Channel Island Monsters E-Book

Erren Michaels

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 364

Beschreibung

The Channel Islands have a rich legacy of interwoven folklore, an antique tapestry full of faery creatures and mythical beasts. Here you will find fantastic adventures and fearsome fairytales, tall tales, horrors and high romance. In this exquisitely illustrated compendium, Channel Island Monsters weaves a web of deliciously dark stories from centuries of fables and their fragments. The werewolves, mermaids, changelings and dragons may seem familiar, but there are also monsters which are strange and unique to the Channel Islands. La Vioge, La Cocangne, Lé Bélengi and L'Êmânue are ancient creatures waiting to be rediscovered, with their eyes still shining and their claws still sharp.

Leseprobe

For my Dad

First published 2023

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

Text © Erren Michaels, 2023

Illustrations © Amelia Wilde

The right of Erren Michaels to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 8 0399 473 4

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

INTRODUCTION

The monsters in this book sharpened their claws and scared children long before literacy was commonplace, or books were available. The mythology of the Channel Islands originates in spoken storytelling. If there was an original child who ran crying from their room to tell their parents that they had just seen Lé Croque-Mitaine’s long claws curl over their windowsill, it was not written down anywhere. There must have been one parent, before any other, who earnestly warned of La Cocangne whispering down the well, to make their child stay away from the edge. The parent has been forgotten, but the monster survived through history because other parents told their children, who who repeated it to their own children, on and on across the centuries. Perhaps there was a single smuggler who had the idea to run into a crowded inn one night and shout that he had just encountered a giant black dog, a mighty beast with hellfire eyes stalking the night. The black dogs remain. The smuggler is forgotten, even if his trick to move illicit cargo ashore became common practice.

Some monsters stayed well-known. Their tales were re-spun by naturally gifted tellers of bedtime stories, or in drunk and earnest groups in smoky taverns, over and over. Sometimes stories would have been told seriously as warnings. Sometimes to entertain by candlelight on long winter evenings. Whether or not people believed the legends, the monsters of the islands thrived within them for generations.

Stories, like the magical creatures who inhabit them, can be immortal. They have a life and a will of their own. They slip through centuries, forever young, changing with the teller and adapting to their audiences. In these islands sirens sang and storm witches roared, and ships were smashed into hidden rocks by seething tides as treacherous as any in the world. Monsters underwent metamorphosis in the retelling, growing stronger. In a culture of storytelling, visiting sailors shared their own tales. The sailors may have left, but their stories stayed, and so did their monsters.

The story heritage of the Channel Islands was once rich and colourful. It was woven for so long by its people, by their character and history and humour, into a web of legends stretching over the beautiful and dangerous geography of the islands.

Then it began to die.

The old stories had been retold in the native island languages, Jèrriais and Guernésiais, which are now spoken by only a few hundred people. As the languages of the island were forgotten, so was the mythology carried within it. There were many long years during which even mentioning magic or monsters could lead to accusations of witchcraft, so repeating legends became dangerous. Literacy and the rise of the novel brought new stories, and an easier way to enjoy them. Roads were cut through lonely places and there were lanterns to light the darkness. While no islander in their right mind would walk the Forest Road at night, or scramble up Crack-Ankle Lane after sunset, there was suddenly less interest in myths and legends.

As their stories were no longer told, the monsters of the Channel Islands lived on only in fading recollections. They lingered sadly in the places named for them. They slinked back to what was left of the dark woods and were mostly forgotten. Sometimes monsters were confined, all stripped of detail, into the texts of old guidebooks which described them as ‘folklore’ or ‘superstitions’. They were dismissed as old wives’ tales or fairy stories, suitable only for little children. They became the quaint curiosities of a dying culture. Electric lights blazed and monsters receded into the shadows. Some were lost forever. They dissipated in the last moment that their story was remembered and were silently devoured by time.

Some waited quietly. They had dug their claws into those places named after them, and into the academic work of those few wise people who realised that the history of a place and its people lives as much in the ephemera of its stories, folklore and traditions as it does in its ancient standing stones and castles.

