Atargatis and Her Creatures
Chicago, IL
2020, Junior, Creative Writing
When Atargatis came to be, the name for what she was did not yet exist.
They called her goddess, the great mistress of fertility. Atargatis fell for a shepherd, one she later accidentally killed. Blinded by despair, she dove into the ocean in the hope of turning into a fish and drowning her guilt in the deep waters. Instead, she remained a goddess, or at least half so. Her legs had disintegrated into sea foam, a scaled tail taking its place, wrapping all the way up to her waist. Turned half-fish, she found she could breathe and swim underwater. And so, Atargatis made the ocean her new home.
When Atargatis had been a full goddess, she felt like she could upend the entire world to please herself, devour giant whales whole on a golden platter. However, the more time she spent exploring the ocean, the more she grew to love said whales. In fact, she grew to love all of them, every sea creature, as if they were her own children. Her closest companion was a manatee she named Gat, in the likeness of her own name.
One flushing summer day, Atargatis and Gat treaded to the surface for some fresh air, only to find that the air was not as fresh as they remembered. It was then when she saw them again, for the first time in eons—humans. A man, in particular, leaning over the rails of his ship, mouth wide open in complete shock at the sight of her. Panicked, Atargatis quickly dove back underwater, though not quick enough to miss his excited shout.
Mermaid. That’s what he called her. The man told everyone he had seen a mermaid, although years later, they would tell themselves it was Gat, not a myth but a manatee.
After that, there was a lot more of them. Thousands of smoke-breathing vehicles traversed the ocean, scattering whispers of pollution and tragedy in their wake: sea turtles turning anemic, forgetting to return to where they were once born; coral reefs drained of color and bleached chalk-white; the visceral shock of the bruised, carved, scratched, scraped creatures; the deafening sound of ice cracking, like gunshots.
Humans were not made to hold guns; it wasn’t natural. Oil, runoff, and fuel-ridden waste weren’t natural. Destroying the ocean was not natural. Atargatis watched helplessly as her sea creatures, her children, dropped dead one by one, tens by tens, thousands by thousands.
She found herself kneeling inside whale carcasses, its ribs a haven to the nightmare that was now a reality. She listened for the happy chatter of dolphins but found instead the screams of the suffering. Her gentle-giant family of manatees dwindled down, getting injured or killed by motorboats and fishing nets.
With each life lost, her heart unfastened itself, knot by knot. And when Gat died, sickened from contaminated algae, Atargatis’ heart just about split in two. Never had she felt so much pain, so much sorrow, and worst of all, so much powerlessness.
She had heard the prayers. She was a goddess after all. But goddesses didn’t wave a magic wand and fix everything. They couldn’t alleviate the sorrows of the entire ocean, an entire world. And that’s all she was, a goddess.
Not even. She was a mermaid.
She was a mermaid, and she was fed up. She was fed up with loss, with death, and with sacrifice. Because that’s what it all was. Humans can deny it all they want, but all the damage they inflicted on the ocean ecosystem was sacrifice, and it needed to stop.
But there was one more sacrifice she was willing to make.
When Atargatis surfaced the water for the first time since that moment so long ago, she was immediately spotted. Mermaid. A strange sight the two men must’ve seen—a distressed half-woman, half-fish being, hand clasped tightly around the neck of a wine bottle.
She saw it coming, but it didn’t make it hurt any less. The gunshot burying a bullet into her side felt like the cracking of ice sheets. She hazily felt herself being hauled onto a ship and tossed on deck face-up, breathless.
“Hold on, there’s paper in here!” The man on deck snatched the wine bottle in her hand and dumped out the scroll. As the sky flickered more black than blue, Atargatis smiled. She was ready to give herself up and away. Her final sacrifice.
“Atargatis and Her Creatures?” The other man read, perplexed.
My story, Atargatis thought. Their story. A final play for hope, for change.
And then she was gone.
Reflection
I absolutely love reading myths and legends, so when I stumbled upon one of the origin stories of how the first mermaids came to be, I couldn't resist. I found that people had often mistaken manatees for mermaids and that manatees were becoming increasingly endangered with the developments in pollution and climate change. And it's not only manatees––it's an entire ocean crisis. It's a sad situation, and a sad story, but it doesn't need to have a sad ending. This year's contest is about climate hope and transforming crisis, so I wrote this piece to raise awareness that it was us humans who got the situation to this place, and it's up to us to right the wrongs and get us out.