M
ai dove for pearls with her sisters and the other girls from the village, though she did not want to. Every morning the boats took them out to the reefs and they slid beneath the waves, breathing deep the precious air and then kicking down and down and down. The world beneath the waves was quiet. The salt water stung Mai’s eyes and pushed in against her nostrils. Fish scattered as she kicked by, flitting away. The coral grew in strange shapes, and brilliantly colored anemones waved stinging tentacles at them. The oysters nestled among them, and Mai pried them loose with her knife, shoving them, one after another, into the bag at her waist. She worked without paying attention, her eyes ever on the deeper water, where the reef dropped away and the water grew murkier and, sometimes, they saw the merfolk.
Haruna lived alone far along the beach, where the trees grew down into the water, in her own little hut, without a man or any sisters. Pieces of bone, all knotted together, hung in the trees around her home, making soft music when the wind blew. She did not dive for pearls like the other women, or fish like the men. She made her living through other means, through the payments of villagers who snuck out to her hut when the moon was dark, and the night was quiet. She had the longest hair of anyone Mai had ever seen, dark and black against her pale skin, though all the other women wore their hair short. She had small, thin fingers and a small, thin smile. They said she had swum out to the merfolk, once, her hair fanning out across the surface of the water. Mai stared at her hut, far away on the horizon, sometimes. Sensible girls did not visit Haruna. It wasn’t safe. Everyone knew that. But.
Mai grew up hearing about the merfolk; all the pearl divers saw them, sooner or later, it was the one benefit of the work. They were strange creatures, almost human, save for their long, beautiful tails. Mai loved to watch them, swimming through the deeper waters, always staying far from the divers. She loved to imagine the freedom of diving deeper, finding out what existed in the depths. She had swum out towards one, only once, after the creature lingered and lingered. She had not gotten very close at all before one of her sisters grabbed her and pulled her back up to the water’s surface. Ayumi had told Father that night, and Mai still remembered his thunderous disapproval. Sensible girls did not go out to the merfolk. It wasn’t safe. Everyone knew that. But Mai watched them and wondered.
The men fished, catching up the fish disturbed by the pearl divers. Mai used to beg to go with them, before her father told her, calm and cold, that he had no sons; there would be no place in the boats for Mai, no matter how much she wished for the kiss of sun on her shoulders, or to wear her hair long and free. The men dragged their nets through the water and sometimes they hauled up strange things, monsters out of the deep. It was always exciting to return to shore to find them gathered around a boat, yelling at one another and calling to the others in the village. Mai hurried over to the boats, memories of half-glimpsed merfolk temporarily forgotten. 59
