Beautiful to Me

by E. L. Tenenbaum

  “It’s just—I have to! Sienna—” I began.

  “Sienna,” the prince repeated darkly.

  “Sienna,” I repeated firmly. “This should be happening with Sienna.”

  “Why?” he pressed, his frustration too genuine to be staged, and there really wasn’t much I could think of to argue in response that I hadn’t already said.

  I was caught in a whirlpool, emotions so fierce spinning around me so no matter how fast I darted I couldn’t break free. This was not the way this was supposed to go. This was not the way any of the past few months was supposed to go.

  “Why not?” I countered, completely exasperated.

  “Why not?” the prince echoed forcefully, his exasperation deepening the accent of his words to sound as thrilling and wonderful as ever. “Why not? With all the books, and all the lovely words, is there any way to explain it?” He heaved a frustrated breath and ran an aggravated hand through his thoroughly rumpled hair, taking a minute to control his approaching tumble of words. “Because I do not see her eyes and wonder what is behind them when I close mine at night. Because when I have something to share, she is not the one I seek out.” The prince finally pushed away from the door, but only to move closer to me, further boxing me inside the room. “Because she is not the one who distracts me from a magnificent view I’ve hiked hours to see.”

  He reached for my hand, but I fell back at step. I’d rather not relive the pained expression that came across his face at that, but it was too much for me. How could I give in when my whole life had been about Sienna? How could I give in when I knew what that would do to her? How could I not when another life, a life I had unintentionally intruded upon, was begging me to become part of it instead?

  “Ariel,” he whispered, and the lilt of his voice, the way only he could caress my name like that, nearly left me in pieces.

  “Please—” I interrupted.

  “No,” the prince insisted, “for now I must say what you, for whatever foolish reason, refuse to hear.”

  “But—But it’s not my place! It can never be,” I quickly cut in. “Didn’t your sister talk to you?”

  “She did,” the prince said seriously, his tone making plain he had no desire to stop what he’d begun despite my obvious distress. Stubborn man that he was. “We had quite an interesting little talk before she left.”

  The tone he spoke in wasn’t any better. It almost sounded as if he’d convinced Queen Cordelia of his position. Who then remained to stand between us?

  Prince Rainn. Could I petition him? I searched my memories, and abruptly understood with the force of an angry gale set on capsizing any ship at sea just who he’d been referring to when he’d wished his friend farewell that long ago day. And who knows what more was said if they’d grabbed even a few minutes to talk around the coronation.

  I violently shook my head in protest, a last effort to disperse the unrelenting waves of realization mercilessly crashing into me. I couldn’t hear any more. I didn’t want to hear at all. Didn’t he know what was at stake?

  The prince stepped closer to me anyway, at which point my lungs struggled to work, and I felt like I was drowning on air.

  “From the day you turned on me in the library and reminded me that even a foundling has a name—”

  I think that’s what he said. The pounding of my heart in my ears was so loud I was lost somewhere in the roar of a wave, right before it was set to shatter against the shore. The prince stepped even closer and this time he did catch my hand because I couldn’t find my feet in time to step away. In truth, there was no longer anywhere left for me to hide that he wouldn’t find me, unless I sank to the bottom of the sea itself. And how could I do that now? I clutched his hand in return.

  “Ariel,” he repeated, his voice, his face, his presence too close to mine, “since that day, I am a ship that sprang a leak.”

  His fingers trailed up to my face, and I’m sure my eyes only closed reflexively. Or maybe they remained open and stared into the depth of his fiery, coal black ones. It’s difficult to say. My mind was struggling to row a boat through a crashing storm. There was only so much it could fight against the tide before it overturned completely.

  “I’ve taken on too much water, and I’m sinking fast.”

  My voice hitched in my throat with a quiet squeak. It didn’t matter, he was close enough to hear it, to hear the empty cavern within me that longed to be filled with something warm, accepting, and good.

  “I once invited you to walk beside me—”

  “Holding the frogling,” I reminded him.

  “Ariel,” he said, his accent unusually measured, his ink black eyes boring into mine, “that wasn’t only about the frogling.”

  I had no response to that.

  “Please,” he pleaded. “Don’t leave.”

  “I—I don’t want—” I managed to squeeze out, the words more shape than sound.

  “Do you want to stay?”

  “I—Yes.”

  “Then marry me!”

  I didn’t say anything, only grasped his hand more fiercely. I may have opened my eyes or closed them, my lips may have formed words or not, I’m not really sure. I wanted to cry, but I had no tears. Who could have ever anticipated this?

  “Marry me,” he insisted. “Please.”

  I couldn’t withstand it anymore, could no longer see the point in my futile resistance of a man who’d bothered to notice me, despite all the beauty he was surrounded with every day. A man who intrigued me with his interests and wonder of the wider world, who insisted, and delighted, in sharing it all with me.

  His eyes roamed my face, reading everything it said that I just couldn’t.

  “Marry me.”

  What had Prince Rainn said? Something about catching the extraordinary. Hadn’t I also grown up with the best my world had to offer? Hadn’t I also known privilege, if not on my own merit, then because of who my parents were? Why were his words any more pertinent to the prince than to me?

