The mermaid

Years later when the prince was old and gray he would return to the beach once more. The prince always liked the waterfront, in the bittersweet way people liked Christmas. Much has changed since the shipwreck. The wild shore was now covered in bathing sheds, they had set a fun fair up at the wharf.

Of course, he never went there, his wife was firmly against it.

But a year after his wife’s death, there he was.

As the sunset and the fair grounds lights turned on, suddenly he heard that voice.

It was coming from the fairgrounds' music hall, and he peered outside the carriage window, his aged hands leaning against the banister.

“Sir?” the commander of the guard asked, but he could not stop staring at the fair.

They stayed until twilight fell and the drunken stragglers disappeared. One by one the lights turned off, plunging the carnival into darkness.

“Perhaps it's time to go” he suggested to his captain. The Captain was used to elderly royals eccentric whims, the prince's sister was after all married to a teapot.

“Perhaps we should” he merely said but there was a sudden whiff of something, the salty fresh scent of an ocean during the storm.

Suddenly the prince recalled the moment he briefly died.

Drowning in endless freezing black, the pins and needles tearing through his skin.

Until her face appeared.

That face was now staring at him in the moonlight through the carriage window.

Seventy years had passed, and she was still so exquisite.

“Hello your highness, I saw your carriage from my tent” she said, and for the prince it was as if he had seen a ghost.

“I have never heard you speak before,” he croaked.

“I never had to, you much preferred my dancing,” she smiled.

Oddly enough her vaudeville costume was that of a surreal mermaid, a great glittering gown resembling scales with blue paint covering her eyes.

“You disappeared, so very long ago” he said and as the captain watched the old prince began to cry.

“You married the wrong woman” she sighed leaning forward,, and she kissed him full on the mouth.

It was a brief, rare moment of sudden wild magic.

Suddenly was thrown through the quieter, darker years of his marriage. His wife’s gradual coldness after the children were born, her obsession with religion. The night she died there was nothing left to say until she turned to him, her eyes mad with fever.

“I saw her when I found you, it wasn’t me,” she whispered.

“My queen?” he asked.

“Stay far from the beach,” his wife choked.

When the dance girl pulled away her eyes were so full of love, the prince wished he was young once more.” I suppose that would not work, the rules were very specific” the dancing girl replied with a bittersweet smile.

She drew away from the carriage and snapped open a parasol decorated with paintings of goldfish.

“Are you always here?” the prince called after her as she began to walk away.

The dancing girl glanced over his shoulder and smiled at him as if he had said something very amusing.

“I will be for the next two hundred and thirty years, singing hope for all the good boys and girls,” she laughed.

Nothing she said made sense, but then again he was ancient and chances were this was nobody more than a dream.

“And why would you do that?” he asked, perplexed.

“You let me down, my darling prince, I’m building a soul of my own,” she answered before blowing him a rather cheeky kiss.

The prince watched gravely as she tottered back to the fair and then turned to his captain.

“did the just happen?” he asked.

“Did what sir?” the captain replied.