An enigmatic oval wooden mirror reflecting a foggy forest on an asphalt road in fantasy style

Mirror Mirror – Day Two

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An enigmatic oval wooden mirror reflecting a foggy forest on an asphalt road in fantasy style

A university student. 

Cambridge. Twenty twenty-five. October second.

I didn’t mention it at first—sounded like the sort of story people put online for clout. But it happened in the gents, brushing my teeth before lecture. My eyes blinked. The reflection blinked after, like it was playing along. I told myself I was knackered. Revision, too much caffeine. Easy excuse.

At lunch I checked again. Phone selfie looked fine. Mirror didn’t. Held our poses just a beat too long. When I tossed the paper towel, my reflection waited, then snapped to follow. I laughed too loud. Said my arm ached. Better to sound daft than scared.

That night I tried the steam test—breathed on the glass. Wiped a circle. Near the edge, a faint scratch. I touched it. Heard a click, like a jar lid loosening. Except it came from inside.

I jumped back, slammed into the dispenser. It kept cranking towels after I’d let go. The room stayed silent otherwise. Just me, the mirror, and the echo of that click in my teeth.

Later, I set up my phone. The video showed me, ordinary. But the mirror smiled wider—one tooth more than mine. When I raised a hand, he pressed his to the glass and left a smear, like breath.

I’ve draped a towel over it now. Told my mate I’ve got a migraine. He said, “Get off screens then,” which is funny, considering.

The towel feels thin. Too thin.

 

 

An enigmatic oval wooden mirror reflecting a foggy forest on an asphalt road in fantasy style

Mirror Mirror – Day One

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An enigmatic oval wooden mirror reflecting a foggy forest on an asphalt road in fantasy style

2025 October 1st

You remember the rules. Don’t look in a mirror in the dark. Don’t keep a cracked one. Don’t catch your sleeping face in a black screen at three a.m. You learned them from neighbors and grandmothers and the hush that follows a flicker in the hallway. You pretend you don’t believe them. You still keep them.

You tell yourself mirrors are tools—glass and paint, a way to check the collar, the curl, the lipstick you’ll swear isn’t too much. You lean in close until your breath fogs the surface and the world becomes you, then smaller than you, then only the small square where your mouth is. You say you’re adjusting. You are practicing.

Here’s what you don’t like to name: every practice is a rehearsal, and rehearsals are for performances.

You’ve felt the wrongness already. Not with your eyes—your stomach felt it first. A half-blink. A smile that held a beat too long. A tilt of the head that finished after you’d stopped caring. You laughed it off, because laughter is a bandage you keep in your pocket. Still, when you left the room, you kept your eyes on the doorway, not the glass. Just in case.

Listen closely. October sharpens edges. Screens and mirrors behave like siblings who made a pact you weren’t invited to. The silver behind the glass is not empty. It’s crowded with what you’ve taught it. Your hands hovering near your face. Your shoulder set against bad news. The way you pretend you’re fine, and then the way you really are.

You can keep the rules if they help: drape a towel, face the frame to the wall, speak to your reflection only in daylight. You can also break them to prove a point. Either way, the glass is patient. It’s been taking notes for years.

Before the month is out, you will see something you cannot explain. No thunderclap, no violins. An adjustment you didn’t make. A gesture you didn’t teach. A mouth forming your name without you.

When that happens, don’t argue with yourself about belief. You always believed. You were just waiting to be addressed.

 

An enigmatic oval wooden mirror reflecting a foggy forest on an asphalt road in fantasy style

Mirror Mirror – Day Zero

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An enigmatic oval wooden mirror reflecting a foggy forest on an asphalt road in fantasy style

September thirtieth.

This is MissMeliss, the Bathtub Mermaid, and you’re listening to Tales from the Tub.

Okay, you’re not listening, because this is my blog, but you SHOULD be listening.  Even better, subscribe to my patreon and you’ll get early access to regular episodes, plus monthly extras.

Anyway…

Tomorrow begins something a little different. It’s called Mirror, Mirror, a story cycle told in thirty-one short monologues. Each piece stands alone, but together they trace a thread through the month.

You’ll hear a variety of voices and characters — students, workers, people in ordinary places — each telling a small story. Some are unsettling, some strange, some a little sad. Every few episodes I’ll step back in as the narrator, either tying things together or letting the mirrors speak in chorus.

This isn’t a series of jump scares or sound effects. It’s meant to be simple: one voice at a time, one reflection at a time. If you listen  (or read) straight through, you’ll hear a shape emerge. But you can also drop in anywhere, and the story you hear will still make sense on its own.

So this is your invitation. Mirror, Mirror starts tomorrow, and it will carry us through the month. I hope you’ll stay with me.

