Adrift: A Little Mermaid Retelling

26: Daniel

I saw the world from the crow's nest of the Summerwave. It was long, hard work. My hands had never been soft, but they grew rougher on the ship. I didn't shrink from the work, though; I loved it. If my first love had been Agnes, ever since I was a boy, my second love—the one I could have—became the sea.

We sailed to Noreen. I saw the foggy marshes and the bogs and a couple nameless towns—they do not name their settlements in Noreen. We sailed to Oranslan, the homeland. At last, I saw the Crown City, jewel-bright on top and black with filth on the bottom. I saw the Whispering Isles, stunningly beautiful when seen from the sea. We navigated the Oran's Beard islands, which bridged the gap between the old world and the new. A few tiny settlements had sprung up here, mostly reclusive religious folk; otherwise, the islands were naught but a treacherous strip of stony outcroppings waiting to break a hull.

Back and forth we sailed around our world, trading in goods and information.

Still, I thought on Agnes often. There was a song they were wont to play in taverns where sailors would loiter between ventures. I could never get that damned song out of my head, and every time I hummed a line, I thought of what Agnes would think of my singing voice—decent, but not terribly good. She had sometimes told me as much. She was merciless when it came to music.

"Black is the color of my true love's hair,

Her lips are like a rose so fair,

She has the sweetest face and the gentlest hands,

I love the ground whereon she stands.

"I love my love, and well she knows,

I love the ground whereon she goes,

And how I wish the day would come,

When she and I can be as one.

"I sail the sea, and I mourn and weep,

For satisfied I ne'er shall be,

I write her a letter, just a few short lines,

And suffer death ten thousand times."

I wondered about the folks who wrote such things. Educated, they must have been, to put such pretty thoughts together in lines and make of them something that could bring out such feeling in another. I could never do such a thing myself.

I won't say I spent each day pining after her. It's a rare person who'll do that—waste away from grief. Life went on. I worked by day, and yes, being a young man, I capered by night. I'd spent years as a house servant, in the company of quiet women. Now I was among other hard-living men, my age and older, who put the salve of creature comforts on their wounds.

My father had told Master Allore he'd raised me right, and that I would never touch a drop, but he was wrong. Now that I was a sailor, I spent the money I earned to keep myself decently shod and clothed, and I put a bit away against the future—but the rest of it, I spent on drink. Sometimes, perhaps, a bit too much. At least I stayed away from the brawling. I saw a man die during my very first shore leave, when another knocked him alongside the head with a bottle, and I resolved that day to keep my temper.

It seems to me that there are two types of men; one, when in his cups, will be angry. The other kind is a sad drunk. Lucky for me, I suppose, I was always the latter.

One thing I never did: I never spent my coin on company. The other sailors seemed happy enough with their "dock wives," and part of me resented Agnes because she had not loved me. More than once, I made it as far as the door to the brothel—but I never went in.

Ness was all I wanted. The memory of her was wrapped round my heart, and the time passed, but my need for her didn't. I knew I was being stupid; Ness did not know how I spent my nights, and probably she did not care. But it wasn't just loyalty to her that kept me from going with the others. I just knew there was nothing in those places that could bring happiness to me.

Black was the color of my true love's hair. I had to see her again. I had to find her ... someday, when I had the courage. Because I now knew something about her that, perhaps, she did not know. Something about her mother.

Semmil had told me on my second day aboard the Summerwave as he showed me a series of knots I would need to learn.

I had reminded him of the matter; remembering Margaret's box had me more curious than I'd been before. "Semmil, you never told me about the King's Bounty," I said.

"Tighter, laddie—aye, just so. Now yeel do it again on yer own, go on, and I'll watch ye to make sure ye have it right." Semmil watched me loosen the knot and shake out the rope, then go through the motions again as he had shown me. He observed for a moment before he went on in a conversational tone. "The King's Bounty is naught more'n a slaver's ship."

I looked up at his face, feeling a pang of icy shock. "What?"

"Aye, well." Semmil gestured, turning my attention back to the knot. "It's women she deals in. Sea-women. Have you e'er heard of the King's Bounty brides, laddie? Naw? It's—wrong, laddie, the other way."

I crossed the rope end in the other direction, trying hard to apply myself to this new art while also hanging on Semmil's every word.

"Good. Give it on." Semmil took the rope from me and, with deliberate, slow motions, he showed me the workings of another knot. "This'n here we calls the sheet bend; I'll show ye the best way to use wi' the sails soon enough, laddie, soon enough. See this? Cross ... o'er ... and this little laddie, he's through. Got it? I'll show ye again."

"The ship, Semmil—it deals in women? What do you mean, like ... like prostitutes?"

Semmil squinted his good eye at me. "Them women gets paid, don't they? Slaves don't get paid. Naw, Dan, 'tis a sad thing what they do on board that ship."

"Tell me."

"Yeel have heard of the sea-women. Mermaids, what they're called in some parts."

I vaguely remembered my father telling me a story once about a mermaid. She had sat upon a rock on the ocean combing her hair, and a farmer had tried to win her love. That is all I remembered from the story, except that she'd had a long fish's tail, which was the funniest thing I had heard of at that age. "My father told me once. He was a sailor, back in his time."

"Half-woman, half-fish, they are. Well, laddie, all a man what wants a wife has got to do is steal somethin' o' her'n, and if he does it, and hides it away, she's his wife forever. She cain't change no longer into her fishie form when she's got somethin' missin'; nor can she be a-scoldin', or a-runnin' about on 'im, or doin' anything what drives a man mad wi' a reg'lar wife."

I grinned at him. "I thought you were being serious about all this."

He raised his brows at me. "I'm serious, laddie. Go on to any pub and ask on to any sailor, he'll tell ye the same. The mermaids would as soon drag a sailor under to droon him as lookit him, but these uns on the Bounty, they stopper up their ears all wi' wax and only pretend to be under the spell, and when they're close enough, they grabs up the little fish-lassie's comb, or her mirror, or e'en a lock o' her hair what they cuts off right in the moment. Take that, and she's no choice but to come aboard, where they cleans her up proper and puts her in a goon an' all that. Then they sell 'er, sometimes back in the crown-land but mostly here in the colonies. I ent a goodly friend to them mermaids. They're dangerous critchers, and I've no love for 'em, but it ent right, what them sailors are doin', and they've been doin' it for years, and none will stop 'em. It's rare, findin' the sea-women, so they comes awful dear. Give 'er new husband that pretty trinket o' her'n and she's the perfect wife, in't she?"

I stared at him, knowing he expected some response, but I couldn't come up with one. The weight of what he was saying had settled into my stomach like a stone. I slumped onto a crate to sit.

"You arright, laddie?"

"Sea legs," I muttered by way of excuse. I hadn't gotten them under me quite yet—that much was true—but it wasn't the ship that had me queasy now.

Margaret. The comb. I shook my head, trying to put my thoughts in order. Had Master Allore—had he bought her? And Agnes—Ness's mother was a mermaid? That simply couldn't be. It was too fantastic.

But I remembered what Margaret had done. She'd killed Allore. Then she'd stripped off all of her clothes and flung herself into the sea.

She'd gone home.