Perched here on the black rocks at night as the waves crash around me, one might take me for a girl seeking to join the ranks of the mermaids, but that is not what I am; my purpose here is quite different.

My mother once told me, You must not marry. You must keep your heart in a tern's egg, in a charmed iron box, and place it in a cave on the cliff face where no man may go. My mother, who knows far more than any sailor, told me, When a girl throws herself into the sea, the mermaids come, they gather like sharks, and if they smell love in her heart, they eat her heart, right out of her chest. It is the taste of love they miss, and those whose hearts they devour become mermaids too. Keep your heart safe, and you'll have naught to fear from men nor mermaids.

I did not heed my mother. I did not seal my heart in a tern's egg and hide it in a cave both bleak and inaccessible. I did not keep it safe. I fell in love with a sailor, and we were wed. My mother, despite her reservations, attended the wedding; the groom's family tried not to notice as she dripped seawater on the church floor, as she watched them fixedly with her wide, black, liquid eyes, as if finding a fault in every one. My father I had not seen in some ten years, not since the day he took the form of an albatross and flew away on his white, enormous wings.

My sailor had dark hair and pale eyes. My sailor had pale skin and red lips. My sailor had broad shoulders and long legs. My sailor was a bonny boy with a voice as sweet as honey. I gave him my heart, with no eggshell around it. I gave it to him, and I trusted that he would keep it safe from mermaids and from other men. We witches, you see, do not keep our hearts in our bodies, safe behind flesh and bone, after the fashion of ordinary people. Our hearts are separate things, and that is why the question of what to do with them obsesses us so. A wise witch who hides her heart well can live for thousands of years, tens of thousands. I was not so wise, and I gave my heart to a sailor like a silly girl.

I sit on the rocks, and the water is very near me. The water makes a sad sound as it sings to the shore. I told my mother that I wanted to see the mermaids, I told her what charms I wanted, and she looked at me with her golden eyes and asked me if I was quite sure. I could see by her expression that she was wary of what I wanted with them, those fishtailed, grey-eyed things who had once been human, who had once danced with human legs on solid ground, who had once wept salt-water tears. Mermaid tears are rare things, often mistaken for pearls. Such tears must be painful to shed: irregular, pearlescent stones. I did not tell my mother what I wanted with the mermaids, and she did not ask me.

My mother gave me three charms to toss into the sea. The first smells of lavender. It is a charm to summon the mermaids. The second smells of rosemary. The third smells merely of ashes. When I cast the third charm into the water, it will disperse the mermaids; they will swim back to their dark kingdoms of death close to the sea floor.

I gave my heart to a sailor, and my sailor drowned. My heart fell into the sea with him, and what became of it, I do not know. Does it lie now on the bottom of the sea? Did the mermaids find it and eat it? They would have found it delicious, for it must have been strong with the taste of love. Or did they keep it for a plaything, a scarlet ball to toss from each to each? I cannot say what happened to my heart. It did not come back to me, and a sea-witch without her heart is a nearly useless creature. Without her heart, what magic can she make? She cannot bring the storms, nor calm the waves.

From my perch on the black rocks, I toss the first charm into the water. Beside lavender, its primary ingredient is a certain rare red kelp that grows only in the deep ocean. At first, all I hear is the black tongue of the water lapping at stone, but I have faith in my mother's craft; I know the charm will work, and I wait. I carry no lantern with me, but the moon is full tonight, casting her glow, and the stars her handmaidens accompany her, each with her own, lesser shine. A few long moments pass, then there is a splash, and I see the first mermaid surfacing. Though I have heard many tales of mermaids, I have never before seen one, and I see, as she swims towards me, that she is as beautiful as the tales say. Her grey eyes are dark, lacking whites, and her skin is pale, gleaming like the underbelly of a fish in the silvery moonlight. Her long hair, trailing in the water behind her, is black and thick, matted and wet, with the look of kelp. Her lips are full, her mouth wide, and that dark mouth moves to smile at me as she rests her clawed, webbed hands on the rock below my feet. She does not speak a word, merely stares at me with her fathomless eyes. Mermaids cannot speak.

