Deadlines are a bitch, aren’t they? Especially those self-imposed ones. Why do these kinds of deals always have to end at some arbitrary time?
Everyone at the palace was in a panicked fever since early dawn. Because the stupid two-tone trollop had destroyed the wedding cake and decapitated the floral arrangements, the wedding originally set for sunset the day before had been moved to noon the day following. Right on the deadline of the contract.
I wasn’t sure how I was going to get Devan to marry her. I almost considered staying. Being Milstead forever. But I couldn’t. Not for a crown. Not for green eyes. Not for nothing. No, I was a self-made woman and I wanted to return. I would suffocate and die without the ocean. That would be one literal suffocation but if I were to have to breathe through the face of a man for the rest of my life that would kill me faster than being out of the sea.
I stood in front of the mirror in the Captain’s Quarters of the royal barge. It had been designated as the prep area, while the wedding itself was set to occur at the end of the royal pier.
The barge was swaying gently. It usually soothed me but today it felt like the pendulum of a clock ticking down to my execution.
I adjusted the collar of the white suit. It was tight. Too tight.
I felt a flush of heat that was there with no regard to summer sun, but only appearing due to chemistry. The testosterone was evaporating. I could feel it leaving my system like a tide going out and revealing the estrogenic edges of my true biology beneath.
It hit me like a rogue wave. My emotions had been blissfully dulled by the male hormones. It was mostly just hungry and angry and horny. Suddenly, they sharpened into a prism of anxiety and sentimentality. I wanted to cry. More than that, I needed to kill someone. But I would have been satisfied with some chocolate.
“Get it together,” I hissed at my reflection. “You are a predator. You do not have mood swings.”
I pressed a hand to my chest. The rock-hard slab of pectoral scar tissue felt tender. Softer.
“Knock, knock,” a reedy voice called out.
I didn’t turn around. I knew who it was. The fun sponge himself. Martan entered the cabin looking like someone had placed a straw in his mouth and just sucked all the air out leaving a wrinkled sack with eyes. He was holding a pocket watch and vibrating with stress.
“Lord Waters,” Martan said while bowing low. “The guests are seated on the pier. The Archbishop is ready.”
I stared at myself in the mirror. I poked my chest.
“Martan,” I said. “May I ask you a serious question?”
My voice wavered slightly before I forced it back down into the baritone rumble. I turned to face him. I pulled the fabric of my coat tight across my chest.
“Be honest with me,” I said while looking him dead in the eye. “Do my nipples appear engorged to you?” Martan froze.
His mouth opened and then closed. He looked at my chest then immediately looked at the ceiling and the floor and a spot on the wall behind my head.
He did not reply.
“It’s the humidity,” I muttered while releasing the coat. “It makes everything puffy.”
Martan cleared his throat. A sound like dry twigs snapping.
“It is time, Lord Waters,” he squeaked. “We cannot keep the Archbishop waiting.”
I looked out the porthole. The sun was nearly at its highest point. It was a heavy ball of fire threatening to reach noon and burn my entire life to the ground. Martan didn’t know the clock I was on. He just wanted a wedding. I wanted to survive.
I had to get Avis. I had to get her into a dress and onto this boat and in front of that priest before noon.
“I need half an hour,” I announced.
“Half an hour?” Martan sputtered. “Lord Waters! That is highly irregular! The groom cannot be late to his own wedding! It is improper!” I walked past him and grabbed my top hat from the table.
“It may be,” I said. I paused to check my teeth in the mirror. Were they shrinking? “But I’ve never been accused of being a proper lady before and I’m not about to start now.”
I left him hyperventilating in the cabin as I swept onto the deck and down the side opposite the guests.
“Carriage!” I barked at a footman. “Back to the palace. Drive like the devil is chasing you. Because she is.”
The ride to the dungeon was a blur of cobblestones and cursing. I spent the entire journey checking my beard. It felt itchy. I tugged on it. It held firm but I could feel the follicles weakening.
