Baptism

by Tracie McBride

Brother Tomas drew his habit tightly around himself, a futile gesture against the biting sea wind. He eyed the tiny island in the middle of the bay that would be his new home. He had been in Koreka for less than a half a day, and already he was homesick for the Secoduna Desert. His superiors had decreed that he be sent here, and they took their instruction directly from God, but sometimes he wondered if they might not occasionally be mistaken in their interpretation. Have faith, Brother, he silently chastised himself. Surely, this was no mistake; if anyone could succeed where others had failed, it would be him.

“You're the fourth friar I've rowed out there in as many months,” said Mellie, the rawboned young woman who had been assigned as his escort. She gripped the oars with two windchapped, meaty hands and leaned back, sending the little boat surging against the wavelets. “But I didn't row any of them back, not alive, leastways. What makes you think you'll do better?”

“Greater experience, true devotion to and faith in Our Lord, and a plentiful supply of chasteberry tea.” Tomas smiled and patted his rucksack. His smile faded as he sniffed the air. “What's that smell?”

Mellie looked over her shoulder. A large log bobbed in the water several feet away. Mellie grinned humourlessly and rowed harder until they grew level with the object. A ripe, overwhelming stench rose from it. The 'log' had a face.

The corpse floated on its back, its eye sockets empty and its mouth open to the sky. It still wore its shirt, cravat and jacket, but was naked from the waist down. Its groin was a ragged mess of tattered, bloodless flesh. Tomas retched and covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve.

“What's the matter, Brother?” said Mellie. “Haven't you ever seen a dead man before?”

“I've dealt with many bodies, but they were all...”

“Less chewed?”

“I was going to say 'drier'.”

“You'd better get used to it. Most of them wash up on your island.” Mellie picked up a pike, hooked it through the dead man's shirt and dragged it to the side of the boat. With a grunt, she hauled it over the side and dropped it at Tomas's feet, sending up a fresh miasma of decay.

“They all think they can withstand the lure of the mermaids' song. We try to warn them, but...” She shook her head.

“...but if you tried too hard, it might be bad for business,” Tomas finished. With all the able-bodied menfolk of the town either dead or moved away, their traditional livelihood of fishing was defunct, their nets left to rot on the shore. Perversely, the town thrived, their boats converted from functional fishing vessels to pleasure craft as men flocked from all parts of the country. Most came seeking to satisfy their prurient curiosity, some came to challenge themselves, but save for a few wretched suicides, they all expected to live to tell the tale.

But Tomas was not here for those misguided men. He was here to save the mermaids' immortal souls.

As if in response to his thoughts, a dozen sleek heads broke the surface of the water within arm's length of the boat. Mellie hissed and smacked at the mermaids with her oar. They hissed back and retreated to a safer distance.

“They like to hang around and gloat when we bring in a body, the filthy bitches.” She spat into the sea. Her spittle rested for an instant on the surface before dissipating. “Pardon my language, Brother.”

Tomas barely heard her. He crossed himself as the mermaids encircled the boat, his eyes never leaving them. He had been told that there were no mermen, and that in the absence of available human partners, mermaids coupled with other sea creatures. Indeed, he could see evidence of this in their features; one had a fat round face that bristled with spikes, suggesting that she had been sired by a puffer fish. Another, with her tiny little black eyes set wide on either side of an elongated face, was undoubtedly the offspring of a shark. The impression intensified as she opened her mouth and gave a gurgling approximation of a human laugh, displaying three rows of razor sharp teeth.

He had also been told that, even when they were not singing, the mermaids exuded a malignant glamour, and that to be in close proximity with one was to experience temptation on an almost unbearable scale. His manhood stiffened and pressed against his breechclout, and he shuffled painfully in his seat, anxious to conceal it from Mellie. He had resisted the advances of many a bejewelled Secoduna beauty, yet one look at these creatures and he had to grip the sides of the boat to stop from flinging himself into the water.

“A new man of God!” the shark-like one said. Her voice bubbled like slow-boiling porridge, and Tomas's stomach roiled. “I do hope you will be as...entertaining as the last ones.” She undulated her tail, propelling her torso above the water's surface, and flung back her long black hair to thrust her breasts at him.

Nobody had told him about the gills.

