Jolly Sailor || Elizabeth Swann

00

A small boy with straight dark hair to his chin was sat on a large rock in a sunlight bay. The sea lapped around him in gentle waves, a deep glittering blue. The rock he was perched on was slippery with seaweed and almost half a mile away from the golden beach behind him. It was low tide and he dipped his toes into the water as he basked in the sunlight. The tide was low enough for him to see the reef through the water below. The fish and colourful coral seeming deceptively closer than they were.

The boy didn't seem to be more than ten years old, yet he was stranded on a rock in the middle of the sea. A distance a child should have had trouble swimming too even with the low tide. Yet there he sat, as calm and peaceful as the waves that bright day. His thin frame sticking out through his trousers. The cloth hanging off him. All grandly pale limbs and wild dark hair. There was no shirt or any other accessory and the trousers had been tied round his hips with a length of rope. A few scars dotted a pale chest. Scratches and long cuts from knives crossing over his ribs. Ugly roundish wounds on his palms and knuckles from blisters and fights. For a child of his age, despite his innocent beauty, there was more than met the eye.

He was humming to himself as he trailed his toes through the water. A slow tune, so slow that it was almost a nursery rhyme, a poem or verse rather than a song. He sang it in the high voice of a child despite the darkness of the words.

The king and his men stole the queen from her bed
And bound her in her bones.
The seas be ours and buy the powers
Where we will, we roam.
Yo ho, all together
hoist the colours high
Heave ho, thieves and beggars
Never shall we die.

Down below him came a splash. He giggled and flicked water with his toes. In the darkness of the water, something glittered. The iridescent scales of a fish tail. Blues and greens glimmering as whatever it was swam around the rock. The boy crawled onto his hands and knees excitedly. He peered over the edge, long black hair hanging in tangled tresses around his face as he watched the water eagerly. Another splash sounded and he grinned as a woman's head broke the water. Her long dark hair trailing behind her. Waves braided with pearls and seaweed as she emerged. Pale arms reaching out to grip the rock and pull herself up.

She sat in the edge of the rock next to the boy. Her breasts hanging bare, skin glittering slightly with water under the warm sun. Scales covered her waist and over her hips into a large round fishtail. The scales gleaming like diamonds and emeralds. The boy threw his arms around her neck and her arms reached out of hug him. "Mother!" He greeted. She swept him up in strong arms and pressed kisses to his cheeks. He giggled as she smoothed back his long hair. Her own black hair hanging around them in a curtain of black tumbles. Now that it was out of the sea, it curled into waves over her shoulders.

"Benjamin. Darling. My little shark", she beamed at him with sharp teeth. The boy grinned back, teeth just as sharp. She shifted and pulled him to sit on the lap of her tail. The long fins on the ends still trailing in the water below. "Darling. Tell me what you've been up too". Her voice carried an accent that was difficult to place. It held the note of half a dozen dialects and somehow still fit none. Yet still, her voice was melodic.

The boy, despite the scars on his chest bare with freshly healed white skin, nodded happily. He held out his hands and began talking. His mother combing his hair with sharp clawed hands. Her light touch threading coral and seaweed into the strands as her son talked. The two of them alone in this sunlight bay. A mermaid and her child. Both lit in gold and highlighted by the shimmering blue of the sea.

Unedited