Blue Water (A Little Mermaid Reverse Fairytale Book 2)

by J. A. Armitage

  Unfortunately, there was a knock on the door. It seemed that Ari wasn’t the only one who thought I should get my ass out of bed.

  “Acania wants to speak to you.” It was Josh.

  I scrunched up my nose trying to remember who Acania was. I mentally listed the crew’s names in my head, but as far as I was aware, there wasn’t an Acania among them.

  “Just a minute!”

  Pulling myself away from Ari, I found a clean dress and slipped it over my head. Ari pulled a sheet over himself as I opened the door.

  “Woah, sorry for interrupting.” Josh winked and grinned in a very Josh-like manner, not seeming sorry at all. “The best man won, huh?”

  “Josh, I hate to break this to you, but there was never a competition. If there had been a competition for my affections, you would not have been in the running.”

  Josh clicked his tongue but kept the grin on his face. “I remember that time in the upturned boat that you begged me to kiss you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I think begging is a strong word. Who is Acania?”

  “Oh!” Josh stood up straight, now that he wasn’t making suggestive comments. “She’s that siren you saved.”

  My eyebrows shot up. What reason could she possibly have to speak to me?

  “She’s waiting upstairs.” Josh extended his index finger and pointed up. He lowered his voice. “She was quite calm and almost normal when she asked to come aboard, except for that rotten smell and that weird eye of hers.” He gave an involuntary shiver.

  “Can you help Ari get upstairs for breakfast? I’ll go and speak to her.”

  I left him to figure out the logistics of carrying a merman to the upper deck and headed up to meet Acania. We were due to leave for home this morning with a fleet of sirens behind us. I wondered what had changed. I hoped that whatever it was, it had something to do with helping the people of Havfrue. It was the one thing that plagued me about this trip. I’d managed to figure out how to free us from the sirens, but I hadn’t accomplished what I’d set out to do. On top of that, the sirens would be coming with us causing more problems and Hayden was still angry with me for ruining his honeymoon. The only good thing to come from this was the fact I had Ari back, and he was finally cured of his illness. All this was going through my mind as I entered the dining room. The others were already there eating breakfast, but Acania was nowhere to be seen. Astrid pointed to the door that led out onto the deck.

  Outside, the weather had turned. The wind from last night had picked up considerably, and sea spray wet the decks. I wished I’d put on something more substantial than a summer dress, but Acania didn’t seem to notice the weather. She must have heard me coming, but she continued to look out to sea.

  “Good morning,” I uttered, standing next to her by the railing. I could taste the salt in the wind, and within seconds my hair was soaked through. Acania nodded her head but remained silent. I wondered if I was supposed to start the conversation, but without knowing what she was here for, I wasn’t sure what to say.

  “Are your people ready to go? I wanted to set off early.” I started. I was hoping to have a conversation about her magic and bringing it with us, but it couldn’t be the first thing I said to her.

  She looked out over the foaming ocean “My people are not going.”

  “Oh?” I was surprised. That had been her reason for letting us go.

  “You tried to save me last night. After everything I had done to you and your friends.”

  “You saved Ari’s life!” I pointed out. “If it hadn’t been for you, he would have died.”

  “Yes. You should know that I only did it because he is a creature of the sea like me. Had he been human I would have let him rot.”

  I took in this information. “The sea witch who caused his disease in the first place didn’t care that he was a merman. Everyone who is affected by her spell is a merperson.”

  “I knew her. This sea witch you talk about. She lived here with us a long time ago. Her name was Ursula, and she hated what we had all become. We were once young and beautiful. We lured the ships onto the rocks with nothing but our beauty and our singing. Back then, we only desired company. The sailors we lured to our islands would come and party with us. We had the most amazing times, and when they had to leave, we let them go willingly. Many came back after they had completed their missions, they liked us so much. We had no need for magic.”

  She became silent once again.

  “What happened?” I couldn’t quite square up the image of those hideous sirens with the thought that anyone would come back willingly.

  “Time. Time happened. It was so slow at first that we barely noticed it, but when the sailors stopped coming, we realized how much we had aged. That’s when we decided to use our magic, and it was about that time that Ursula left us. She was the one who told us to use the body parts of sailors to stay alive. I was totally against it, so she left. It was a hundred years before I realized she was right. Our bodies had decayed to the point that if we didn’t, we wouldn’t survive.”

  “How did you originate? I mean, it’s strange for a species to only have females and have no way to procreate.”

  Acania laughed. He voice was so shrill I almost had to cover my ears.

  “You humans think the strangest of things. Do you think we were delivered here right from the gods? I do not believe in such things.”

  I squirmed, feeling embarrassed at my lack of knowledge. Anthony had been telling me for months that I needed to find out more about the other kingdoms and the beings that lived there. I knew magic existed, why not gods?

