Listen to the author reading this story:
I was born half a sea nymph. Rising from the water resplendent, lighthearted, beneficent, droplets clinging to my hair, tickling my nose, remembering the taste of salt. My mother was a Naiad. She named me pele for web, lepo for unraveled. When she held me up for my father to gaze upon, he shuddered and tried to have me drowned. Later, when I grew legs, I strolled the walls of Ithaca, wondering what lay beyond: Broken treasure ships. Sea monsters. Sirens who lured men to their deaths with sharp, strange voices. There be dragons. When I wed Odysseus, my mother cried and my father clenched his fist in triumph. At last, the dirty water baby has become a queen.
Then Odysseus left to fight the Trojan War. You see what men do in the name of beauty. They creep into traps. They fill a horse with daggers. They spill their ruby blood in an unfamiliar land. Left behind, day after day, year after year, I sat on the balcony, gazing at ships laden with spices and silks, at the ravenous sharks beneath the gemstone blue Agaean, at the clever whales, at the naiads who whisper come back in the night, and the scorpion fish, hiding venom in their spines. She misses him so, said my courtesans. She is lonely, said the townspeople. She needs a new king, said my father, who gathered suitors like they were daisies and threw them in my lap for sport. One hundred and eight men, vying for my favor.
Each day I wove a funeral shroud. Each night I undid the stitches by the light of an uncertain moon. I will wed when I’ve finished, I told them, my legs crossed demurely, my cheek resting in my hand. My choices are thin as sand crabs, skittering into foam. Delay, delay. For 20 years, I delay until my fingers are callused as the pointy end of a conch shell, and I am still Queen. What is she really thinking? they wonder. When Odysseus finally returns, disguised in a beggar’s cloak, I see his crooked feet, hear his pretty lies, and know him immediately. Come to bed, he says, gazing at my stony face. In a moment, my love, I tell him and return to the balcony where if I listen very carefully I can hear the eels sing.
Beth Sherman has had more than 200 stories published in literary journals, including Flash Frog, Fictive Dream, Bending Genres and Smokelong Quarterly. Her work is featured in Best Microfiction 2024 and Best Small Fictions 2025. She’s also a multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. She can be reached on social media @bsherm36.