It is possible that some Channel Island legends have existed for longer than anything that is solid and tangible, or built from stone, other than the dolmens. The mystery of why there are so many ‘Fairy-Stone’ dolmens in the islands is as unlikely to be solved as the question: why do such little islands have such a vast trove of stories about fairies and monsters? The mythology of the landscape is almost ludicrously crowded with fantastic creatures. Any poor, superstitious fisherman of the last few centuries must have feared that he would struggle to avoid the wrath of storm witches, sirens and sea monsters. Even if he made it back to land, past the kelpies and selkies near the shore, he was unlikely to get far on the path home without being eaten by a variety of mythical creatures, or struck dead by the glance of one of the giant black dogs that people kept mentioning in the taverns. He may have considered it quite fortunate that so much cheap alcohol was mysteriously available on the island, because at least he could afford to drink his fears away.

Every creature in this book has been part of the fabric of folklore within the islands for a very long time. Some are unique to a specific island. Some of them inhabit more than one island. Others prefer the water in between. Some monsters only survived in scraps of information or in contradictory accounts. The monsters in this book may very well wake up in these stories, shake the dust off their claws, and discover that their tale is different to how they remember it. That it’s being told in a different language, and they don’t like how they look in their picture, or how their name is pronounced, or why everyone makes such a fuss now when somebody gets eaten.

Far too much detail has been lost to know how these tales may have been told in centuries past. Changes, sometimes quite dramatic ones, have always been the nature of folklore and fairytales. They are a living litany of bald-faced lies and outlandish claims just as much as they are careful constructions or recounting of memories. It is pointless to try and pull threads from the weave to see what might be considered ‘real’. Many versions exist. Many versions have been lost. This book is just one adaptation of these tales.

Evolution is always better than the alternative. Stories left untold are stories that die, and when folklore is lost, a thread winding back through generations of storytellers snaps forever.

A valuable heritage hides in stories of myths and magic. There are shades of all the people who passed stories onto others. There are echoes of the recitals of thousands of voices and their thoughtful alterations made in telling and retelling. From the changes made by booming oral storytellers seeking ringing rhythms to enchant crowds, to the careful omissions made by parents for the ears of their children. There are even shadows of truths stuttered out by men or women scared witless by the things they saw, or thought they saw, in dark and lonely places.

The mythology of the islands is a gift passed down to everyone. It grows stronger in being shared. It is an inheritance that links each listener, each reader, back to those who came before. Surely that is proof, if anything can be, that there is a little bit of magic in the world.

LA COCANGNE

Aqueous nymphs, or nixes, yclept Grindylow and Jenny Greenteeth, lurked at the bottom of pits, and with their long sinewy arms dragged in and drowned children venturing too near.

John Higson

Cassie sat against the wall of the little cave and drew her knees up. She hugged them to her chest with a sigh and rested her head on them, looking out into the daylight from the shadows.

It was quiet here in the well-cave, since most of the water drawing happened early in the morning, and she could watch all the people of the castle walk by, since it was located on the main path that ran from the top to the bottom of the vast stone fortress.

It was an odd place for a well, she thought. So high above the ground. This level of the castle was already higher than the rooftops of the fancy town houses where Cassie wished that she and her family lived. Or at least, she had wished that, until she had seen the fletcher’s boy Flynn. After that, she had decided she didn’t mind so much living in a castle, far away from the shops where they sold pretty dresses and sweets and ribbons.

While Cassie enjoyed the sheltered privacy of the cave, she did not much like the well itself. She had leaned over the edge once, when they had first arrived. The gaping darkness had pulled at her, making her feel like she might fall.

‘That’s just your instincts telling you to keep back,’ her father had said, when she told him of the horrible feeling, ‘That’s to keep you safe, my dear.’

He had rubbed his ink-stained fingers thoughtfully and then smiled. ‘I should get back to work. Wait! Pass me that green pigment, but don’t get it on your dress for goodness’ sake.’

So immersed was Cassie in her thoughts of Flynn, that it was a while before she realised that the soft echoes of the well had taken on a sing-song quality, and that the voice on the edge of her hearing was coming from inside, not outside, the cave.

She sat up stiff and put her hands to the cold stone floor.

‘Wishes, riches, power of witches; faery magic, goblin gold, secrets, beauty, joy untold…’

‘Hello?’ Cassie said.

The voice was strange and distracted, like an old woman who had wondered from her room and forgotten what she was saying.

‘La Cocangne in the well. Granting a wish, casting a spell.’

Cassie tilted her head towards the voice as it continued.

‘The price of a coin, the touch of hand, for all the magic in this land…’

She scrambled to her knees and crept closer.

