Cozy Fantasy Series, Story #3 - The Mermaid of Cotter's Beck

This week in Millhaven: a mermaid has taken a wrong turn and ended up in a stream barely deep enough to cover her tail.

She is not happy about it, the townsfolk once again have opinions and Tam doesn't listen to them.

The Mermaid of Cotter's Beck, and the Considerable Problem of Getting Her Home

The stream that ran through the lower end of town had several names depending on who you asked. The Aldwickss called it the Beck, as their great-great-grandparents had, and their great-great-grandparents before that. The newer families called it Cotter's Stream, after the mill. The children called it the Ditch, as it was four feet wide at its broadest point and knee-deep in the rainy season, which this was not.

It was not a body of water that expected company.

The mermaid would have been the first to tell you that she hadn’t chosen it.

It was Aldwick's youngest, a girl of eight named Petra, who found her first. More accurately, Petra was the first to tell anyone else about her. Tam, who had taken the horses to the stream for fresh water, had found her first, but was star struck and staring.

Petra had gone down to the Beck on a Thursday morning to look for interesting stones, which was her primary occupation and the source of considerable parental frustration. She came back home only minutes after leaving and without any stones.

"There's a lady in the stream," she told her mother.

Her mother was making butter and had rather hoped that her daughter would leave her in peace for more than five minutes." Mm," was all she said.

"She's very cross," said Petra.

"Mm."

"She doesn't have any legs."

Petra’s mother stopped churning and looked at Petra with a frown. “What?”

By the time she'd gone down to the stream, stood staring for several minutes to accept what she was seeing, gone to tell her husband, who had gone to look and taken considerably longer to accept it (or, at least, that’s what he said), and then told the neighbours, who had told the baker, who had a loud voice and used it, it was mid-morning and half the town was standing on the bank of Cotter's Beck looking at the mermaid. The mermaid had looked back at them for a few minutes, but when no one had anything helpful to say, she had turned her gaze to her nails, which were getting dirty from the trickle of water in the stream.

Maren decided the mermaid was the most beautiful, and the most miserable, creature she had ever seen. Her hair was dark, heavy with water and plastered to her skin. Her tail, which Maren had rubbed her eyes at seeing for the first time, rippled with iridescent scales and was far too long for the Beck, curving back on itself in the narrow channel like a discarded ribbon. As the mermaid flopped it back and forth, splashing what little water there was, the scales caught the morning light and sparkled in all hues of blue that Maren had names for, and some she didn’t. Her face was extraordinary. On it, she wore the expression of someone who has been sitting on a hard chair for the past hour and only just been asked if she was comfortable.

Only, she was still waiting for someone to ask.

Finally, she spoke up. "It went wrong at the Alderton fork," she said. "I should have taken the eastern branch. The current was wrong and I should have felt it, and I didn't and now I'm — " She stopped. She looked at the assembled townspeople. She looked at the stream around her. She splashed her fingers in the puddle. "Here," she finished, as if here was the last place she wanted to be.

The constable chose that moment to arrive, slightly out of breath. He put his thumbs in his belt with an expression that said I’m in charge. "Right," he said. "We'll need to…” He cocked his head one way. “There'll have to be some kind of…" He cocked his head the other way.

The mermaid looked at him with eyes the colour of deep water, hoping he would have the answer.

“Process," he finished, with less authority than he'd started with.

"Can you not simply swim back the way you came?" asked Professor Mole, who had bulled his way to the front of the crowd and was already writing in his notebook, a jar of ink perched precariously on the opposite page.

The mermaid turned her gaze on him with the patience of someone explaining something to a slow child. "The stream is four feet wide," she said. "I am considerably longer than four feet. I tried turning around. Now, I’m…” she gestured to her crooked tail. “Stuck.”

"Ah," said Professor Mole. "No. Quite. Although technically if you — " he made a complicated gesture. When the mermaid shrugged, he followed suit. "No," he said. "Fair enough."

There followed a period of discussion.

As mentioned in a previous document, people have opinions. The discussion that followed was less a discussion and more a calling out of opinions. Each person thought they knew what to do and they were very vocal in making their thoughts known, along with what they thought of the thoughts of the others in the crowd.

Very few of those opinions took into consideration what was best for the mermaid in question.

