tenderly, to the still lingering Maud; 'There is a new beginning awaiting you.'

Cledlialle looked about the room once more, though naturally, not just with her eyes.

She smiled.

There was so much of Merry here, of course, for which parents do not indulge a daughter or son they love so dearly?

Hah!

And then she saw it – or, rather, felt it calling to her.

Merry's book of songs. Songs that had set her free, allowed her to rise up and away even from her imprisoning self.

For what can be more stimulating than a beautiful voice, especially when it is from your own core that it emanates?

Cledlialle sang these songs, intensely, quickly, yet also peacefully slowly, as mermaids are able to do.

These memories she allowed to flow away on their own waves.

'Go,' she said quietly, tenderly, to the still lingering Merry; 'There is a new beginning awaiting you.'

As Cledlialle had diligently searched the lighthouse for the bonding memories she had needed to free, she had found something else of use to her, something safely stored away in a heavy trunk on the top floor of what remained of the shattered lighthouse.

Struggling up the stairs as painfully as she had clambered across the rocks – she could control the waves, but not such that they could support her weight so relatively far from the rest of the sea – Cledlialle sought out the trunk and opened it. She marvelled at its carefully paper-wrapped contents, the corset of whalebones merry had been persuaded to buy despite having no need for it, the boned hoops of the dress that would have given her such a ridiculously false and odd shape.

Merry had never worn this dress, of course. She had only ever hoped to wear it.

It contained no memories of Merry. It held only the sharp memories of those women who had sweated and strained for long hours in its creation.

Cledlialle slipped into the dress, tied it about her, with the help of the fingers of the waves, the patting and caressing hands of the wind. A toppled chair was righted for her, and she sat as comfortably as she could upon it.

Then she waited.

Waited until she at last caught sight of the Sprig o' Thyme, rushing for home.

And only then did she break out into her glorious song.

A song whose own strands reached out to weave amongst the soaring threads of the captain's own luxurious singing, entwining and seamlessly embedding themselves there.

And in this way, Cledlialle and her love merged.

*

'Tis I, 'tis I, thine own true love,

That sits all on your grave,

I ask one kiss from your sweet lips,

And that is all that I crave.

The Unquiet Grave

The captain's men cheered enthusiastically when they saw that he had rescued his Merry.

That he was embracing and kissing her in a way that promised a later entwining of bodies.

And yet when he withdrew his lips from hers, and looked their way, his eyes were wide and glistening with horror; and more bizarrely still, it appeared to them that they were the ones responsible for his terrified gaze.

He made as if to turn, to run away from them.

But then he stopped as Merry spoke to him with words they were unable to hear above the storm.

*

'The storm!' Cledlialle exclaimed worriedly, having to shout close into the captain's ear. 'It's dangerous even for me now!'

He had thought to dash towards the rocks, to throw her towards and into the safety of the waves. But now as he listened to his love's pleas, he also picked up the unnatural rhythms of a furiously delivered song.

A song he could never hope to know the words for and yet instantly recognised.

This was the song that had caused the shallows to shift and take on a life of their own.

A song that commanded elements, first breaking then bending them to the will of the mermaids. A song that was being sung with even more fury and concentrated intensity than on that day when his ship would have been wrecked if not for Cledlialle's help.

'My sisters are angrier than ever with me; I can't command the waves when they're working so closely together!'

The sea was slamming the surrounding rocks. If Cledlialle had no control over it, she would be dashed and soon ripped apart against the sharply edged stones.

'A boat, then,' the captain said, grimacing resolutely, lowering his head in bull-like fashion as he charged forward towards his oncoming men. 'I need a boat to row you out to where it's safer!'

Before Cledlialle could tell him it was all still too dangerous, Captain Adams was rushing through the gaps lying between his oncoming men, utilising the brief burst of litheness and strength granted him by his desperation.

His men, though surprised yet again by their captain's actions, chuckled at his haste to return to land with his Merry. Spinning on their heels, they followed him as he ran full tilt back towards the secured boats.

Unable to use the small pier built to keep the lighthouse supplied, the men had brought the boats into a relatively more sheltered area lying between two small outcrops of rock, securing them as best they could with loops of rope strung over iron bars hammered between crevices.

On reaching the boats, the captain carefully lowered Cledlialle into the nearest one as his men prepared them both for leaving. But as soon as his hands were free, the captain spun around to face the others, in the same move expertly drawing his pistol from its special oil soaked pouch, and aiming it at the man closest to him.

'Now, lads,' he said as kindly as he were able while suffusing it with all the well-practised authority he could muster, 'step and keep back awhile until we're safely away from you; I'll explain later, as best I can, and I'll be back with the boat in a few minutes, if you'll just bear with me.'

As the men stepped back, wondering if the captain's experience of rescuing his Merry had left him a little crazed, Adams warily clambered into the boat, handing the gun to Cledlialle as he did so, carefully ensuring it remained trained on the nearest man.

She briefly met his eyes, revealing the confusion there; she had no idea how to work a gun, obviously. He met her bewilderment with an assured stare – his men weren't to know she wouldn't be able to fire the gun if they were foolish enough to make a sudden approach.

'Captain; what's all this about?' a man demanded anxiously.

'Is that Merry? Another asked uncertainly.

'It doesn't look like I remember her,' agreed another, nervously reaching for his own pistol, wondering if there was only one way now that he could make his captain see sense.

The captain wasn't listening; he was strenuously rowing out of the relatively sheltered area of the encircling rock, heading out into the raging waves.

There was sharp crack, one that would normally be loud and harsh, yet was dulled in the shrieking of the storm and the melodies of the mermaids.

Cledlialle almost spun in her seat and the bullet tore into her shoulder, the spurt of scarlet blood far redder than the dress she wore.

The captain anxiously cast aside his oar handles, reaching across to tend to her bleeding wound.

'No, no; don't worry,' she assured him, Indicating with a wave of a hand that he must return to his rowing. 'I'll recover soon enough!'

And yet, she realised fearfully, it probably wouldn't be soon enough to ensure they travelled safely through this storm.

*

A boat in such a sea with only one man rowing; its fate was already decided.

Even Captain Adams, even though he hoped otherwise, could see that.

Their boat was tossed as effortlessly as a leaf in strong gusts of winds. They were making hardly any progress, the rocks still dangerously close.

Under normal circumstances, Cledlialle might have been able to ease their troubles. But when mermaids sing, especially as a choir, it is far from being normal circumstances; and besides, she was still weakened by the shock and force of the bullet that had struck her.

An oar was abruptly, violently stripped from the captain's grasp, pulled away, lost on the waves.

'Turn back!' Cledlialle fearfully yelled. 'You're going to die if you don't!'

'Not yet,' the captain replied, reaching out for one of the other oars lying along the tops of the rows of seats. 'Just a few more yards, and it will be safe enough for you to slip over board!'