‘A chance that’s granted to a few – reach out your hand, it shall be you.’

‘Hello?’ Cassie called again.

‘Hello, hello, no one we know, no men with buckets who come and go, their days all orders, chores and habit, they don’t deserve a wish or magic…’

‘Are you in the well?’ Cassie asked. ‘Did you fall in? Do you need help down there?’

She shuffled almost to the edge of the well, but was too nervous to peer in. ‘Do you always speak in poetry?’

‘Questions, questions, cheeky whelp! The well’s my home, I don’t need help. And yes, I weave words all the time, the magic lives within the rhyme. Come closer, let me see your face… a pretty thing within this place. A coin, or kiss, shall grant your wish. Speak clear and loud and clasp my hand, the most powerful magic in all-‘

‘I need a coin!’ Cassie jumped to her feet and raced away.

She didn’t have a coin. Why would she? And her father had certainly raised her better than to kiss strange faeries, which had seemed to be the other choice. Besides, girls in true love never kissed anybody except their true love, and she was quite certain that her true love was Flynn the fletcher’s boy.

Grabbing the hem of her dress, she raced up the long flight of stone stairs at a swift, high-kneed trot that made her pigtails bounce and lash around her face. She was out of breath by the time she reached the residential area of the castle, where her steps became noisier on wooden floorboards.

She darted through rooms that had seemed a maze when she had first arrived there. Along passages switching back and forth against the rock, upstairs, downstairs, until she came to the little room she shared with her sister, and out of breath shouted, ‘Isobel! Give me a coin!’

Several minutes later, and no closer to getting a coin, Cassie had stamped her foot twice and was shouting again. Isobel, ever the picture of ladylike calm, was still leaning back against her pillows with her book resting against her raised knees.

‘Cassie, really. Somebody is making fun of you. Waiting to laugh at you throwing your father’s money down a damp hole for a wish that won’t come true. Faeries and wishing wells indeed! Whoever heard of such a thing?’

‘Everybody, Isobel.’ Cassie stamped her foot again enjoying the loud bang. ‘Everybody has heard of faeries and wishing wells and magic. Especially in these islands. The soldiers all say that the Channel Islands are very magical, and that there are doors to another land and – do not snort at me Isobel! I’ve heard them say so! Real, grown-up men!’

‘I did not snort,’ Isobel exclaimed, losing her calm for the first time. ‘I merely sighed with vigour. I am a young lady and I have never snorted in my life.’

‘You did snort. You snorted like a pig! Now give me a coin, you selfish witch. I want to make myself a wish. There, now I’m rhyming too.’

‘You can’t make a wish,’ said Isobel slamming her book shut, ‘because it’s dinnertime.’

Cassie realised the logic of this statement at the precise moment that she realised she was hungry, and suffered herself to be tidied by her older sister and then led to the dining hall.

She had not forgotten the faery, and sweetly asked her father for a coin.

When he asked her, bemused, what she needed money for, she decided honesty was the best policy and told him that she wanted to make a wish in the well. Satisfied with this explanation he counted out two little copper coins and pushed them along the table.

‘There’s one for you too, Isobel,’ their father said with a smile. ‘Wish for something nice.’

‘Look, Cassie,’ Isobel whispered, as she passed the money to her sister. ‘Even his coins have map ink on them. We’ll go down tomorrow.’

As the midnight bell struck Cassie slipped out from under her covers and, as quietly as she could, put her dress back on over her shift. She groped blindly in the dark for her shoes, and carried them with her, wincing when she banged them against the door as she turned the handle and crept out.

She moved away from her room before putting her shoes on. She had carefully left the coin in her right shoe so that she didn’t have to search for it in the dark. She began walking as though she had every right to be up and about at this time, with her head high and a prim expression on her face.

She slipped out of the large, iron-bound door of the keep, and the soldiers stationed on either side looked at her curiously. She recognised the one with freckles – his name was Bry. Neither he nor the older man questioned her, so she scampered swiftly down the stone stairs, the cool night air feeling chill against her flushed cheeks. The coin dug into her palm as she clutched it tight, terrified that she might drop it and hear it ping away into the shadows. She skipped down the last of the steps and hesitated before the mouth of the cave. The flaming torch at the entrance cast light which did not reach as far back as the well. Cassie stepped blinking into the blackness and peered towards where she knew the mouth of the well waited in the dark.