“Just hold on,” I whispered to my facial hair. “Just a little longer. Be a team player.”
I stormed into the dungeon and ignored the guards who scrambled to salute me.
“Open it,” I roared while pointing at the heavy iron door of cell block four.
The guard fumbled with his keys. “Yes, Lord Waters!” He unlocked the door and swung it open.
I strode in. I was ready to grab the girl and drag her to the pier and force a happily ever after down her throat if I had to use a funnel.
“Alright, you little brat, let’s g...” I stopped.
She was gone. The bed was made. The bucket was overturned. And on the window ledge there was a glistening substance. It was wet. It smelled of three day old fish.
She used her overactive spit glands to create a lubricant from her own drool and slid out between the bars.
I looked out the window. It opened out onto the cliffs. A sheer drop to the sea. She was gone. She was out in the city somewhere loose and mute and probably trying to eat a shoe.
“She’s gone!” the guard gasped while looking behind the bed as if she might be hiding under the pillow.
“Brilliant observation,” I snapped.
My back up plan was gone and the swap was impossible. I had no bride to trade.
I looked at the sun through the bars, seeing it was now higher. I had a small glass bottle in my pocket, a fading potion in my veins, and an expectant Prince waiting at the altar.
“Back to the ship,” I ordered while spinning on my heel.
“But... the prisoner!” the guard shouted.
“Forget the prisoner!” I bellowed. My voice cracked into a high shriek before dropping back down. “I have a wedding to attend.”
The Royal Pier was a veritable florist shop.
Devan had covered every inch of the dock in red roses. Thousands of them.
The scent was overwhelming. It masked the smell of the salt water and smelled like love. So much it made me want to retch.
I walked down the aisle. The guests stood. The foreign dignitaries and the local gentry and the people I had terrified at the luncheon all bowed.
They whispered as I passed.
“Look at him,” they said. “So imposing.”
“A King in every sense.”
“I heard he ate a whole shark for breakfast.”
I noticed the Kings of Evenhere among the guests. Colorful. They were the rulers of the first two-king kingdom. The orange one was taller than me, by far. And the other… well, I had heard he was beautiful… but wow! They weren’t lyin’. That’s the real power. They both smiled. No whispers. Only respect.
I wondered how they were going to react whenever they saw who I really was.
I reached the altar.
Devan was standing there. He looked devastating. He was wearing his dress uniform with the white sash cutting across his chest. His hair was windblown. His eyes were the color of the deep ocean on a clear day.
He saw my face and he illuminated. I felt a physical pain in my chest at the way he looked at me with such pure adoration. But he only saw the man who had listened to him, not the witch. In his eyes was the strength that he craved, not the LIE he was told.
He was looking at his future King. He didn’t see me.
“Milstead,” he whispered as I took my place beside him. “You came back.”
“I told you,” I said. My voice was tight. “Deadlines.”
I adjusted my cuffs. My wrists felt thin. The sun was nearly at its highest point. The final countdown had begun.
“Dearly beloved,” the Archbishop droned. “We are gathered here today...”
I tuned him out. I was focused on my body. My skin was crawling. My shoes felt suddenly two sizes too big. I needed to say I do and get him below deck into the dark before I exploded.
“Do you Prince Devan Sailenson the Second take Lord Milstead Waters to be your lawfully wedded husband; to honor and to rule, as kings of this land, over seas under sky?”
“I do,” Devan said immediately. He squeezed my hand.
“And do you, Lord Milst–”
I opened my mouth.
And then chaos. The crowd stared, gasping with alarm. Devan and I turned; at the end of the pier was Avis.
She looked like a disaster. Her dress was torn. She was barefoot. Her hair was a tangled nest of dark-rooted fury. She didn’t look like a princess.
The crowd gasped.
“The feral girl!” someone shouted. “The trollop!”
Devan’s eyes went wide. “Avis? How did you...” I stepped forward to shield him.
