Fathoms Below

We are locked in a waltz, the prince and I. My lower body is on fire, agony snaking up my feet and legs where my lustrous green tail and fins had been. It takes every effort, all of my years of stringent royal training, not to scream soundlessly in his face and collapse.

I dance on knives.

His lips brush against mine and his hands grip me close. My strange human heartbeat thrums in my throat, where my gills were before they melted into smooth flesh.

I am a seamless knit of skin wobbling on two skinny appendages. Through the embroidered layers of my skirts, I scratch and scratch at scales no longer on my body. The prince, all grace and poise, takes my scratching hand, holds me to the warmth of his chest, and whispers into my ear reassuringly.

All around us are colors and movement; women in bright gauzy dresses drift like schools of jellyfish around men in tailcoats, straight-backed and proud.

At breakfast, I used red jelly and fingers to paint pictures of my family: me, my sisters, my father the Sea King, resplendent with trident and crown. I drew the merfolk and the palace and the carriages pulled by a retinue of plumed seahorses. It looked like blood spreading on the tablecloth.

The prince said: “What a pretty drawing, dearest.”

I shook my head furiously, silver utensils flying out of my hair, and pointed to myself, then to the tablecloth.

How could I convey to him the joy of warm currents, the gardens of bright anemone and coral, fish swimming in and out of open windows, and the chorus of voices singing the sun down?

Days pass and memories of my home slip away like water, the voices of the ocean grow fainter as I pace up and down the seashore.

The servants and courtiers whisper when I walk the halls of the palace. I hear whispers of “asylum” and hope this is a place that my prince will take me, like when he took me to visit the town.

Sebastian, faithful companion, bright red and festooned with parsley and buttery sauce, lies on a silver platter. His eyes are bubbled onto his stalks and watch me silently, disapproving even in death.

He had followed me then, scuttling in the shadows until cornered by a kitchen boy, although I had warned him to stay hidden in my room.

Prince Eric, seeing my distress, says soothingly, “Only a king crab, dear one.” And to the others at the banquet table: “Poor, sensitive creature. Ariel was showing me her love for ocean life only earlier this morning. Wonderful artist, this girl.”

I tuck a mini-trident into my evening gown, as they had persuaded me to relinquish the ones I wound into my hair.

He raises a wine goblet to me and turns to chat with the woman beside him.

The wedding ship. Revelry. The deck of the vessel is a blaze of white: the wedding party dancing around a spew of white banners and flowers. Prince Eric and his new bride are spinning in a waltz. The sun casts everyone in a golden haze.

I slide unnoticed from the railing into the waves and swim away from the hull of the ship, my body heaving, dying. And then my spirit is released like a breath of wind and escapes the pain-riddled ruin of my flesh, leaving the body floating in the waves.

I rise with the sea spray and foam. The prince and newly crowned princess, dancing no longer, stand entwined by the bow.

I brush a kiss, soft as mist, against his face. It is enough to know that he is happy and in love. It is enough to have loved him.

“Where is that red-headed whore who has so diverted your attention?” The Princess asks.

“Poor girl!” Prince Eric says. "Washed up on the shore like so much trash. She's a raving lunatic, you know.”

The princess laughs, raucous as the gulls hovering in the ship’s wake.

“I hear she collects cutlery for her hair,” she says. “And that she thinks she is a princess of the sea!”

The prince laughs with her. 

Pain worse than the knife gash of my missing fins and more encompassing than the loss of my voice and songs. The scream rises out of my soul, from the very depths of me, and the ocean answers. The sky churns black, flickering throughout with lightning, and the waves rise to meet it. The ship bobs up and down the swells like a lost bottle.

Screams from the ship, as the wedding party lurches up and down the deck. The prince shouts orders over their shrieks and the howls of the storm, the princess huddles with her maids, drenched and moaning.

With my last breath I whisper, “Father.”

The storm howls. The ocean is a maelstrom of broiling, black waters.

From the depths of the waters come tentacles, vast and familiar, that creep over the ship’s deck and clenches like a fist.

I sigh and close my eyes at last.