There Be Monsters
From mermaids to spies and everything in between, May’s Sunday Morning Transport stories are ready to entice and ensnare you. Authors Suzan Palumbo, Kelly Robson, Christopher East, and Mary Anne Mohanraj will be your conductors this month! As always, the first story of the month is free to read.
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Did you hear a song on the wind this morning? This week features Suzan Palumbo’s spectacular intergenerational mermaid tale, with all the warnings and nurture this implies.
~ Julian and Fran, May 4, 2025
There Be Monsters
by Suzan Palumbo
The song reaches Violet on the breeze as it always has. This morning, standing on the sandy, rain-drenched shore, she does not resist it. The melody sinks into her, pumps through her veins, and caresses the ache she’s kept buried in her chest her entire life.
Robert’s body lies in a watery grave on the seabed. She misses the harbor of his breathing, the way he’d knot his arms around her. Her grief is suspended in the center of her stomach, buoyed by warring tides of bitter desolation, sour guilt, and sweet relief.
She eyes the white skiff a few feet away. It is hers and hers alone now. There is no one left to stop her from setting out to sea.
#
“Do you hear that?” she’d asked when she first caught the trace of a tune in the air. Her whimsy-less mother had been hanging sheets to dry outside their shoreside cottage. The gray fabric snapped in the wind like the sails dotting the horizon.
“Hmm?” her mother said, a clothes-peg held between her lips as she adjusted the line.
“A girl? Calling? No . . . singing. I can’t make out the words.” Violet pointed to the left, toward the open water. “Over there, somewhere.”
Her mother stiffened, then finished pinning the sheets before leaning down to look ten-year-old Violet in the eye. An inexplicable sorrow Violet did not understand sat in the creases of her mother’s patient expression.
“No, I don’t hear anything, love.” She kissed Violet’s forehead and went back to the laundry. “There’s only you and me and the house.”
Later, they watched for her father’s return at the large window in the kitchen. The big vessels entered the port from the right and docked. The crewmen dispersed in their own little boats, rowing to their homes along the cape.
“There he is.” Relief filled her mother’s eyes, though her jawline hardened.
“A mermaid was out on Devil’s Rock today,” her father said at the table during dinner. He winked at Violet. Water and sun had cracked and lined his face like an old wooden board, but his heart had remained jellyfish soft for his family. “The mermaid’s voice made the men cry. The sea is made of tears. That’s why it’s salty.” He sat back and smiled as if he’d gifted his daughter an ancient truth.
“Did you cry when you saw the mermaid, Father? Was she pretty?” Violet sat at attention, hoping he’d bestow the answers her mother could not provide.
“Mermaids don’t exist, love.” Her mother’s dry-cut practicality dissolved the brewing enchantment of the tale. She ladled more scallops into Violet’s bowl. “Those are silly stories sailors and fishermen repeat to explain their misfortunes.”
Her father shrugged. Violet’s heart dropped. She spent the rest of dinner staring into her soup. Her parents remained talking at the kitchen table late into the night, well after she had gone to bed.
“Don’t fill Violet’s head with fantasies and dreams she can never hold.” Her mother’s whisper lapped underneath the door in Violet’s room.
“It’s just a bit of fun, May. She knows I’m not serious.”
“Does she?” A heavy pause. “It’s cruel, Abel. Stop taking her out in the boat. It will lead to disappointment for her later.” Violet covered her head with her pillow and squeezed her eyes closed. She tried to shut out every noise except her own breathing, but the voice from the water was there, soft and low like a lullaby.
The next day, and every day onward, she steeled herself against the sound. It rushed toward her in half-caught phrases, tempting, teasing, desperately searching for a way to be let into her lungs. She did not know why she had to deny hearing it. How could it be dangerous or wrong if it came to her naturally? But her mother had warned her that succumbing to the song, admitting she could hear it, would hurt her.
She suspected her mother had been hurt by it long before Violet was born.
#
“Do you hear a voice calling?” Cecelia looked longingly out at the open water. She and Violet were gathering clams at low tide. Violet scraped one out of the sand and threw it into the mesh bucket. They had become fast friends after Violet’s father quit taking her out on the water and teaching her how to navigate using the stars. Cecelia’s father was a fisherman too, only he had never let her set foot on his boat.
“Women are bad luck at sea,” he’d said when Cecelia asked. “Do you want to spoil the catch or get me caught in a storm?”
Violet stilled like her mother poised before the laundry line, weighing the cost of her answer to Cecelia’s question. Her breath hitched in her throat like an unsung note.
Risk a confession for the hope of shared solace and company. Say: Yes, I do. I hear the song here and now with you. I am so happy you hear it too. Or, deny her senses and body to remain safe from the threat of undefined heartache and keep her mother happy?
It will lead to disappointment for her later.
“No.” Violet dug her nails into the sand, her heart pounding. “I don’t hear anything at all.” Anguish contorted Cecelia’s pretty brow. She stood up, pelted an empty shell at the surf, and walked toward her house.
