Author's Note: I will be forever grateful to Hans Christian Andersen's beautiful, brilliant fairy tale. Nothing staves off writer's block like "The Little Mermaid."
--
It is barely dawn; the first ray of sunlight is still new to the sky, stretched across the horizon like a reaching arm. Still, even this early, she sees the deck filling with people, courtiers and sailors drawn up from their staterooms and bunks by the noise.
It had been such a quiet noise, too, that she isn't entirely sure how it woke anyone. She wraps her arms around herself and shivers in the cold morning air.
--
She was sent to the convent before she was even old enough to understand what that meant. Education in every royal virtue—that's what her parents expected, what the convent promised to provide. She didn't even know what royal virtues were, but she liked the convent. The gardens were beautiful, the nuns were kind, the weather was pleasant. She liked to roam the beaches whenever she could. The island had a lot of beaches.
--
It had only been a soft splashing sound, quieter than the waves against the hull, quieter than the wind through the sails. But she supposes that the sailors are attuned to such soft sounds. A splash that doesn't come from the ship crashing into a wave is not a natural sound. That kind of noise can only mean one thing.
Someone had fallen overboard.
--
Then there was the day that had changed her life, the day that she had stumbled across a man on the far northern beach.
She was sixteen years old. Her parents had written to her once a month since she had come to the convent, and, recently, their letters had been detailing her journey home—expected early the next year—and what her being home would mean.
She walked along the unpopulated beach, the one with the white dunes that rose gently from a warm, deep bay, and thought about returning to her country. She shuddered as the words from the last letter floated to her mind.
You are to be married to the neighbor prince, her mother had written. Your father has spoken with the king, and he has agreed to the alliance. The wedding will be arranged as soon as you have come home.
She picked up a shell and turned it over in her hands. She would go home to a husband already promised to her. She would have no say in the decision.
Then she laughed at herself and dropped the shell to the ground, where it sat waiting for a wave to wash it out to sea, as unable to alter its fate as she was her own. She was a princess, a princess well-educated in every royal virtue, and nothing less than absolute submission was to be expected from her. Did her father decide that she would be raised by nuns? She was shipped to the island before she was even old enough to protest. Did her father decide that she would be married to the neighboring country's prince? Her wedding was arranged before she even knew she was to be a bride.
She wandered closer to the water's edge, letting the ripples lap at her bare toes, and stared toward the horizon. The sun had just risen; streaks of dawn color were still visible in the slowly-bluing sky. There were so many things she would never to do, so many feelings she would never know. She would be married off before she could ever fall in love.
She understood that was the way life worked, but it still didn't seem right. She was a princess, and, in all of the stories told by the neophyte nuns, princesses always fell in love and lived happily for ever afterward. She wished that the stories could somehow be true.
A shape, a spot of shadow on the bright white sand, caught her attention, and she turned toward it, curious about it because she knew every shadow and tree and dune along the far northern beach. When the shadow formed into a recognizable shape, she froze and gasped.
A young man lay on the beach, pale as death and barely breathing.
--
She begins to piece together what happened. The girl, the mute one with the graceful walk and beautiful eyes, the one her husband (she uses the word shyly, even to herself, not used to the way it feels) always speaks of with great fondness—the girl doesn't seem to be anywhere on the ship.
The helmsman hurries toward the crowd. "I saw her, sir," he says to the prince, "but I didn't understand what she was doing, and I couldn't stop her." And, when her husband gasps and hurries toward the railing of the ship, she understands.
The girl had thrown herself overboard.
--
She fell in love with him. He stayed at the convent for only one week once he had recovered—he had been shipwrecked, she found out, and he was at first so ill that even the Supreme Mother, who never in the memory of even the oldest nuns had ever showed any feeling, looked at him with a crease between her eyebrows. But he was young and strong, and he did recover, and he couldn't thank enough the women who had saved his life. In just the week that he stayed in the convent, she fell profoundly and obsessively in love; he was so handsome and clever and kind that half the convent was in love with him by the end of his stay, but she was the only one who dared to express it. And she had never been happier than she was on the evening when he assured her that he retuned his ardor—he was even so bold as to insist that he loved her twice as much as she loved him, which made her laugh just to think it. They laughed together a lot in that too-short week, laughed and talked and walked together on the beaches, swinging their joined hands between them like schoolchildren, and she was, for the first time in her memory, truly and completely happy.
Then, when he left, he took her heart with him. The resignation she had had before toward her parents' scheme to marry her off vanished. She would refuse anyone, everyone, no matter how hard her parents pushed. She lamented the day that she would leave the island convent, even when it arrived a year later. As she boarded the ship that would take her home, she thought about that line from her mother's letter. You are to be married to the neighbor prince. Your father has spoken with the king, and he has agreed to the alliance. The wedding will be arranged as soon as you have come home. No one could force her to marry the neighboring prince; she had already given her heart to the man shipwrecked on the island.
She went home. The prince and his parents and half his court had already been there for days. She met the prince. And no one was as surprised as she was to find that the prince of the neighboring country was the very same young man she had fallen in love with at the convent.
Her happiness could have been perfect if it hadn't been for the girl. Mute as a tree, but with fluid grace and pale beauty that more than made up for her shortcomings, the girl was the only smudge on her glittering joy. The devotion between the girl and the prince was almost painfully obvious. The way he spoke about her, the way she watched him, it was impossible to believe that there wasn't something powerful between them. He swore he had eyes only for his lovely princess, but it was clear that he loved the beautiful mute girl, too.
She'd be lying if she said it didn't make her jealous. But she tried to conceal it, because she loved him, and he loved the girl, and she would never hurt him by hurting someone he loved. She tried to be friendly toward the girl and offered her the most honored place in the wedding that she had left to offer—to hold her train, because the bridesmaids had already been assigned by her father, and he wouldn't even think about letting hid daughter decide matters for herself. The girl accepted, but not without a resentful look that made her shiver. No one had ever hated her before, but something about the way the girl looked at her made her think that the girl truly hated her.
But it didn't matter. The wedding was celebrated with all solemnity and magnificence, and the girl held the train of the dress with tight fingers and a large smile, and, when the priest pronounced them man and wife, and her handsome prince kissed her, she was sure that she would live like the princesses in the stories: happily for ever afterward.
--
"Why would she do that?" he asks, whispering into her ear, his voice full of pain.
She can think of only one answer, because she knows what it is like to love him, and she can guess how much that bright smile must have cost as the girl stood smiling in the church, her fingers clenched tight around the bride's train. But she doesn't speak her answer and only wraps her arms around him and leans her head into his shoulder. She can feel him shaking under her touch.
The sun peaks above the horizon, setting the sky and sea aflame with red and gold. The salty sea breeze wraps around her, making her thin nightdress flutter around her ankles. It is cold, but very gentle.
She holds him tighter, fighting back a small shiver of wonder—at the sky and the sea and the cold salty air. The breeze caresses her forehead, twisting together the loose hairs that had escaped her braid, then pushes away to fill the ship's drooping sails.