The Bimini Mermaid

Frothy sea spray crashed fervently against the rocky shoreline of the northern coast of Bimini Island. Its aquamarine waters shimmered in the reflection of the sinking sun like floating crystals on the ocean’s surface. The siren made her way to the cove and breached the surface of the secluded tidal pool, one of her favorite hunting grounds. She plucked a handful of scallops out of the abundant scallop beds that were found in the diverse ecosystems found there. Leaning against the knobby trunk of a mangrove tree, she hungrily crunched the mollusks. Her ultra-sensitive hearing picked up the whine of a small boat engine headed in the direction of the estuary where she was feasting. She immediately plunged down into the water and back to the open sea, diving to a depth of 400 feet below the surface within minutes, leaving no trace of her existence behind.

“Ashley honey, once I tie off on this tree limb, I want you to wait until I get down, and then I’ll help you out of the skiff, ok?”

“Of course Dan, although, I’m not an invalid you know. At least not yet.”

Dan killed the motor of the skiff and let the gentle roll of the tide carry them to the shore of the inlet. He tied off on the branch of a mangrove and gingerly stepped out of the skiff, slowly lowering his foot into the water to feel for a spot his foot could gain purchase on the submerged rocks that edged against the bank.

Although Dan hadn’t worn a life jacket for the boat ride, he had insisted Ashley wear one, and now she took it off, letting it drop on the seat of the skiff.

“Common now, steady and slow.” Dan reached for Ashley’s hand and she slid it into his palm. She took a tentative step onto the rock that Dan had found to support her and, taking in her surroundings, lost her footing. Dan caught her before she could fall and hurt herself.

The two waded through the rocks and made their way to shore. Ashley was a little unsteady on her feet going up the sandy slope of the beach. Dan noticed her breathing was a little labored. His brows knit with concern but he didn’t allow Ashley to see his worried expression. She took a few moments to recuperate while Dan waited patiently.

“Ok”, Dan initiated, “I do think this is the island where The Healing Pool is supposed to be according to that old native man. At least I hope it’s the right place.”

They wandered through the thick vegetation, weaving their way through the island in search of an allusive pool of fresh water with special healing properties amidst the many streams and inlets that feed into the cove. The island had very few visitors, so Dan was told he was going to have to hack his way through underbrush. The longer they walked without locating the pool, the more Dan found he could not stave off growing anxiety about Ashley’s condition.

“This damn pool HAS to be here! It’s Ashely’s last hope and I won’t give up on her!”

“Dan, I’m sorry, but I have to rest. I’m starting to think this place really doesn’t exist anyway.” She gave Dan a measured gaze and saw the stubborn intent on his face. She recanted, “Maybe we should head back to the villa for the night. I don’t think this is the right island, but maybe we could try again tomorrow. We probably just got the wrong heading or something. There are so many islands here.”

Reluctantly, Dan conceded. “All right Honey, we can go out and look tomorrow. We need to get you some of that conch salad I heard about.”

They carefully picked their way back through the small path they had beaten through on their way in. By the time they reached the skiff, the sky had darkened considerably, with ominous rain clouds threatening their trip back to the inhabited side of the island. Dan kept a worried vigil on the sky as he helped Ashley back into the skiff. “I didn’t think it called for any rain today.” He mused. He jumped in himself, untied, and started the engine, watching as she buckled up the life jacket. He turned the boat back towards the small slip where their rental villa was located on the northwestern side of the main island. He opened up the small outboard engine to full capacity and left small waves in their wake.

Not only did the clouds get thicker and heavier nearly as soon as they got the skiff away from the beach, but a deluge of rain started pouring down on them like someone emptying a larger-than-life bucket from the sky. The wind whipped up creating large waves in the normally placid ocean. The boat was rocked violently and swayed as a baby in a cradle, threatening to capsize the small skiff with each gust. It was all Dan could do to keep the boat moving forward instead of succumbing to the wild fury of the storm, until at last, the small boat could take no more and in one fluid motion, was flipped completely upside down.

Ashley kicked ferociously as the life jacket buoyed her to the surface. She broke water and frantically searched for Dan, but he was nowhere. She screamed and paddled, scanning the horizon for Dan. She grabbed the capsized boat and hung on, continuing to call out Dan’s name. She clung desperately to the hull and allowed the wind to carry her wherever the wind was blowing. She feared the worst. Dan must have been hit in the head when the flipped over and then drowned. Dan was gone. Her salty sobs mingled with the ocean water and the pouring rain as she clung to the skiff, trying to save whatever energy she could, for as long as she could.

