The net broke through the surface of the ocean, which was composed of huge storm waves. One particularly large wave crashed into the net, forcing it back, and slamming me into a ship's wooden hull. I gritted my teeth, determined not to show any kind of weakness.
The net dragged up the side of the ship and over the side, finally stopping on the ship's deck. My first several breaths out of water were strained as my body took a moment to shift from gills to lungs. AN INCREDIBLY annoying and haughty female voice assaulted my ears.
“Well, well, it seems you've finally caught one of the blasted creatures, for a while there I thought you were lying about the legends of mermaids existing actually being true, Cedric, how long will it be before you can strip my new voice from the over-sized fish?”
They want to steal my voice? This was bad! I began to search for a way to escape, not bothering to struggle as that would only entangle me further in the ropes of the net. Why in the world had I left my sword at the castle…….Ah! That's right, I still have my knife! I pulled the blade from a concealed sheaf in my armored bodice and began to discreetly saw at the rope in front of me. An evil sounding male tenor answered the annoying woman's question.
“It should only take a few minutes, Princess, then you'll be able to charm any man in the lands, including the new King of Serac. Of course, we will need to remember to kill this creature to ensure it is permanently your voice...According to legend, they are quite persistent in getting their voices back ”
Darn, there wasn't enough time to escape in order to stop them from stealing my voice, but that part about killing me….That meant that I could somehow get my voice back if I managed to survive! Pausing in my attempts to cut through the ropes, an idea occurred to me and I began to pull power from the air, using my human magic, as I had already exhausted my mer magic by saving Melly, to infuse the blade of my knife with magic.
Returning to cutting the ropes, I was pleased to find the blade sliced through the thick ropes with only a small amount of resistance. My speed in the escape attempt greatly increased, I turned to get a good look at my captors as I continued to slice through the numerous ropes.
The woman's appearance was quite a contrast to her terrible voice. She was a striking blond with a good figure, just small enough to engender a desire to protect in any male, and lovely sky-blue eyes. A delicate silver crown adorned her head and she wore an elegant forest-green dress that hugged her figure in a very flattering way. She stared down at me, a disgusted sneer twisting her fine features. A cloaked figure stood next to her, slightly hunched, with no visible features uncovered for me to identify. Probably the Cedric guy…. A shimmering shield above them kept them from getting wet. I winced slightly as the princess began to speak again.
“Very good, the King of Serac has a very big kingdom, and I've heard he intends to send out invitations to any eligible woman in a year in order to find a suitable queen, and I do so want to be a queen….”
The cloaked figure bowed towards the princess.
“And I am sure you will make an excellent one, now if you would, please step back a bit, My Lady, I don't want to risk you accidentally getting caught in the spell...”
The woman nodded and stepped back a few paces. I felt the air begin to hum with controlled power. The cloaked figure stretched out his arm, his cloak falling back to reveal an ageless hand that held a rope of pearls. My focus zeroed in on the pearl necklace as it began to glow a sickly green, the pearls began to shift and rise slightly into the air.
Strange chants began to fill the air and the strand of pearls suddenly shot forward and slid through the net to wrap around my neck. Fierce ripping pain shot through me, and I made a show of clawing at my neck with my left hand as I continued to cut at the net with my right hand. The pain intensified for a moment, and then the pearls slid away from my neck and back into Cedric's hand. The hole I had created was almost large enough for me to slip through. I abandoned all attempts at discretion and focused on slicing through the ropes as the cloaked figure turned to the princess.
“Here you go, Princess, so long as you have this strand of pearls touching your skin, you will have the enchanting voice of a mermaid. Oh, and make sure to keep it safe, if the strand is broken, then the spell will be broken as well.”
Well, that was a good thing to know…….I began wiggling through the hole, something that would be a lot easier if I had legs instead of a tail….I almost slapped myself in the face with my right hand (which still held my Very sharp knife), I just needed to shift to human form! Focusing, I felt my scales begin to pull away from my skin, forming a shimmering skirt as my tail split in two to form legs and my fins morphed into feet, it only took moments, where it would have taken any normal mermaid several minutes, a perk of being half-human. Crawling rapidly through the net, I began to scramble towards the edge of the ship.
“If it's so dangerous to break it, why didn't you make it something sturdier, like a metal choker….Ah, the creature is escaping!!!”
Magic began to hum in the air, but it was too late as I quickly jumped over the side of the ship, shifting back to mermaid form as I fell. But the moment before I hit the water, I felt something blast into my tail. As I splashed into the water, blinding pain flooded through my tail and throughout my entire body. Glancing down, I saw a medium sized hole piercing completely through my tail, that was gushing bright red blood. I already was starting to feel faint, but gritted my teeth and swam away from the surface as quickly as I could. Slim arms suddenly slipped around my waist, and I looked down to see Melly looking up at me, clearly frightened out of her wits, but determined. She pulled hard and began towing me along with her at a far greater speed than I was currently capable of, while faintly singing what I recognized as a healing song. Wasn't she supposed to have fled far away from here? Well, I didn't have the energy to scold her right now….Blackness slowly swallowed my vision.
I slowly drifted awake from a pleasant dream, a small smile on my face as I opened my eyes to see Melly staring down at me with big tears drifting through the water around her face before merging seamlessly with the ocean water. I grimaced as I became aware of an uncomfortable pain in my tail, though it was no where near the pain I had felt before……..I shot straight up and cracked my head against Melly's as I remembered what had happened. Melly flipped back, turning head over tail before steadying herself and frowing at me.
