Chapter Text
The newest attraction at The Enchanted Forest: A World of Mystical Creatures was a massive hit. The hydra had been quite a draw and had audiences dying to see more rare and aquatic creatures, previously believed to have been myth. Now the theme park had a new, more peculiar site for the public to feast their eyes on: mermaids.
“Its merfolk,” Nathan Gold’s son, Bae informed him once he had made the grievous error of calling them that. “Only the girls are called mermaids.”
“Are you sure you want to see those first?” Gold asked, “What about the dragon? Or the griffons? Wouldn’t those be more exciting?”
“We’ll see those, but I want to see the merfolk. What if one of them saved you?”
“I told you, I was hallucinating.” The plane crash had been three years ago and Bae still refused to believe that it had been luck that had spared his father from watery grave. He only had the hazy memory of a pair of light blue eyes on a lovely face, framed by brown curls. The woman his mind had conjured as he was drifting towards death had not only stayed with him, but his boy as well. Bae insisted ever since that a mermaid must have rescued his father.
“What if she was real?” he asked yet again.
“She wasn’t.”
“You don’t know that,” Bae said, “people used to think merfolk weren’t real either, but they are.”
There was no point in arguing with his ten-year-old son. Gold sighed and shook his head, shifting the weight off his bad ankle with his cane. “Alright, let’s go see the mermaids.”
“Its merfolk,” Bae said again.
It was a small sea with glass walls that Belle was now forced to call home. A few months ago some men with a net and strange device called a syringe had plucked her out of the warm waters close to the land of Australia and brought her to this odd place. It was designed to look like a lagoon, but the land was completely unnatural. The plants on the false rock didn’t feel like the plants she was used to, they also didn’t need water or even sunlight. Sand coated the bottom of the lagoon, along with seaweed and coral. Fish populated the waters. There were even caves made from the same odd rocks. Her companions would hide in the caves when the humans came to inspect them.
“This is horrible, Belle,” Snow whispered in the dark when all of the humans were gone, “What if we never return to the see?”
“Do they expect us to just entertain the humans all day?” David had wondered, “What are we supposed to do?”
Belle had no answers for her friends. There were five of them in all, herself, Snow, David, Aurora and Philip. At least the four of them had each other. Belle’s father was still in the ocean, along with Gaston, though he wasn’t much of a loss.
It really wasn’t so bad living in the glass-walled lagoon. She had always found the human world fascinating and had wanted to observe them more, but her father had never allowed it. She tried not to think about how worried he must be. It helped when she focused on watching the humans.
Her only interaction with humans before was brief. A strange boat with two fins had fallen into the ocean. Belle had found one of the humans struggling against the ocean, desperate to live. Something has pieced one of his bottom limbs. Legs, that’s what humans had instead of tails, legs. The poor man couldn’t make it, not without help. Her father had told her as a child, “Let the humans be. They are monstrous and will only harm you in the end. It is better to let the ocean claim them.”
She couldn’t do it in the end. He was near death already when she had brought him to the surface and to the closest piece of shore. He had opened his eyes for just a moment when she had cupped his face. They were a dark brown, unlike any creature she had ever seen before. His hair had been long too, streaked with grey like driftwood. He had reached for her for a moment, but then went back to sleep. More humans had come then, so Belle had to make a quick escape back to the ocean.
Belle had returned to the land the next day and found a treasure in the sand: a gold ring with a lovely blue stone. She had no idea if it had belonged to the man or not, but she liked to think it did. She had made a string of black pearls to wear with it around her neck. Her friends back home had thought she was mad and her father had been furious, but she didn’t care. She often would go back to that beach to see if he was there. That was how the humans had found her at last.
Perhaps she should be afraid of the humans, but most of them seemed harmless. Yes the people who had poked and prodded at them before weren’t very nice, but the visitors that waved at them through the glass seemed perfectly nice.
The young humans were particularly charming. They always smiled when she waved back or flipped her tail at them at the surface so they were splashed with seawater. Her friends didn’t want to play games with them like she did. Sometimes Snow would wave at the little humans, but Aurora and Philip always remained in the shadows.
One boy had just arrived, both hands plastered to the glass walls. Belle swam up and waved at him, her hair wafting around her. The boy waved back then gestured for someone to come along and see.
“Papa, come on,” Bae called out with the impatience ever child had when they wanted their parent to be just as excited as they were.
“You know I can’t move as fast as you, Bae,” Gold reminded him.
“But she’s going back to the others, you’re going to miss her.”
“I’m sure she’ll be back.” Gold finished the walk up the ramp to the exhibit. There was another ramp on the side that appeared to lead to the surface where they could see the mermaids—merfolk, when they were above the water.
There was one mermaid he saw with a white tail and long black hair. Her skin was pale like seafoam. She looked at them with wide eyes, darting quickly towards a merman with a green tail who put one arm around her shoulders.
“They don’t seem very friendly,” Gold said.
“The other one was,” Bae told him.
“Which one?” He could see two more hiding back in one of the little caves. Really, what was the point in having this attraction when they creatures didn’t want to interact with them? These things could talk? Couldn’t they be taught to actually swim around rather than hide?
“There she is!” Bae cried, “The pretty one with a blue tail.” He pointed to another mermaid who was breaking back from the top of the water.
She had one of the artificial flowers clutched in her hands as she made her way back towards him. Her tail was light blue with shimmery scales that sparkled in the light from the tank. She was much livelier than her companions, swirling around in the water, her brown hair fluttering behind her. She came closer; waving at them, but then froze.
Gold stared back into her blue eyes, large and full of wonder. He remembered those eyes.
“Papa,” Bae gasped, “Isn’t that your ring?” He pointed to the necklace of black pearls around her pretty neck. At the center was his grandfather’s ring. He had thought it was nestled at the bottom of the ocean, lost forever due to that plane crash.
He looked up at her face. Her pink lips were parted as if in a gasp. Slowly, she reached out and pressed one of her small hands on the glass. Gold found himself stepping forward until he stood directly in front of her. He dropped his cane as he reached up to put his hand on the glass, directly over hers.
“You’re real,” he whispered. His mystery rescuer, the one who had continued to haunt him in his dreams, the one he was certain had been some figment of his oxygen deprived mind, was real.
She was real, but as he felt the cool glass warm beneath his skin, she was still out of reach.