Even as the captain took hold of the new oar, the other was swept from his hand by a passing wave. The boat rolled, rocked.

The captain reached with one hand towards his other hand, briefly fumbling there as he slipped from his smallest finger a sparkling ring of gold; one he had once intended to be worn only by one girl, once his Merry had said 'Yes!'.

'If we are to survive,' he said, 'I would marry you!'

Letting go of the oar and grasping now instead her hand, he slipped the bond of gold onto her finger.

There were a hundred wails of fury; and the waves battered the boat, shattering it as effortlessly as if it had been constructed of nothing but rotting reeds.

As the boat disintegrated about them, its passengers plunged into the rolling waters, their already heavily drenched clothes dragging them under, constricting any attempts to make for the surface.

There was something far stronger pulling them under, though, something that even Cledlialle couldn't resist even if she had shed her thickly layered red dress.

She would keep it on, she decided

It would be her marriage dress, a marriage dress as red as the blood that suffused them now in its own sparkling veil.

And she embraced her new husband, bonded to him now by his ring.

And, kissing him, she whispered that she would love him forever, even as he died in her arms.

*

# Chapter 45

Babes, oh, babes, it's Heaven for you,

All alone and aloney.

Mother, oh, mother, it's Hell for you,

Down by the greenwood sidey.

The Cruel Mother

The wreckage of the small boat whirled everywhere about me, mingling into the whirlpool of yellows and dark greens of the shifting seabed.

I was sinking deeper and deeper, it seemed, with no hope of being able to strike out for the surface.

It wasn't just that my clothes were heavy and constricting, but that the currents had a hold on me, and didn't wish to let me go.

Amongst the dark, swirling shards of the shattered boat, there was also a flash of gold, circular it seemed, like a large wedding ring.

It was the goblet.

My goblet of memories, which spilled from it like black, oil-rich smoke plumes.

*

I had been here before.

Underwater, I mean.

Drowning like this.

Unable to reach out for the surface.

Too weak.

Too weighed down.

And then...I had abruptly gained in strength.

Gained a will to live. Not to die.

A dark shape, undefined, something I failed to recognise, slipped from me.

The weight, dropping away.

And in return, a bond of golden memories, of promises not to forget, spun about my finger.

The surface; I had to reach the surface, before I drew in the dark waters that would choke me, kill me.

*

But these were only my ill-defined memories.

The reality was that the cloying darkness still clung to me, the flowing currents still tugged hard at my feet, my increasingly heavy and cumbersome clothing.

I couldn't hold my breath for much longer, the grip about my chest of my own restraining muscles becoming increasingly painful, intolerable, the spent and tainted air caught in my lungs wailing for release.

Then there was a flash of gold; another flash of gold, not the same as before, it seemed to me.

Flashes too of rubies, emeralds, sapphires and amethysts, a pirate treasure swept up in the nomadic swirling of the seabed.

The painfully hard grasping about my chest moved down towards my waist.

And then, suddenly, thankfully, I was soaring up towards the surface.

*

# Chapter 46

Down on the ground she fell like one a-dying,

All tearing of her hair, weeping and sighing.

There's no believing one, not your own brother,

So girls if you must love, love one another.

Fountains Flowing

Breaking the sea's surface, I tried to desperately gulp down as much air as I could, throwing open my mouth, breathing in deeply through my nose; only for a rolling wave to immediately fully envelope me, such that I drunk in as much water as air.

As I struggled for more air, I was struck every now and again by a surging wave, my gasping becoming more panicked until I magically rose up higher above the waves, allowing me to at last breath in deeply and luxuriously.

Amongst the rapidly dissolving images of my watery, tear filled eyes, I saw that the glittering pirate treasure of gems and gold still swam about me, as if it were this that I was somehow floating upon.

The pain in my racking chest was thankfully no longer quite so bad, now that I could thankfully ease the overly-tightened muscles, but the hard grip about my waist persisted. Attempting to ease it a little with the caress of a hand, I found myself grasping the long fingers of another hand, realising with a start that someone was supporting me by the waist, holding me high above the rolling waves.

The hands were elegant, feminine, and fully fleshed, rather than the dark shadowy hands of my brother that I had been expecting to see when I glanced down towards them. The arms, too, were slender, and seemingly incapable of the strength it must surely take to lift me safely out of the reach of the waves.

As my eyes cleared, and the racking of my body lessened, the watery flowing of brightly coloured precious stones floating so fluidly about me began to merge, to take on form.

A girl.

A mermaid.

Cledlialle.

*

I could hardly fail to recognise her.

This was the mermaid, I saw now, who had earlier swam alongside the Sprig o' Thyme.

Hadn't she told me then – although I had found it hard to believe – that our captain had a glorious voice? Hadn't she said also that she had been betrothed to him?

It had all seemed so ridiculous then, of course.

And yet now I had seen for myself that she had told the truth on both counts.

She had been the one in the tale related to me by the whiling sands of the sea bed.

I should have recognised her then, should have seen the similarities between the mermaid in the retelling and the one whom I had spoken to earlier.

But the tale had begun to change, hadn't it, before I had had time to realise this?

And that new tale had been a tale about me.

About how I had nearly died in a drowning I could no longer remember.

*

# Chapter 47

One night she knelt close by my side,

When I was fast asleep;

She threw her arms around my neck,

And then began to weep.

The Foggy Dew

'Thank you!' I spluttered gratefully to Cledlialle. 'Thank you for saving me!'

Having turned around in her arms, I clung on to her a little more tightly than perhaps I should have, still fearing that I might otherwise slip back beneath the waves.

Cledlialle chuckled, as if she were dismissing her role in saving me as something of no real importance.

'In this case, I don't think Captain Adams would be furious at me for denying him another soul to round up!'

'Is that why he hunts and hates you?' I asked. 'One of his men said something about mermaids deny souls their fate?'

With a wary sidelong glance, she briefly looked back towards the harbour and its port.

'That's not the true fate of souls,' she said morosely. 'Not the ones, anyway, who aren't so disquieted.'

I also briefly followed her gaze.

'They...they drink goblets of bitter memories,' I said, hoping she could offer further explanations.

'Only because the captain has invited them to drink from their own cups; they are fooled into thinking they are being offered an extended life, which they grasp at eagerly – only to endlessly suffer a regurgitating of the memories they'd hoped they'd buried long ago.'

'My brother's there,' I said, wondering even as I said it why I had referred to him but not my mother whom, of course, I knew far better. 'I didn't even know I had a brother until I met him there; so it must surely serve some good purpose, yes?'

She smiled pityingly.

'And so you don't think, then, that if you had drunk of fonder memories you would also have been reunited with him?'

I frowned, puzzled.

'I...I can't be sure I do believe that,' I admitted.

In reply to me, she merely shrugged her shoulders, shoulders so strong that they were still effortlessly keeping me from being tugged below once again by the surging waters.

