Seaside Recollection

by Shauna Checkley

Sabine stared at the results of her ancestry search and clutched the printout like some long-lost treasure map. She arched one eyebrow in surprise and amazement. She muttered to herself: “Britain one generation! Then Puerto Rico the next! Italy then Colombia then Finland then India and Germany then China and back to Britain then off to Spain and on and on! So much for thinking I am a full-blood Irish Canadian!”

Sabine turned each page in confused delight like a child perusing a favourite fairy tale book. Twenty-three generations back, over almost a thousand years, and yet her ancestors showed up somewhere new with nearly each successive generation.

“Hmm,” she mused, “sounds to me like they were traders, seafaring people, possibly pirates. How else would you explain such globe-hopping? Possibly even travelling down the Silk Road, who knows?” Like a tail slapping about, she felt excitement whip through her. Who would have guessed?

It was nearly noon and quiet in the tiny house she was renting. As it had been lightly raining early that morning, a smell of petrichor came through the screen door that was propped open to allow freshness in. She felt the coolness of the kitchen tiles under her bare feet.

Staring at the DNA document, she wondered at the curious legacy. Mercifully, she felt a reprieve from the storm within, that gathering darkness of anxiety and depression that had been swelling as of late. She read eagerly.

While she was sipping her coffee at the Formica kitchen table, the light crept through the soft, butter-yellow curtains. It gave all indication of a pleasant day, even deceptively so.

She marvelled at the document. It had come in the morning mail. She had almost forgotten about it. Having sent away for it months ago and having been waylaid by runaway moods, those affective cycles that ebb and flow like unforgiving tides, she had been driven to distraction. She was a shipwreck and a trainwreck in one.

But here it was. Sabine had ordered it online one drunken, late, night when it had come on sale. At the time it had seemed like a good idea, and perhaps it was, given that it had provided her with a much-needed thrill and diversion.

Yet, she wondered if it wasn’t just a scam. How much can really be gleaned from a swab inside the mouth? Just what? Who knows if that Q-Tip wasn’t cross-contaminated somehow?

Feeling skepticism begin to rise like a sudden squall, she crinkled her nose. Then she frowned. Finally, she pushed the document aside. She sighed. So much for that cheap thrill, or actually a not-so-cheap thrill, she judged remembering the two-hundred-dollar cost. Ouch! Sucks. But whatever.

Finishing the remainder of her coffee in one decisive gulp, Sabine then set the chipped, pink cup aside as well. She wondered what to do next. She thought about returning to bed. But she knew that if she lay down, she would be hard pressed to get up again. She would likely just lie in that comfy shell and stare at the ceiling for the rest of the day. God knows, I’ve had weeks of doing just that! Nah! I gotta get outta here. I ‘ll take a walk along the ocean. It’s better than nothing.

Sabine left quickly. Before she changed her mind, before her moods shifted, while she still had a spark of energy, she slipped her flip-flops on and went out.

Living in British Columbia, the scenic west coast of Canada, she thought it would possibly be the life fix that she needed. Laid off from her job at an oil refinery in Saskatchewan, she believed that the brutal winters there had contributed to her black bouts of depression. She assumed that by relocating to a small place outside of Chilliwack, she would cure her geographical malaise.

The area was very picturesque after all. Flowers. Wild roses grew everywhere, dotting the landscape like precious gems. Surf, sun and sand. Ragged, jagged mountains further inland. The majestic and forbidding Pacific Ocean itself. They didn’t call it beautiful British Columbia for nothing, right?

Yet the demon dogs of depression had trailed her, were steady on her scent. What to do? There just seemed to be no reprieve from the bad times. No job. No life partner. Even her beloved cat Boris had passed away at the ripe old age of seventeen. Now what? There seemed to be fewer and fewer options all the time. She felt claustrophobic in her own life, in her own skin. It seemed like all was darkening and closing in.

Driving the short trip to the Pacific Ocean, she parked her car and got out. The day was bright yet cool. She walked along a trail that took her to the shore. She had walked this very path many times before and, over time, it had become almost routine. She shuffled along. Feeling dispirited and heavy, she walked as if she were in water, slow, heavy, laboured movements, a tortured gait.

She stared at the water, the blue-gray skin that lay all about, that rippled and rolled. The Pacific appeared animated with light skiffs on the surface of the waves. The light created a beautifully deceptive hue, nearly aquamarine. There was someone with a dog in the distance, though they were walking away from her. The shore was as empty as it was long. The only sound was the rhythmic lapping of the waves.

Sabine just stared into the light. She recalled how, the last time she’d been there, she had an urge to just walk into the water and to keep going until she was gone, Ophelia style. “Hah!” she thought: “That’s the way to do it. No drama. Just return to the watery source, lost mother beckoning, calling you, to an undersea grave, that is all I would need to do. They probably would not even find my body. Little fish would get it, the waves would carry it away, I would become part of a marine underworld. Davy Jones’s Locker. That’s all.”

Recalling a line from a Tom Waits tune — The sea didn’t get me today — Sabine began to hum. She could hear his gruff, gravelly voice. Was it normal to be doing this while contemplating suicide? She doubted it. Yet she knew that death was anomalous at best, full of secrets and surprises, with twisted, sideways pleasures. It was an unfathomable beast.

Standing there clad in old, gray sweats and a near vintage hoodie, Sabine looked as forlorn as she was feeling. She was unwashed. Her hair hung in limp strands. She had been unravelling for some time. An onlooker could have even mistaken her for being homeless, derelict.

Glancing over at a nearby pier, her focus shifted. She stared long and hard at it. She thought just as long and hard too. It was painted red and black. It was empty.