  “A few months ago I didn’t know mermaids existed. It was only recently I found out I was a half-mermaid myself. Two days ago I’d never heard of sirens, and yet, here you are. I’ve learned to be open-minded.”

  For the first time since I’d walked on deck, she turned to look at me. I tried not to flinch at her face.

  “You are half-mermaid?” She seemed surprised.

  “Yes, but I don’t have a tail, and I can’t breathe underwater on my own. I guess I inherited more of my father’s genes than my mother’s. It has only been recently that I learned to swim.”

  “Very little surprises me, but you do. A mermaid that lives on land. That must be difficult.”

  I thought about my problem with Ari. The fact that he couldn’t live on land with me was the biggest difficulty. “As I said, I didn’t know any different. I’ve always lived on land.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “There are male sirens. The way we live is not normal for our kind. Usually, the males would live on one island and the females on a neighboring island and once a year we’d meet in the middle to mate. Many hundreds of years ago a storm hit. It was extremely severe. This island has a network of underwater caves in which we were able to shelter. The men of the other island didn’t have such a place, and they all perished. As I told you before, we had the company of passing sailors, but unlike the merfolk, we cannot mate with humans. We can only take their body parts and use them to survive. It is not much of an existence, but it is all we have.”

  My heart went out to her. Her life sounded miserable. “You said that you aren’t coming with us. Why?”

  “I will be coming with you. It is my sisters who will stay behind. I know what humans are like. My sisters will be ridiculed and hounded. I will watch over your friends editing and make sure he shows the footage.”

  My heart sank. The way she had spoken, I had thought she was going to let us go free.

  “You still plan to lure people to their deaths?”

  “What else can I do?” she asked simply.

  I sighed. She was obviously not going to change her mind. It was yet another problem I would have to deal with. At least, I didn’t have to worry about the rest of the sirens. I probably should have felt more relief at it only being her, but in the back of my mind, I wondered what her real motive was and if we weren’t heading for more trouble.

  “Come inside,” I invite
d her. “They are serving breakfast.”

  I wasn’t sure how she would walk, as like Ari, she only had a tail, but she extended her wings and fluttered behind me.

  As I opened the door that would take us inside, Captain Howell raised the anchor. I felt the lurch of the ship as it began the long journey back home.

  The ship listed from side to side as another serving was brought out to accommodate Acania. I could see the thinly veiled revulsion in the eyes of the server as she piled food onto her plate. I’m sure Acania saw it too. Even with one eye, it was pretty hard to miss. I didn’t like the way Acania saw the world, but I could understand it. To be looked at in that way and worse still, to know how awful you looked when you were once one of the most beautiful creatures in the sea, must be a terrible torment.

  The rest of the people around the table only looked at her with mild curiosity. I could see that they were dying to know what she had said to me.

  “What is this?” she asked, looking down at her plate which had bacon, eggs, sausages and cooked tomatoes on it. She glanced around the table to see if anyone else was eating it. She probably thought we were trying to poison her.

  “It’s good. Try it,” I said, taking my fork and spearing a slice of bacon. She watched me eat it and waited until I swallowed before she was satisfied it wasn’t a ruse to kill her. Once she’d taken her first bite, she tucked right in. I guess it made a nice change from raw fish or whatever it was she usually ate.

  “What’s happening?” Hayden, who was seated next to me, whispered.

  I wished I could tell him some better news, but nothing really had changed. “She’s still wanting to have Josh air the footage he filmed to lure people there.”

  I sighed. As a queen, I should have been doing everything in my power to protect my kingdom, and here I was, not even the official monarch yet and actively bringing the enemy to our shores. Maybe Anthony was right. I wasn’t really cut out for ruling. I’d certainly not done a great job of it so far.

  After breakfast, Acania went outside, braving the howling wind and freezing rain. Through a porthole, I saw her holding onto the railing, gazing out over the stormy ocean in much the same way she had when I’d been out there with her. Not that there was much to see. The cloud was thick and heavy with rain, and everything out there was a shade of gray.

  “Let me get this straight,” Hayden started as the servants cleared our plates away. “Everyone is still sick, and she won’t do anything to help, and yet, she ’s coming back with us with the aim of making a TV show about her and her weird friends that will lure many of the people of Trifork back to them so the sirens can murder them for body parts?”

  I nodded bleakly. There was no point denying it. In coming out to sea, I’d made the situation worse.

  “I bet Josh is loving this,” Hayden added grumpily.

  I looked around the table. I’d not noticed before, but Josh was missing. “Where is Josh?”

  Hayden huffed. “The idiot asked for his food to be taken to his room, but I suppose we are the idiots now. He didn’t have to try to force food down while looking at that monstrosity.”

  “Hayden!” Astrid put her hand on his arm, and he visibly relaxed.

  He looked up. “I’m sorry. I’m just feeling frustrated. I wanted this trip to be special, and it’s been nothing but a nightmare from start to finish.”