The constable wanted to dam the stream above the mermaid and redirect the flow, which several people pointed out would leave her in a puddle even smaller than the one in which she found herself now. Old Perwick, whose fence the dragon had demolished and who had come down to the stream with a general grievance about magical creatures and their effect on property, felt the whole business was someone else's problem and said so at length to anyone who would listen.

The baker's wife suggested a system of ropes, the specifics of which she was vague on but felt strongly about. No one had thought to bring any rope anyway.

The mermaid bore all of this with the expression of someone who had hoped for better but was not exactly surprised to be disappointed.

Down the bank, a little apart from the crowd, Tam still crouched at the water's edge. He’d stayed because he agreed fully and wholeheartedly on the beauty of the mermaid. Did I mention he was starstruck? However, after listening to the discussion for several minutes, he found he was looking at the stream around the mermaid more than at the mermaid herself.

Tam had been moving things through tight spaces since he'd started working with animals. Horses that didn't want to go through gates. Stubborn oxen in narrow yards. Carts that were too wide for the gap and had to be tilted and coaxed through at an angle. Turns out he was surprisingly good at it, which is why he was travelling with the group that had, for whatever reason, ditched him to get the bill in the Crossed Stirrup three night before.

Tam’s mind had a way of turning those problems over to find the line that worked. He traced the Beck in his memory, which their wagon had followed the day they’d arrived in Millhaven.

"There's a mill pond," he said.

They had stopped there to water the horses, not knowing at the time that it was just outside of town.

The constable was once again explaining his dam plan, this time with more confidence and even less sense than the first time, and so no one heard Tam.

Tam stood up. He looked at the mermaid, who had stopped listening to the constable and was staring at the water around her with an expression that said she knew where she was supposed to be, but she wasn’t sure she would ever get there.

"There's a mill pond," he said again, louder.

The discussion paused. If it hadn’t been for the dragon, the discussion would have continued until the mermaid, and all the townsfolk, died of old age. There had been a dragon though and most of the people in the crowd had been there when Tam kept it from roasting the blacksmith alive and so they listened.

"Cotter's mill pond," he said. "Half a mile south. Fed by the Beck. Deep enough, wide enough. From there the outflow runs to the river." He looked at the mermaid. "The Alderton fork is on the river. You could find it from there."

The look the mermaid gave him didn’t look like the one she’d given the constable, or the professor.

"How deep is the pond?” she asked without quite looking him in the eye.

"Deep enough," he said. "Twelve feet at the centre, maybe more. I've not had a chance to explore further."

"And the outflow," she said. "The channel to the river. Width?"

"Wide enough," he said. "I've moved horses through it."

"Horses," she said, amused.

"They're larger than you'd think," Tam said.

"The mill pond," said the constable, catching up. "Yes, well, that's what I was about to suggest. " He looked around for confirmation of this. Nobody paid any attention.

"How do we move her?" asked Maren, practically. "Half a mile is half a mile."

This opened a second period of discussion, which had the same general character as the first but with more focus and marginally less Constable. The rope plan resurfaced. Someone suggested a cart, which raised the question of keeping her wet, which raised the question of barrels, which raised several further questions. Professor Mole suggested, with great enthusiasm, an idea involving the dam after all, a controlled flooding of the lower field that would theoretically float the mermaid down to the mill pond on a temporary waterway. He spent four minutes explaining it before arriving at the reason it wouldn't work and abandoning it mid-sentence.

Tam listened for a minute and then went to get the cart.

He was back in twenty minutes with the flatbed and two horses and a collection of water barrels which he'd filled at the pump in the stable yard. The discussion was still ongoing. He'd lined the cart bed with the stable's extra canvas and filled it with enough water to cover a tail, or thereabouts.

He backed the cart to the bank.

He looked at the mermaid.

"We'll need to lift you," he said. "I can’t do it myself.”

"Don't let the constable touch me," she said, quickly and with considerable feeling.

"Right," said Tam.

It took him and Petra’s father some time to manage it, because a mermaid out of water is heavier than you'd think and considerably more dignified about the situation than anyone expected. She said nothing while it happened and looked at the sky with the expression of someone enduring something they intended never to speak of again.

Tam tried hard not to notice her bare skin, which sparkled in the sunlight. After her tail gave him a deep cut, Maren helped bandage his hand and then he and Petra’s father wrapped their hands in their shirts for protection.

When the mermaid settled in the cart, tail curved around the barrel that Tam had wedged at the end to give her something to rest against, she closed her eyes for a moment.