“Guards!” I shouted. “She’s loose! She’s hysterical! Someone grab her!”
Avis charged.
She lowered her shoulder and tackled me. It was a suicide run. I was six-foot-four of solid muscle. She was a waif. But she had the element of surprise and I was currently fighting a hormonal war inside my own body.
We went down. I hit the dock hard. Roses exploded around us.
“Get off me!” I roared while grabbing her by the hair.
She clawed at my face. She scratched my cheek. She wasn’t trying to hurt me. She was reaching. Her hand dove into my pocket.
“No!” I shouted.
I tried to grab her wrist but my grip slipped. My fingers felt slippery.
Mucus-slick. She ripped the small glass bottle from my pocket. She rolled away and scrambled to her feet. She held the bottle up.
“Stop her!” Devan shouted. He stepped forward. “Avis, put that down!”
She looked at him. Her eyes were filled with tears.
And then she bit off the wax sealed cork and poured the bottle into her mouth.
“You did all of this so you could get a drink?” Devan asked. The poor boy.
The sound was like a thunder clap.
And then she spoke.
“Devan, you foolish human idiot!”
Her voice was clear. It was bell-like. It was a sound Devan had never heard before.
He froze. He stared at the girl he thought was mute. “You... you can speak?”
Avis pointed a shaking finger at me.
“She is a witch!!” she screamed. “She’s not a man! She’s an octopus!”
The crowd went silent.
Devan looked at me. Confusion warred with horror on his face.
“Milstead?” he asked. “What is she saying?” I stood up. I tried to fix my coat.
“She’s crazy, Devan,” I said. “She’s delusional. Let’s just...” And then the sun reached its highest point.
The sun stood directly overhead. The contract expired.
Avis fell onto the deck. Her legs instantly fused back together forming her amethyst tail.
“A mermaid!?” Devan yelled out. “How?”
Then the potion crashed. It was a detonation. I felt my biology unzip.
“Oh, barnacles,” I whispered.
My suit shredded. The meat suit couldn’t contain the violent expansion of my true mass. Shoulders burst through the white wool. The beard dissolved into my skin. My legs... my beautiful legs... fused.
“Ghhhuuuaaagh!”
The sound that tore out of my throat was not Milstead’s baritone. It was my voice. The rasping cackle of the Sea Witch.
The pier groaned under the sudden weight.
My tentacles, eight gloriously thick, white limbs, burst from the confines of the trousers. They writhed and smashed the pews and sent the guests flying into the harbor.
I grew and expanded. I had forgotten the sheer size of myself as I towered over them. The transformation was complete.
I was me again. My black hair floated in the wind. Pale blue skin glistened. My bosom heaved with the sheer relief of oxygen.
“Finally,” I sighed while stretching a tentacle to scratch an itch on my back. “I was getting so cramped in there.”
I looked over. Devan was staring at me. He ignored the monster, barely even phased by the tentacles. He was looking at the sum of the parts.
“You...” he stammered. He took a step back. “You’re a woman?”
I blinked.
Of all the things. The eight tentacles with their rings, these were the rings I wanted. My blue skin. My sheer overwhelming size. That was the detail he got hung up on?
“Technically, I’m a Sea Witch, darling,” I corrected while smoothing my hair. “But if we are splitting hairs, yes. Does that void the warranty?” Devan looked at me. He looked at the lie.
“You lied to me,” he said, his chin quivering. “I told you everything, shared my deepest desire and darkest fears with you. I trusted you. And none of it was real.”
“But it was, Devan,” I plead my case. “But I’m still me. Still the one who heard you, who saw you. The one who you wanted to protect you. I can still do that. And no, not a man anymore. I was once. A merman. But I changed. To who I was meant to be. Then I was Milstead, to help Avis find love. Who knew I would be the one to find it? But I did. I did find love… with you. Could you? Could you maybe still love me as I am?”
