Jonathan Strahan - The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume 5 An anthology of stories

Behind him the city was dark. At the moment, it felt cold behind him, but safe, too, in its quiet. He didn’t really want to go back there. Not yet.

He wished he’d had time to set them one last fire before he’d left.

In addition to working as a doctor in Madrid, Sara Genge writes speculative fiction for the sleepless mind. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons , Cosmos , Weird Tales, and Shimmer Magazine , among others, including translations into Greek, Czech, and Spanish. “Sins of the Father” is her sixth story for Asimov’s .

Mother, I received your letter a year ago. The men brought it up to town from the nest of brambles where the tide had left it. Luckily for you, they’ve learned to recognize the sheen of the bone-white logs where you write your messages and bring them uphill for me to read.

If it were up to me, I’d leave your letters on the shore to rot. But the men think your messages are important, maybe contain a sign that the merfolk are relenting on the technological restrictions you’ve imposed on humans. They wouldn’t believe me if I told them that the message is not for them, not even really for me, even though it is to me that you address your concerned words. The sea is free and your message can be read. What better propaganda than your constant chiding, your denunciation of my treason and your resolve never to allow me back into the sea?

I chirped at the log and your words bounced back at me like a slap. After all these years, you are still so restrained, so proper! I shouted at the men who’d brought me the message as they stood sweaty on my doorstep. With Spanish patience, they left me alone. Why is it that your letters always elicit the same reaction? A merman should be capable of getting over his mother, even if he isn’t capable of getting over losing his place in the sea.

Do you know what it’s like living here? Dry comes to mind, and poor. You made it so, but you only know what they tell you.

No matter, I can fix that. Propaganda works both ways: our kinsman, mermaids and mermen, will read and repeat my words. You must know what you’ve done, all of you, and then maybe your heart will soften and you will listen to my plea.

Like so many love stories, mine started at a party. The town was decked in paper flags and light bulbs. The old generators were dragged out to cough up light along with smoke and the children ran around round-eyed at the small miracle. The merfolk allow a yearly festival. They reckon their world can deal with this small ecological disaster.

Even the women drank, and the men taught the younger children to tip the bota up over their heads and catch the red liquid in their mouths without splashing their best clothes.

By midnight, despite the food, everyone was tipsy and girls started asking me to dance. I’m sure it was a dare, but I wasn’t complaining.

Rosita, normally a timid creature, kept coming back for more.

“Pobrecito,” she whispered, daintily probing the dry scales on my neck. “Does it hurt very much?”

“It mostly just itches,” I told her. “It’s much worse in winter. Sometimes one of them gets infected.” I cursed myself; she didn’t need to know that. But she didn’t seem to care and looked up earnestly into my face.

“I know of a remedy that might help. But don’t tell anyone I told you about it, eh? It’s embarrassing,” she said.

I promised to keep it a secret.

“You have to take your,” she blushed and lowered her voice, “ pee . Put it on the dry parts every morning. It helps.”

I stopped dancing and pulled away from her. Couples swerved to avoid us. Did she really think I’d fall for that prank? They’d nicknamed me lizard. Would they call me peeman next?

“Sorry, Señorita . Was this your friends’ idea? Shame on them, for suggesting it, and shame on you, for carrying it out.”

She looked confused for a minute, then lifted her eyebrows in surprise and started giggling into her hand.

“Oh no, it wasn’t a joke. I would never joke about someone else’s discomfort. Oh, I’m really sorry that you thought that, oh, you poor thing. No, no! The remedy really works and I meant it in earnest. The women use it all the time in winter.” She fixed her eyes on mine, willing me to understand.

I didn’t.

“In winter?” I asked.

“Yes, because of the skirts.” She squirmed.

I shook my head and she sighed and leaned in to whisper into my ear, putting her hand on my shoulder to bring me closer. She didn’t seem repulsed by my skin.

“Because we don’t wear pants and our legs rub together. Down there .” I could hardly hear her, she was whispering so soft, and her wine breath tickled my ear. “In winter the cold chaps the skin and it hurts like the devil.” She let go of my shoulder but kept her voice lowered. “Remember Manuela? Trinidad’s grandma? They said she died of that, her legs rubbed raw and then one day she woke up with them puffed and swollen and the next week she was dead.”

The song wound to an end. I assured her I believed her and grabbed her by the waist. She didn’t move away. Instead, she placed her left hand on my shoulder and her right in my hand. We stood still for a whole minute until the band started playing again and we were free to dance.

My town hangs from a cliff over a ravine, in the Archipelago that was once the Iberian Peninsula, in the middle of the Great Sea.

What little land we have, we need for planting, so the villagers carve houses from stone, using the silt as base for whitewash and walling themselves into the earth with brick and plaster. I love them: houses like wombs. No fear of escape. Sometimes, when the sea calls out to me so loud and deep that I falter, I dig into my house and feel as surrounded as if I were floating underwater. Nothing reaches me inside my cave, except the pull of moon on blood that never leaves a merman. And if that fails, there’s always wine.

A week after the festival, I took my place in Severino’s tavern. All the men were here, fleeing their women and their religion for wine and tapas. I drank and peeled scales from my face, dropping them on the floor while the men looked away politely.

I looked around at sun-scared men, the visible heat, the card games. This is a fragment of Spain that exists outside of History. It was never like this, not even in the period that it supposedly imitates, the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It was never this sad. My scales piled up, slight and luminescent, among the olive pits and cigarette butts. I was part of the cliché, but you, Mother, made it this way.

You suffer humans to live so you can laugh and point. The merfolk could wish humans away with a flick from their collective tail, but instead they leave them these islands of dirt and inbreeding, make museums out of them, examples for the younger generations of mer who are eager to exploit resources that they can’t put back. Of course, there can be no industry in these prisons and the humans get extra points for going for the whole historical hogwash and keeping their old customs, their clothes and their beliefs. For every seven years of continuity, the merfolk desalt a few crates of silt and throw it on the shore. Allow me to say, with my acquired Spanish irony, that by my calculations, you will have reconstructed the whole of the peninsula in another two thousand years.

The Preserves are put to other uses. Where else could you send people like me? The sea is free; there are no prisons to send traitors. I was given a choice between my tail and my life and I chose my life. My tail was ripped down the middle, joints turned around and flippers lifted at a right angle to serve as feet. You may not agree with me, Mother. I know, for you, this is the ultimate embarrassment. But it was my choice to make.