2 Mara the Ondine
Mara the Ondine
“But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more."
― Hans Christian Anderson
THERE WERE ALWAYS SECRETS WHISPERED in the house of whores. Secrets skillfully pried from the lips of men by way of the bottle, by the way that a smile and a bat of an eyelash could empty men's heads as effectively as they emptied their wallets.
Mara was queen of all of those.
But even she needed no skill to learn the news the morning that one of Port Royal's most notorious pirate captains mysteriously washed up on the docks. Washed up minus his entire ship.
She could imagine easily how such a thing may have happened.
Long before her days of whoring and legs, she had been an ondine, swimming merrily with her kin in the warm and soothing waters of the Caribbean.
She'd seen many a sailor go overboard in her time, torn from the deck by wild storm winds to be lost in the raging sea.
She'd seen even more lost to a sinking ship, blown apart in great battles or even greater storms.
She could have easily brought them to land, if she'd wanted to, these sacrifices to the sea. But the bipeds had never interested her.
Not until she'd heard a queen singing on the shore of Port Royal.
The woman, raven hair shining in the sunlight, had been regal and breathtaking. So beautiful, and so unlike any biped that she'd ever laid eyes on that Mara's heart had been stolen away immediately.
She'd never before wanted to be someone else's port in the storm so much before that moment. She'd been willing to give everything for that chance.
Which was why it had been so inconceivable that her love and her sacrifice would be rewarded with such betrayal. And now, here she was. Stranded, a fish on land, bearing the curse of Mami Wata.
A biped you shall be, my daughter, until you are loved with a true love.
A love that is true? No, Mara no longer believed in such fairy tales. They’d been trampled beneath Elizabeth Barnes’ treacherous little feet. And her repugnant little toes.
Well, all toes were repugnant. They were wiggly and stumpy, like fingers but somehow deformed.
She did not know how it was that bipeds - humans - could tolerate them being attached to their bodies.
Some of them even fetishized them, the filthy perverts.
Those were clients she did her best to stay well clear of.
She'd lived among humans far too long, serviced their pleasure for far too long. But she wasn't so removed from the ocean that she didn't recognize the mark of her own kind in the news of the beached pirate. And that - that was something she most certainly needed to do something about.
It was easy enough to steal away from the brothel in the early hours of the morning, when the only clients still in attendance were passed out drunk or curled around warm bodies.
Easy enough to bundle up clean clothes and a sliver of soap, to make her way down to the sea with the pretense of bathing.
There were coves, beyond the port of Port Royal, where it was common enough; she left her clothes there, stripping the human threads from her body, and dove into the warm embrace of the water she had once called home.
Even without a tail she could still cut through the water with ease.
The gills at the back of her neck, tucked away and hidden from human eyes, flared open in the cool seawater, filling her with life.
For a moment she allowed herself to revel in memories, to believe that if she just stayed here that Mami Wata would grant her back her beautiful tail.
Having her fill of the marine fantasy, she finally pushed away hope. She had work to do.
It was embarrassingly easy to find her brother, skulking around in the shallows under the docks.
“You’d better get a grip, Silverfin, you creeper!”
“Mara!”
They had embraced warmly, her legs coming to tangle around his magnificent tail. Their long hair, with the similar texture and coils, mingled together in the salty water. When she had held him to her heart's content, she pulled away and smacked her brother across his smug face.
“Hey! What was that for?”
“For you being an idiot,” she replied, shaking her head. “What were you thinking, dragging Hawk’s body to shore and leaving him out there for Elizabeth to find?”
“Who?”
“The biped? The pirate? The self-loathing ginger nightmare?”
“The Red Pirate King!” Silverfin exclaimed, flushing crimson and diving deep to hide his embarrassment. She floated on her back, waiting for him to resurface. “What did you say his name was?”
“Captain Hawk,” she sneered. “And you, you are the imbecile du jour. Did you really think you could just leave him on the dock and no-one would ask questions? That no-one would wonder how the most notorious pirate captain magically appeared back in Port Royal, alone, while his boat is off hunting a prize?”
"Is he really?"
"What?"