‘Hello?’ she whispered. ‘Are you still there, faery person? I have a coin now.’

For a moment there was nothing, then she heard something far and deep. Echoes of whispers. Muttered words blending and merging, slowly getting louder.

Cassie felt suddenly disorientated in the darkness and she moved sideways until her hand touched the wall. She did not move closer to the well.

‘She comes in darkness, comes at night, she stays in shadows out of sight, without a fire without a light, she needs a wish to make things right.’

‘Yes please,’ said Cassie as the voice echoed closer. ‘My father gave me a coin to make a wish.’ She swallowed her fear and added, ‘It’s only a copper coin. I hope that is enough. Do I throw it in? Is it like a wishing well?’

There was the soft pattering of water dripping onto the floor as the whispering voice filled the room, and Cassie shivered to think of the faery living so deep and dark in the water of the well.

‘Take a step, and do not pause, take my hand… your wish is yours!’

Cassie thought of how cold and wet that hand must be. She wondered what manner of faery would live at the bottom of a well.

‘And I can wish for anything at all?' she asked.

‘It’s all your choice, just use your voice, speak your desire… you think me a liar?’

‘Oh no! Of course not,’ Cassie took a slow step forward, eyes straining to see a shape in the black. She thought perhaps she could make out the line of a hairless head, a figure even smaller than she was. Outside, the torchlight flickered in the breeze and its eyes shone. They were pale and luminous and, as she hesitated, they narrowed. Somewhere on the night breeze, Cassie heard voices.

‘My patience wanes. My magic drains. I made my climb. Don’t waste my time.’

‘No! No, I’m sorry. I wish… I wish that the fletcher’s boy… No. Wait. I wish that everybody I love stayed safe and happy until they grow old and die. Is that… Is that something you can grant?’

‘Pay your sum… and the deal is done.’

Cassie stepped forward, her coin held out between her finger and thumb, to where the gleam of light had caught the faery’s eyes. She dreaded the feeling of its cold skin brushing against her when it took the coin.

The contact, when it came, was upon her wrist. Cold, hard fingers closed around her like a shackle and long claws scratched her skin. She cried out as the faery tugged her towards the well. She almost lost her footing as she was pulled against the low edge. Her free hand grabbed at the rough stone in the pitch black. She heard the coin ring against the walls of the well as it bounced down and down, so deep that she didn’t even hear it hit the water.

‘What are you doing?' she gasped. It was a few moments more until she realised, struggling against the strength of the thing, exactly what it meant to do. She screamed then. A sharp single explosion of panic that rang incredibly loud in the confined space. The faery was pulling her into the well and the endless cold, dark drop. Panic fuelled Cassie’s struggles as she tried to shake loose her hand. The monster’s thin wet arm looped around her neck. It was horribly strong.

‘A long way down… until you drown.’

The thing laughed, a horrible raw, wet sound. She could feel herself teetering, her weight starting to shift, pulled forward against her will. She screamed again, a long hopeless wail. Then there were narrow arms around her waist, dragging her back. They pulled with greater strength, and another voice was screaming along with hers, a voice she knew so well that tears burst from her eyes to hear her sister take a breath near her ear and then screech, ‘Somebody help us!’

They struggled, monster and sister, Cassie pulled between them like a prize.

The faery pulled at her arms, clawing her skin, and Cassie thought that surely she and Isobel would lose. Her body was pulled out over the well. She felt more than saw the dark depths yawning beneath her.

Then there was merciful light, and the sound of men shouting. She saw the faery lit by the lantern they carried. Its monstrous face was filled with teeth, its narrowed eyes reflecting light. Its skin was green as pondweed and there was fury in its face as it hissed and dived away.

Arms larger and stronger than her sister’s lifted Cassie and carried her outside. She heard the swearing of the guards. Cassie sobbed hysterical laughter to hear Isobel exclaim, in her ladylike fashion, ‘If you please, sir, I do not wish to be manhandled!’

The next day they sat in the sun, a stone’s throw from the well cave. In the shadows of the cave, two men had been lowered on ropes to find the thing that had attacked the mapmaker’s daughters.

‘I knew you’d snuck out. You made more noise than a blind cow,’ Isobel told her.

‘Then what took you so long?’ Cassie snapped.