Phantom ship

The Anclote Phantom and the Mermaid’s Debt

by

They say the first time you see the Phantom, you’ll think it’s just moonlight.

The sails glow a little. The water does that trick it does in August, when the plankton get feisty and every wake turns into handwriting—green cursive trailing the sterns of weekend boats, kids shrieking like they did something magical instead of biological. From the sponge docks the laughter carries, the bouzouki from Hellas blends with gull-screech and outboard chatter, and everybody pretends summer will last forever.

But the glow the Phantom throws is older than summer, and sharper. It isn’t party light. It’s warning.

I should know. I grew up on the Anclote, where the river slides out past salt marsh and mangrove to find herself a proper horizon. My grandmother kept a clapboard house on pilings and a radio that wasn’t for music. Weather only, she’d say, tapping the speaker like it owed her rent. Storms are company, and you don’t ignore company.

She told me the story the way some families say grace: with gratitude, with a touch of dread, always in order.

Phantom ship

Once upon a shoreline, there was a pirate who didn’t want to be a pirate anymore.

His name had frayed. Some people said Captain Ionas, others made it English—Jonas—and my grandmother, who never met a vowel she couldn’t bend, called him Yanni. He’d raided up and down the Gulf until his soul felt pickled. The coin piled in his cabin made a misery of him. It tanged like rust. It weighed like sleep. On the day he tried to leave it, his men tied him to the mast for disloyalty, and the gulf spread its flat face for him like a mirror he refused to look in.

The storm that found them wasn’t much. Not yet. Just a bruise on the sky, the Gulf getting ideas. Whitecaps with good teeth. It would have passed—Florida storms always say one thing and do another—except the shoals off Anclote were hungry, and the tide miscounted herself, and the ship kissed sand hard enough to bite through.

That’s when the mermaid surfaced.

Do not picture Disney. No clamshells, no bashful hair curtain. Picture a woman made of pressure and salt, her throat latticed with the faint pale scars of gill-slits that open only when she sings. Picture a gaze like a cutlass: bright, unarguable. Her hair wasn’t hair; it was the moving shade you find under mangroves when you think you’re alone.

She looked at Yanni first, because he was tied to the mast and the mast was stubborn. She cocked her head and listened. That’s the part everyone gets wrong—mermaids don’t smell your fear, they hear it. The tremor of it. The bassline in your blood.

“What do you want?” she asked him.

“To live,” he said, which was at least honest.

“And what will you give the water for that?” she asked him, which was at least polite.

“Everything,” he said, which was a mistake.

His crew screamed when the hull buckled. He didn’t. He just watched her. She slid closer. She reached up and laid two fingers on the rope that made a girdle of his chest. The knots went slack like they were embarrassed to be caught at it. He stepped free and almost fell, because the ship had listed, because the sea had opinions, because he had just chosen life without reading the contract.

She cupped his jaw like a lover and kissed him. It tasted like the moment before lightning.

“Done,” she said, and let go.

The ship broke. The crew went into the green panic. Yanni did not drown. He did not even swallow water. He slid into the Gulf like into a second skin and found he did not sink and did not float and did not need anything so vulgar as air. The storm bruised past, sulking. The Anclote shoals let go of their new toy. By morning the ship had become a rumor, and Yanni had become a story no one could tell correctly.

Immortality sounds grand. It is not. It is being kept.

He tried to go north. The current turned him sideways. He tried to go south. The eddies laughed him back. He swore and spat and pleaded and sang. He offered oaths that meant something and bribes that didn’t. The mermaid did not come. The shoals did.

The first time the Phantom rose, people thought it was a trick of heat. Sails don’t do that, someone said, meaning glow. But the sails did that. The ribs of the ship showed faintly through the white like bones in a good x-ray. The hull didn’t mark the water so much as etch it. Wherever it went, the plankton woke and went to church.

That was the point. Warnings are for the living. Yanni’s debt was simple: steer the storms away from the mouth of the river. Keep the sponge boats safe. Let Tarpon Springs sleep. The Gulf—cold patron that she is—makes deals all the time. She only asks for enforcement.

Every season has a shape if you look. That year, the storms came like a pack—restless, lean. Each time one tried to nose past Anclote Key, the Phantom cut across its face, a slash of light on flat water. The storm would shiver, shoulder itself a few degrees east, and go off to teach Clearwater a lesson or ravage the long beaches farther down. People clapped the sand from their hands, grateful. The docks smelled like beer and diesel. My grandmother set a plate at the end of the table and said it was for the Captain. She’d salt it herself. She always salted his empty plate.

She never went out when the sails showed. She wasn’t foolish. “You don’t wave at a funeral,” she said. “Even if it’s someone else’s.”