  I looked at the man who’d seen me and thought me extraordinary, a dusty jewel lost in barnyard dirt, who listened to what I had to say and chose to favor a fox which used its mind over a leopard with the most beautiful of coats. Who saw that I had my own shadow to cast.

  A few tears escaped the corners of his eyes. Without thinking, I brushed them away and he responded with a muffled hiccup, clasping my hand against his cheek, and I let him. Every part of me was numb, and all my heart could say was, here is the man who never doubted the abilities of my mind, here is the man who unleashed my voice from between the bars of music, here is the man who pried open my closely guarded heart.

  “Marr—”

  I couldn’t, wouldn’t fight it anymore. I forgot about everything and every part and every wonder in either world and focused only on him. Him. And me. He had to have seen that in my eyes, how much he meant to my own little world, when I finally, finally nodded.

  The prince’s face broke into a smile so wide I could feel it in the tips of my fingers, as welcome and warming as the rays of sun gleefully dancing on a glittering sea. The joy suffusing him was infectious and a giddy giggle escaped me. Overwhelmed, he swept me into his arms, plain face, clumsy feet, overlarge body and all.

  I couldn’t believe how happy a simple nod from me could make him. I hoped and prayed he would always be this happy, vowed to do my best each day to make sure of it.

  “I want to have a large family,” I blurted out, somewhere into the front of his shoulder.

  “It’s fortunate we have the space for it,” he said into my hair.

  And so I gave in, with every pound weighing down my ungainly frame. I still don’t know how he did it then, how he did it still, with a private glance, a shared smile, an impulsive caress of my still unexceptional face. Because in that moment, that moment when I responded to him, he pulled me even closer, as if there was still too much distance between our already entwined frames. That is when a long-shut window of understanding finally slid open. It
wasn’t my body the prince was embracing, pulling closer and closer to him, but me, the me within my body, the me he wanted so much to be part of his life.

  And I responded in kind because the prince had done for me what no one else had, not even myself. He’d found me somewhere within the body I was so ashamed of and in turn used as my shield against the world. Like Sienna and the Frog King, I was my own kind of foundling, not as a mermaid in a human body, but as myself in a physical form I never truly accepted. To the prince, it didn’t matter; whatever clothed me outside could not hide the person he was so taken with inside. My spots may not shine as brightly as the boldest of leopards, and though he admired them because they were unique and mine, it wasn’t my spots the prince was so taken with.

  For all my posturing, that was the first time I truly understood what it was to have a soul. In that one moment, when my externalities faded away with my resistance, when I was finally being embraced by a man who only wanted me, I understood being connected to something eternal.

  That’s when I knew it would take a long while for me to return to the sea, because I would not leave the man who’d pushed me to realize all that.

  Considering what was to immediately follow, let no one think that I fell for a man just because he was a prince who bothered to see me. Let no one think that I fell for a man who opened up his world with all its breathtaking vistas and odd little contraptions and ability to walk upright on two feet. Let no one think I only fell for his charm, his enthusiasm, his intelligence, his compassion, or his looks. No, it was something deeper than that. Much, much deeper.

  I could say he gave me love, but that would be unkind to the mother and father who raised me. Though it could not compare, it was something I already had to some extent.

  I could say he gave me friendship and respect, but that would be unkind to a particularly dear pair of dolphins who never once questioned why they were my only friends, who never once commented on my differences. Even Queen Cordelia had opened her heart and home to me with few questions asked and little comment made.

  I could say he gave me hope, or courage, or faith, or any number of things that were all true, but were also always there, somehow, in some way.

  Rather, what made all the difference to me, what finally convinced me to entrust him with my simple heart in exchange for the precious one he offered me in return, was really one simple oft-overlooked thing.

  He was the one who lifted my head out of the sand and gently brushed away the grains marring my vision. It was not a sweeping mountain view, or awe-inspiring landscape he showed me; rather, it was a look deep inside myself, a reason to believe there was something to see at all. Therein was a girl who gave a foundling back her name, who saw something in an ugly purple frog, who shared her moment of fame with a court composer. There was intelligence, creativity, respect, passion and pride in the work I did. And what’s more, I liked what I saw.

  For the first time in my life, I felt noticed for all I had to offer, for all I could truly be. For the first time in my life, I felt…beautiful.

  And he didn’t do it by holding up a mirror and pointing out the height of my cheekbones or the length of my hair or the entrancing sea-swirled color of eyes framed by thick lashes. Rather, he gave me a glimpse through his eyes of the girl he saw through them. And it was someone I had never seen before. It was an imperfect person, but it was me, with so much that deserved to be believed in and seen. I could not resent anyone who hadn’t noticed me before, who’d overlooked the girl trailing behind in others’ shadows, because I had never been generous enough to notice myself.

  So let anyone who cares to know that I fell for the man who made me beautiful to me.

  Over the years, I have thought long and hard about how, on this land—or any other for that matter—the prince would choose me over someone more appropriate for him, someone like a princess or duchess, someone graceful and dazzling to behold. Someone like Sienna.

