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Death is neither fair nor impartial. Death is, in fact, something of a bitch. Grelle should know.
Drowning isn’t exactly a fun way to go, but then, nothing really is. The ones who hold on the longest—trying to get back to the surface, trying to get a breath, trying to stay alive—are the ones who make it hardest on themselves. The ones that inhale a lot of water right away, or realize there’s no hope and give up, they just feel calm. A lot of people hit their heads on the way down and are unconscious before they’ve even realized they have no chance, which is probably the best way to do it. Grelle’s carried a lot of drowning victims quite peacefully to the bottom of the sea.
It gets boring, if she’s being honest.
Three hundred years, the ancient beast at the bottom of the sea had said. Three hundred years of loneliness in the ocean, collecting the souls of everyone who hadn’t drowned on purpose. If she does that for three hundred years, she gets a second chance. If not—well, they weren’t clear on the if not. Only that she was supposed to want the second chance at sunlight and living.
Grelle decided quite a while ago that the ancient beast of the sea can take its second chances and shove them up its ass.
They aren’t supposed to talk, the merfolk, aren’t supposed to mingle or create a life down here. But Grelle’s tail is such a vivid red, with hair to match, and while seashell bras, it turns out, are neither practical nor comfortable even if they have no actual breasts to support, she can still scavenge the bodies for jewelry and make herself the most beautiful thing under the sea. Some of the merfolk spend all their days staring wistfully upwards, eyes locked on a world they cannot reach. Grelle leaves them to it; it’s their loss.
But at least some of them seem to notice there are other things to do than pine for the sky.
The serious merman with the black tail and the permanent frown keeps looking at her, she’s sure of it. Even if it’s just because she keeps flitting around him, clearly ignoring her supposed job. Even if it’s just a flicker in the corner of his eye. Even if it’s just to send her pointed glares.
“I’m Grelle,” she says, on a day when sunlight filters through the water in summertime brilliance. “What’s your name?”
“Stop pestering me,” he says. “We aren’t supposed to talk.”
Two sentences, she thinks, when one would have done.
He watches her, she’s certain. Watches her float up to coral reefs and chase writhing, colorful schools of fish, watches her knock on the bottoms of boats and speed away before the humans can spot her. Watches her laugh. Watches her flirt with the hot sailors and tease the new mers. Watches her grin at the mess of a particularly bloody shipwreck.
“Come on,” she wheedles, brushing aside sinking cannonballs and mangled limbs. He looks very pointedly away from her. “I told you my name. It’s only fair you tell me yours as well. Not that I object to thinking of you as ‘that tall, dark, and handsome stranger,’ but it gets cumbersome, you know?” She curls around him in the water, closing the distance until bubbles pop between them, fizzy on her skin. “It’s just a name. Doesn’t even have to be your real one. I mean, I threw the one my parents gave me out years ago. Just give me something to call you.”
“I told you that we aren’t supposed to talk,” he snaps, shouldering out of her grip. “Don’t you have your own work to do? I’m busy.”
“Well, if you’re busy.” She sighs dramatically, flipping herself over, scanning for people tangled in the still-intact hull of the flooded ship. “I’ll find you later, then.” She darts off.
“Don’t come looking for me! Grelle, did you hear me? I said leave me alone!”
Not a chance, she thinks, not when you remembered my name.
She watches him back. His fastidious work. The precise movement of his tail. His serious attention to his charges.
The way he never, ever, not once, ever looks at the surface.
The way his eyes flick to her with a stifled curiosity instead.
“If I tell you my name, will you stop following me?”
The question surprises her. It’s the first time he’s ever initiated conversation with her. He asks it on the edge of a chasm, with the bottomless black of water too deep for sunlight to reach below them and the insistent pull of shipwrecks and work to be done both north and south of them. A few other scattered mermaids are streaming away from the same hurricane-sunk ships that they’ve just finished clearing, turning left or right, working to kill three hundred years of time. She leans back in the water, examining him.
“Maybe,” she says. “After all, once I have your name, it’ll be much easier to call you. I’ll only have to follow you if you don’t answer.”
“Tch.” The mer clenches his jaw. “What would make you leave me alone, then?”
“Not tellingggggg,” she sing-songs, putting a playful finger to her lips. “How about this: if you tell me your name, I’ll leave you alone for a whole month.”
His eyes slide sideways to her. “A month?”
“A whole, entire, lonely month,” she sighs. “But they do say absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
His eyes move back to the abyss. He’s silent for so long that she thinks he’s gone back to stonewalling her. Just as she’s about to give up and cave to the increasingly strong fish hook tug in her guts pulling her towards another shipwreck, he speaks again.
“Two.”
“Sorry?”
“I tell you my name, I get peace and quiet for two months.” He lifts his head and narrows his eyes at her. “If I see you before then I’ll steal a harpoon and pin you to the ocean floor with it.”
“Ooh, scary scary!” Grelle has to curl her tail up beneath herself to get her reaction under control. She leans into the new position, cupping her face in her hands and floating toward the mer like she’s lying on her stomach on her bed listening to school gossip. “Alright, two months. You won’t see a single red hair off my head. So? What is it then?”
He studies her for another moment, and then moves his eyes back to the ocean before he answers. “William. My name is William.”
“William!” Grelle flips herself over in the water, delighted, ending floating above the black of the abyss. She blows him a kiss. “I’ll see you in two months, Will,” she says, and takes off before he has to chase her off. They can do that later. For now, she’ll keep her word, leave him alone, and let him miss her.
Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not for the first hundred years. But she’s going to make him follow her one day, away from this bullshit contract they never signed up for, away from nebulous second chances for a life both of them lost faith in anyway.
And then? Who cares, Grelle thinks.
They have the whole ocean to explore.