Behind her, another surfaces, and another. Some are pale, some are dark, some have dull skin, and others glitter. They converge on the rock where I sit. One after another, they lay their clawed hands on the base of the rock, until there are so many of them, the newcomers must rest their cold hands on the backs of those who came before them, and soon I am surrounded by a shoal of mermaids, all of them with their eyes fixed on me. They watch in near silence. I hear only the sound of the waves hitting the rocks, and a brief splash whenever one of the mermaids strikes the surface of the water with the flat of her tail. I wonder what they are thinking, what they see as they gaze at me.

The second charm my mother gave me, fragrant with rosemary-- which masks the scents of the other things inside the pouch of porous fabric treated with the blood of cormorants-- is not a charm she would merely give to anyone with coin enough to pay for it. It is a dangerous making, and only to one she trusts would she give it. To summon the mermaids is one thing, to command them quite another. I do not drop the second charm in the water yet. I continue to wait, with my retinue of mermaids, and we watch each other as if we understand each other, though that comprehension is likely my imagination.

Though I have lost my heart and the greater part of my power, there is a little art of the sea-witch in my body yet. I know the currents of the water. I know the track of the ships across the trackless surface of the water. I feel more than one ship drawing nearer the shore. Ships full of sailors, like to my sailor, but none of them he, none of them as lovely as he was, as kind as he was, with his low voice and his laughter like the tide coming in. I have nothing of him now, nothing left. I do not even have a heart with which to grieve. The ships draw nearer. The sailors are coming home; their voyages were uneventful, and they are looking forward to seeing once again their mothers, their sweethearts.

Thinking of these expectant, contented sailors, I rise to my feet. I throw the second charm into the water. It hits the surface between two mermaids, sinks. As the the water swallows the charm, the mermaids, as one, open their mouths. They begin to sing. Though they cannot speak, they can sing, and they have beautiful voices. Voices as beautiful and unsettling as their bodies. Voices like the voices of girls, yet animal. Like a song, yet like a wail, so sad, drifting far out over the water, beneath the moon and stars. I listen to them sing, and I wonder, are their songs songs of mourning? Or are they only senseless cries? I will never know.

A mermaid's call is treacherous, not unlike the legendary song of the sirens. Much like the sirens who, in the old story, lured sailors to their deaths, so the call of a mermaid is such that those who hear it are entranced, drawn unwaveringly towards it. Unlike the sirens of the story, however, mermaids do not usually gather near the shore; they are roving, solitary creatures, elusive, slipping in and out of sight and existence like the ghosts they are. It is a rare thing to see one, rarer still to hear one sing. Tonight, however, I have called the mermaids in droves to the shore. Here where I have chosen to toss my charms into the sea, here is the island's most dangerous stretch of shore. There are many rocks, sharp, thrusting from the water. These rocks would cut into the hulls of any ships that struck them. Ships would sink, and sailors drown.

The mermaids are singing, and the ships are sailing towards the shore. I think of my dead sailor. I think of the live sailors in the ships and their sweethearts. And why should I care if those other girls lose their sailors? They are not like me. They are merely human girls. Why should they enjoy what I have lost? Why should the other sailors, limber and hale, enjoy what my love has lost: movement of air through their lungs, smell of seawater in their noses, taste of brine on their lips, touch of flesh beneath their fingers, sight of the world in their eyes? I close my eyes for a moment, and I feel the slipping of hulls through dark water. I raise my hand, and it is as if I can feel the rough barnacles on the bellies of the ships. The ships are sailing towards the shore; the mermaids are calling them. I smile, and I open my eyes, but my smile quickly falters as I realize I myself am not immune to the mermaids' song. Almost, I step forward, from my rock into the dark water and the cold, fishy arms of the creatures gathered around me. Their song is drawing me to them, and it takes all my will to resist it.

The mermaids' heads are all thrown back, eyes on the starred sky; their throats flash in the moonlight. Save for the first mermaid, the one closest to me, directly before me. She looks at me, her gaze fixed upon my face. She must be singing too, for her mouth is open and she seems to sing-- though I can hardly distinguish the voice of one mermaid when they are all singing so loudly and eerily.