Violet watched her leave. She sat and gathered her knees up tight to her chest, trying to keep herself from falling apart. “You are a coward,” she whispered to the sea.
#
The entire village attended Cecelia’s wedding three years later. Violet accepted the invitation along with her mother and father. She barely noticed the groom—an average boy who worked the boats. Her eyes were only for the resplendent bride, who cast a bittersweet look as she turned her back and tossed her bouquet behind her. The posies fell at Violet’s feet. A crowd of unmarried women shoved her aside in their frenzy to scoop it up.
“Congratulations to you both,” Violet’s mother said when their family took their leave for the night. Cecelia pulled Violet into a tight hug.
“Soon this will be you,” Cecelia whispered. The cadence of her voice held a threat.
#
“I don’t want to marry anyone, Father. I want to go out with you on the water like when I was little. Maybe I could make my own living.” Violet could no longer resist struggling against the net she felt closing in around her. “I don’t want to be stuck doing the same chores every day, waiting for someone to return home. Like an unthinking piece of furniture.”
Her mother flinched, and then frowned.
“You don’t belong on the water.” Her father spoke in between slurps of the whiting and fennel soup in his bowl. “You’re grown now. Robert’s a good lad. He’ll make a good life for you both. Stick to women’s work like your mother and you will be happy. Right, May?”
Violet’s mother nodded. A tight smile stretched across her lips, despite the stricken look in her eyes.
Is she happy? Violet bit the inside of her cheek. She wanted to toss her bowl to the floor. She swallowed her frustration as a bitter accompaniment to her broth. Where would she go if she refused?
She went on walks along the beach with Robert. Her mother, the shadow of her future, trailed behind them as chaperone. Robert spoke softly, gently. He had his own small vessel. He wanted to buy a cottage not far from her family. She listened, treading against the wailing on the wind, trying to keep hold of the thread of his voice as the lament from the sea pleaded with her to say, No, no, no, never.
“I saw you with your friend years ago, collecting clams on the beach. I was helping my father paint the hull of his boat farther down the shore. Your friend, she looked out into the water. But you, with your dark hair, you turned your head landward. I knew in that moment you were the steady type of girl that a man could build his life on.”
She shuddered, remembering how Cecelia’s chest and shoulders caved inward that day on the beach. Violet had betrayed them both.
When Robert took her hands in his, his tousled hair full of salt-sea air, Violet said, “Yes, I will be your wife. I will watch you leave every morning and push off onto the water and I will stay in place waiting for you, cooking and cleaning and mending your clothes. I will live only for you.”
I will even forsake myself and I will forget, she thought as she walked down the church aisle with her father, the wedding march smothering the sea’s refrain outside the little stone structure.
“You made the right choice.” Her mother planted a kiss on Violet’s cheek after the registry had been signed.
Had there ever been the possibility of a different one? she thought before she tossed her bouquet into the waiting crowd.
#
Robert reached out and put his hand on her wrist. She had grown familiar with his frequent searching touch. “There’s a strange look in your eyes in the evenings. Do you worry that I won’t return when I sail off?”
“No. I always know you will.” She ladled his stew out before him. He raised an eyebrow and laughed.
“Let’s have a child.” He shoveled a potato into his mouth. “It will keep you company when you are alone, and fill your time.” She was quiet in response. How would she teach a child to navigate a life of self-denial?
She capitulated, having already embarked upon this path. Robert rolled on top of her like the waves she yearned for that night. She was wet and malleable—a still pool offering no resistance. Fill my life, fill my mind, fill my time. Maybe the child would finally drown out the melody?
#
The song filled the baby’s first cries, and Violet saw the horizon in the little girl’s gaze. She prayed silently, begged the depths of the ocean that her baby would never hear the call of the water.
She braced, rehearsing for the day Lily would come to her and ask if she could also hear a voice from beyond the cape.
Yes, Lily, love, I hear her. The song is real, Violet would say. She isn’t in your imagination.
Lily never asked. She grew into a smart, witty, beautiful woman and met a boy who was kind and gentle just like her father. She left Violet’s side as easily as a dandelion seed in the wind to have a family and children of her own.
She had filled Violet’s heart with love, and yet the song, the insistent voice, remained.
#
“Are you unhappy?” Robert asked. They were alone in their cottage, like they’d been in the beginning. Violet’s hair was salted with strands of gray. Her jawline hung looser. She was curled up by the window, watching the water. A barely audible hum vibrated in her bones.
“No.” She turned to him. “I have everything a woman should want. A kind husband.” She paused to kiss him on the cheek. “A beautiful daughter, married . . .”
“And what of things you were not supposed to want?”
She turned the question over, her stomach quivering. What could she lose if she admitted it now? She swallowed, but her mouth felt gritty, like dirt. “I’ve always wanted to go to sea.”
#
Robert pushed the skiff out into the bay. The sun was warm on their faces and the winds calm. Gulls floated silently in the air overhead. As he rowed, their house and the land grew distant behind Violet’s back.
