chapter one

The mermaid liked to watch shipwrecks.

A mermaid's ears are not like our own. In the depths, the water is thick and black, and sound moves slowly as if each note is wading through treacle. Every sound is slow, sluggish, softened around the edges like a saltwater pearl. Things are more abstract down there. Hazy. The water obscures most things, and sound is one of the first.

Up here was a cacophony.

When one breaks the surface of the ocean, sound is sharp. It's harsh, loud, rich. The hull of the ship cracked, and the ocean roared through the hole. The sail billowed like drums. Each rip of the wood was like a horsehair bow scratching across violin strings. The screaming sailors were, of course, the choir.

When at last the storm settled, and the men floated down to the seabed along with the cannons and the guns, the mermaid would swim back to her home.

She lived in an augite cave, black and smooth. She stitched the wounds of the injured, and she mixed medicines and read through her fingertips. Each night she would sleep amongst the dark, sharp-smelling plants that grew from the cave's floor.

Today's shipwreck was special.

It was a royal galleon – she knew from the ship's masthead. It was a lion; the animal of Cragen. A salty whip of a wave shattered the lion's head from its body the crash of a cymbal.

The air was cold on the mermaid's wet skin. She closed her eyes and listened.

"This is it, Your Highness!" roared one of the sailors, his voice straining against the storm's crescendo.

The wind howled, screaming through the ship's body, dragging huge angry waves over the deck.

"We have boats for the men!" another replied. It was clear he was in charge. "For God's sake, go!"

"You've –" Another wave crashed. The hull split. "You've got to get off this ship, it's a death wish! The men are on their boats! It's just a few of us, it's just –"

"I shall not leave this ship until every last one of my men is safe and –"

The ship swayed, and its vast creaking echoed over the waves. The mast splintered.

The mermaid closed her eyes and smiled. The final note. It rippled across the ocean, icy and dead. The song was over.

She turned away. Chunks of driftwood were floating on the ocean's surface now. Anything heavier would be dragged to the bottom of the sea where collectors and anthropologists would find it years later. Her head felt light with the rush of a good shipwreck. There was just something about a good piece of art that made her feel both strong and liberated, as though she could crush the nearby cliffs in the palm of her –

Something grabbed her hand.

The mermaid raced back, snatching her arm away. Something was thrashing in the water. A man. He was a strong swimmer, but no match for the storm; he was fighting to keep his head above the black water.

The mermaid watched him with curiosity. Rain fell on her face and arms like arrows as she waited.

"Please!" managed the man, clawing at the water's surface, at driftwood, at anything. Seawater poured from his mouth. He swallowed as much of it as he managed to spit out. "Please help me!"

She wrinkled her nose. She had never been spoken to by a human man before. She did not like it.

The sea snatched at him like a doll, but the human man seemed determined to live. "Please!" he choked. "I can – I can beg you! I can give you whatever you wish!"

The mermaid glanced up at the moon. It was getting late.

"I am a Prince," bartered the human man.

The mermaid shrugged.

"Please," he gasped, water pouring from his mouth as he struggled for breath. "Please help me."

On one hand, the mermaid had little to no interest in helping the Prince. His voice was harsh and ugly. It sounded like swords against stones. On the other hand, she had sworn an oath as a physician to help those with any ailments. She supposed drowning counted as an ailment.

"Fine," said the mermaid, and she bobbed below the waves.

She seized the Prince's ankle and she swam as fast as she could towards the rocks by the cliff face. She could feel him thrashing behind her, which she supposed was how humans swam.

"Stop trying to help," she said, stopping, yanking him up by the leg. "I can swim stronger than you can, all this thrashing just – shit."

The Prince was floating face-down in the water like a chunk of water moss.

She swam around him, trying to make a diagnosis. "Are you dead?" she asked.

He did not reply. Rainwater battered the sea around him.

Her eyes widened. It was entirely possible she had been dragging the Prince with his face under the waves. It was equally possible that he had been thrashing not to help her to swim but rather to get his head above water so that he could breathe. Not being able to breathe, she knew, killed people.

She floated next to him for a little while, trying to figure out what to do now. She pushed him gently and he rolled onto his back. He certainly looked dead.

"Alright."

The mermaid then spent about ten minutes trying to decide whether or not this counted as her fault. She did drag him around with his face underwater, but on the other hand, he would have died if she had left him too. It was difficult. In the end she concluded that while it was not her fault per se, she should probably give him a decent burial.

She sighed deeply, and her chest deflated. She looked around. It was so late to be bothering with this sort of thing. She did not know what to do.

She had seen human funerals. Rather, she had seen one, on the tip of a cliff. Everyone had worn black and there had been singing and crying, and the body had some land-flowers on his chest as if they were using it as a table. She used this information to piece together an idea of a human funeral.

She dragged the Prince to some rocks, black and slippery, below the face of the nearest cliff. She scratched a handful of dark moss from the cliff's face and slopped it onto his chest where the flowers were supposed to go. She observed her handiwork with scepticism. It did not look great.

The next step was a teary song. She did not know any human songs, but she decided to improvise.

"O Prince, thou art dead;
Underwater was thine head.
Yo ho ho ho ho
I knocked up the captain's wife."

(She had mostly only heard sea shanties.)

