"Ssssh, she's coming!"
"Get under the table!"
"Ariana, get off my tail!"
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY ARIEL!"
The shouted chorus dissolved into a muddle of hugs and congratulations. Alice noted with satisfaction how surprised and strangely teary her youngest sister looked today.
"We're gonna take you out on a mermaids' day today. It's not every day you turn 16!" Alice wrapped her arms around Ariel, eliciting what almost sounded like a gasp. The older girl straightened back with concern. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing! Nothing, I'm fine. It's really great, actually, because there's this new fabric I saw somewhere that would look really great for a shirt and-"
"Oh yes, all these shirts that you were, Miss Prude," Alice teased. "How are you ever going to hook yourself a merman without showing some skin?"
Their other ten siblings gathered around and Ariel's reply was lost in the lively chatter and debate about exactly what the perfect day should be.
They all just assumed she was modest.
Even Alice never suspected anything, although she was the most curious and the smartest of her sisters. She was a princess, so no one ever questioned it when she started wearing shirts as a 13 year old. Why should they? Ariel thought.
The moment she entered the dining hall her sisters pounced on her, yelling something unintelligible in a frenzy of excitement. What's happening today? Ariel wondered. Then she remembered. It was her birthday.
Only one member of her family was absent from the room, and some of the tension left her body. She hated having to meet his eyes normally, as though nothing had happened the night before.
She hated herself for following his orders, but the last time she had refused to come, he had knocked down her bedroom door and, muffling her already silent scream, dragged her out of the palace. She'd been forced to stay in her room for the next two days, faking an illness. Still, she got a perverse sense of satisfaction out of not coming to him like an obedient puppy, proving to both of them that this was wrong. The events of last week had her sore enough not to repeat her acts of defiance.
"Princess Ariel,"—he spit out her name every time as if he wasn't the one to name her, hold her, raise her during her first twelve years—"You are guilty of the worst crime that can be committed in the sea. You are guilty of murder, of treason, through your killing of the Queen Amphitrite. The severity of these actions merits you unworthy of such a light and painless death when her last moments were torture. Instead, you will come to your king every time you do her memory an offense and you will be punished by my hand accordingly."
Ariel wanted to reason him, telling him that it wasn't her fault, that death during childbirth didn't mean that the result of the process was to blame; but she had tried that many times before, and it did much more harm than good. Instead she hardened her face into a mask as her father drew out a whip. The whip.
It was obvious why Triton always picked such remote places when the echoes of her screams could be heard from a mile away.
When Alice hugged her she struggled to hold back a whimper, even though she had padding over the injuries which adorned her back and lower torso.
"Ariel, darling?"
Her sisters were all looking at her with confused looks etched on their faces.
"Sorry, what?" Ariel asked.
"You're 16—it's the last chance we'll have to celebrate one of our sisters' coming of age. Since you're an adult, you get to decide where we're going first," Andrea said excitedly.
She was unbearably sore.
Her sisters' definition of "a girl's day" consisted of more swimming around and talking than anything else She loved them, of course, but it was hard to be close when she was hiding such a big secret. Her father made it quite clear that if anyone, even her sisters, found out, her punishments would leave her so badly off that she wouldn't be able to move, and she was afraid the punishment might even extend to her sisters. That was not something she would ever risk.
Alicia and Alexa really wanted to go to a haunted gallows, but by this time it was almost 12:00, and they were supposed to be up in six hours. Ariel pointed this out quietly to them. "Come on, Ari, who cares about Daddy? You're in your rebellious teenage years!" Abigail cajoled.
"Guys, this has been one of the best days of my life, and I'm completely grateful to all of you for making it happen," Ariel said truthfully. "But I'm just really tired. You go on. Really, I'm good."
Her sisters let out disappointed sighs but recovered their enthusiasm soon enough, leaving Ariel alone. Once they were well out of sight, Ariel glanced around carefully and started towards her cave.
The entrance was hidden beneath a sunken ship where Ariel had discovered it about a year ago, when the beatings started becoming much more severe. It was rather small, only a few square meters, but it didn't matter because she would be the only person ever to visit it.
She went here to tend to all of her injuries and for some alone time when she needed it. She stored a few rolls of bandages, some cleaning solvent, and anything especially private here. By now she was an expert at cleaning and bandaging and had packaged her wounds neatly in only a minute. Satisfied, she swam up to another cave that was about half a mile away, one that had water but was also half filled with air. She pulled herself up onto a ledge and peered above the sea through a small hole in the cave roof.
Her father had decreed a law against going above the surface, of which breaking was punishable by death. Perhaps that was why she had always been fascinated with humans. Of course, she'd never seen one, but the paintings that she'd found in shipwrecks fascinated her immensely. She unconsciously touched her tail, imagining legs and feet.
Ariel was snapped out of her daydream by a loud explosion. She panicked for a moment, searching for the source of the noise before realizing it came from above.
It was a ship.