"The most notorious captain in Port Royal?"
Mara sighed. Her brother's fervor was embarrassing, but all too familiar. The look in his eyes, the way he fell all over himself just speaking of Hawk. It was the cause of all the mistakes she'd made in her life.
"Listen to me, little brother," she said, with as much sternness as she could muster.
"Whatever it is that you think you feel, you don't. Getting involved with bipeds will cause you nothing but pain.
So leave this place. Go back to the sea, forget about the man you saved, and never come back here again. "
Never come back here again. That’s what Mara had said, and Mara would know.
When years ago she had given up her tail for a pair of “legs,” Silverfin himself had mourned his sister for dead.
It was that way with the ondines: if they left their marine home for love, and their lovers betrayed them, the consequences were always dire.
But the rules would not apply to him. First of all, he reckoned, he wasn’t some sighing, weeping mermaid.
He was a MerSir, a prince of the sea. Second, he had been Mami Wata’s favorite for some time.
And third, and most importantly, no one was going to pull one over on him, for he was the wiliest fish in the big, wide ocean.
And he wanted Hawk. (Hawk. What a funny name. All biped names were funny.) He wanted him, and the only way he could be with him was if he did what Mara had done.
He needed to strike a bargain with Mami Wata for a pair of those “legs.”
But would Hawk want him? The fact that the handsome pirate had tried to commit himself to a watery grave still weighed heavy on Silverfin's mind. It tied the MerSir to Port Royal; every moment that he was away was plagued with visions of that beautiful body slipping beneath the waves.
“He will not care about your love,” Mara had told him.
“All he cares about is gold. I hear him and Elizabeth talking about it when they don’t think I’m listening.
A self-governed Port Royal, safe from the encroaching empires of civilization.
And they need money to secure this independence, and lots of it. ”
Silverfin regarded his grotto, the glittering treasures he'd stolen away from the human world.
Would that be enough to buy Hawk's love?
He knew more about the ways of the bipeds than most of his kind, enough to know that many of the things that merfolk treasured would not hold as much value to the land-dwellers.
His small collection of pearls, perhaps.
The gold coins scavenged from the wrecks of ships.
But the other things - the pottery, the trinkets that decorated his home - those were plentiful, up above. He'd need more.
Like an entire ship full of treasure.
A ray of sunshine hit the waters and reflected back into the azure of Silverfin’s eyes. The placid waters unfolded before his gaze in a shimmering array of gold.
Yes! That was it! How foolish of him not to think of it sooner!
An entire galleon, laden with gold: it wasn’t a thing of imagination.
It traversed these waters fairly regularly, and Silverfin knew the route.
It was the Estrela do Norte, and many was the time that he and his kin had discussed sinking in for the greater glory of Mami Wata.
All that gold, so much treasure to fill out the oceanic coffers. His mer-kin wanted that gold. But his Pirate King - Captain Hawk - he needed it. That gold could be the only thing that might yet keep him from the watery abyss.
But how was Silverfin supposed to give Hawk an entire ship?
Despite his sister's warnings, Silverfin knew he couldn't leave his Pirate King - Captain Hawk - alone.
Whether the man had meant to or not, he'd almost been sacrificed to the deep.
And in those few moments alone on the dock, it had been clear to Silverfin that the man's sorrow was too heavy for it not to tow him under again.
That, and...
Silverfin pressed his fingers to his lips, remembering that stolen kiss on the docks.
Despite having just been in the ocean, Hawk's lips had been searingly hot against his own.
It was so good to kiss him, and that ache it had awoken inside him - the need to press close, to feel him - had never gone away.
If he didn't do this, Silverfin knew it would continue to haunt him for the rest of his days.
He had to return to Hawk, despite Mara's warnings.
He had to join the bipeds himself, on a pair of those weird "legs.
" But he wasn't so foolish as to assume his mere presence would win Captain Hawk over, despite the fact that he was arguably the most beautiful fish in the sea.
But if he came on land with something else to offer, like information about a treasure ship so laden with gold that it could buy Captain Hawk's every dream...
Surely Hawk would never be able to resist him.