Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 4-7 2019 | Page 99

She is still too young for that, he thinks.
He gives her little trinkets from the pile of treasure the emperor grants him after each voyage. He has no wife to
offer them to, and like human girls her age, the mermaid has a certain fondness for pretty things. It makes the captain
laugh to see her act so coquettishly, admiring the shine of golden bangles and jewelled hairpins in the sun.
She should act her age, he thinks.
Because sometimes, it is hard for him to see the little creature he and the rest of the crew helped raise. Her skin is
nut-brown from the sun, not her mother’s sickly pale hue from decades underwater without surfacing, and it is traced
with scars the mermaid has earned from tussles with crew members. She is still human sized, nowhere as large as her
mother had been, but their tails are the same deep crimson, her teeth the same sharp gleam of ivory, and in his
nightmares, all the captain sees is the blood of his men in the water, their screams echoing in his ears.
He feels that she has been growing up entirely too fast for him to catch up, and soon she will no longer be the
innocent little child he knew, slurping up clams and babbling nonsense in her little wooden tub.
Her eyes still shine gold though, and the captain prays that it will be an age before they grow dark with cruelty.
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When they almost reach Calicut on their fourth voyage, it is to flee.
There is a fleet of pirate ships that has been gaining on them for days. The captain had hoped that they could
outrun them, but their ships are no match for the swift pirates. Their own ships, though armed, are big and slow, and
while they make for a very impressive sight when they reach foreign capitals, they are no match for these pirates’ speed.
“We have to keep going,” Zheng He says grimly.
“Why?” the mermaid asks.
“Because if we try to stand up to them, it will be a massacre.” And it will be carnage, he thinks, another day of the
stink of gunpowder and the iron tang of blood, of screams and more of his crew sinking into the cold, merciless
embrace of the ocean. They will win, but at what cost?
The mermaid tilts her head, eyes flashing. “Are you sure?” she asks.
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The pirates surrenders after the flagship is sunk, the anchor ripped off and planks torn off the hull. The surviving
crew, wild-eyed and delirious, whimper and say a great sea creature came from the depths and descended it’s fury upon
them.
“Demon!” they shriek. “Monster, sea witch!”
Zheng He looks at the mermaid floating alongside the ship, her expression twisted with frustration as she tries to
crack open a particularly stubborn clam. He tries to put together the pirates’ words with the young mermaid currently
growing cross-eyed as she stares down the clam and has to hide his laughter He frets over a particularly nasty splinter in
her arm and makes her bandage it.
“Don’t worry,” she says with a bright grin, “it was fun. Besides, family is supposed to protect each other.”
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