Ashley awoke with sore arms clinging to the skiff. She had just been bobbing in the water, allowing the ocean to claim her. The storm had passed, leaving blue skies and a calm sea in its wake. Overhead, the cries of seagulls broke up the lull of the lapping ocean waves against the hull of the skiff. She mourned for Dan and was past having hope for herself. She was contemplating this when she caught some movement several yards away. She began to panic thinking it was a shark, not thinking that realistically, no shark breaches the water, except for its fin, and whatever this was did not have a fin. Nonetheless, she was a sitting duck bobbing there in the ocean. She was torn as to whether she should try to turn the skiff over herself, or be quiet and try not to draw attention to herself. Whatever it was she had seen had dove back down into the water and was out of sight now. That made Ashley even more uneasy and she scanned the water’s surface for any sign of movement.

The siren knew that she had to do something to assist the human female or she would perish. Even from that distance, she sensed the girl was ill and wasn’t going to hold up very long floating in the ocean aimlessly. She made the decision to again break the unspoken law of her kind and interfere in human life, although this one was conscious and so was going to have to see her. Without a second thought, she plunged back into the water to bridge the distance quickly. When she silently surfaced, she was only a few feet from the girl, who was facing the other direction. Not able to speak in language, the siren slapped the surface of the water with her hand and waited for the girl to turn around.

When Ashley heard the slap on the water, she was terrified. “This is it. I’m fish food.” She deduced, and slowly, she kicked her legs and pulled her arms through the water until she turned behind her to face the creature that effortlessly treaded water, not 10 feet from her.

Stunned in disbelief and frozen in fear, Ashley could do nothing but stare at the creature before her. She was so shocked her legs and arms stopped moving through the water simultaneously and she felt heavier as the weight of the life jacket suddenly got too much for her to keep around her shoulders. She was beyond tired, and her disbelief at what she was seeing was the last straw. She slid into darkness as her shoulders and arms went limp, and the life vest turned from a life-saving device to something that threatened to contribute to her demise. As the darkness and the water took her over, she felt a hand on her shoulder and a grip around her waist as she was hoisted back to the surface where she involuntarily gasped for air. When she stopped spitting out water, she briefly cautioned a glance at her savior and breathlessly uttered “It can’t be. You’re a, a… mermaid” before complete exhaustion overtook her, and her watery blue world went black.

Dan came to laying on his stomach, seawater dribbling out of his mouth. He realized he had a heck of a knot on his head and a massive headache as he slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position trying to figure out where he was and what had happened. He remembered the storm and the boat swaying in the water violently. He remembered Ashley’s terrified face looking to him for strength. ASHLEY! What had happened to Ashley? If he was here, wherever here was, where was Ashley? He rose to his feet to survey his surroundings and found he was on a beach. No surprise there, but, what beach? He thought about exploring the area but thought better of it in case, by some miracle, Ashley had made it to the same shore and was looking for wood or something to build a fire with. He sat back down and told himself he would wait for an hour or so, not knowing how to gauge that time with no watch on, and then he would go walk the island to see what he could find, which hopefully, would be Ashley.

The siren was hesitant to bring the woman to where she had left the man because she did not want to risk the man being awake and getting a look at her too but decided that it was in the best interest of the woman that she bring her to where the man was. She made her way up the coastline and paused when she saw the man had awoken. He wanted to drop the woman a few yards from the man and disappear, never to be seen again, but she paused. She knew the woman was going to perish without some type of intervention. She had a sickness that was claiming her body. On an island secluded with a veiled mist, there was a spring that had properties that would allow for healing the body, but, it was perilously close to where her kind’s civilization had been; the ruins of which her kind still guards from discovery. The civilization where her kind had originated. She knew if she brought these two humans to the spring of healing and it was discovered by her elders, they might kill the humans, and she would be banished. Still, the weight of her inaction to help a life heal when she has the power to do so was too heavy, and she made a decision.

Ashley came to face down on a beach. She was so wiped out she could barely move. She had no idea how she got there and she really didn’t care. She lay there not wanting to do anything but rest. Her mind was empty and she felt very heavy. She remembered that she was in the water clinging to a boat and that Dan…” Oh, Dan,” had drowned. She had no desire to do anything at all.

Dan had grown impatient waiting there on the beach and began pacing. He was tired and getting hungry, but he had no course of action. He made a decision and set off to find out where he was.

He explored about a mile or so into the heavily foliaged inner portion of the island and had not found anything of significance. He decided to head back to the beach for no other reason than he was beside himself in what to do. When he returned, he looked up and down the coastline, only to find a form of what looked to be a human body in the distance, several yards up the beach. “Oh no! Please God, let her be alive! Ashley!” he yelled, taking off as fast as he could run in the wet sand towards the lifeless form.

Dan found Ashley lifeless on the sand. “Thank God! Ashley, honey, I’m here.” He proclaimed as he dropped to his knees to check for her pulse and breath. He turned her over on her back and began CPR. After a few repetitions, spit and ocean water flooded from her mouth and Dan quickly turned her on her side so she wouldn’t drown. Coughing and sputtering, Ashley raised herself on her arms. When she was finished she sat upright and grabbed for Dan.

