THE MERMAID BONES S amantha J ean C o x all The mermaid washed ashore the summer that Margery turned thirteen. July. How unlucky for the poor creature, she thought, the way that midmorning sun beat down and blistered her back as she crawled, belly-down, across the white sand back towards the sea. Margery watched from the cliff-side above, sitting on the little bench between the lighthouse and the cemetery, as she often did to watch the lick of waves against the shore. People gathered on the shore, circling the strange body, and watched her fingers claw through earth with single-minded purpose. When she reached the seafoam and it seemed that the next lapping wave might carry her back into the sea and out of their reach, the people put their hands on her. Pulled her away from the water by the arms and folded her way one and then another. The mermaid thrashed and wriggled, back arched and bronze tail undulating, but to no avail. Margery went to fetch her father who she knew was a good and honest man, but when she told him of the mermaid on the beach, he called her
inside and busied her with pre-supper chores. Then he simply locked her within the gates and left to see it for himself. The bruised iron fence was tall and difficult to climb. Margery spent a few moments trying to pry apart the bars with her fists, but soon gave up and wasted the rest of the afternoon distractedly pulling weeds from around cemetery plots, fingers wrinkling from probing blindly in the wet soil, eyes solely focused on the path leading down to the beach where she could just hear the murmuring of a crowd. Margery’s father was the proprietor of the cemetery, as well as the gravedigger and undertaker. Margery assisted him in the ways that she could: cooking, cleaning, and providing company for a man who mostly otherwise only walked among the dead. They lived on a small island, shaped like a half-moon, with the wide stretch of sand settled below high cliffs the shade of old bones. Though small and unassuming, the island was by no means isolated. Fishing boats arrived and departed almost daily with ease. And yet, nothing
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