The Mermaid (I Don't Believe in Destiny)

Gunshots rang out across the midnight-black deck, pirates shouting as they raced from one ship to the other. Sabine struggled to her feet, squinting in the darkness—the only light came from the pale moon far overhead. "Somebody better light a damn lantern," she growled, making for the lower deck, sword in hand. She stepped over bodies on the way, glancing at each face to make sure they weren't members of her crew.

"Captain," someone hissed, and Sabine whirled, sword raised. A small flame flickered, and the face of her second-in-command, Eve, came into focus. The woman was holding a small lantern, the flame sputtering in the wind.

"Thank the gods." Sabine lowered her sword. "Where are the others?"

"Ori used her magic to subdue the crew. Kyra's patching up Red."

"Good," Sabine said with a terse nod.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” Sabine stalked across the deck, Eve a step behind her. Rule one of being a pirate captain: don’t talk about your feelings. Crying about her problems hadn’t gotten her to where she was now—raiding the infamous pirate Balatraz’s ship for treasure wanted by the pirate queen herself. She knelt at the trapdoor and pulled it open.

"Do you think it's down there?” Eve asked, breathing hard. Fire magic cost her second more than it should, ever since a fateful night years ago involving an ice witch and a selkie—and thousands of crowns worth of treasure.

"Only one way to find out." Sabine sheathed her sword and jumped down into the darkness.

She landed lightly on her feet, and Eve followed down the ladder, her lantern lighting up the hallway.

Sabine’s second flicked her wrist, and the small flame in the lantern turned into a tiny inferno, revealing a door at the end of the hallway with a sleeping guard sitting in front of it, an empty bottle of rum at his feet. They crept past him, and Sabine crinkled her nose at the smell of alcohol as she pushed the door open. She winced when it creaked, but the guard didn’t stir.

The room was small, iron bars taking up half of the space, and Sabine stopped, taking a moment to orient herself in the dim gloom. Why were all pirate ships so gods-damned dark? They really needed to invest in better lighting.

She scanned the space, and her gaze caught on a figure sitting against the wall across from her, the iron bars separating them.

The girl was beautiful—silver hair that contrasted against her dark skin, gleaming in the golden light of the lantern dangling precariously from the ceiling, and big gray eyes that widened as she took in Sabine's appearance. Sabine's eyes caught on a flash of silver from the girl’s legs.

Except the girl didn't have legs—she had a tail. A long, silvery-blue tail, shimmering with gray light like the ocean at dusk.

"Holy—"

"Sabine!" Eve cried, emerging from a door to the right of the cage. "The amulet is here!"

The mermaid made a strange sound, almost mournful, and Sabine could barely comprehend Eve's words. The girl—mermaid—looked sickly, too skinny, and Sabine wondered how long she’d been trapped here. Mermaids weren’t supposed to be above water for long—too much time on dry land, and they’d lose their gills and scales forever.

"We have to go," Eve urged, and Sabine blinked, still staring at the creature watching them both through the bars of her cage. Gods, what was Balatraz doing with a mermaid?

Eve nodded, and the pirate captain followed her second back into the treasure room, where priceless artifacts gleamed on shelves and inside wooden chests. "I didn't think Balatraz had this much wealth," Sabine said, impressed.

"Here," Eve said, holding up a glittering necklace with a small amulet dangling from a silver chain.

Sabine took the amulet, the metal cool against her calloused fingertips. The pendant was made from a single piece of ammolite, iridescent and shimmering like a rainbow above the ocean. It was sacred to the merfolk, and legend said it had been crafted as a gift for the first queen of the merfolk, thousands of years ago.

"Look at this," Eve breathed, and Sabine looked up to find the girl studying a small black book. She flipped it open to a page with an incredible drawing of a mermaid, swimming with a pair of manta rays.

The next page showed a group of humans, their faces contorted in rage. Sabine stared at the drawing, the depictions striking a chord within her. Memories clawed to the surface of her mind, dark tendrils pulling at her mask of calm.

She shoved them away, tearing her gaze from the journal as a small explosion rocked the starboard side of the ship. "We have to leave."

Eve nodded, tucking the notebook into the inside pocket of her jacket. "What about the mermaid?"

Sabine frowned at her second. "We're not taking her with us."

"But—"

"Captain?" A familiar voice called, and Sabine turned from her too-kind second to find Red stalking across the room, a knife in one hand and a bandage across her bicep. "We've secured the ship!"

"Good," Sabine said. "Let's go."

And then the ship exploded.

"Eve! I think she's awake!" someone called, and Sabine groaned at the loud voice that pulled her from an incredibly strange dream—something about magical amulets and mermaids and long-lost treasure that still couldn’t soothe the ache in her heart.

"Captain," Eve said, and Sabine cracked one eye open, the brightness of her cabin searing her eyes.

