Chapter Text
Eve stood on the deck of the ship, staring out at the horizon. The sun crept up, bathing the sky in red and orange. She winced at the glare.
“Stare at the sun, you’ll go blind,” Bill said.
She turned to see him standing a few steps behind her. He stood, leaning back slightly, his frame punctuated by his flimsy-looking bucket hat. Eve returned her attention to the horizon.
“Let me guess, what’s the point of life if not to stare at beautiful things? Even if it costs us dearly,” Bill continued.
Eve laughed. “Feeling philosophical?”
Bill walked up to stand beside her. “It’s the sea, your highness. It’s no good for the old brain. Makes us think deep thoughts we ought not be thinking.” He smirked.
Eve rolled her eyes at him. “As opposed to thinking about practical things, like what? Diplomacy? What to wear when meeting foreign dignitaries?” She leaned against the wooden railing, cradling her face in her hands.
“The practical needn’t be as boring as you take it to be.”
“Easy for you to say,” Eve said, glaring out at the waves. “I am doomed to a life of being practical. Can’t you let me wallow in it from time to time?”
He shook his head. “So am I. So are most people.”
“Not the same.”
“Ah yes, how could I forget? Your palaces and your fiancé and the endless wealth at your disposal, it’s all such a drag, isn’t it?”
Eve restrained herself from telling him to fuck off.
“I was harsh, your highness. I beg your pardon. All I mean to say is… well, staring at the sun isn’t good for you. Just like longing for a life you can’t have. Nothing good comes from it. It’s better to accept what’s good in the life you do have. Find the beauty in the everyday. Learn to enjoy yourself, instead of constantly wondering what you might be missing out on,” Bill said, staring down into the waters below.
Eve shrugged. “I know you mean well.”
For a few minutes, they stood in silence, listening to the rhythm of the waves. Bill spoke up, “There are legends about the ocean. Wild tales.”
“Sea monsters and all that, I know. Every seafaring civilization has come up with its own myths about what might be right below the surface.” Eve’s voice had the bored lull of someone reciting information from old textbooks.
“They aren’t all myths, your highness. These waters, they’re deeper and more mysterious than we will ever know.”
“I didn’t take you for a believer in that kind of thing.”
“For a long time, I wasn’t. Then….”
Eve straightened up. “Then what?” She turned to face him. “Come on, you can’t start something like this and not finish it.”
“When I was in the Royal Navy … I was young back then, full of hope and all that nonsense. But in any case, we were out at sea and one night I was staring out into the water when I saw this shape under the surface. I thought it might be a dolphin. It disappeared and I didn’t think much of it. A few nights later though, I saw it again. This time it broke through the waves.” He pressed his palms against the railing. “It was a person. I started yelling out man overboard at the top of my lungs and I jumped in. Reckless, I know. But when I fell into the water, I saw him.” He paused. He let his gaze drift across the waves. “He wasn’t a man. Well, he was but not entirely. A merman, that’s what the legends say. Fanged half-humans with fishtails instead of legs.”
Eve burst out laughing. “You’re fucking with me.”
“No. No, I never ‘fuck with people’ about mermaids. I saw him, I swear on our good kingdom. He was the most handsome man I’ve ever seen. Really, I was quite taken.” He traced his thumb against a fissure in the railing. “My crew dragged me back on board. Good thing too. I was in such shock at what I’d seen, I probably would have drowned. But every night, I went out and looked into the water. I saw him again. And again. We started talking even.”
“So, you fell in love with a merman? Is that what you’re telling me?”
Bill kept his eyes on the water. “Yes. I fell in love. I’ve never felt anything like it since. I…” he trailed off.
Eve asked, “What happened?”
“He was a merman. I was a sailor. What do you think happened? I couldn’t exactly dive into the ocean and spend the rest of my days with him. And he couldn’t survive on land.”
“So you just let him go?”
Bill gestured vaguely, cocking his head to the side. “There wasn’t a choice. We had one night together at the surface, and that was all. I never saw him again.” He sighed. “It’s for the best.”
Eve chewed on her lip. She couldn’t fully process Bill and a merman getting it on in the waves, but the moment didn’t seem appropriate to address it.
“You’re lucky,” Bill said. “You have Prince Nico. The two of you will make a lovely couple.”
There was no point arguing. Eve didn’t have anything bad to say about her fiancé, other than that he was the most boring man she’d ever met. She also had her suspicions about him and one of her ladies in waiting, but that didn’t bother her nearly as much as the boringness.
