Amanda Adams - A Mermaids Tale: A Personal Search for Love and Lore

A Mermaids Tale

A PersonalSearch
for Love and Lore

AMANDA ADAMS

A Mermaids Tale

GREYSTONE BOOKS
D&M Publishers Inc.
Vancouver/Toronto/Berkeley

Text copyright 2006 by Amanda Adams
Photographs copyright 2006 by photographers credited
First paperback edition 2009
First ebook edition 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For a copyright license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Greystone Books
An imprint of D&M Publishers Inc.
2323 Quebec Street, Suite 201
Vancouver BC Canada V5T 4S7
www.greystonebooks.com

Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada
ISBN 978-1-55365-117-8 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-55365-377-6 (paper)
SBN 978-1-926812-41-0 (ebook)

Editing by Nancy Flight
Copy editing by Mary Schendlinger
Cover design by Jessica Sullivan and Naomi MacDougall
Cover photograph by Alex Farnum
Excerpt in Chapter 2 of Book 12: The Cattle of the Sun is from
The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles 1996 by Robert Fagles.
Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Distributed in the U.S. by Publishers Group West

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, the Province of British Columbia through the Book Publishing Tax Credit, and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.

For Dan
And in memory of Zeki,
my little crazy-making siren

Contents

THE MERMAID
I make my way as a mermaid,
as they wrap themselves in raincoats and plunge into the shower,
I always go out in my golden scales on the shore.
They will say: heres the moonlit sea splash-flashing under my tail
The thousand-eyed will see its likeness in me.
City, city you are old and you barely fill the eye
how the air congeals, like a bird and a lion
and how it strips scales from off my scaly skin,
how brave and tender I stand in the light of the world.
And scales float onto a merchant vessel from Thebes.
The wind is long and comely, slow in its flight.
They drift like snowflakes, like tea leaves my stiff attire.
They will say: Look the sea sparkles and gulls hang in the air.
TATIANA SHCHERBINA

Celadon
SEAS

Down where the mermaids
Pluck and play
On their twangling harps
In a sea-green day...
WALTER DE LA MARE, OFF THE GROUND

C rimson-tailed mermaid in a celadon seathis is how I see her. Blood-red scales that glint in clear green water. Long hair that trails past scaled hips, unfurling in waves of dark brown and black, hair that swims alongside and against the mermaid as a second living thing.

Skin burnished to a shine by the gritty texture of the sea. The salt has swirled around her shoulders for so long that they gleam like porcelain, illuminating her lissome form when seen from a distance, when spied from the boats helm, or, when things are going badly, from beneath it. In some oceans, her shoulders are the color of chocolate, warmed by tones of orchid purple and blushed gold; in other places, her skin glows like milky carnelian stones lit from within by flame.

One sweep of her tail carries her through those thick clumps of current where the frigid northern water has thrown its fist into blankets of southern warm. The mermaid arches her back, unrestrained by a stiff spine, and raising her arms above her head, she cuts through the tangled tide like a diver through air.

Her necklace jangles like giant wind chimes when she flips over. Above the reverberating bass tones of whale mothers and the calls of sea lions, the metallic clanking of crucifix and knife, metal soup cans against crooked nails, spits a cacophony of noise into the muffled sea. Strung around her long neck is a heavy collection of offerings and bribes, gifts and garbage, all got from a centurys worth of sailors. A chrome-spark necklace made of twisted bubble-gum wrappers, steel bells, broken mirrors, rosary beads, butter knives, latches, one rusty compass, and a slew of fish hooks in different shapes and sizes all hung on hand-coiled rope.

Tied into her hair are her favorite things: a small hand mirror with gilded edges and mother-of-pearl inlay; a dozen or so fat pearls, big as gumballs; a smooth piece of ivory carved into the shape of a bear and another carved into the silhouette of a gull; a pair of lacquered chopsticks, and a bottle opener in the shape of a plump tuna with a laughing mouth and the words Fat Fish 1988 inscribed upon it. This item she picked up from an exceptionally attractive fellow paddling all alone in a kayak in foul weather. He never made it home.

This mantels worth of trophies draped across the mermaids chest were not the only things she had snagged. When sailors threw their nearly finished cigarettes and cigars overboard, she sometimes caught them and smoked in the sea. Standing upright on her tail, she would puff on damp tobacco, prompting stories of deep-sea chimneys, fire-breathing whales, and lost volcanoes for years to come. Wine and brandy in bottles still corked were another favorite; they brought heat to her chest and new songsshe thought her very best songsto her lips.

This crimson-tailed mermaid had spent her day swimming around her favorite haunts: frothy coastlines that swept up towards pretty town churches and green pastures, harbors, and comfy coves with views of a village and the comings and goings of all the people in it. When she could, she waved to onlookers while bobbing seductively in the sea until the women screamed and the men ran across the sand, soaking their pant legs with sea foam. She mocked the sound of broken carriage wheels with her high-pitched, dolphinlike squeal, making crabby drivers pull over and kneel to the ground, cursing as they inspected the spokes of their wooden wheels in search of damage. General mischief making was the mermaids delight. She charmed young girls to the waters edge with simple melodies, and when they came to heralways one by one, hesitantlyshe brushed her long hair before them, singing to the sky, and flapped her tail with bravado, making the allure of mermaidenry impossible to resist.