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There is a bottle drifting toward her.
It stands out against the water, this incongruous human object, nothing like anything else she’s seen in what seems like forever. The letter beckons her from behind the simple brown glass – contact, at last.
She plucks the cork from the bottle and begins to read.
July 20, 1823
Dear Arista,
I miss you all. I didn’t think I’d miss you all the way I do – isn’t that funny? I spent so long in my cave, dreaming of the surface, dreaming of everything I didn’t have, and now that I’m here I dream in blues and greens and whalesong.
I don’t want you to think I’m not happy. I am happy. I have Eric, and we are in love, and I am happy.
He promises we will visit soon – he says when we have a ship free to take us, we will go, but the fleet is occupied fighting the piracy off the south coast. He says if Father will help with these efforts, perhaps the ships will be free more quickly.
So I occupy myself with music, and art, and the things a lady is meant to do here. I’m amazed how good at it I am, and even Eric’s mother praises me for these even if she disapproves of other things. I can be a lady, here, and nobody might ever know…
But how I miss you all. Kiss our sisters and our father for me, and tell them I will see them as soon as I may. I hope this letter finds you swiftly – another shall follow soon, I’m sure.
All my love,
Ariel
She tucks the letter into her things. It’s a treasure, and she treats it as such – something from the world beyond her little place in the ocean, from a place she thinks of almost as something she dreamed up from a long-ago tale.
---
The second letter comes in a strangely shaped bottle, green and fluted, and the cork wedged in the top takes effort coming out. She can’t get a grip on it, not really, and finally she has it half in the sand, thinking maybe the roughness will help her get some leverage. Even then, she’s not sure but what she might have to break the glass, and inside she balks at the thought.
She gets it, though, and fishes the letter out.
August 2, 1823
Dear Arista,
You haven’t written, or your letter hasn’t reached me. I don’t know how much I can expect given the decisions I made, but I miss you all fiercely. I fear I am not at all what the King and Queen expect from their son’s wife. They are a seafaring people, and they mainly eat food from the sea – fish, crab, and other animals I consider close personal friends. They think me odd to refuse their artfully prepared meals in favor of the simple fare we are used to at home.
I hear whispers – Eric tries to keep them from me – that some of the young women of the court are calling me the Fish Princess. I know not whether this is true, Arista, but I have seen some women around the court with filigreed jewelry wrought to look like tiny cats, delicate little fish in their glimmering paws. Cats, Arista, are small animals notorious for their laziness, hatred for the water, and taste for fish. I find it all strange, Arista, and difficult to navigate. There is a saying, here – a fish out of water, someone who does not fit or feel comfortable. Sometimes I think there has never been a saying so appropriate to my situation.
But then I look at Eric, at his kind blue eyes, and I feel the touch of his hand, the warmth of his kisses, and I wonder how I could be anywhere else. He loves me, and I feel my heart uncurl like an anemone at his touch, and I wonder how I could doubt my decision.
So as much as I miss you, I cannot allow myself to doubt what I have done.
I hope to see you and the rest of our family soon, though. Please talk to Father again – the sooner he helps with the pirate situation off the south coast, the faster the ships will be able to take us to visit. Eric knows that Father cannot show favoritism, that the Sea Kingdom must remain neutral – but the pirates are a menace, Eric says.
I hope to hear from you soon.
All my love,
Ariel
Back into the bottle goes the letter, and she tucks it away with the other one, to be read and reread. Tales of cats and filigree, ships and pirates – she almost can’t imagine such a thing. She lays her head back in the sand and sighs.
---
She has to wait a whole month for the next letter, and the days seem to pass with a drugged, heavy sort of slowness until it finally does appear. The bottle is a pale blue this time, fat on the bottom narrowing to a thin opening, with little flowers etched in a spiral from the lip to the base. It makes her breath catch, and she’s almost reluctant to prize the cork loose – it only comes out when she digs at it with a sharp little clamshell, but the pop it makes is satisfying. She’s tempted to read the letter in stages, savoring it, but in the end she can’t bring herself to stop.
September 4, 1823
Dear Arista,
It’s been three months now since I’ve seen you, almost as long since I’ve heard from you. I begin to despair that I will ever see you or our sisters or Father ever again. The fighting with the pirates off the south coast has cost the kingdom in trade and lives, and a fortnight ago Eric and his father took the two newest of the ships in the fleet to face them. We have heard nothing from them since they set sail, and I fear greatly for their safety.
I fear Eric’s mother the Queen blames me that the fighting continues unabated. There are whispers in the court that I am not who I claim to be, that I am a common washerwoman masquerading as the princess of the Sea Kingdom, that I have tricked the court, and I do not know whether I find it worse or better than the previous whisperings about me.
And I have discovered only yesterday – at least, I believe it to be so – I am pregnant. I do not know what reaction the court will have to this news, but although I hope for the best I cannot but fear that my joy will be muted by the fear that something will go wrong, that our child will not be accepted because of who his mother is, or that – Neptune forbid it – something will go wrong, that the child will not be born at all, or worse.
Please, Arista, I beg you to write me, to let me know that you have not forgotten your sister. Give me strength, as I seem to have left mine with Eric, or at the bottom of the sea.
All my love,
Ariel
She holds the letter close to her chest for a few long heartbeats, wishing more than anything that she could –
But no, she is stuck here. She rolls the letter back up, wedges the cork back in, and tucks it away with the others.
---
The next letter comes more swiftly, and the red glint of the bottle as it floats to her is a joy to see. The cork comes out easily, this time, like the letter wants to be read. She obliges.
September 22, 1823
Dear Arista,
The court has learned of my pregnancy, and it is both better and worse than I had feared. There are whispers that our son will be born a - and here the ink is smudged, as if a reluctant finger had tried to dry the page - …ster, a thing to be feared. But the Queen has taken the news to heart, and has pressed me to do all I can to bring Eric and the King home.
We have received a ransom letter, you see. The pirates have captured the King, and there is no mention of Eric – we presume he is attempting to rescue his father. Any other situation is unthinkable.
I will come quickly to my meaning – I have persuaded the Queen to send me to the South Seas, when the newest member of our fleet is launched from our shipyards. I will bring Eric home. I will save the King. And I will finally see you and Father and our sisters again.
I am counting the days until I see you again.
All my love,
Ariel
She can’t breathe.
She digs in her bag – four bottles, brown and green and blue and red, all together. She fumbles at the bottom until she finds the tiny pearl-handled knife that is the last, best reminder of her old life. She cups it to her breast for a moment, remembering.
This is it, she thinks, and unwraps the albatross feather from the front pouch of her bag. Carefully, she shaves the end of it down until it’s a perfect point, cuts a notch in it.
She trudges up the beach to her fire pit, collects some of the ash. Mixes it with ocean water, just enough, until she has –
I’m sorry, she writes, scratching the back of the last letter with the quill dipped in her crude grey ink. It's slow going, but it's too important. She knows viscerally that it must be perfect.
These are yours. I kept them, but I am sending them on now. Please come and find me, someone.
I can’t be here much longer.
Find me.
She waits until the words dry, then stoppers them and returns them to the ocean. She watches the four bottles drift and bob, green and red and blue and brown, until the sea swallows them up.