Chapter 1
“Watch that line!”
Captain Gruff’s voice boomed over the Shanghai-La’s intercom, his roaring tone echoing off the steel structure of the ship. The reason for the Captain’s interruption was because the tie-line attached the the crabbing pots had become entangled in the iced-over block, turning the swaying steel into eight-hundred pound wrecking balls. Max had seen a man get crushed by a pot before; squeezed him like a lemon, leaving juice all over the deck.
The Captain’s order was aimed mostly at Max; after all, he was the greenhorn. Big Mose and Joe continued in their sorting of the king crab on the table while Old Hoss (who lost a finger from a loose pot, cut through it just like a knife through warm butter) manned the hydraulic controls. Captain Gruff was especially hard on lanky, timid Max. Every mistake he made was followed by a rampage that even the seagulls heard.
Max groped at the tie-line and untangled the mess just in time to see their last pot in a hundred-pot string drop over the side. The eighteen-hour shift was coming to a merciful close, and Max’s mind drifted to a warm pot of coffee and a four-hour rest before the next string. Max's sweaty patch of ginger-red hair was soaked through with sweat and seawater. His legs were numb. His hands felt heavy like concrete; even his hair hurt. The intercom crackled again.
“Alright, boys, come on in out’ the cold!”
Old Hoss moved quite fast for being sixty, and Big Mose and Joe pushed the last bit of meat in the hold before ambling into the crew’s quarters.
“Max, git that dammed table batten’d down before comin' inside!”
A low groan escaped Max’s tired lips. The warmth of coffee and rest would have to wait. With eyelids of cement, Max half-stumbled over to the crab table. Waves were spitting their mist over the bow, drizzling Max with cold seawater. The rocking motion of the Shanghai-La kept Max fighting for balance, and after a particularly harsh wave Max found himself stumbling backward; dangerously close to the side of the boat. He quickly grabbed hold of the block, slipping on his back.
That was close.
Max turned his head and looked out over the cresting waves. Death was simply a matter of losing one’s balance.
As Max started to right himself a rogue wave washed over the side, engulfing Max in a large, watery coat. The great wave caught Max and flung him over the side and into the deathly-cold water. He tried to manage a scream but was met with a mouthful of salty brine. He only had minutes now.
Max’s only hope was that the Captain had spotted the man overboard from the wheelhouse. As he picked his head up he listened for the sirens on the boat; none came. With horror in his eyes, he saw the Shanghai-La motor past. His fate was sealed.
The waves covered him with their misty death; his aching legs were numb and his concrete arms ceased to respond to his orders. Max weighed his options; death from the cold, or drown. After a brief minute of terrible thought, he decided to let himself sink.
The water felt warmer as he submerged his head under the waves. He closed his eyes momentarily. An image of his parents shot through his mind. He could see them clearly for a fleeting minute; they then faded away. He opened his eyes, ready for the icy hand of death to take him to the other place.
There, staring back at him, was a mermaid.
A mermaid? There’s no other way to say it.
Max tried to scream, but seawater filled his mouth, and everything went black.
*******
Max’s eyes focused. His throat burned from swallowing seawater and his head pounded worse than the waves around the harbor’s rocky coast. At that moment he wished he was back at the harbor, hoisting glasses of dark ale at the Crow’s Nest and talking shop with the old-timers. Instead, he was staring face-to-face with a mermaid.
“You might be feeling quite funny,” said the mermaid in near-perfect English. The deep voice indicated the creature was more of a mer-man; the face was exactly that of a man except for its slimy blue skin and golden yellow eyes. The muscular torso formed down into a large, scaly flipper. Max rubbed his temple.
“Funny… is not quite the word I’d use. Where the Sam-hell am I?” Max asked, looking around. It appeared he was floating in a huge air bubble that stretched far above his head. On either side was the darkness of the deep ocean, with hundreds of pairs of glowing, yellow eyes following his every move. It was if he was on the other side of the aquarium glass.