He didn’t answer right away. He thought. He considered it. He actually took a few moments to consider… me.
“What you did to me,” he whispered. His voice was broken. “It was hideous. I can’t.”
I froze. I waited for the rest. I waited for him to call me a monster. To call me an abomination. But he didn’t. He called the act hideous. Not the actor.
It was a distinction that only Devan would make. And for some reason that made it burn worse. My hearts, all three of them, shattered into pieces and then melted and reformed. Harder than before. If they wanted a villain, fine. I would give them the whole damn show.
“Hideous?” I laughed.
I grabbed Avis with a tentacle. I lifted her high into the air.
She screamed.
“I’ll show you hideous,” I roared. “Noon has come! The deal is done! She belongs to me!”
I turned to the sea. I prepared to dive.
“And as for you, Prince,” I sneered while looking back at the broken boy in the dress uniform. “You could have had a goddess. Now, you get nothing.”
Just then, the ocean erupted.
King Lir rose from the waves. His Spear glowed as he rode a water spout that towered over the barge.
He looked pissed.
“OCTAVIUS!” he bellowed.
“Oh, great,” I muttered while tightening my grip on the mermaid.
“Now it’s a family reunion.”
The name echoed over the water. It was magnified by the roar of the ocean and the sheer, unadulterated entitlement of the man shouting it.
“The name is Octavia, darling!” I reminded him.
Lir was hovering on a spout of water that lifted him above the pier but I had already grown tired of him.
“Brother-in-law,” I boomed. “You look dry. Have you been moisturizing?”
Lir didn’t smile. He pointed the Spear at me. The tip swirled with energy.
“Release her,” he commanded. “Release my daughter, you abomination.”
I tightened my tentacle around Avis. She squirmed. Her tail flopped uselessly against my sucker. She looked small. She looked fragile.
“She isn’t yours anymore, Lir,” I sneered. “Check the timestamp. Noon has passed. The contract is executed.”
“I am the King!” Lir roared.
He fired.
A swirl of wind shot from his little spike. I didn’t dodge. I didn’t shield myself with magic. I shielded myself with paper.
I whipped the scroll from my bosom and held it up.
The magic of the contract absorbed the whirlwind. It glowed with a fierce, legalistic red light.
“You fool!” I laughed. The sound rolled like thunder. “You think you can blow away a binding contract with a little breeze like that? This is the Old Magic, Lir! It is deeper than your crown! It is older than your ego!”
I held the scroll up. The signature at the bottom was glowing.
Avis.
“She signed it!” I shouted. “She bet her soul on a pair of legs and a prince and she lost! She belongs to me!”
I looked at Avis. The transformation had already begun.
Her blonde hair with its dark roots was turning gray. Her skin was losing its luster. It took on the texture of a dried sponge. She gasped but no sound came out. She was shrinking.
“Look at her, Lir,” I taunted. I held her out over the churning water. “She is withering. She is becoming a barnacle. A sad little garden ornament for my collection.”
Lir’s face crumpled. The rage drained away. It was replaced by the terrified look of a father watching his legacy dissolve.
“No,” he whispered. “Please. There must be another way.”
“There is always another way,” I purred.
I lowered Avis slightly. I leaned in and brought my face close to his.
“I’m a reasonable businesswoman. I don’t want the girl. She’s defective. Broken merchandise. Honestly the maintenance alone is a nightmare.”
I looked at the Spear. It hummed in his hand. It was the symbol of the ocean and the key to the gate. This was the only thing that had ever kept me out.
“I want the trade,” I whispered.
“What trade?” Lir asked.
His grip on the weapon tightened.
I unrolled the scroll. The terms rearranged themselves in fiery letters.
“The daughter for the daddy,” I said. A wicked grin split my face.
“The trollop for the Spear.”
Lir looked at the scroll. Then he looked at Avis.
She was fading fast. Her eyes were pleading. She was terrified.
