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In the lighthouse on Bound Skerry, a book lies on the table where the lighthouse keeper used to sit. The cloth is water-logged, the paper mouldy. One needs a bit of imagination to see that the cover once was green. The letters are still plain to read: Mermaids – the Myths, Legends & Lore. It is a sunny day, just after noon; a mild breeze plays with the book's tattered pages, makes them rustle and turn. When the breeze leaves it be, the book has fallen open to one of its most cherished tales.

The Boy and the Blue Wave

Once upon a time, there lived a boy on the Out Skerries. His hair was black as a raven's wing, and his eyes shone green like the moss on Grunay.

The boy had been touched by evil once – a lightning-bolt shaped scar on his forehead told the tale. But in a long battle he had defeated the red-eyed worm, and in all of Albion, the boy was loved for his brave deed.

Yet as the years passed, people forgot about the boy, and he moved to the loneliest place he could find: the rugged Skerries. On the isle of Bruray he bought an old crofthouse, which had been deserted for years. He made it his home and lived among the natives who knew him but did not make a fuss about their dragon-killer hero. Every morning, he would greet the wind and the water, and go about his business, lighting the stove to make tea.

He did not think of himself as lonely. The warm stove, the occasional visitor, and the ceaseless wind kept him company. He thought of himself as a man if not happy, then certainly content with the life given to him.

One night the boy had a strange dream. In this dream, a blue wave came over him and carried him away from the isle of Bruray. When he awoke, his sheets were wet and his body was on fire. The boy, who had long given up touching himself, was so hard it took just the barest caress for him to come. He screamed his pleasure into the pillows and couldn't stop touching himself, recalling the blue wave – wetting his skin, tousling his hair, streaming inside and filling him up. All night long he floated in and out of the dream, coming over and over again.

Spent and exhausted he got up the next morning, but the house was cold. He had slept so late the fire in the stove had died. He had not made tea, and a traveller had come by, but seen the closed door and passed on. The wind, who had always been the boy's friend, tore at the roof and at his hair.

The sea though...

The sea lay sparkling in the sun. It shone bright and cool. Tempting. The boy found himself at the beach with no memory of what had brought him there. For hours, he sat on the rocks and watched the waves approach him and retreat, never quite touching his feet. When night fell, he went home and again the dream of the blue wave came over him.

Every night, the dream came. There was such a longing in the boy, he did not know what for. Every day, he went down to the sea. The tea-drinking visitors and the wind could no longer satisfy his needs. Something was out there in the water, something waiting for him – under the green rocks, in the turquoise waves.

For hours, the boy would sit at the beach and touch the pebbles, he would bury his naked toes in the sand and lick salt from his lips.

Sometimes he caught a glimpse of a shimmering fin, perhaps the tail of a large fish. Sometimes the boy saw, or at least he thought he saw, the strong back and slim waist of a man, swimming in the water. The boy was sure these images were just his imagination – why would a man, a naked man, swim in the sea and never come to shore? But then he spotted water drops, rolling off a pale shoulder. He watched bright blond hair falling over a man's delicately sculptured ear.

Back in his bed, the boy tossed off to those memories, startlingly clear, of skin so smooth it seemed to be made of marble, but was undeniably alive with splashes of turquoise, rose, and gold. In his dreams, the boy opened his thighs night after night, and as the blue wave crashed inside him, he let the glimpses of the naked stranger resurface. In his mind, it was not water that stroked his cock, and it was not just a wave that entered him fully and hard.

Then one day the boy stopped dreaming about the blue wave. The sea, when he looked out from the house onto it, was just the sea. Nothing called him, not even in a rippling whisper. Down at the beach, the tide was low. There was nothing there but the rocks he'd know since his first day on the Skerries. Still, the boy searched everywhere – for blue fins, smooth skin, bright glimpses of hair.

All day he wandered over Bruray, he walked over the bridge to the West Isle, he searched all the voes and looked beneath every ragged cliff. With a small boat he crossed to Grunay and even to Bound Skerry where the old lighthouse stood. Its automated signal kept flashing when night came and the boy finally gave up his search.

Yet sleep would not come as he lay beneath his quilt, and the darkness of the moonless night made the stars shine all the brighter. The boy got up and left the house; he made his way down the old road to the jetty. An old fishing boat was quietly rocking in the low tide. The jetty's weathered posts, which were usually flooded by water, jutted out of the ground.

The boy walked to the end of the jetty. To the East, the signal from the lighthouse flashed its intermittent light. In front of it, the dark mass of the Lamba Stack rose from the water.

The Lamba Stack – it's a rock in the sea; stakkur, the natives call it. It lies apart from the shoreline like a single sheep that has fallen from its flock. Lamba is an old Skerrie word for lamb.

And here, under the star-studded sky, the boy finally found what he had been searching so desperately all day. The bright beam from the lighthouse caught a silhouette: a naked man perched upon rock, his blue-finned tail twined around it.

The boy gaped. He had only ever seen the man in daylight, in scattered reflections of sunlight upon water – turquoise in the morning, like the gems of a precious necklace from a far-away land. Or in the afternoon, lapis lazuli blue, glittering like veins in the earthen walls of an old mine. Never had the boy seen the man in darkness, and never his entire body, head to tail. He had long suspected that the man was one of the merpeople who populated the islands on the Eastern shore of Albion. But now he saw it clearly, in the exposing, flashing light.