“You’re many miles away from the nearest land-town, and hundreds of miles away from normal.” The mer-man chuckled as he plucked a dead, raw fish from the ocean and plopped it inside the bubble at Max’s feet. Max looked at the raw fish before him with a quizzical expression.
“Lunch,” said the mer-man, “isn’t that what you land-folk eat?”
“If I was from Japan, maybe.”
“Where are you from?”
“Lubbock, Texas.”
“This Tex-ess, do they not eat fish?”
“It’s more of a beef country.”
“What’s beef?”
Max’s pounding head and queasy stomach got the better of him, and be began to vomit; the seawater tasted worse coming up than going down. The merman moved back, sensing something wrong; only when Max stopped did the creature speak bluntly.
“We’ve had many problems down here,” the merman said, “the whole seafloor has been ravaged by these king crabs. They eat all the seaweed and destroy the areas they crawl over. We need your help.”
“Why do you need my help?”
“Because,” the merman’s tone became serious, “you know how to hunt them.” Max lifted his finger in protest, but couldn’t find the words. He realized that he did know how to catch and essentially hunt crab, even if he was a “dammed greenhorn.” Max never thought that besides man, king crab had enemies below the surface.
“We’ve been watching you for a while now,” continued the merman, “your ships above have been fighting and catching our enemies for some time. What do you do with them when they go into those steel traps you put out?”
“We, uh, process them and eat them.”
“Eat them? Why would you want to eat those filthy things?” The disgusted look on the merman’s face spoke loads for how the sea creatures thought of their enemies. Max couldn’t help but laugh.
“Well, with some warm butter, they ain’t bad.”
A loud boom from a far-off horn interrupted the two; the merman’s yellow eyes shot up in anticipation. Max looked around the bubble to see the hundreds of glowing eyes disappear off into the darkness.
“What’s wrong?” Max asked. The merman’s gaze drifted above to an approaching red glow that seemed to emanate from the top of the large bubble-room. As the light grew closer, Max could see the outline of about twenty mermaids swimming around a large man holding a long, gold trident.
“Don’t tell me that’s Poseidon!” Max exclaimed.
“You have met our King?” The merman’s surprised expression was only matched by Max’s. This has to be some sort of dream. The twenty mermaids converged around the bubble as Poseidon entered the translucent sphere. The merman bowed graciously and swam to an observing distance.
Poseidon’s massive body was everything Max read about in the Greek mythology books back at his Texas high school. His head was adorned with long flowing white hair and a large grey beard; his tree-trunk chest bulged out with each heaving breath, as Poseidon apparently could breathe both under and above water. The gold trident he held in his hands could skewer a thousand shrimp; it was at least the length of the Shangri-La itself.
“I am Poseidon, King of the Ocean and Ruler of all the Merfolk,” his grand voice echoed though the room, making the bubble’s sides flutter with each word. “What are you called, land-man?”
“Uh, my name is Max… from, uh, Texas.”
“Max from Tex-ess, we need your help. The king crabs have taken over the ocean floor and have ravaged our lands. You land-folk have declared war on them for years now. You have been hunting them on the surface and taking them away from our realm. What do you do with them?”
“Well we, um, eat them.” Max said.
“Eat them?” Poseidon’s appalled look made Max fidget. “Well, that does not matter what you land-folk do with our enemies, as long as we are on the same side. We need to ally our two species and defeat these king crab.”
Poseidon’s speech caused the hundreds of merfolk around the bubble to swish their tails in approval. Max could only float there in awe at the unbelievable sight he was seeing. I’m standing in front of Poseidon, King of the Ocean, five miles under the sea… and he wants my help to declare war on king crab.
“Deliver the message of war to your own kind, land-man,” said Poseidon, “and we will conquer these deviants and drive them from the sea!” The merfolk wailed with delight. The wavering bubble looked like it would pop any second, sending rushing water in to drown Max. The bubble held, but Lord knows how. Poseidon faced the thousands of merfolk and proclaimed with a thunderous voice-
“My children! My people! Let us bring this land-man back to his world, so that he can spread the word of the alliance between our two species. We will prevail against our common foe, and our great worlds will live in harmony!”
