Elven Silver: The Irreverent Faery Tales of Zardoa Silverstar

Sample story from page 176:

Taking to the Seas

Jack was an athletic guy with a Masters in Marine Biology who had a passion for sea-life and joined Green Peace to protect the whales, dolphins, porpoises and other creatures from slaughter by the fishing companies. He was at this very moment in a motorboat harassing a Japanese fishing trawler on the open seas, getting between them and shoals of fish, filming everything and challenging the ship to run them over. In spite of this, the fishing went on and the most Jack and his comrades in the motorboat could do was make it difficult, aggravating the fishermen to no end who cursed at them endlessly in Japanese, or so Jack assumed. He didn’t actually speak Japanese but the tone of epithets they used was pretty International.

The trawler had plunged a huge net into the sea and was pulling it out when Jack could have sworn he heard a porpoise calling to him for help. Not just calling out as porpoises do in with their sort of squeaky voices, but actually speaking English, calling to him saying, “Help me, Help me.” That was crazy, of course, but without thinking about it and totally on an impulse called by the tone of that urgent plea he leapt from the motor boat as it passed the net and climbed onto it and began hacking away at the huge ropes with an keenly sharp machete like knife that was so strong it could hack through steel cable, which he carried for just that purpose. Within several desperate swipes, he had severed the line and he and the tuna and the porpoise plunged back into the sea. He was stunned but his people scooped him up out of the water while the crew of the fisher cursed at him some more and one of them started taking pot shots with a rifle just to scare them as Jack and his friends jetted off back to a local island to celebrate their victory.

That night about a dozen of them sat around a fire talking excitedly about the day's events and adventure, having a few beers and in general agreeing that Jack was both a hero and a lunatic that could have gotten himself and potentially some of them killed. They laughed among themselves and felt like outlaws, or pirates, only pirates for the good instead of the thieving, murderous ner-do-wells pirates actually were. After a while and a few beers, Jack wandered in among the trees up from the beach to take a pee and when he had finished and was giving it a last shake a voice said,
“You saved me today.”

He looked up to find a young woman standing there apparently naked though mostly hidden behind a tree. “What did you say,” he asked, hurriedly stuffing it back into his pants, which was not entirely easy under the circumstances.

“I said you saved me today. You heard my call and rescued me.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

“You know very well,” she replied.

And he just stared at her and then edged a little closer till he was just on the other side of the palm tree she was hiding behind.

“I'll give you three wishes,” she announced.

“Like in the faery tales,” he pointed out.

“Exactly,” said she.

“Then I want to kiss you,” he told her.

“Not what you want,” she informed him, “What you wish.”

“Then I wish you'd kiss me,” he quipped and she slid out from behind the tree and took him in her arms and kissed him long and deep upon the mouth, her naked body pressed full against him. When they separated, she whispered, “Think it over carefully. I'll be back tomorrow night.” And she ran off into the dark.

“Hey,” he yelled after her, “What’s your name?”
She stopped and turned back to him saying, “You couldn’t pronounce it.”

“Try me,” he said, grinning in the dark.
Then she utter a few squeaks, like porpoise calls and he laughed. He tried to imitate them, but then she just laughed and said, “Not quite. But you can call me Sea Skimmer. That’s what my name means.”

“Sea Skimmer,” he repeated, thinking what a strange name. “How about I just call you Skimmer?”

“Okay,” she said and ran off again.

He tried to follow after, yelling, “Hey, wait,” but soon found he was just stumbling around, tripping on driftwood and clumps of grass in the dark and finally gave up and wandered back to the fire where his comrades had gotten into telling stories from past adventures, although he only half listened to these his mind, really his whole body, absorbed and obsessed with his recent encounter.

The next day they were at it again bedeviling the trawler and he could have sworn the pack of porpoises that hung near their little craft were cheering them on. It really sounded like that, a strange mixture of human and porpoise squeak. That night he waited for her again but she didn’t show. After a bit he gave up had a few beers and once again he went for a pee. After he had completed his business this time, she slipped up on him and said, “So? What will it be?”

He, of course, didn't really believe she could grant wishes other than those mostly carnal ones that had been popping into his mind all day. Yet, he had given it serious thought and he told her, “If I could really have anything I wished, I wish those damn fishermen would all stop hunting the seas.”

“And I wish I could grant that to you,” she replied, “But I cannot for two reasons. One, the rules say it must be a personal wish, a selfish wish, something really for you.”

“That is for me,” he began to protest.

“And second,” she continued, “That fishing is something time and Nature will take care of and is out of my hands.”

“Well, Nature's none too fast,” he sighed, frustrated.

“She seldom is,” replied the sprite for, of course, that's what she was really, a sea sprite. We know, you thought she was a mermaid, sorry to disappoint.

“Then,” said Jack, “I'd like to be a porpoise for a day. Did you ever see that Disney cartoon, 'the Sword in the Stone' about King Arthur and Merlin and Merlin helps King Arthur as a boy become a fish to see what it's like?”

She shook her head. “Don’t see many movies,” she replied.

“Anyway, that's what I would wish to be, one of them for even a night.”

“Then come,” said she and she grasped his hand and led him to the water, and slipping off her clothes, for she had come dressed this time, although only in a simple sarong, and urged him to do the same. He thought he was about to get lucky. But then she waded out into the ocean and plunged in, pulling him after. How, he knew not, but he was sure of it, immediately he was a porpoise in touch with other porpoises and they were swimming, hundreds of them moving north. In his mind, he heard her say, “Come on, we're about to have some fun.” And they swam to where the trawler was anchored for the night and then beyond it, and then they were waiting, waiting, waiting expectantly. Happy to be together, knowing something was coming. Suddenly they turned and started back toward the trawler and he knew why, there was a huge wave on the way and they were going to surf it.

The wave came and lifted them up, rising higher and higher until they were twice the height of the ship and then they sailed over it as it, too, was picked up and pitched down. It broke into a thousand pieces and they kept riding the wave laughing for another hundred miles until it petered out.

Back on shore and back in human bodies, he commented, “I thought you couldn't do that sort of stuff,” referring to the shipwreck.

“That?” she responded, “That wasn't us. We’re just wee folk. We don’t have that kind of power. That was Mother Ocean. Every once in awhile she gets tried of them and sucks them down and eats them. We were just there for the ride.”

“And a great ride it was,” Jack said and laughed to the depths of his soul thinking about it. And then, without considering what he was saying, moved by some deep inner desire, he said, “I wish I could be like that forever.”

And she kissed him and seized his hand and led him back into the sea, for that was his third wish and she had to grant it.