Triton

chapter six, empty hand.

I had spent nearly five days in bed, physicians and servants and the occasional brother or two always within shouting distance, usually closer. The only people who hadn’t come to see me were the prison vagabonds and my parents, which made sense, because they were similar in character quality.

I spent most days reading and sleeping and wishing I could redo the mermaids on my bedroom floor, except I knew that wasn’t happening. Id jus have to paint a portrate or something instead.

Anytime I wasn’t doing one of those things, I was thinking about the dark haired mermaid and the green eyed one, wondering if any of what I’d seen and heard had been real. I highly doubted it, somehow, even though I felt it must be true.

On the sixth day, I asked one of the physicians if I could go for a walk. This one was a different one than the one from the first day. She was young and plump, with mountains of floofy ginger hair and an old homespun brown dress that was the same color as dried blood.

She said I could go for a walk, and I immediately loved her. She called on of my brothers and they asked me where I would like to go. “the beach.” I said immediately. They exchanged a look, but I’d already been granted permission.

My brother called a footsmen, who organized a coach that took us along the shore till we got to where I wanted to be. For fice or six or seven minutes, we walked around and I dipped my toes in the cold, salty ocean. ‘I’m going to marry a sailor.” I told my brother james. “ and we’re going to by a ship and travel on the high seas till we die, and have a thousand babies.”

“You can’t have babies.” He reminded me.

“they wont be mine.” I replied. “They’ll be abandoned mer babies, left on a dock to dry, and I’ll take pity on them and teach them how to be human, and we can live together for forever, or at least until they decide they need to swim in the ocean again.”

James rached into  his bag and pulled out a sandwich rapped in cheesecloth, smiling indulgently. “Are you ready to eat, sea princess?”

“maybe. Do you think people will start calling me sea princess?” I twisted locks of my hair around my fingers, wondering why the stuff I had looked so different from the manes on  the sea-serpent women.

“if you keep talking like that they will.” He handed me the sandwich and then produced an apple, along with a flask of wine.

“What’s on the sandwich?” I asked.

“poat and radishes and grapes and cheese.” “Mmmm.”

We ate in silence for a while, till it was time to leave. I told james that tomorrow I wanted to see the place where they’d found me. “We’ll talk about it.” He said.

We never talked about it. Two weeks had passed since the shipwreck. My parents had stopped by only once to check on me, and during the less than half hour visit, all they talked about were castle renovations, and half the time it was directed at my mother’s personal assistant. My father had been livid about the mermaid rumors. James had told him what I’d said about marrying a sailor, and he was livid about that, too. I had been isolated from anyone who could or would spread rumors. No nurses or physicians were left in my presence unattended by one of my twelve brothers. Today, I was completely alone, and I had a plan for using this time. Under my bed was a sack lunch, a little bit of change, and some decent boots. I slung the money and food over my shoulder, slid my feet in the boots, and grabbed my rope from the corner. I tried to keep my hands from trembling as I lashed the rope to one of the marble railing posts on the castles. Repeling down the side of the castle was easier said than done, especially for the chronically ill, but I managed. I’d bribed one of the maids the other day, while the brother on watche duty was busy conversing with one of the ever-present physicians, to fins someone who could take me to where id been found. Id told her to tell whoever it was to meet me at the produce drop outside the kitchen.

The contact was a skinny, lumpy faced teen with hair the color of dirt, that looked like it’d been cut with gardening impliments. He snuck me into the back of a cart that just sat there for way to long and was full of potatoes. When we started rolling, I kept getting slammed against the potatoes, which were much less comfortable than you could guess. He lifted the tarp on the back of the cart quite a while later and let me out. Then he pointed in the direction of the slowly setting sun and said to meet him there in an hour. I started walking till a I came to the shore. Nothinh was near by, no houses, no wreckage, no cliffs, no jetties. There was a ruff, rotted looking pier, crookedly fingering out into the water for what seemed like a long ways. I walked towards it, not expecting to find what I wanted. When I reached the pier, I slowly tested each board with my foot before stepping out. I made it all the way to the end without mishap, and lowered myself to the edge, staring at the bright strips of red and white and orange that flashed across the water. I sighed out and dragged a breath in and sighed out. I reached a hand into the water, watching it cut into the surf. Just past my hand was nothingness and blackness, and I wondered what was beneath it all. I thought of the green eyes and wished the voice there with me, the voice of whoever sang me to life. I layed my palm out flat on the water, and I wished whoever belonged to the voice was holding it. A pale hand flashed up out of the depths and laced its fingers with mine.  A head followed the hand, surfacing gently. Black black black hair and pale pale pale skin and green green green eyes were there. The eyes took me in, and then they turned and left, a long silvery tale flashing up and out of the water as the boy and his green eyes dove away from me, leaving me with an empty hand.