She is a dead girl, both more and less than a ghost. At some point she broke bread every morning, had her petty complaints and her great ones, grieved, and finally threw herself into the sea, which took her. Do mermaids remember their old lives? Do they know what they were once, or only what they are? I wonder what her name was, what kind of a girl she'd been. Has she been dead for two years? Twenty? Two hundred? I know she was human once, but there is nothing human now in her eyes. They are fishlike, hungry, blank, and even if she remembers her life of before, her mermaid memories must have superseded the older ones, for she is feral. Feral, but not mindless. There is an awareness in those eyes, though it is not human. So little is known of the lives and behavior of mermaids. What do they do when no one is watching them?

The fishermen say, sometimes a mermaid will take a sailor for a lover. My mother says, any sailor who loves a mermaid is doomed. But she does not tell me why. The mermaid will not devour him, I know; they devour only the hearts of drowned girls. I did not drown, but my heart was lost at sea. I do not know what became of it or what will become of me, and it is unfair. Yes, it is unfair, and I want someone to suffer for it. I tell the mermaid this, though I do not know if she can understand me; in reply she only watches me, watches me endlessly. How strange. I think of my lost heart, and I wonder again if the mermaids consumed it, for it must have been sweet with love. Or bitter with love. I do not know what the taste of love is. Any man who loves a mermaid is doomed. Any girl who loves a sailor is doomed.

The ships sail nearer. So many sailors will die when they strike the rocks, and their sweethearts will weep. Perhaps some of these sweethearts will cast themselves from high cliffs down into the sea, become mermaids. Perhaps they will speak of me, the Sea-Witch's Daughter, and for years, generations, will tell of the night I slaughtered the sailors. My name will become a charm, used to frighten children into behaving well, and thus I will regain a kind of power.

My mother must have known why I wanted the charms I asked for. She must have known, but she gave me the charms regardless, though it is her duty to watch over all the sailors, fishermen, divers, and people of the island. She is not one of those sea-witches who live to do mischief. She is a good witch and has never done an islander any harm.

That one mermaid is still watching me, and I don't understand. I forget the approaching ships, drawn by the lure of the mermaid's song, and return her gaze, it is so intent. I crouch down again to be closer to her. She is not singing, I realize. She is only pretending to sing. She smiles at me, black mouth in a pale face. Her teeth are like needles. I ask her what she wants. I ask her why she isn't singing, although I know-- I was taught as a little girl at my mother's knee-- that mermaids cannot talk. They can only sing, such sad songs. The song of the mermaids is moving me as surely as it moves the sailors' ships through the water towards the rocks. Soon I will be able to see those ships with my own eyes, see and hear them break to pieces.

The mermaid I spoke to does not answer my questions, but her eyes are still on mine, and I feel something. Inside me, where I would hold my heart were I a human, something stirs. It is a wise thing, I think, for humans to have their hearts inside their bodies. I put a hand to my chest, and I start to weep. Witches are closer kin to humans than mermaids, for they shed salt tears, and I feel mine slip warm down my face, stinging as they go. I clutch the third and final charm in my left hand, and that hand dangles over the water as the right hand lies upon my chest, upon the place I would feel my heart beating, if I were only a girl like these gathered mermaids were once. I say that I want them to die, all these sailors who are not my sailor, that I do not care, but the mermaid watches me as her sisters sing, and I know she does not believe me, cold thing with her sharp eyes. I do not believe myself, for these tears on my face say otherwise.

My right hand trembles. My fingers unclench around the third charm, and it falls into the water with a small splash. The third charm contains, among other things, the charred bones of a whale. The choir of mermaids falls silent at once, their voices cut off cleanly as by a knife. The night seems desolate so suddenly deprived of their keening song. The mermaids fall silent, and the ships correct their courses at the last moment, their navigators starting from a daze as if from a sickly sweet dream, awakening to discover that the stars are suddenly all in the wrong places. One by one, the mermaids, released by the third charm, slip away, flicking their tails as they sink into the water, perhaps to propel themselves away, perhaps as a gesture of farewell. Until only one remains, the one who was first to arrive, the one who never sang, who is still watching me as I crouch weeping on the rock I chose for my perch, no charms left.

The first arrived and now last remaining mermaid pulls herself up out of the water and onto the rock beside me as I weep. She takes the form of my mother-- or rather, my mother returns to her own form, and she takes me in her arms, and I dry my tears in her long, dark hair.