A length of wood splashes near me. I lunge after it to stay afloat, only to see the initials carved into the old wood. I look up to see Gunther glaring me down like a gargoyle on a church spire.
He knows. He knows and I am doomed. Whether the mermaid gets me or I drown, it doesn’t really matter. Either way, I will not set foot on dry land again.
The cry goes up. It is Gunther’s oarsman, Osk, who spots her.
“Yonder she comes! Hard north!”
My brains go numb at the terror coming at me, unseen and unknowable in those blue depths. I have seen what it can do, and I am terrified.
The men tense, nets at the ready, lances gripped in white-knuckled fists. With the vessels blocking my view, I cannot track the creature’s approach. The sea is calm, water lapping gently on the hulls. The oarsmen pull and counter the oars to maintain the ring around me.
“She’s gone under!” Gunther bellows. “Steady, now.”
A gentle splash. I turn and she is here, her strange double-lidded eyes dip at the waterline. I cannot see her mouth, cannot tell if she is smiling or opening her jaws to bite down. I don’t want to die, not like this. I brace myself for the coming pain, for the venom of her bite.
Neither occurs. The mermaid does not strike, her gaze inscrutable and foreign. I cannot tell if she is amused or enraged. Of the harpoonists and their spears, she either does not see them or is not alarmed by their presence. I hear the voices of the fishermen puzzle at her behavior.
“Why doesn’t it eat him?” says one.
Another responds. “The stupid boy has made a pet of it. Look at it.”
The creature circles slowly, her strange eyes fixed on me. The first net is flung, then the first harpoon. The maiden slips below easily and surfaces behind me. More nets, another lance. Again, she eludes the fishermen’s weapons. The sail of her dorsal fins twinkles with sunlight as it cuts the surface. It is toying with me the way a cat bats a mouse before biting its head off.
“Why won’t it go for him?” says a voice.
“Maybe she prefers the taste of men to boys,” another replies.
I glance at Gunther. He has yet to fire his harpoon. Eyes on the water, he is studying the way she darts and feints to avoid capture. Tracking her locomotion, anticipating her moves.
“Maybe Kaspar is secretly a girl,” laughs long-nosed Sligo.
A sharp tug on my ankle pulls me below. I catch only a murky vision of the mermaid gliding past me before I claw to the surface. Spitting out the spume, I see a net whirl over me with precise aim. Then Gunther’s harpoon sails from his powerful arm.