Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle by Peter S. Beagle

Author:Peter S. Beagle [Beagle, Peter S.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Conlan Press
Published: 2015-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

SALT WINE

All right, then. First off, this ain’t a story about some seagoing candytrews dandy Captain Jack, or whatever you want to call him, who falls in love with a mermaid and breaks his troth to a mortal woman to live with his fish-lady under the sea. None of that in this story, I can promise you; and our man’s no captain, but a plain blue-eyed sailorman named Henry Lee, AB, who starts out good for nowt much but reefing a sail, holystoning a deck, taking a turn in the crow’s-nest, talking his way out of a tight spot, and lending his weight to the turning of a capstan and his voice to the bellowing of a chanty. He drank some, and most often when he drank it ended with him going at it with one or another of his mates. Lost part of an ear that way off Panama, he did, and even got flogged once for pouring grog on the captain. But there was never no harm in Henry Lee, not in them days. Anybody remembers him’ll tell you that.

Me name’s Ben Hazeltine. I remember Henry Lee, and I’ll tell you why.

I met Henry Lee when we was both green hands on the Mary Brannum, out of Cardiff, and we stayed messmates on and off, depending. Didn’t always ship out together, nowt like that—just seemed to happen so. Any road, come one rainy spring, we was on the beach together, out of work. Too many hands, not enough ships—you get that, some seasons. Captains can take their pick those times, and Henry Lee and I weren’t neither one anybody’s first pick. Isle of Pines, just south of Cuba—devil of a place to be stranded, I’ll tell you. Knew we’d land a berth sooner or later—always had before—only we’d no idea when, and both of us hungry enough to eat a seagull, but too weak to grab one. I’ll tell you the God’s truth, we’d gotten to where we was looking at bloody starfish and those Portygee man-o’-war jellies and wondering… well, there you are, that’s how bad it were. I’ve been in worse spots, but not many.

Now back then, there was mermaids all over the place, like you don’t see so much today. Partial to warm waters, they are—the Caribbean, Mediterranean, the Gulf Stream—but I’ve seen them off the Orkneys, and even off Greenland a time or two, that’s a fact. What’s not a fact is the singing. Combing their hair, yes; they’re women, after all, and that’s what women do, and how you going to comb your hair out underwater? But I never heard one mermaid sing, not once.

And they ain’t all beautiful—stop a clock, some of them would.

Now, what you didn’t see much of in the old times, and don’t hardly be seeing at all these days, was mermen. Merrows, some folk call them. Ugly as sin, the lot: not a one but’s got a runny red nose, nasty straggly hair—red too, mostly, I don’t know why—stumpy green teeth sticking up and out every which way, skin like a crocodile’s arse.

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