3PLEX

In the southern seas James had seen mermaids.

Always and only from a distance, their skin blue-black or golden-green and flashing iridescent in the clear shallows: they had avoided the shipping, fled blue-fin swift from from the cutters' bows, away into the crystal depths. In the Med, sirens: lovely, impossibly lovely, lying bare on the warm and lovely rocks, the wind carrying little twists of their undying song to turn the head even at a seaman's safe distance. Other things, too, he has seen, sprites and sea-witches, beings he does not know what to call, some lovely and some as cold as drowning: ships that were not there, cities below the swell. Such are a sailor's tales, though landsmen think them quaint.

And when after twenty years aboard he had taken his final shilling from the master, slung his sea-bag on his shoulder and made his way here to this island which he had once seen in the sunset, with the little boats running home to harbour, and which he had still dreamed of sometimes, people had whispered: one for the selkies. And he had not questioned this, for it seemed after all no stranger or less than the hundred other strangenesses of the sea.

=

On the island there is a stretch of beach and a sweep of cliff and above in the tall grass on the clifftop a whitewashed house, far enough from the town that the sound does not carry and close enough that the lights show in the night. Before the house on the seaward side the nets hang drying in the stinging wind and on the strand below the cliff a small white boat lies on her side, her mast unstepped now at the close of day.

In the house the kettle boils, and James rises to make himself his tea.

The first year has been hard, but he has not come so far by turning easily from hope. If he has not yarn to mend his sweater or milk for his tea, at least he will not starve: he catches now enough to eat and salt and smoke, enough to trade to the peat-cutters for his fire, enough now and then to sell and buy himself some oats or flour or honey. Last autumn's burst of labour, helped by the lads from town, had seen to the state of his roof; his doors and shutters fill their frames; his sails are in fine order. When winter comes and the little garden stops yielding he will be worse off than he is, but he will go then and walk on the shore and cut kelp among the black-shawled women: and here in this moment, in the long light of evening, he has a cup of real tea and the warmth of the fire, and he is content.

Into this peace comes the characteristic rap on the door, and James exhales--it is not precisely a sigh--through his nose. Contemplates ignoring the sound: wonders what the cost of angering the sea might be, for a fisherman. "Yes," he says, not entirely loud enough, "I'm coming." He doesn't bother trying to sound surprised.

=

The first one had been blonde.

It had been the third day of the storm when she had come to him, and the rain like pebbles flung against the walls. The knock on that day unexpected as it should have been: and when he'd held the lantern out into the darkness the light had caught her not-quite-human eyes a glancing blow. A concerning circumstance, to be sure. But she had been thin and bare and cold, her long hair tangling wet in the circling winds, and she had looked at him with those wide-set blue-grey animal eyes, and he had stepped aside to let her in: the first mistake, perhaps.

Sir, she had said, sitting at his only table wrapped in the blanket from his bed, you have done me a very great kindness. Like something from a folktale. James, who had met his share of djinn and tricksters, had been wary. Still he had put a bit of oatmeal before her, which she looked at with distaste, and a glass of black kelp porter, which she had taken happily: he had not asked her the necessary questions, perhaps out of some premonition of endurances to come. She had done the work herself: Shall I tell you something of myself, she'd said, and when James had left enough of a pause she had continued: my father keeps his hall below the sea. A long and longing look, then, from below her long pale lashes: the freckles across the bridge of her nose. She really had been quite a pretty thing.

In the morning he had gone to the place she had described to him, down among the rocks on the shore, and found there among the broken shells the neat smooth fold of her sealskin where it lay. Had not even unfolded it, merely carried it in a glossy bundle up to the house where she still stood wrapped in blankets, her hair combed out now into smooth wheat-gold waves. He had placed the bundle before her with the slightest bow, and she had put her small hand to it as if surprised. You are. Returning it to me? The oddly put-out look on her face: slight pout of her blush-pink lower lip. "I am," James had said. "Is that not what you had asked? That I should fetch it for you?"

It is, she had said, still with that air of mild frustration. And I thank you for it. She had looked at him then, a raking look from top to toe, and softened perhaps a little. Then she had risen, dropped the blanket on the chair, taken up her magic skin and walked straight out his door without another word.

=

The second had been dark, sparking and sweetly curved. The full swell of her breast and the round shape of her hip had drawn his eye but he had been no more a fool then than the first time: nor, at least, had she expected him to. A summer night, that one, and the heat lying like nectar on everything: and she had pressed her sealskin into his hand and said "take it, at least" as she'd slipped past him into the house: she had not bothered to beg a sheet and he had not offered, watching her inspect his cups--pull down a bottle from his shelf and pour, a few fingers for each of them. A bit more in her own, he'd thought.

"You'll not have me for a wife," she'd said to James, leaning up against his doorframe. "I knew as soon as I saw you."

"I won't," James says, mildly. "I have no need of a wife, here."