Of course I waved.

Of course I went.

I was nineteen and reckless, and the Anclote at dusk makes you believe you are the center of a very generous map. My grandmother fell asleep in her rocker with the radio mumbling forecast, and I slid the skiff down the mud like a secret.

The Phantom was to the west, tracking the black seam of a storm that hadn’t yet been born. The sky wore that hard yellow you only see when the sun has decided to be theatrical. I didn’t aim at the ship—I’m not that much of a fool—but I wanted to be near it. To see if the bones were real.

They were. So was he.

He stood at the rail like the statue every harbor wants: chin lifted, coat moving in a wind I couldn’t feel. He was not beautiful. He was an old man and a young one layered like shale, time wrong-footed around him. When the bioluminescence caught his shadow, it threw a second ship alongside, quick as palming a card.

“You don’t belong here,” he said.

His voice landed in my chest like it had sailed there.

“Neither do you,” I said, because I was nineteen.

He smiled the way men smile when they forgive you for being rude because it reminds them they were alive once. “I belong precisely here,” he said. “That is the problem.”

“Does she ever come back?” I asked. “The one who kissed you.”

More shadow than hand gripped the rail. For a second the sea around the ship went dark, like all the tiny lights took a breath. “She comes,” he said. “When the tide brings her. When the shoals are thirsty. When the world forgets to balance itself and I have to remind it.”

“That sounds lonely.”

“It is a job.”

“What happens if you refuse?” I asked.

He looked toward the river like it was a child sleeping. “Then the storm comes in.”

“I’m not asking if it’s necessary,” I said. “I’m asking what happens to you.”

He looked at me then. Found the measure of me. Decided to spend the truth on me like coin. “I drown,” he said. “And wake up on my deck. And do it again.”

The first drop of rain hit my cheek like punctuation. The line between sea and sky erased itself. My skiff rocked a little, eager to make this into a mistake. I thought of my grandmother, salt on an empty plate. I thought of the men at the docks who lived on tips and weather, of the kids who would grow up and pretend not to believe because pretending is a kind of armor.

“I could help you,” I blurted, and had no plan to add to it.

He laughed. It was a surprisingly soft sound. “You would throw your life against a promise a king could not break,” he said. “Keep your life. Spend it well.”

The rain found its rhythm. The Phantom eased between me and the mouth of the river, a bright, impossible knife. The storm shouldered us like we were furniture to be rearranged. I rode the chop back, swearing I would not look over my shoulder, then breaking that promise three times because I am exactly the kind of woman who breaks that promise three times.

From shore, the Phantom looked smaller. That’s how safety always looks: insufficient until it works.

My grandmother didn’t scold me. She handed me a towel and set another place. The radio said the storm had veered east. The Mermaid—if she came—came without ceremony. The tide climbed the pilings and combed her hair with eelgrass.

I kept the secret of Yanni’s face like a pearl I wasn’t sure how to wear. I finished school. I came back. I left again. Hurricanes introduced themselves, each with a fresh name and the same old hunger. The Phantom lit the water like a final candle. The storms curved and went to break something that wasn’t us. On Sundays, I salted the plate.

Last year, when the Gulf ran a fever and the fish started floating belly-up like coins with the wrong monarch stamped on them, I went back to the docks. The tourists still took pictures with the bronze diver. The fishermen still cursed softly in Greek. The sky had gone that color again: the yellow that pries open a mouth.

The Phantom rose before the first advisory. No one else seemed to see it. Maybe eyes learn to slide off certain truths. Maybe grace is angles.

I borrowed the skiff out of habit and regret. The river wore its pretty face—girls in cotton dresses, boys with shotgun smiles. I pushed past them like a rude prayer. Out in the channel the current clawed at the hull with the determined affection of a cat.

I didn’t get as close this time. Didn’t need to. He was there. He is always there.

“You came back,” he said.

“You always knew I would,” I said. “We don’t leave our dead alone.”

He gestured at the shoals. The water there boiled politely. “I am not dead.”

“That’s the problem,” I said, and surprised us both with the anger in it.

He tilted his head, listening to something I couldn’t hear. Maybe her. Maybe the river learning a new word. He took off his hat—black, wrong century, wrong world—and bowed the kind of bow that says I learned manners where they were weapon and art both. When he lifted his head his eyes had gone as colorless as rain.

“Would you like to see it?” he asked.

“See what?”

“The contract.”

The mermaid rose without breaking the surface. That’s the best way I can say it. The light changed. The water around the Phantom went from green to the blue you taste behind your teeth when you’ve swum too long. A shape. A shadow. Not a woman, not not a woman. If holiness has cousins, she is a first cousin. She did not look at me. I know because if she had, I wouldn’t be telling this. She looked only at him.