Isobel tidied her skirts in deliberate affectation. ‘Unlike you I wasn’t prepared to run around the castle half-dressed, like a hoyden, in the dead of night. I don’t know what those guards must have thought of you.’

‘Don’t be a such a prig, Isobel,’ Cassie frowned at the cave. ‘I don’t know how anybody could stand to go down there. In that darkness, with the sides closing in around you and the little circle of light at the top getting smaller and smaller. Knowing that thing is down there. The thought makes me sick.’

‘They have to find it, don’t they? We can’t very well have a monster running around the place. Not to mention, everybody drinks that water. Now that makes me feel sick. Months we’ve been drinking out of that well. Bathing in it. Washing our faces in it. Revolting.’

A figure emerged from the cave and strode towards them. Flynn the fletcher’s boy, Cassie realised, and felt her cheeks flame.

‘They’re bringing the men up now,’ he said, crouching down in front of them and smiling. ‘No sign of anything down there.’

‘Did they check under the water?’ Cassie demanded.

‘Under the water? Well, no. How could they?’

Isobel sighed and smoothed her skirts again. ‘I shall just have to drink wine,’ she said.

One of the guards from the night before came to stand with them, and Cassie could see her own worry etched on his face. He knelt and took her hand, turning it so that he could better see the scratches on her arm. His own hand had a bandage where he had been bitten.

‘It’s still down there, hiding under the water,’ Cassie said to him firmly. ‘Waiting. Waiting for somebody to lean over and hear it whispering and rhyming, so it can pull them in. It said it could grant wishes…’

‘Wishes?’ The guard shook his head. ‘Unless you wished to be dragged down a well and eaten, I’m pretty sure that thing wasn’t granting any wishes.’

‘You said it was small, Bry? And green?’ Flynn pursed his lips. ‘It was probably a Cocangne, then. Mum used to warn us when we were children. Don’t lean over the well or the Cocangne will get you,’ he wiggled his fingers. ‘Scary monster. That sort of thing.’

‘It was a scary monster,’ Isobel said. ‘I never heard of such a horrid thing. Pulling people down wells, if you please. How rude.’

‘Cocangnes,’ Bry narrowed his eyes. ‘Isn’t there a really big one in Guernsey that lives in a pond out East? I think it has a road named after it. You must have heard that story, Flynn! It eats cats and seagulls when it can’t get children, but it definitely prefers children.’

‘I don’t know anything about Guernsey,’ Flynn shook his head, then stood and stretched. ‘I tell you what, though – it wouldn’t hurt to throw a few sharp rocks down that well from time to time. Keep that nasty little monster on its toes. Maybe we could do that tomorrow?’

‘Oh yes!’ said Cassie.

‘Certainly not,’ said Isobel. ‘I would not sink to such vulgarity. I believe I shall ask that they put a lid on that well. A lady can’t be expected to sleep in a castle where there are monsters roaming about the place trying to eat one’s sister. Come along Cassie. I do believe it’s time we had some breakfast.’

Smiling at Flynn, Cassie let her sister take her hand and lead her away.

THE MERMAID

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

T. S. Eliot

Those wishing to hear of giant squid or leviathan in the incalculable depths of a cold black ocean should look elsewhere than the Channel Islands. Their seas are shallow and swift, like a silken sheet pulled across a bed of nails. The tides advance and retreat faster and wilder than river rapids, and the sea level rises and falls more dramatically than anywhere else on earth.

Before the famous lighthouse was built in Jersey, the area of lethal rocks known as Corbiere was a site of frequent shipwrecks. After storms, when news of a shipwreck reached them, people would gather on the beach. Some would search for survivors, but most would look for any valuables that might have washed ashore.

One such morning, as the sea receded, it left in its wake the shattered hull of a merchant ship, torn sails still whipping from its broken mast. The sands of the bay had been scoured by earlier arrivals, so Sylvain left the beach in the hope of finding something in the rock pools around Corbiere. He hopped from one low rock to another, his arms out for balance, wavering like an uncertain bird on the wind, trying not to slip on the dark, uneven stone.

Sylvain’s lips were grim. He did not like searching the flotsam of a shipwreck, but could not afford the luxury of overlooking some small item that might be sold or exchanged for food. He had sole care of his mother, and her health had been poor for some time.

The wind, the last tatters of the storm, blew his sun-bleached hair into his eyes and battered his worn shirt against his narrow torso.