He looked at Devan who was cowering on the dock. He was useless and small. He looked at his Kingdom beneath the waves. And then he looked at me.
He knew he had lost. He knew that for all his power he couldn’t break the law of the deal.
“Sign it, Kingy,” I hissed. “She goes free and you take her place.”
Lir lowered his head. The silvered light around him dimmed.
“I’ll sign,” he whispered.
He reached out with the Spear. He didn’t use a quill. He used the tip of the spear to burn his name onto the parchment.
King Lir
The universe shifted.
The scroll rolled itself up and vanished into my cleavage.
“Done!” I shrieked.
I dropped Avis.
She fell to the deck. She gasped. Her color returned and her tail turned purple again. She was safe. She was free.
But Lir...
The change was instant. The platinum crown fell from his head. It clattered onto the deck of the barge.
His muscles dissolved. Those polished muscles he loved so much were gone. His tail shriveled. His skin turned a sickly gray-green.
He shrank. He folded in on himself.
“Dad?” Avis whispered. She reached for him.
But he couldn’t answer. His mouth fused shut. His eyes bulged.
He wasn’t a King anymore. He was a barnacle. A tiny little bottom feeder. He flopped on the deck. He was slimy and pathetic.
I laughed.
It was a sound of pure vindication. After years of banishment and years of rotting in the dark while he played the benevolent patriarch... I had turned him into a garnish.
“At last!” I roared.
I reached out and grabbed the Spear.
The moment my fingers closed around the platinum, it bit me. It was a shock to the system. The Spear was attuned to him. It resisted. It burned my hand.
“Oh no, you don’t,” I snarled. “You work for me now.”
I poured my will into it. I poured my anger and my trauma and my darkness into the platinum.
The blue glow flickered and died. It turned a violent purple.
The power rushed into me.
“YES!”
I exploded and absorbed the ocean.
I took the storm into myself as I rose out of the water. Finally growing to a height that made the Royal Pier look like a child’s playset.
My tentacles were the size of redwoods. My crown was the storm clouds.
I controlled the wind and the waves.
I became the Ocean. I was the Queen of Oceanica. Ruler of the Seven Seas.
“The storms obey my command!”
I looked down at the tiny specks on the barge. There was Devan. The boy who called me hideous. He was checking on the barnacle brother-in-law.
“And as for you,” I boomed. I turned the Spear toward the ship. “My little pathetic subjects.”
I spun the Spear. Pointed it straight at little Avis and she became a seafoam on the dock. I promised she wouldn't be a barnacle. The deal was I wouldn't own her. I don't.
That woman with the mole on her chin, running to escape the chaos, slipped on her. The last I saw of my niece she was riding the back of that woman's frock. A rich stain on silk.
Then, I pointed my new toy at the barnacle brother-in-law. With a swirling vortex of oceanic might, he was taken to the Leviathan Trench. I would tend to him later.
“I think it’s time to separate the wheat from the chaff,” I cackled. “Or the fish from the bait!”
I raised the Spear to deliver the final blow. It was time to drown them all and bury them in the deep. Then I would rule over a kingdom of ghosts.
I was an actual goddess, and I was invincible.
All I was focused on was the power. I didn’t notice the guardsman.
Devan had them rally. The twenty-one cannon salute that I had planned for after the ceremony was about to be repurposed. I looked back just in time to see the plumes of smoke heading my direction.
“But, sweetie...”
SLAM.
The sound was like the snapping of lobster shells. The cold iron of Devan’s massive balls burned like acid. The pain was unbearable.
It was the same sound I had heard when Carlotta died. I gasped as the Spear slipped from my fingers. My eyes went wide. I looked down at the holes buried in my stomach.
I looked at Devan. He was a future King defending his kingdom from a giant monster.
“Hideous,” I whispered. Blood bubbled past my lips.
The lightning flashed. I fell into a sea full of ink and blood.
Seven would have been fine. Twenty-one was overkill.