  Of course, when a feeling is true and deep enough, there is no amount of words to ever fully explain it, however, there are markers to offer some insight about how it could be. It was true that I had been the mermaid to rescue the prince that fateful night from the storm, but it was also true that it was Sienna’s magical voice he’d heard. He never knew that there were two different mermaids, or that he had indeed found both of those elusive, magical beings.

  I have considered a few reasons why Sienna may have been overlooked in my favor, why he could have been so taken with me despite being surrounded with beauty and charm and grace.

  To start, although Sienna was undoubtedly more attractive and far more charming than I, and though she may not have bothered the prince with her fawning, it was her fawning that made her just like any other noblewoman he was used to ignoring because such is the life of a handsome prince, and heir, too. I was always reserved in the prince’s presence, yet still open in sharing my thoughts, and I think he was grateful for it.

  Next, I challenged him, and he responded in kind. He loved that I read the books he brought to me, that I understood them well enough to discuss them with him afterward, that I truly enjoyed learning all types of subjects that bored many others. I believe it thrilled him to find a girl with a mind he could so value.

  Plus, I wasn’t afraid to stand up to him, even if I never should have when I was only a foundling myself and lowly apprentice gardener. I doubt he’ll ever admit it, but I think he liked the notion of someone who wouldn’t let him get away with whatever he wanted just because he was royalty.

  In short, and this is a reason created entirely for my own benefit, the prince loved music, music had bound us together from the very start, and I simply had the best singing voice he would ever hear.

  The prince’s proposal may well have been the best thing that ever happened to me, but when the initial ecstasy faded, I was slammed with the uncomfortable realization that my marriage to him would be the very literal end of Sienna. It was I, not her, whom the prince loved more than father and mother, on whom his thoughts were fixed, who he worked to make happy. Unless I could convince her to return to the sea before the ceremony and take Tatiana’s revised offer, she would forfeit her life and fade into its foam more than two hundred years too soon. I highly doubted Sienna could be persuaded to cast her undivided attentions on another human in time to save herself.

  I thought a long while about what I could possibly say to remind Sienna of the enchanted life and doting family she’d left behind. Surely she’d learned enough, seen enough in over a year on land to finally return to her true home in the sea. Surely, she wasn’t willing to give up on the love and goodness still awaiting her there.

  I’ll admit that for the briefest of moments I was tempted to call Pavo to talk some sense into her, but she’d never really listened to the funny little axolotl before, and I wasn’t entirely sure where to find him anymore. Bestaymor would have been a good option, but I didn’t entirely trust her not to say something that would goad Sienna into purposely defying her will. King Trident and Tatiana were out of the question, and her mother or sisters were hardly optimal choices. As always, it had to be me.

  I wandered the halls for days searching for the right words, for a sign, for anything that would tell me how to deal with my obstinate princess. I spent long hours glaring at the mermaids on my ceiling, pleading with them to speak with me, to grant me the magic of persuasion, if only for a day. I stared at the large tanks of colorful sea life all throughout the palace, begging the fish within to help me release a girl as trapped as they. I lay for quite some time on the glass-bottomed terrace outside, my face close to the world teeming just beneath the surface, desperate for help of any kind.

  At the end of all that searching, I was left with as little as I had started with. Even Heaven only offered warm rays of sunshine.

  Still, I had to do something.

  Realizing I couldn’t push it off any longer—especially as the prince would soon be speaking with his parents about his intentions, whi
ch would lead to a kingdom-wide announcement soon after—I sought out Sienna for one final attempt to convince her to return home.

  I followed her out to the terrace late at night and quietly lowered myself onto the stone steps beside her, sitting with her as she soaked her feet in the sea. She turned enough to acknowledge my presence before returning her gaze to the distant, blackened horizon. At least she didn’t leave, so clearly she hadn’t heard anything yet. I figured it for a good sign, even if there would be nothing good about what was to follow.

  The silence between us grew long and heavy, and I decided there was nothing to do but break it.

  “Do you miss it, Princess?” I asked. “Even just a little?”

  Sienna graced me with a sideways glance that didn’t really say much of anything at all. So I tried something else. From where I’d set it on the step beside me, I offered her a small orange sea star. It wriggled along my hand toward her, listening to the direction of my touch. Sienna blinked at it, unimpressed.

  “Don’t you remember anything at all?” I asked in exasperation, miming tying back my hair with the sea star. “Or have you so completely erased it all from your mind?”

  Sienna shrugged beside me, which made me feel even worse.

  “Why must you be so obstinate about staying here?” the words finally broke loose, and I couldn’t stop them before they were done. “Why not allow yourself to remember, if just for one moment, the magic of the world you turned your back on? Why are you so willing to give up a life of favored royalty for the secondary life you have now? Why have you turned your back on the sea and all it’s given you?”

  Sienna, as usual, didn’t respond.

  I lowered my hand into the water and let the sea star return home. At least one of us should. I frantically searched my mind for something else that might persuade Sienna as she had yet to respond to my angry outburst. If she ever suspected her life might be reduced to just a few more sunsets, she never let on, never showed the slightest bit of worry that things wouldn’t turn out in her favor.