Jewel of the Sea

The surface shined like the crystals in the caverns; unexplored, untainted, and begging to be seen. Rays of light penetrated the water, coming down so far before the depths snuffed them out. They swayed and danced, blinking in and out of life; coming back right away one after another… other times, they disappeared all together. The surface rippled, water churned, trying to carry her further away. She wanted to give in to the current, let it carry her away, and see where it would bring her.

“The surface is off-limits.”

Words her father ingrained in her and her sisters throughout their years. Yet she yearned to see what it looked like. Would those rays shine down on her? Or would they hurt?

The coldness swept around her tail, contrasting with the warmth she felt around her upper body. It felt inviting, different, and had a pulse race beneath her skin that she always felt doing something she shouldn’t.

Ariel loved the feeling.

Trouble, rebellion, freedom. She craved it because sitting around the palace all day, fretting over jewels she saw every day, merfolk that wanted in her father’s good graces, and perfect daughters who obeyed without a word wasn’t something she could do anymore. Her sisters loved it: the attention, adoration, sweet talks,

But it was all fake. Ariel could tell the moment her sisters turned their backs the way the merfolks eyes would change. The smiles that would fall from their faces. Her sister didn’t care, though. They knew, and they reveled in knowing they held that power.

Ariel hated it.

Hated not knowing who she could trust or confide in. Growing up knowing her life had been planned, to be betrothed to another she didn’t trust or love. Love was a notion she wasn’t privy to. A privilege her rank wasn’t allowed. It drove her away. To see what the waters held outside of her people, the palace, and her family. To be as free as the water they lived in. It wasn’t held down by anything or anyone, flowing wherever it wanted and taking those it wanted. It was relentless and merciless, unlike her. Stuck in a place she wanted to run from, but to afraid to take that leap.

She wanted to break from that. And maybe that was her start.

With one swift flick of her tail, she swam toward the surface. The coldness was left behind, warmth surrounding her and the rays blinding her, but she didn’t stop. She wanted to see the surface. Nothing would, and no one would stop her. The guards were oblivious to how she escaped the palace every time, and her father never seemed to send anyone out for her unless her presence was required. She may have been the youngest, but she may have as well never been born.

Inconvenient, burden, murderer. There were words that would have someone’s head bitten clean off by a shark, and thrown straight into their territory as punishment. No one dared speak those words, even when no one was around.

The echoes of those voices were left under the water as she broke the surface. The light blinded her through closed eyes. Heat beat down on her from above, and she could feel the water slowly drying from her skin.

A moment of panic set in, and she lowered herself below the surface. Her hands reached up, feeling her face, yet she didn’t feel anything different. Her skin was still smooth. Her eyes cast toward the surface, gazing at the brightness just a few feet from her. Was that what heat did? Suck all the water out of her? The thought terrified her, yet she wanted to see mor

You’re surrounded by water. You won’t die as long as you stay in the water.

With that reminder, she slowly broke through the surface again. The heat beat down on her once again, but she pushed the worry away. Every direction held nothing to the eye. What was there to worry about above the surface? She didn’t see the appeal her father was worried about.

Ariel turned to stare in the direction she knew her father’s palace was in. She knew she pushed, going beyond where she was used to, but she didn’t care. She would venture far and wide, if she had to, to find something that made her father make them fear nothing. Because that’s all she saw—nothing.

Anger slowly seeped through her veins. How dare he tell stories about the surface and the plundering of their kind when there was nothing even remotely close to them. She wondered what other stories he had lied about. The ones who turned their back and were cursed? She wondered who the one that cursed them was if any of it were true.

Water splashed behind her. Once, twice, until it became a pattern. Ariel turned, not seeing anything until they appeared again—elegant and graceful. They jumped out of the water, diving back in as they moved further away. In the opposite direction of her father’s palace.

Choices were never an abundance she was able to have. Swimming out into the expanse that called to her was a choice she could make, albeit it was against everyone’s wishes, but it was hers. One she made on her own, and watching the anger simmer in the other’s eyes was something she learned she loved. They were also swift and fleeting. Something she missed when hesitating too much; it was why she didn’t hesitate when she followed the dolphins—mimicking their movements as they jumped in and out of the water. Rays of heat caught her every time she flew through the air, and the coolness of the sea encased her once again. Her swim companions turned to her every so often. Whether to make sure she was still with them or question why she was so far from her kind. She was just glad they didn’t turn her away; instead, they invited her to swim alongside them.

