Air Is Not So Hard

by Kat Beyer

Sometimes when the wind picks up I miss my hometown. It’s the way the windchimes clatter and ring; they sound like the drowned bells of my home. I think then about how I never noticed the taste of salt until it was gone from my mouth.

Air is all right. I manage—there’s a way to still your gills with spells. Feet and tails aren’t so different; it’s easy to change from one to the other. And love, while not a simple matter, is still reason enough to remain. I gave up mermaidhood for her.

Her drunk friends at the palace on the shore dared her to go down to the water and call for a lover. They were all at her engagement party, stealing bottles of wine while their parents celebrated the coming union of Princess Madeline, 16, to Prince Bertram, 21. She’d never met him. He’d sent his portrait, and the original was traveling by slow nuptial progress through the kingdom. He was six carriage-stops away by the time she was two bottles in, stumbling down the rocky path ahead of their shouts.

She took off her shoes halfway down, I remember that. I watched from a rock out from shore, ignoring the songs and shouts bubbling up through the waves.

“Go on, Dauphine,” my friends had said, “Go to the rock and call for a lover. You don’t want that old prince anyway—he’s probably got a tail like a trout.”

I worried that she would cut her feet on the rocks, before I remembered that she had climbed down this cliff hundreds of times. I had seen her before. Maybe she had seen me. She came to lip of the water and pressed her toes into the foam.

I watched her for a while, while she stared out across the water. When I swam up she didn’t look the least afraid.

“I haven’t called yet,” she said, as if we already knew each other.

“I know,” I said. “My name is Princess Dauphine.”

I swam along the shore in the breakers; she ran along the shining edge; we went round the point of the bay; we went on and on; after many stories we wound up here, in our shack on the inland road, with wind chimes, a simple life, the occasional argument, plums from the orchard. Air is not so hard.

They didn’t come for the women

by David

“Honey?” Sherry stood at the door, 8-foot shapes looming beyond her. Charles sighed.

“Let them in.”

The bugs clickety clicked through the foyer and into the den.

“Honored sirs,” he began, “how may we help you –”

“Stand aside, human scum,” the first hissed, “to have shown us your paraphernalia!”

Charles waved his arm. Two of the culture pirates headed to the kitchen, where they soon could be heard clattering pans and opening and shutting cabinets. There was really nothing you could do. Bullets wouldn’t stop them.

One of the bugs sputtered like a tea kettle with a lisp “To have antique furniture in shed? Back porch?”

“The garage,” Charles said. “That’s where all the, ah, antique furniture is.” He followed them out.

One bug picked up a wooden folding chair. The bolts screeched every time it was folded or unfolded. That was placed reverently on the concrete slab. Soon it was joined by a beach umbrella (broken), a bookcase that proved Charles did not know how to stain furniture, and an upholstered chair that had survived three generations of cats.

“To have more valuable antiques, puny human?” demanded a bug.

“No,” Charles protested, “this is our best stuff. Please don’t take it.” You had to act aggrieved.

Sherry screamed. Charles ran back in the house. One of the bugs was stuffing framed pictures into a sack. There went Sherry’s mother, her grandparents, two of her great-grandparents. She was wrenching at the bug’s lower right arm, but it paid no attention.

“Sherry, stop it. There’s nothing you can do. We’ll replace them.”

She wheeled to face him. “Replace great grandma?! This is the only picture of her. They can’t have it.”

She ran before he could stop her. He had to get the bugs out before she came back with the shotgun. She couldn’t hurt them, but they could hurt her.

“You know the big house two doors down on the left? With the columns?”

“Sssss.”

“They’ve been holding out on you. They have all kinds of antique china in the attic. They have knickknacks.”

“Knickknacks?” the bug asked.

“Yes, but you better hurry.”

The bugs conferred briefly, then scuttled out the front door, slamming it just as Sherry came leaping down the stairs.

“Sweetie, they’re gone.” She headed for the front door. “I scanned the photos,” he shouted, “high-resolution.”

She stopped inside the door, breathing hard. He gently took the gun, stepped in front of her and hugged her tightly.

“I hate bugs,” she said.

The end