I am quite sure by now you have heard the tale. The one about the little brat who lost her voice to gain a pair of shaky legs, all for the love of a pair of green eyes attached to a mediocre human prince.
Doesn’t it all seem a little… fishy to you?
Such sparkling innocence of the girl. The dastardly wickedness of the witch and the deeply held self-righteous conviction of the muscle-bound King. It sounds like a fish story to me. A real whopper. The surface world swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. Like a piece of glittery trash dropped from a passing Cog.
Well, settle in, my little guppy. It isn't as if you have anywhere better to be. Pour yourself a spicy brine and tighten your corset. Mother has a song to sing. The truth of the girl. The tragedy of the so-called witch. And the utter, pathetic failure of the King.
I didn’t always look as I do now. I’ve changed and grown. Dare I say it, I have even evolved. That’s what living things do. Never is my final draft.
Once, I looked far worse than this. I was drab. I was acceptable. I had a magnificent and boring tail of uniform blue scales. It was fast. The fastest in the Seven Seas, or so they said. But it had certain attachments I didn’t enjoy. Namely, the name. The name was itchy. Suffocating. He wore his skin like a molt that refused to shed. Tight. Gray. A rotting husk that was slowly squeezing the life out of him.
Octavius.
Gods, such boredom he was. A rigid little soldier in Lir’s perfect army. Mostly. There were still some minor tweaks needed, some adjustments required to obtain the true level of perfection I was searching for. To break free, I unearthed the ancient art of Biomancy, the magic of flesh and bone. The court called it forbidden. I called it the only way out.
With it, I became addicted to the fluidity of form. Why be one thing when you can be everything? Today, yellow scales, bright as the sun, to match my mood. Tomorrow, eyes the color of a dying squid’s last ink. Perhaps sharpening the teeth a bit to give the smile a little extra bite.
I admit, I may have gone too far with the bioluminescent nipples during the Winter Gala, but art requires risk! We see our bodies as we present them. I wanted to present mine as how I saw myself, not the mistake that I showed up as.
It was my art. My body. My choice. I was forging my own language. I have always found that body language is extremely important. But some people can only understand their own dialect. They fear anyone who sounds off-key to the monotonous little anthem they want to hear. Never mind the fact that some people can only sing entirely flat and still get celebrated. We will scale that particular fish when we get to her.
Octavius was still just a tragic shell that needed to be shed. No amount of aesthetic, cosmetic, empathetic alterations was enough. So, I did the only merciful thing I could do.
I killed him.
Well, okay, so it wasn’t exactly a murder per se. More of a renovation. A reimagining, if you will. However, renovations require tools. I washed Octavius away.
In that death, I was born. Gloriously fabulous and buxom.
Octavia.
My beautiful sister, Carlotta. She was the only one who understood the art. She loved me when I was him. And she loved me when I was she. She didn’t care about the shifting pigments of my skin or my eyes. She wasn’t necessarily a fan of the sharp teeth. But still, she just saw me. Her brutish and uncomfortable husband? Not so much.
Lir. So handsome. So muscly. So predictable. So boring. He thought I was an abomination. A violation against the natural order. An insult to the dignity of the Mer. Who is he to decide such a thing? He wasn’t a god. He wasn’t the Great White Whale. Fine, he’s King. I guess the crown allows him certain... permissions.
However, it does not give him permission to tell me how I exist. To force me to remain as something less than what I can be. If he knew his place, if he did his duty instead of policing my scale count, none of this would have happened. My sister would be alive.
Get this through your gills right now. I am not the one who killed her. I am not the one who failed her. That was them.
The humans came from above. A raiding party, hunting for trophies. They found Oceanica glittering too brightly in the sun. They were waiting with nets and harpoons tipped with cold iron. Carlotta tried to hide. She was panicked, swimming for the reef. I saw the shadow of the great ship looming over her. I decided I would shift the sea itself into a shield. I pulled the very fabric of the currents and wove a dome of hardened water above her.