“Payment,” she whispered, and the river bent toward her like a reed.

He stood very straight. He did not look at me, either. Maybe that was his kindness. Maybe that was mine.

“Go home,” he said.

“I could—” I started.

“You could drown,” he said, and smiled that soft, infuriating smile, and turned toward the open Gulf where the line of the storm had thickened into a wall.

I did as I was told, one time in my life. I went home. I salted the plate. The radio spoke in that calm voice that knows the difference between panic and information. The storm turned. It flooded streets with names I grew up saying. It tore a hole through neighborhoods that had never learned to fear water. It left us with our roofs intact and our gratitude loud. We said things like miracle and luck. We did not say debt. We did not say kept.

At dawn, when the shrimpers went out to check their luck and count their boats, one skiff found the shoals shallow as bone. The Phantom was not there. The water glowed tiredly, like a saint after a long day. I went to the river with coffee and an apology and watched mullet throw themselves at the air like they could fix gravity with enthusiasm alone.

The Phantom came back that night. Of course he did. That’s the contract. He will be there tomorrow, too, unless he won’t. The Gulf always wins. Not today is the best Florida can hope for.

Sometimes, late, I walk the edge of the docks and listen for a voice that never learned how to be unkind. When the tide is right and the sky forgets to lie, I leave a pinch of salt on the rail and thank the kept man who keeps us. I thank the woman who wrote him into the water and never learned how to unwish a thing. I thank the river for taking the shape of the grace we ask for and the grace we deserve.

From certain angles, the sails look like wings.

From certain angles, they look like teeth.

And from the right spot on the right night, if you squint past the glow and the gulls and your own disbelief, you can see the kiss still shining on his mouth like lightning lag—bright, terrible, binding—while he turns the storm aside for us again.

Boat-with-Sponges

The Bay That Storms Forget

by

Boat-with-Sponges

The Gulf is too hot this year. The water feels heavy, the air thick with it, and yet summer has nearly passed without a single storm. No spirals spinning on the maps, no frantic rush for plywood or bottled water. Just stillness, and stillness is never safe.

My grandmother used to say the Bay was blessed. She would tell me stories about covenants whispered into the tide, or a princess buried in the water with her drowned warriors guarding her rest. And when storms spun wide and furious, only to curve away at the last moment, she would nod and say, “See? The Bay protects her own.”

I believed her, until I met Daniel. He was a fisherman, older than me, his skin the color of weathered rope, his eyes always turned toward the horizon. He said the Bay wasn’t blessed at all. “She’s beautiful,” he told me once, “but beauty like that always takes something back.” He’d lost a brother to a calm sea — no warning, no storm, just a boat that never came home. “The Bay feeds on us,” he said, “and that’s why the storms don’t stay.”

I didn’t know what to make of it, not then. But I remembered when Daniel himself vanished. Clear skies, flat water, and he never returned. The Coast Guard called it an accident. His family called it bad luck. But I knew. The Bay had reached for him the way a jealous lover reaches, and she had kept him.

That’s when I understood what my grandmother never said out loud: spared doesn’t mean safe.

The storms still circle. They pace the horizon like wolves, throwing their weight against the Gulf, but when they reach the Bay, they falter. They turn aside. And every time they do, another village farther up the coast is torn apart, another marsh is drowned, another name is added to the roll of the lost.

People here still call it a blessing. They laugh about the bubble, say the storms never land, pour another drink while they patch their roofs. But I think about Daniel, about his brother, about all the others the Bay has claimed when the skies were calm. The Bay doesn’t protect us for free. She takes her payment in flesh and memory.

Now the summer is nearly gone. The air feels too quiet, the water too still, like everything is holding its breath. Maybe the storms will try again soon. Maybe the Bay will sing them aside, as she always does. Maybe she’ll ask for another offering first.

And you know how these stories go.
There’s always a storm.
There’s always a price.

Sayyida al Hurra

Free Women of Sea and Stars

by

Nyota Uhura

Names matter. They carry echoes, shadows, and histories, even when the person wearing the name doesn’t know it. Sometimes a name is a promise. Sometimes it’s a burden. And sometimes it’s a signal across centuries, like a call and response that was never supposed to happen but does anyway.

Sayyida al Hurra’s name meant “the free woman.” She was born Lalla Aicha bint Ali ibn Rashid al-Alami in 1485, in Morocco. By the time she took the throne of Tétouan after her husband’s death, the name Sayyida al Hurra had become both a title and a declaration. She was the free woman. The noble lady. The one who owed allegiance to no man.