"Would you like to fuck anyway," says the selkie.

Not an unappealing prospect, but he'd had no intention of misstepping in his game. He had shaken his head, a smooth slow easy turn. A sigh from the seal-maid.

"Right," she'd said, "Well, I have to stay the night. Otherwise they'll say I haven't tried."

They had drunk their whiskey and played picquet until the sun had come up, and then she too had slipped into the sea.

=

The third had been a young man with dark hair and light eyes whom James had ushered in with alacrity, though there was no one on the path and no one out to sea.

"Hello," the man had said, soft, gentle, "I expect you know the rest." He had been lean and supple and very, very handsome, with a charming habit of pushing his dark hair back from his eyes with a curled hand, and James had thought for a moment of going along with all of it: of seizing the skin, hiding it—on a rafter, perhaps, or down in the forward locker of the little boat—waiting out the years until this lad without a name saw fit to steal away (ah, and there was the ache). A poor choice, to be sure.

"I can't give you a child," James said, to fill the silence, though in practical fact he knew nothing of the sort: magic, after all.

"Oh," said the young man, "no. It's not about that."

A pause: the young man looking around as if considering his future home. Less willing than the girls had been, James thinks, and something in it turns him cold.

When he sees James staring the young man blinks, makes a sort of half gesture: the flush across his breast in the cold makes James swallow. His soft prick which he makes no move to cover.

"It's the house," the young man says, as James says "Would you like a blanket," so that they pause again and look at each other: and the young man nods, and James crosses the few steps to his bed to fetch it. As he wraps it round the lad's shoulders the lad says "the house" again, and then as James goes to pour them a drink.

"One of us has to be here," he says, as he accepts the cup and tilts it to his lip. "Those are the Terms."

The Terms of what, James is not foolish enough to ask. Whatever bargains have been struck he wants no part in them.

"One of you," James says. "But not you, specifically."

The young man smiles at him: a genuine and lovely smile, full of sharp teeth. "I have someone," he says. "A fisherman. In the village." It should not be quite such a blow as it is, but then it has been some time since James has been held.

"I will not keep you from him," James says.

"I must stay the night," says the young man.

But he is gone by the time James wakes, and the blanket folded neatly on the table.

=

"Oh," James says now, at the door. "I had expected someone else."

Someone less clothed, for one: the man before him wears an old pea-jacket buttoned to the throat and plain blue trousers; he is barefoot, but then so many sailors are. Someone younger and leaner and perhaps more inclined to look up at James adoringly through perfect lashes: all these things.

"Did you, indeed," says the man, with something worse than humour. "How disappointing."

Still he does not move from the doorstep, and James wonders for a moment if he has misplaced the man's face, if he is some old shipmate come calling: but then the autumn sunset catches the animal glint in his eye, and James knows as he always does.

"Oh," he says again, stepping back from the doorframe. "Perhaps not."

The man steps inside: casts James a brief glance. "Whiskey," he says.

"Haven't any," says James. The man looks at him again, disgusted: "Haven't the money," James says. "Stout?"

"That will do," says the man, and pulls out a chair at the table.

=

"I expect," says the man, "you're rather tired of this."  He swirls his porter in its glass: his fingernails are a little long, with a faint blueish cast.

James looks at him, across the table in the falling light, and wonders. He reminds James of a captain he'd had once, as a young man: nothing in his looks but in his manner, somehow, a kind of worn and guarded honour. An odd choice for a seduction, James thinks, and contemplates it: finds the thought not unappealing.  

"You do not want a wife," says the man, "nor a lover." James tilts his head. "And I would make a poor show as either," says the man. His teeth when he smiles are human, not sharp: gapped at the front. "But you need a man to take the tiller while you haul your nets, and a man to dig potatoes while you take your catch to town." He spreads his hands: they are scarred. "I have a few years left in me."

"I can hire a man," James says.

"I am stronger than a man," says the selkie. "And I am faster."

Outside the wind turns round the cottage like a cat stalking a mouse. Across the table the man with the gapped teeth holds James’s gaze for a moment, something fierce and raw in him, and the wind rises, rises: then falls, suddenly, and the lamp flickers and the man shuts his eyes, abruptly, as though in pain. 

"Do you know," James says, "Not one of you has ever given me a name."

"Francis," the man says, without further probing. 

"Francis." says James. Hopes he has kept some of the absurdity of it out of his voice.

"I was born under a slate roof same as you," Francis says, sharply, though of course James was born in no such place. Smoothly (a sailor after all, James thinks) Francis drinks off his glass: sets it down: looks toward the cupboards on the wall. There is a blue shadow of exhaustion under his eyes, and James wonders—

"What happens to you," James says. "If you don't find someone? Someone to—take you?”

"I found someone," Francis spits at him. His voice loses its bitter edge a moment, softens into sorrow. "Twice."

=