'How much longer can you hold me like this?' I asked worriedly.

'As long as I wish, I suppose,' she replied cheerfully, adding, 'But fortunately for you, I don't have to; because here's a boat, which I believe has come for you.'

There was indeed a boat, surprisingly close and apparently heading our way.

It had triangular sail, flapping with a crack and a slap in the breezes coming across the sea.

It was the boat that had brought me here in the first place.

And the dark, silent form of my brother was once again controlling its tiller.

*

There is still no word from my brother even as Cledlialle slips into the boat behind me, after helping me more ungainly clamber aboard.

The boat appears much like it did when I had first boarded it; patchy, rotten, and far from being the kind of boat anyone would willingly set out to sea in. Yet it is also far from being the boat whose mast I saw breaking at its base, the boat whose shards of wreckage had swirled about me amongst the dark memories pouring from the golden goblet.

Of course, the golden goblet has also been restored to its previously unemptied state, and imperviously sits once more upon the boat's middle seat.

'Why is he so damn quiet?' I hiss into Cledlialle's ear.

'How can he hope to have a voice?' Cledlialle loudly replied, 'when you still refuse to drink and accept all your bitterest memories?'

With a nod of her head, she indicated the goblet, its dark contents spewing over the seat, only to be instantly replaced by yet more impure ale.

'Until you do that, drinking it all in,' Cledlialle added, 'how can you expect to fully appreciate and fully understand your more cherished memories?'

As she spoke, she gently rubbed the golden ring upon her finger; the ring the captain had presented her, promising himself to her.

It was of a gold similar to that of the goblet, a yellow gold, as bright as the sun on glorious fields of wheat.

I glanced once more at my own goblet, its rim hidden as the overflowing ale spilled endlessly about it.

Cledlialle must have noticed my continuing reluctance to drink down the ale.

'Drink it, and all at once too,' she said admonishingly. 'Otherwise, there will always be something that will come back and continue to haunt you.'

I apprehensively looked once more towards the waiting goblet.

Towards the ale that spilled over its sides, a dark and perfectly circular waterfall.

There was something amongst those memories that I needed to know, I realised that.

Yet I also sensed that I must have buried it deep within me for a reason.

And therefore I wasn't sure at all that I wanted to reawaken it.

In the sparkling of the ale as it struck the bench and dispersed in shining droplets, I noticed another kind of glimmering memory, one I immediately recognised.

It was the glistening of a metal-speckled stone.

Of a ring.

A ring given to me by the Prince of the Stones.

*

'My ring!'

But how had it come to be here?

I had seen my mother throw my ring away, into the deepest waters of our harbour. And I had only recently returned hers.

I eagerly reached out for the stone ring, ignoring the ale that spilled coldly across my fingers as I touched then grasped it.

As I gripped it, another, icier hand was also taking it within its own fingers.

Yet it was not a fight for possession of the stone.

It was a recollection – and yet, not my own recollection, but someone else's.

Someone who had retrieved the ring from the bed of the harbour.

And then, suddenly, there was a restraining hand on mine.

'You sought to choose easier memories once again,' Cledlialle chided me.

I bitterly glanced down at her hand, at the ring of gold upon her own finger.

'And yet my ring is only of stone,' I pointed out sourly. 'Not gold like yours!'

'Memories can never be purely of gold,' she answered.

And as she said this, a dark band appeared from beneath her gold ring.

And, snake-like, it slithered about my own finger.

*

# Chapter 48

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,

Not so much honouring thee,

As giving it a hope that there,

It could not withered be;

But thou thereon didst only breathe,

And sent'st it back to me,

Since when it grows and smells, I swear,

Not of itself, but thee.

Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes

Their captain was crazed; there could be no doubt about it this time.

To point a gun at them like that!

To take one of only two boats they had to escape the island.

And all for a woman at that!

But then, had she really been a woman?

Only a mermaid could bewitch a captain to act so stupidly, so dangerously.

It hadn't been his Merry that he had brought back from the ruined lighthouse; every one of them could agree on that now.

Why, when he had placed her in the boat he had rowed off in, hadn't she had a strange way of moving – like a woman who couldn't walk, who had badly crippled legs.

A woman who didn't have legs, but a tail.

'We have to row out after them; to bring him back before she drags him down to her lair beneath the waves.'

There was an agreement amongst them that they needed to rescue the captain from his own foolishness. And yet, there was also a profound fear; the storm still raged, an unnatural storm conjured up by the singing of the mermaid's own sisters.

'Look, look!' One of the men pointed off out into the thick mist of wind-whirled spume. 'He's back! He's rowing back to us!'

As they peered out, following the man's directions, they each began to catch glimpses of the painted white planks of the boat. But, they glumly realised, it was far from being a complete boat; it was nothing but a section, where a seat joined the hull's interior.

And on that seat, even now, there remained a sparkle of blood.

Of the rest of the boat, of Captain Adams and the mermaid, there was no sight at all.

*

It was no human blood on that seat, the men realised as the sea brought the wrecked section closer and closer.

Human blood, surely, would have been cleanly washed off by now.

Besides, this wasn't the dark crimson of the blood they so often saw spilled on decks after accidents, nor was it the thicker, glutinous blood of the great whales they dismembered to gather up the treasures that put food on their tables.

It glittered as if formed of liquefied rubies.

Hadn't the bosun taken a shot at the mermaid? Hadn't he claimed to have wounded her in the shoulder?

Well, here was proof that his bullet had struck home.

So, she was sorely wounded then.

That gave them hope that they might rescue their captain after all.

'Aye, or at least, we'll bring back his body for a proper burial!'

'Let's swear on it then; that there'll be no resting for us until we get him back, alive or dead!'

There was a raucous agreement on this, some already taking out their knives, fully aware that such an important vow required sealing with blood.

'In blood, it has to be in blood.'

'And as it's mermaid we'll be hunting,' said another man, fishing for and pulling out of the water the broken segment of boat, 'let it be a mix of the sea bitch's blood too!'

He dipped the blade of his knife in the pool of glistening blood, grinning triumphantly as he raised it high, demonstrating to them all that its steel now glimmered with the sparkle of hundreds of minute rubies.

And as he ran the blade over his arm, to draw his own blood, the others eagerly stepped forward to wet their own knives.

'This shall be our vow,' they each intoned as they let the blood of each wound, of the mermaid, mingle: 'We shall find our captain, whether it be alive or dead!'

*

The captain's men had a rough idea of where his boat must have been wrecked, for they had watched him row away from the relatively sheltered area lying between two rock outcrops where they had moored their boats. The waves of the storm, powerfully washing towards the rocks, would have prevented him from getting too far, especially as he was rowing a boat ideally requiring six men.

No body had been found, washed up on the shore after the storm. So if he had died, his corpse remained somewhere beneath the waters, perhaps weighed down by his heavily drenched clothes.

