ARIEL walked purposefully along the cobblestoned streets of the marketplace of Ipswich. Strange, but…sweet. Those were the first thoughts the young woman had of the handsome man she had met in the marketplace not but fifteen minutes ago, the image of his face still vivid and fresh in her memory. Her overactive and sensitive imagination began to wander away with her as she pondered over his offer that seemed to have come out of nowhere.
She took a lock of her red hair in her finger to twirl as she pondered why the young man had thought to ask her to serve as a maid to the Prince. Why her, when surely, there were many other girls throughout the village who would practically give their left hand for the opportunity?
She thought about the events of the last few minutes and wondered if she would see him again.
The encounter had been so…so…she could not even find a word to describe it, but what was even stranger, she thought, was that was not necessarily a bad thing. The sun had begun setting behind her, the rooftops of the homes and the businesses taking on a darker look.
The air was beginning to get colder, the salty sea breeze tousling her hair off her shoulders and pinking her cheeks. Her feet felt tired, and she was sure blisters were beginning to form on the backs of her heels from all the standing and walking around she'd done today.
Her curious gaze lifted to the vast darkening sky above her head. Black and purple thunderclouds were beginning to billow in from the east. The sun's setting rays had not yet touched this corner of the little village, the sky still clung to the last remnants of its blue hues.
The color reminded her of something or rather, someone. The dark-haired man's cautious and wary eyes from before instantly flashed through her mind.
Her breath caught in her throat as her thoughts drifted to the young man unexpectedly. He seemed sweet enough, shy, like she was, though thankfully, her shyness tended not to last too long. She felt her shoulders slump in defeat as a wave of guilt washed over her.
How could she have run off on the poor man like that without even offering an explanation to him as to why she could not leave Elise all alone by herself in her frail old age?
The woman was a godsend and had been kind to her and had taken her in when no one else wanted her when she'd woken on the shores of the beach, alone, with no clothes, and no memory of how she had come to be there. The only thing she could remember was her name.
Elise had so happened to be taking an early morning beach walk that day and had immediately grown concerned for the frightened and confused young redhead who could remember nothing of her life before waking. The old woman had not hesitated in giving her the cape off her back and whisking her back to her simple two-room hut.
Elise had agreed to let Ariel stay on the condition that she help her with the chores around the house and do the cooking, as her lumbago and arthritis flared up in her joints in her old age, and she could no longer move as nimbly as she once could.
Eager to do anything she could for the one kind soul in this entire village who had shown her a small scrap of kindness, Ariel had accepted the old woman's offer and had quickly made herself at home with Elise in her hut. She chewed on her bottom lip and halted as she came to a stop in front of the place she now called home but did not immediately ascend the steps.
She wanted a moment alone to linger with her thoughts as they drifted once more towards the man, and she realized she had not even gotten his name, nor had she offered hers in return. She had not had the opportunity to talk to too many young men close to her age or older, but she knew without a shadow of a doubt in her heart that he was one of the strangest but also sweetest.
He was handsome and charming, and a certain tender aura had surrounded him in the street as if the man had never been exposed to the evil of the world.
Try as hard as she might, she could not stop thinking about his eyes. They were so brilliantly blue, like her own, and as shocking as his initial offer of employment had been, Ariel did not think the stranger had any malicious intents towards her when he'd asked. She hated that she had to say no, but she did not want to leave Elise alone on her own in her fragile state.
Elise was growing frailer as the moons passed that she had made herself a life and a home with her, and Ariel feared that one day she would return home and find her soul had departed this world and gone to be with the gods. She harbored a twinge of caution whenever she left the hut, and she hated the feeling. Ariel huffed as she dusted off her slightly dirtied dress and picked up her basket with their meager spoils for the next few days. The wind suddenly picked up without warning as thunder rolled in the distance, and locks of her long red hair flew haphazardly in front of her face. She did her best to tuck her untamed and wild hair back into place.
