They say bodies floated in the water off the Lone Dock that morning in 1721. The sunrise after Torch Night was broken, the clouds covering the sky like scales on fish flesh, filtering the sunlight, breaking it into beacons spotlighting the dead.
The newly founded town of Mackerel Sky was small, but it was fierce and scrappy. Though a settlement of but twenty or so buildings at that point, it was rooted in the earth and a beloved home to all who lived there. Under the command of Burrbank and his crew, beside the Wabanaki and the Feathers of the Piratebird, the residents fought valiantly against the onslaught of mermaids and ocean on Torch Night. The Piratebird set Burrbank’s house ablaze, both a fiery call to arms and a mortal warning for the mermaids born terrified of fire. The Feathers tore lit boards off the house and stabbed them deep into Crescent Beach, a boundary of jagged, burning teeth. Some townsfolk died in the ocean wrenching their loved ones away from the waves and the mermaids’ song, or the mermaids themselves, who had snapped on the men in the water like crocodiles and dragged them to the bottom. The Feathers of the Piratebird fought with their burning boards and bows and fire arrows. The town fought with kitchen knives and pitchforks and bonfires. The mermaids fought with whalebone spears and shark-tooth maces and the ocean itself and their siren song, its dulcet melody the deadliest of lures. They say that that night the Feathers of the Piratebird countered with their own land magic, learned from the Wabanaki and Burning Owl, but the only record of such beyond myth was said to be in the big red book, and Myra Kelley was mum.
Three truths rose with the shattered sunlight that day: Tristolde Alain Burrbank would remain a child of the land, the mermaids were gone from the town, never to return as before, and in their wake they left a curse, a storm cloud that settled angrily over Mackerel Sky indefinitely.
The morning of the broken sunrise a new graveyard was built at the end of the town, far from the ocean. A statue—a virgin on the rocks facing due east, her clothes blowing off in the wind, one hand reaching to the main, mid-step toward the cliff—stood in the cemetery in tribute to all those lost, those with graves at sea, unvisitable resting places. They erected eight stones that day, some cenotaphs, some gravestones, for some of the bodies from Torch Night washed up on the shore, some disappeared forever, lost to the vast unmarked tomb of the sea.
But that would not be the end of it.
The next winter was the most brutal on record in Mackerel Sky. The blizzards and illness decimated the survivors of Torch Night and took another nine. In the red book it said that those who suffered from the affliction of the winter lung of 1721 coughed like they were drowning, and save for winters of war the winter of 1721 was one of the worst on record. Ultimately the town paid the mermaids’ losses with twenty-one lives that year: eight when the mermaids attacked, nine during January and February, one drowning in spring, and three drownings in summer.
In the decade that followed, all of Burrbank’s crew left Mackerel Sky and returned to a life on the sea, all save one: his copain de vie, Stéphane’s ancestor Alain, the Terror in the Night. Burrbank and Alain had a knack for saving each other’s skins and grieved life’s griefs together. Alain grew to Mackerel Sky like a great pine, driving roots deep, seeking water from the Acadians and the Wabanaki. His tomb, erected many, many years later, set under a hill at the end of the cemetery, was surrounded by a lush brushstroke of wildflowers spring to fall, a favorite spot of high schoolers for senior photos.
Ever since the morning of the broken sunrise, the sea thenceforth claimed more inhabitants of Mackerel Sky than most towns on the Maine coast, victims like one of the Tattooed Twins, like Jason’s twenty-two-year-old brother, Vincent, like little Nimue Perle.
The morning of the Mermaid Festival, four years after her daughter died, Manon walked up the crooked drive to Myra Kelley’s front porch, hands in her pockets, hair flowing around her cheekbones. She had stopped by Myra Kelley’s for a steadying coffee this morning of all mornings. She had entered her quilt into the auction but would not stick around the downtown busy with tourists and locals to see how it fared. When she and Jason had Nimue, they would have been on a boat by now, watching the lobster-boat races with a soda in one hand and a crabmeat sandwich in the other, her child on her lap. She looked at the ocean, sparkling, inviting. She looked at her child’s tomb.
