Mary Jane Capps
Iloray: A Mermaid Story
For Mama and Dad
Prologue
It was a story Gryshen had heard a thousand times. Sometimes there were slight variations, depending on which tribe you heard it from, but the bones of it remained the same.
The first children grew from their mother’s belly, the Mother of all, deep within the water. She birthed them in the forms of sparkling shells, twelve great oysters, each one holding an iloray babe. They were raised inside a sacred cavern, a place of unparalleled magic and wonder. In this place was everything they needed to grow healthy, fat, and content. Each child, twelve total, was nourished by the abundance of plant life near the cave, nurtured by the powerful love of the Mother, and protected by the strongest gift She could give them, the greatest gift the sea had to give.
The great oysters cradled the babes as they slept and grew, alongside what is only created when sand gets trapped in the shell—a pearl.
The Sea Mother tucked a grain of sand into each shell as her babes formed, knowing that as her children grew, so would the pearls, knowing that they would nourish her young, and when her young were ready to come out, the gleaming orbs would be there to protect them, like an umbilical cord attached to a placenta.
Except no detachment was necessary.
For many freezes and thaws, the babes wanted nothing more than to be together within this cavern, happy, fed, and next to Mother’s heartbeat. But as they grew older, they grew restless. They began to tire of the same games, the same unanswered questions. None of them had ever even left for oxygen, as they all swam to an opening high up in the cavern that reached the surface of the water.
Every morning, the sun shone upon their faces as they drew breath. Every evening, the moon glowed down as they gulped goodnights into the air.
There was land visible in the distance, but Mother had warned them of creatures, of new and strange dangers, of a climate that was unfriendly to ceasids. Most of the children listened, and kept their longings focused in the world that was their own. But two kept going up, gulping air long past the time the others went back, trying to see more of that green island in the distance.
Mother was a good mother, and she encouraged her children to find their own path—including those drawn to the earth.
And so, brother and sister joined, pairing up until there was no single one left. Except for Mother. She was the only constant in a sea that was only fluid. And these babes were grown and off on their own.
They ventured into open waters, but they found that they grew sick and weak the farther they got from their birth cave. Each pair took a pearl for their vitality, and they agreed to leave six behind in case they needed them.
One pair made their home in the Mediterranean waters. Another traveled toward the Caribbean Sea. Another toward the rocky Celtic coast, another to the balmy Pacific, and the fifth pair took to the iciest waters they could stand in the Arctic.
The sixth went to shore, and practiced basking in the sun for as long as they could. But they soon learned that being out of the water for so long made them tire quickly, even more than when they were far from a pearl. They knew they would need more energy. Back to the cavern they went, asking Mother for another pearl.
Mother asked, “Do the others know? Have they blessed you to take it?”
“Oh yes, yes,” the two lied. They thought their siblings might never agree to them taking a second pearl when they had all left home so recently, and when they sensed resentment over their choice to leave their whole ocean family behind.
“Then you have my blessing to take it.” And Mother opened her great cavern arms, and they plucked another pearl from its hatchery home.
It worked. They felt better on shore almost immediately. But as time passed, they became frustrated once more, for they couldn’t go far beyond the sand of the beach, since they could only use their arms to push their bodies along the ground.
It was known within each of the children that the strongest magic was in Mother’s arms, and so they decided to get one more pearl, to see if it could give them the power to move about the planet.
One night they returned to the cavern.
Again, Mother asked, “Do the others know? Have they blessed you to take it?”
And again, they lied. “Oh yes, yes.” They were certain that if a second pearl would not be approved, a third would be forbidden.
“Then you have my blessing to take it.”
So they brought a third sacred pearl up to shore.
They had the most strength they had ever had, and yet their tails were cumbersome. The brother and sister still had no way to move freely. One evening as the waves drew up high on the beach, they arranged the three large beads carefully in a cluster by some rocks, to keep them from washing away.
The brother accidentally smashed one against the rocks, and from within the white ball, millions of tiny stars burst all over him. They coated his fin in a shimmery glow. The glow burned, and the brother screamed in agony as it began to tear through his tail. His sister watched helplessly as his tail split in two, and the scales began to peel. The pain soon lessened, and in the following days, they understood what had happened as all the scales stripped away to reveal bare pink flesh, and the pink flesh gave way to taut skin.
The ceasid had legs. He stumbled as he learned to walk, and the walk became a run. He reveled in his new body, his new life, as he stretched past all his former limits. He could roam the forest, see the strange creatures of the land. He could climb trees and view the world from a vantage point no one in his family could imagine. He learned to hunt beasts of the land, and brought them back to shore for his sister to taste. He told her of his discoveries, of this earth.
Brother and sister wanted to take the land together, and they knew they’d need one more pearl to do it.
Mother asked the same question, and they told the same lie.
The new man broke the pearl on a rock and sprinkled the stars on his sister’s tail. Shimmer led to wretched pain; wretched pain gave way to rebirth.
And so, the first landkeepers came to be.
Life on dirt was dangerous, and difficult. They did not understand the terrain, and injury soon followed.
While searching the horizon for more to explore, the man fell out of the tree and shattered his legs. The new woman, his sister, was desperate. She did not know his legs would heal naturally, so she broke one of their last two pearls over his limbs.
And then they were left with one. It was barely enough to keep them alive. They had not yet discovered fire, and the land was getting cold. Without the magical energy to protect them, death seemed likely.
So back they took to the sea.
They swam awkwardly, and it was difficult to breathe, even though they still had gills in their necks. They had adjusted to the air. Now human, finding the cave proved much more difficult, but they finally did, and Mother was waiting patiently.
“Do the others know? Have they blessed you to take it?” she asked.
“Yes, yes!” they replied.
“You lie.” The cavern began to close around them.
“Please—just one more!” they pleaded.
“You have taken four. You have misused the magic. You have taken to my womb to steal from me. No more.” And the whirling water began to push them out of the tightening cave mouth.
“No!” screamed the woman. She snatched one pearl and pushed her way out with the man. Upward they swam, but their siblings were all waiting for them.