Part 11 (2/2)

Hanging from the walls of the shed were dozens of rusty fish axes and harpoons, each covered with fish guts and algae and filth. Covered, that is, save their edges. Those shone sharp and clean.

”h.e.l.lo there!”

Jill turned around to see the red-bearded man sitting on a stack of peat bricks against the wall of the house, mending a fis.h.i.+ng net. ”Why, look who it is!” he said, and his face lit up.

”h.e.l.lo,” said Jill. ”I hope I'm not disturbing you . . .”

”Why no! I love some comp'ny while I tend me net. Sit!” he said, and gestured with his foot at an upturned bucket, still wet with the innards of gutted fish. Jill looked at it and remained standing.

”Was it you that lost your daughter to the sea?” Jill asked, even though she knew the answer.

The man's wide smile faded. He looked at Jill and his eyes were hollow. ”Aye,” he said. ”'Twas.”

Jill looked down. ”I'm sorry,” she said.

He nodded and sighed.

Jill looked back up, straight into the man's eyes, with a gaze sharper than a fish knife. ”Are you trying to catch the mermaid?” she asked. Her mouth was set and her face was hard.

The man looked at her funny. ”La.s.s,” he said at last, ”no man can cast such a net as can catch a mermaid.”

Jill did not let him out of her gaze. He looked back down at his work on the net. ”This poor rope and twine can no more catch a mermaid than you can catch the light o' the moon,” he said. He began mending again. After a moment, Jill again said she was sorry for his loss, and started back toward the village. But after a dozen steps she glanced over her shoulder. The man was watching her darkly, keenly, from under his heavy brows. She hurried up the hill.

That night, Jill waited impatiently for Jack to fall asleep, and then, as soon as the mermaid's song began, she hurried down the steps and out the door of the tavern. As she slipped out into the night, she kept an eye on the little hut by the sea. Its door was tightly shut against the wind and the spray. As she made her way down to the rocks, though, following the sound of the mermaid's song, she thought she saw the door open just a crack. She stopped. She looked closer. Yes. The door to the bearded man's house was now standing ever so slightly ajar. Jill kept walking.

When she got to the little harbor, she walked on past it, farther out onto the rocks. The waves crashed around her feet as she climbed the slippery, craterous black crags out over the sea. At last she found a good footing.

”I didn't want him to see where I meet you,” Jill whispered to the wind. ”He's watching me right now.”

As if in answer, the mermaid sang, Never cry no more again, and her song caught on the word never. The mermaid held it long and low and so sad, and then let it fall and gutter like waves in a rocky shoal. The song ended. She did not pick it up again. Carefully, Jill walked back over the slick rocks, and then up the path and into the tavern. She closed the door behind her. She waited. Ten minutes later, she opened the door just a crack and peeked out. The bearded man's door was tightly shut.

Jack was sitting up when Jill awoke the next morning. ”Hi!” he said. ”I feel a lot better. I think I can help you with your work today.”

Jill's hands instantly became clammy. She sat up and stared at him.

Then, as if deciding something, she got out of bed and came to his side. ”Let me feel your head.” The frog crawled out of the blankets and yawned sleepily. She put her hand on Jack's forehead. Compared to her clammy, sweating hands, Jack's forehead was smooth and dry and cool. ”Take one more day,” Jill said firmly. ”One more day, and then you can come downstairs and help me.”

”At least let me sit down there-” Jack began.

”No,” said Jill, and her voice was sharp when she said it.

”I don't think sitting downstairs would be bad for Jack,” the frog replied, surprised by her abruptness.

Jill thought for a moment. Then she said, ”Not for Jack, no. But I don't think the innkeeper would like him sitting in tavern, staring at the customers, do you? With a bandage on his head?” And without waiting for a response she got up, left the room, and closed the door behind her. Once in the corridor, she took a deep breath and went downstairs.

The lunch service in the tavern was always quiet, because the fishermen did not return with their boats until midafternoon. As soon as the last patron had left, Jill slipped out the tavern door and hurried down to the hut by the sea. The door was closed and no light came from within. The bearded man would, like the rest of the fishermen, be out on the sea for a couple of hours yet.

Jill went around to the back of the house. There, she tried the door of the shed. It wasn't locked. She slipped inside and closed the door behind her.

Within, she scanned the walls. Rusty instruments of death hung from every hook. She studied the hooked blade for opening a fish's belly, the sideways-bending knife for separating meat from bone, the harpoon points with their barbs that caught and tore the flesh. She found a coil of rope and set to work.

Now, my dear reader, you are probably feeling a little tense right now. If I've told this story well at all, in fact, you should be feeling a tightness in your shoulders, and a lightness in your head, and your breath should be coming a little quicker.

And when I describe Jill hiding in the hut with all the ”instruments of death,” as I think I called them-well, you are probably expecting something horrible and b.l.o.o.d.y to transpire.

Good. At least you're expecting it. That should help a little.

The bearded man came home exhausted and stinking of fish. He walked into his little house and peeled off his great oilskin coat and changed his heavy boots for some lighter shoes. Then, sighing from the day's work, he went out back and trudged heavily to his toolshed.

He pulled the door open and stepped inside-and found himself tumbling to the floor. His great frame crashed into the back wall, sending knives and knots and awls clattering down upon him. He looked back at the door. There was a rope tied tightly across the frame. He looked up.

Jill stood above him. Her face was furious and black. Her eyes were wide. Her nostrils flared. Her lips were pulled back around her teeth. Above her head hovered the largest, sharpest fish ax the man possessed.

”Leave the mermaid alone!” Jill bellowed.

And she brought the blade down as hard and as fast as she could. The man raised his arm to protect himself. The rusty blade hit his flesh with a thwack and buried itself in his bone. The man howled. Jill tried to pull the ax out, but it seemed to have become lodged there. Jill turned and grabbed the long, curving knife from the wall. She raised it and brought it down-but before it could enter the man's flesh, she was flung back by a kick to the chest. She tumbled over the rope and out into the daylight.

The man lay amid the fallen tools in the tiny shed, blood pouring from his arm onto the ground. He was staring at Jill.

”You leave her alone!” Jill snarled again, and then she ran.

Jill pa.s.sed the tavern so quickly she did not see Jack looking out the window, watching her run up the road. Not that seeing him would have stopped her now. She kept going, up, up into the steep and misty hills. The wet gra.s.s was like a sponge beneath her feet. She could smell the peat smoke rising from the fires in the houses of the village. It was a sweet, musty smell. She pa.s.sed a flock of sheep, lying on the green wet hillside. They bleated at her.

At the edge of the little valley behind the first hill, there stood a small sheepfold-just a wooden structure with three walls and a roof, where the sheep could gather if they wanted to get out of the rain. Jill made her way to that. She sat down in it. She looked at herself. Her clothing was splattered with the man's blood.

She was sorry she hadn't killed him, but she thought that maybe, lying there, he might just bleed to death on his own. She thought of the beautiful mermaid-how perfect she was. And how she loved Jill. She loved her, Jill knew it. And to think that there had been six more of them, and that the bearded man had killed them all. It made her sick. And then, to think of his little daughter, who had died from grief because of him. Oh, what he had done to his little daughter.

Perhaps, she thought, she would return to his hut that night and be sure the job was done.

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