And if he were still alive, then it could only be because he had been abducted by the mermaid, and taken down into her lair.

No matter which it was, there could only be one starting point for their search: they would have to dive deep beneath the waves, seeking out the currents that may have taken his carcass away, or looking out for clues to the whereabouts of the mermaid's dark den.

The diving equipment they brought with them was normally used for the salvaging of wrecks, encasing a man in a mix of brass, iron and oiled leathers. Air was supplied to the diver through rubber tubing leading back up to a boat on the surface, where others worked hard on the hand-powered compressor.

The first man to die was the one who hadn't realised until too late that the pipe had caught tightly in a cleft in the rocks, cutting off the flow of air.

The second simply fell overboard while helping the diver clamber back into the boat. The large buckle of the leaded-belt he had just removed from his friend's waist became tangled up in his clothes, dragging him down to the sea bed.

The third was caught up in a thick swirling of sand and grit as the shallows decided to move once more, causing him to lose his way, to stumble badly and tear the leather on his arm. The waters drowned him while he still wore his suit.

After such a run of bad luck, that appeared to show that fate was against them, the men could have been forgiven for giving up their search for their missing captain.

But they had made their vow, and in a sharing of their blood at that.

To give themselves the courage required to continue, they reaffirmed that vow.

'We shall find our captain, whether it be alive or dead!'

'...whether it be alive or dead!'

It could have been a harsh echo, this simultaneous repeating of their vow. And yet the word dead, surely, had been delivered with far more emphasis than they had given it?

The men swapped anxious glances.

What could it mean?

That they wouldn't find their captain until they were indeed all dead?

*

Early the next day, at the first stirrings of the morning's immature light, the men once again diligently and morosely set about preparing their boat and equipment for another dive. At the sea's edge, the waves hissed angrily as they coursed through the shingle, their surfaces crusted as if with blood in the fledgling sun's red rays.

Just a little farther out from the end of the beach, the waves parted oddly, a dark shape rising up from between them and unhurriedly heading towards the toiling men.

Another rising dark shape appeared alongside the first, then a third, a fourth.

They were the dark, brooding forms of men.

Coming out of the waters as if born to it.

Yet these men had no tails. They had legs.

Legs that powerfully strode out, bringing these dark forms of men closer and closer to the terrified men preparing the boat.

Then the first and tallest of the dark shapes halted in his approach.

'Why are you gawping like that, lads?' the captain asked his men with a raw chuckle.

*

'We found him wandering on the sea bed, thinking he was dead and unaware that we were out searching for him.'

Remembering their vow, sealed in blood, the men who had died in the diving accidents had continued to seek out signs of their captain.

'We shall find our captain, whether it be alive or dead!'

And apart from the strength of the darkness that had settled about him, their captain had been returned to them in every other way whole, it seemed to the men.

There was, of course, the missing ring.

He had worn a gold band on his little finger, one intended to forge a bond once his Merry was promised to him. Now only a dark band was wrapped about that finger, a memory of snatched happiness.

But a ring's a ring, and easily replaced if needs be.

'Listen!' the captain said suddenly, crocking an ear. 'Do you hear that?'

It was to his darkly formed men that he turned, his smile one of grim satisfaction. The three men nodded; yes, they could hear it too.

'A merry tune: and so sweetly too, bless her heart.'

The other men couldn't hear anything that sounded like singing. They looked to each other, briefly wondering if they were the only one who couldn't hear.

'It's a mermaid, lads!' the captain happily guffawed. 'Think yourselves lucky you can't hear a thing!'

'And as there's no one hereabouts who's in peril, she ain't to know that we can hear her,' one of the freshly arisen gleefully added.

'Who's for capturing ourselves a mermaid, then?' the captain laughed richly, reaching into the boat for a harpoon.

*

He had given his life for his Cledlialle, only to be abandoned by her.

If his men hadn't found him, he could have spent the whole of eternity wandering the sea bed, thinking only that this was what it was like to die; to be alone, completely alone, with nothing but the whirling of your thoughts and memories to endlessly torture you – letting you live all over again every one of your many failings, your innumerable mistakes.

He slung the coiled rope of his harpoon over one shoulder.

He told his more darkly formed men to fetch their own harpoons, the rest to follow on behind.

*

She sang so sweetly.

No one was in peril today, she thought.

She couldn't be heard; couldn't be seen.

But she was wrong.

Today, she was the one in peril.

The very darkest forms of men were patently encircling her, their hearts harder than stone. Men who were stronger than they had ever been before. Who could throw their harpoons twice the distance they had once managed, and far more accurately too.

The first harpoon hit her solidly in the chest, the force behind it such that it cleaved through every muscle and bone, its blade exiting her back in a fountain of rubied blood.

Even so, she rose groggily to her feet, bewildered every bit as much as she was hurt. Her singing instantly changed, now a call for vengeance, a demand for the rising up of the sea and wind to protect her from further attacks.

Yet the second and third harpoons were already swiftly sliding their way towards her. These also each struck her too, with a force that almost knocked her to the ground, slipping through her flesh as if splattering the tender meat of a slow-cooked roast.

The wind took the fourth harpoon, deflecting it harmlessly. And the sea grabbed at its thrower, so close to the edge of the rocks, taking with him two men who squealed in surprise and horror.

The mermaid's singing was now too pained, too screeching, to coordinate any further attacks on the oncoming men. With the ropes tied to the harpoons spiralling out and away from her like rescinding threads of life, she was both encumbered and fully under the control of the three dark forms tugging on the other ends of those coiling strands.

They brutally pulled her this way, then the other, weakening her with every agonising wrench of the ropes. Gradually, they were reeling her in, leaving her as helpless as any stupid cod caught in a fisherman's net.

The forth dark form had already sprung up from the sea that had taken him, as if he had merely taken a dip, a long needed bathe. Next came the two whom had been alive, but where now of the same dark substance, an air of brooding and ill-tempered strength entirely suffusing them.

These freshly arisen men smiled triumphantly; for now they could see the mermaid as she helplessly writhed on the harpoons.

Yet they still couldn't hear her.

Because now she was silent.

And soon, she was lying perfectly still.

*

It was soon agreed that the mermaid would make a fine figurehead for their ship.

Only those privileged with a new life would be capable of seeing her, for only those who have themselves died can see a dead mermaid.

To this end, they painstakingly set about mummifying their corpse, patiently draining her of her blood, treating her flesh with the clear lacquers created from the butchered whales.

It was as the blood sparked in the goblets they collected it in that the men recalled the mingling of blood as they had made their vow.

Was it this – the mermaid's blood of minute rubies – that had ensured their restoration to a new life?

But what of their captain?

He, too, had gained a new life, yet he hadn't participated in taking the vow.

When this was put to him, he briefly considered it, then said:

'As she held me beneath the sea until I drowned, I took in with all that water blood that was seeping from her wound. She didn't mean to, but the sea-bitch granted me a new life – one in which I can hunt her and her treacherous sisters down.'

