Abigail and I made it back onto the ship with me leaning against her, it seemed safer than the inn. It seemed no one was following us. Yet.

Once in our quarters, I collapsed on the hammock.

Abigail was looking at me with a mix of emotions I struggled to read.

“What…was that?” she said

Up to this point, I had planned to stay quiet, until I understood what was going on enough to explain it at the very least.

But Abigail had been open about her past, and after my stunt today becoming that thing again to protect her, I felt like she deserved some answers.

Maybe she could help me find my own. I just hoped…I wouldn’t worry her so much.

“I have a confession to make.” I said, “About my curse…I didn’t exactly…forget.”

Abigail looked surprised, but waited for me to continue.

I glanced around for a moment before I spotted a notebook and quill.

“That’s Mateo’s diary.” she said.

Oops “This is important.”

I opened to a blank page and began a crude drawing, a circle filled with spiraling markings.

“I was cursed because I tried to steal this.”

“That looks like the patterns on your skin…” said Abigail.

I nodded. “They weren’t there before.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. I was hired to steal it. All I know is that as soon as I touched it, I became the thing that attacked your ships.”

She looked back up at me. “Do you know where it is now?”

“No, and that worries me. What if what happens to me happens to someone else?”

“Well maybe we could find the mermaid who hired you?”

“It’s not that simple.” I said “Abigail, I have no idea how long I was in there. The world has changed so much since I was last myself. I honestly don’t know if I would have lived this long if whatever happened to me didn’t happen.”

“Things have been…weird since I’ve gotten back,” I said “Abigail. I can do things I never thought possible. I can be…this.” I gestured down to the human form I had somehow assumed to participate in shore leave.

“So you couldn’t always do that?”

I shook my head again. “And there’s another thing.” she said “It wasn’t a mermaid who hired me. It was a human.”

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I looked back up at her. “You told me your story. It’s time I told you mine…”

Up to a point, I had lived a happy, normal life.

I had a happy family, a mother, a father and three rambunctious brothers.

My parents taught us how to fish, sink skips with our songs, and above all else, to stay away from humans.

But I was so enamored with the mystery of the land and it’s inhabitants. What sort of animals were there beyond the sea? What kind of food, culture, stories?

So I didn’t listen, and one day when I was grown, I snuck off.

With the eight strong arms of my lower half, I could do what other mermaids could not. With practice, I could walk on land.

I was elated, taking in the trees, the dune grass, the shore birds and land crabs, the humans on the horizon-

People sometimes tell me I’m naive and looking back, I suppose it’s true.

The humans were not as friendly to me as I had intended to be to them.

I was quickly grabbed, captured, even as I pleaded with them that I meant no harm, it’s not like we could understand each other’s languages.

I was placed in a small saltwater tank in what they called a “cabinet of curiosities.”

“The Pearl of the Atlantic” they called me.

For a good while, that was my life. I floated sadly with hardly enough room to move around, took my meals of bait and chum when they came and watched the humans oo and ah at me as they came by.

Until one day someone new came in.

It was after closing, so he shouldn’t have been there. Perhaps he broke in.

He walked up to my tank and addressed me directly. At the time I couldn’t understand his words, but he showed me a drawing in an old book, of what looked like a huge pearl with swirls and spirals etched into its surface.

He wanted it, that much was clear. Despite our language barrier, he managed to get his deal across through pantomime and body language. He was willing to let me out, but only if I swore I would get it for him.

I agreed.

Before I knew it the glass was broken and I was sitting with the man in a small dinghy in a strange lagoon.

He barked an order to me, pointing at the water, and I nodded and lept in.

It took me a good bit of searching, swimming through tunnel after tunnel in a vast sea cave, nearly getting lost more than once.

Then I found it, it was sitting on a stone plateau almost like a pedestal.

I reached out to touch it.

Suddenly it felt like I was bursting at the seams, like an energy too great to contain was flooding me. I was barely conscious, flitting in and out of foggy awareness in a dreamlike state, trapped like I was again behind glass as I looked down at my body as it grew to monstrous proportions, barely resembling a person any longer.

I don’t know how long it lasted, hazy as my awareness was, but my next coherent thought was a sharp pain, greater than anything I’d felt before.

And then I was me.

I somehow knew the girl before me with her fuzzy copper hair and soft face full of freckles that reminded me of stars was responsible for saving me.

I gave myself a new-old name. Pearl, that was what humans had once called me right?

And that brings us back to now, to Abigail looked at me with eyes full of shock and sympathy.

“Pearl…” she said “…I didn’t know…”

She held me tightly.

“Do you want me to call you something else?” she asked.

“No.” I said. “This name carries new memories now.”

“I know how personal this is to you,” she said. “But I think we should tell the captains.”

I nodded.