The Mermaid of Black Conch: A Love Story by Monique Roffey

Author:Monique Roffey [Roffey, Monique]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Peepal Tree Press
Published: 2020-04-01T23:00:00+00:00

6. THE FISH RAIN

AT NIGHT, AYCAYIA COULDN’T SLEEP. A future with the possibility of possibilities kept her awake. A deep sense of knowing had awoken in her from long ago. It had to do with being a woman and all that being a woman meant, of living as a woman.

She lay upstairs in David’s bed, with one hand on her heart and the other on her womb. For centuries she’d travelled the cold waters of the ocean, searching for the possibility of a mate. But there was no coupling with her own kind; not one merman had appeared in all that time. She touched herself down there and wondered about David. She had been watching him, watching him watch her. The feeling down there, between her legs was powerful, like a force of its own. It had been keeping her awake at night and she knew it had to do with him. The fisherman smelled good, a man smell, a skin smell, a home smell, his body warm. As she lay in his bed she could hear him breathing loudly downstairs. It was dark outside. She hummed a quiet song about her sisters. They had all been older than her, all of them fair of face. They had all kinds of secrets – she knew that – and they had kept them from her, the youngest, as if these were secrets she would understand later, when she was a woman, old enough to be married. But she’d had many dreams about marriage, and in those dreams marriage always turned out to involve her death. She’d never liked the idea at all. Instead, she had danced and sung her songs. Aycayia, ‘sweet voice’ was a name she lived up to. She attracted men, couldn’t keep them away, but hadn’t accepted any of them. She didn’t want to be married: a wedding would kill a part of her, so she’d not accepted any man. Then her six sisters had drowned, in an accident in a canoa, and she’d been left alone. The men had pursued her still and made their offerings to her father. But her father was too stricken with grief to let her go, his last daughter, and so she had escaped.

The ache between her legs felt bigger than her, than her fears of marriage and death, and it flowed up from her lower half of its own accord. It sent a hotness through her up to her heart, made her feel awkward and full of tension. She tossed and turned, not understanding what this ache was, why it had come on her, and was so demanding. Maybe this ache had been present in her loins for some time, maybe since she’d first seen David in Murder Bay. Had she started to change back to being a woman even then? A fisherman. He’d lit her up and she had stayed close to the Black Conch coastline because of him, distracted, her insides aching. Maybe she’d carried an ache with her all these centuries.

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