As she was placing the last pieces of her hair back behind the shell of her ear where they belonged, her gaze caught sight of the towering parapets of the realm's royal castle in the distance. Her hand caught in mid-air and stayed by her left ear as Ariel gazed with awe and trepidation at the magnificent structure. The Prince and his servants lived there.
She was told by the local villagers and by Elise that the Prince very rarely made public appearances. She tried to picture what it was like there, living in such a lavish castle, but so alone in the heart as he seemed to be. A pang of sympathy ran through her at the thought of what the young man from earlier would say if she were to someday run into him again and accept his offer.
"No, I couldn't. Elise needs me here," she whispered, placing a hand over her mouth in shock the moment the thought flitted across her conflicting thoughts as she tried to silence her mind.
Her mind felt like it was reeling from all that had happened in such a short time span. She furrowed her thinly plucked red brows into a frown and shook her head to herself, desperately to clear her mind of such a thought. She could not—would not—leave Elise to fend for herself.
She made her way swiftly up the cracked steps of Elise's hut, entering in the dimly lit abode and sighed.
"Elise?" she called as she gingerly closed the door behind her and immediately set her basket down. The furrow of confusion and worry in her brows deepened as she noted the darkness of the hut and the utter quiet. It wasn't totally strange.
The old woman often went to bed early. As a widow, she was still not over the death of her husband, lost at sea in a vicious storm, and his body not able to be recovered.
But she had expected Elise to be awake when she had promised to make stew tonight, one of her favorites. She was worried about Elise being alone in this home all by herself for too terribly long.
If she had gone to bed early, she hoped Elise had at least remembered to eat. If she did not make dinner or leave her something, then poor Elise would not eat at all.
She headed towards the side of the hut towards the hearth, where a fire was already roaring to life in the hearth, sending its warmth and light throughout the cramped and modest abode. Her nervous eyes made a quick scan of the room and then landed on a figure on the floor by the small round table where the two of them took their meals.
Suddenly, her ears were burning, and her stomach was churning in knots until Ariel thought she would be sick. Her heart pounded painfully in her throat. She swallowed down past a lump in her throat and when she did, it felt like she was swallowing knives.
Ariel bolted towards the old woman's crumpled form and knelt into a crouch by her side.
"Elise?" she whispered, a horrible aching fear settling in the pit of her stomach as bile rose up in the back of her throat. "Elise?" she repeated, praying the woman would wake.
She shook the old woman's body but got no response in return. Ariel gingerly felt the woman's wrist and could not feel the life pulsing through her veins.
She must have fallen and broken her neck, she thought, trying to contain her panic as she stood and backed away slowly, clamping her hands over her mouth as she realized that she was now well and truly alone in a foreign place, with no one else to turn to.
Ariel did the only thing that she could. She turned heel and ran, her feet feeling like heavy lead in her boots as she had to lift the skirts of her dress a bit to avoid tripping over the long hems.
The door opened easily, and she was outside once more.
The cold air as the autumnal squall blew in from the east was almost a welcome relief against her flushed skin. Her cheeks felt clammy and hot, and the further she ran, she only felt hotter.
She considered screaming for someone to help her, but then that would only succeed in strangers asking her questions, and the villagers were already suspicious of her enough, as no other woman or man had red hair quite like hers, and they viewed her as odd.
She knew she would get no help from the villagers. She did not know how far or for how long she ran, heading towards the castle, her only landmark.
Her legs ached and her chest burned, but when she drew in breaths to try to fill her lungs, it burned them with its purity. She passed by curious onlookers on the streets, but she did not stop. Elise was dead. She could not go back there. She had to get away, had to keep moving.
Ariel let out a pained sigh as the heel of her boot caught on a loose cobblestone and she felt her ankle twist in a way that she knew it shouldn't, and she could not stop the cry of pain that escaped her lips as she felt her body tilt and pitch forward as her equilibrium failed her.
She winced as she braced her fall with the palms of her hands and nearly scraped the skin off her hands, and she was sure she had sprained her wrist, too.
