Bedtime Story

"Tell the story."

"Which one?"

"You know, Mama. Thee story. My favorite one."

"Yes, yes, my love." She took a deep breath and sighed. Her voice took a slightly deeper and ominous tone. "The first merfolk were stolen babies; taken from the unattended decks of ships and shores of the sea by the dolphins who lost their own babies. They took their new young and nursed them until their lungs grew strong, their limbs turned to fins, and their skin and eyes grew immune to the salt."

The child grinned with excitement.

"Many generations later, the merfolk numbers grew. They no longer needed to steal babies from the shore. But sometimes they would find a man whose wife died giving birth or an unwilling mother offering a baby and would gladly accept the gift of life. And in exchange, the absolute silence on the matter. Which is why the merfolk were so secret for so long: any one who saw them were unable to speak of them: the merfolk curse of silence. Then one day, there was a mermother who birthed a human child and no matter how much she tried, the baby would not take to her. She cautiously lived near the coast for weeks, waiting for her baby to hold their breath and become like her. With no avail, she left her child wrapped in braided kelp blanket on the end of a dock. She waited and waited under the dock for someone to find her baby, and when the child was found and taken away, she howled through the night at her loss. Her screams and cries grew for days and upset the tides. And on the next full moon, the tides roared in sweeping away the docks, sinking boats and ships, and destroying the homes leagues and leagues in from the shore. People stayed away for a long time, the sea was too treacherous to build near. Every dock broke on every full moon and every boat in the water sank. For years, the tides shook on the full moon and stormed the shore, until one day, they completely stopped. It is believed that the mermother died of grief and could no longer cry and upset the tides. Since the quieting of the tides, people began to forget of the power of the tide storms and built upon the shore again. The docks grew and shipping flourished. The city grew along the shore until you could see nothing but city from one horizon to another. But the people became reckless, taking advantage of the abundance of the sea. Over-fishing. Polluting. Until finally there was one immense howling from the sea. A scream so loud that windows shattered and extinguished home fires."

She stared at the sky and the waxing crescent moon.

"And on the next full moon, a tide storm came in so great that it engulfed the city and when the morning came, the tides receded. New ships came to shore to find the city empty. No living soul resided there. People were shocked and scared at what they saw, they saw the streets littered with garbage: rusted cans, broken glass, hulls of long sunken ships, and everything caked in oils. Since then the city remained abandoned and the howling of the sea stopped. The merfolk have not been spotted since. It is unknown whether they all died or just receded deep into the sea. Trade ships now travel much further to safely dock in inland bays and canals to avoid the pure wrath of the waves. Sometimes, on a clear night leading up to a full moon, you can hear the howling of the merfolk and it reminds everyone, there is no tidal wave any more powerful than a mother's love. Whether it's the mother of a child, or Mother Earth's love."

She looked down at her now sleeping child. She smiled, took another look at the moon, then shifted her body on the sand and nestled with her child to go to sleep herself. The waves lapped over their tails on the sandbar.