A smile spread across her face. Twisting and raising her arms toward the sky every so often. The bright ball in the sky blinded her, but she didn’t care. It was warm and inviting, begging her to come closer—an impossible feat since she was stuck beneath the surface. The water slapped against her back every time she hit it flat on. The pain was something new. Her back burned, yet the water soothed it away until she did it again.

Free.

Ariel had never felt something so invigorating as she did at that moment.

She reached her hand out, touching the smaller dolphin beside her. Many dolphins had passed through her father’s territory, never staying long. It wasn’t hard to tell it was their mating season when they called and swam around at each other until they paired up and swam off. She wanted that—freedom to choose who she wanted by graceful movements and singing. To feel a connection with something other than words and a position that granted them something precious while it turned hers into a cage.

Her eyes caught onto something in the distance that sank under the surface. The dolphin’s movements caught her eye as they swam further out, taking a wide birth around it. She slowed down, glancing between the place in front of her and the companions she had been swimming with for a while. Leaving them so soon was something she didn’t want to do, yet curiosity crawled through her, urging her to check it out. The adventurous side of her needed to see what it was. Her father’s words etched in her mind made her go rigid.

There’s nothing to fear. You’ve seen nothing like the stories Father had told to scare you back to him. She knew that. It was the small coil in her gut that made her clench her jaw, barely moving an inch forward to see what it was. She was being silly, a mercild, if she was being honest. She stopped fearing her father’s words the older she became

Her tail fin was already bringing her closer to the weird object before her thoughts came to an end. The burning need to see it for herself and what it held was too much. Wasn’t that what freedom was? Exploring the unknown to her hearts content?

It grew bigger the closer she got. Made of the similar wood to the one she explored at the bottom, yet it was somehow bigger and longer.

Her head broke the surface, water careening the sides of her face. The tip of her nose tickled by its playfulness that peaked just above the surface, kept her hidden from the object, and whatever it held. She wasn’t dumb enough to think it floated by itself. She’d heard stories of humans and their incessant need to explore, conquer, and make others bleed.

Water splashed by her face. Droplets of its damp coolness hitting the side of her face. The sound seemed louder above water without anything else around to drown it out. It was too much, too close to the object, and the last she wanted was the attention drawn this way.

Her head turned, finding her scaly friend. His deep-blue, with light blue spots scattered across his scales, gleamed in the bright light as he jumped and flipped in the air beside her.

Her eyes narrowed, water bubbles coming to the surface as she spoke. “Flounder."

She stuck out as it was. Her hair bled out around the water like blood that seeped from a wound. Bright in contrast against the dark blue waves that whirled around her body. She didn’t need him to make her presence known more than she already did. Being seen too early wasn’t her intention.

If there was anyone’s attention to get. She hadn’t seen any movement the whole time she gazed at it.

Flounder swam around, splashing water in the air. Her face contorted at what he suggested.

“No, Flounder. I’m not going back yet.” Ariel scowled at him as he told her how worried her father was. As if she cared. “It’s suffocating there.”

She would have laughed at how absurd that sounded—suffocating when air was an abundance, everywhere and anywhere below the surface, just as it seemed above. Her father’s worries seemed invalid as she peered around the vast openness. There was nothing as far as her eyes could see besides the wooden object. It stood out… like her. A richer brown than the floors of the sea or the algae-mixed dirt walls of her room.

She wondered if it felt different above the surface than it had below. Would it feel soft and smooth like the algae? Or rough like rocks under her hands?

Ariel didn’t wait long to get closer, inching closer with each swish of her tail. It looked abandoned—just as the one she ventured through below. No movement had been seen at the top. Drifting aimlessly in the vast sea that would one day swallow it whole.

Once she had reached the object she had only touched below the surface, she slowly reached her hand out, inches from touching something that stayed above the surface; where it was intended to be.

Why does Father hate these things?

It was a question she knew she could never speak of with him. He would surely lock her deeper into Atlantis if she pushed further.

Her fingers ran along the object. It wasn’t rough like the rocks she knew. It was… smooth, yet not like algae. Somehow… softer. Was that what it felt like when the object below the surface stayed above? Untouched by the depths that had taken the other? Ariel wasn’t sure how to describe it. Except it was sucked of every life she knew.