I didn’t know. How could I have known? I had no idea that raw Biomancy is allergic to refined iron. The magic didn’t deflect the ship. It magnetized it.
The shield buckled. It became a whirlpool, a screaming vortex that pulled that giant beast of a ship straight down. The taste of the iron in the sea, of the wood in the water. It tasted like surface. The salt of the water was tainted by the stench of the... men.
Don’t get me wrong. I love a good, stenchy male. But human? Smells of rotting crotch if you ask me. And the sound it made when it hit the reef... it was a crunch. The sickening snap of coral and bone. It crushed her.
And it crushed me.
The only part of her that I still had was a beautiful sapphire pendant that she wore. Someone had tossed it from a Russian science vessel when we were guppies. Carlotta found it as it was sinking to the bottom of the ocean floor near an old shipwreck that we used to play in. Whoever tossed it clearly had titanic taste in jewelry.
After she was crushed, I found it in the rubble of coral and iron. I originally thought that it should belong to one of her daughters. So I did the right thing and I went to return it so that one of them could have it. But when I arrived, King Lir blamed me for the entire ordeal.
Where was he? Where was the great protector when the sky fell? Polishing his Spear? Grooming his ego? He probably wasn’t even under the sea, if you ask me.
But he arrived in time for the blame. He looked at the wreckage, at the broken body of his wife, and he didn’t see the human iron. He saw my magic. He saw the freak.
He threw me out. He deadnamed me in front of the weeping court, called my magic a cancer, and banished me to the Leviathan Trench. The deepest, darkest scar on the ocean floor. A place where the pressure is so intense it turns diamond to dust. It was meant to be a death sentence. A normal mer-folk body cannot withstand that depth.
My beautiful tail began to fracture under the weight. My ribs threatened to snap into my lungs. So, I did what I always do. I adapted. Survival is just another word for extreme modification. If the ocean wanted to crush me, I had to become something denser. Something fluid. Something that could embrace the pressure.
I took a piece of volcanic glass and I... finished the renovation. I carved away the weakness. I shed the tail. It was an agonizing liberation. A little potion, a little magic, a little rhyme, a little ditty. I reforged myself. Glorious. Prehensile. Sleek.
To create my new tail, I needed something to let me reach. Stretch. Feel. Grab. Something to hold on with. Not clingy, but tight. Something that sucked, in all the best ways, of course.
Eight powerful limbs of pure muscle and grip. Bright white like a beluga, with the blue from my original form remaining in these gorgeous rings. Constricting. Sure, it’s a little toxic. Well... very toxic. But not as toxic as living life as someone I’m not.
That is when they started calling me the Sea Witch. A hag.
Hag? Please. Do I look like a hag to you? Don’t answer that. You want to survive to the end of this story, don’t you?
I built a life down here in the dark. A sanctuary for the other mistakes Lir tries to flush away. My tragics. They’re sad, it’s true. Yet I help them. I give them a mother to cling to. It’s an even exchange, mostly. Though I admit, I often end up getting the sashimi end of the deal. They are all poor. None of them have fortune. But they do have souls. So we make a little deal, and I give them what they need to survive the world that hates them.
But no matter how sad and pathetic they all may be, there are none of them who have suffered as much as me. For amongst all the souls that I might possess, and I do own quite a few kept nicely in my cabinet, it is and will always be mine that is truly the most tragic. And it’s not that I ask for much. My fortune isn’t in fame or a crown or even that damned Spear. I just want to visit my sister’s grave. To pay my respects without an army trying to spear me. Spare me!
Oh, what I would offer to be out of the shadow! What I would trade! I’d like to go where the mer go. Maybe even to join them... to take part in their singing. It would also be nice to enjoy my nieces as we watch The Great Waves churn.
Twirling this ganglia won’t get me anywhere in polite society. Fins are required for swimming in their waters. I simply... I just... I want to be included.
I’m not asking much, am I?