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Cala Maria sold her soul for love.
Perhaps that was the first thing you assumed when you looked at her; perhaps she fooled you into thinking it was beauty she had traded so much for, fortune.
But no, it was love that ended up being her downfall, like the stories of old predicted. In those tales and legends it was a valiant knight who sacrificed themselves for the fair maiden they had fallen in love with; it never ended well with those two, one had to take the fall. Sometimes it was through poison, sometimes a bullet to the chest. Sometimes it was the cusp of dawn in a land far away from hers.
However, Cala Maria’s story began in the inky blue waters around the Isle she was born on- from the teardrops and blood of the heavens raining down upon the ocean. She arose from the depth of the sea and found her place among the waves- dancing and twisting with them as the tides came and went.
She didn’t have a name for who and what she was then. The ocean had no need for naming things; it was faithful and a bastion when calm. When it was angry, the world shook. It was her home, too, as much as the cool water on her skin and the memories of the far-away sky where her journey began as nothing but a drop of rain.
Those were lonely times, for there was no one like her out there among the waves, no one who could reply to a story told. All they could do was listen with their wordless mouths and swishing fins.
The first friend she found was a pair of giant fish who had swallowed magic essence carelessly tossed into the sea; they spat out creatures they consumed to attack those who dared to come near them. Cala Maria was small and fearless and so much younger than those fishermen trying to catch the two; they did not see her as a threat and let her pass into their hiding places, watched her with exalted gazes as she splashed around the rock formations, the bottom of the sea, the long strands of algae rippling through the water. She laughed and laughed until the fish were smiling too, as much as they could, as much as they would.
Next was a turtle turned cannon by the scientist of the shore, a creature with little happiness in its life and even littler wish for company. It saw her, though, with her octopus hair and her human upper body and it decided to leave her be as she followed it around through the ups and downs of a solitary turtle’s life. She shared food with it, too, the few pieces she found and didn’t need for herself. Some days were better than others.
The seahorse was a prideful fellow and did not give in to her presence immediately; it let her wait and try once more after failing for the seventh time to earn its trust. She extended her hands to it in friendship and was shot in the face with water for it time and time again. It wanted her to beat it in a race but human arms were not made for swimming, not when compared to a seahorse who had years of experience and determination burning bright. She challenged it over and over until her arms hurt and her fish tail had trouble moving at all. Even then it always seemed as if it took pity on her in the end when it swam with her to the safest grounds in the sea, pacified, victorious.
The puffer fish were nothing like the seahorse, they never challenged her or asked for anything in the way that other fish would. They sat in silence and watched her swim around them, swishing her tail back and forth to animate them to play.
Sometimes, with them, she felt like she was surrounded by the dead.
The eels were not her friends. They stalked around the waters she resided in and swarmed her until she was uncomfortable- they nipped her skin and threatened to electrocute her as though they were the ones playing with fire. She had no idea what they would do if they fully committed to biting her but she also did not feel compelled to find out.
Then there were the sailors who came for her head; the ones her friends killed and whose ghosts remained in the grotto where she often found shelter. They found their end at the bottom of the sea, those humans looking for riches in the waters where they suspected a mermaid to be. They said that word often, ‘mermaid’, when they saw her and she did not know what to do with it.
Sometimes she saw a flying machine in the sky, one whose name she did not know and could not ask anyone to pronounce for her. Sometimes she saw a winged green creature circle above the mountain on the isles.
The truth was that Cala Maria did not hear the sound of her own voice at all until she met a human at the shore one day.
“Hello human,” she said with her head above the surface, cautious, testing the waters.
The human turned their attention to her and were startled enough to take a few step back and away.
“What has brought you here to the edge of the ocean?” Cala Maria asked and crossed her arms in front of her chest, “You don’t belong here.”
The human knew that, it turned out.
They knew a great many things.
At first Cala Maria was not sure what to think of someone who went out to the sea and beckoned the creatures from beyond to come and take her away- but the human woman was nothing like she had expected someone like that to be.
She had come to the ocean to die.
The notion scared Cala Maria. Death was not a subject the silent creatures in the world below the surface had ever brought up with her; she had seen it happen to some of the puffer fish and those others who fell victim to the teeth of a shark. It was there all around her, of course, as it was in life, but she had never seen someone seek it out of their own volition.
“Why would you covet death?” she asked under the light of a pale moon as they talked another day, a different time.
“Because it’s easier than this,” the woman said and smiled the smile of someone who had seen a future of no answers and worry in no short supply, “So much easier.”
They spoke to each other day after day because the world outside was scary for the mermaid and even scarier for the fearless human wanting to die. They spoke to each other at the shore where the waves bounced against the sand, toes and fish tail firmly planted on solid ground.
Cala Maria was not sure when it happened, when her feelings turned from something grand into something of a different shape, a different weight in her chest. She did not have the heart nor the guts to tell the human; not if their mind was occupied with thoughts of the ocean, too, in a different way, a darker, deeper sense.
They spoke when the sun was setting, when it was high in the sky and when there were no more tales to tell they sat in silence. But it was different than the quietness she had come to know under the sea, nothing as blanketing as heavy, just the breeze on her skin and the clouds in the sky. She smelled the ocean in the air.
Then, one day, the human died.
It should not have come as a shock to her; it should not have come as anything at all. But it hit so much harder than she had ever expected. An entire universe comprised in a skull, gone forever.
Cala Maria cursed the sea that day she was alone at the shore.
It did not take long for more humans to come to the ocean, searching for the one they had lost and never loved more than when they had lost her.
They injured the mermaid because they were sure she had her hands in it; they scarred her shoulder and would have left her for dead had the tide not carried its daughter back to the depths.
She wept in the grotto she called her home and she wept burning tears even inside the sea, droplets added to the endless whole, the all-consuming entity around her. She did not eat for many days, did not sleep and did not care what the state of her being was.
The briny grave that was her home was a little colder then, a little darker.
So when she returned to the shore one day out of habit, because her arms and tail carried her further than her brain could follow, she was surprised to see another creature waiting for her.
“Well, well,” the devil said as he saw her in the water, “Who do we have here?”
There were a few happy days after that; just a few.
Then they came for her soul.