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The Little Mermaid: A Child Born of Sea and Shore

Ch. 8: Reunion

One Week Ago

June had come, and with it, summer. And cooped up in her quarters in Oldenburg Castle, Ariel knew it.

She knew it was summer, because she was drenched in sweat. Whether the window be open or close, it made little difference. If heat came in, it stayed in. If heat went out, it was replaced by more heat. It had been clear to Ariel that land-folk were more vulnerable to colder temperatures than mer, but now, even clad in the finest Luccan silk, her body was drenched in sweat, as if she had been submerged in water.

(Well, she had – baths were a daily ritual to escape the heat.)

As she lay at her desk, she put a hand to her belly. It had become so large, she could hold the bulge.

Or rather, her child had grown large, and it was kicking.

Hard.

I'm going to murder you.

The baby kicked.

No, really. Soon as you're out, knife, neck, blood.

She felt it again.

Murder. Painful murder.

Kicking.

Murder most foul.

One month of constant kicking.

Bloody murder!

Her child finally stopped, though Ariel knew it was small reprieve. Taking what it allowed her, she returned to the books and letters on her desk, picking up the most recent one from her husband, which had arrived the prior week.

Eric's letters had become less eloquent, but in turn, his health had improved, or so he claimed. He had written that he expected to be in Denmark before month's end (therefore, within the week, given when it was dated), well before the birth of his heir.

Their "child," Ariel noted, rather than "son," even if more and more people assumed the latter to be the case. It was as if they could look at her bulging belly and know something she didn't.

She had written back as best she could, but since the premiere of La Sirenetta, she could barely put quill to paper. It was still being performed, well received by all corners of society, yet she had not attended since. She had written to Signor Meloni, assuring him she meant no disrespect, that her pregnancy had kept her away from such activities, but he was a smart man. Smart enough to know there had to be more to it, yet too smart to accept tales of ghosts and spirits. He had included the Fates in his opera, that didn't mean he believed them to be true.

She saw them. Sometimes the younger, who while forever silent, did not always fill Ariel with dread. Sometimes the pair, in which case the terror returned, and her heart would clench as surely as her stomach. Never the elder one with flower and toga alone, she noted, and never with any other sensation than dread. The crown of flowers belied authority, but without compassion.

She saw them beyond the window. When her belly would cramp, and she would awaken in a cold sweat, so different from the gentle grasp of the sea. She would stumble, she would fall, and whenever they drew near, she would clutch her stomach involuntarily.

Days would go by since they always returned, but since watching Meloni's opera, reality and dream sung the same song.

Sleep granted her no respite. She had nightmares of her time in Greenland when she had saved Eric from Arnaaluk. She had descended to the ocean floor with legs rather than flippers. Used a stone to shatter Eric's ice prison, and return to the surface. For whatever reason, the queen had not pursued her, and despite making peace between the Inuit and mer, Ariel had never asked.

In her dreams, it was different. Arnaaluk, screaming with the cold and edge of ice itself, caught her. Dragged her into the depths of the sea while her husband floated to the surface. Down into the dark, unable to breathe, unable to see beyond the darkness named Oblivion. Death itself suffocating her until she awoke, drenched in sweat.

She would hug herself tight, afraid that one night, she would be brought into the depths, and not wake up. And when she did, always, the ethereal creatures were there beyond the window. Like wraiths, waiting for her to embrace perpetual sleep.

Dreamless sleep was better. So in her waking hours, she kept herself as busy as possible, She no longer sat on the privy council, but Grimsby sent her missives, and assured her that men like Pedersen had not done anything stupid. Carlotta brought in three meals a day (all of which she wolfed down), Dr. Poulsen confirmed her health, Vareet and her fellow servants changed the bedding. At times, she was even allowed to see Treasure, Matey, or one of the castle's other resident animals, provided that they never enter her quarters themselves.

But bereft of anything to actually do, Ariel had taken to reading and nothing else.

Locked up in here, she had plenty of time to read. She'd started with her old journals – the one she made in Greenland, her old diaries, brought to her by Sebastian…

It was interesting to see the girl she'd been contrasted with the woman she'd become. To see a young mer pining to see the world above her, to the woman who'd learnt to live in it. But she could only read so many pinings for the surface world, so many illustrations of Arctic flora and fauna, before her mind began to turn to overdone soup.

Thus, she consumed the literature of that world – from Shakespeare to Holberg, from Locke to Aagaard, with even a copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales for light reading.

But today, Shakespeare, and specifically, The Tempest.

"O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world that has such people in it."

Ariel saw a lot of herself in Miranda, despite sharing the name of Prospero's servant. Fell for a man, presumably stayed with that man (despite having barely known him at all), found herself enchanted by the new world she'd been thrust into…She wondered if Miranda and Ferdinand had ever produced children. If so, at least Miranda didn't have to transform to do the deed.

