Chapter Text
Clouds covered the sky over the castle, which towered on a rock near the sea. It seethed, the water hit against the stone shore, breaking into thousands of small salty splashes. The wind was getting stronger.
Somewhere in the distance, a storm was gathering at sea. All the shutters in the palace were securely closed so that the water couldn’t come inside. Only at the top, from the window of the highest tower, someone threw out a long rope – it cut the air with a whistle and fell onto the rocky coast. A young man in a dark cloak began to carefully get down: his fingers quickly stiffened under the currents of cold air. It didn't stop him. The hood fell off his head, revealing golden strands and a swarthy, tanned face.
It was not the first time for prince Alfred to escape from the castle.
He climbed down, pulled his hood over his already wet hair, and ran – as fast as he could run over the slippery rocks. He rounded the coast, away, away from the castle – the waves hit very close, showering drops on a dark cloak. Lightning hit into the waves far away in the sea – a flash blinded him, Alfred almost tripped over, almost cut his knees on sharp rocks. One of these storms would have recently taken his life, if he had not been rescued, had not been nursed – his heart skipped a beat... Away, until dawn came, until his absence was noticed. If all goes well, he won't have to go back anytime soon.
When his legs were already tired of carrying him, his eyes caught on a high, prominent boulder. Alfred jumped up with renewed vigor, leaned on with all his might, pushed it aside. A narrow passage opened up to him, a ladder led down into a dark corridor, saturated with the smell of salt and seaweed.
The sea-sorcerer's cave was littered with green fumes billowing over a huge cauldron whose iron flanks were patterned with dragons. The slender figure in the red silk robe didn't even move as Alfred tumbled inside, disheveled and flushed from his fast run.
“The sun hasn't rotated yet. Your time to think is not over”
“To sea hell with these thoughts!” Alfred threw off his cloak, dousing the shelves with intricately shimmering flasks with a fan of spray. A stirring at the cauldron: the sorcerer barely turned his head; a black shiny strand fell from his shoulder to his chest. He grimaced. “Fulfill my request, and the matter is over”
Slanted brown eyes stared appraisingly into his wide blue ones.
“Are you sure of your decision?”
“To turn into a merman?” The young man shook his head. A smile, smashing like a swing of a sword. "I've never been so sure of anything in my life!"
For all sixteen years, this desire was the brightest.
***
Alfred is six years old.
His sonorous laughter spreads along the beach, the air sparkles from the droplets that gentle waves wash ashore. His bare feet dig into the sand as he pushes off, jumps up, soars up and hits the ball that Mattie threw too high.
But the ball flies not to his twin brother, but to the boulders on the edge of the beach, which go into the sea in a ridge.
“You threw it away again!” Mattie puffs his cheeks resentfully. "I won't run for it there!"
He is not allowed to climb stones – nannies are afraid that he will get hurt. Or break glasses.
“I'll get it myself!”
Alfred jumps onto a stone before the nanny has time to catch on, hurrying from the other end of the beach (only that a pile of underskirts only gets in the way), slides on a wet surface, jumps onto a round cobblestone, rolled over by waves, almost falls – the ball is seen nearby, it floats next to coast. Alfred jumps into the water – it splashes around his ankles – and grabs the toy before the wave carries it away.
Makes eye contact with the boy.
The boy peeks out from behind the stone. If he is older, then only by a couple of years. Gray hair, skin too pale for their warm coast. Alfred hadn't seen him around before, and his eyes...
...deep, violet...
“Hey!” He steps forward. “Who are you?”
The boy twitches like a frightened deer, recoils, dives into the water –
A scaly fishtail gleams in the sunlight, and Alfred freezes with his mouth open, almost letting go of the ball again.
“Mattie! Mattie!”
Matthew looks up from the book grudgingly – his brother is his usual self: he runs down the corridor to their room and yells, waving his arms. Jumps right onto the table he's sitting at. Well, at least not with legs.
“Mattie, do people with fish tails exist? Do you know?”
“Of course I do. They’re called mermaids”
Alfred snorts and shakes his bangs.