She hadn’t been back on the water since Jason rescued her the night of the Book Burner, the night they saw the two mermaids circle the Pearl then sharply swim for the seaboard, drawn by a distinct virescent lucent orb, some jade firefly upon the shore. Jason gunned his engine all the way back to the wharf, and by the time they got to the Crescent the ambulance had already taken Derrick Stowe to the hospital, and the truth of what happened was already becoming stretched and colored and exaggerated, though the consensus was that there might have been another mermaid sighting and that Derrick Stowe might not live through the night thanks to the good-for-nothing Townsend twins. When Jason looked back for Manon, he saw nothing but the crowd; she had returned to haunt the Lone Docks.
When she had Nimue, the morning of the Mermaid Festival she and Jason would be looking forward to a picnic out on Iledest Island, but she had been avoiding him since the night of the Book Burner, avoiding most people. The town was once again abuzz with the topic of mermaids; this time of year Manon preferred to be out of town the most, away from tourists discovering her daughter’s story as an anecdote in a travel guide, away from locals pointing and whispering factoids about Nimue’s coffin being empty.
Iledest Island was directly east of Mackerel Sky and founded by some lost adventurous Acadians. Iledest was French, and literally meant East Island, or Island of the East, but most residents of Mackerel Sky did not speak French and so the redundancy of the word island in the moniker Iledest Island was lost. The island was a favorite of locals for camping and bonfires and clambakes. Manon had not been there since she carried her daughter across its sands.
When Manon arrived at Myra’s front porch, Jason opened the door holding a cup of coffee. They stood still for a long time, just breathing, holding the moment in their eyes. Manon was keenly aware of the warmth emanating from Jason’s body, and how easy it would be to settle hers on his in an embrace and feel her muscle tension release filament by filament. Jason leaned forward the tiniest bit, lost in her as he had always been, then stepped back, ever so slightly, and held the door open wider, gesturing once with his coffee in welcome.
Manon entered Myra’s kitchen, and encountered Leo at the table eating hard-boiled eggs with butter and white toast, Dog catching scraps at his feet.
“Hi, Mrs. Perle!” he said enthusiastically, his mouth full of egg.
“Don’t speak with your mouth full, boy; we only like one kind of seafood here,” Myra ordered.
Leo nodded and mumbled apologies. Manon waved.
“Coffee’s hot. Another cup, Jason?” Myra offered, though Jason had not taken his eyes off of Manon. He nodded, snapped out of his reverie, and pulled out a chair for her.
They sat at the table with Leo and their coffees—Jason’s with cream and sugar, Manon pouring in the cream, Myra’s decaf, black.
“So, lots of mermaid activity as of late, Jason tells me,” said Myra after a sip, after a beat.
Leo dropped his fork, flabbergasted. He stopped chewing so he wouldn’t miss a sound. Jason looked at Manon with wet eyes as if he would break.
“I told Myra you were right. That I didn’t believe you,” said Jason. “I told her that we saw two back in June, off the boat, the night of the Book Burner, when Blade’s boy got beaten up.” Manon nodded, stirring in her cream.
Myra sighed. “Poor babe. Still in a coma. Bless his little heart.” She had been praying every night for Derrick, and Leo.
“Going on seven weeks. My sternman’s sister works at the hospital,” said Jason, almost finished with his second coffee already.
The table was collectively silent, the weight of the tragedy silencing them.
“I saw a mermaid,” offered Leo, hesitantly.
“Yeah? Welcome to the club, kid,” Jason responded.
Leo sat straighter and secretly smiled into his eggs. When he looked up, Jason was again staring at Manon. She cupped her coffee and watched the steam.
Manon remained silent. Leo looked at Myra, expectant. She released an audible sigh.
“I’ve seen more mermaids than I care to remember. Nuisance, mostly, the lot of them. But honestly, it’s the sea witches you really need to look out for. They are one of the real dangers in the ocean. Top-off?” She got up from the table and grabbed the coffee pot. “You two going in town for the festivities?”
Manon shook her head before the question was even finished. “No, not this year. Too many tourists.” Too many memories. “You?”
“Up to Leo here.”
Leo perked up at his name and his options. He absolutely loved the Mermaid Festival. He usually went alone and broke, but it was always an opportunity to get out of a trailer full of his mother’s wasted friends. His hopeful smile at Myra filled her heart.
“We’re going, then. But only two treats—I don’t want you coming back here with a stomachache.”