There were nods and mumbles of agreement from the men that it had to be the blood of the mermaids that gave ever-lasting life.

A man who was still alive curiously peered at the blood in the goblet he held, marvelling at its iridescent beauty, the way it appeared to swirl and shift as if it were itself alive.

Hesitantly at first, then more confidently, he lifted the goblets lip to his own; and drank in a mouthful of glittering blood.

He proffered it to the man standing by him

And as he also drank from the goblet, he realised he would have to make sure his wife and children drank from it too.

*

It was a song of mourning but also anger.

It drifted across the waves, everyone in the town hearing it as clearly as those already out at sea.

Its intentions, then, were clear; everyone was imperilled.

Down to the smallest child, the most crippled man.

They had wished it upon themselves, killing a mermaid, many angrily breathed.

What kind of vengeance would her sisters wreak on us now?

The song gained in intensity, in its cruel joy, its enchanting threats. It rippled through the air, the waters, stirring them, calling on them to respond to the calling of the mermaids.

And they were calling for violent retribution.

*

For close to a month, the storm lashed at the beleaguered port, its ships, and its inhabitants.

Many people thought it must be the end of the world.

For most, it seemed it would indeed be the last time they saw the sun rise, as they were buried under the tons of sand dumped throughout the streets by the waves, or dashed against stone walls or floors by fiercely howling winds.

When the song of the mermaids at last drifted back across the waves, and the sea and wind, mollified, returned to their more regular courses, where there had been a town and a port there was now a large drift of sand and gravel thrown up against the cliff face.

Those who had sensibly fled the town while the storm raged returned to what could be best described as virgin land. The cliff face as it more or less must have looked before man had arrived, and settled here building his port, his homes.

They had come back expecting to see devastation; instead, they saw complete obliteration. Thoroughly disheartened, they could see no way to restoring their port to anything but the most grimly inhabitable shanty town.

The sheen of looser pebbles crusting the surface of the great earthen mound that only recently had been their home hissed, as if moved by the waves. Disturbed, it moved slightly, rolling down towards the edges of the sea.

The deeply packed sand was next to shift here and there, as if falling in upon itself. Then it parted oddly, a dark shape rising up from beneath its surface; a man's head, spluttering angrily as it spat out a mouthful of earth.

*

The men, the women, the children; all those who had drunk from the goblets of blood rose up from the packed ground as if granted new life by it.

They were dark, brooding – but they were alive.

They had waited patiently beneath the earth, thinking it foolish to rise before the mermaids had fully assuaged their anger.

Now they dug out with great energy those who had foolishly forgone the chance to sup the blood of eternal life. And as the casks of collected mermaid blood had been destroyed and lost in the month-long storm, they brought to the lips of their dead goblets of their own dark blood, sparkling as if littered with minute rubies, wondering if it would have the effect they desired.

The captain's own parents and sister lay amongst the dead, still partially covered with the soil that had encased them. He spat bitterly when he realised there would be no new rising for these who had died with no chance to drink of the pure blood.

'Mermaids,' he declared, grimly pursing his lips in his determination. 'We'll get a fresh fill of blood from the mermaids.'

Those who had survived were strangely bitter in their way, lamenting the loss of those who hadn't partaken of the drink of life. But they were more bitter still that their new life was not as they would have expected it to be; for their children were now grown, whereas ageing parents were now hardly much older than them.

For the town, of course, it was a boon to have so many productive people, and none who needed care and looking after. Yet for each person who had survived, there were deep residues of resentment; why could I have not risen younger than this, why could I not have been older? Why do I no longer have children to raise, why did I miss out on the easier life of the aged?

Their bitterness gave them motivation to take their revenge on the mermaids who had brought all these ills down upon them.

There would be no need for whaling anymore.

The blood of the mermaids was far more precious to them.

*

They found they had no thirst for drink, no hunger for food.

And yet they felt empty, requiring a fill of...what, exactly?

What sustenance do the newly arisen need?

It was a question that was answered for each and every one of them in their own time, when this new form of hunger, this new thirsting, drew them to distraction; and a golden goblet would appear before them, containing a dark ale of ever swirling dregs.

The goblet sparkled just as the ruby blood of the mermaids endlessly glistened.

The ale was as dark as their own blood, when it had spilled on their death and dried to a sticky paste.

But as they drank it down – sipping only, of course, avoiding the dregs as much as possible – why, then the memories of the town returned to each and every one of them, the burying sand no longer a problem when you either forgot or had never ever realised that it was there.

The ships, too, took on their previous grandeur once more, though in this case – as the ships weren't completely familiar to all, and as they would be seen by others out beyond the harbour – they would need some basis, a brace of mnemonics, to hang their memories upon; so the whaling folk set to crudely repairing each wreck in the harbour, toiling until they at least had a semblance of the ship it had once been.

And a memory has no fear of shallows that no one can remember ever been there before.

*

The ships fished now for other souls to join them in their hunting of the mermaids.

They flung out their great nets, letting them sink to the sea bed, dredging up the wrecks that had lain there undisturbed for years, even centuries. They sought out the ports plagued with disease, the ships about to be wrecked.

And no matter how long they had been dead, no matter how withered the flesh on their bones, they were restored to life on been forced to take a sip of the goblet of life.

And so now it was the sparkling blood of the mermaids that was spilt and flowed across the decks of the wailing ships.

From the scales of the mermaids, from their hair, they also made the most iridescent of jewellery, unique in that it could only be appreciated by the freshly arisen.

From their bones, ornaments could be carved that reflected even the town's dim light as if it were sun itself on your mantelpiece.

From their apparently delicate yet surprisingly hardy flesh, the most durable and waterproof bags and containers could be made.

And their tongues, that had once helped them sing so sweetly, made delicate purses that jangled joyously whenever a coin was slipped into its embrace.

And so whenever the Sprig o' Thyme returned home with such a haul of treasure, with every catch stripped of everything valuable, it could be expected that Captain Adams' luxurious voice would once again be heard drifting across the water.

But the dead don't sing, except in their most bitterest of memories.

*

# Chapter 49

One day she was sitting in her father's hall,

All alone and aloney,

She saw two babes come playing at ball,

Down by the greenwood sidey.

The Cruel Mother

The eerie wailing, a mingling of bereavement and barely controlled yet long-held fury, drifted towards me as if from across the sea.

It took hold of that sea, too, and began to stir it, to cajole it into a steadily increasing rage.

Naturally, the wind joined in, bringing with it its own chorus of wailing and whispering.

And yet, I saw, it was a tune that the dark form of my brother was singing, not the mermaids.

But the dead don't sing – do they?

And what of the goblets of dark memories?

How did I end up with such a cup, when I'd never drunk from a goblet of mermaid's blood?