“Real”, she muttered, “they’re real Dan! I saw her! She saved my life.”

Dan stared at her, shaking his head slightly as he tried to understand what she was talking about.

“She’s a mermaid! I saw her Dan! In the water! The boat capsized and then she was there! I tried to hold on, but I was so tired."

“Ashley, I’m sure you saw something in the water. Probably a dolphin or something. The storm was horrible and scary and I’m sure you were so tired you were delirious.”

“No, Dan! I saw..” she trailed off as her gaze caught the sight of their skiff being pushed onto the beach by a creature resembling a woman, but who could have equally been described as fish-like. Dan turned to follow his wife’s gaping stare and he began to stand up.

Both of them were transfixed as the woman-like creature backed off into waist deep water and watched the couple for a few seconds, motionless. She gestured to the skiff and looked back out at the ocean, her directives given in exaggerated simplicity, but neither Dan nor Ashley made any attempt to break their shocked stance and the siren took on an exasperated expression before, with pursed lips, fixing her gaze on Ashely for a brief moment before she plummeted back into the ocean and out of sight again.

It took several moments before Dan could move. Both he and Ashley still remained focused on the spot where the mermaid, as ridiculous as it sounded, that’s what it was, disappeared into the sea. When he was finally able to snap himself out of his trance, he reached for Ashley, who was still scanning the ocean’s surface for signs of anything unusual.

“Common Ashley, let’s get you back to the villa. It’s been a helluva day, and it’ll be dark soon. The last thing I want is to be stuck on the water after dark.” He rubbed the throbbing goose egg on the back of his skull, trying to remember how he got it, and then it dawned on him suddenly. He had hit his head on the side of the skiff when it overturned and everything went dark. His last fleeting memory before blacking out was the feeling of thin, yet strong arms around his midriff. Then he was waking up on the beach. “Face down…just like Ashley was.” He mulled the thought for a moment before speaking. “Ashley, I think that, um, that..”

“Mermaid, Dan? She was a mermaid. Just like I told you.”

“Ok, whatever you want to call her, I actually think she pulled me out of the water because I hit my head and blacked out.”

“And I passed out when I had no more strength. I slid into the water, I know I did.”

“She saved us Ash, we owe her our lives.”

The couple exchanged knowing looks before Ashley got in the skiff and watched as Dan pushed the boat off the sand and jumped in himself, cranking the motor and steering back out into the sea, hoping he could find his way back to North Bimini and their waiting villa.

Twenty or so minutes had passed and Dan was growing increasingly worried that his lack of navigational skills was keeping them hopelessly lost. With dusk approaching, he was at a loss for what to do to find their way back to familiar island beaches. The storm had really blown them off course and that, whatever it was, had deposited them somewhere off the beaten course. Where, he had no idea. Ashley was slumping in her seat and Dan was more than concerned. She had guarded health at best on a good day, let alone when she’s exerted herself and not eaten or rested properly, which this day had run the gambit on all of those taboos, and Ashley was fading away. He had to get her back to the villa for rest and food, or, setting his eyes on her, to the hospital probably.

Dan had begun to lose patience with himself; the whole day he had really messed up. First dragging poor Ashley out here looking for some make-believe healing pool. “What was I Thinking anyway?!” Then not paying attention to the encroaching storm and getting her back in time to avoid it, getting knocked out when she needed him the most, only to be rescued by some…THING in the water, and lastly, getting them hopelessly lost on the water with nightfall overtaking us within half an hour. “Inexcusable!” Dan chided himself under his breath. “I’m going to be the death of her myself, never mind the damn lymphoma.”

Ashley knew they were lost at sea, and she felt drained from the day’s events. She had exerted too much of what precious little energy she had left. She felt the life force ebbing from her, pulling further and further out, not unlike the tide pulls away from the shore during the low cycle. She was sinking in her chair on the skiff, the ocean waves were pulling her under again, as they had earlier that day. Her awareness of her surroundings was becoming like a surreal fog. A fog rolling on the ocean surface with the coming of night.

“Oh my God, Ashley!!” Dan cut the engine to the skiff and ran to the starboard side where Ashely had just fallen into the water. It was night now and he could barely make out the outline of a figure floating on the surface, but moving at a high speed, as if propelled from below.

“What the Hell? Hey, what is going on? What are you doing with my wife? Bring her back here!” Dan cranked the engine once again and followed the floating body headed to God knows where. “Must be that mer..that thing. I hope it knows what it’s doing.” Dan knew if the siren had wanted to harm them it would have done so earlier that day, but instead, it probably saved both of their lives. “And now it’s got Ashley, taking her God knows where.”

