Peter Beagle - The Line Between

«Ah, well, a Goro's not to everybody's taste.» He yawned again, and suddenly barked with laughter. «Probably gave the poor old thing a belly–ache — no wonder!» He literally fell over on his back at the thought, laughing, waving his arms and legs in the air, purely delighted at the image, and more so with himself for creating it. I watched him from where I lay, feeling a curious mixture of ironic admiration, genuine revulsion, and something uncomfortably like affection, which shocked me when I made myself name it to myself. As it occasionally does even now.

«I tried to stop the Goro," I said. «I told him that it was a trick, that you were deceiving him. I begged him not to fall into your trap.»

The old man did not seem even slightly perturbed. «Didn't listen, did he? They never do. That's the nature of a Goro. Just as not wanting to know things is the nature of humans.»

«And your nature?» I challenged him. «What is the nature of whatever you are?» He considered this for some time, still lying on his back with his arms folded on his chest in the formal manner of a corpse. But his eyes were wide open, and in the twilight they were more gray than fox–yellow just then.

«Deceptive," he offered at last. «That's fair enough — deceptive. Misleading, too, and altogether unreliable.» But he seemed not quite satisfied with any of the words, and thought about it for a while longer. At last he said, «Illusory. Good as any, illusory.

That will do.»

I lay long awake that night, reflecting on all that I had passed through — and all that had passed through and over me — since I fled across another night from that place, with the Hunters behind me. Deceptive, misleading, illusory, even so he had done me no real ill, when you thought about it. Led me into peril, true, but preserved me from it more than once. And he had certainly taught me much that I needed to know, if I were to make my way forward to wherever I was making my way to in this world. I could have had worse counselors, and doubtless would yet, on my journey.

My hands and arms pained me still, but far less than they had, as I leaned to nudge him out of his usual twitchy fox–sleep. He had searched out a couple of fat–leaved weeds that morning, pounded them for a good hour, mixed the resulting mash with what I tried not to suspect was his own urine, and spread it from my palms to my shoulders, where it crusted cool and stiff. I had barely touched his own shoulder before his eyes opened, yellow as they always are when he first wakes. I wonder what his dreams would look like, if they were to take daylight substance as a Goro's do.

«Three more days on the Nai brings us where?» I asked him.

* * *

Salt Wine

If my business manager and I hadn't been schlepping ourselves and a carload of books from the Bay Area to Las Vegas for a Star Trek convention, this story would not exist. It's a very long drive, and extremely boring, and the night sky was crackling with heat lightning, and we'd run out of Sondheim songs. For conversation's sake, we turned to discussing a possible title for this collection, and after a series of remarkably lame suggestions, the phrase Salt Wine and Secrets suddenly popped up like a slice of fresh toast. Evocative and curiously haunting, obviously it would only work if there were a story called «Salt Wine» in the book. And I hadn't a notion of what salt wine might be, nor what secrets it might engender. I said I'd think about it.

On the way home, a few days later, slogging through a pounding rainstorm, I announced that I just maybe had the beginning of a mini–hint of a story idea. «It's something about merrows, that's all I know.»

I usually get one clue like that per story — the rest is strictly up for grabs. If the Muse is late for work, you start without her.

Looking back at «Salt Wine," I realize that almost every story I've ever written from a first–person point of view has been completely improvised according to the narrator's voice. It's a matter of trusting the source; of assuming that the storyteller knows what he or she is doing, even if I don't, and that the tale will structure itself and tell me when it's done. It's a form of possession, I suppose, but generally a benign one.

So here's Ben Hazeltine, stepping from wherever those voices that visit me live, to tell you a story. There's a secret in it.

All right, then. First off, this ain't a story about some seagoing candy–trews dandy Captain Jack, or whatever you want to call him, who falls in love with a mermaid and

breaks his troth to a mortal woman to live with his fish–lady under the sea. None of that in this story, I can promise you; and our man's no captain, but a plain blue–eyed sailorman named Henry Lee, AB, who starts out good for nowt much but reeling a sail, holystoning a deck, taking a turn in the crow's–nest, talking his way out of a tight spot, and lending his weight to the turning of a capstan and his voice to the bellowing of a chanty. He drank some, and most often when he drank it ended with him going at it with one or another of his mates. Lost part of an ear that way off Panama, he did, and even got flogged once for pouring grog on the captain. But there was never no harm in Henry Lee, not in them days. Anybody remembers him'll tell you that.

Me name's Ben Hazeltine. I remember Henry Lee, and I'll tell you why.

I met Henry Lee when we was both green hands on the Mary Brannum, out of Cardiff, and we stayed messmates on and off, depending. Didn't always ship out together, nowt like that — just seemed to happen so. Any road, come one rainy spring, we was on the beach together, out of work. Too many hands, not enough ships — you get that, some seasons. Captains can take their pick those times, and Henry Lee and I weren't neither one anybody's first pick. Isle of Pines, just south of Cuba — devil of a place to be stranded, I'll tell you. Knew we'd land a berth sooner or later — always had before — only we'd no idea when, and both of us hungry enough to eat a seagull, but too weak to grab one. I'll tell you the God's truth, we'd gotten to where we was looking at bloody starfish and those Portygee man–o'-war jellies and wondering … well, there you are, that's how bad it were. I've been in worse spots, but not many.

Now back then, there was mermaids all over the place, like you don't see so much today. Partial to warm waters, they are — the Caribbean, Mediterranean, the Gulf Stream — but I've seen them off the Orkneys, and even off Greenland a time or two, that's a fact. What's not a fact is the singing. Combing their hair, yes; they're women, after all, and that's what women do, and how you going to comb your hair out underwater? But I never heard one mermaid sing, not once. And they ain't all beautiful — stop a clock, some of them would.

Now, what you didn't see much of in the old times, and don't hardly be seeing at all these days, was mer men. Merrows, some folk call them. Ugly as fried sin, the lot: not a one but's got a runny red nose, nasty straggly hair — red too, mostly, I don't know why — stumpy green teeth sticking up and out every which way, skin like a crocodile's arse. You get a look at one of those, it don't take much to figure why your mermaid takes to hanging around sailors. Put me up against a merrow, happen even I start looking decent enough, by and by.

Any road, like I told you, Henry Lee and I was pretty well down to eating our boots — or we would have been if we'd had any. We was stumbling along the beach one morning, guts too empty to growl, looking for someone to beg or borrow from — or maybe just chew up on the spot, either way—when there's a sudden commotion out in the water, and someone screaming for help. Well, I knew it were a merrow straight–away, and so did Henry Lee — you can't ever mistake a merrow's creaky, squawky voice, once you've heard it — and when we ran to look, we saw he had a real reason to scream. Big hammerhead had him cornered against the reef, curding and circling him, the way they do when they're working up to a strike. No, I tell a lie, I misremember — it were a bull shark, not a hammerhead. Hammer, he swims in big packs, he'll stay out in the deep water, but your bull, they'll come right in close, right into the shallows. And they'll leave salmon or tuna to go after a merrow. Just how they are.