Once, twice, thrice the signal turned, and on each turn the boy shivered at the man's beauty.

The merman, in turn, seemed to not notice, or not care about the presence of the boy, and that his true aquatic nature was revealed to him. He simply stared onto the water, as if looking for something long lost to the sea. Only when the signal illuminating him for the fourth time, did he turn his face to the boy. His pink lips were slightly open; his hair was roughed up by an invisible wind. In his eyes tears had gathered, and they shimmered in the colours of the sea at noon – mother-of-pearl and the brightest, translucent blue.

The boy watched as tears streamed down the man's face, and he wished he could console him with a gesture or a word. But the water was between them, and when the signal light swiped over the Lamba Stack for the fifth time, the man was gone.

Come to me, rippled the waves.

Come to me, creaked the jetty.

Come to me, blew the wind, and come to me, sang the seagulls in the air.

But the water was between them. And the boy did not know how to go to the man, who had come to him all those nights on the blue wave.

He did sleep dreamlessly this night. When morning rose, the boy knew what he had to do. He stepped outside of his house, greeted the morning and the wind, and went back inside to heat the stove and prepare the tea.

A fortnight he waited, all the while bringing his things in order. Not once did he dream of the blue wave or the merman on the rock; all his dreams were about the past and the life he had long left behind.

When the moon was full and the tide reached its highest point, the boy went back to the jetty. The old fishing boat was waiting for him, and he ferried over to the Lamba Stack. It was a short crossing, just a few minutes' ride. He climbed upon the rock and left the boat anchorless, to drift back towards the jetty or get lost in the ocean. It swayed seawards, landwards, it span around and around. Finally the retreating tide took it far out beyond the point where the boy could see it. He kept staring onto the ocean, wishing that someone claim him, just as the tide had claimed the fishing boat.

All night the boy stood on the Lamba Stack, surrounded by the gushing tide. He was clothed all in black but wore neither a coat to warm here nor a cap to cover his hair. He simply hoped and waited, but he did not really know what for.

With the first light of dawn, the merman came, riding towards the Lamba Stack on a low wave. He found the boy deep in a wondrous sleep, curled around the rock. He wore no shirt, and his skin was midnight blue. He wore no trousers, and his tail was like black white-streaked marble. The merman smiled down at the boy and quickly flicked his tail.

Drops of water fell onto the boy's face, and he yawned and squinted into the sun.

"Good morning," said the naked man who had joined him on the Lamba Stack.

"Is it?" The boy sat up, and realised that he was naked, too. "A good morning, I mean?"

He could not help but stare at what had become of his feet and legs and, oh, oh – Two finned tails were wrapped around each other, his own dark glittering silver, the other man's shining green and blue.

The merman grinned at him. "I should say so, Potter."

He leaned forward and cupped the boy's face, his blond hair like a halo before the morning sun. His lips were soft and cool, and when they touched the boy's mouth, it was a promise – of love and desire and of a future so unlike anything the boy could have imagined. He touched the merman's lips with his fingertips; he licked water droplets from his chin. They tasted sweet like rain.

"Let's go into the water," the merman whispered against the boy's skin. "There is so much I want to show you." He caressed the boy's shoulders and arms, and he softly stroked his waist where human skin met glittering scales.

I am a mermaid, the boy thought, and he laughed out loud. "I'm a mermaid, ain't I?"

"Merman." The man's voice had gone raspy and dark, and in it lay yet another promise of what the future held for the boy.

He wrapped his arms around the merman's shoulders, and they were so close now, he could smell Draco underneath the tangy scent of the sea. One last time he turned to the Skerries – the lighthouse, green Grunay, the jetty, and his house, small upon the cliff. The merman held him skin-to-skin, and the boy turned towards the ocean where the sun was rising quickly over the horizon.

They jumped into the water; they dove into the waves – raven-haired and silver blond, midnight blue aside the bright azure of summer. Their fins moved in the same rhythm, they held each other by their hands. The waves parted for them in welcome, inviting them into the blue ocean where they lived, happily ever after.

All that was left now of the boy in this world was a wet patch on the Lamba Stack, rapidly drying off in the sunlight.

the end

And so ends the tale of the boy and the merman. The pages turn and rustle; a strong gush of wind shuts the book closed. It lies on the table as it has for years, waiting for the rare visitor, to peruse its pages and enjoy the legends of the Skerries merfolk and their lore.

Over on Bruray a plaque was raised at the old crofthouse, commemorating the dragon-slaying hero who had lived there for so many years.

Here lived Harry J. Potter, Saviour of the Wizarding World and Defeater of Him-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named in the Second Wizarding War.

In 2047 Harry Potter moved to the Out Skerries and made this house on the Isle of Bruray his home. He served as the Skerries postmaster for forty-two years and ran the local store. The Out Skerries islanders still recall their beloved hero who steadfastly raised the flag each morning and invited travellers and natives in for a chat and a cup of tea.

Harry Potter disappeared in the night of August 18, 2089. Despite a months-long search his body was never found. Some say he took to the water, joining his long-time companion Draco L. Malfoy, who had been the lighthouse keeper on Bound Skerry for many years before he succumbed to illness.

May their souls rest in peace.