Brave new world indeed, Ariel thought, wincing as the parasite growing inside her gave the hardest kick yet. I-

She grit her teeth. She put the book down on the desk, and put a hand to her belly, which even now, refused to stop getting larger.

"Let's make a deal," she whispered. "I carry you for the next thirty days. I give birth to you. I spoil you, I raise you, I give you every little treat, forgive every little transgression. I don't use a magic trident to destroy your collection of flotsam and jetsam, I don't ban music, I don't hand you over to a governess who despises you, I don't forbid you to ride wild horses. And in return, you just stop kicking. Deal?"

The baby kicked her again.

"Guess not." She looked around the room. Ladies-in-waiting remained in the hallway, and a single call could have the entire palace at her command. But until then, as Grimsby had made clear, she was not to be disturbed. She was to rest, and not do anything to jeopardize her health. The world was her quarters, and her quarters were the world.

As you from crimes would pardoned be, let your indulgence set me free.

Footnotes stated that when the play was performed, Prospero sometimes broke his staff. Freedom, perhaps, or symbolic that the Bard had reached the end of his work? In the end, it didn't change the fact that right now, she was anything but free herself, even if the Ariel of Shakespeare's work had achieved his freedom, lucky bastard. It also didn't help that after facing creatures ranging from Ursula to the Seaclops, Caliban came off as rather tame (though still a lot nastier than the Caliban she'd befriended years ago…sea monsters, as they were often called, were often anything but).

She closed the book. Her child kicked her. Wincing, she looked out over the ocean. Once, she had seen it as her prison. Ten years of being cooped up in Atlantica under Marina's baleful eye and her father's despairing ones had done that to her. The two years which had followed had been better, as she'd found herself on an adventure on a weekly basis, but still, the sea was her prison. As much as being queen had allowed her to come to understand her father, he had still held the leash.

But how she yearned for it now! The sea was freedom, the land was prison. This very room was her prison, her only company being books and the tocks and ticks of a clock.

She sighed as she looked out over the ocean. Winced, as the baby kicked her again.

"Maybe when you're born, I'll show you to your grandfather," she whispered. "King Triton, Lord of the Seas, come meet your son. Why yes, he does have two legs, and yes, he does have his father's hair. He still uses a hairbrush, despite forks being better and-"

The baby kicked her, shutting her up.

"Look at me," she whispered, as she leant on the desk. "Talking to myself."

It was amazing, really, how she'd spent the first fifteen years of her life in the presence of six sisters who wouldn't stop talking (read: bickering), but now would have welcomed the sight of any one of them. Arista, Andrina, yes, even Attina. Dear Attina, sweet Attina, who was probably ruling Atlantica by now. Launched her palace coup, fed her sisters to the sharkanians…was probably preparing to launch an attack on the surface world to remove the last contestant to her throne and-

Her baby kicked her.

"Quite right, those were unjust bloody thoughts. I think this continent's getting to me." She giggled. "Besides, Attina would launch a bloodless coup. She was always far too prim and proper to get her hands dirty."

Her child didn't give her another kick. Maybe being inside Ariel's body gave it insight into her mind. The fact was, even if Ariel would never admit it, she'd been closest to Attina out of all her sisters. A strange match, that bond between eldest and youngest, between the one prepared to rule and the one last in line, between the one who was never seen without her crown, and the one who swore to never wear such a thing, and yet, it had been there all the same.

Perhaps it was because Attina knew Ariel's mother the best out of all her sisters, and through her, she had a window to Athena's life. Perhaps Attina saw her mother in her youngest sister, and through that, was closer to her than she might otherwise have been. Because even then, as even Attina herself had pointed out on more than one occasion, Ariel was strange. A sister apart. They collected sea shells, she collected from sunken ships. Before her wedding, none of her sisters had even been to the surface, or shown the slightest inclination in doing so. Before her father's edict, it had even been tradition that a mer journey to the surface on their fifteenth birthday and bring back tales of what they had seen. It was an edict that none of her sisters had ever challenged, and tales of prior journeys had never interested them.

A sister apart indeed, Ariel thought. Perhaps so apart that her sisters, nay, all her friends and family had given up on her. Since her return to Denmark, not a single attempt made at contact, no matter how many times she'd headed to Maiden's Head, or walked upon the shore. Sebastian had never crawled into the castle, Flounder had never come beside any boat. Perhaps they thought she'd abandoned them, despite the message she'd given Scuttle and-

Her child kicked. She let out a start, and elbowed The Tempest off her desk.