A line of red-tinged slits ran down each flank, pulsating gently in time to the rise and fall of the mermaid's chest. He clutched his rosary beads, closed his eyes and muttered a fervent prayer.

“You're wasting your time,” said Mellie. “Praying isn't going to save you—ask any widow in Koreka. The mermaids aren't children of God, they're the spawn of the Devil. And the sooner the Church realises that, the sooner you can stop trying to save their souls and start exterminating them like the vermin they are.” She scowled and bent again to her rowing.

“I'd better get you to your island. It's nearly sundown, and I've still got a corpse to bury.”

#

Tomas's island sloped sharply upwards to a peak in its centre, too steep for him to climb unaided. It was covered in drab, low-lying fruitless scrub, and took less than an hour for him to circumnavigate on foot. Based on the reports from his predecessors, Tomas expected the mermaids to immediately commence a campaign to seduce him, but for several days he was left alone. The only evidence of their presence was a daily offering of freshly caught fish left on the end of the small jetty near his hut. It was while he was collecting this gift one morning that the mermaids resurfaced, by which time he was almost glad to see them.

“Good morning, ladies,” he said, inclining his head, and taking care to stand out of reach of their taloned hands. “My name is Brother Tomas Santoyo. Might I enquire as to your names?” The arousal he had felt when he first encountered them washed over him anew. He swayed slightly, dizzy and weak-kneed with lust.

The shark-faced one, evidently their leader, swam forward. She held a hunk of flesh in one hand, and from time to time took delicate bites from it. Tomas could not tell what kind of meat it was.

“My name is Sh'Teth,” she said. She named the others in rapid-fire, sibilant mertongue.

“And who is that?” Tomas indicated a small fair-haired mermaid a short distance away at the back of the pod.

“Her? Oh, she is nobody—just a slave we captured.”

The mermaid in question swam forward. Unlike most of the others, she looked strikingly like a human female. Whipped by the wind, her fine hair was already almost dry, revealing itself to be a fetching golden blonde. Her father must have been a handsome man, God rest his soul, thought Tomas. The mermaid looked up at him with wide blue eyes. As she bobbed in the water, Tomas noticed that her belly was swollen, evidently in the later stages of pregnancy.

“Basha,” she said. “My name is Basha.”

Sh'Teth snarled, spun on Basha, and struck a vicious open-handed blow across her face. She growled something in mertongue that made the smaller mermaid cringe and retreat, clutching a bleeding bottom lip.

“Pay no attention to her,” said Sh'Teth, waving her gory repast at Tomas. “She is lucky we let her live.”

“What are you eating?” he asked.

“Baby,” she replied. She held the meat outstretched to him on her two upturned palms. “Would you like some?”

At first, he thought that he had misheard her. Then he saw a small white bone protruding from one end of the offering, three tiny fingers on the other, and two pink oozing stumps where the missing digits should be. The blood drained from his face. He stumbled backward in horror and dropped to his hands and knees on the deck. He dug his fingers into the boards and retched.

“Please tell me that child was already dead when you found it,” he gasped.

“Of course it wasn't,” said Sh'Teth, looking offended. “We are hunters, not scavengers. We took it from another pod last night.”

“Then it's not...not human?”

“Oh, Brother Tomas, we would never eat a human baby. That would be a sin.”

For a moment Tomas felt a glimmer of hope. If the mermaids had some concept of sin, even a grotesquely distorted concept such as this, then perhaps his predecessors' work had not been entirely in vain.

The mermaids burst into laughter. They were making sport of their heinous crime, and what was worse, they were mocking him. He raised his head and watched, his eyes filled with tears, as they slapped the water with their tails and swam away. Only Basha did not laugh. She trailed behind the others and looked back at him, her face incandescent with sorrow.

#

Tomas sat on the end of the jetty and swung his legs like a child. He closed his eyes and turned his face up to the sun. It was moments like these, quiet and pure and simple, when he could almost feel the presence of God.

Almost.

A familiar flood of lust washed over him, and he opened his eyes to see just a gleaming head. No, two heads, he thought with a smile—Basha held a tiny merbaby in her arms. The child was golden-haired, like her mother. Her chubby little hands flailed against Basha's breast as she suckled noisily. Basha swam in tight circles just out of reach of the end of the jetty and made a nervous humming noise in the back of her throat.