Sabine walked over to it. Once more, her gait was heavy, laboured. She walked up the steps and then onto the pier itself. She continued walking until she reached the end. There were several large, flat rocks on a jagged outcropping. Several discarded pop cans lay there as well. Ginger ale.

Should I? Should I just keep going?

Pausing, she stared out at the water. It seemed like the sadly logical thing to do. She took a deep breath.

But then she saw it: a sudden, colourful flash as something leaped out of the water and hung momentarily in the air before it dropped back down.

Startled, Sabine jumped. Then she blinked and looked again. What was that? Some sort of large, fancy-looking fish? I dunno.

She stared straight ahead at the water, straining to try and get another glimpse of this most improbable creature. But then she heard it, as if it were coming from deep inside a shell or possibly the ragged bowels of the ocean, a sonorous song began. It was like a wonder wall of the richest sound imaginable, music of the waves, of the ages. All around her it was as if a million pan pipes were playing, sweetly, seductively, lilting and lyrical. It was a sound she would never forget, so deeply imprinted it became on her consciousness.

“Yoo-hoo, my dear!” a voice rang out.

Sabine turned and saw a mermaid lying on the rocky outcrop below. Sabine froze. As terrified as she was astounded, she blinked, shook.

“Don’t fear, dearie! It is I, Peqoud, the enchanted Empress of Mermaids.”

Sabine stared, nearly reeling with shock.

The creature had long golden hair and large, violet eyes that were almond-shaped; bare breasts, and a tail that gleamed different shades of green and blue and purple depending on how the sunlight glinted off it. She wore a necklace of precious stones.

Sabine had a sudden flash of an old mermaid teddy that she slept with as a child. But her mind leapt quickly back to the chimera at hand.

“I have come to urge you to not take your life. I swore to me lover, Captain Jon Alric never to allow any harm to ever come to him or any of his kin on the seas. I made that vow aeons ago, but it’s good even today.”

“Wh-what?” Sabine sputtered.

“I can’t allow you to die at sea. I will always be there to thwart you, if you try. That’s my legacy to the love of me life, which was your ancestor, Captain Jon.”

Sabine stood slack-jawed. Though fear and bewilderment were still present, curiosity, too, was rising in her.

“Captain Jon who?”

Sitting upright on the jutting, rocky crag, Peqoud said, “He was from Britannia. He was my lover on and off for years until he finally became too old and retired. He was a great man.”

“Oh?”

“Aye. And you are of his spawn, his very line. So ’tis my job to look out for you.”

They paused.

Sabine was breathing quick, nervous breaths. She stared at Pequod and was amazed at her shattering, almost annihilating beauty. She was radiant, perfectly symmetrical. She nearly glowed in the daylight. It was little wonder that this Jon Alric was captivated by her, any man would be really! She was the total continuum of sensual delight, bewitching, beguiling. For it was like her eyes were luminous yet lovely like set glass. To stare into those eyes, though, was dangerous. It was as if they invoked beauty of a highest order, a level that was hungry and not quite human.

“But mermaids don’t exist. How can this even be?” Sabine cried.

“Aye, we do, and I am the Empress of all of them, along with Sirens, water sprites, Naiads, ye name it.”

With her initial fear giving way to astonished curiosity, Sabine said, “How did you meet him?”

Peqoud smiled coyly. “’Tis I who chased him across the ocean. I saw what a handsome man he was; no one else cut quite a figure as he. Then I bade him to join me on an atoll where I lived. We did this for years until he became too old for the seas. He was my king, my Neptune of sorts.”

Sabine exhaled deeply in wonder. It made sense, she reckoned. Pequod was the perfect feminine antidote to a lonely, sex-starved sailor as she imagined this Captain Jon to be.

And who was she to dispute it? Beauty and love are not a problem to be solved, or a question to be answered. Sabine knew from sad experience that the only way to love was by trial and error, each try a risky game, every bit as treacherous as the high seas.

But then a car pulled up in the distance, doors slammed. Faraway voices.

“’Tis time for me to go. Keep well.”

With a glistening slide, Peqoud seamlessly entered the waters and was gone in a flash. The mermaid shone a final brash, brazen blue then disappeared.

Sabine was mesmerized. She hated seeing her go. She wanted the experience never to end. There were so many questions to ask! There was so much information to be gleaned, gathered like shells and driftwood picked from the sand.

But Sabine continued to stand on the dock and stare out at the ocean. The breeze lightly stroked her hair. She felt like a shuddering archipelago, like little islands of wonder all crammed into one.

Rolling over in bed that night, Sabine clutched the Ancestry DNA document. Her heart still raced when she pictured Peqoud in her mind’s eye. She looked for any further signs or clues. Britain was listed numerous times, probably the most of any, so there was a case for the mermaid’s claims.

She recalled the mermaid toys she had collected and played with as a child. Ariel. Everything. She fondly recalled a plush one that she slept with at night. Could that have been some sort of latent, lost ancestral memory? Who knows? Go figure...

Then Sabine set the printout on her night stand. She snapped the light off. She settled into bed. The sheets were cool and enticing. It was growing late. Those haunting refrains, rhythms of the deep returned to her. She grooved at the sound.

“What a day!” she thought. “The document came. A mermaid befriended me. One of my ancestors fucked a fish. Whew! High strangeness for certain.” She chuckled. Then she recalled that lyric once again: The sea didn’t get me today.

Well, thank God for it, I suppose. It’s so much better to be alive! Then she counted mermaids until sleep came and dragged her under with its soft claw.