She cursed, and picked it up. Stared at the page it had fallen upon. Iris, Ceres, and Juno, all making their debut. She had read the words before, yes – Ceres, the most beauteous, Iris, the many-coloured messenger, and Juno, highest queen of state. Three goddesses of old, come to bless a union of mortals.

She had read the words over and over until she grasped their meaning. She'd shaken her head as to the idea of the Bard getting sea nymphs and naiads mixed up (the Sea Nymphs were nomadic mer, the Naiads were an all-female order of warriors ordained by Neptune II). But seeing them now, these three goddesses, three Fates, almost…

Iris, so similar to the youngest ephemeral, behind a rainbow shining over the island. Ceres, perhaps the most beauteous with her crown of flowers, but indifferent. And Juno?

Ariel had never seen Juno. No creature of air, no ghost, had appeared before her wearing the cruel, haughty countenance of Jupiter's wife.

Yet there had always been two spirits, at most. She-

"Ariel?"

She made a start, and not just because the baby kicked her again. A bird was on her windowsill. And not just any bird…

"Ariel? Egg shells and crackers, it is you!"

She stared in silence. Even the baby had stopped kicking.

"Ariel? You with me kid?" Seagull feathers were waved in front of her face. "Know you lost your voice once, don't tell me you lost your hearing."

As she bookmarked the page, she made a sound that was half laugh, half cry, half curse. And if there was a better way to greet Scuttle after all this time, she didn't know it.

"I hear you," she whispered. She went to hug him.

"Please, kid, no hugs. A seal tried that with me once. I tried to tell her that she wasn't my type, but…" He cleared his throat and looked around the room. As someone who'd long claimed to be an expert on the human world, this had to be the proverbial seaweed buffet.

"So this is how the humans live," Scuttle said, as he plopped on her desk. "Not too shabby, kiddo. You've been moving up in the world. Not as high as a bird, mind you, but…what?"

Ariel was sitting there in silence. Her initial joy at seeing the seagull, to be able to speak to an animal at all and have them talk back, was fading. Instead, with darkening eyes, and with darkened tongue, asked the bird what had happened.

"What happened?"

"What happened?" Ariel repeated. "Nearly a year ago, I told you that I would be in Greenland. I told you to pass it onto my friends and family. Even if they abandoned me, you, Scuttle…you can fly over land as easily as sea."

Scuttle put one foot behind the other awkwardly. Refused to meet her gaze.

"Scuttle?" she asked. "You did tell them, didn't you?"

"I, er…funny story about that." Scuttle suddenly had trouble meeting her eyes. "Y'see, I've got my grandgull, Larina, laid an egg which hatched into my great-grandgull, Jona. Great gal. Happened around the same time. She's really had trouble flying, so old man Scuttle was called in to help and-"

"You forgot," Ariel whispered.

"It…might have slipped my mind?"

"You. Forgot."

"Yeah. I mean, we all make mistakes from time to time, right?"

"You forgot," Ariel said for the third time. "Close to a year, I've been without any contact from the World Under the Sea. I thought my family had abandoned me. My friends turned away from me. I was afraid that I'd done something wrong, that by leaving these shores, I may have spurned them."

"Sounds pretty bad," Scuttle said. "But I've actually talked to them and-"

Ariel screamed, and tried to strangle the bloody bird in front of her.

Scuttle squawked, and flew around the room. He was babbling something, and babbled all the more as she threw one book after another at him. The door opened, and Vareet's head popped in.

"Your majesty, what is-"

"Out!" Ariel yelled.

"Is that a seagull?"

"Out!"

Vareet screamed before slamming the door. Scuttle, in his own fear, made a beeline to the open window.

"Not you!" Ariel yelled, as she slammed the window in his face. Scuttle, for one reason or another, slammed right into it, flopping onto the desk.

Ariel, with a copy of Hamlet in one hand and Macbeth in the other, rose the book to pound Scuttle's skull in. If it be done, best it be done quickly. For something was indeed rotten in the state of Denmark, and…

She stopped, as she felt something inside her. Not a kick. A brush. A hand, perhaps…

"Scuttle?" she whispered. She dropped the book. "Scuttle?!"

"…see…glass…"

"Scuttle!" Dropping the books, she knelt down by the desk. "Oh Tides, Scuttle…forgive me…I wasn't…I mean, I wouldn't…the window, I…"

"Birds…see…"

"What?"

He looked at her groggily. "Birds can't see glass."

Ariel let out a cry, and hugged the dumb lug with the strength of a kraken.

"Gentle, gentle! No kisses!"

Well, with almost as much strength.

It made sense now, Ariel thought to herself, as she took a sip of green tea.

They had thought she'd abandoned them. It was why, since returning to Denmark, Sebastian had never crawled into this room. Why Flounder had never swum up a canal to find her. Why not a single sister or even Urchin had come to the beach to see her. Because of Scuttle, as far as they were aware, she'd up and left them.

