Blue Water (A Little Mermaid Reverse Fairytale Book 2)

by J. A. Armitage

  I’d tried sacrificing myself for Ari before, and my grandfather had saved me. This time my grandfather wasn’t around to stop me. I waited until he fell asleep and crept out of the bathroom. I was going to find the leader and offer myself up in exchange for curing Ari. I couldn’t live without him. I knew that now. The pain would be unbearable. This way, he would survive. The leader liked my hair; maybe I could get her to cure my mother too.

  I perched on the edge of the deck, looking overboard. Josh and Seth were nowhere to be seen, so presumably, they were back on the ship having shot enough footage. The sun was beginning to lower in the sky, and the sirens kept guard in the water below.

  I was just about to fling myself over when I was grappled to the floor. It was Ari, and the two of us skidded for a way and then fell overboard anyway.

  As we hit the water, all I could see was blood, and it was obvious who it belonged to. Wrapping my arms around his waist, I pulled him to the surface. His chest was raw and bloody, and below the ocean surface, I could feel he still had legs. Something had happened to stop the magic that brought his tail back.

  He didn’t make a sound when I pulled him up to a rock. He drifted in and out of consciousness, his eyes flickering.

  “Why did you change? Why did you come after me?”

  “You forget I can see your thoughts when you are near,” he gave me a small smile and then his eyes closed. He’d known I was trying to save him, and he’d decided to save me instead. I screamed loudly, shouting out his name, but his eyes remained closed. All my screaming did was bring most of the people on the ship to the deck and alert the sirens. Within a minute of me getting onto the rock, we were surrounded by them. Looking up, I could see my friends on the ship.

  “Help me!” I shouted to no one in particular. “Ari is dying.”

  “We do not care,” the leader said, swimming through the other sirens. “His body is of no use to us. Look at him. Leave him here on the rocks and let the birds have him.”

  How easily she dismissed him.

  “No!” I will not go back without him. You need to heal him, or all this is over.”

  She glared at me. “I’m already doing you a favor by not taking your bodies now. I do not see why I should do you any more favors. I should kill you now.”

  “Kill her, and this ship goes up in flames.”

  We all looked up to see Hayden with a gas lamp in his hand. He was poised, ready to smash it onto the wooden deck. When Astrid saw what he was doing, she ran back and got another one.

  “Everyone on this ship will burn. You’ll get nothing except Erica.”

  “No!” she screeched, seeing her prize almost slip away. “I will save him, but only him. I know there are others in your land and I will not extend my magic to them.”

  “Do it!” I demanded. I’d figure out a way to help the others back home later, now Ari’s plight was dire. His breathing was shallow, and his body was a bleeding pulpy mass. He didn’t have much time.

  The leader spread her wings. Even they looked like a poorly put together mess of mismatched feathers taken from numerous seabirds. She took off into the sky and flew over the island.

  “Where is she going?” I asked in a panic, cradling Ari’s head in my arms.

  “Do not fear,” snapped one of the nearby sirens, showing green furry teeth, “She is going to get the magic.”

  Get the magic? I’d assumed it was within her, that these sirens were magical beings. I’d certainly been a victim of their magic. Not that I cared. I was just happy that something was to be done to help Ari. I stroked his face, and as I did, I watched the disease work its way up his neck.

  I tapped my toe upon a rock impatiently, desperate for the lead siren to come back with whatever it was she needed to save him. If she didn’t get back soon, it would be too late. Ari’s face was wet with my tears, but salt water alone could not heal his wounds.

  “Come on, come on,” I whispered under my breath as if it would hurry the siren up. The disease was up to his chin now, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. My stomach churned as I watched the insidious line of red get higher and higher. No medicine in any of the kingdoms could help him now. Magic was his only chance of survival, and then, only if it came in time. I searched the dimming skies for her and grazed my eyes over the island I’d barely looked at since getting here. I had no reason to as the sirens lived on the rocks and in the water surrounding it, but now as I looked, I could see it was a bleak place with patches of grass, sand, and rocks, and not much else. I could only see part of the island, but it was not a large place. We could have sailed around the whole thing in a couple of hours if we had chosen to. Beyond it, there were more islands that looked the same. Barren, desolate places that suited the weird sirens very well.

  A light appeared in the sky. My heart lifted when I saw it was the lead siren. She was glowing; her body appeared like an early star in the evening sky, getting bigger as she approached. She’d gone back to her beautiful self. Like an angel descending from heaven, she touched down beside us. Despite her current form, she was not using her magic to pull us in. I did not have the desire to cut my body for her, to be part of her as I had the night before. I looked for something in her hands, the thing that was causing her magic, but her hands were empty. She placed them on Ari’s chest and immediately the skin there healed. With each inch of Ari’s skin that came back to life, her light dimmed a little. By the time she got to his legs, her light was almost out, but she persisted. His legs grew scales and then became one until he was whole again. The perfect specimen of a merman. He opened his eyes as the lead siren fell to the rocks beside him.

