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1. She dreamed of the sea.
Not just sometimes, but every night. The waves beat at the land beyond her windows, and she lay in her bed and dreamed. Her satin sheets lost their warmth and roughness and transformed into the soft caress of the currents of the ocean; Erik beside her lost his awkward limbs and coarse hair and became a merman, his tail the color of the night sky when the first stars come out, his hips powerful and strong, his hair jeweled with barnacles and scales.
And she, of course, became a princess. Not the princess she was, who curtseyed and bowed, who walked on feet that felt like knives, who wept alone on the balcony that overlooked the water, but the princess she used to be, who sang and danced and swam under the roiling water, safe in the fathomless depths of the ocean she loved.
Each morning, she was greeted by the horrifying realization that she was no longer a mermaid; would never be underwater again.
* * * * *
2. Ariel met him when she was only fifteen, though calling it a meeting was probably too generous. She saw him when she was fifteen, and she was overwhelmed by him. His beauty, his voice, his kindness, his legs. His world.
When one’s life has been spent on land, the underwater realms seem mysterious, even magical. This is no less true when one lives underwater and stares in longing at the shore, heart begging for something it can't have. So when she saw him on the water, of course she fell in love--in love with his strangely shaped, oddly foreign feet and legs; in love with his voice, unfiltered by water; in love with the strange garments with which his people clad themselves.
In all the legends, it is a sailor who hears the mermaid singing and goes to her, only to be dashed against the rock. For her, it was the other way round: she heard him singing on his boat one night, and she swam out to him.
The rocks might have been kinder.
* * * * *
3. Spring became summer, and summer became autumn, and autumn, slowly, faded into winter. Seasons, somehow, became years. The longer she was on land, the more withdrawn she became. She stood at the window for hours, gazing out across the snow-covered lands, and when she could escape from the palace and the eternal list of duties of a queen, she would slip outside and walk down to the ocean. The rocks were cold and the wind was cutting, but she'd sit for hours, staring out across the choppy winter sea.
Each night before bed, Erik would ask her if she was happy, and each night she nodded, mutely, her voice stolen from her then as surely as it had been stolen from her when she was sixteen and in love.
Winter was a lean time, but she became reed thin and ghostly pale. People noticed--how could they not?--and whispers flew, eventually. She wasn't made for a land like this. She was too foreign, too cold. She still smiled when she went out, still performed her tasks with the utmost dedication, but there were little things: her hands shook when she took her tea; her face tightened almost imperceptibly when she was presented with news from outside the castle bounds; her gaze lingered slightly too long on the castle's ornate fishtanks.
At night, when she was alone, she cried.
* * * * *
4. Even as a child, she was careful, clever. It was months before he saw her—before she allowed him to see her--though she followed him quite closely in that time. She swam after his ship when it went out in the mornings, and watched, hidden in the surf or behind rocks, as he walked on the beach in the evenings. She saw him at a funeral, his eyes closed, his head bowed, the pyre reaching up towards the endless blue sky.
When winter came, she was devastated. The boats didn't sail in the cold, stormy months, and evenings on the beach were impossible when the beach was frozen and covered in salty rime, the wind cold enough to kill a man in minutes, not hours. And her people didn't go up in the winter, not if it could be helped. When there were breaks in the ice, the waters were fickle, and what was a door one moment could become a wall the next.
She spent the long months hidden in the deeps, half-asleep in the almost-hibernation of winter, dreaming of him, and when spring came, she went to him.
The first morning his boat was out, she swam up to its side and stayed there, singing softly to herself, until he noticed her. They didn't speak, and as soon as he looked, she dove away, but he had seen her, he knew that she was there, and, for then, it was enough.
* * * * *
5. Three years after the wedding, she gave birth. The child was a girl with hair the color of sunset and eyes the color of a stormy sea, and things were easier for a time. She was born in midwinter, the sea more of a crust of ice than the living water that it usually was, and it was easier to ignore it. To forget. To pretend.
It lasted through the spring. By summer, the crashing waves and swirls of seabirds were calling to Ariel again, and she'd stand at the window with her child, staring out over the water. It was deemed unsafe for the queen and princess to be on the beach unescorted, too dangerous to the future of the kingdom, and so she'd stopped going, contenting herself with the high balconies that overlooked the sea and open windows to let in the salt air that she craved.
At night, when the child was asleep, she would slip out of her room and wend her way through the silent castle, leaving through the servants' door. Once out the confining brick walls of the castle, she followed the footpaths through the dune grass to the beach, relaxing only when her toes were in the icy surf.
* * * * *
6. She followed him from through all that spring and all that summer. Each time she stayed above longer, letting him see her, singing softly to herself. And he watched for her, and watched her, the beautiful sea creature with the soft, sad voice.
Eventually, she sang to him, no longer to herself. She sang to him on his ship, and she sang to him in his bed at night, letting friendly sea winds carry her voice to his chambers, knowing that her song would weave itself into his dreams. And he dreamed of her, song or not--of stormy skies and rough seas, and of fire and destruction, and of glimpses of liquid silver tailfin flashing above the water.
He grew incautious, gazing over the sea and looking more for her than he did the rocky shoals or the gathering of storm clouds, and she sang still, knowing that it would bring him to her.
When it did, it was not in the way she had expected. Summer storms were brutal, and Erik ran the ship onto the rocks. The flimsy lanterns hanging around the deck fell from their moorings, leaving bright trails of fire where they rolled, and the men, one by one, were taken by the sea.
