The Merfolk

Ao Chao, a fisher of the Eastern Sea, cast his net one night beyond the reefs and hauled up a creature with a fish's body and a human face, its hair like seaweed, weeping without sound. Chao feared it and would have loosed it; the merfolk opened its eyes and spoke in the accents of the tide: 'I have been cast away in the wind and waves these three days; blessed is the pity that found me.' Chao cut the line and set it free. The merfolk sank, then rose again and, cupping a single pearl, laid it in the boat. 'This is knotted of my tears,' it said; 'in time of storm it may be sold for a measure of rice. Keep it well.' Then it sank and was gone. The pearl was large as a longan, and in the moon it cast a halo; held in the hand it was warm and smooth. Chao was poor, and in lean years he would pawn the pearl for coin — its light would dim, yet brighten again, and none who pawned it dared cheat him. In a few years Chao took a wife and got a son, and his lot mended; all of it the pearl's bounty. One evening a great storm rose and well-nigh overturned his boat; in the chaos he seemed to see a figure upon the water thrusting the craft onward, and the waves parted before it. Returning home he examined the pearl and found it split in two; within lay a tiny likeness of the merfolk, its brows and eyes lifelike, as if weeping. Chao understood: the pearl was the merfolk's tear, and its soul besides; the debt repaid, the soul must return to the sea. He took his boat to the old reef and cast the pearl into the waves. Beneath the water a sudden light spread, and a host of merfolk lined the shore in farewell; their leader raised a hand, and the wind stilled and the moon came forth. Chao returned, the mark of the pearl upon his heart; all his days he fished no more in the deep sea. The Chronicler of the Strange remarks: For a drop of kindness the merfolk repays with a tear-pearl; yet the man who receives the pearl oft forgets its source. The pearl splits and the soul returns — not that the merfolk is fickle, but that the debt is paid and parting comes. Those among men who take bounty and break faith — before this pearl, are they not ashamed?