With a great swish of his trident, Poseidon broke the mighty bubble, sending the oncoming water to rush and swirl around Max. In an instant the water engulfed his body, sending him flailing around. He felt the touch of a thousand oily hands grasp and lift his body until he blacked out, and darkness once again fell upon him.
******
“He’s comin’ to!”
Max slowly opened his eyes, expecting to see angels and white, fluffy clouds. To his surprise, he saw Big Mose staring back at him.
“Captain, the kid’s waking up!” Max heard the shuffling of feet above him. He was lying on the sleeping bench in the crew’s quarters of the Shangri-La, wrapped up in a fire blanket. The stale smell of cigarettes and familiar odor of coffee swam up Max’s nostrils. He sat up with a shudder; Big Mose patted him on the back.
“We though we lost ya, kid,” said Big Mose, “it’s a good thing we happened by that ice-pack. You was plum knocked out cold on top o’ the ice.” Footsteps came bounding down the deck stairs.
“Stupid dammed greenhorn… falling off the boat.” Captain Gruff’s welcoming tone made Max feel right at home. Old Hoss and Joe followed behind, their deck slickers wet from the sea mist. They all crowded around Max.
“What did ya do? Go for a swim?” Joe joked.
“It’s a miracle we found you. We was ’bout to head inland, and there you was, just laying there, smack-dab in the middle of the pack-ice! Darndest thing I ever saw on the seas…” Old Hoss grabbed a cup of coffee and shoved it into Max’s hand. Max took a long sip.
“Alright, cut the mushy stuff. We got crabbin’ to do!” Captain Gruff’s order was about as friendly as he could get. The men gave Max a hearty back-pat and then proceeded to the deck; their bread and pay awaited them in the water. Max slipped out of the blanket to get into his deck slickers. Back to work.
On the topside the ship rolled with the waves. Max’s sea-legs still needed work as he stumbled from the bait-chopper to the pots. The redundancy of the job continued. Max shifted to robot mode as he hooked the bait jars onto the pots and watched them fall over the side. When he had a minute to himself he tried to remember his strange journey in the water; only fleeting images raced past his mind. He could not think straight and wrote the bizarre encounter off as a near-death dream. As the last crab pot slide off into the ocean, Max looked into the deep green nothingness.
The shift ended and the men hustled back into the warm confine of the Shangri-La’s steel belly. The tired men ate a quick, heavy meal before succumbing to the soft, gentle call of sleep.
It was near four in the morning when Max awoke. His thought swam about his head and stung him like a jellyfish; he could not sleep. He swung his legs over the bunk and ambled into the kitchen area to put on a pot of coffee. Sitting on the sleep bench, Max tried to recall his underwater adventure. Had it really happened?
“Can’t sleep, eh?” Old Hoss was leaning against the pantry, startling Max. Max sighed and sipped his coffee.
“Not at all.”
“Nearly dyin’ will do that to you. It’ll keep you up nights, boy.” Old Hoss grabbed a cup and sat down on the bench across from Max.
“It isn’t that. It was just….strange.” Max said.
“Dyin’ is strange.”
“No, not dying…. something else.” Max couldn’t explain what happened without sounding foolish. It occurred to him just how ridiculous it would be to tell about how a mermaid brought him to King Poseidon, and how the Ruler of the Ocean wanted him to declare war on crabs. Old Hoss wouldn’t understand that, let alone Captain Gruff.
“I guess I’m just seeing things, that’s all.” Max said.
“Well,” said Old Hoss, “you may not be as crazy as you think you are.” Max furrowed his brow and looked at the old man standing before him; he then gasped as Old Hoss smiled.
Staring back at Max were two golden, yellow eyes.