She hauled them to shore, first him, and then several of his men, back and forth until no more survivors could be found. Then she swam back to shore, beaching herself and lying with him in the surf, stroking his hair and singing quietly to him, memorizing his angular face and the feel of his body against hers.
* * * * *
7. The second child came two years after the first. The occasion was all the merrier for that the child was a boy, and there was now one child who could be used to form alliances and one child to be heir.
Her visits to the beach were stopped entirely, though as a concession, three large pools filled with seawater from underground caves were built for her use. She paced listlessly around the edges of them for days before entering one, not trusting this water that did not breathe or move. It wasn't the same, but she stayed in anyhow, soothed by the cool, reassuring weight of it.
The morning after her son's one-year birth anniversary, she woke early and slipped down to the pools. Her daughter was there before her, floating atop the water. Laughing, she swam to her child, realizing too late that something wasn't right.
Something in her heart seized, and she screamed. She screamed and screamed until her throat bled, and the castle physician forced sleep-bringing liquid into her throat.
Never before had she understood what the humans had always known: the water, her beloved sea, could take things away as easily as it could give them.
* * * * *
8. Before even a moon had passed, he was back at sea, looking for her. He no longer laid nets, but drove his crew ever onward in his agonized search for the woman-fish with the voice of a bell. She knew then that her time had come, and so she set out to find the witch.
It wasn't easy. The witches lived in dark, murky waters, heavy with silt and scum, infested with bottom-dwellers and scum-suckers and other, darker, things. She swam through the stinking muck, searching for currents bearing a hint of magic, leading her like a trail to the witches.
They jeered at her as she swam past, their lampreys and hagfish charging at her, tangling themselves through her hair, wrapping around her tail. And she ignored them and kept swimming, for she was once a princess, now a queen of the sea, and would not be denied by some glorified watersnakes.
Finally she was before the Ur-witch, she who the other witches feared, she of a grave and terrible power that shadowed even the strongest of the sirens. The witch looked deep into the mermaid's heart, and then she threw her head back and laughed.
The sound echoed through the deeps, the lesser witches amplifying their queen's voice and spreading it as far as their considerable powers would let them. Still Ariel remained, staring levelly at the queen until the laughter faded to the low murmur of magic that filled the trench.
"I would go above," she said, unabashed and unafraid.
And so the deal was made: her voice, the lure of the sirens, in exchange for legs, the gift of the humans. And the catch: should she ever again immerse herself in the watery demesne of the seacreatures, her life would be forfeit. Never again would she sink beneath the welcoming waters of the seas, knowing that she was safe and protected; never again could she return home.
* * * * *
9. There was another child after the tragedy of her firstborn. She looked sadly at the child and looked back out the window, gazing at the misty morning tides. She offered no names, this time, and stood mute at the christening, her eyes locked unblinkingly on the baptismal font.
Her son was four, his large eyes blue as he clutched his nursemaid's hand and watched as his sister was dipped into the pool, once, twice, three times.
As they filed out of the sanctuary, she dipped her hand into the water and brought it to her lips, and she tasted only salt.
* * * * *
10. She took it gladly, young and in love and willing to overcome all obstacles, and the witch smiled at her, her teeth sharp like the jagged rocks that littered the shoals.
The witch's power drew her voice from within her, Ariel’s throat tightening as the witch bound her voice in seaweed and magic. In exchange, she was given a small shell on a string and a warning not to remove it, for without the magic it contained, the spell would decay to nothingness.
The witch looked at her with cold, hungry eyes. "Go," she said. "Put on the necklace when you reach the shore, but not before. Do not return."
Ariel hesitated, suddenly afraid, then reached out to take the shell necklace that held her fate. It sparked when she grasped it, the strange power of it shooting up her arm with a tingling sensation that neared pain, the shell searing itself into her palm. She looked at the witch, who still watched her, unflinching.
"Go," she said again. "This was your wish."
The lesser witches and hags parted before her as she sped through them, desperate to get out of the suffocating, filthy trench. She swam, the water slick against her skin, the seaweed waving at her like a goodbye, the light above clear and golden and warm.
When she finally reached the shallows, she looked back at the sea, and, with trembling hands, put on the witch's necklace, and she swam no more.
* * * * *
11. The children grew, both older and more human. Their teeth did not grow sharper, as hers had at their age. She ran her tongue over her blunt, human teeth, anxious, watching the children that were both hers and not hers--of her blood, but not of what she was. No thick cords of hair woven through with seagrass for them; no iridescent tail; no song to lure, to seduce. They ate with forks and knives, not sharp teeth attacking soft bellies, and learned not the ways of of the sea and the threat of magic, but the ways of the stars and the threat of invasion. Their gazes slipped easily past the open windows and focused on their tutors, their courtiers, their prospective marriages to secure alliances.
She stared out the windows ever more intently, feeling the tides in her bones, yearning for the liquid weight of water's embrace. At night, she paced the castle, unable to rest; unable to leave, and knowing, deep inside, that this was not her home.
It was foggy on the morning when she finally left the castle. The terns screeched overhead, and cold clouds rolled in off the water. The tides were shifting.
At the water's edge she stopped, the surf rolling over her toes, and she stood for a long time, letting the sea-salt air fill the lungs that never quite worked the way she had expected them to work. Finally, she pulled her nightshift over her head and stood nude on the beach.
She moved further into the water, shivering, until she was neck-deep. She looked behind her, just once, at the shadow of the castle in the fog, and then she moved out further still, past the rocks, the water deep enough that her feet churned furiously to keep herself above water. Without looking back, she snapped the chain of her necklace and cast it aside, and then she dove deep.