The Merboy Ashore

1. Curiosity

I was always a super curious merboy.  Curiosity was something the grownup merfolk feared.  I would want to know, if we can eat food and breathe air, why don't we explore up there?  Their answer was always the same.  We get oxygen and minerals through our skin and nourishment from what grows on the sea floor.  Up there we are cripples.  Who in their right mind would want to go up there?

Most of them thought I was crazy anyhow, so why not try it.  One morning when the sea was calm and the sun bright I swam for the beach and crawled up onto it. I found the truth of what they said, for my lower body, so good for propelling me through the water, was useless ashore. I had to use my strong arms and shoulders, well developed from constant swimming, to drag it behind me.  But as my lungs filled with air I felt a deep sense of kinship with the air-breathing ancestors recounted in the ancient sagas.

My first experience ashore was this black blob on the sand that seemed to follow me as I crawled along the shoreline.  As I puzzled over that I failed to notice a bunch of humans, young ones like me, come over the dune onto the otherwise empty beach.  Suddenly I was surrounded by a lot of chatter in human talk that I could not understand, for I spoke only sea-talk, whistles and clicks and groans and such that we picked up from the whales and other like creatures.  

The biggest of the humans (not much bigger than any of the rest of them) picked me up and headed back to the dune, followed by the rest of those with him.  I didn't know whether to be terrified, or delighted that I was going to see more of the up-there world than I ever could on my own, for as the merfolk said, we are indeed cripples ashore.  The boy handled me ever so gently and spoke to me softly in human talk.  He made me feel safe and secure.

As we crossed the dune the four other young humans ran around us down a path that led to a structure I later learned was called a "house" or "home."  The human that carried me continued walking gently, speaking softly all the while.  The reassurance was broken a moment later when a human I came to learn was the mother of all five of the young humans burst out of the door of the house, hollering at the boy who was carrying me.  I nearly jumped out of his arms.  

The boy spoke softly to the big human and she soon calmed down, as did I.  When I had more or less mastered human talk I was told that the big human had given birth to the five young ones and that the human custom was for those from the same mother was to dwell with her and her mate until they were ready to have offspring of their own.  Very different from merfolk.  We never know who begat us because we reproduce like fish.  The female lets out eggs by the hundred and the male swims over them, spraying something that makes them develop.  Most of them are eaten by other sea creatures but there are always some that live to grow into merfolk, like I did.

I had heard chilling tales of merfolk caught up in nets by humans.  It was said that the humans ate the fish the nets caught by the hundreds.  Merfolk don't eat fish, for we are kin.  As the gentle young human brought me inside, surrounded by his mother and his excited siblings, I had to wonder if they were planning to eat me.  I began squirming, wanting to get out of the boy's arms and crawl back to the sea.  A sharp word from the boy quieted everyone down.  Once again he looked into my eyes and spoke softly, gently.  From the large room I came to know as the kitchen he carried me down a passage to a room near the end of it and shut the door in the face of his siblings.