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“Ow! That hurt Big Sis Delta….How are you feeling?”
I leaned slowly back onto what I realized was my bed, and opened my mouth to answer her. Nothing came out…..Oh right, they had stolen my voice. I shook my head at Melly and pointed at my throat. She looked confused for a moment, and then her eyes widened in horror as she realised what I meant.
“T-they stole your voice!? But that means you'll have to…..”
Melly's voice drifted slowly off, but I knew what she was talking about. In our law, there was a very important rule, if a mer's voice was stolen, he or she were responsible for getting it back and were banished from the kingdom for either as long as it took to retrieve their voice, or until they died, at which point, their body would be allowed to magically return for a proper burial. Melly grasped my shoulders and looked firmly into my eyes.
“I know you won't let me try to stop the banishment, but I am going to have it delayed until your tail is fully healed!”
For the first time, I truly saw Melly have a queenly bearing, and a proud, but sad smile broke across my face. I nodded, knowing that when Melly put her fin down, it would take a hurricane to move her stubbornness. A small smile broke across Melly's face.
“I'll go bug Papa about it right now, before anyone else figures out what's happened!”
Melly turned and swam quickly though out of my room. I looked sadly around at my room, knowing that it might be a long time before I would get to see it again. It was fairly clean, with a variety of weapons hanging on the slightly curved walls. The ceiling was covered in a swirling pattern of mother of pearl. My bed filled most of the space, made of a large clam shell, from a killer clam shell I had killed back when I was 21. It was a dark blue, and filled with extremely soft sand that I covered with white sea silk sheets and a large amount of fluffy sea sponge pillows.
I pulled the sheet off of my tail and examined my wound. Instead of a gaping hole, it was a bright red line that was slightly puckered. The skin around the line was bare skin, without scales. By my estimate, with the help of healing songs, the wound would completely recover in a week, three times faster than it would if left alone.
I turned my thoughts to my new problem, how to get my voice back. The only thing I knew about the culprits was that the mages name was Cedric, and the woman using my voice was a princess…..That didn't really clear much up, there were a lot of princesses, and a lot of mages running around...But I did know who the princess intended to use her new ill-gotten voice on, the King of Serac. In my younger days before my mother died, we had often visited my uncle, my mother's younger brother, who was the King of Tede. The Kingdom of Tede was a coastal kingdom, and it's neighbor was the Kingdom of Serac, which I had occasionally visited over the years in disguise as a commoner, the two kingdoms weren't in the best of terms…… After my mother had died, I had spent even more time at my uncle's palace, but when Melly came under my care, I had focused my attention on her and the visits became less frequent.
My door suddenly swung open, breaking through my thoughts, and my father swam in. My father looked the same as he did when he came of age, which I had always found a bit weird since I spent so much time with humans, whose fathers did not look the same age as them. It did help that he had a very long green beard that made him look regal and wise, just like the seas kings of old. He swam up to my bed, his tail flicking with a bit more force than necessary, something that I had learned years ago meant that he was very upset. He gently took my hand and stared at my face, his eyes slightly crinkled from worry.
“You've lost your voice, do you know who took it?”
I raised my free hand up and shook it from side to side, adding a small grimace. He frowned.
“Not exactly?”
I nodded, then gently pulled my hand away from his and used both my hands to form a circle around my head, then I dropped my hands and wiggled them in the way small children did when they were pretending to cast magic. It was too bad we couldn't write under-water, otherwise it would have been a lot easier to explain. My father watched my gestures carefully.
“Ummmm, a mage princess took it?”
Haaaa, so close. I shook my head and held two fingers.
“Two people? So there was a princess and a mage?”
I nodded, happy he had finally gotten it.
“Do you know who they are?”
I frowned slightly, this would be hard to explain….. tilting my head to the side in an certain manner, I made the magic sign again while holding up one finger, then smiled brightly, then made the circle and then crossed my arms in a negative gesture. My father was silent for a long moment.
“You don't know exactly who they are, but you do know what the mage's first name is?”
Oho~ First try this time, he was getting better at this….I nodded firmly. My father grimaced.
“Then you don't have any way to find them…..”
I shook my head slightly.
“You do have a way to find them?”
I nodded and pointed at the target for my knife throwing. As a hobby, I liked to take human things and see if I could do them underwater, and vise versa, of course. Knife throwing had turned out to be nearly impossible to do underwater. My father stared at the target for a long moment.
“You know what their target is?”
I nodded and pointed at the heavy crown on his head.
“A King? ”
I then pointed at the locket that my father always kept around his neck, a memento of my mother.
“Your mother…..Ah, you mean your uncle Sorin?”
I nodded my head, then shook it and pointed to the side. Indicating that I was talking about Sorin, but also not about Sorin at the same time.
“Hrmmmm, not Sorin, but a neighbor of his?”
I nodded and formed my hands into claws, then tapped them together and made a fierce grimace.
“Hmm, a neighbor he has conflict with? Ah! You mean Serac! I heard that the old king had died…..so the princess wants to become a queen then...”
I nodded and slumped back into the pillows, suddenly feeling very tired. My father ruffled my hair, something he hadn't done for years.
“Well, if anyone can get their voice back on such a small amount of information, it's you dear. Rest now, you're still injured, you know….”
I smiled and let my eyes drift shut.