Sometimes it is hard to be sure what comes from true memory, and what I have dreamed in some fevered night when the wind was full of howling and my flesh seemed possessed by unnatural beings.

I remember whales, the shape of them in the water above me and the uncanny sense of their having knees. Do whales have knees? I remember someone telling me in truth I had seen only blubber. But they were telling me about seal blubber at the time, and how that relates to the bodies of selkies in and out of human form and perhaps that did not happen after all.

Still, I cannot shake off this question, this unease. Do mermaids have knees? For if whales have knees, then surely mermaids must? Is that not logical? And if whales have blubber resembling knees then could mermaids be the same?

I only ever see their upper parts, their heads and shoulders as they bob in the bays, calling for me to come into the water. I am certain I have seen them, with their wild eyes and terrible teeth. I have seen them turn and dive, the flash of tails as they resubmerge. But of knees, I know nothing.

“Come and look,” they say to me. “Slip beneath the waves and learn our secrets. Know our hidden parts, discover the truth for yourself.”

I know that mermaids are not to be trusted. We bury the people who trust mermaids, or at least we bury what little of them the sea gives back to us. Perhaps those dead souls might speak out, and share the truth of their own findings beneath the waves. Undoubtedly there were teeth, and tails. Will they remember the knees? Are they – like me- haunted even in death by that which lies beneath the surface?

(Text by Nimue with thanks to Rachel on Twitter for the prompt.)