She ruled not as a placeholder or regent, but in her own right. She governed the city, commanded fleets, and wielded political alliances like weapons. She struck a partnership with the famed Ottoman corsair Barbarossa, and together they turned the Mediterranean into a stage for their power. Her ships raided Portuguese and Spanish vessels, reclaiming wealth stolen from North Africa, and striking fear into colonial powers that had assumed the sea belonged to them. In a world where women were expected to remain invisible — domestic, cloistered, silent — she carved her name across the waves. Not as a wife. Not as a consort. As herself.

Freedom was never handed to Sayyida al Hurra. She seized it, ship by ship, raid by raid, decree by decree.

Sayyida al Hurra

Centuries later, in a television studio in 1960s Los Angeles, another woman bore a name that also meant freedom. Nyota Uhura, the communications officer on the starship Enterprise. Her surname came from the Swahili word uhuru — “freedom.” Her first name, Nyota, meant “star.” Freedom, among the stars.

When Nichelle Nichols first appeared on screen in that red uniform, calm and authoritative at the communications console, she was a revelation. A Black woman not in the background, not a maid or a comic foil, but a respected officer on the bridge of a starship, working alongside men of every race and nationality. At a time when segregation was still raw and civil rights marches filled the streets, her presence on Star Trek was more than casting. It was a statement.

Martin Luther King Jr. famously urged Nichols not to leave the show when she considered quitting, reminding her that she was shaping the image of what the future could look like. And she stayed — not just as a performer, but as a symbol. Uhura was proof that the future was wide enough for women, for Black women, for voices that had been excluded for too long.

Sayyida al Hurra ruled the seas. Nyota Uhura navigated the stars. Both were free women who claimed spaces where the world didn’t expect to see them.

And maybe that’s why their names feel like a call and response across centuries. One woman staring down colonial empires with cannons, the other calling through the darkness, and connecting people with her voice. One a queen commanding fleets, the other an officer commanding language itself, translating chaos into order, holding her crew together with words.

Both of them remind us that freedom isn’t something handed down politely. It isn’t permission, or a token seat at the table. It’s something fought for, taken, and lived in..

The parallels between sea and sky are older than either woman. Mariners have always looked to the stars for guidance. Conquerors, dreamers, and wanderers have always compared the unknown ocean to the uncharted cosmos. The sea is a mirror for the sky, and the sky is a mirror for the sea. Sayyida al Hurra’s fleets cut across one, while Uhura’s voice bridged the other. Both women commanded liminal spaces — places that belong to no one and everyone, places that promise freedom and danger in equal measure.

And both carried names that told the world exactly who they were: free women.

In our own moment, their stories intertwine as more than trivia. They are reminders of possibility. When I hear Sayyida al Hurra’s name, I hear the echo of resistance — a woman who refused to be silenced, who claimed her right to rule, who struck fear into empires. When I hear Nyota Uhura’s, I hear the promise of representation — a woman who stood on the bridge of the future, showing us all that freedom could mean equality, visibility, dignity – belonging.

Sea and stars. Corsair queen and starship queen. And perhaps it isn’t only coincidence, but a hidden continuity — as if Uhura were, in some imagined genealogy, the descendant of Sayyida al Hurra herself, a free woman of the seas reborn among the stars, carrying
forward the legacy of command, defiance, and freedom in a new frontier.

 

Icarus

Icarus, Descending

by

a companion piece to “Daedalus, Diminished”

Icarus

The wax sticks to my fingers. Feathers shake when I breathe.

Father warned me. Not too high. Not too low. Balance. Core. Moderation.

But wings are not for moderation.

The wind tears at me, hot and cold all at once. My chest splits wide, ribs straining with too much air. It hurts. It’s joy. It’s both.

The gulls wheel beside me, screaming. Their wings are meant for this. Mine are borrowed. Stolen.

I laugh anyway.

The sun is close enough to taste. Honey. Fire. Blood. My lips crack with it.

Wax runs down my arms. The first feather drops. Then another. White spirals against blue.

I spread my arms wider.

The frame shudders. The cords snap. My wings are breaking. I am breaking.

Still I laugh. Still I burn.

The sea lifts its black mouth to meet me. Salt on my tongue, spray in my eyes.

I do not close them.

Image Credit: dimitrisvetsikas1969
Cardinal Ornament

Sacrificial

by

The tree stood in the living room, centered in the arch of the window, its branches unadorned – naked. Despite being both artificial and pre-lit it had been there for several days because Ellie insisted that even plastic trees had to acclimate before they could be decorated.

Cardinal Ornament

Several RubberMaid totes, their purple hue faded to lavender by time and dust, sat open on the floor, each filled with crumpled tissue in a variety of colors. The same tissue was re-used every year, until it was so tattered and thin that it had to be replaced. The ornaments – mostly glass, but some wood, some tin, and a few made of seashells – once cradled within were scattered haphazardly on the coffee table, two snack trays, and an end table that had seen better days.

