But What Choice Do We Have?, by Sarah Nielsen

The Village of the Mermaids, by Paul Delvaux (Belgium) 1942

But What Choice Do We Have?

Hetty was the first to transform.  She was one of the younger wives, brought to this remote, arctic island from faraway Belgium, by a fisherman who loved her long, auburn hair and how readily she laughed at the market – with her sisters, the vendors, a stray dog.  Anyone, really.

He made her his wife, and brought her to this place.  And then he left on the boats, like all our men did, for months and months chasing the fish and the whales and the bears. The polar winter set in, and daylight followed the men over the horizon.  The new wives feared the darkness but those of us who had been here longer knew it was the nearly-dark days that were the hardest, when you could fool yourself that the sun was about to pop over the horizon line. Your body waited, like on the verge of a sneeze that didn’t come. But soon, even the nearly-dark glow faded from our days.  We waited in the darkness.

At first, Hetty kept busy – inventing recipes from available foods, sweeping the floors, sewing curtains from her old travel cloak.  But as the days got shorter, she grew more still.  She stopped brushing her hair.  Stopped going to the market.  She only left to stand on the beach. In the dull twilight we would see her silhouette facing out to sea, arms low to her sides, palms out, beseeching.

Until one day we asked, “Has anyone seen Hetty?”  We knocked and we searched, but I knew.  She had gone to join him.  Her hours on the beach, her gnawing need, had transformed her, given her a tail and gills and the ability to follow him out to sea.

Hetty was the first. Mila and Lina have all left to become mermaids, too.  It has been five months of polar darkness, eight months without the men, and I think I may become a mermaid, too.

​Sarah Nielsen

Sarah Nielsen is a writer, energy executive, and Army veteran who lives alongside the Colorado mountains with her family.