Life Cycle

Straining against the wind to reach the top of the dune, the winter was beginning to set in. They had gone on countless hikes there. Each time, she had gazed across the great lake longingly, but this time, even more so. The wind’s sharp knives cut a dagger through her heart.
She identified with the Selkie woman, who’d shed her skin to live on land, but could never shed the feeling of displacement.
Across the lake was her other home. This other home was probably no better than the life created here. In fact, in some ways, parts of that other home were more backward, yet coexisting with parts that were more forward looking, much like here.
Her eyes scanned the gray skies, soon to turn to dusk. What she saw was a little disconcerting. Gray, round heads looking as thought they were doing breaststrokes toward her.
Then, she began to wonder and to remember. The gray heads took off their headgear by pulling them up over their faces and backward, revealing long tresses with garlands of multicolored flowery seaweed.
She sat on the rock in a forward-gazing yoga-like pose.
“Darlene!” one of them called out, “you’ve been gone too long. It was Muriel’s turn several years ago!”
Then, she heard many voices cry out, “Darlene, Darlene, Darlene!”
She cupped her ears with her hands and squinted her eyes shut. These were no Selkies; these were Mermaids…Mermen,too, but then, there was no such thing as either one.
However, she began to remember. She felt a strange tug at her feet; her feet were melded together. She couldn’t move them one at a time. She was crippled, no longer able to walk, stride, and above all, hike on those long summer excursions.
One blond and powerful maid came forward to visit her, sitting on the rocks.
“Darlene, you’re not being very fair, you know. Everybody gets to take his or her turn. Muriel’s been waiting a long time. By now, you’re probably so adjusted to land, you’ve forgotten us and your old ways, singing in our churches, eating our food, painting flowers from the bottom of the sea, farming the ocean floor.”
Tears streamed down Darlene’s face: Of Course, of course, but she thought those memories were on the land across the lake, the large cities and small towns reflecting varied motherlands and customs.
“Come on, now, Darlene,” said the blond one “You’ve got to leave all you’ve built up here, all the relationships, and go home.”
“You mean, to die?”
“Only to a place you’d agreed you’d never stay. Die to that, perhaps.”
The mermaids and mermen surrounded her on the rocks.
Muriel called out, “Did you have a good time, Darlene?”
She thought, “Oh, I wouldn’t have traded my life here for all the world, but some of those times were very, very hard.”
“Well, no matter what happens there, I still want to go,” Muriel insisted, “I have the next chance, and I’m going to take it!”
The blond one whom she’d recognized from her life before, Angela, tugged at her, and she automatically, with the skill of her flipper, dived in, meeting up with and surrounded by many she’d known and loved before.
She thought she heard something like a baby’s cry; it was just Muriel, breaking her flipper encasement becoming…human.
“See you, Muriel,” they cried out, “have a wonderful adventure! Just don’t forget us and your real home.”
Muriel blinked and looked at her new bright setting with wonder. She looked as though the Mer-people were no longer in her line of vision.
Already, she was beginning to forget.