#one day...one day

Not only the stars, of course, but the moon and sun as well; the whole host of celestial bodies that eddy in the currents of man’s sky. This is her great secret: the way the moonlight shafts through the water, the way the stars steadily burn like vents in the night. No other mer had dared come so close to the surface, not in a hundred years.

At least, no one but her mother.

A poor example to follow, Grandmother always said, shelling clams with clever fingers and deft hands. Practiced motions, made perfect over time, like rocks tumbled against the ocean floor. You’d do best to keep your distance, else you’ll find yourself at the end of a man’s fish-cutter, like she did.

Watching the stars ripple in the waves, Shirayuki lets her mouth relax into a smile. She never had been good at doing what she was ought.

A great, dark hull cuts across the water; a predator’s shadow trailing moonlight in its wake. Excitement puts buoyancy in her belly, pushing her up, up; a puffer fish careening on a current. In a single breath, the world goes topsy-turvey in her eyes, sand and sea reversed.

The surface. Her eyes scrabble first to the sky, as if she might gain her bearings as the mer of old, but there is nothing familiar there, only the cold burn of the careless stars. When she first broke the water’s barrier, years ago now, she had thought the firmament here was the same as the sand of hers, that they were two worlds that kissed at their ends with men swimming in the air the same as she did through the sea.

It was not a mistake that lasted long, not when ships sailed these waters, hurrying to ports near and far. They’d been smaller than the one she follows now; sloops she’d heard them called when she dared to draw close to the shore. Bigger still than the carcasses they left in the deeps, only bare bones left to jut like toothy maws in the twilight.

They also had not played music.

Man is different from mer’s of course, meant to cut through the air instead of wind through the water. Even at her distance, the drums pound, setting her heart to racing. She and man are alike in this, she thinks, for when they dance on the decks, stomping their feet to the music, that thrum of frisson goes through her, phantom heels itching to join them.

Pipes shrill when she comes closer to perch beneath their sight, cutting through her as quick as the wind. Shirayuki wedges herself in the square cut-outs an arm’s reach above the water; it’s a squeeze, one that involves pushing aside the metal muzzle she shares it with. Her tail hangs limp off the side, its shimmer lost in the shadow. Even if a man were to stumble to the side to expel his drink-- as they often did, it seemed to be part of the process-- he would see nothing but the sea.

“Good night for it,” a man says up above. She knows little and less of man’s tongue, but she knows these words, though they make little sense together. Presumably, the man that answers-- belching forth a muddle of sounds she can’t make fins or tails of-- knows what it is, and by his tone, has opinions on it. She lets the noise rush over her, like how water laps against the ship’s side.

“Fuck, but it’s been a long trip!” the same man laughs. “Can’t wait to weigh anchor. Only a few days now.”

More familiar words-- anchor, that thing they drag in the sea when they come to port; long trip, an expression of exasperation, relating to their voyage. She’s heard that often enough from the lips of man. Soon they’ll talk of shore leave and maybe even wenching, though she’s never quite understood the last. Something to do with food, perhaps, since it seems to follow drinking.

Which only leaves that one word to puzzle over. It’s familiar too, but she’s never heard it so clearly, so crisp.

“Fuck,” she murmurs to herself, liking the way it feels. “Fuck.”

“I’ll just be glad to get rid of that--” she’s unprepared for the word that follows, spoken with such edge that it might be one of their fish-cutters. “A beating was too good for ‘em.”

Shirayuki’s heart flutters in her chest. Beating. Beat. To fight, implication: single-sided, one man having the advantage. She’d never seen such a thing happen, only heard the banter after the fact, but still-- her stomach flip-flops like she’d dove into the deeps, water pressing too close, too hard all around her.

She should go. If these men beat their own, what would they do to one little mer all by herself? Especially with the way they swaggered around, fish-cutters displayed on their hips as if they were proud of them.

“Too bad he won’t rot in the brig,” the other man said, teeth flashing like a shark’s. “Too close to shore. But if God be good, his wounds’ll finish the traitor off long before that.”

Traitor. That’s what the first man had said, harsh with derision. There’s no hint to what it means, nothing besides that this is what their prisoner is-- she knew that much a least, if they were in the brig. Perhaps it was a drunk; that was what a brig was filled with in her experience. But if that were true, the men would laugh, not speak with knives on their tongues, and besides all that...

This traitor had wounds. Wounds, meaning injured, enough to kill him, if that man spoke true. Beating had always implied fists before, but with all these fish-cutters glittering on the deck, perhaps they had gutted them, like they did their dinners. Perhaps they were even--?

Her fingers clench at the sill. Could traitor mean mer? None of the men she’d watched had ever mentioned her kind, had never mentioned anyone but other men, or maybe even a woman, which she assumed to be the maid to their man, though she had never seen one to find out. If they were--

She can’t leave them here, to be brought to shore and gutted for stew. Shirayuki slipped from her perch, dropping into the water with a slow, controlled plop. It’s cold for a moment-- a shock, every time. It made a certain amount of sense for one world to be colder, and the other warmer, and yet her skin shivered no matter which way she crossed the boundary.

It passes quickly enough; she doesn’t bother to wait for the warmth to return to her, not when every moment is precious. The men are drinking above now, plotting their adventures on the dry land, but any moment one might wander below, might see the gleam of their blade and think it felt right to sink it into traitor belly. 

This ship might be bigger than the ones she’s used to-- though smaller than ones she’s glimpsed but never dared approach, their decks too high for eavesdropping and their men too sharply eyed for sneaking-- but there’s not much difference between them. The point of these brigs is to be uncomfortable, and after a few quick searches of the holes nearest the waves, she finds it, a room more bars than boards. Or rather, a couple of them, all in a row on each side.

Ah, these bigger ships, they must have more drunks. They certainly had more space for those big, banded barrels, the ones the men called rum.

Most of these brigs are empty now; Shirayuki only peeks between the bars, finding a stuffed cushion and a bucket, before going onto the next. At the third-- the last on this side, the narrowest-- she nearly does the same, but--

But then a pile of cloth moves. It groans, rolling over, half off the cushion, a spiky black urchin tumbling across the floor--

No, it’s no urchin. It’s hair. And that pile of cloth, it’s a man.

No, she realizes, it’s a traitor. Which by all accounts, seems to be the same as any other man. His shirt is slashed, barely more than tatters along his back, crusted with black in the dim. He moves again, a long groan tearing from him as the fabric pulls, breaking the crust to crumbles. A thick liquid drips from them, soaking the remnants of his shirt, and--

It’s blood. The traitor is bleeding.

Panic pulses through her. Any moment the scent of blood will call the sharks, and that much is sure to cause a frenzy. She just needs that salve to staunch it, and--

Her hands still where they rest on her satchel. They’re not in the water, not now; there’s no sharks to call and no mer to evacuate, no feeding ground to forestall. It’s only a man, here in man’s world.

A man who is dying. Between his wounds and his impatient traveling companions, he’ll never make it to the shore.

And she could help. She could save this man’s life.

Shirayuki’s hands tighten around the bars. That’s hardly any choice at all.

“Stay alive,” she tells the man. “I’ll come back.”

He groans again, mindless, but still, he turns toward her voice, like kelp reach toward the sun. In the dim, she can see the barest gold beneath his eyes.