The siren knew time was very short. She tried to get the two to follow her to the place of healing earlier that day, but they didn’t understand. Now she is having to race for time if the woman was going to have enough life in her to heal. Once she slipped past the point of breath, there would be no helping her. She also had to make sure the man could follow her in the boat so he knew where to find the woman after.

The grotto where the Healing Pool was located was virtually impossible to locate unless you knew what you were looking for. There had been a few humans who had discovered its location over the millennia when the siren’s ancestors were still living on the island that housed the grotto and the Healing Pool. The siren and her kind have been ferocious guardians of the grotto and the pool in it. The last remnants of a once thriving but forgotten kingdom that, through their advanced use of atomic energy, inadvertently, and all at once caused their own self-destruction. As a direct consequence, the waters within a radius of the island became energetically charged, and interactions with metal craft became irreversibly unpredictable. The Bermuda Triangle became an enigma to the modern world.

The siren approached the entrance to the grotto and waited impatiently as the small skiff pulled up to the entrance. Here is where it was going to get tricky. She had to submerge and carry her unconscious charge with her. She surfaced and motioned for Dan to “wait”, then, pinching Ashley’s nose so she wouldn’t drown while submerged, she quickly dove, leaving Dan to panic.

She had never swum so swiftly before. Time was of the essence for Ashley in many ways. The siren held the woman close as she sprang out of the water, releasing her nose so she could breathe. Quickly checking for life in the woman, the siren deposited her on the inner bank of the hidden grotto, the glistening waters of the pool awaiting its patient. The siren hoisted herself on the bank, grabbed the woman to her, and used her muscular tail to inch them both to the pool. When she reached the edge of the pool, she carefully laid Ashley down on the soft sand, cupped her hands to gather some of the healing liquid, and drizzled it onto Ashley’s lips. After a few moments, Ashley began to lick her lips. The siren cupped more water and again drizzled onto Ashley’s lips. Ashley’s eyes fluttered open and the siren cupped a third helping of water. Ashley was able to lift her head up enough to actually drink the water from the siren’s cupped hand. The siren wiggled her way back to submerge herself into the water that led out and waited for Ashley to get some strength.

Ashley couldn’t explain the feeling that came over her as she drank another cupped hand full of water. She had begun to feel infused, as if by a healing energy. The longer she sat there taking sips of the fresh water with the unusual flavor, the better she felt. Her thirst slaked, she glanced around the grotto and spotted the mermaid behind her in the water. She smiled and said “Thank you. I owe you my life. Twice, I think.”

The siren smiled slightly, but nervously turned when they both heard Dan yelling.

“That’s Dan! I bet he’s looking for me. How do I get out of here?”

The siren gestured she had to swim underwater by pinching her nose and emulating swimming. She looked questioningly at Ashley and Ashley understood that mermaid was asking if she could swim.

“Yes, I can swim, and I think I even have the strength to do so. In fact, I haven’t felt this good in so long I can’t remember.”

Ashley jumped in the water with the mermaid and they both dove under, the mermaid leading the way out of the grotto through the underwater tavern.

On the other side, Ashley submerged, the mermaid surfacing several yards away. Dan stared wide-eyed for a few moments as Ashley swam up to the skiff.

“Well, are you going to help me back into this boat, or do I have to figure out how to climb up?” Ashley admonished. Dan snapped out of his amazed stare and offered a hand to Ashley, quickly lifting her into the skiff. He started the engine and Ashley said “I think the mermaid is going to help us find our way back.”

They followed the siren back to the island they first thought was the location of the Healing Water. The siren bobbed in the water long enough for Ashley to wave and say “Thank you…for everything.” Then she dipped into the ocean, still blackened by the night, and disappeared.

Dan and Ashley waited for daybreak on the island the mermaid had taken them to. Ashley recounted how she felt in the boat before she passed out and fell in the water, and then what happened in the hidden grotto and how she couldn’t explain the difference in the way she felt after drinking from the pool inside it. They discussed if they should tell someone about the mermaid, and try to take them back to the location where the Healing Pool really was. Dan thought the discovery would be too beneficial to science and mankind to withhold from the rest of the world, but, in the end, agreed with Ashley that even if they could find their way there again, such things would end up being exploited by man, and the mermaid and her people, if there were more of them, would only be in danger if their existence was disclosed.

At dusk, Dan and Ashley boarded the skiff and headed back to their villa on the north side of Bimini Island.

The siren watched at a distance as the woman and the man boarded the skiff. Beside her, a male siren emerged and beside him a juvenile siren. They watched the boat disappear out of sight as the siren wondered if she had signed a death warrant for her people in helping the man and the woman. She didn’t know if they would try to return and bring others to look for the hidden grotto and the healing pool, spelling doom for the merfolk. But she did know that helping the humans was the right thing to do. All life is sacred after all, and must be preserved whenever possible, be it human or otherwise.