This is kind of different for me. There's a lot of run-on sentences in this, and probably some tense-changes, but that's (mostly) on purpose. I was trying out a different style, and I'm not sure if it really worked for me, so tell me what you think of it in your review!
Do you see me flying now?
Did you ever see me at all?
I belong here, now.
I
Red flowers, flowing in the undercurrents.
She likes the color, because it makes her think of living, in some vibrant whirl of bright emotion.
She likes the way they flow, because it makes her think of being, in some free, untethered state.
Sometimes she flows too, forgetting swimming or belonging anywhere, just drifting. Weightless. The way the anemones are and the seaweed, the way her flowers are, but they're all rooted down to the sand. They belong there, in all their separate places.
And she wonders if she'll always be drifting.
II
"Father, where does the light come from?"
She watches it fall down in streams into her circle of flowers and around her sisters as they swim and play. She knows it comes from somewhere, and it must be from another world, because there isn't any streaming light in the one she lives in.
Her father's eyes are dark and deep: the all-seeing eyes of the Sea King, but she often wonders if he sees her. He pauses a minute before answering, "The light comes from the surface, Daughter, up above us. The air."
She doesn't know what air is, but she doesn't bother asking, because he's looking at the castle and the courtiers and the fish, and they're all in their places like they're set up on a game board, and she's still drifting.
She goes back to her red, red flowers, and she sits in the middle of the circle, and she thinks about the word.
Air.
She likes the way it sounds, breathless, like swimming too far, too fast, or seeing a great whale suddenly flick its tail and swim past, or watching the streams of light fall down around her, or just...drifting.
Will anything ever tie her down?
III
We found this on one of the ships.
What is it?
He's...beautiful.
He was like her, only different. He had two long stalks coming down from his waist, instead of a tail fin. He was a statue. But that was alright, because he sat under the willow she planted by him, and she liked the line of his jaw and the way his eyes looked.
He was her friend. Her first, her only.
She could smile and laugh and talk to him and pretend that he smiled and laughed and talked back and ignore the fact that she was driftingdriftingdrifting away.
Because when she held on to him, she was fastened on to something.
Her grandmother said he was a human, and all humans looked like him, without fins, without gills. It was odd, but appealing. She was twelve, and it was the first time she thought of love. Romantic love. She was a princess, and her grandmother had told her enough stories to know that princesses always get swept off their feet (only she doesn't have feet) and fall in love with heroes.
She wonders if she'll ever have hero and if the story could be hers.
The currents pushing through her flowers whisper, Nonononono.
IV
Did I ever belong here?
Did I ever belong anywhere?
In her dreams, she sees white foam, pearly and riding on the back of waves far out at sea.
It's so pretty, milky and white against the aqua blue. Her small, silvery hand reaches out to touch it, to feel the small bubbles held so close together, but they shatter at her fingertips, dispersing into a million tiny pieces.
And they're drifting.
She wakes up whimpering.
V
Her sisters go to the surface, one by one. They feel air touching their skin, but they don't come back breathless, the way she knows she would. They come the same as ever and return to their places in the sea, by their flower beds, in the castle.
But they see things, things she wishes she could see, things she wants so bad she can almost taste it.
Light. Not streaming, but sparkling from a single dot, a million and more tiny dots, everywhere. Music, wafting through the air, in wild, joyful tunes. Voices. Human voices, strange and grating, but somehow beautiful.
A golden ball, high above the edge of the water. Grandmother calls it the sun. It falls to the surface, sinking under, and spreads it colors across the plain of the sea. Orange, rose, and red. Vibrant red with a whirl of bright emotion.
Castles shining in the air, big and bold and brilliant. Fish that flew, untethered to either water or land. Human children, with yellow-brown skin, laughing and talking and splashing by the seaside, running on their two legs. (How she wishes she could run.)
The surface spread wide before them. An enormous plain of wide, empty space. Seagulls darting in and out of the waves, snatching fish in their sharp beaks. Whales blowing water up in fountains and dolphins bouncing in the waves.
Cold, frozen water, floating on the surface like enormous pearls, as beautiful and milky white. Currents in the air, blasting and spinning about. Ships floating quickly through, with the currents fast in their billowing white sheets.
