Soul Singers

Soul Singers

“Aliana! We’re not allowed up there until after dark!” Janisa swam behind her sister, flicking her shimmering tail as fast as she could to catch up. 

“I know, but I thought I saw another one!” 

“Do they usually come to us this early?”

“They can come anytime. We have to stay ready.”

“Where did you see one?”

“Up on the bridge, like always. Well, I thought he would’ve been here by now. Wait, yep. Here he comes, over there.”

The two mermaids sprang into action, a streamlined movement through the warm, salty waters to the spot where the human body had just plunged beneath the surface after jumping from the bridge high above them. 

“Don’t start singing until the bubbles clear. We need his soul to hear us, not get caught in the confusion of the upset waters.”

As the body sank, the broken surface of the water and the turmoil it created underneath quickly calmed, enveloping its newest victim and smoothing back to its glassy stillness.

Aliana nodded at Janisa as they circled the body. The two began to sing, creating a low vibration with too many notes to sound like anything in the human world. Ethereal and haunting, without discernible words, the melodies and harmonies intermingled and wove throughout the waterway. 

Before long, the mermaids recognized the man’s soul detaching from its body and floating into the waters around it. The soft, warm colors mingled in a translucent swirl that gently moved away from its original home.

The two mermaids continued to sing as they swam beside the soul, hemming it in and guiding it away from the body. The soul seemed to follow their voices, being pulled along as if with an invisible string, unable to choose otherwise. Any sudden movement could break the trance that caused the soul to obey. The mermaids flicked their tails as little as possible, only just enough to keep them gliding forward, toward the open waters, where the soul would be sent to its eternal home. Slowly, seamlessly, the mermaids continued their incantation with chords and tones from deep within themselves. Soon, they were at the mouth of the Great Gulf. The soul continued to glide forward, past the mermaids on either side of it, as they sang it into its destiny. 

It moved into the cool darkness of the open waters, following the light ahead as the mermaids’ resounding hymn echoed behind it. Finally, when they could no longer see the soul, they held a final note, harmonizing together before turning, flicking their giant tales and speeding back to their place under the bridge. 

Now, the light from above was growing orange, soon to melt into the deep purple of night. Sparkles of the orange light danced in Aliana’s purple hair as it trailed behind her torpedo-like form. Beside her, Janisa’s blue locks rippled like the water, fanning out around her torso whenever she stopped swimming. Playfully, Aliana glanced at her sister, then rushed to the surface to leap in the air before diving back under the waves. The air always felt refreshing on Aliana’s skin, a cool rush of wind on damp skin. 

“Aliana! You don’t know what’s up there! You could be seen! Or caught…” 

“You sound just like our mother. It’s fine if you do it at the right time. Near dark, no one up there knows what they’re seeing. All the animals do it. You should try it. It feels amazing!”

“I don’t know…what if someone sees us?”

“Come on. I’ll go with you.”

Aliana took Janisa by the hand and flicked her tail gently, pushing them closer to the surface. They slowly emerged from the water to look around. The enormous bridge towered over them, all pillars of metal and cables of iron. Janisa stared in awe. The surface of the water was peppered with boats as sight-seers and fishermen stopped to watch the sunset. The sisters kept their heads low, nothing above the surface besides their eyes. Their blue and purple hair splayed around them in swirls, mimicking seaweed or some sort of jellyfish. 

“It’s so tall!” Janisa said.

“Yeah, it’s pretty amazing from underneath, huh?” 

Suddenly, a man from a barge called out to his crew. 

“Look there! What’s that? Floating over there!” Pointing at Janisa and Aliana, he yelled for his fellow workers to see what he was looking at. 

“Oh boy. Here we go. These guys would love to catch one of us. Let’s get out of here.” Aliana pulled Janisa’s hand and they disappeared below the surface. Flipping themselves around, their tails rose above the surface for an instant with a powerful kick, then they were speeding down, as far beneath the surface as they could get. 

When they felt safe, they slowed and Janisa exclaimed, “That was exciting!” 

“Yeah, a little too exciting…that man saw us.” 

“So what? He’ll probably just think he saw some seaweed or a dolphin or something. Humans can be pretty stupid.”

“Let’s hope so. The last thing we need is someone hunting us. They used to do that, in ancient times. It was not good.”

“I want to go back.” 

“Not now. They’ll be watching for us. It was fun though, right?” They laughed at the excitement of it all. 

The next morning, Aliana showed Janisa a rock formation near an island. While the rocks led directly up the side of the island to land, the likelihood of people being on the island was pretty slim. 

“No one comes here, really. There’s nothing for them to see or do, it’s too small for them to live on,” Aliana explained. “So the only way a human might see us is if they come by in a boat, but we’ll hear that and dive down before they get here.”

The girls were swimming in and out of the rocks below the surface. Then Aliana pushed herself above the surface and, using her arms, pulled herself onto one of the rocks. Janisa wasted no time doing the same. 

