The Twice-Drowned Prince

CHAPTER 1

PRINCE

The prince had no memory of the first time he drowned. The salt numbed his mind. But the second time, it stung. Every breath brought a thousand barbs, slicing his flesh to ribbons without spilling a drop of blood. His lungs screamed as never before—voiceless.

He remembered the after, of course, when he woke up ashore, salt in his mouth, sand on his skin, his savior before him.

What makes a man choose to drown? A great many things, the prince was sure. But for him, it was two eyes more vivid than the sky. Her eyes, her hair, her tail of vibrant blue.

Light, almost icy blue, biting in her locks, her eyes, the scales of her tail, and even in the freckles sprinkled across her delicate face. Her skin was pearl—not metaphorically, but real, true pearl—and her ears pointed. White eyelashes framed her sky-blue irises like feathery clouds. Her left hand, hard and soft at once, clasped his chin, and she smiled at the prince.

He forgot all about the tail, then.

Her lips parted as if to speak, but then a dark hand covered them. This skin was richer than the prince had ever known, and his eyes drew, reluctantly, toward the new, toward the other mermaid.

Her hair was a dripping mass of red coils. Not copper or orange or any mortal shade, but a red for apples to envy. She shook her wet head, features scolding, so underwhelming, so boring next to his sapphire angel. So the prince’s eyes shot back to the truer beauty. She was fairer, brighter, perfect in every way, and her eyes never left his. Her hand fell away, and his hand reached out without him willing it, at least not consciously. Then she slipped away, those blue eyes gripping his until her head finally turned to dive, to swim beneath the waves.

The prince stood though he had no bearing, knowing he would fall on to the beach. He had to follow her, to thank her, to ask—

His knees buckled, naturally, and he heard a voice call his name from the shore. He didn't turn. All his focus was on the crashing waves.

Madness? A dream? Salty mirages? But why two? Why one so angry and plain? Why take her away?

EARTH WITCHES ARE NOT easy to find, even for last born princes. If the old tales are true, they tended to stumble upon magic whenever they sought our fortunes, but magic only returned to this world a generation ago. And the prince sought a different form of destiny.

The witch he found, or who found him, inhabited a cave where the cliffs met the sea.

Light did not touch that place, but the smell would ever linger in the prince’s memory, clearer than any scent he had ever known. The dampness. The unnamable, salty must. Not just mud or mildew—something like raw earth but richer and simpler. The definition of the solid world. The witch herself.

He tried not to stare, but he couldn’t resist. Nothing had prepared him for a face half-transformed into gemstone, shoulders made of malachite, even once human hair replaced by crystals that stretched up instead of cascading down. Her left arm, mostly clay, remained at her side, and she stretched out the right, still flesh and bone.

What brings you here, my prince?

There was no slick temptation in her voice, no cool allure, but there was a bluntness to force a response from a stone.

What is your request?

CHAPTER 2

MERMAID

My people have a saying: every wave reaches the shore. His people call it fate. I call it the law of dumb luck and bullheadedness.

That’s my only explanation for how he found her. It certainly wasn’t because he had a plan. Someone with a plan wouldn’t wave his arms around more wildly than anemone or struggle to swim. Desperate for her attention, he keeps waving and tries to mime.

Ondine becomes bored rather quickly. The first merman in existence is something she doesn’t mind tossing away.

She turns her back to the former human, focusing on her shells, and Alamer swims over to join me behind the coral that covers this lower stretch of sea floor, the water light in pressure and green with algae. My hands start to greet Alamer, but her signing makes them pause.

Will you help him?

My shoulders drop, and I grimace, but Alamer’s eyes plead. It’s rare enough to see any emotion widen those deep indigo eyes, and the unfamiliar expression is made more powerful by the contrast of her fin-sharp cheekbones and obsidian face. My sister has not frowned in a decade, much less begged.

You’ll understand him better than any of us. Just to discover—how. She emphasizes this last gesture quite a bit, and my own curiosity surfaces. I would never admit it, but I cannot deny it.

And he seems so—sincere, for a mortal, for a man especially. All the waves of his face, the downcast gaze, the wrinkled brow, the half-parted lips, are easy enough for a child to read.

There is shame in his eyes, as he stares after Ondine, that seems to reveal some intelligence, some self-awareness of his hopeless naivety. Yet still he looks, still he clings to something wholly absurd.

Humans.

His eyes soak in almost every detail of her. They are looking at every part of her except one, in fact. He is pointedly avoiding the curves of her chest. I’m not sure why.

Alamer signs something I don’t see clearly, and I return her gaze. She doesn’t repeat herself. We never do.

Very well, I agree at last, swimming closer to the sea bed where he sulks.

His black eyebrows raise in surprised recognition, and though he clearly wishes I were bluer, he grants me his attention. He has a small scar under his eye that wasn’t there when he was still human.

Using my tail fin and some magic, I write a question in the sand. After all my practice, I can write more quickly than most humans with a pen.

How did you get a tail?

He tries to use his fin and, failing, uses a finger instead.

E-a-r-t-h w-i-t-c-h-. He scratches letter by letter, each one disappearing as soon as he writes it. He has no magic to keep the letters pressed into the sand.

Ocean take those humans who try to work enchantments. I hope the spell cost her two legs too.

Wait, I command before swimming up to shallower water to gather seaweed and stones, anything he can use as letters. It will be agonizingly slow, but it should work.

What did the witch ask of you? I write using the seaweed, pinning it in place with the stones.

He looks confused, blinking at the words I’ve written and then blinking back at me.

My tail writes directly in the sand, betraying my impatience, no doubt.

She just gave you a free tail? She must have wanted something.