For Ellie, decorating the tree had always been her favorite part of the season, as if a piece of holiday magic entered the room with every bauble placed on a waiting bough until – finally – the angel was placed on top, and Christmas arrived in full force.

This year, however, something was different. The air felt heavier, almost as if the house itself were holding its breath. The dogs seemed to sense it too. Mumble had been pacing anxiously all day, and Pork Chop hadn’t even barked at the mailman once.

“Are you ready to start?” Max asked, coming into the room, and causing his wife to jump.

“You scared me!” Ellie said. “And yes… I am.”

“Great!” Max picked up a small yellow ornament – a glass version of a rubber duck. “This guy looks like he wants to be first.”

“Wait!”  Ellie’s cry made her husband freeze in place. “Don’t forget the sacrifice.”

It was the phrase she’d heard every year from her mother, growing up, and from her grandmother as well. “It’s part of the tradition,” the older woman had reminded them every year, her voice quivering. But in all the years those words had been spoken, often during late-night conversations she hadn’t been meant to overhear, Ellie had never known what they meant.

Tonight, Ellie felt the weight of family history. Every year, one ornament had to break. Not intentionally but also not by accident. Well, not exactly.

“What do you mean ‘sacrifice?’” Max asked. He wasn’t usually part of the decorating process from the beginning. Instead, it was up to Ellie and her mother, and he’d come later and do the top section where they couldn’t reach. But Ellie’s mother wasn’t with them anymore, and she’d insisted that she couldn’t – didn’t want to – decorate the tree alone.

“Mom told me once that it’s for the tree. To make the magic work.”  Ellie frowned as she said it. The notion was absurd. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her mother might have been right. She looked at the tree: it seemed to loom larger than its actual size, the dark green needles casting shadows that looked like clutching fingers on all the walls of the room.

Fighting a shiver, Ellie told their smart speaker to play Christmas music, and she and Max sang along to Bing, Johnny, Burl, and Nat as they began to decorate.

Carefully, they began placing the ornaments on the branches. Ellie’s hands trembled as she hung a shimmering snowflake as high as she could manage. Every brush of her sleeve against the needles or clink of glass as the ornaments touched made her flinch.

As the hours passed, the tree grew more beautiful, but the weight in the air grew heavier, pressing down on Ellie’s chest.

“Is it time?” Max asked as they neared the end of their task.

The remaining ornaments were among the oldest in their collection, things that Ellie’s mother had bought for her when she was still a baby. This one was from her very first Christmas, and that one was from the year Max proposed. How could she choose one to be destroyed?

The answer came not from her, but from the tree itself. A low creak echoed through the room, the sound of the center pole groaning under an unseen weight. The branches trembled, shaking the ornaments as if impatient.

“I guess it’s now,” Ellie said.

She picked up an old glass cardinal with a chipped tail feather. She held it tightly, her hands cold even though the room was warm. Cardinals had been her grandmother’s favorite bird. Standing in front of the tree she reached to slip the gold thread around the branch, but the second she let go, it came loose.

It fell in slow motion, spinning as it descended toward the tile floor. When it landed, the sound was sharper than Ellie expected, the shattering glass echoing like a gunshot.

The music stopped. The room fell silent. The shadows around the tree seemed to shift, retreating as though satisfied. The air grew lighter, the oppressive weight dissipating until Ellie was breathing freely once more. Staring down at the tiny pieces of red glass, she whispered, “It’s done.”

Max restarted the music and went to get the broom. The dogs sniffed the air, then jumped onto the couch, settling into opposing corners.

And the tree? It seemed to hum with approval, its lights glowing brighter. Ellie even thought she detected faint movement from the branches… a bow of gratitude, almost.

Later that night, as she and Max sipped spiked eggnog in the darkened living room with only the tree lights for illumination, it occurred to Ellie that the broken ornament had meant more than just a ritual sacrifice. It was a sort of a pact. The tree would retain Christmas magic until the dawn of New Year’s Day, when the ornaments would be removed.

Still, she had to wonder: what would happen if the tree ever went without?

 

 

Special thanks to Kymm and Francesca for naming the dogs.
Winter Flame

Flames of Winter

by

The darkness of the whole world cannot swallow the glowing of a candle.  ~Robert Altinger

Winter FlameChristmas. Hanukkah. Yule. Whether you come from a single faith tradition, or from a family like mine, that blends and merges traditions from several cultures, there is no shortage of winter holidays to choose from.

