Loaves and Fishes

“Oh! There is someone trapped under the end of the dock,” said Heddi.

Anna peered down through the mist left from the great storm at the wreck of their fishing pier below and caught a flash of shiny black hair. She was sure a small face was looking up at her within those locks. Whoever it was was pinned beneath the heavy frame of the pier.

Heddi was already running down the long set of stone stairs that led down into the cove. Anna grabbed their parasols and followed her eight-year-old’s bobbing blond head down the stairs. It was all she could do.

The storm had made quite a wreck of the long wooden dock that went out into the cove below their lighthouse. Seaweed was heaped everywhere, and their fishing pier was utterly collapsed into the shallows.

No time for caution, Anna had to catch up with Heddi before the girl got in trouble or worse. Anna braided her long dark hair back as best she could as she ran. It would not do to have it in her face as she navigated the stairs.

Heddi was teetering down the slanting wreck of the pier.

“Heddi! Stop! You can’t swim!”

The little girl stopped and shouted back, “Quick, bring the parasols!” And then, infuriatingly, continued to slide down the wreck of the dock.

Anna got there a minute later and caught her breath. The woman trapped under the collapsed frame had a fish tail, and the wood had pinned it to the sand.

“Quick, Mom! The sun is rising and the tide is leaving!” pleaded Heddi.

The mermaid was hissing at them and baring her teeth.

“Don’t worry!” Heddi shouted at her. “We will help you!”

She snatched the umbrella out of her mother’s hand and tried to hand it down to the mermaid, who, as far as Anna could tell, thought that this was not a good development.

The fish woman waved her free hand, trying to bat the parasol away.

Heddi opened it and placed its shade on the mermaid’s face.

The woman gave a little “Oh!” That sounded almost human to Anna. She looked at Heddi and then stared at Anna.

Anna nodded.

The mermaid reached up and accepted the parasol from Heddi.

“See, I told you,” Heddi said to her.

Anna noted that the land under the pier was now clearly visible through the lapping waves of receding water.

“Heddi, go get the wood bucket from the end of the dock and hand it down to her. Then I want you to stay where you are now and do not come down to the water.”

Anna jumped down and waded into the knee-deep water around the wreckage to the mermaid. She regarded Anna with hostile green eyes beneath a double pair of eyelids and bared a set of sharp, pointy teeth. Webbed gills on the woman’s neck seemed to be straining open and shut as she tried to breathe.

“Easy, Miss. Do you speak English?”

This was answered with a hiss.

For an instant, her trapped tail seemed to blur and divide, but the change failed at the injured spot. A moment later, her tail snapped back into a single finned form. The woman’s hands were webbed and contained a sharp set of retractable claws.

Anna noted that she would need to stay out of their reach. She pointed at the heavy frame and made an upward gesture with her arms.

Then she put a shoulder into the frame and pushed upward with her whole weight. The wood strained, but mostly Anna sank into the sand.

As she unsuccessfully struggled to get one foot free, she almost fell backward into the water.

“Now we are both stuck,” she said to the mermaid.

Heddi was back with the bucket.

She waded out and began dumping water on the top half of the fish lady.

Anna was almost certain she heard the woman laugh as the little girl doused her.

Heddi had no fear of the woman, who apparently had no wish to harm the little girl.

Anna struggled with the mud and only seemed to sink deeper.

“You must sit,” came a heavily accented voice that was both high and low at the same time.

Anna looked at the woman and saw the hostility had thawed.

She sat back in the water with a little scream as its cold soaked into the many layers of clothes she was wearing. Now that her weight was off her feet, she found that she could pull them up, but at the cost of going all the way back under the water.

When she finally struggled up to her feet, both Heddi and the mermaid were gaping at her.

“Momma, you look like a mud monster!”

Anna brushed the mud and sand off as best she could. Again she thought the mermaid laughed.

“You deal better with your world than I can,” she answered. The mermaid said nothing.

“Heddi, please go get that board up there.”

As Heddi obeyed, Anna said, “I’m going to try to use it to lever the dock off you. Be ready to swim out.”

The mermaid nodded.

Anna wedged the board under the frame, letting the sand carry it gradually under. She heard someone splashing and moving behind her, so she said, “Heddi, come help me.”

When she pushed down on the lever, she was surprised at how easily the wood dock frame lifted. In fact, it kept going up after she had stopped pressing.

The mermaid wriggled out.

Anna turned to find that her lifting partner was what she took at first to be a merman. He had the same webbed, clawed hands, but he also had legs. Anna whipped back around and tried to run, but the levering had left her sunk into the sand. Her attempt at forward motion left her falling face-first into the water. A webbed hand steadied her. She looked back, this time careful to keep her eyes on the man’s face. He only had one set of eyelids and no gills.

“Thank you for saving Etesiarum,” he said in the strangely resonant, thickly accented voice of his people.

Anna hesitated, trying to think of how to answer.

“You are my neighbors,” she said finally.

The man laughed.

“I am Ventus, and who might you be?”

“I am Anna, and that is Heddi.”

Heddi was back up on the dock, gaping at them.

“Lean back, Anna,” he said, holding out his arms.

Anna most certainly was not going to do that!

He simply shrugged and hauled her straight up out of the mud as if he was lifting a small child.

“See you again, neighbors,” he said, and then he dove into what water was left and swam off.

Anna thought she saw a fish tail retreating into the waves.