“What is it, Basha?”

“I'm not supposed to be here,” she said. “If Sh'teth knew...”

“Well, then, we won't tell her.” He smiled to reassure her. “Congratulations on the birth of your baby. She is beautiful. What have you named her?”

“That is why I have come to you. The last Brother said that if we were to baptise our babies, then they would go to Heaven.” She lowered her head to gaze lovingly at her child. “I like the sound of Heaven,” she said, her voice barely louder than a whisper. “It sounds so much better than here.”

“I would be honoured to do so,” said Tomas. “But she will need a good Christian name. I think I shall call her Constance.”

Basha swam closer and held the baby up to Tomas. She was so close to him now, close to enough to touch, and he only had to throw his weight forward a little more to join her in the water...

She all but threw her baby into his arms and hastily swam away, as if she feared his touch would burn. Tomas let out a breath, grateful for the minor respite from Basha's glamour. He scooped up handfuls of sea water to sprinkle over the baby's head.

“Constance, I baptize you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

He felt a little like a fisherman releasing an undersized catch as he lowered the wriggling infant into the sea and sent her swimming back to her mother.

#

Tomas had been on the island for five months, a new record for Koreka missionaries, and he had received a letter from the bishop congratulating him for his piety and fortitude. But Tomas was not celebrating; the mermaids were singing tonight. A string of lights bobbed in the bay as a small flotilla of boats set sail from the mainland to meet them. Most of the men aboard would be bound to a post to prevent them from jumping overboard, but there were always a few wanting to pit their will against the mermaids'. No doubt Tomas would be towing their mangled corpses up the beach in a few days' time.

Sighing, he turned back to his scriptures. He could not sleep while the mermaids sang. He drank chasteberry tea until his tongue was stained blue, stuffed his ears with wads of cotton against their high-pitched wordless wail, and prayed until his knees were bruised, yet still he shook with the effort of keeping his feet on the sand. When they finally fell silent, he knew his dreams would be plagued with visions of their inviting arms, their high, pale breasts, their throbbing, incarnadine gills...

He shook himself like a dog shedding water. The words in front of him ran together into nonsense. He pushed the book aside. It hit the floor, sending up a small cloud of dust. He left it where it lay and took up a pen and parchment.

Dear Bishop Lucian

Thank you for your recent letter. Your words of faith and encouragement were most welcome to me. However, I have come to the conclusion that our mission here at Koreka is one of greatest folly.

Despite the mermaids' superficial resemblance to human women, and their facility with the English language, my work has led me to believe that they are more of the order of beasts of the field and the jungle than of fully sentient creatures capable of receiving the full Grace of God.

Some of the mermaids show evidence of intelligence, comparable even to their feminine two-legged counterparts, and I have been able to engage in some rudimentary theological discussions with them. Perhaps, in time, I might even be able to dissuade them from some of their more abhorrent practices, such as their aggression towards other mermaid pods and their cannibalistic tendencies. Regrettably, it is their means of reproduction that provides the greatest barrier to salvation. Their base nature compels them to seek profane unions with human men, and occasionally lesser sea creatures. They have rejected all attempts to persuade them to live in holy matrimony, and with good reason; removed from the sea, they fail to thrive, and pine away to death in a matter of months. And of course, it is impossible for a human man to live in their environment. They are no more capable of choosing a life of chastity and fidelity than the wolf is capable of choosing not to eat the lamb.

I therefore request that the Koreka mission be closed down, and that I be assigned to a new post where I might be more usefully employed in the service of our Lord.

Your humble servant,

Brother Tomas Santoyo

Tomas read over his letter. He had held high hopes for converting Basha, but since the baptism, she had kept her distance from him, as if she were afraid that he might betray her to the rest of the pod. Surely, he thought, this was the most sensible course of action, for himself, for the Church, for the mermaids...yet he hesitated before putting his seal upon the letter.

Perhaps the mermaids did need him. Perhaps he was all that stood in the way of their certain extermination. For if his superiors were to believe his account and were to reconsider the mermaids' status, they surely would not suffer them to live. As much as he despised the mermaids' way of life, he was not prepared to sign their death warrant.

A loud female voice, clearly audible even through his ear plugs, shook him from his reverie.