“And how do you always know everything?..”
Matthew silently pushes him a tome from the stack he brought from the library. Alfred looks at it for a long, long time, then for the first time in his life he opens the book on his own free will – and Matthew is finally satisfied, because all sounds that remain is the sounds of rustling pages.
Since then, Alfred has been reading a lot, often and avidly – about the ocean, about marine life, about mermaids. He stays up late and lights the candles himself, even if the servants have already extinguished everything.
Very soon, he, too, will need glasses.
***
“What you are asking for is dangerous and might kill you”
“Yes, yes, I heard this a hundred times over the past day from Matthew” Alfred rolled his eyes. Why did everyone always hold him back when all he wanted was to fly on and on? “I'm ready, Yao. Get started”
“I'm not holding you back, boy. I'm talking about the consequences. What is the point of stopping a moth flying into a fire?”
Alfred twitched and threw up his head – did the sorcerer read his thoughts?..
He twitched again – this time due to the frightening proximity: Yao Wang was already standing close to him – when did he manage to move, how...
Tenacious fingers lifted his chin, pupils dug into his face; Alfred, not easily scared, suddenly felt the urge to shrink. He suppressed it.
“Then let's talk about the pay”
“What?.. You didn't say anything about money!” The young man recoiled, anger splashing in his eyes the color of the ocean depths. Even if he had been told yesterday, what could he do? The entrance to the treasury was closed to him.
“Money? What nonsense. I collect curiosities, boy” Thin lips stretched out to reveal a row of sharp, small teeth. “Your eyes will be the payment”
“My eyes?..” he caught his breath.
“Your bright and rare color. In return, you will get amethyst-colored eyes – like all marine creatures”
A relieved sigh escaped his chest. He and Yao clearly had a different idea of a rare eye color. However... if the sorcerer had asked for his hand in return, he would have agreed without hesitation.
He wanted to see other eyes too much.
***
Alfred is eleven years old.
Alfred grows up reckless, blusterous and swift of foot. He is the reason for the constant complaints of teachers who are exhausted, trying to make sure that he is not distracted by the sound of the surf, does not turn his head to the window, to the horizon line covered by waves. Servants carried shells out of his room – he brought new ones and hid them even better, and then small crabs crawled around the castle, frightening the ladies of the court.
Alfred would be a headache for their father if he spent more than a couple of months of the year in the castle, the rest of the time busy expanding the lands of his already vast kingdom.
Alfred reads books about heroes and pirates, swings a wooden sword – he wants to be one of them, a fearless seawolf, for whom every day is a new adventure. Mattie, the perfect Mattie, whose hand goes up in class more often than the screams of seagulls outside the window, joins him after a series of pokes, and they jump around the bed and laugh... until the teacher takes away their weapons and puts them down for lessons.
Alfred sniffs into a book, not about heroes and pirates, but about grammar rules, and he can't suppress a yawn. If it were down to him, he would spend all the time by the sea, and not just on the shore, but would swim far, far away, like a dolphin, like...
The idea flashes instantly: he does not have to be a dolphin at all.
He shares with Mattie so that he won't worry when he sneaks out of the castle at dawn the next day, dressed in shabby stoker boy clothes.
Alfred runs to the port, where the fishermen are just taking their boats out to sea, and begs one of them to take him with them. A bearded old man with a weather-beaten face and kind eyes agrees, takes the boy, who called himself by a false name, on board and shows how to pull the sail, how to handle the helm, how to set up nets. Alfred absorbs everything like a sponge, follows every movement of the sailor's overworked hands, runs around the deck, exposing his face to salt spray, laughs joyfully.
He freezes when he hears a splash very close by, and out of the corner of his vision he notices a flashing mermaid tail with a nacreous fin. He calls the fisherman – but he looks and sees nothing: the creature from the depths of the sea has already managed to escape.
Alfred runs into his and his brother’s room in the castle in the afternoon, when any lessons are hopelessly missed, he glows with happiness – and the smile is immediately washed away when he sees Mattie sobbing and holding onto his red cheek from the blow.