How was it possible, too, for me to see the Sprig o' Thyme's mummified mermaid figurehead, if such a thing can only be seen by those who have died?

Cledlialle must have noticed my look of confusion but misinterpreted its cause.

'It's only once you accept the darker memories,' she said, drawing my attention back to the sparkling goblet now precariously rocking on the middle bench of our fiercely bucking boat, 'that you can fully appreciate the golden ones.'

Her hand was no longer on mine. The shadowy serpent that had briefly bonded us had withdrawn, slipping back behind her band of gold.

I took up the stone ring I had been reaching for, clasping it hungrily in my palm.

'Is it true that only those who have died can see a dead mermaid,' I asked her worriedly.

She nodded, smiled.

'Thankfully, yes; we wouldn't want anyone to see a dead mermaid, washed up on a beach.'

'But I can see the Sprig o' Thyme's figurehead! But you said I wasn't dead!'

'Did I?' She chuckled, briefly frowning a little in bemusement before it dawned on her that I was referring to the time she had swum alongside the ship. 'Ah, yes; of course! I said the dead can't sing like you can, didn't I?'

'But, but...am I dead? What you've just said, I realise now, doesn't really say I'm not, does it?'

'You've misinterpreted what you actually heard: it isn't just those who are dead, but those who have died who can see a dead mermaid.'

I briefly puzzled over this, hoping that at last I was beginning to make sense of her words.

'But I can't even remember dying!' I said, having to shout now to make sure I would be heard over the shrieking storm. 'And if I did die, then how am I now alive? I haven't drunk any mermaid's blood!'

'No, no; of course you haven't!' she said reassuringly, if all the more confusingly. 'But why are you expecting me to reveal the truth to you, when you insist on withholding it even from yourself?

She glanced once more towards the goblet, her intention clear; she was reminding me once again that the answers to all my questions lay in taking in every dreg of my worst memories.

The goblet tottered and tipped, yet never toppled completely. The blackened ale sloshed everywhere about the rolling boat, forever being replenished.

The waves washed over the boat, carrying the spilt memories away, battering at the goblet yet unable to remove it. The boat rose and fell on the soaring waves, leant terrifyingly then briefly righted, the sail cracking and snapping in a wind determined to strip it from its mast.

'I can't save you again,' Cledlialle warned me, ominously regarding a storm so violently bearing down on us that it seemed its sole aim was to sink us. 'Fate has already been denied twice.'

So, I have been close to death before then.

Maybe, yes, I even died.

But if so, how did I manage to survive?

The only way I'm going to find my answer lies in drinking deeply from the goblet.

But first; to ensure I didn't lose it once more, I took the stone ring from out of my tightly grasping palm and slipped it onto a finger.

*

# Chapter 50

Now the willow tree it will twist,

And the willow tree it will twine,

And I wish I were clasped in my lover's arms fast,

'Tis he that has stolen my thyme.

The Sprig of Thyme

These are the memories I hope I shall never forget.

Dancing amongst the Stones. Whirling excitedly from one to another, as I sang.

And as I sang, the Stones themselves came to life.

Dancing with me.

Dancing about me.

The Prince, holding me closely, lovingly.

As if he would never let me go. Even though, of course, he did.

As we dance, embracing each other so slowly, so lovingly, I realise I wish to – I must – kiss him. And as I raise my head up towards his, he begins to lower his head towards mine.

We're moving closer, readying ourselves, eager, to bring our lips together, mingling, enjoining.

No, no!

It didn't happen like that!

I held his head, remember?

I brought his head down towards mine!

Don't kiss!

Please don't kiss!

When we had kissed before, my singing was stilled, the dance came to an end.

The Prince and his Court had become Stones once more!

And I was left all alone and aloney.

But as I sing and dance amongst the Stones, I'm not listening to – I can't possibly be aware of – my memories.

And so I draw his lips to mine and kiss him.

And the singing continues, merrily taken up by the Prince's courtiers. They twirl everywhere about us, as if caught up in a whirlwind of ever-increasing joy.

I wear the Prince's ring.

And our marriage must be celebrated to its fullest.

*

No, no; he never kissed me like this!

It was just the once that we kissed, I swear!

And it ended on the bringing together of our lips.

But here I fill his arms, and he fills mine.

It does not end.

We do not part.

We stay entwined within each other's embrace, our kiss lingering and pure.

He the oak, hard and straight.

I the willow, bending, embracing, welcoming.

He the rose, whose bud I pluck, the thorn pricking me to blood.

I the lily and the pink.

The willow bends; then breaks.

*

# Chapter 51

Oh, thyme it is a precious thing,

And thyme it will grow on,

And thyme it'll bring all things to an end,

And so does me thyme grow on.

The Sprig of Thyme

These weren't my memories!

Foolish wishes, maybe; but no, not a truthful past.

The boat now is twirling uncontrollably on the peak of an ascending wave; then, as the wave falls away, we sickeningly plummet too, down into the depths of a dark valley, where the sea threatens to swamp us.

Cledlialle has gone; as she has already warned me, she cannot pluck me once more from the fingers of fate. She had realised, no doubt, that as long as she remained with me, I would forever put off learning the truth she says will save me.

I'm gasping for air, not out of fear, but fury and frustration.

Why won't my ring show me the truth?

Isn't it my ring after all?

I fiercely glare at my brother; not that he notices, I think, for his hand remains firmly if uselessly upon the tiller, as silent and irremovable as the goblet swaying back and forth upon its bench.

I had expected joyous memories, but had been gifted instead only with sordid ones.

But wait.

Hadn't I already mistaken recollections of my mother's for mine?

I'm partly my mother, we share memories – I understand that, yes!

Hadn't I already seen her dally unseemingly with a man? A liaison I had briefly and confusedly thought must be some errant memory, for I had completely failed to recognise the man involved.

Yes, I had failed to recognise him; because I hadn't wanted to, completely burying the things I didn't wish to see.

Now I knew who it was – and who too, then, my father must be.

My mother has loved her Prince in ways I never experienced.

The Prince of the Stones is my father.

*

The kiss we had shared.

That is why the dance had come to an end for us.

He hadn't sought to make me his lover the way he had my mother.

I was the one who had misinterpreted his kindness, his care, for the kind of love I longed for.

But...the ring?

Taking it between finger and thumb, I twist it nervously about my finger.

It is a bond, then, and one of love: only love of another kind.

For just as I am partly my mother, I am also part him.

As is, of course, my brother.

And yet, he remains silent, and brooding.

He sees no danger in this storm, it seems to me. He had welcomed it, after all, conjuring it up with his singing.

He means for me to suffer; maybe even to die.

Huuugghh!

I pull my hand back sharply as I feel icy fingers, reaching for my ring.

It's the dark hand, the hand I had seen earlier on first picking up my ring.

The fingers grip the ring's edges, tug at it, as if trying to free it and wrest it completely from my hand.