All are radically different. Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ. Hanukkah remembers the Maccabees and their defeat of the Seleucids as well as the rededication of their temple and the miracle of the oil, which was only enough for one night, but lasted for eight. Yule originated as a Nordic and Germanic midwinter celebration that involved feasting and gift-giving (and in the oldest celebrations, sacrifices).

And yet, these winter holidays all have something in common as well – aside from the tendency to celebrate with incredibly delicious, albeit unhealthy foods. They all bring light to the longest nights of the year.

True, in this age of technological wonders when we can have books in our hands at the touch of a button, and get antsy when we’re away from our smart-phones or tablets for more than a few minutes, and are limited in our ability to work late into the wee hours, not by waning daylight, but only by our stamina and the amount of caffeine we’re willing to ingest, we no longer rely on candles or firelight for physical illumination.

And yet…

And yet we light candles to mark the progress through Advent.

We light them, one at a time, to count the eight days of Hanukkah.

We build fires in our hearths as symbolic representations of the bonfires our ancestors might have danced around, or we build actual bonfires and invite our friends to dance with us.

We fill our homes with candles that represent nothing more than a cozy glow, and we gather ’round our gas logs or Franklin stoves even when our houses are fitted with central heating systems, because there’s something – some magical thing – about fire that seems to drive away the stress and darkness of winter in a way that electric light never can.

I think we forget, sometimes, that the holidays aren’t always merry and bright. They’re not always full of smiling faces and joyous laughter.

These winter holidays come to us at the end of the year, which means they’re both an ending, a sort of finish line we’re all racing toward, and a final hurdle we must overcome before we have the opportunity to start anew. We fill our homes with those colorful candles and crackling fires as much to keep the shadows at bay and drive away the darkness, as we do to celebrate the light.

Our flames aren’t some form of denial, though. Rather, they’re sort of a nightlight for our souls. They keep our hearts warm and our homes welcoming, and remind us that all winters end.

Yule comes with the Winter Solstice on December 21st. Christmastide and Hanukkah coincide this year, for they both begin on the twenty-fifth. Whether you’re celebrating one of those old holidays, or you’ve embraced something newer, like Kwanzaa or Chalica – or even Festivus – may the flames you ignite keep you warm in body and soul this winter.

 

Originally written for Modern Creative Life

 

The nets

The Gift of the Mergi

by

A handful of pearls. That was all Nerissa had. Oh, she’d grown up in Poseidon’s Grotto, with abalone combs and aquamarine and moonstone gems, but when she’d left the great ocean to marry a land-walker, she’d forfeit her jewels and pirate’s treasure hoards and kept only the handful of her nameday pearls.

And it was nearly Christmas.

The nets

It had been a fair price to pay. Many people believed that mermaids had to give up their voices to walk on land, but that was only true in fairy tales. In the actual world of the sea, merfolk could transform from fins to feet and back at will, but they had to dip their toes in the water at least once a week.

This was no trouble for Nerissa since her land-walker husband worked on the sea. Her Stavros was a fisherman with strong arms and a kind smile, eyes the color of the perfect wave, and dimples you could fill with a tide pool. He was also the owner of a wooden boat – the Sea Witch – inherited from his father’s father’s father, and the original glass floats that helped him find his nets once they were cast. The floats were very old and very valuable, for such things were no longer made, and only the oldest fisherfamilies still used them. They were also beautiful, as iridescent as opals and as delicate as bubbles if not handled carefully.

Nerissa loved helping on the boat. She and Stavros sang sea shanties, and she helped re-weave the nets when they frayed and ensured no sea creatures were accidentally ensnared. Stavros would cast the nets and drag in the catch, laying it in layers of ice. Whenever one of the other fishermen needed an extra hand, Stavros was the first to offer aid, and whenever anyone fell from a boat, Nerissa would be there to swim them to safety.

But every minute Stavros gave to others was time he wasn’t fishing. Then, too, the water had been overwarm this last season, and the catch had been smaller than usual, and Nerissa wanted so much to help her husband succeed… she knew that if she visited her many-times grand-mermother Amphitrite, the old woman would be able to help.

Decision made, Nerissa gathered her precious pearls and ran down to the beach. The water was cold on her bare legs, but once she’d shifted back to her birth-form, the chill didn’t bother her. She descended to the sandy bottom of the sea then swam out beyond the buoys that marked the channel, to where the water was deep blue, and the kelp forests surrounded the grottos where the finfolk lived.

Amphitrite welcomed her with open arms, chiding her for going so long between visits. “Stay for the solstice celebration, child,” the old merwoman said. “And take home a gift from me. Your father would not see you go without. He loves you, though he shows it poorly.”

Stavros, Nerissa knew, would be spending the evening at the Fisherman’s Roost, sharing drinks and stories with his friends. He never drank to get drunk, but just as she had her friends in the water, he needed to maintain his friendships on land. “I’ll stay,” agreed. “But I need your help.”