Rage boils in his soul: who did it, who dared... The gaze falls on the stature of their father – and everything becomes clear in an instant.
The fisherman with kind eyes ends his days in prison, no matter how much Alfred begs and cries, and the castle gates are closed for him forever.
He and Mattie are taken to live in the highest tower.
***
Yao finally got down to business: he told Alfred to take off his clothes and stand in a funnel at the far end of the cave that went down into the sea. He put off everything like old, shed skin.
“You mustn’t tell anyone that you are from the Sublunary World” the sorcerer poured blue powder into a deep bowl of water, stirring it until the liquid became nacreous. “Otherwise, within five minutes, you’ll be dead”
“Mermaids and merman hate people so much?” Alfred grunted and leaned on the edge of the funnel, grinning mischievously from ear to ear. “Come on. I can charm them”
He could charm one for sure.
“Floating belly up? It's unlikely” Now it was Yao's turn to grin, and Alfred's smile evaporated like drops of moisture in the sun. “You will die. Literally. The spell will draw the life out of you before you make it to land. The same thing will happen if someone outside reveals your secret to a sea creature”
Only Matthew could tell. But Alfred didn't worry about him. He could trust Matthew with his life.
“However” the sorcerer dipped his fingers into the solution and rubbed them against each other, testing it for viscosity. “Sea creatures really do hate people”
***
Alfred is fourteen years old.
The tower they live in is boring and lonely, but he and Mattie have each other. He helps Alfred with tasks – their native language is not enough, so the ancient ones were also added – and Alfred in return entertains his despondent brother with stories about brave sailors, predatory fish and mysterious treasures.
Their loneliness together is interrupted when Mattie goes to the Academy. Alfred has not been the sharpest tool in the shed during the exam – and therefore remains in the castle.
Not that he tried, of course.
Now he only sees Matthew for a couple of months of the year, in the summer when he comes on vacation, and their July birthday comes in those couple of months.
They don’t like this holiday as long as they can remember. The smiles of the servants are too forced, the lights are dimmed, and the father – who arrives because the rules say so – does not even try to make his usual gloomy face less frown.
All congratulations, from whom it is only possible to accept them, are accepted, all the obligatory bows are made, and Alfred finally takes Matthew to the beach near the palace.
“Will you go with me?”
A boat with a small sail is moored at the rocks: Alfred, armed with books and tools, has been making it for the last couple of months.
“Come on, it won't drown” Alfred smirks and pulls his brother by the sleeve. “Not for the fifth time for sure. I’ve checked”
Matthew shakes his head with a small smile. He must return to the guests, and their long disappearance might cause trouble for the servants. So Alfred shrugs his shoulders, takes off his makeshift anchor, and sails alone from the shore, until the lights of the castle are so distant that they merge with the light of the city.
The waves rock his boat, he lies on its bottom, with his hands behind his head, and looks up at the distant and cold stars. It seems that calmness and spaciousness reign everywhere: the palace bustle has remained somewhere in another world.
He and Matthew don't like this holiday for as long as they can remember.
After all, their birthday was the day their mother died.
***
Yao Wang stuck something sticky on his wrist with a sharp movement – either a plant or an animal – Alfred did not have time to make out before this something was already absorbed under his skin, spreading dark juice through his veins.
“What the...”
“It’s a seaweed. The "Mermaid Claw". It will keep your shape. In a month you must come to me and remove the spell – otherwise it will grow into you forever, and you will remain a merman for the rest of your days without the possibility of becoming a man again”
“Month. Understood” The prince unconsciously scratched the back of his head, examining his wrist. “And if I swim, turn back, and then want to become a merman again – is that possible? Or, let me guess, I'll die, right?”
"That's right" Yao's voice sounded cheerful. “"Mermaid claws" are poisonous. The poison accumulates, and people cannot stand the second portion. But month might be enough for ending up worm food on the seabed”
“And now because of what? Because I sneeze three times in a row and the power of my sneeze will destroy the spell?”
