December 18th, 2025
Ancient Song
Bonnie Tarantino
She watched them from just beyond the reef. Her mermaid eyes were still sharp at 80, though she looked an eternal 30. It amazed her how close she could get without being seen. How easily the human eye saw only what it could know while editing out what it could never imagine. Yet she was not imaginary or the stuff of fantasy. She was as real as any sea creature and just as good at staying beneath the surface as humans were at staying where they can breathe best.
It helped that she was born human. She didn’t know that her mother was from the sea until she was 60. Her mother fell in love with a lonely surfer, her dad, and traded her seal skin for a wetsuit. After months spent under his board nudging her longings through current and wave like sonar, she began preparing to meet him on land. Her mother practiced gaining strength on her marine legs by surfing first. Night by night, she balanced, crawled, and walked the boards while the other surfers were fast asleep. Her uncle, her mother’s brother, helped her mother to do this because he was one of her kind that moved between land and sea seamlessly. He knew what it meant to be called by the human heart.
She found her mother’s real seal skin only after her mother died. Though her mother’s mermaid songs and tales left clues after clues, it took years to pry the story from her grieving Dad. His dementia made it easy for him to recall the past, though he called her Pearl in the moment, her mother’s name.
It was only after her father died, after her own husband died, after their child died, that she unpacked the seal suit and slipped it on for the first time at 70. Determined to die along with them she swam out into the surf on a full moon with no plans to touch ground ever again. What she found waiting for her was a world she could not have imagined. The world her mother gave up. A race of creatures so ancient, so advanced, so loving and powerful that with just one wave they could right every wrong, wipe out suffering for good.
Like the two couples on the beach, though, it was complicated. The lessons of love that only two legs and a split mind and heart can offer are essential to life. In the distance, she could see the older surfer carrying his wife into the water for what they believed to be her last swim. Their adult children joined them, bobbing around gently, laughing and loving in the lightest way possible, so as not to go too deep. Buy the dying woman has mermaid blood that is simmering in the surf. She glows with it. One night, she will take the last of her energy and walk out here on her own, crawl even if she has to,in to the water, out into our waiting arms. Then, we will take her home to be healed and returned to her kind.
The other couple down the beach a bit is just starting, has yet to test the depths of their waters, has yet to find the perfect mixture of earth, water, air, and fire. Their bond is alchemic and beyond their understanding of human chemistry. The young man has been combing out the woman’s knots. He is patient and gentle. The young woman looks right at me and knows I am not a seal. She bears the markings of the Kahuna Nohoa, an ancient whale who telepathically trains humans while they sleep and meditate. His golden threads are woven throughout her aura and will remain there until it is time for her to download them and prepare her kind for what is to come. Her gentle mate has no language for these things, though his work and training will land them in Hawaii, where he will learn to heal with a knife, while she will continue her dream time training with the great Karuna. For now, the man’s mind is precise and sharp, black and white, for now. Later in their marriage, he will put down his scalpel and pick up meditation. By then, what his wife knows will be so woven into his atmosphere that his journey to his center will be an easy swim. Her soul is Whale. He is from the stars. She is among the first ones to come to the earth, soaring from the heavens like meteors and landing deep in the sea to help Mother Gaia prepare for the humans who were yet to come. He has been waiting a long time to be with her again, and he walks the earth cautiously. His arms tether her securely.
The young woman untangles herself, gets up, and walks to the shore. I dip down and swim as close as I can to her. The water is clear and quiet, and though very cold, she braves it and swims a few strokes out toward me. She lays on her back and floats in the golden setting sun and begins to tone a tune that only the ancient whales can teach, that only the ancient ones like me can hear.