And her sisters sing, linking arms and rising to the surface. She sings alone, tending to her red flowers, and her skin seems too pale against their vibrant color.
VI
You're grown up now; you must let me adorn you like your other sisters.
But it hurts me so.
Pride must suffer pain, young one.
But why, why does it hurt so?
And finally, she's fifteen and beautiful, with oysters on her tail and lilies in her hair, and her world is shattered and turned upside down.
He's so beautiful.
They're all so beautiful, twirling and spinning in their bright colors, and she wants to spin with them. And then the bright fire, bursting through the sky. Loud banging and streaks of color; they look like her flowers blooming, petals of flame opening to the air. And they're red.
When the waves crash too hard and the wind howls too loud and the fire burns too hot, she saves him. Because he's beautiful. Because he's bright. Because she doesn't want him to drift in the ocean currents, to the bottom of the sea.
On land, he's taken away from her, and she wishes she could follow. And the waves whisper, Nonononono.
VII
Fifteen faded into sixteen, and she watches him from behind the rocks, hiding from his eyes, and she feels red. And she wants to fly, the way the fish of the air do, only she hears him call them birds, and she thinks it sounds perfect, and she wantsitwantsitwantsit.
She gets it the only way she knows how.
She smiles especially bright at her sisters and hugs her grandmother extra tight and lingers in her flower bed, watching the red flowers sway in the currents. "Will I ever be like you?" she whispers, running her fingers over the silky petals. She knows she'll never come back.
Her tongue is cut out and her fin tears in two, ripped right down the middle, and she wishes she knew how to cry, but she doesn't because you can't cry under the sea, because you're already surrounded by saltwater, and she's drowningdrowningdrowning, in a million tiny tears.
VIII
What do the humans have that we don't? Why are they so different, and yet the same?
They have legs, with which to walk, tears to let out pain, and a soul to live forever.
I wish I did.
Warm.
It was the feeling she got from the air and the bright ball called the sun, with its rays falling down on her skin, on her arms, on her face, on her...legs. She has legs now, and she stands on them wobbly and it hurts just like the sea witch said it would, but it doesn't matter because she's standing.
She can walk, too, wherever she wants to go, and she smiles, and she thinks she might be happy, but she's not really sure, because she's not sure what happiness feels like.
Then she sees him; he comes, walking down the beach to her. He's so beautiful. And he's warm, when he takes her hand, and his voice sounds rough and uneven compared to the voices she's known, but it's so beautiful and...human. He leads her away from the beach, toward his castle in the air.
She looks back at the waves as they walk away, and they seem to say, You don't have much longer.
She only wants to live before she has to die.
IX
She's a human now, and she's learning new things, human things, every day.
She learns that humans bleed red blood, vibrant red like her flowers under the sea. She thinks it must be because they live their lives in that same whirl of bright emotion, the one she wanted, the one she felt when she saw her prince, but her blood is still silver.
She learns that ships have anchors to hold them in place, otherwise they'll drift far off course, thrown by what waves and currents would take them. She remembers her flowers, rooted down to the sandy ocean floor, and she looks at her prince and wonders if he could be her anchor.
And last, she learns what pain is, as she dances on feet with pain like rods stabbing up through them, as she blanches white and tries to keep from crying out in pain.
But she has her prince. And he's beautiful. And he's becoming her everything.
She can't say much, but he talks to her, and looks can say as much as words, or more, she hopes. And sometimes he stares out to sea, looking so very far away, and she wonders if she could be his anchor, too.
X
Can I tell you a secret?
Nod.
You promise you won't tell anyone?
An eyebrow raised, amused.
Laughter. Of course you won't tell anyone, but you'll...keep it all the same, for me?
Nod.
Well, my parents try to get me to marry, but...there's this girl. I met her on an island, in the middle of the sea. She saved my life when I was shipwrecked there. She's...so beautiful.
That was how her heart broke, with a few halting, quiet sentences. If she ever had a heart to break, that is. Maybe that only came with having red blood, with an anchor, with a whirl of bright emotion.
