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Summer 2025

The Broken Bargain of Songs for Legs

A fantastical tale of the love between a Mermaid and a Witch by Stefani Cooke

The witch draws a box around herself in the sand, ensuring the precise lines intersect: protection. Her five o'clock, the mermaid who wants legs, has beached herself and slithers toward her. The witch sways onto the balls of her feet and then back on her heels, mulling over possibilities. How do you break up with a mermaid and avoid drowning?
________________

It started with idle chit-chat: the craft of luring a man and how a gal only needed her voice to inspire love. These days, everyone uses dating apps. The mermaid’s talking crab did not
appreciate the errand of swiping her a pre-paid phone and SIM cards from mall kiosks. She met people, leading to the inevitable concern of in-person meetings and walking. She heard the witch made home visits–as close to home as a human could get, anyway–so she dropped her a line.

Their tête-à-tête was so enjoyable the witch decided on a layaway plan: eight alluring songs each week (to drum up more business) in exchange for the legs.

The witch realized she needed the mermaid after the fourth week.

She loved the mermaid’s tinkly laugh, and once the witch noticed brushing her hand against the mermaid’s smooth arm elicited a shell-pink flush, she was greedy for more excuses to
touch the sea creature.

Then it happened: the witch kissed her. She’d never been this bold, but she’d never had someone she wanted to kiss. The witch’s bulbous facial warts kept most away, and she had
grown used to being alone. But the mermaid returned the kiss with intensity, a faint smell of sulphur on her breath, her tongue a slippery ribbon of salty seaweed.

That afternoon turned into evening, then inky night, and they held hands and giggled, sockless toes and parched fins soaking in the swelling surf. It was bliss.

Yet, at the seventh meeting, things changed. Threadbare ditties replaced potent ballads, and the mermaid kissed enough to satisfy but not embolden. The conversation was a brittle exchange of pleasantries concerning the weather and weekend plans.

So the witch decided the mermaid was a usurer and that it was time to cut her off.
________________

Noticing the lines in the sand, the mermaid stops her sensuous wriggle, presses her hands into the dirt and swings her tail in front of her. Waves slap at the shoreline just short of the drawn line, and the witch is glad she thought ahead. Mermaids were forever drowning people.

She ahems.



“I know what you’re doing. You’ve broken the terms of our contract, so I cannot follow through with our agreement. We shouldn’t see each other anymore.”

The mermaid’s eyes lose lustre, and her smile stiffens. Was she crying, or were those remnants of brine?

“What is it you think I’m doing?”

The witch stutters, taken aback by the mermaid’s pointed question: “Well, the, uh, recent quality of your songs has waned. The first few were real hits, but now you’re giving me a subpar product. We talked about the weather! You’re using me for cheaper legs.”

The mermaid’s usual giddy tinkle deepens into a mirthless snort, and she rakes her urchin-slathered fingers over the drawn lines–but the barrier holds. She slams her palms against
the unseeable force field and begins again.

“You’re a pretty little fool, Dru. I hoped you’d notice the watered-down songs and bargain for more. I wanted you to crave me, to clear a space inside of you just for me.”

The witch stands tall, crossing her arms over her naked heart. “But why the artifice, Cor? We would’ve gotten there.”

“Time! I have lived far too long to become sea foam when I die.”
Dru’s face is blank.

“I turn 300 next week,” Cor says. As she waits for the heavy words to collide, she studies the hairline cracks her fins have collected.

The milky white in Cor’s eyes had not gone unnoticed by Dru, nor had she ignored the remora nestled in the mermaid’s scales, but she did not know death was so close. She can hear each thought click into place.

“Heaven’s a hard gig to get,” she says, recalling the mermaid lore a Danish man had once shared with her when he had bargained for a potion that might melt his masculine features.

“And love helps pad the resume,” Cor admits, still looking anywhere but the witch’s face.

“Do I mean that much to you?” Dru asks so low that the crashing waves consume her question.

The mermaid rolls her eyes, clouds passing over wan moons.

Dru presses a hand against her chest, applying pressure to keep heart blood from flowing out. How can this vibrant, funny girl dissolve into microbubbles and fade into memory?

Witches, thinks Dru, are supposed to give away their hearts: to devils, to the earth, to anyone but themselves. What was a heart shared between lovers? She would readily endure the price: the length of her years halved. She didn’t want them, anyway.

The witch nudges her toe across one of her lines, then stretches a hand toward the mermaid, smiling through tears.

The mermaid grasps the witch’s hand, but her limp smile does not crinkle her eyes. She knows this imperfect love will not meet heaven’s entrance regulations, but at least she will not
face the end alone.

Though meaningless, the witch offers distorted prayers that resemble poorly spun spells. She pleads with whatever sky god is holding court above them that the mermaid finds comfort in the afterlife.

The lovers embrace. For a moment, they yearn for the broken bargain of songs for legs, but the reality of their pressed bodies snuff the unspoken wish.

Weeks after Cor’s passing, Dru tries to slip into the waves and find a way back to her mermaid. Though the witch sees no one, clammy, barnacled fingers keep her from submerging under the water for too long.

Dru escapes drowning a second time.






Stefani Cooke is a writer and middle school teacher from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, whose narratives focus on identity, self-discovery, and anxiety. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Ryga Journal, Hearth & Coffin Literary Journal, the Drabbledark III anthology by Shacklebound Press, and Penumbric Speculative Magazine. You can read her work and find her socials at https://linktr.ee/stefthescribbler


Copyright © 2025 by Stefani Cooke
Published by Orion's Beau

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