  “What happened?” asked Ari sitting up. He no longer looked tired, and his color had returned to normal. I wanted to fling myself upon him, but the siren needed help. It would have been so easy to leave her, but she’d brought Ari back to me, and now she was suffering. I pulled her into my arms, the same way I’d done with Ari just moments before.

  Unlike Ari, she was breathing normally, but her eyes were closed. Her beauty had completely faded, and she was back to being her normal self. I didn’t let that stop me. I was so grateful to her for saving Ari that I hugged her closely. She received the same amount of my tears that Ari had as I tried to wake her. The other sirens stayed in the water, but they watched me closely.

  “Please come back!” I whispered to her, stroking her misshapen face. She’d done a lot of wrong, but in the end, if it wasn’t for her, Ari would already be dead.

  Ari pulled himself around to her other side and held her as I took off my jacket and laid it on her. It was still damp, but at least it kept the wind off her. I couldn’t understand why the other sirens were doing nothing to help her. Neither Ari nor I had any magic to do anything but after a few minutes, her one good eye fluttered open. She looked at me with such a curious expression before sitting up. My jacket fell down around her waist. She picked it up, held it in her hands, feeling the fabric then handed it back to me.

  “Go back to your ship,” she commanded. She stood up without looking back at me and Ari and dived straight into the water. The other sirens followed her, disappearing into the depths.

  The whole thing piqued my curiosity, but I was so thrilled to have Ari back to normal that I didn’t think on it for too long. He was completely healthy again, and judging by the expression on his face, in good spirits.

  “I’d forgotten what it was like to not be in pain. Even when I had my tail, the magic weighed me down. Until it was lifted, I hadn’t realized just how much.”

  “You still have your tail now,” I pointed out.

  He looked down and grinned. “I know.”

  He hadn’t grasped what I was getting at. “Your tail is dry. You are out of water. You no longer have legs.”

  He looked down again. “The siren took all the magic, not just the magic that affected me in a bad way. I’m back to how I was before I had any dealings with the sea witch.”

  I scooted over to him, and
he wrapped me in his arms. It was just like coming home.

  “Get a room!” Someone shouted from the ship deck. I recognized Josh’s voice.

  “Exactly who is that?” Ari asked, glancing up at the deck.

  I grinned. “I’ll introduce you properly, come on.”

  Hayden had to climb back down the rope ladder to bring Ari back up again. It was in fine spirits that we all headed inside to eat our first meal in hours.

  The servants had done a marvelous job of making dinner, and for the first time since starting the trip, everyone, including all the crew, sat around the huge dining table and ate together.

  The atmosphere was almost party-like as we toasted to Ari’s health. His return to fine health affected me too in ways I had never expected. I felt lighter than I had in weeks. I’d not felt any pain, not in the same way as Ari had, but my body had felt heavier, slower. Now that he was better I felt as though I would float off my seat if I didn’t hold onto it. It was just another of the weird and wondrous ways the magic of the bonding held us together. I breathed easier knowing it was all over.

  “The sirens aren’t surrounding the ship anymore,” pointed out Captain Howell. She was the only one who had refused a glass of wine citing the fact she was in charge of the ship, and she couldn’t do that without all her faculties about her.

  “If they’ve gone, why don’t we leave now before they come back?” Hayden asked the people around the table.

  Almost everyone was in agreement, but something didn’t rest easy with me. For a start, going home without a way to help my mother was not an option. Now I’d seen how quickly Ari was saved, I needed to figure a way to get help for the others too. Plus there was the fact that the lead siren hurt herself in saving Ari. It might have been temporary, but she’d given everything she had. It would have been much easier to let him die. Many of the sirens had wings, and so if Astrid and Hayden had set the ship on fire, the sirens would have been able to fly up and grab them all before they burned to death. Plus, I think it was quite obvious that Hayden was bluffing. He wasn’t particularly good at it. No, something else had made her save Ari. Despite everything, I saw compassion there. If there was even an ounce of compassion in her, there was a chance she would help the others.

  I put this theory to everyone around the table. Most shook their heads.

  “She wasn’t showing much compassion when she had us chained up and was ready to cut our skin off,” Hayden reminded me.

  “No, she didn’t. But think about it. These women don’t get married and have children. They are all female. They are ancient beings that stay alive for centuries by taking body parts from others. Without being able to do that, the whole species would die out. If you were in the same situation, what would you do?”

  Hayden shrugged, but I could tell he was thinking about it.

  “I never thought about it that way,” Astrid replied glumly. “It must be awful watching your body fall apart due to old age and yet you keep on living.”

  “I don’t think they are inherently bad people. They are doing what they must do to survive,” I added.

  “Well, I, for one, don’t want to help their species survive by giving them any of my limbs,” Hayden argued, standing up and throwing his napkin down on his empty plate. “I think we should go while we can.”

  “Actually I disagree,” Josh asserted, joining in the conversation.

