The new island smoked a few miles offshore. The shore was lined with dead
mermaids as far as the eye could see. Standing in a knot, the massed
fishermen of Murrogach and Eiblihn Bay, to a man, wearing grave
heartbroken expressions.

All the fishermen had known about the mermaids, but their wives had not.
The fishermen only had wives anyway in order to perpetuate the family
name. But wives grew fat and shrewish, and there wasn't a fat mermaid in
the bunch (unless you counted the enormous benthic mermaids of the deep
ocean, of whom the pelagic girls spoke with mixed awe and derision).

The fisherman would steam far out to sea, out of sight of land, and the
girls would arrive in groups and one by one, once the sun burned off the
fog. They'd come with bushels of handpicked fish who'd died of natural
causes or, in times of scarcity, volunteered. All day long, the girls
would cavort with the fishermen, and after all the laughter and multiple
orgasms, and without a word of warning, they'd slip back into the water
like seals from rocks and disappear.

The fishermen could barely believe their luck, and swore to keep the
secret upon pain of death. On land, their minds worked dreaming of each
day and concocting stories to warn away women, children, and the aged.
About the strange, frightening, disgusting powers of sea creatures. How
they had red eyes and pig snouts. How they transformed themselves on the
strand into little hornless cows. How the touch of one would drrrrag ye
off to the dark kingdoms, and so forth.

When the volcano erupted, the villagers marked the unease in the
fishermens' eyes, and figured it was about how the local fish ecosystem
would be impacted. They had farming, they had potatoes, they'd get by.
But the fishermen were depressed beyond all reckoning, and it stymied
many a mind.