The Little Maid: Tail Not Included

Chapter the Second: In Which Ariel is Captured and Decides to Stick Around

It was a lovely day that Ariel was taken. The sun shone and the turquoise sea was clear. The sixteen-year-old redhead laughed as she danced through the waves, golden tail (I call it a tail, though it went nearly up to her shoulders) snugly attached. She was having such a lovely time that she did not hear her parents' frightened shouts.

She did, however, notice her sisters frantically swimming away. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw an enormous ship approaching. Without hesitation, she dove under the surface, swimming as far away as she could. But it was not enough. When she surfaced for air, a tightly-woven net was flung over her and she was hauled aboard the Shark, a sailing vessel belonging to Lord Branwyn, one of the nobles of the kingdom and a close relative of the royal family. Ariel did not know that this particular nobleman had an extensive personal zoo, nor did she know that this ship was what he used to capture aquatic additions to the zoo, but I figured I might as well tell you. Revealing that through the plot is simply too much work, don't you think?

The nobleman himself was on the deck, along with his wife and three or four children, all watching as Ariel was hauled aboard. She kicked and cursed and threatened to fight them all, her words muddled with anger and rendered nearly unintelligible due to her thick Scottish brogue.

The nobleman seemed delighted at the sight of her, as did the children. His wife seemed rather horrified.

"Child!" she exclaimed, "Where in heavens did you learn those words?"

"Me mum taught me." Ariel grinned a toothy grin. It was not the strict truth, as her mother was actually displeased to discover Ariel had overheard that vocabulary, but it was all the same to Ariel.

"What are you?" the youngest daughter asked in a soft upper-class accent, approaching her.

"A unicorn," Ariel snapped, "I'm a mermaid, of course! Dunna ye have eyes? Now—"

"Put her in the tank," the nobleman said, turning and leading his entourage away.

"What? No! Let me go! I say, let me go! Why, ye just wait until me Mum and Dad find me! Then ye will be sorry! You'll—"

She stopped shouting as they disappeared from view. Two of the ship's crew carried the net over to a water tank built into the deck and dumped her inside. She sank down, and saw the ocean through a porthole in the side of the ship. The Mermaid was far away, and getting smaller.

For the first time in her life, Ariel felt fear.

Gradually, it became dark. The stars lit up the sky and the crescent moon cast shadows across the deck.

One of the shadows moved.

Ariel hauled herself up out of the tank and onto the deck, ungracefully squirming across it. It would be foolish to take off her tail just to walk a few feet when she'd need it to swim. Also, she... wasn't wearing much underneath.

She froze as she heard a sound—footsteps on the wooden deck. Dropping low, she hid behind a coil of ropes.

"Why can't we help the mermaid?" someone asked—it sounded like the girl from before, the one who asked what Ariel was.

"Because," a different voice replied, "She's one of the pirate mermaids. The ones who rob the ships. I'm going to make her tell me all about it. The stories are ridiculous. I want to hear the real thing."

"She's a pirate?" the little girl gasped, "Oh, oh, Christopher, let's not. Maybe she'll kill us!"

"Don't be such a—" Christopher trailed off. Ariel risked a peek and saw Christopher, whom she guessed was between fourteen and seventeen (it was dark out, and hard to pinpoint,) staring into the tank. "She's gone!"

The little girl screamed, but Christopher clamped a hand over her mouth. "Hush. She can't have gone far. We'll just find her."

"I don't want to. What if she hurts us?"

"She's just a mermaid," he replied, "What harm can she do?"

Unable to resist, Ariel spoke up. "Ye'd best watch your mouth, lad—those're fightin' words!"

She didn't mean to frighten the little girl. She didn't mean to alert any of the crew members. And she certainly didn't mean to startle Christopher into falling over the side of the ship. Ariel looked over the edge and didn't see him. Turning to the girl, she snapped, "Don't tell me he can't swim!"

The girl's terrified face was all the answer Ariel needed.

She heaved a long sigh and dropped over the edge of the boat. With over a decade's worth of practice, she slipped through the surface of the water without a splash. It was dark and she could barely see, but there seemed to be a boy-sized shape falling through the water. She grimaced as she realized the undercurrents had taken him. They were dangerous, and only someone who knew them well could escape the vicious pull.

Ariel had lived her whole life in the sea. She knew the undercurrents like a person would know the streets of their hometown.

With powerful kicks of her tail, she went down into the deep. As she drew closer, she could see that he was flailing around, trying to get to the surface. He had no business being on a boat if he couldn't swim, that was for sure. And he was wasting air. Their eyes met—his panicked and desperate, hers determined and the slightest bit annoyed.

She finally reached him, grabbing him and dragging him up. He hung limply in her arms. She could hold her breath for plenty of time, but he seemed to have run out already. She remembered her mum's warning about the deadliness of inhaling salt water, and clamped a hand over his nose and mouth.

As she neared the surface, she became aware that the boat was nowhere near. The powerful undercurrents had dragged them a ways off. She had two options: swim back to the boat, or find somewhere else to wait. She chose the second. These were rocky waters, and there was certainly a flat-topped boulder somewhere around.

She spied one and pulled him to it. He wasn't breathing.

Ariel considered cursing, remembered that her parents frowned upon it unless in extenuating circumstances, and settled for spitting in frustration. "Oh, wake up! Wake up, wake up, I need to get outta here so ye need to wake UP, BLAST IT!"

He still wasn't breathing.

Ariel's parents had taught her what to do for many medical situations, from setting broken bones to treating infected wounds. And yes, she knew how to make a half-drowned person start breathing again. Ariel did what needed to be done, and made a mental note to inform her older sister Hannah-Marie—who had irritated her sisters by giggling through that particular lesson and spent a week afterwards daydreaming about saving a drowning prince—that there was really nothing romantic about it.

She nearly laughed at the thought of her sister's envious and infuriated face. Hannah-Marie spent most of her time daydreaming about boys (the girls didn't see many of them,) and Ariel, little Ariel, was the first to have a... close interaction with one. She could already hear her sister's whiny voice shrill, "It's just not fair! I should have been the one! I would've appreciated it!"

He started coughing.

"Ah, good, you're alive," she said, "Now, can ye hear me?"

He coughed some more.

"Splendid. Now, I'll be swimin' off and you're gonna shout and they'll hear ye and come back and we can all live happily and separately after. So long and see ye never."

She turned to go, sliding off the rock and into the ocean, but hesitated. It was night, and the ocean was cold. She couldn't see her parents' boat. Perhaps it would be best to stay. Pretend like she jumped off the side of the boat only after he fell, just to rescue him. Maybe they'd feel so indebted to her that they'd let her go in the morning. There was also the option of revealing that she wasn't a mermaid, but if she was being honest, she liked being believed in. It made her feel... special.

"Perhaps," she murmured, her golden scales shimmering as she climbed back up, "I might see ye never... tomorrow."