With luminescent tears pooling in her eyes, then dripping down her face, the younger mermaid told the older one about her two-footed husband, and his total acceptance of her needs. “He works so hard to take care of the Sea Witch, and to take care of me and….” Nerissa paused, placing her hand just below the point where skin turned into scales. “We are to have a child a few moons after the turning of the year..”

“And you want to share the grace of Glaucos with him,” the old merwoman said. “What gift would you bestow upon your human lover, child?”

“I wish to give him one of Glaucos’s nets,” Nerissa answered. “I would offer my voice, if it were a fair bargain.”

“The sea would prefer your voice remain where you can use it to sing songs and speak words of curse or comfort,” Amphitrite answered. “What else can you share?”

“I would offer my hair, if it were a fair bargain.”

“Your beautiful blue hair does far more good on your head, then lost to the waves, my dear,” the many-times great-grandmermother said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Then, I would offer my nameday pearls,” Nerissa said, “if it were a fair bargain.”

“Your nameday pearls carry the magic of your mother’s love, child. It is a fair bargain, and I will give you Glaucos’s nets, that your lover…”

“ – husband—”

“…husband, then, may never have a catch that isn’t bountiful.”

The bargain maid, Nerissa enjoyed the music and dancing of the merfolk, and the parade of phosphorescence that brought in the solstice and the change of seasons. When she left, two young mermen escorted her back to the Sea Witch, leaving the nets in a pile on the deck.

On Christmas morning, Stavros watched Nerissa frolic in the waves for an hour, joining her at the end, then lifting her into his arms and carrying her back to their cottage on the cliff. He had fashioned a Christmas tree from pieces of driftwood draped with pine boughs and decorated it with lights and seashells and fishing lures. At the top, one of his old foul-weather hats gleamed yellow and bright.

And under the tree were two packages. A large lumpy one, wrapped in sailcloth, and a wee box with a blue-green ribbon that almost matched Nerissa’s hair.

“Stavros, this is lovely!,” Nerissa said.

“I wanted our tree to reflect us,” he said. “Shall we brew a pot of strong tea and sip it while we open our presents?”

Nerissa made the tea, and Stavros sliced some ginger cake, and they sipped and nibbled and talked about her solstice celebration and his evening with his friends, and then they turned toward the gifts, one for each of them.

Nerissa opened the box first, and when she saw what was nestled within, she began to cry great salty tears.

“What’s wrong, lass. Do you not like it?” Stavros asked. “I know it’s plain, but I thought you could string your pearls on it. You never wear them.”

“It’s beautiful,” Nerissa said, lifting the fine gold chain and letting it hang from her long fingers. “But I’ll have to string it with shells for now, because I traded my pearls to acquire your gift. Open it, please?”

Stavros did as he was bidden, and untied the sailcloth bundle to find new fishnets that gleamed almost as golden as the chain his wife was clutching and radiating a sort of power he couldn’t identify. “These are brand new,” he said.

“They are imbued with the grace of Glaucos,” Nerissa explained. “He’s the protector of fishermen and will guarantee a bountiful catch with every use.”

“It’s a generous gift, my love, but…”

“But what?”

“I sold my floats to buy your chain,” Stavros said. “I have cork floats, but I don’t think they’re buoyant enough to support this net.”

For a long moment, both were silent. Then Nerissa spoke. “It would appear the Mergi are smiling upon us this year.”

“The… Mergi?”

“Yes. In your land-walker tradition you have stories of the magi – the wise men who brought gifts to the holy child when he was born. In the Ways of the Water, we have the Mergi – wise ones who guide our hands and hearts away from selfishness and greed. In our efforts to give to each other unselfishly, we gave up our greatest treasures, and for that, the Mergi smile.

In fairy tales, there is always a happy ending, but Nerissa and Stavros live in the real world. Still, they were respected and loved by their separate communities. When the couple arrived at the harbormaster’s cottage for the annual holiday toast, each of Stavros’s friends brought a single glass float to give to him. Combined, they were just enough to support the new net.

Days later, at the first tide of the new year, Nerissa and Stavros returned to the Sea Witch and found a cradle waiting there, piled high with sweet saltgrass. Nestled in the center was a small chest, and inside that was a single pearl, a fistful of pirate’s gold, and a note from Amphitrite to “bring your daughter to meet me, when she is born.”

Nerissa and Stavros lived, and fished, for many decades, and every year on their daughter’s nameday, they would bring their daughter Pearl to visit Poseidon’s Grotto and hear stories from her many-times great-grandmermother.

With apologies to O. Henry and Hans Christian Andersen