“Because of the sharks. Because of moray eels and stingrays. Because of the nets set by the fishermen. The choice is wide” Amber eyes gleamed in the twilight. “You never know what will bring you death”
***
Alfred is sixteen years old – and the day he turns sixteen almost becomes the last in his life.
Everything goes awry when father orders to throw away everything that Alfred managed to collect on the shore and at a shallow depth in the sea: bright shells, dried sea urchins and stars, shellfish shells. All books about marine life are now locked in the library, he cannot get them.
On the floor of his room, he discovers fragments from a small aquarium that stood on his window.
Alfred freezes for a moment and rushes out of the castle – Matthew does not have time to stop him.
He runs out to the beach, to his boat, which – thank the gods – he has had the sense to hide in one of the grottoes, unwinds the sail and sets off from the shore – he is so angry that he does not pay attention to the clouds gathering over the sea.
When Alfred swims far, it becomes too late: the wind is already tearing his sail, piercing him to the very bones. He tries to row with an oar, but the waves carry him farther and farther away. His clothes are soaking wet and heavy, hanging on him like shackles, nothing is visible – the wave throws the boat up, he falls, and his glasses fly overboard, disappearing in the foam. Alfred is tossed – a sharp, burning pain in his leg – the boat capsizes, and he flies into the water, choking, trying to swim up and gulp air with the despair of a doomed beast, until his strength leaves him and he sinks to the bottom.
The last image in his fading mind is the eyes of amethyst color.
He does not come to his senses immediately, lingering on the border of oblivion and reality. For a couple of minutes, all that exists in the universe is pain, a dim light, and the reflection of waves in the low rocky ceiling directly above him. Alfred lies on something hard and cannot move a limb, the attempt ends with a painful groan – a blurry figure bends over him, drops from gray hair fall on his tanned face...
Eyes. Violet. They glow in the dark.
"Don't move" the voice is soft.
The stranger pulls away, and Alfred can see his face – plump lips, large nose, gray wavy hair matted with moisture. Beautiful face.
Alfred wants to reach out to him, but the slightest muscle tension gives off such wild pain that he screams, not even through clenched teeth.
The stranger glances at his leg. Now he's worried.
“I'll... I'll come soon. Just don't move, please”
It turns out that Alfred lies in a low grotto that goes from the shore into the sea, on a stone ledge near the water. The stranger peeks out of it waist-deep, and then turns and dives.
The splash of a merman's tail falls on Alfred's hand.
He falls back into oblivion, waking up from a slight burning sensation: seaweed on his arm and leg, wrapped tightly around his forearm and shank. They glow.
The next time Alfred wakes up, the seaweed is gone. But the bones in his arm and leg do not feel like broken glass.
The stranger comes again and again, bringing medicines, food and various trifles: soft sea moss under Alfred's head, fresh water in a vessel. Alfred drinks it more slowly than he could – he wants the merman to stay with him longer. So that once again he pushed the golden bangs from his forehead and holds it longer by the back of his head, carefully pouring in the liquid.
Alfred is still too weak to talk. Therefore, he silently touches the merman's fingers with his own.
He shudders, inhales sharply, and his pale cheekbones become a little pinkish.
He waits for Alfred to finish drinking, and swims away, forgetting to take a vessel with him.
A day passes before Alfred can move himself, although his movements are slow, as if under water. Merman lifts him by the shoulder blades, as carefully as possible.
“Like this... Be careful...” One palm – on the back, the second – on the shoulder. Alfred grabs the last one, grips it tightly so that his savior doesn't disappear again. He takes a deep breath, but doesn't pull away. “Can you talk?”
Alfred nods, then hastily adds a hoarse “yes”.
They remain in the same position: Alfred is sitting unevenly, the merman is chest-deep in water.
The blue gaze meets the violet one, the chest rises and falls more often. It seems that something needs to be said, but the fear that this magical something between them will collapse, fetters him. The merman starts first.
"Please don't tell anyone you saw me" His fingers tremble on Alfred's shoulder blades and back. “I can't... can't...”
Dog barking.
