THE MERMAID'S COURAGE

     The water known as Itshehe can feed you, entertain you, kill you.  Itshehe can seduce you, beguile you, lead you into a strainer and hold you under too long.
     Itshehe is a Mermaid.
     Her exquisite anguish is one of her most definitive aspects.
     Time after time she falls in love with a sailor; a male human who must remain in the clear air of the prevailing paradigm.  Too often Itshehe will lead the Beloved too deeply into the wonderland beneath the waves and when the emergency is recognized, no one can get him back to the air in time and he dies.  Dies in the arms of Itshehe, looking into her eyes with fear, panic, trust or, most painfully, the shock of the betrayed.

"The Mermaid and the Prince" by Jo Wall.

      Itshehe withstands the collapse of dreams, the dread of knowing that never again will the face of the handsome sailor be reflected in her own, feeling the tearing apart of fiber after fiber of the threads that bind two hearts together.   These things often kill a human lover.   The lights will go out.  The will to take the next step would chill and fade.  Finally the shipwrecked heart might forget the next beat.
     Knowing the Beloved believes, at the moment of dying, that the Lover has committed betrayal, and being just guilty enough to overlook the mutually neglectful nature of their self-betrayal, brings a pain to the Mermaid akin to Death itself.
     It is at this point that Itshehe, and all the Merfolk, bear up a rare brand of courage and dare, dare in the face of excruciating pain, dare in the face of repetition, dare to love again.
     There are rare occasions -- Mama Oceania be praised -- when the Beloved, that hapless human sailor, discovers his cloaked Dolphin or Sylkie nature and the two live together forever in the Marine Gardens.  Perhaps this is the hope-spring from which that extraordinary courage arises.
     Itshehe is all those things.