Beneath the depths of the ocean, according to these stories, an atmosphere exists adapted to the respiratory organs of certain beings, resembling in form the human race, possessed of surpassing beauty, of limited supernatural powers, and liable to the incident of death. They dwell in a wide territory of the globe, far below the region of fishes, over which the sea, like the cloudy canopy of our sky, loftily rolls.

—George Brisbane Scott Douglas,
“The Fisherman and the Merman,” 1901

THEN

Ruby

August

RUBY WAS WATCHING Yoga Man from the safety of the dark. She was sitting, wrapped in a duvet, on the draining board, her feet in the sink. The routine was familiar; she’d been watching him without fail every day, for so long that the sequences repeated in a pattern she could now predict. Today was headstand day.

Being awake at three thirty AM was standard for Ruby these days, now that a normal person’s regime, like having work hours and a social life, was no longer relevant. She dwelled in a permanent half-light; whenever an errant sunbeam edged around the closed curtains and sought her out, it felt as if it burned. The only time the curtains were open fully was at night, when she was watching Yoga Man. A guilty pleasure, perhaps even shameful, but in those silent hours, cocooned in the velvet dark and the warmth of the bedcover, she felt more alive than she had in a long time. His movements both soothed and ignited her. When he walked toward her at the end of the routine, to shut the blinds against the approaching dawn, she imagined he was looking at her, acknowledging her. He seemed to gaze straight into her eyes, though where she sat, behind glass, protected by the dark, he could never have seen her.

When it was over, Ruby would get down from her perch and go to bed, tying a scarf over her eyes to block out the light, sleeping until mid-afternoon. Just like Barbara, her boss, had said, after she’d driven Ruby home from work on the day she’d been signed off sick, yoga practice was meant to be good for your mental health. Barbara meant for her to take a class, but perhaps watching someone else do it was equally effective. It was certainly true that once she’d discovered Yoga Man, Ruby felt she was less depressed and more productive. He was inspirational: when she wasn’t watching him, or sleeping, she was working on her music.