He arranges the seaweed slower than a sea slug.

Nothing.

And you believed that? Everyone wants something.

I consider swimming to inform Alamer then and there, end the whole business before it begins, but he looks so pathetic.

Infantine gullibility aside, she will not speak to you, I write. She cannot.

He nods before I finish.

Yes, I know, he rearranges again, a sea turtle out of water. The witch said. You sign. You use hands.

It is all we have. We do not read.

He looks at me pointedly, face waves wrinkled, before re-rearranging, You do.

Only me. I will not translate. There are no teachers. There are no mermen. Go home. Get your legs ba- I stop writing when I realize what he’s spelled out.

Will you teach me?

I am so struck by this question I cannot move.

To sign, he clarifies, his tail wagging in excitement. So I can speak to her. So I can say—

He could teach me too.

I scold myself for the mad, selfish thought.

What do you want to say?

To thank her. She saved my life.

I try not to laugh.

I will tell her.

His heroine is continuing her shell inspection. I swim up to her and explain the situation. Ondine giggles and waves in his direction. He floats five feet up at this attention and plummets back down once she blows him a kiss, almost landing on a bed of coral.

I want to Boil her, and I tell her as much, but she waves me off.

She said you are very welcome, and you should go home, I lie.

His face contorts more than that of a wounded dolphin.

But my gratitude is inexpressible, and I have no home, he arranges, having to destroy many of his words once I read them because he doesn’t have enough sticks to write his thesis. It has taken me days to follow the witch’s directions, days of trepidation and pain. I cannot begin—

I sense neo-gallant poetry coming on and erase the words by sweeping away the seaweed with my tail.

Do princes compete in an annual stupid contest, or are you the reigning champion for life? Go home, I write instead.

He swims just beyond the reach of my tail so he can write again without being erased, using a stick this time, even though each letter will fade immediately. The waves of his face arch in hope.

T-e-a-c-h m-e.

GO HOME.

T-e-a-c-h m-e. I b-e-g y-o-u.

There is nothing for you here. No damsels in distress, no palace, no servant to carry your hairbrush.

He stops writing and kneels, as well as one can with a tail, on the sea floor. His eyes widen, pleading.

He could teach me too.

It is not easy, I write.

He nods and then bows his head.

It could take months.

He presses his forehead to the sand as well.

His humility is affected by self-importance. It seems like a performance of something he has only seen done for show. He probably thinks I have no idea what it means for a man of his station to go so low, but if he thinks I have no idea, then is it genuine submission?

Pampered privilege’s attempt to kiss the king's ring like the lower folks.

But my people have no king, and we have no ring. Appearance is nothing to us, just as it is nothing to the Ocean.

Still, there is something sincere. Blind as he is to most of his foolishness, he is clearly willing to be foolish, to go lower still, abandon kings and rings and crowns and ribbons, for some reason infatuation alone cannot explain.

I flick my tail at him, and he sits back up, the waves of his face smooth.

Why? I demand.

For the first time today, the prince hesitates.

I retrieve some seaweed for him, and he twirls the plant in his pale hands for a few seconds. He looks at me with some expression I can’t name in any language.

Because I won’t leave you alone until you do. Because I can’t go a day without thinking of the hour that angel saved me. Because she’s the first thing to stir—-he pauses and then changes the word- to call— -he changes the replacement too- to move my soul in any way, make it feel anything, in so long.

He looks up at me with those eyes again, so naïve and yet so hurting. I realize he has lost something to get here, perhaps more than he realizes, and he has clearly come too far to regain it.

This is a mistake. He could ruin—so much.

Only if I let him.

Come with me.

CHAPTER 3

PRINCE

You drowned once. I can drown you again, but be warned. There are senses, sensations, you won’t have as a merman.

Yes, well, I rather assumed, given that half my body is a tail...

Not just that. Mermaids don’t eat or drink. They don’t need to. Even if they tried, the sweetest fruit would taste only of salt.

Food has already lost its taste to me.

For generations, mermaids were just stories to his people. Folk tales. But then, so was magic. Now, man’s civilizations are the legends. Technology and cities lost to war, the world itself nearly lost—until the magic returned. They only had books to remember the past, but even these were few. And they could explain none of the magic that had overtaken the land.

But perhaps, the prince thought, beneath the sea, the magic never left.

The prince had read libraries about the seas and their mysteries. The texts were usually outdated, wholly unaware of how the world had changed, alluding to things and places that no longer existed or that were now overrun by enchanted forests and beasts, but they were all he had. So many books offered different techniques, better routes, more profitable trades.

His father, if he noticed the prince at all, dismissed all discussion and any suggestion he proposed for reaching those far off lands again, indignant that someone so bookish and inexperienced could think he had anything of use to offer a real sailor. He insisted those books would be his downfall and often threatened to send the prince off to a monastery since he so loved scrolls and futile efforts to understand something no one did.

The prince read anyway. Often, he read to escape. He sought to dive into deeper questions and philosophies than tides and salt. The books brought worlds to explore and people to learn of other than courtiers and sailors, but they offered help too.

He bore the brunt of his father’s temper without losing who he was and what he wanted.

Until we lost everything.

Until His Majesty proved to be right after all.

But his teacher knew none of that yet.

And she knew nothing of how the prince felt beneath the waves—the crushing weights in his chest and voiceless scream in his throat. She couldn’t have comprehended the relief he felt when he realized they were surfacing.

He gulped and gasped like a fish suffocating in air. An appropriate image, given that he now had a fish’s tail.

The mermaid ignored him and started humming.

The prince claimed no great knowledge of music. He’d preferred writing prayers to singing them. His brothers didn’t care for music much, and his father