“Two? Two?” Two treats was double: one treat plus one treat was more treats than Leo had ever gotten any year at the Mermaid Festival. Leo jumped from his chair and hugged Myra then, who was squishy and smelled like Bernie’s soap and chuckled deep in her belly when he leaned in.
“Can we go soon? I want fried dough wicked bad.”
“Ayuh. Make your bed first.”
“Miss Myra, can’t I do it after?” he whined, the words long and forced.
“Leo, don’t let every day be a new adventure in excuses.”
As he always did, Dog went with him.
Jason still had not stopped looking at Manon, her sprinkling of freckles, her long, almost elfish ears, her piano fingers wrapped around the warm mug.
“Come with me,” he pleaded suddenly, not realizing where he wanted to go with her until he finished the question. He would have gone anywhere with her, escaped to anywhere with her where they could run from the world, but today there was only one place he wanted to go with her. “Come with me, to Iledest.”
Manon looked up at him then, and saw the understanding, the present, the light in his eyes. She thought of the sunrise this morning, when once again the Three Bats surprised her, awake, stitching in their rocking chairs, overseeing the harbor. When she asked them why they were up so early, Gladys answered, “Goddamned mermaids.”
“That nice husband of yours coming around today?” asked Beatrix, pulling the thread through to punctuate the words husband and today.
When Manon shook her head, Gladys snorted. “That’s a fucking shame.”
“Ayuh,” concluded Agathe-Alice.
Manon thought about how lonely her bed had been of late, how she kept waking up to cuddle with someone who was not there. She thought about how Jason looked at her when he saw the mermaids the night of the Book Burner, like coming home, like ghost gear returning to the shore.
“Okay,” she offered.
Jason saw the window of opportunity crack open with a sliver of light and immediately took her hand and lifted her to her feet.
On the porch was a picnic basket from Myra Kelley, already packed.
On the boat, Jason watched, enthralled, as Manon came alive, rocking with the water, at peace, the wind in her hair. They sat for a long while in silence, contented by the sharp sea air and the constant, soothing, in utero drone of the engine. When beyond the reach, Manon spoke out loud, to Jason and the wind and the sea:
“Do you know how Myra met Bernie? It was during the war, when she was in high school, during a dance. She was crying with her friends because a boy they had gone to school with had been killed in combat. Bernie gave her a handkerchief. I thought that was beautiful. He wiped her tears away.”
The last time either one of them had been to Iledest they had come with their daughter. The island’s empty beach and tall pines grew in view. They anchored, rowed in on a skiff, and silently walked on the sand, Myra’s picnic basket packed for two between them.
There used to be a child in their arms. She died this day four years ago. They carried their love for her; they carried her memory, carried her ghost.
Where they moored there was a corner of the beach called Pirate’s Trove, where the current and the tides washed up haberdashery and ghost gear, lobstering equipment that had come untethered, lost, homeless: how Jason felt until he brought Manon back onto his boat. Residents of Mackerel Sky looked for treasure there, and Nimue’s cache was still in her bedroom, covered in dust, untouched. They used to trade some of their treasures with the backyard crows.
“I have to feed the crows again,” Manon said to no one in particular. She played with the pearl earring in her pocket.
Manon didn’t think she would ever be able to go back to the island where Nimue ate her last meal, but returning was less jarring than she thought it would be; the memories and the pain were more akin to the buzzing of a mosquito than the wasp nest she feared. It wasn’t the place she dreaded, it was the loss that happened there, and the loss had already happened. There was nothing left to be taken.
This time as they walked the beach, she felt Jason steady beside her, like a rock she could break upon, over and over.
He took her hand, and her fingers melted into his.
She and Jason shared lunch on a blanket while the clouds grew heavy. They hadn’t expected rain, but the thunderstorm rolled in heedless of their plans and set Jason to seeking shelter for them in Iledest’s woods. He found refuge under some tall firs, a rock outcropping, and their blanket. When he returned to Manon, she was standing in the pouring rain while the waves rioted around her.
He took her hand and she turned to him and saw him again, her lighthouse in the storm.
They kissed in the wind and the rain, their embrace as wild as the weather.
Under the blanket on the soft wet forest floor they found each other, and filled themselves with each other, and making love under their makeshift lean-to felt like coming home. Although their house would always be haunted, it was theirs.