The ring's not on my hand, however, but lies in a murky darkness, embedded in the cloying mud of a harbour's seabed.

This is where my mother had cast my ring; the deepest part of the harbour, where the sun fails to reach at any time.

Here there are just different shades of darkness.

Swirling earthy browns. Disturbed olive greens. The impenetrable black of discarded whale oil.

The dark fog of my brother.

It is his fingers that grasp the stone ring.

His hand that cups it firmly.

After all, he had sensed a connection, heard the ring singing out to him .

It was my brother who had retrieved the ring for me.

Because this was also where he had drowned.

*

These were the darker memories, then.

The ones I had chosen to forget.

They lay hidden beneath the more pleasant recollections.

Beneath the glittering band of my stone ring.

They slithered there, I saw now, waiting to crawl out.

A coiling dark band, serpent-like in the way it began to tighten its grip.

*

# Chapter 52

She laid them under a marble stone,

All alone and aloney,

Then she turned as a fair maid home,

Down by the greenwood sidey.

The Cruel Mother

My mother – again!

But she's happy. Happier than I have ever seen her.

She sings so sweetly, too. Especially as she admires her ring, raising her hand so that its metallic flecks catch the last rays of the setting sun, the gold sparkling as if capturing those glittering rays.

She's no longer all alone and aloney.

She's heading across the fields, gradually making her way downhill towards the port below, where the first oil lamps are being lit and hung.

Despite the encroaching darkness, she has no fear. There is only joy, and love, in her heart.

She should be exhausted after all that dancing by the Stones. But instead she is elated, her energy overflowing in a way she has never experienced before.

The only downside to her sense of ecstasy was a twinge of pain about her waist, doubtlessly a strained muscle, brought on by the frenetic twirls and twists she had thrown her body into while dancing. When she lightly ran a hand across her stomach, she could just make out a swelling there, which again was simply a sign of an overused muscle.

A night time of peaceful, almost motionless rest, once she had arrived home, would considerably reduce the swelling by morning.

She sang again, of oaks and willows, of greenwoods and heaven, ignoring the steading bloating of her belly, telling herself she hadn't eaten or drunk all day, so what could she expect? No wonder her stomach throbbed and ached!

Finding it harder to walk, the exertions of the day at last catching up with her, she slowed her pace, recognising that there was no rush to head home. The jolts of pain in her stomach were now almost crippling, slowing her down all the more.

The bulbous swell of her stomach was now quite horrendous. It was far harder than she expected it to be when she ran a hand over it once more.

There was movement in there, a sharp prod from deep inside.

She stopped now, having to reach out and grasp the branch of a thorny bush, leaning against it to support herself while she took in great, painful gulps of air.

She felt dazed, hot.

It wasn't far now. She would soon be home.

She screamed as the pain abruptly became more intense than she had ever believed it was possible to suffer.

She screamed again, hoping someone in the far off town – it seemed so far away now, suddenly so unreachable – would hear her and rush to her aid.

What was happening to her?

Then her waters broke, and she stifled her scream, not wanting anyone to hear, not wanting anyone to come and see her shame.

How could she have been so stupid?

How had it all happened so quickly?

Once again, she was so all alone and aloney.

*

The baby came out quickly, perhaps relatively painlessly, going by how she had heard other women describing their own birthing.

The second came easier still, the passage already eased by her twin.

Two fine babies. Born within moments of each other.

And her so, so young!

Horrified and panicked, she tearfully bit through the cords connecting mother and babes. She hurriedly laid the babes to one side, their bared and wrinkled flesh still smeared with the streaks of her blood.

As she scrambled up on to her knees, turning to look back in terror and disgust at her scarlet-marbled spawn, a hand quite naturally came upon a rock, a rock fitting perfectly in the palm when tightly squeezed between her fingers.

A rock the size of each babe's tiny, fragile head.

She weighed it in her hand.

Weighed it in her mind.

The possibilities...

The repercussions...

No, no! She couldn't do that!

To crush their miniature skulls, to splatter herself in their new blood.

Then she would have to bury them too, and deeply at that. Otherwise a fox, a badger, even a dog out with his master, might hungrily dig them up, revealing her crime.

Placing the rock by her babes, she frantically tore off her underskirts, which were soiled and ruined anyway, a sure sign to her mother of what had come to pass. She ripped away seams, wildly biting and gnawing away at the hardier sections, twisting the strips into cords she used to bind the babes securely together, to plug their mouths so they made no noise, to tie the rock so that it hung below their feet.

She placed her construct upon the larger part of the material that she'd laid flat upon the ground. She brought up the sheet's corners, tying them together until she had a bundle she could carry.

'They're piglets,' she would say brightly, if anyone asked her as she made her way, struggling and weeping, towards the harbour.

'They're kittens,' she would answer as she made her way towards the quayside.

She chose the spot where the water was at its deepest, its darkest.

With all of her last dregs of strength, she threw her burden as far out into the harbour as she could.

The knot tying the rag of dress into a bundle slips free, the cloth flapping lazily in the light wind before striking the water.

The bonds holding the babes and the weight, however, remain secure.

Born together, the babes would die together.

*

# Chapter 53

Oh the judge he did tell me,

'You shall die; you shall die.'

Oh the judge he did tell me,

'You shall die.'

And they threw me into jail,

Where I'll drink no more strong ale,

And my neck shall pay for all,

When I die, when I die,

And my neck shall pay for all when I die.

Jack Hall

This time as I sink deep beneath the waves, my brother is with me.

He's a dark shape, a whirling fog of darkness, amongst all these other shades of black, of muddy browns, olive greens. There's a lazy flapping of off-white cloth, a rag of light amongst everything else that is so darkly unforgiving.

Our boat has at last given up its fight to survive the raging storm. It is wrecked once more, its drenched triangular sail sinking along with us, like a dying ray.

I am drowning once more.

As Cledlialle had warned me, this appears to be my preordained end, as decreed by fate. And our fate is always ultimately unavoidable.

Then, amongst the resignation, amongst the whirling of disturbed sand and torn up undersea plants, there is a flash of hope after all, a flash of Cledlialle's brightly glittering tail.

The sparkling of amber, of emeralds, of polished jet.

She has returned to rescue me after all.

She has changed her mind.

As she draws closer to me, the glistening of the jewels dull, while the brightness of gold sharpens.

And then I see it is purely gold after all, its reflecting of the dim light making gems out of mud, of rotting plants, even shadows.

It isn't Cledlialle.

It is the goblet.

*

Like blood spilling from an agonising wound, the dark ale of unwanted bitter memories seeped endlessly from the sinking goblet.

I reached out for the goblet, but only to try and knock it away.

Even as I drowned, even as I took in great, painful gulps of water into my lungs, I didn't wish to take in the goblet's dregs, its painful thorns of a deliberately hidden past.