“Tomas! Please, Tomas, help me!”

Tomas tore the cotton from his ears, snatched up a lamp, and ran outside. He clattered down the jetty and skidded to a halt. Basha clung to the boards. Deep scratches striped her face and body, her blood glistening almost black in the flickering lamp light.

“We were attacked by another pod...the others escaped, but I was too slow...Tomas, they killed Constance!”

“Oh, Basha...”

Her pain and despair was palpable. Without thinking, Tomas prostrated himself on the jetty and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, drawing her into an awkward embrace. He sought only to comfort her, but the touch of his skin on hers intensified the mermaid's allure beyond his ability to resist. He turned his head and pressed his open mouth to hers. His heart seemed to stop in his chest as she returned his kiss.

Then she grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled. She was strong, freakishly strong, and he offered no resistance as he slid into the water. He clasped Basha to him, and their combined weight dragged them slowly down. Basha wriggled away from him, and he had a moment to consider how lovely her hair looked as it swirled about her in the gentle current, another moment to wonder how it was that he could see her, underwater and in the dark, and then he was shooting skyward.

He drew a deep, shuddering breath as he broke the surface. His lamp had tipped over and set the jetty alight. The heat from the mermaid's kiss flowed outward from his lips to infuse his entire body, mirroring the fire. The flames cast a ruddy glow over the water as they licked at the spilt oil and raced along the boards.

It was if he were seeing fire for the first time. The flames bowed and pirouetted, seguing from the palest yellow to vivid orange to arterial red, their own hushed roar the song to which they danced. The sea lapped gently at his shoulders, caressing him through his sodden robes as he tread water. He inhaled again, savouring the scented air. Salt, seaweed, sagebrush, burning pitch, he could distinguish each aroma, yet it all combined into an exquisite perfume. Now he understood why so many men risked death to embrace the mermaids; in one instant Basha had changed him. She had brought him anew into the world, immersed him in sensation, she had...

She had brought him closer to God.

He wept. Basha came to him to drink his tears, catching each drop on the tip of her tongue. The sea rippled around him in a dozen different places as Sh'teth and her pod rose to take their turns embracing him. In the dimmest regions of his lust-fogged mind, he wondered if they had used Basha as bait to lure him into the water. Once this would have enraged him, but now it no longer seemed to matter.

He wept as the mermaids' caresses became more insistent. They tugged and tore at his robe and undergarments until he floated naked, and they adorned him with their own bare flesh. He wept as they took their pleasure of him, holding him submerged until he reached the brink of unconsciousness, then allowing him the briefest of respites before dragging him under again. He wept as his own climaxes ripped him apart and reassembled him in strange new ways. Even as the mermaids took him down for the final time, he wept, although whether it was from the agony or the ecstasy, he could not tell.

#

The boat sat low in the water under Brother Alton's weight. With every lurch of the oars, water splashed over the sides, soaking the hem of his habit.

“Don't know why you're bothering,” said his escort. “You can't convert the mermaids, and there are four gravestones on that island to prove it. I hear Brother Tomas even wrote a letter to the bishop telling him so—right before he died.”

“If such a letter exists, then it is the property of the church, and no business of yours,” he said. “In any case, Brother Tomas was weak, just like the others.” He jabbed at his chest with a podgy forefinger. “Whereas I will prevail.”

She raised one eyebrow, and seemed about to say something, when there was a disturbance in the water off the prow of the boat. Alton half-stood to see what it was, sending the boat rocking.

“Welcome to Koreka, Brother,” said the thing in the water.

Alton sat slack-jawed and speechless. Nothing he had read or heard about the mermaids could have prepared him for this. She was beautiful, she was terrible, she was completely, unmercifully compelling. As she lifted her body above the waves, he could already feel himself drowning.

###

Tracie McBride is a New Zealander who lives in Melbourne, Australia with her husband and three children. She is a member of the Melbourne-based speculative fiction writers group SuperNOVA. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in over 40 print and electronic publications, including Pulp.Net, Coyote Wild, Abyss and Apex, Space & Time, Sniplits and Electric Velocipede. She won the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best New Talent for 2007 and the Williamstown Literary Festival's Seagull Poetry Competition in 2009.

Baptism was first published in Hecate (December 2009).