By some miracle, after a moment, she managed to get to her feet, though putting too much pressure on her now-sprained ankle was almost unbearable, and just the pain caused her knees to buckle, but she somehow kept on going, a surge of adrenaline propelling her forward.
"That lady's bleeding, Momma!" a little boy who could not have been older than seven called out, and adults in the streets who were boarding up the shutters of their homes and bracing for the coming storm turned to look at her.
A fisherman stepped forward, the skin of his brow pulled taut and tight with concern.
"Lady! Lady! Are you alright?" he yelled, running towards her, though in Ariel's panicked state, she screamed. That was when she realized she was crying.
Slick tears were running down her cheeks as she openly sobbed, mourning the loss of her only friend, someone who had been as good as a mother figure to her when she'd had no one else.
But she kept on moving, though her gait was almost limp as she was careful not to put too much weight on her ankle. She would have kept on going until her muscles collapsed or until she passed out from exhaustion. But she was grabbed when she got to the center of the town square, and she screamed, thinking perhaps that it was a royal guard, coming to escort her to stand in front of the throne, the people would accuse her of killing Elise, she was sure.
They hated her and did not trust her, she knew. She lashed out at her captor, kicked at him, spit, tried to bite him, and used her long fingernails to scratch at his hands. The entire time she sobbed, screaming for help, but of course, no one was coming to help someone like her. Someone touched in the head who could only remember her name and nothing of her life before.
"Someone bring me a blanket to cover her with!" the voice yelled, and it was then that it hit her squarely in the chest.
It was him. It was the young man from earlier, the same one she had spoken to who had offered her a position as a maid in the Prince's castle. She thought she would know his voice anywhere, though Ariel had only had a brief conversation with the messenger from the Prince's castle, that was beside the point.
She felt her body go limp and she collapsed into the man's arms as he lowered her down onto the street, treating her very delicately, though ensuring that she remained kneeling on her knees.
"A-are you alright, miss? Miss?" he asked, and he shrugged out of his navy blue cape that was draped over his shoulders and pressed a handful of the fabric to her bleeding palm and wrist to try to stop the slow but steady trickling of blood that dripped down her wrist.
"I—I need help," she panted, her breaths coming to her in pained, shallow gasps as she looked around with wet and wild eyes. "Elise, the—the woman who took me in, she—she's dead, I—I think she fell while I was gone."
"Help's coming," he told her, sounding concerned, though he also looked distracted.
A crowd of onlookers had begun to gather around the two of them. The handsome stranger barked at them and told everyone to back up a few feet and give them some space, but it seemed everyone wanted an eyeful of the strange girl the old hermit had taken in and had lost her mind.
"Stay awake for me, miss, can you stay awake? Can you tell me your name?" he asked her, his tone urgent.
"Ariel," she whispered, and a murmur ran through the crowd that immediately sent a chill down her spine. "My…my name is Ariel."
The crowd around them then erupted into questions, accusing her of causing Elise's death and asking her where she had come from, that she could not have come from the ocean, she was no mermaid, but Ariel could not make sense of the mingling angry voices that were now renting through the air. She felt dizzy. Her ears began to fill with a horrible, fatigued ringing and her stomach heaved a pressure she was so unfamiliar with, she thought she would be sick.
She saw spots. The man did not catch her as she fell, and the last thing she heard was the sound of her skull smacking against the cobblestones, and then, she felt herself beginning to ebb away. Before she succumbed to sleep, however, she could briefly make out the now-blurry outline of the young man's face. She swore she saw him mouth her name.
She was sure of it, she was sure, yes, she was sure. She could just barely make out the brilliant blue hue of the man's eyes and saw his face looming over hers, desperately trying to peer through her eyelashes to look into her pupils, before she faded off completely and went limp in the man's arms. She was already unconscious as the Prince himself lifted her with surprising strength and ease into his arms, barking orders at a nearby guard to help him.
Like it or not, her fate was now not her own, as Ariel was about to become a part of a very different world, whether she was ready for it or not. All the while, the redhead in the Prince's arms, slept on, oblivious to how much her life had changed, and to the young Prince's torment.
