I float, suspended in my yolk sac in the clutch of eggs. Through clear membrane I see my siblings with my partially formed eyes. Occasionally they look back, disinterested.
I’m very interested. They look delicious.
It’s a lie that mermaids are nurturing mothers. They are not mammals, don’t nurse their young, or even stay around to see if their eggs hatch. They are aquatic beings, muscle, tooth and desire.
When I hatch—first, of course, or there would be no tale to tell—the first thing I do is gobble up my siblings. They are not as tasty as I fantasized in my sac, but it’s sustenance. I double in size, my sharp teeth sprout and I go to work on sea urchins, shrimp, and unsuspecting flounder.
Belly bulging, I slip between an anemone’s many poisonous fingers. Its stings hurt me, but keep me safe from predators.
When asleep, I often see visions of a merwoman. Hair of deepest blue, eyes black as an eel’s back. A crown set with rarest pearls is pressed onto her locks. Twelve clamshells clamp onto her tail.
I wonder about those shells. Do they hurt? What do they signify? Beauty—or status and power?
I decide it must hurt. My own tailfins are very tender. I also decide I would happily endure twenty clamped onto mine if it meant I could wear the pearl crown.
I have a watery memory of this creature—my mother—swimming away from us, from me, a cluster of silvery scales shaped like a seaflower on her hip. Merfolk don’t live in families, at least not in my part of the ocean. The few I’ve seen are feral spawn, like me. Eat, stay hidden, try to grow very fast.
To have a crown, it seems to me, one would need to be a part of some society over which to rule, or else what’s the point? Which in turn means my mother laid her clutch of eggs far from where she lives and rules.
Did she fear one of her offspring might be a little too much like herself?
And then, today, I discover two silver scale-petals on my hip.
I dine on squid to celebrate.
I take chances, and swim greater distances each day. I discover a ship’s wrecked hull, and inside, half buried, a large sea chest. The rusty lock breaks off easily, and I curl up inside it atop a bed of pretty golden disks, and a coil of gold links. I pull the lid down over me and sleep safely.
***
My hair has grown to a stunning length, luxuriant cerulean blue, and flows from head to tail. My hip flower has all its petals.
I draw on instinct and knowledge buried deep within my mer-lineage, and fashion a weapon of razor-sharp coral. Now I bring down sharks. And once, a seal who dove too deeply. She bled copious ribbons of warm red blood that I twirled in as I ate.
I roam far from my ship’s bony hull. Down into deep, cold trenches and shadowed sea caves. Always alone.
I love—so deeply—myself. My utter lack of regard; I am holey with it, like lacy sea coral. My prayers are these little mounds of sucked-out mollusk hulls.
One day I discover a trio of merfolk lazing about a trench heat vent. They speak a lovely language of clicks and screeches that I try hard to understand. When they swim away, I follow from a distance.
The habitat they enter is strange and glorious. Glass globes filled with glowing pink and green anemones light up dwellings of brilliant white coral, built side by side and stacked on top of one another. Many merfolk dart about, sleek as dolphins, graceful as jellies.
There are no merchildren.
Two mermen put lips to enormous conch shells and blow. An explosion of shrill bubbles bursts out.
Amidst the bubble cascade a merwoman drifts down from a coral balcony—blue hair, now streaked with silver, pearl crown, silver hip-flower. She settles onto a mother-of-pearl seat, its tall back fashioned from exquisite shells and found treasure.
All the merfolk bow to her. They begin a krill-dance, arms woven together, swirling faster and faster. They form a tight, dizzying ball of flashing color, then shoot off in all directions.
When the current settles, she claps her hands and other merfolk offer her enormous shells piled with seafood beyond my imagining. And sea chests full of plunder.
Oh, my stomach and teeth ache at the sight.
Dazed, I swim back to my shipwreck and watch the sun drown itself in a bloody bath. I curl into my sea chest bed and lie awake, flicking my tail. I think: this scavenged, warped, wonderful world is mine. Then I sing a song of praise to myself and this domain of relentless hunger.
True happiness is a belly bloated from feeding.
***
Emptied of its golden disks the chest is cumbersome, but not unmanageable. I haul it to the gates of the mer-city while they sleep, then slip inside the chest. I thread the golden chain through the lid’s hole and hasp, close the lid, and hold the chain fast.
And wait.
When I feel the chest being buoyed up by merfolk I contract my body like a spring, clutch my weapon tight. I feel the slight thud as they bring the chest inside the gate and drop it onto the sand.
Excited chittering. Thumps test the wooden top. I release the chain and they pry the lid open a crack. I burst out and dart straight for the queen.
Mother.
I slip behind her and hold the razor-coral to her throat. Everyone halts, scarcely bobbing in the current. I don’t know their word for Mother. I wrap my hand in her hair and force her around to see the twin of her silver flower on my hip.
Her dark eyes widen and she screeches one word.
I’m not sure, but I think it’s “Daughter.”
I draw the coral blade across her throat quickly (I’m not a monster) and her cool green blood spirals around us. I release her and, before she drifts down to the sand, I snatch the crown from her head and press it onto mine. I tug the clams from her still-moving tail and clamp them onto mine, wincing.
Before her soulless eyes close, I catch a glint in them that wasn’t there before. I like to think it’s admiration. Maybe even pride.
I brandish my weapon. No one dares oppose me. I swim up to the high throne, and sit, flicking my tail, wary.
They swim Mother’s body away through the gates. I clap my hands and two mermaids bring me shells heaped with lovely food. I’m ravenous.
My tailfins throb excruciatingly. But I’m getting used to it. The pearl-studded crown distracts me from the pain.
Mermothers rarely remember their offspring.
But their offspring, sometimes, remember their mothers.
Sharmon Gazaway is a Dwarf Stars Award finalist. Her work is included in NewMyths' Best Of anthologies, Cosmic Muse, and The Growers, and appears or is forthcoming in Abyss & Apex, Cosmic Roots & Eldritch Shores, Solarpunk Magazine, The Fairy Tale Magazine (The Best of Enchanted Conversation), and also in anthologies from Inkd Publishing, Blackspot Books, Brigids Gate Press, and others. Sharmon writes from the Deep South of the US where she lives beside a historic cemetery haunted by the wild cries of pileated woodpeckers--Instagram @sharmongazaway.