A huge, wet cough exploded from the Prince like water from a blowhole. He sat up, his body shaking from coughs. His face was grey, and he was breathing like a drowning man, clawing at the moss on his chest. He scurried to the edge of his rock and vomited into the sea. When at last he had purged his guts of seawater, he wiped off his mouth and dipped his hands in the water. He splashed his face. He was shivering.

The Prince looked out at the shipwreck. He said, "I'm alive..."

"More or less," she replied. When she gestured, her hands splashed a little water from the sea's surface.

The Prince froze. "A maiden?"

The mermaid dipped underwater and back up again, splashing her tail. She said again, "More or less."

He frowned, scraping back his sodden hair. "You are a fish?"

"Well, I'm a mermaid. So...more like a human, really."

He said, "Do mermaids lactate?"

This was not a question that the mermaid had expected or wanted. She said, "What."

"Oh!" the Prince remembered his manners. "Oh, I apologise, was that crude?"

"Well, you just asked me whether I lactate."

"Not you personally, but just mermaids who have had offspring."

She thought about it. "No, we don't. Do you?"

He shook his head, still shivering from the storm. He thought about it. "Do you have gills? Do you lay eggs?"

"We can..."

He nodded. "Fish," he diagnosed.

"Is that a joke?" She had just saved this man's life and his response was to call her a fish and ask her whether or not she lactated. If this was gratitude, he could shove it up whatever humans even had back there.

"No," he said, crossing his legs and hugging his knees into his chest. He was missing a boot. "The animal kingdom has some rather strange classifications. Dolphins are mammals."

"So you presume to be closer to a dolphin than I?"

"Well not like, emotionally..."

"Alright," she said flatly. "I'm going to go."

A flash of panic crossed the Prince's eyes. "Wait!" he said. "I'm on a rock."

"Yes, you're welcome."

"Yes, but..." He looked around, squinting out the rain. Around him, huge black cliffs soared like waves. "I have no idea where I am. I can't see anything. And I'm covered in moss for...some reason?"

"Alright, and what of it?"

He shrugged his broad shoulders. She could see them through his drenched white shirt. She squinted at them, trying to figure out whether she liked that or not.

The Prince said, "What if a shark comes?"

"And does what?"

"And eats me!"

"My condolences."

"You will be very sorry that you rescued me only to have me eaten."

"I shall be very sorry that the shark is not receiving proper nutrition," she replied. "You look quite sinewy."

"I shall take that as a compliment," he said, a little smug for a man who had been five seconds from a painful death.

"You can take that as a lesson in ichthyology."

He said, "Ichthyology?"

"Study of fish. I would be a magnificent teacher in the study of fish as I, apparently, am one."

The Prince laughed. If the shipwreck had been an orchestra, this was more like a gentle melody played by pipes. It was humble and musical. The mermaid quite liked it.

"My name is Chamber," he said, and his smile reached his eyes.

"That is not a name, that is a room," she replied.

"Princes have strange names," he allowed. "It shows people we are special."

"I shall have to take your word for it." She extended a hand, speckled with water. "Anahita. You cannot pronounce it."

He shook her hand. "Anahita," he greeted, somehow mispronouncing every syllable. "Do you have a nickname?"

"Yes," she said, and she left it at that.

The Prince nodded, impressed by the way she spoke to him. "Fair enough. I cannot pronounce anything the first time. I still cannot quite master the word kvlevir." Catching her look, he explained, "It is a type of horn from Chystlavy – a nation far East, I don't know if you know it. They have all sorts of musical instruments."

Her eyes widened. The storm was settling, and the sea was slowly becoming still. Above them, the clouds were clearing. The sky was dappled with stars.

"Oh," he said. "You like music?"

She squinted a little, trying to read him. "I don't know about kvlevirs." As she stayed afloat, the water rippled around her.

"They have all sorts in Chystlavy. Little guitars that sound very high pitched like –" He played an invisible guitar, imitating a few high notes. "I once went to a ball in their capital and they played an instrument made of goat-skin and pipes! And they use bells instead of drums!"

It sounded beautiful.

Anahita said, "I will go to Chy-stla-vy and hear their music."

Chamber hummed. "It's land-locked so I think you'll struggle, what with the..." He motioned to her tail. He amended hastily, "Well, I can tell you about it! I can tell you about anything. You did save my life."

Finally, she thought. Some acknowledgment.

"Oh!" his eyes lit up. "I bet you don't have lemon cakes in the ocean."

"There is no need to brag," she said, folding her arms. And then, "What's a lemon cake?"

"Oh it's the most amazing thing! It's a little fluffy food – sweet, delicious, like honey – and it's made from butter and eggs and sugar whipped up together with the zest of a lemon!" The words poured from his mouth as if each one was precious.

Anahita said, "I don't know what half of these words mean."

"Butter is when you take the fermented milk of a cow and you churn it until the fat comes out."

"That sounds really special," she lied.

"It is more valuable to me than gold."

"You are a prince," she said, "so that doesn't mean much. I'm sure you could say the same about air."

He laughed again. He had stopped shivering. "I will bring you a lemon cake," he promised. "If I see you again. Which I would like to do."

Anahita did not let herself smile, but her eyes betrayed her. "I must return," she said, "for I have medicines to concoct in the early hours."

"I did not know fish could be doctors."

"I did not know princes could be funny."

With that, she disappeared. 

________________________________________________________________________________

[Thank you so much for reading! Let me know how you're finding it so far! And it will be quite fun to see what you think might happen next, etc. Looking forward to hearing from you, aaaaaaa]