"Gods," she groaned. "What happened? Did we—" she tried to sit up and hissed, pain in her right foot shooting up her leg. Gods, her whole body ached.

"Balatraz’s pirates blew up their own ship," Eve said quietly, sitting on the edge of Sabine's bed. "We thought you got caught in the blast, that you—”

Eve stopped, swallowing hard. "We searched for days. Red's been keeping the ship together with her magic, but we were going to abandon the search when she found you."

Sabine raised a brow, and Eve smiled mysteriously. "I'll let you two get acquainted," she said and slipped out of the room.

A familiar young woman stepped into the room, smiling at Eve before shutting the door behind her and walking to her bedside. Her silver hair shone in the sunlight, gray-blue eyes as deep and unknowable as the open ocean. Sabine had a sudden desire to stare into those eyes forever.

"You—you can walk," Sabine said dumbly, gaping at the mermaid from Balatraz’s ship, who was indeed standing on two legs.

The sacred amulet hung around her neck, and she held a black notebook in her hand.

The mermaid nodded slightly, her eyes sparkling. By the gods, she was beautiful.

"I'm sorry we tried to take the amulet. What does it do, anyway?"

The mermaid's lips twitched. "It was given to the first queen of Atlanta four thousand years ago. It allows the wearer to change forms into whatever she pleases."

Her voice was like a rainstorm in summer, and Sabine wanted it to be the last thing she heard before she died. Maybe the mermaid was casting some kind of spell on her, because she’d never felt so… affected, by someone like this. She couldn’t let someone into her heart now. It had been years, and she was perfectly content with being alone, thank you very much, with her crew and her treasure keeping her company.

"So you use it for legs?"

That made the mermaid smile, and the sight was the prettiest thing Sabine had ever seen.

"Oh, and I saved the treasure from the ship. It's worth about twenty thousand crowns if you're still interested in it." The mermaid's voice was cool, casual, and Sabine kept her face neutral, her fingers stilling in her lap.

Once upon a time, she would have jumped at the sound of twenty thousand crowns, but now she hesitated. She had a much better catch standing before her.

"I—”

The mermaid laughed again, cutting off Sabine. "It's yours, don't worry. I have no use for treasure."

Sabine smiled, pushing away thoughts of all the improvements she could make to her ship with that much gold.

"Eve said you found me. You saved me?"

The mermaid nodded again, and Sabine's heart pounded in her chest. If the mermaid could hear its thunderous beat, she gave no sign of it.

"Why?" she breathed. Sabine knew she should thank the mermaid, but she had to understand.

The creature's lips twitched as if she understood that Sabine couldn't just accept it as a fact, that she looked at the world as a scale in which every choice had a price, and she refused to owe anyone anything.

She held out the notebook, and Sabine took it, their fingers brushing. The touch sent a thrill through Sabine, which she ignored, forcing herself to focus on the worn book in her hands.

The pages shimmered as she opened them, and she suspected it was spelled to keep from becoming damaged underwater.

The mermaid flipped the pages to the left, and Sabine stared at a drawing of herself, standing at the prow of a ship with her sword raised. There were more sketches on the opposite page: Sabine smiling, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Sabine falling asleep on Eve’s shoulder. Sabine remembered that night, nearly two years ago.

She'd just been promoted to Captain by the Pirate Queen, and her crew had stayed up well past midnight after a successful raid on a rival ship. Sabine had sat beside Eve in the galley, resting her head on the girl's shoulder for a moment. In the drawing, Eve was wearing the same jacket she'd been wearing that night. She'd lost it the next day after spending the night with a particularly curvy barmaid when they stopped in the closest harbor for supplies. (Eve had invited Sabine along, but she had still been brooding over the last girl who broke her heart, you don’t need anyone a mantra in her head. Now she wasn’t so sure.)

“You drew these?” Sabine asked, glancing from the pages to the mermaid. She already knew the answer, but the nod she received sent a shiver down her spine.

“In the past few days, or...”

The mermaid shook her head. “I started dreaming about you two years ago.”

Sabine’s eyes widened. "Really," she breathed. "What's your name?"

"Cassaia," the mermaid said and accepted her notebook when Sabine handed it back to her.

Sabine repeated the name, and it felt delicate and sweet on her tongue, like sugar-spun silk. "Thank you for saving my life."

Cassaia smiled. "It was my fate."

"I don't believe in destiny," Sabine murmured, as Cassaia set her notebook on the bedside table and sat on the bed, her hand dangerously close to Sabine's.

"May I attempt to change your mind?" The question was a challenge and a dare, and fire sparked in Sabine's empty heart. She'd been alone for so long—maybe it was finally time to let someone in.

Sabine smiled wryly, and the two young women talked of everything and nothing until the hollowness in Sabine's chest eased, and the mermaid's hands were tangled in her hair, and she felt infinite.