If I am to die, can't I die in peace, rather than be tortured by memories that will now serve me no purpose?

My brother is with me, as he had been when our mother had so callously tossed us away to drown.

Is that why he had brought me here? Why he had called up the storm that sank us?

Is he embittered that I had somehow survived that first drowning while he didn't?

Are we to be finally joined in death as fate had first demanded?

As the goblet's stirred memories mingled with the equally dark whirlings that formed my brother, they shifted together, contracted, shrank.

He is a babe once more.

And bound irrevocably to me.

*

# Chapter 54

Go home, go home, to your father's garden,

Go home and weep your fill,

And think upon your own misfortune,

That you brought with your wanton will.

Blackwaterside

The bonds our mother has wrapped about us are not as easily severed as the cords that had bonded mother to child.

Besides, surely we are too young – too inexperienced of the world – to realise that the things happening to us are not normal, and should be resisted, fought against, if we are to survive.

We are too weak, anyway, to break free of such tight bonds.

Fortunately, for us there are other bonds; the more earthier links to our father, the Prince of the Stones.

Our nature cannot be denied.

Even so, life was quickly seeping away. Already, between us we only retained enough life to sustain just one, not both.

And so one must take in more than their fair share.

*

As I drank in the sparkles of life seeping from my brother, he shrivelled, becoming darker, less substantial, as ale disperses when poured into water.

The bonds loosening, freeing me.

I rose up through the bitter cold and cloying darkness, up to where the surface rippled seductively with the rubied sparkling of a dawning sun.

Half way to the beckoning surface, I was already a girl of four.

As I broke through the top waves, eagerly gasping for air and life, I was eight years old.

And I was so glad to be alive, I burst into song, my voice as sparkling as if drawn from the sun itself.

*

It was a song that my mother listened to with increasing dread as its singer drew ever nearer to her home.

She recognised, of course, the beauty of its tones, the confident modulation of chords, the smoothly flowing rhythms.

Only a daughter of hers could sing like this; as impossible as that could be.

The girl who brazenly entered her home, as if she had done so countless times throughout her life, was drenched and perfectly naked, and perhaps around ten years old.

And on her finger, she wore a ring that flashed with flecks of gold.

It couldn't be her daughter; and yet, it most definitely was – she was somehow so incredibly sure of that.

And what of her brother?

What had happened to him?

'You shouldn't be allowed to forget, mother,' the girl said, coolly helping herself to the glistening red jam and dark crust that lay upon a nearby table.

'Forget what?' the mother asked fearfully.

The girl briefly paused in her hungry devouring of the jam as she tried to remember.

'I forget,' she chuckled, already freed of every bitter memory.

And although she failed to notice it, the golden ring gracing her finger dissolved into nothing but a briefly misty air.

*

# Chapter 55

I'll do as much for my true love,

As any a young girl may.

I'll sit and mourn all on his grave,

For twelve months and a day.

The Unquiet Grave

Naturally, my mother had never mentioned my brother.

She preferred, of course, to forget that he had ever been born.

Yet it was far, far worse that I had forgotten him.

Even when the Prince of the Stones had given me a ring – the ring mingling flecks of gold with darker tints, the treasured memories with the darker, bitter ones – so that I might remember, I had wilfully misinterpreted his intent.

My mother had stripped the ring off my finger, flinging it far out it into the darkness of the harbour, relieving me of any need to recall the sacrifice my brother had made.

He deserves to be remembered, no matter how painful the memory of my betrayal is for me.

So I remember him at last.

But only as I drown, as fate had long ago ordained.

*

Relieved of its burden, the goblet began to rise in a veil of mercurial bubbles.

I spluttered and gagged, uselessly, as water continued to flood up through my nose, into my foolishly gaping mouth.

My chest was wracked with agony as I unavoidably breathed in great, painful gulps of the sea. My waist screamed out next, the muscles tightening, gripping me hard there.

But suddenly, thankfully, my continual descent had come to a halt.

At last, I had been caught up in the rising of the mist of silvered bubbles.

The grip around my waist was that of firmly grasping hands. Hands lifting me up through the dark waters, up towards where the surface glittered and rippled.

Beside me now, rather than the dark shadowy waters, there was a flash of glistening, naked flesh.

Cledlialle.

It had to be Cledlialle.

Here to save me after all, now that I had taken her advice and drunk my fill of bitter, hidden memories.

*

# Chapter 56

O fare you well, I must be gone,

And leave you for a while:

But wherever I go, I will return,

If I go ten thousand mile, my dear,

If I go ten thousand mile.

The True Lover's Farewell

As we gradually neared the dazzling surface, where the storm had thankfully ceased, the flecks of my ring sparkled all the more with every inch of progress we made.

It flashed gold, shone with silver.

The goblet of memories, gently bobbing beneath the glittering waves, broke up and dissolved in the refracting rays. Becoming itself fluid, it flowed towards and became one with my ring.

Not that my ring was now entirely of gold; for I was fully aware of a dark, slithering band, forever lying close to my naked flesh.

The waters break, giving us up.

Wailing desperately, I gulp down as much air as I can.

*

The triangular sail flaps with a crack and a slap in the breezes coming off from the sea.

Then our boat had not been wrecked after all?

Had I simply been thrown overboard?

Cledlialle helps me, still spluttering and gasping for air, to head towards the waiting boat. As I gratefully clamber aboard, and crouch choking in the bottom, she slips over the boat's side after me.

Out of the corners of my bleary eyes, I see she moves through the boat with surprising ease as she heads toward the stern and its tiller.

She has legs.

Is that possible?

No: naturally, it isn't Cledlialle.

It's my drenched and naked brother.

As he sees the truth dawn on me, he grins hugely.

He sets the tiller to take us a thousand miles from here, away from this land of darkly embittered souls.

And as the wind takes up our sail, and our hull skims gracefully over gently rolling waves, he breaks into a song.

And his voice sparkles as richly as an ever-rising sun.

*

Mother, oh, mother, it's we were yours,

All alone and aloney,

Scarlet fine was Our Own heart's blood,

Down by the greenwood sidey.

The Cruel Mother

End

If you enjoyed reading this book, you might also enjoy (or you may know someone else who might enjoy) these other books by Jon Jacks.

The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)

The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll's Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666

P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers – Gorgesque

Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent

Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak

Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife

Elm of False Dreams – God of the 4th Sun – A Guide for Young Wytches – Lady of the Wasteland

The Wendygo House – Americarnie Trash – An Incomparable Pearl – We Three Queens – Cygnet Czarinas

Memesis – April Queen, May Fool – Sick Teen – Thrice Born – Self-Assembled Girl – Love Poison No. 13

Whatever happened to Cinderella's Slipper? – AmeriChristmas – The Vitch's Kat in Hollywoodland

Blood of Angels, Wings of Men – Patchwork Quest – The World Turns on A Card – Palace of Lace