She only felt numb. And cold. And alone and...drifting. The wind blew too hard, and she could see the sea foam on the shore splitting up and fizzing away, breaking and blowing into the farthest corners of the world. She knew she'd never be his anchor. He'd found his already, the day she left him on shore, and now he could never be hers. If she'd only stayed a moment longer, if she'd waited for him to wake up and see her, if she'd left him on a different piece of land, if—if—
There were so many other possibilities, other ways the story could have gone. She could have been happy. She could have had everything she'd ever wanted, but it didn't matter now. Those possibilities died the day she chose her own path. What's done is done.
And somehow, she knew it all along.
XI
You'll come to our wedding, of course. You can hold the train of the dress and dance for us. You're such a beautiful dancer. You'll like that won't you?
A silent nod.
We're both so happy now.
White. The wedding is white, and the lace trim on the white dress reminds her too much of the way the foam looks, in her dreams, on the beach, and she's afraid to touch it because it might break apart and start drifting away, and she might break and start drifting away, but she touches it all the same and smoothes the train of the dress, because it's the job she was assigned to.
The ceremony is short and to the point, and she sits still all the while, listening to the lulling tones of the priest's voice, watching light fall in streams through the window, and she remembers sitting in her flower beds, watching light from that same sun, falling in those same lines.
She realizes then that she's still the same, watching the light, watching other people living, because maybe under the sea, they had the same thing she'd come to the human world for, and she'd only failed to notice. The merpeople all belonged in their places under the sea; they weren't all drifting like she was, and they had emotion, and they had brightness, and they had anchors, so why didn't she?
She wasn't like the rest of them, for some reason; she wasn't like anyone. She doesn't understand why. And even from the inland church, she can hear the waves and the foam calling to her, Your time is almost up.
At least she could say goodbye.
XII
She dances on bruised and bleeding toes; she twirls and turns and spins, because if this is the last she's to see of the world, she wants it to be in a whirl of color. She wants it to be bright. She wants it to be red. (She only wanted to live before she had to die.)
She smiles so much that her cheeks hurt from stretching so far. This is her last night.
And finally, she watches the sun dip over the horizon, and she sees it spread its colors over the water. Orange, rose, and red. Redredredredred. Twilight comes in ashen purple, beginning to spread dots of light, of bright stars, scattered across the sky.
There's so much light, so much beauty, she doesn't want to go.
XIII
We gave our hair to the witch. You don't have to die now. Plunge this into his heart, and let the blood fall on your feet. You can be a mermaid again.
Silence took the knife with desperation.
Hope. Murder. The words don't go together; how can one ever define the other? And yet for her, they do. She holds the sharp knife, gripping the pearly handle and wonders what it would feel like, pushing it into the heart of another. And not just any other, but him. He is so beautiful. He made her world turn upside down.
She stands above him, watches his face. Beautifulbeautifulbeautiful. She watches him breathe, slowly, slowly, in and out, in and out. If he stopped breathing...he'd be dead. She'd be alive, for the rest of her three hundred years.
Murderer.
He'd never feel pain. He'd never be happy. He'd never stand, he'd never walk, never do any of those things that made her smile so much, when she first found she had legs. He'd never dance on the ship the way she'd seen him first. He'd never be red, a whirl of bright emotion.
She can't kill him. But can she die for him?
XIV
Sinking. She watches the knife, slowly falling down, until it's too deep and far for her to see. She waits for sunrise. She watches the bright golden light stream down from above, the same way it did in her flower garden and in the church. It's so beautiful, but she can't stop shaking.
Tremors, almost violent, rip through her, starting from her fingers and up her arms and on her toes and legs and everywhere. She's shaking, because she's dying, and it's like her dreams, and she's driftingdriftingdrifting.
There's saltwater pouring down her cheeks, and she doesn't know why, because she wasn't splashed, and yet it's pouringpouringpouring, and then she realizes that she's crying, and she's sobbing, and she's never done either ever before, and what that means, she doesn't know, but it doesn't matter, because she's coming apart now.
Parts of her fall away in the air, caught in the breezes and drift away, and she's gone, dispersed, and if she tries to touch her skin, it just breaks apart and shatters in a million tiny pieces, and there's a million tears falling down her cheeks, and she feels like she could drown in them, and she's gonegone—
Everything changes in an instant.
Red
Light
Warm
Anchor
Every good feeling she'd ever felt was wrapped up into one.
And it was beautiful.
And she stopped drifting.