He showed her how to hoist the little sail and angle it to catch the breeze. He let her steer. The movements her father had taught her as a child came back to her quickly, resurrected by her muscle memory.
Robert dropped the anchor and they sat quietly contemplating the sky and the sandy beach. Violet looked beyond the bay. The voice was clearer than ever. So clear, she could taste the song on her tongue. It was spicy and redolent. Intoxicating. She squeezed her eyes, attempting to shut it out.
The ocean is made of tears. . . .
“I’ve been waiting for you,” it said, echoing in all the chambers of her heart. She shook her head and looked about for the sinister mermaids her father had spoken of, trying to find the source of it all. There was no one anywhere.
“Why do the boats always sail out of the harbor to the right?” She forced herself to refocus on Robert.
“There be monsters to the left.” He brushed his curly hair from his face. “We should return home. The sun is well past midday.” He bent over the side of the boat to haul up the anchor, his back to her—trusting and vulnerable.
Push him. The voice bubbled in her throat.
He’d been good to her all these years, exceptionally kind and accommodating, a gentle, wonderful father to their daughter. He’d never raised a hand to Violet, never went out late, never misspent the family money.
Push him.
She imagined knocking him into the sea and letting him sink for the fish to tear apart with their piercing triangular teeth. She rose from her seat, leaning, her hand reaching toward him.
PUSH HIM.
The boat rocked.
“Whoa there.” He turned to her and hefted the anchor over the side. “Careful or you’ll overturn us.”
Self-reproach heated her through and made her wince. She smiled sheepishly and sat down. Turning the boat around, he sailed them back. Violet did not want the connection she could finally hear without obstruction severed, did not want her feet to touch the shore.
“Was being on the water as good as you’d imagined it would be?” Robert offered his hand to help her out. She went cold as she grasped it.
“Yes.” Her voice was bereft and hollow. “I wish I could have stayed out there forever.”
#
The sea eventually claimed Robert without Violet’s help.
“A mermaid was singing. She lured us into sailing near Devil’s Rock. We hadn’t even realized how off course we’d all got. She’d swum out to taunt us. Then she smacked the boat with her tail and tipped it over.” Cecelia’s husband broke the news to Violet at her cottage door. “We could not save the men tangled in the net. I’m so sorry. Robert was a fine fellow.” He removed his cap and held it to his chest. “I trusted him with my life.”
Those are silly stories sailors and fishermen repeat to explain their misfortunes. . . . Women are bad luck at sea. . . . Push him . . . push him . . . PUSH—
“Thank you,” she whispered, and closed the door. Had she conjured his death with her thoughts? There’d been no mermaid when they were out on the water. Nothing except Robert, Violet, and the boat. Mourners came and went, leaving casseroles and baked goods. A memorial was held for the lost men. Lily stood beside Violet when Cecelia came to offer her condolences.
“I’m so sorry.” She put her arthritic hand on Violet’s forearm. Violet pulled her into a tight embrace.
“I’m sorry too. But this will soon be you,” she whispered.
#
She visited her own parents’ cottage after the mourners had gone and Lily returned to taking care of her growing family. They’d become quiet slivers of themselves, though her father still carried a sly twinkle in his eye. Violet sat holding a warm mug across from her mother at the old kitchen table.
“You lied.” The edge of the accusation feathered into a quiet sob. “Why? When you could hear it too, all these years. Why did you leave me to struggle with it alone?”
Her mother took a long sip from her cup. “I could only prepare you for the heartbreak I already knew.” She looked back out the window at the water, her expression as resigned as ever.
#
The sky clears and Violet pushes the little white boat out onto the water. Tilting the sail, she catches the wind and navigates out of the bay to the left. Her house near the shore shrinks each time she glances back. She has no compass. She’s never been this far out on the water before, but the voice fills her lungs and rings in her head as sharp as a bell. It directs her course. She sails past midday and well into the afternoon, long after the men would have turned their prows home.
Is she too late? She is not a young woman anymore. Her face has begun to seam with age, like her father’s. Will this matter wherever she is going?
As the sun begins to set, she catches sight of a large rock rising out of the water. She steers toward it. The shallows nearby are calm and gentle. She sets her anchor down and scrabbles up the slippery surfaces to stand on the flat top of the islet.
There’s a depression at its center. She walks over to it. The sea all around her is boundless and eerily hushed in anticipation. The voice guiding her has gone silent too. A broken shell, ivory white and curved like an ear sits on the ground before her, like a gift.
She holds it up to listen, painful relief washing over her.
“We’ve been waiting for you,” it sings, in a harmony she’s always known.
#
Thank you for joining our journey this week.
Suzan Palumbo is a Trinidadian Canadian speculative fiction writer and editor. Her work has been nominated for the Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, Aurora, and Washington Small Press Awards. Her Nebula-nominated novella Countess was published by ECW Press in September 2024. A full bibliography of her work can be found at: suzanpalumbo.carrd.co. When she isn’t writing, she is often wandering her local misty forests.
“There Be Monsters,” © Suzan Palumbo, 2025.
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That was heartbreaking.