Page 43 of Twisted Royals

HIS LITTLE SEA WAIF

A TWISTED LITTLE MERMAID RETELLING

DINAH MCLEOD

CHAPTER 1

Ari

I was born from the sea. That is nothing of an accomplishment—my fourteen sisters before me were the very same, as were all our fellow Merpeople before us. The only thing notable about my birth was that my mother was caught in a fisherman’s net soon after. The story has been repeated so many times that it’s become something of a legend, due in part to the fact that the ending wasn’t the one that was expected. Instead of being killed, as was feared, my mother was found two days later, dropped back into the ocean miles from where she’d been snared.

My nurse told me that there was a storm the night I hatched. Such a thing was not uncommon, she assured me, except that this storm was unlike any other that Atlantis had seen in recent memory. The water bubbled and frothed as the storm raged. It was such a shock to our people that my father, King Triton, sent scouts up to the surface—an occasion almost as rare as the storm. They would later report that the sky was filled with clouds so dark they might have been the color of ash.

And then, as the scouts were beginning to swim back down and my egg was beginning to crack, a lightning bolt shot straight into the sea and burned down to land right in front of it. My nurse, ever mindful of her duty despite her fear, swam to rescue me.

“It was the strangest thing, child. You came out unafraid, without a single tear, or as much as a cry.”

My hatching wasn’t the only strange thing about me. My sisters were icy beauties with blond hair and round, blue eyes like my mother’s. My father had flowing locks of silver for his own crown since the day he was born. I had hair a color never seen before—a bright, vibrant red, the same shade as fire. It had been shocking, my nurse told me, but was chalked up to be because of the fury of the sea that day. If I had been born to anyone else, perhaps I would have been abandoned in some dark, formidable corner of the sea. But the fact was, I was born a princess, and no one would dare tell the Sea King what to do with his daughter.

In time, the mermen adjusted to the shock—at least those who knew my family. Visitors from other parts of the sea often stared with gaping mouths and I had learned from an early age to regale them with a bland, unconcerned look in return, just as my mother taught me to do.

“You are different,” she’d told me, brushing out my long, red hair. “This can make life hard in some ways, Ari, or you can choose to let this difference be your strength.”

Always affectionate where my mother was concerned, I’d cuddled into her. “How do I do that?”

“I’ll tell you how. Don’t you for one second, not one, forget who you are or where you come from. You are your father’s daughter, and therefore, a princess of the sea. You allow no one to tell you any different, even with their eyes. Understand?”

I’d nodded, but I couldn’t understand, really. Not until I grew. But her words never left me. It was the only lesson I ever remembered her teaching me, for she had died shortly after.

In time, everyone would agree that my hair suited me. It was made more startling by comparison of my fair, porcelain skin and emerald eyes. Frequently, my father or my sisters lament that I was hatched with the same fire that gave me my infamous hair.

There was another gift the lightning gave me that day: an unquenchable thirst to see and understand the Earth Dwellers. To my never-ending despair, it is specifically forbidden for my people to seek them out, even when we have need to go to the surface.

And yet, forbidden or not, I could not change how I felt. I had a longing inside me, buried deep in the pit of my belly, to know them. Not to merely observe them, but to know them. In every day that I had lived, swimming the sea, it had only unfurled and pushed upward, the desire spiraling and spreading to fill every crevice until it was the very beat of my heart.

As the youngest, I would be the last to discover all the wonders the surface world has to offer. I didn’t take the news graciously, and though I listened to my sisters’ tales of the sights they saw, it was with a twisted mouth and sullen ears. Finally, I could bear it no longer and went to my nurse to plead.

“You know that this is forbidden until you are fifteen,” she’d said in her calm, matter-of-fact way.

Normally, I found her to be the very body of reason and good sense, and her tranquil manner was the perfect balm to my temper. But not this time. I begged in a way most unbecoming of my station—I know, because she told me so—then when she would not relent, I raged, pouted and cried.

She only stared at me with dark, fathomless eyes.

But I was far from done. I continued to sulk, drawing on all of my stubbornness and willpower. I stopped eating, or even speaking. This went on for three long days, and I barely felt any pain of hunger because my desire burned hot enough to fill my stomach.

Nurse tried her best to reason with me. When that did not work, she sat me down and regarded me with somber eyes. “It must be a hard thing to have lost your mother so young,” she began.

I started. This was not at all what I had expected, and in truth, I thought of my mother very little since I hardly remembered her and Nurse had been my surrogate mother ever since.

“We rarely speak of her, which perhaps makes it harder still.” Nurse had let out a long sigh as I wondered where this was going. “Grief can have such a stronghold, perhaps King Triton finds it easier not to mention her. She was a great beauty, your mother.”

I nodded, for this much I could recall.

“You remember she was captured?”

“Yes, of course.”

“She never was the same after that.” Nurse clucked her tongue. “Not that you would have

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