Someone's voices. Distant at first, but louder and louder with each moment.
“He smelled something! There, in the grotto!”
Matthew.
Merman tosses his head, looks with fear towards the golden sand illuminated by the sun. Alfred understands what is about to happen, so he blurts out:
“Wait! What is your name? How can I find you?”
The merman's gaze returns to him. He is silent. He just looks furiously-fascinated, makes a decision, rests his hands on the ledge, pulls himself up sharply and…
His lips are salty and soft; Alfred opens his, slides his tongue over his tongue, all before he has time to come to his senses. He presses his head to him. A magical something spreads warmth over his body, his lips tingle, merman’s gray hair is stiff from the salt under his palms...
The merman pulls away just as abruptly, dives into the water and disappears, flashing scales on its tail.
For a few moments there is nothing but Alfred’s pounding heart, until a dog that has climbed into the cave almost knocks him over and begins to lick his face, and Matthew, squeezing into the grotto, cries out “God, you are alive!”
Not even a week goes by before Alfred escapes from the tower again.
Books about the ocean and marine life are read by him far and wide, but there is no answer to the question that he so passionately seeks. The prince knows from experience that what you don't find in books you will find in the sailors' stories in the tavern.
The cloak obtained from the servants hides his stature, his hair is dyed with henna, but Alfred is sure that he has not gone out into the city for so long that no one would recognize him there. Drink pours, unties tongues, Alfred pays for it, not skimping (here no one cares how old he is), and learns about Yao Wang, a sorcerer who lives on the edge of the bay, who knows how to grant wishes: but one has to pay for the return of youth with years life, and for love – with a heart capable of feeling. There are rumors that he could turn into a bird or beast, or lay such a spell on another human, and that's all Alfred needs to hear.
He finds Yao Wang that same night, already desperate to scour the rocks at the other end of the bay, until he guesses to move the protruding boulder. He realizes that he made the right choice when a slender dark-haired man, not looking up from the brew in the cauldron, says:
“I did not think that the prince himself would come to me. What don't you have that you came here, boy?”
A day to think.
Alfred was ready to rush right now, but he was given a day to think. Like it made a difference, ha.
Every minute brought him closer to the meeting, from which his breath caught, and his lips tingled.
***
Everything was finally ready.
Yao dipped two fingers into the bowl with potion. They glowed with mirror-violet, and Alfred shuddered with impatience once again. Where the sorcerer ran his fingers through the air, nacreous strokes remain: they formed together in symbols too complex for each sign to stand for only one letter: it must have been a whole word. Yao put his hand out, blew – the symbols floated to Alfred and stopped, almost touching his chest.
“Ready?”
“How many times are you going to ask?” The prince rolled his eyes, but immediately softened, the smile bloomed on his face, it was quieter and more grateful. “Yao, I… Thank you for helping me. For doing it all. You even advise how to survive, although you sneer that I would turn up heels. And thank you for not discouraging me”
Yao Wang didn't answer. He looked distant and impassive, sighed. His sigh reeked of indulgence.
“Alfred... I don't care”
Nacreous symbols cut into his skin.
They burned, they blazed, they oozed with light, they scorched the insides. Alfred wanted to scream, but he couldn't – the pain was too strong, so strong that stars appeared under his eyelids. Unable to breathe, he grabbed his throat, scratched it, fear was already dancing somewhere along the spine, damn sorcerer, he was not going to transform him, he would kill him, he...
He was pulled down into the water, carried into the ocean – a purple whirlwind cocooned around him, pain in his legs, from the tailbone to the tips of his fingers, something opened on his sides on the ribs, and – lo and behold – he could breathe again! Ache, in the knees, in the wrist – it burned with fire under water – in the ankles – something was changing, as if his bones were breaking through the skin, growing, tightly linked. He was spinning, spinning, he was yelling, pain inside, heat outside – it drove him crazy...
The whirlwind stopped, the pain went away. Alfred sank with his back on something soft, completely tired out – his eyelids became heavy, they closed at last...
The rays of the sun barely made their way under the blue to the seabed.