A bruised apple, bobbing in a rock pool, was his first find. It was last year’s harvest, the skin wrinkled, and salt water mixed with the sweet crunch. Perhaps it was from a spilled cargo of apples and cider then. Probably a boat heading away from the islands. Sylvain closed his eyes, savouring the taste as the wind whipped his hair around his ears. He ate the whole thing, core included, and licked the last of the juice and salt from his fingertips.

He continued scrambling over the rocks, using his hands where necessary to keep him upright. The barnacles were rough as broken glass on the palms of his hands. He spotted another apple, scratched but whole, and jammed it in his pocket for his mother.

His search led him further from the shore. Even now, with the tide at its lowest, a lifetime of warnings kept him glancing at the sea. He slipped on the smooth slope of a rock and shouted in annoyance as he slid into a pool, feet first and ankle deep. The water soaked through the holes of his worn-out boots. He sloshed out, sighed, and realised that he may as well continue to wade through the shallow pools now that his feet were wet. He was still cautious in case he lost his footing on the slick green seaweed and drench the rest of himself.

He eyed the sea once more. It was easy to lose track of time. Once the tide turned, it would reach glittering fingers of water through the maze of rocks, pouring into shallow pools, filling them and overflowing faster than a man could scramble.

Sylvain reassured himself that the line of blue water had not advanced. Then he squinted as something glittered. He shaded his eyes and headed towards it through a wide, shallow pool. He found the remains of a smashed apple, held together by its browned skin. Three more were battered but edible. Sylvain was momentarily baffled by how he could carry the apples and still use his hands to scramble over the rocks. Then he smiled, pulled his shirt off over his head and used it to tie a makeshift bag for his meagre haul.

Another sparkle, and now a movement, drew Sylvain’s gaze to the same place as before. He knew he should leave. Scrambling towards the sea, seeking unknown treasure, would be foolish. Yet now that he knew exactly where to look, he could see a curve of something orange in the centre of a pool. Perhaps it was a bolt of fabric, or sunlight gleaming on a brown glass bottle.

‘I’m probably climbing towards the sea for a broken bottle and some pretty seaweed,’ Sylvain muttered to himself as he began to make his slow, careful way closer. ‘Stupid. Even if there’s a bottle of cider, I’ll probably fall over and smash it…’

He stopped as the glittering thing moved. Then there was the unmistakably human gesture of an elegant hand lifted, weakly grasping at a rock before falling away.

Suddenly Sylvain was running, scrambling, his shirt and apples dropped and forgotten, calling out, ‘I’m here! I’m coming! N’inquietez pas, Mademoiselle! Je vais vous aider!’

How many people had the boat been carrying? He had no idea what language they might speak, but here must be one of its passengers who had survived. A woman in beautiful orange and red skirts. She did not answer him and turned away in an undulating curve as though afraid.

‘You do not need to be scared, Miss. I won’t hurt you!’ He was close enough now that he barely had to raise his voice. ‘Do you speak English? I will help you, wherever you are from.’

Sylvain slipped and stumbled to the edge of the pool and dropped to his knees in astonishment. He had been raised by the sea. He had heard the ancient legends of a mermaid caught in fishing nets, and the sailors who had spent too long arguing whether she should be killed or sold, giving her time to cut her way free and dive back to freedom.

The woman here was not what he had imagined, nor what had been described to him in stories. Human skin shimmered down into delicate scales. Mackerel stripes on her arms and flanks, carnelian and coral scales the colour of a winter sunset. What he had mistaken for the skirts of a dress was the swirling membrane of a great tail.

They stared at each other, and there was terror in her limpid eyes, which were as turquoise as a sunlit sea. Gills flared at her neck, but she breathed too, her lips parted in fear.

Ropes of pearls wound around her wrists. A gold comb pinned one side of her copper-coloured hair. The glitter of her jewellery was nothing compared to the living gleam of her tail as it flexed and curled in the shallow pool. Grazes had torn her skin and scales, and one of her high cheekbones was swelling with a purple bruise. The force of the storm had caught more than human victims it seemed. She must have been thrown against the rocks and stranded, helpless, by a receding tide.

She was a living fortune, a beautiful monster, and a woman in need of help.

‘Can you understand me?’ Sylvain asked quietly.

For a moment she just looked at him, then gave a slow nod.

‘Good. That’s good.’ Sylvain bit his lip then asked, ‘You’re hurt?’