  “I messed up. It’s my fault, but I promise that once this is over, you can take the ship anywhere you want.” Even as I said it, I could hear Anthony chastising me. Knowing my luck, in the short time we’d been away, Trifork would have broken out into war or something, and we’d need the ship elsewhere.

  “Why don’t I go out and talk to her?” Ari offered. “She might listen to me as we both come for the sea. She made the decision to save me after all.”

  “Why don’t you just push her overboard while you’re at it?” grumbled Hayden.

  Ari smiled “Because she has wings and would fly right back.”

  The ship rolled as a particularly large wave hit us. Seth stood up, looking rather green and rushed out of the room, more than likely to find somewhere to throw up.

  “The storm is really picking up,” observed Astrid. “Maybe you should wait until it subsides? She might have wings, but you don’t. I’d hate for you to accidentally fall over the side.”

  “If he fell, he’d be fine. You forget he’s a merman. The sea might look turbulent from up here, but below the surface, it will be calm.”

  As I said it, I noticed some movement through the porthole. It wasn’t Ari as he was still sitting beside me, but someone had joined Acania on deck.

  I pointed to the window so the others would see what I was seeing.

  “What does that imbecile think he’s doing?” Hayden shifted slightly to get a better view of what Josh was doing.

  He appeared to be trying to reason with Acania. The coat he wore was huge, and it appeared that he was hiding something under it.

  Another wave hit us, coming right over the deck. I had to grip the table to keep from falling over. When I looked back outside, both Josh and Acania were gone. They’d both been swept over the side.

  “Josh!” Astrid shouted, but it was too late. He was already gone.

  Dead Alive

  “Guys! Help me up!” Ari demanded.

  When I realized what he planned to do, I pulled his arm over my shoulder, wrapped my own arms around his waist and tried to lift him. Astrid ran around the table, quickly followed by Hayden. Between us, we managed to get him outside. The rain lashed down, stinging my skin. I could barely keep my eyes open to look around, but it was clear that there was no one left on the deck.

  “Throw me over!” Quickly!”

  We heaved Ari up to the railing, but it was him that propelled himself over the edge. I watched as he disappeared under the churning water. Beside me, Astrid gripped the railing tightly as we waited to see Ari resurface.

  “Get in here now!”

  I could barely hear her over the rain and wind, but her voice just barely lifted over the squall.

  “You’ll go overboard too if you stay out here.”

  The huge waves battered the ship, and I had to admit she was right. There was no point in us risking our lives just to see if Ari would save Josh.

  We all trooped back into the dining room and shut the door behind us.

  Captain Howell looked stern as she addressed the three of us. “I’ve got the first officer steering this thing, but I don’t feel comfortable leaving him alone up there in weather like this. I saw the others go over, but there is nothing you or I can do about it. I can’t keep the ship still in this. My only option is to try to get through it as quickly as possible, but I can only do that if you three stay inside and I don’t have to worry about you.”

  Like naughty school children, we nodded our heads.

  There was nothing for us to do but wait it out. I knew Ari would be safe. He’d spent his life underwater, but whether he’d find Josh in these choppy waters in time was another matter.

  The ship lurched again as another wave hit us. I grabbed the table and held tightly until the ship righted itself, and I could sit in a chair. Opposite me, I could see the fear in Astrid’s face and Hayden’s. Although he was hiding it much better than Astrid, I’d known him long enough to know he was scared too.

  For hours, we sat there as the ship creaked under the pressure of the battering ocean. No food was served as it was impossible to cook in conditions like these, but the servants brought us snacks and drinks to keep us going. The storm lasted almost all day, but eventually, it petered out, and the blue of the sky began to show through the clouds. At that point, Captain Howell let us go outside. Hayden and Astrid retired to their bedroom, but I stepped outside onto the water soaked deck. The sea was back to a beautiful blue from the terrible grey it had been, and we no longer lurched from side to side.

  I scoured the horizon and the sea between there and the ship, but there was no sign of Ari or Jos
h. Acania was also nowhere to be seen.

  My emotions spiraled as I didn’t know what to think. There was no way of telling whether Josh had survived. I knew Ari was alive. Thanks to our bonding, I could feel him. He felt distant, but I knew in my heart he was alive which gave me some comfort. In the distance, I saw land, and as we got closer, I recognized it as the shoreline of Trifork. We were finally home. It was with mixed feelings that I walked off the boat when we had sailed safely into dock. Acania was no longer with us, which meant I didn’t have to deal with the crazy scheme, but I was no closer to finding a cure for my mother or the others. I’d also been away a day longer than expected so there was no telling what I’d find at home.

  I left the boat with Hayden and Astrid, telling them that they could do with it as they wished, but they both elected to come back to the palace with me. Instead of waiting for a palace driver to come pick us up, we took a taxi home. Terror filled me as we were driven down the long palace driveway, not knowing what I might find when I got to the end of it. I didn’t think I’d cope if my mother had died while I was away.