At the first glimpse of her, his blood ran cold. As he drew in the net, there among the hundreds of mackerel, her pale white skin shone unmistakably under the full moon. He figured that he’d managed to snag a body, some sodden corpse dumped in the sound, an unfortunate murder victim that had been disposed of only to come up here.

He almost vomited at the thought of it.

As the boat winch drew the net higher, and he could see the body more clearly, his terror turned to astonishment. She was a woman, sure enough, or at least she had the form of one. But where a woman’s legs would be, her torso continued on, gradually tapering until it ended with a pair of flukes, and covered completely with overlapping blue-green scales. A mermaid!

His eyes goggled at the sight. His head began to spin and through his mind raced a flurry of ideas. Was he dreaming? Had he gone mad?

The winch system was not built for delicacy or nuance, but as gently as he could, he released the catch onto the deck. Picking his way through the wriggling fish, he drew nearer to this miracle - or abject hallucination? Was she alive? Could she be dead? Could she be a threat? Could she be… profitable?

He stood over her, her form illuminated by the moon’s blue light. Now he could see her much better, and he realized that the skin on her upper body was not pale and smooth. Beneath the skin he could make out a network of something, something that could almost be blood vessels, but in a thousand different colors and running in all directions, linking and crossing each other. Now he became aware that behind her right ear rose a metal antenna of about six inches.

And then he noticed the eyes. They were wide open; instead of pupil and cornea there was only a solid silver surface, reflective as a mirror. He could see the moon and all the stars reflected in her eyes. As he began to wonder which of those stars she might have come from, her hand shot up and caught his wrist in an iron grip. Her lips, so far motionless in their slightly parted shape, flexed at the corners and a sound came from somewhere within her.

“Help me.”