"Thank you," she said in a quiet voice, just loud enough for Tam to hear.

"Right," said Tam, and clicked his tongue at the horses.

The procession down to the mill pond was one of the stranger sights the town had produced in a week that had already produced several. The cart led. The horses, to their credit, did not find any of this particularly troubling. Behind them came most of the town, because… well, because wouldn’t you? Besides, everyone felt they ought to be present in case something needed deciding.

Professor Mole walked alongside the cart writing without looking up, occasionally asking the mermaid questions she answered in the tone of someone who has decided that cooperation is less exhausting than refusal.

"The migration patterns," he said. "You mentioned a fork. You travel the same route each year?”

"Yes," she said.

"And the others of your, um. There are others?”

"Yes."

"And by now, they would be where?”

"Where I should be," she said, and closed her eyes again.

Mole stopped writing at this point. He stoppered his ink bottle, stowing it in a pocket that was well inked from previous stowing. He tucked his notebook under his arm and closed his mouth firmly. Maren, who had been watching this entire process, was surprised at this. She hadn’t expected that level of empathy from the man.

At the mill pond they reversed the process, which went slightly better because it was downhill to the water and the mermaid was, by this point, past caring about dignity and simply wanted to be wet.

She slid from the cart and into the pond and went under without a sound.

The town stood at the edge and waited.

She was under for long enough that several people began to exchange glances. The constable opened his mouth. Tam, watching the water, put his hand up without looking around and the town collectively held their breath.

The mermaid surfaced in the centre of the pond. The difference was immediate. This was not the creature they found folded miserably into four feet of stream for three days. She moved through the water with evident glee. It was clear to all who saw her that three days in a four-foot stream had done no permanent damage. She turned twice, full long turns that sent ripples to the edges of the pond, and the colours of her tail in the deeper water were something that several people present would find themselves trying to describe for the rest of their lives without quite managing it.

She stopped in the centre. Looked at the assembled town.

"The outflow," she said to Tam.

He pointed.

She moved toward the outflow but stopped before she was out of sight. She turned back to Tam.

"There was something with me," she said. "When I took the wrong fork. We were separated." She paused. "It would have followed the same current I did. It will have come ashore somewhere near here."

"What kind of something?" asked Professor Mole, immediately opening his notebook.

She considered him for a moment. "The kind," she said, "that looks like it belongs somewhere it doesn't." She looked at Tam again, briefly. "You'll know it when you find it."

Tam, when he did find it, would wonder why she hadn’t just been straight with him.

Then she was gone, down through the outflow and away, and the pond was just a pond again. The townsfolk wondered at the recent turn of events. First a leprechaun, then a dragon and now a mermaid.

Anyone who wasn’t sure if magic were really returning couldn’t question that now.

"Well," said the constable.

Nobody answered him.

Tam unhitched the horses and led them to the pond's edge to drink. They did so placidly, the way they did most things when he was with them. The afternoon light came through the trees at the pond's edge and made the water look briefly like something that might have anything in it.

Something with me, she'd said. Looks like it belongs somewhere it doesn't.

Others had described him that way, once or twice.

He stood there while the horses drank and turned it over and then let it go, because there was the cart to return and the barrels to empty and the evening feed to do, and whatever was out there looking like it belonged somewhere it didn't could wait until it turned up.

Things that needed finding generally turned up in the end.

Professor Mole walked back to the inn in the long way, around the lower field which he’d wanted to flood, thinking over everything he’d written earlier. He paid little attention to where he went, the external world being a suggestion to him, rather than the real thing. He had four new pages of notes and six new questions for every one the mermaid had answered.

He stopped at the edge of the field. “Millicent of Forde, if she was alive, would have loved that,” he said aloud. “She also would have been insufferable.”

When he got back to the inn, he sat at what was quickly becoming his table and arrayed his notebooks. He looked at what he'd written, particularly the last line, underlined without quite remembering doing it.

Stable boy — again. Horses. Route. Note.

Professor Mole twitched his nose, which he did when he was particularly fascinated by an idea.

He turned to a fresh page.

He printed the name Tam at the top of it. He stared at the boy’s name for a long time. Finally, he snapped his fingers to get the attention of the waitress, something she particularly hated, ordered a beer, which he would not drink until it was warm and flat and then got back to work.