Throwback Thursday: ‘Mermaid Hunt’ by Holly Walrath

When hunting mermaids, it’s best to keep your rudder close and your first mate closer. That’s why Captain Marda has these brief night-time trysts with Barth. Barth lays his stubble against the smooth white of the place under her collarbone and she keeps the map open on the communicator. He whispers “fins like gold” and “seaweed hair” to himself, into her thighs, and she watches the dot of their sub blink across the blue screen. 

During the day she holds the crew like so many round pebbles in her fist, each one slick and wily, insubordinate. Morale is low and she can’t sleep with all of them, so she lets them sleep together. Men and women all intermixed in the metal walls at night, howling. 

But each day Marda gets closer. The sub circles coral reefs off the coasts, where mermaids are said to like the colours of the schools of fishes, and train them to swim around their necks like jewellery or live behind their ears, beneath their long hair. Archipelagos — the sub skirts strands of islands like gemstones spread across blue lagoons and green shoals. Sometimes Mermaids like shallow places, but mostly they like the dark and the beautiful uncharted, abandoned, soulless parts of the undiscovered world. Superficial creatures, they are easily distracted by gild and shine.

The sub comes up for air only once a week. Captain Marda lies in half-naked dishevelment at the helm, her ear always trained for the ping of radar. The sea is blanket smooth and it is unbearably hot. Barth looks fatter sitting in the sun, his eyes squinting at the sea.