Something was thrown over the side from the top. Many holes appeared in it that were held up by four long strings. It broke the surface with a loud splash, sinking below the depths she called home.

Ariel waded the surface and waited to see if it came back up.

It didn’t.

Her eyes squinted in thought, head tilting to the side. She pushed off the boat, letting herself sink below the surface. It was there she had found what had fallen over was bigger than before it fell. The holes that connected the whole thing billowed out, reminding her of an octopus; ready to wrap its legs around her, but this didn’t have eight legs. It only had four. Four strings that carried it toward her. Had they created something like the octopus above the surface?

Panic gripped her chest as Ariel floated there. Unknowing what to do with the thing and what its purpose was.

It was too late.

No matter how far she swam in the other direction, she had waited too long. Her tail wouldn’t give her the currents she needed because it hit the surface octopus every time, slowing her down. The only thing she saw as a slight hope was that it didn’t have the suckers like a normal octopus, clinging to her tail as it wished.

Ariel glanced at Flounder, who waited a ways away from the object. He had stated clearly how he would come no closer to it than he already had. He swam back and forth along an invisible line, tail swashing side to side in a way that only she knew were from the nerves that riddled his little body. It was when he swiftly dove downward, turning to swim in her direction that the feeling seized her chest. Tightening around her lungs that she truly felt what she had done had become more than she could handle.

Ariel raised a hand to stop him, only for her fingers to brush against the rough, prickly texture of the surface octopus.

She recoiled her hand, but the moment of fear and panic had stopped her enough to allow it to surround her. The long strings changed direction, heading toward the surface.

Something brushed against her arm, disturbing the water as it swam around her. Light blue spots stuck out admist the brown.

“No, Flounder.” Ariel turned, finding her friend and gently pushed him out of the ropes that surrounded her with her hand. There was no way she would allow him to stay with her. He wouldn’t survive. She wasn’t even sure she could survive out of the water for long, either. But it was better than them both. And Flounder had only followed her out that far. She wouldn’t put him in any more danger than she had.

Flounder swam in circles outside of it. The holes in it her only reprieve. Ariel knew what he was trying to tell her, but every time she grabbed onto it, it dug into her skin roughly, yet never drawing blood. No matter how much she tugged, pulled, or pushed, the surface octopus wouldn’t budge.

Ariel’s eyes widened. The sides closed in around her the closer it got to the surface. Was it going to squeeze the life out of her once they broke the surface? Had the object not been abandoned, and she was now defenseless against those above? The latter seemed worse than the former. Every horror story her father had told her ran through her mind. The next was always worse than the last. Ariel would rather take death than be some prized jewel.

The rough, prickly object dug into her skin as she gripped it. Water fell off her as they broke the surface. Her body gave way, heavy against the bottom of it as it rose further from the water. Her tail squished by the weight of her body, unable to move from the confines that constricted around her.

Voices from further above now shouted, laughter ringing down below to greet her. Her began to shake. From the coldness that seeped under her skin? Or fear? Maybe both. Ariel couldn’t tell anymore.

Faces she had never seen before were the first thing she saw when her confined trapped broke above the top. They were splotched with a dark color. Smiles with crooked teeth and others missing most of them.

A few held one long rope, seeming to tie it off onto something by the edge.

A few stepped closer to the edge. One held something long with grabbed onto her confinement, pulling her over the edge of the object they all stood on.

Ariel jerked, not going far but swinging her confinement a little. It did nothing to stop the man as he pulled it over the edge of their object and grabbed onto the holes, keeping it from swinging back out.

The one holding it smiled, making Ariel recoil further. Hoping the prickles of her confinement would somehow give way and she would fall. They didn’t. She was stuck. His smile was better than the others. All there, yet one tooth was like gold coral, yet it shined like a jewel. It was his eyes that swept over her she didn’t like. Not like Ocharus. No. He wanted her to be a princess of Atlantis. She couldn’t tell what that man wanted, which was somehow worse.

“Well… what do we have here?”

That feeling she couldn’t tell before gripped Ariel’s chest, closing around her lungs. Breathing became more challenging as she tried to fill her lungs, failing. Everything stilled around her when a deeper voice shouted from behind the crowd.

“Back off, you lot! No one touches her.”

Footsteps echoed from the depths of the crowd, and everyone nearby quieted until Ariel could hear the water below crash against them.