"Can I have some of that? That Carly-lotta seemed okay with the whole bird thing. She knows about the whole mermaid thing, right? I mean, just a little sip and…oh, okay, I get the hint."

As she took yet another sip, Ariel wasn't sure if she'd forgiven him. She watched as Scuttle, now thankfully silent, flapped from one human artifact to the next. Her life in the Dry World had demonstrated that the seagull had been about 90% wrong when it came to land-folk, and the remaining 10 was up for debate.

"This a spinnymajiggy? Now, last time I saw that, it was-"

"It's a globe, Scuttle. It…oh, don't do that!"

She groaned, as Scuttle caused it to spin and fall off its stand. Intentions mattered, she believed that with all her heart. It was why she could never claim to hate her father for destroying her grotto, because while cruelty might have been the outcome, it had not been the intent.

And yet, she thought, as she placed the globe back up (her eyes lingering on Spain), Scuttle might have severed her link with her first world entirely. And while Scuttle at least had the brains and humility to understand that…what had actually changed? He was here. The rest of her friends and family were not. They might never be, unless she had some means to contact them, and unless they came to the surface on their own volition, the seagull had no way of contacting them.

She sat there in silence. Scuttle finally came to land on the desk, his beady eyes meeting her blues. Her made a retching sound that she supposed was a cough before he finally spoke.

"So…"

"So," Ariel repeated, taking her last sip of tea."

"I see you're pregnant."

"How observant of you."

"That, or you've gained weight."

"Who says I haven't?"

Scuttle continued to stare at her. "So, like, the thing's inside you, right?"

"That's how pregnancy works, Scuttle."

"Well, not all pregnancies. You came from an egg, didn't you?"

"Something like that." Mermaid reproduction wasn't a subject she wanted to discuss, especially given her current pregnancy. Her very long, very heavy pregnancy…

Scuttle couldn't stop talking. "I came from an egg, did y'know that?"

"I know about bird eggs, Scuttle."

"I remember it like it was yesterday. There was a lot of yellow stuff, and a lot of white stuff, and there's me poking my beak out through both of them, and I looked up at my mother, and said my very first word." He leant forward. "Y'know what that was?"

Ariel didn't.

"I'm hungry."

She burst out laughing. Her baby kicked her, which promptly shut her up. Normally, her mind would have drifted to the virtues of infanticide by now, but with Scuttle here…well, it was a reminder of her old world. One that she was coming to miss with every passing day.

"I missed you, Scuttle," Ariel whispered. "I can't say I've forgiven you, but if you're the only person of my old life I ever see again…well, I could do worse."

"Aw, shucks, I'm blushing."

"You're a bird. You can't blush."

"Hey, it's the thought that counts," Scuttle said, as he folded his feathers. "And what I was going to tell you, is that you're not as isolated as you think you are."

"What?"

"Haven't you heard the scuttlebutt?"

"No," said Queen Ariel I Oldenburg.

"Okay, fair enough," said Scuttle, who had the grace to not cause Ariel's ears to bleed. "But the scuttle…sorry, the facts of life are that birds talk. Fish listen. Fish swim down, fish speak, merfolk listen. So after merfolk speak, fish listen, and-"

"Scuttle, just get to the point."

"You're pregnant," Scuttle said. "And one of the kid's aunts wants a get-together."

"One of my sisters?" Ariel exclaimed. "Who?"

Scuttle told her.

"Really? Her?"

"That's what she told me."

"That's, um…when?"

"Sooner the better, I think."

Liar. You don't think. Ariel collapsed back in her chair, processing what the bird had just told her. She would have preferred a meeting with all her sisters, to meet just one, even her…

She couldn't ignore this. Grimsby would need a whole lot of convincing, even as queen. She rubbed her eyes, her bones as weary as the earth, her soul weighed down with its weight.

"I have to meet her," Ariel whispered, as she rubbed her eyes. "Make no mistake Scuttle, this is your fault, but if I lose this chance, I…Scuttle?"

The seagull wasn't paying attention to her. Instead, he was looking at The Tempest. The page Ariel had bookmarked, displaying the illustration of the three goddesses.

"Scuttle, are you alright?"

He looked pale. How a bird could look pale when his face was beak and feathers, Ariel didn't know, but somehow, he managed it. He looked at her, his eyes a lot older, his demeanour a lot sterner. As if the bird had gained some kind of clarity that had been missing his entire life. Yet one driven by fear rather than confidence

"Scuttle?" Ariel whispered. "What is it?"

Slowly, the bird looked at her. And with the age and wisdom of Alkonost herself, answered.

"Ariel, why do you have a picture of the Daughters of the Air?"