She swims toward us, and every voice dies as she cuts the dark water, moving with an undulating rhythm not unlike that of a whale. That’s when we see it, all of us popping our eyes in disbelief. The tail. Enormous and long, more like that of a serpent than a fish. Hand over my heart, the woman has a tail where her legs should be.

Someone utters a prayer. An old man drops to his knees and weeps. The woman in the water, this mermaid of fairy tales, watches us with cold eyes as she glides along the length of the wharf. Then she dives, that great tail arcing as it breaks the surface of the water. She is gone. It is gone, whatever it is.

The townsfolk shake their heads and rub their eyes as if waking from a dream. Calamity immediately follows. People shout and run about. The women race for dry land, herding their children before them, while the men all scramble to their skiffs. Nets are readied, harpoons raised, as they all row out into the bay. In the eyes of each man is a mad look as they prepare to hunt the thing they have seen. Something about this creature has them gnashing their teeth, driving them on to spear this fabled luremaid of the depths. Her brazen freedom offends them somehow.

One sloop remains tethered to the dock. Gunther’s fine vessel. The skipper is roaring at a boy on the pier, demanding to know where Brom is. His fishing mate and oarsmen. The boy crushes his hat in his hand and explains that his father is unwell.

“You mean drunk!” Gunther bellows.

His face is red as he stomps the hull of his boat. The boy jumps and quivers all the more. The scarred harpooner casts his eyes about the chaos on the quay and, of all people, locks onto me.

“Kaspar! Get in the boat! Now!”

I shake my head vigorously. “I’m no whaler.”

“I don’t need a whaler, lad. I need someone to row!”

His powerful arm shoots out and plants me onto the slat bench of his boat. Row, he insists. So I row.

“Faster, lad,” Gunther howls as he lashes the end of the spooled rope to his great harpoon. “Starboard now! That’s it.”

The bay becomes a choppy stew of boats and yammering fishermen, each chasing this thing from a storybook tale. Nets are spun into the waves and harpoons fly and miss. To a man, they all seem crazed with the idea of spearing this fabled creature of the depths. An armada of madmen, fishing for folk tales.

I catch only a glimpse of the woman in the water. Astern, her head bobs for a moment, only to appear a heartbeat later on the port side. She eludes the spears and nets like it’s a game.