Another slow, considered nod, a slight narrowing of the eyes.

‘Do you need help?’

He thought about the sea rising, rushing into this churning jagged bed of stone knives and how she would be dragged across the rocks. The water too shallow to swim, too powerful for her to cling safely in one place.

‘You do need help,’ he said more decisively, and leaned forward.

She flinched and swallowed, eyes glancing to his legs, but then nodded.

‘My name is Sylvain,’ he said. ‘Can you… do you speak? May I know your name?’

She spoke, and the sound was like wind over the ocean.

‘Is that...?’ he laughed. ‘Was that your name?’

She gave a nod and the suggestion of a smile, with pearly white teeth and sharp little fangs.

‘I’ll call you Neela. I think that’s as close as I’ll get,’ he said.

‘Call me as you wish, Sylvain.’

In her voice, his name sounded like a wave whispering onto shore, or a breeze against his neck.

‘You said that you would help me,’ she unfurled her tail. ‘Will you still help me now?’

‘Of course,’ he said without hesitation.

‘I need to get back to the sea,’ she said.

‘I’ll have to carry you then,’ Sylvain could feel himself beginning to blush as he moved forward. They were both tense as he slid his arms beneath her. She put her arm around him, and it was cool against his sun-warmed back. He realised how easily she could sink her sharp fangs into his throat. Instead, she held onto him as he lifted her carefully. She was heavy and real. The scent of seawater in her hair.

They made slow progress at first, over uneven rocks and little pools. She was wide-eyed and nervous in his arms. Staring at him with fascination. Sylvain realised how unnerving it must be for a creature of the sea to be held in the air.

‘I’m not going to drop you,’ Sylvain said as he carried her over a stretch of dry, flat stone. He slipped a little, almost at the same moment he said it, and Neela gripped him so tightly her fingertips dug into his skin.

‘I probably won’t drop you,’ he amended with an apologetic grin.

She looked horrified, but then gave him a slow smile.

For a moment he just stood, delighted by the strange magic of the situation. A mermaid smiling in his arms and the wind singing in his ears.

Then there was a shout in the distance. Sylvain felt a jolt of fear as Neela stiffened in his embrace. In the distance were two men. He saw one wave. He had no idea what they wanted, whether they were hailing them from curiosity, or warning them of the tide, or whether they could see that Sylvain was holding a mermaid. What might such men do with a creature like Neela? Would they put her on show for profit? Cut her apart to sell her scales? Or murder her, blind with terror and hatred of magical creatures?

Sylvain had no intention of finding out.

Fear gave him more strength, though his ill-nourished body trembled with the exertion. Neela clung to him as he waded and clambered over the black and jagged landscape towards the sea. The tide was turning and the further they went, the deeper the pools became, until Neela’s hands fluttered against his shoulders.

‘This is enough. This is far enough, Sylvain. You must leave me now. For your own safety. I can make it from here alone.’

‘Are you sure?’ He let his legs collapse beneath him, sinking them both into waist high water, catching his breath.

‘I am sure. You have to go back.’

‘You are sure you will be safe now?’

She smiled into his eyes and then slid more completely into his embrace.

‘Thank you.’ Neela released him, and with a swirl of her tail she left his arms empty.

She circled him, unpinning her hair and shaking it free.

‘You are so lovely,’ he said, then blushed as she laughed at him.

Her tail stirred the water so powerfully that he lost his balance. She drew close again and he felt a flash of fear. They were in her element now. Her fangs only flashed a grin.

‘My eternal gratitude, Sylvain. And a gift. And my promise.’

He felt something hard and sharp against his palm and drew his hand back swiftly.

‘It is only my comb.’ Neela held it out to him. ‘The comb from my hair.’

‘But it’s gold! I couldn’t possibly– ’

‘Take it. Should you need me, comb the water. Once, twice and thrice, and I will come to you.’ Her cool hand touched his cheek gently. ‘But now you must go back. The sea is rising.’

Sylvain held the comb in his hand, a fortune of pearls and gold, and stared at her.

‘Go!’ She turned and dipped under the water. With a flick of her tail, she arched and glittered. He watched her swim away, the diamond droplets flung by the sunset fan of her tail. Then he turned and began to wade back towards the shore. A forest of black stone and surging sea separated him from safety. Water poured and swirled, sometimes he had to plunge chest deep. His knees became bruised where the wet rocks were as slippery as ice. He stopped only once to turn and search for sight of her. Currents dragged at him as he clambered and swam.