***
Eve spent the day in her cabin. Her ladies in waiting helped her sort through her gowns and decide which one to wear the next day for their arrival at the port of Beleva. While they dressed her and undressed her, commenting on fits and lengths and color palettes, their fingers skimming her skin, she rehearsed her speech for the Royal Arrival Celebration. Everything had to be perfect.
As the day turned to evening, dark clouds blacked out the sunset. Thunder roared and waves tossed the ship. Eve’s ladies in waiting crowded around the cabin window, watching lightning crack across the sky.
Eve’s stomach churned. Every wave sent bile lurching into her throat. She excused herself to the bathroom and huddled by the toilet. She cringed at the sound of herself puking. No doubt the ladies were outside, debating whether or not to barge in.
Wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, she pulled away from the toilet. Her mouth tasted of acid. One of her toiletry bags had slid into the sink. She reached up to grab it, but fell back against the bathtub as the ship heaved to one side.
Alarms blared. Red lights flashed overhead. Her ladies in waiting shrieked outside.
She fumbled up off the floor and into the main cabin. Her ladies clustered around her. She led them out into the hallway, illuminated only by the flashing red lights.
A man in a navy uniform ran up to them, grabbing Eve by the arm. They ran down the hallways. Panicked passengers surrounded them. Crew members shouted.
Once out on deck, she spotted Bill by the railing. “Bill!”
Rain pelleted down on them. Eve’s dress soaked through.
Bill rushed over to her, pulling her to his chest. He said something she couldn’t make out over the chaos. With a steady grip on her wrist, he led her to a waiting raft. She stepped into it, still holding onto him for balance. He clambered into the lifeboat after her, quickly followed by her ladies in waiting. A pulley system lowered them down into the hungry waves below.
Eve swallowed any questions she had about the lifeboat’s safety in this weather. She watched the other passengers crowding onto rafts of their own as the ship sank, inch by inch, into the water.
She let herself breathe through chattering teeth. Sit and breathe. Bill still held her wrist.
She turned to her youngest lady in waiting, “You see, it’s going to be okay.”
The waves careened the lifeboat this way and that. Each lurch of the ocean was more violent than the last.
A massive wave rose in front of them. It towered. The moment paused. Eve knew she was going to die. There wasn’t time to be scared. The wave crashed onto them and there was nothing but water. It tossed them into its depths. Eve couldn’t find the lifeboat beneath her or air above her. There was no light to guide her to the surface. Her chest seized up.
She flailed in the darkness. Water rushed into her nose and mouth. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t scream.
Something grabbed her around her waist. Arms. It pulled her. Dragged her. It pushed her up through the surface.
She coughed, spewing out water. The air felt like a miracle. She gasped only to gag.
The arms were still wrapped around her waist. Scales, a body of scales, grazed her legs. Eve panicked. She tossed and struggled against whoever was holding onto her. She kicked against water and scales. Her screams came out as little more than rasps.
“I’m trying to help you.”
Eve turned her head and found herself face to face with a young woman. Her blonde hair was soaking wet and clung to her face and bare shoulders.
Eve couldn’t speak.
The woman kept a firm grip around Eve’s body till another life boat approached and its crew called out to Eve. They threw a rescue buoy out to her, and as she reached for it the arms around her waist let go. She turned, and the blonde had vanished back into the ocean.
She clambered into the lifeboat. “There’s still people out there. Bill. My ladies. And a woman, I don’t know who. But she saved me. She’s still out there.”
Everyone spoke over her. Some shouting commands. Some crying. One man spoke into a handheld radio. Static in the shape of words replied, but Eve wasn’t listening. She begged Bill to show up, to break through the waves. Faces she didn’t recognize gaped above the water.
“We have to save them. Do something!” she screamed.
She stood, barely keeping her balance as the waves tossed the boat. “I’m going back.” She stepped toward the side, but two men grabbed her. They pushed her into her seat. She screamed at them. They forced a lifejacket on over her head. They wouldn’t let her stand back up.
The roar of a helicopter overpowered her voice. A rope ladder descended and the men instructed her to climb up.
From the cabin of the helicopter, she stared down at the ocean. The helicopter’s light shone onto the waves and the lifeboats and the people still desperate to survive.
There was no sign of Bill. Or the woman who saved her.