“Wow!” she giggled. “I love the way the sun dries out my skin, just a little.”

“Yeah, it’s hard to imagine being dry all the time, or being upright on those legs they have.” 

“I know…have you seen them try to swim? It’s so awkward and slow. But they do it all the time in the shallows.”

“Have you been to the shallows before?” Janisa looked at her sister with wide eyes.

“No, I’ve heard it’s too risky. Children are really likely to see us and guess what we are. And there are tons of them there. One time, a merman tried to go close to the shallows to see the people, and someone thought he was a shark. Everyone started jumping and stamping, trying to get out, and he almost got trampled!” 

“So no shallows.”

“No shallows.”

The girls basked in the sun for a while, then decided to explore. They swam around the island, in and around the rocks. On the far side, they found a small cave. Inside, there wasn’t much to see, but the water became shallow and there was some flat sand where a few people could sit. 

“What is that?” Janisa pointed to a pile of black sticks on top of gray ash. 

“It looks like what they use to stay warm, but the warm part is missing.”

“It makes me feel kind of sad. Maybe we should go.”

“Yeah, it’s almost time for our shift, anyway.”

The girls swam back toward the bridge to await their next soul. Munching seaweed along the way, they stayed deep below the surface, not risking being seen in daylight as they neared the boats and embankments near the bridge. 

They saw the two guards they were replacing swimming away and waved as they swam past. 

For a while, they swam in lazy figure eights, around and through the bridge’s concrete pilings far below the surface. They were bored and growing restless when a plunge surrounded by bubbles in the water caught their attention.

“We got one!” Janisa called as she and Aliana moved swiftly to the chaos in the water beyond the side of the bridge. As they neared, they began to circle the body, waiting for the moment when they should begin singing. But the soul wasn’t detaching like it usually did. Janisa looked at Aliana with confusion. Aliana just shrugged.  

“Let’s just start singing. Maybe it needs a little encouragement.” As their voices began to rise and fall in dreamy, sonorous tones, the waters around the body stilled. Yet the soul still did not detach. Aliana gave Janisa a confused look but they continued singing. 

Suddenly, the man’s eyes opened. Confusion followed by sudden realization led to awkward flailing. The mermaids stopped singing abruptly and raced for his body. 

“He needs air!” Aliana yelled.

“Where do we take him?” Janisa was grabbing him under one arm while Aliana did the same on his other side. 

“Not here! We’ll be seen. And I don’t think he can swim.”

“The cave! It’s not far away!”

“Yes, but we have to hurry!”

The mermaids propelled the man forward with alarming speed, pushing their tails to their full potential as they navigated around the small island they’d found earlier and into the cave. Lifting the squirming man up to the surface, they clumsily dumped his upper torso on the floor of the cave, remaining in the water next to his legs. 

He coughed and sputtered for several minutes, tried to sit up, fell, then finally began to calm down. 

The girls floated patiently as he looked around and got his bearings. 

“Where am I?”

“In a cave, near the big bridge.”

“The bridge…I did it? I jumped? I jumped!” the memory of his most recent and most dramatic last act dawned on him. 

“I didn’t die,” he wondered.

“No, though you almost drowned when we came for your soul.” 

“My soul?”

“We’re supposed to guide your soul to its afterlife,” Janisa explained. 

“You must’ve changed your mind!” Aliana teased, as though he had any choice about staying alive in that moment. 

“I did! I did change my mind! I remember it all now. I remember falling, and all my memories flooding in–just like they say they do. ‘Flashing before your eyes.’ And I didn’t want to go. I want to keep my memories, I want to go back!” He laughed as what he was explaining was just occurring to him as he said it. 

“You want to keep your memories?” Janisa asked incredulously.

“Of course! I had good ones! Not all of them, of course, but enough. Enough good memories to make it worthwhile. I want to keep them. They’re the most valuable thing I have. I don’t know how to let go of my memories. I want to go back to my life.”

“Well…” Aliana was considering her next words carefully. “You can keep your memories or you can go back. But you can’t have both.”

“What do you mean? If I go back, I won’t remember?”

“Exactly. You’ll start fresh, with no memory at all.” 

“What if I choose to keep my memories? Where do I go instead?”

“You stay.”

The man looked from one mermaid to the other as understanding slowly washed over him. 

“You mean…?” he pointed to each of them. Aliana nodded slowly. 

“We remember. We couldn’t let go either.”

His face crumpled and he began to cry quietly. “I can’t let go of these precious memories. My dog when I was a child. My first kiss. The way I felt when I hit my first baseball. I can’t…”

“It’s okay,” Aliana said quietly, taking his hand. “You’ll always have them with you.” 

He nodded as the mermaids slowly slid him back into the water, wrapping their arms around each of his. They submerged deep into the water and began to sing a different song this time. The tune was cheerful and bright like sunshine. As they finished singing their song, the three merpeople left the cave and returned to the pilings under the bridge.

The End