  Hayden rolled his eyes. “Of course you do,” he replied, his voice dripping in sarcasm. He held his hand out to Astrid who took it. She gave me an ‘I’m sorry’ look as she followed him to the door.

  “You are obviously going to do whatever you want despite the fact that this is supposed to be Astrid’s and my honeymoon. Funnily enough, when you offered me this ship, I wasn’t expecting you to come with us and bring us to somewhere so dangerous.”

  I opened my mouth to answer him, but he was already gone, taking Astrid with him.

  “Don’t listen to him,” Josh said. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying. You did what you had to do.”

  I sighed. Josh was wrong. Hayden had every right to be unhappy with me. Not that I could do anything about it at the moment.

  “Why do you think we should stay?” I asked Josh. I knew my reasons, but I was interested to learn what the great adventurer had to say on the matter.

  “I think we should stay the night because I think I’ve found a way to save your friends and family.

  The First Time

  I tried to get more information out of Josh, but he refused to say any more on the subject. After dinner, though, I noticed that he made sure both Seth and his camera were with him when he left the dining room. Apart from the problem with Hayden and upsetting his honeymoon, I felt amazingly wonderful. Ari was back with me, and Josh had made claims that he could save everyone else. I had to ask a couple of members of staff to carry Ari to my bedroom, but once we were there, I shut the door behind us and left the world outside.

  He lay on the bottom bunk as getting him up to the top bunk where I’d been sleeping would have been too difficult a task.

  Now that we were together and alone, a fit of nerves overcame me. I’d been dreaming of this moment for so long, but now it was here, I wasn’t sure how to act, or what to do.

  “Are you ok?” Ari asked as I dithered by the sink, cleaning my teeth and making a huge show of wiping my mouth on a towel. I’d forgotten just how good-looking he was. My insides squirmed just looking at him. He was completely naked which wasn’t helping my insides one bit. I’d seen him naked before. He lived in the sea, he was almost always sans clothes so to speak, but now that we were alone in my room, his nakedness was so much more apparent, so much more out there. I’d slept next to him when he had legs, but this was something different entirely. My whole body shook with nerves as I began to undress. His eyes never left mine as I pulled my t-shirt over my head. My skin felt rough with the salt from the sea water I’d allowed to dry there. I kept my eyes locked onto his and took a deep breath as I pulled my trousers down, quickly followed by my underwear.

  Just as he had appeared more naked than usual, I had never felt so undressed in my life. I stood completely still as he raked his eyes down my body.

  “Come to me.”

  My heart thumped wildly as I laid myself on the bed next to him. I had missed him so much, and I wanted him so badly.

  I shifted my position so his arm was under my head and his chest was touching mine. With him so close to me, everything was right with the world. Our bonding had never been so apparent to me as it was now. I could feel the rhythm of his heart and even though he appeared a lot calmer than I felt, his beat matched mine, a percussion of souls. Whatever magic this was, it hadn’t been stripped away by the siren’s spell.

  I ran my hand down his chest, marveling at the curvature of his muscles, hardened by years of swimming through the ocean.

  His tail wrapped around my legs, shuffling my lower half closer and increasing the rate of my breathing. I was completely entwined in his body, and though we were out of the ocean now, I felt as though I was drowning in him.

  I’d run through the whole gamut of emotions with him since whatever magic it was brought us together and bonded us, but never in my life had I been taken to such highs as he was taking me now. He kissed me slowly along my neckline, looking up occasionally to see if I was ok with it. As he began to kiss lower, I closed my eyes, letting out a soft moan as his lips touched the skin on my abdomen, leaving a trail of salty kiss marks over my skin. My first time was not the experience I’d been expecting. Mainly, because I’d not known such emotions, such feeling existed at all.

  I didn’t know what to expect. He was a merman and I…well I was human. Anatomically we didn’t match up. Our minds and our souls fitted together perfectly as though we were made for each other, but unless we found a way for him to become human or for me to be a full mermaid, our bodies were never going to mesh in the right way. And yet we found a way to make it work for us and afterward
s, he held me tightly as I couldn’t stop shaking. I could barely control the magnitude of my emotions, and it was only when he softly stroked my hair and whispered words of love to me that I got my heart rate down enough to sleep.

  Overboard

  The ship was a hive of activity the next morning. I didn’t have to leave the little piece of heaven I’d found, snuggled in the crook of Ari’s arm to hear it.

  Someone whistled a merry tune as they passed by my door, and I could hear the crew setting the dining hall up for breakfast.

  “We should probably get up,” commented Ari lazily. “It sounds like we are the last two in bed.”

  I snuggled in deeper, relishing the warmth of his body next to mine. “I like it that way,” I replied. “I might stay here all day and let everyone else get on with it.”

  Ari pulled his arm up, taking my head with it and kissed me on the forehead. After last night, I was sure I’d used up my quota of flutters, but sure enough, butterflies began to swarm in my stomach, and my heart began to beat that little bit quicker.