The Mermaid: Chapter II

Chapter Two

For a moment, the mermaid stopped to watch the ghost walk along the sand. Jael stopped, also looking and watching. The mermaid crawled up on to the beach, waiting for the change to happen. She was frightened, exposed and open until she regained her legs. The specter moved closer and closer, hovering above the sand. She seemed to smile slightly at the mermaid, as if to avail her fears.

"Why are you here?" the mermaid asked, standing to meet the ghost.

"I am here, as I am every year." replied the ghost, the slight smile remained, as if it had been frozen in place.

"Why do you continue to haunt me? I have not wronged you, why trouble me?"

"I want peace, mermaid." The ghost's pale fingers reached out to touch the mermaid's jeweled hair, but only brushed a strand of crimson.

The mermaid pulled back, shivering. The touch of the girl's fingers were ice and pain. It was as if her hair suddenly possessed feeling, the icy agony running through her scalp and down her spine.

"Peace does not exist. Look somewhere else if you desire it."

Jael looked into the mermaid's eyes. The mermaid could feel her presence in her mind and soul, could feel her probing her memories. The ghost did not seem to comprehend what she saw in the mermaid's green eyes, a look of confusion gathering across her brow. Then the mermaid closed her eyes, pushing Jael out of her mind, pleading with the girl to leave her alone.

"Why were you banished little one?" asked the ghost. Her voice had become soft and gentle. Her deep white-violet eyes searched the mermaid's face, touching wounds that lay buried beneath the beautiful facade. The mermaid could see her soul reflected in those eyes, something dark and sinister lay deep within her that she had not known existed. It was deeper than the ocean, deeper than her pain. It was cold and destructive, lovely and violent. Troubled, she looked away and replied,

"Because I loved. Because I loved a dream, a ghost like you."

"What is your name, mermaid?"

"Troian. Daughter of gods, mortal because of love." Silence fell between the two, uncomfortable and sorrowful. Yet, they remained in silence until the beginning of the sunset caused the ghost disappear.

Troian dove back into the depths, letting the currents drag her further and further away. And in the rhythms of the ocean, thrumming and churning about her, it was easy to forget herself. She would forget herself in the dark peace of a never-ending sea. If only the forgetting took away the pain, took away the memories. But forgetting could not take what she knew, not even to the deepest part of her soul. Even she could not forget that much. She could not forget herself, though she fooled herself into believing it.

She had loved, loved and been betrayed by it. Love did not exist, she decided. It was a myth, like unicorns. Like mermaids. Only, she could not forget who she had been, before she was myth. Before she was lost to this island, the sands of time and grief. Before she was no longer truth.

Truth. She had not thought about truth in so long that it, too, seemed to be a myth. But truth remained. Why couldn't truth exist else where? Then maybe she could believe that she was never in love and that she had never been so full of sorrow. Maybe then she could remember what it was like before anything existed, when she was the daughters of gods.

Light began to filter down to her, though it was faint as a wisp of smoke. She arose just as a bleeding sun gave birth to dawn. In the sparkling light, she seemed to be more thin and translucent then yesterday. She knew what it meant, only she did not wish to acknowledge it.

She was dying. Fading into the eternity to which her soul was doomed. She looked at her hand and gazed through it to the blue water.

"No." she whispered. It couldn't be time for her to fade yet. She had only been mortal for ten years. She was to young, to young to fade away. With no one to remember her. Nothing to leave behind, so that someone might remember that she had existed, that she had been truth once. Now she would be utterly and entirely alone, trapped beyond the reach of anything and everything. Not even Jael would be able to reach her.

Exhausted and sorrowful she made her way to the beach. Though the day held promise, she drifted off, lulled to sleep by her beloved ocean