He staggered at last on shaky legs from the grip of the rising waves. He laughed to see his tangled shirt had washed up amongst the seaweed, the round green bulge of a single apple still trapped within the worn linen.

Sylvain found work aboard the ships eventually, taking whatever jobs he could, provided they never carried him too far from the islands. Short journeys, learning as he went, becoming swift in the rigging, loading and learning to sail. Earning enough to keep his mother well fed, until she passed away. He could afford a new pair of boots and decent shirts for his back. Enough to get by.

Sometimes work was scarce. In the lean times he would take out the mermaid’s comb and consider what it was worth. Yet no matter how he had to barter and beg, no matter how poor the pay or how backbreaking the labour, he could not bring himself to part with it. He kept it always in the left inside pocket of his jacket. Jammed deep where the teeth of the comb were forced through the stitching, holding it in place. In high winds and rough storms when he was at sea, he touched his fingers to where it rested near his heart to check that it was safe. When his life seemed bleak and filled with drudgery, he would take it out and examine it. It was proof of magic, a reminder that there was someone wild and beautiful in the world.

He never worked fishing vessels. There was something awful to him in the thrashing glitter of dying fish, their heaving gills and gasping mouths. It made him fear that one day his mermaid might be caught, tangled and terrified, hauled onto filthy, stinking decks. The idea of what could happen to her in the hands of greedy or desperate men troubled him.

He never told a soul what had happened to him. He feared his memories would be reduced by the sharing of them, if they were disbelieved or mocked. He did not speak of her in dark drunken taverns, or laying cramped in the holds of ships amongst brute men, or shivering on decks in screaming winds that tore the tears from the eyes of sailors until they all seemed to weep for their harsh existence.

He never spoke of her at all.

He crewed a ship to England, then found better payment sailing out of Portsmouth on a French vessel bound for Boulogne. The weather darkened, but Sylvain was impatient to head home. He found a berth on a light vessel with mixed cargo heading down the French coast to Cherbourg, then bartered a working passage on a boat headed for Guernsey. He helped drag a heavy, clinking cargo of wooden boxes aboard before the boat sailed at dawn.

The air was sharp. They made excellent speed, with the wind in their favour, except that it blustered and gusted. It would be roaring into their sails one minute, then dropping to whisper around the rigging, before slamming into them again with enough force to take the footing out from under a well-seasoned sailor. The crew tied ropes around their waists, wary of being tossed overboard.

The sea surged and the prow, lifting on the wind, would slap down and shudder, jerking like a cart over rough ground. For more than two hours, Sylvain clung to wet rope and wet wood, watching the waves rise higher in the unsettled sea. The sky remained cloudless, but the wind was wilder now. For the first time in years, Sylvain felt queasy.

A huge wave rolled beneath them, and the boat seemed weightless for a heartbeat. Then it landed with such force that Sylvain’s knees struck the deck. His hand slipped on the wet wood as the deck tilted. The rope around his waist went taut, then snapped. The boat lifted again and Sylvain was thrown into the air. When he fell, he was swallowed whole by the sea.

In the shock of the icy plunge, the shrieking wind was suddenly replaced with the quiet roar of water in his ears. The world was green and still and freezing cold. He kicked and fought his way to the surface, bursting with gasping breaths back into the scream of wind. He flailed, trying to find the boat. It was high above him on the peak of a wave, and it seemed so likely to fall and crush him that Sylvain covered his face with his arms. The sea surged and lifted him so that he was close enough to reach out, fingertips brushing the wood of the hull. Then the sail snapped full in the wind and the boat reared away.

Sylvain bellowed for help, his voice cut off by a slap of water and he coughed, then struck out with strong strokes, for he was an excellent swimmer. The ocean heaved and the boat was lost from view.

‘Please!’ His voice seemed high and raw in his own ears, like a frightened boy.

The roar of white water thundered, and waves were rolling him, forcing him under into white spinning silence only to leave him again in their whispering wake. It happened again, then again. Each time he fought his way back to the surface. Sometimes there was barely time to suck in a lungful of air before he was trapped in the roiling troughs of great dark waves, a repetitive lurching drop, then a rise as he was pushed skyward, only to be pulled down again.