Chapter 3 - Lost To The Sea

When we reached Whitecap Bay, the captain turned his eye on Sarah and I again.

"We need a mermaid," he announced to the crew. "Any girl will do."

He had two crewmates grab my companion, Sarah, by her arms. She was dragged struggling out onto the deck.

Blackbeard had a dark knowledge of voodoo. He took a potion vial out of his pocket which I saw was labelled "Mermaid Potion."

"What's in that?" I demanded.

"Chocolate and lavender to help it go down," he said, "but sea-salt and red tide algae to turn her."

"You can't do this!" I said.

The crew grabbed me and held me fast as well. I watched as Blackbeard dumped the potion down Sarah's mouth.

"Now put her in the water, in the net," he commanded. Still I watched helplessly as they put Sarah in the net, dress and all, and lowered her down the side of the ship into the water. The girl was brave enough not to scream.

"Now pull her up," Blackbeard ordered. The men hoisted up the net with poor Sarah drenched to the bone and nearly drowned to death.

"Perhaps it needs a crescent moon," he cursed. "Have the boy watch her 'til then."

The men released me and I ran to the girl laying limply, picked her up and carried her in my arms beneath deck and stowed her back on my bunk bed.

That night to my dismay was a crescent moon. Blackbeard rousted me out of my bed and grabbed the girl too, dragging her by the wrist up to the deck. He had her lowered in the net again, and I ran to the railing to watch. In the moonlight I saw a friendly sea-creature approach, a porpoise, who gnawed a hole in the net. Sarah slipped out through the hole with a flick of a silvery-blue tail. She looked back at me once from the surface of the water, meeting my eye, and then she swam off with the porpoise and was gone. My poor heart was wrenched. Was I ever to see my closest companion again?

"She's escaped!" Blackbeard cursed, grabbing me by the shoulder and pulling me back from the rail, though I couldn't have swam after her if I had tried. "Swimming in the bay with her sisters now. Probably the youngest one."

"Sorry, lad," a voice said to me, and I turned to him. It was the friendly Jack Sparrow. "That's touch luck, I'll wager. You could still see here again, I suppose."

"Aye," agreed Scrum, "from the keel of the ship!"

"For pity's sake, the boy's lost his sister to the sea! Give him some space." This voice was Philip. "But don't let him jump in after her!"

The three grabbed me by the arms to keep me from jumping, like in Odysseus' tale of the sirens.

"She's a mermaid now," Angelica said, walking past me. "Lost to the sea. That's how you'll always remember her."

"Quiet, daughter, or you'll be next," Blackbeard threatened her. "Now lower the longboat and men, get inside. We're going mermaid-catching."

To me, I had lost nearly everything. I was torn between Sarah swimming to freedom - maybe to land and the lighthouse in the distance - or us catching her again. She was still there, though - in the water, I knew it, watching me.

When the crew released me I ran to the keel of the ship, and thought I saw her following behind in the white-tipped waves, like a guardian angel in our wake.