The Sea Witch

When the sun set began to set, the shells always shimmered. Orange streams of light from far above filtered through the water and danced upon the smooth and curling structures like prisms. It gave Ursula such joy to watch the light bounce off of her beautiful collection. She felt the soft pouch around her neck and poured the contents of the treasure into her hands. The pearls in her palm shone iridescent against her lovely brown skin.

Dusk was always bittersweet. Soon she would see her lover, but just as reliably as sunset came the sun would also rise once again. That’s when her father would be waiting, when she would be bathed in darkness once more. Would she ever feel a morning’s sun upon her skin?

But she mustn't think of that now. She couldn’t. She must instead think of Phillipe.

He was the one who had found her that night. Her tail entangled in a net she had become buoyed upon the sand in bathes of moonlight like a whale. 

At first, Phillipe had been mesmerised by his discovery. His insomnia often led him to envision many strange things at night. But then the epiphany came as he looked upon the sheer perfection of the seabeing’s face and realised how real the experience was. He had pulled out a knife. She had clawed at the sand, desperate to return to the waters, sure she would die. And then the net had been cut away in one careful swoop. 

He thought she would flee to the waters. She knew that she should. But those eyes…

Love gripped them before they had even shared their first words. She had returned to the same spot every night ever since. 

Ursula returned the pearls to the pouch and glided towards the shore.

Phillipe was waiting for her on the cut of rock long lapped by the waves. Moonlight bounced off of the ripples of the water she left in her wake, her wet hair like long dark strands of seaweed. She swam slowly, moving closer and closer to him. Her eyes were a storm. She took his breath away every time. Beautiful. 

They had tried to talk to one another in an attempt to communicate but it had never worked. His tongue was too dextrous and vibrant for the coarse and throaty language her kind spoke beneath the waves. But somehow that didn’t matter. Somehow whatever they had between them worked.

Ursula knew what Phillipe meant when he pressed one warm finger against her damp lips, and he knew what it meant when she did it back in return. I love you. 

Time pressed on, and the dark sky soon began to grow pink again. She looked at her Phillipe’s face lovingly, stroked at the dark circles and wrinkles that lined his face with concern. She rubbed her palm across the grating stubble on his face. He laid his forehead against hers gently. They both knew what this meant. Tomorrow. 

All too soon dawn’s rosy fingers began to swirl the currents. They parted with a brief kiss and a sigh before Ursula plunged into the waters and began to make her descent into the darkness.

It didn’t matter that the sun was out. No light penetrated the waters this far deep. 

Her sharp and agile eyes saw every trace of the depths, every sinewy slick thing and crusted old crab. The darkness invaded and crawled beneath her skin. She shivered. Deeper and deeper she dove until all was black and muddy and there was no sign of life. The cavern revealed itself like a screaming open mouth, ready to swallow her whole as she struggled into its depth.

“Daughter?” her father called.

“Yes father, it’s me.” A tentacle licked around her waist, smothering and impenetrable. She repressed a shudder as her father pulled her close.

He was bulging and ancient. Two black holes where his eyes once were stared emptily into the black space. Barnacles crusted his face. Sometimes, Ursula could not quite fathom that this nightmarish beast was her father. The dark was his cold and smothering blanket from which he had never left. His empty sockets studied her closely.

“Hmm,” he said approvingly. His slithering hold on her never relinquished. His tentacles slid and churned with a sickening squelch. “You are home late, but I am pleased you are here. We have much to talk about.”

“Oh?” Ursula breathed fearfully. He couldn’t know… surely he couldn’t know. 

How could he? She reassured herself. She never told him about her outings and her father never left. They just sat in each other’s company, wallowing in the darkness whilst Ursula eagerly anticipated the night. She was not allowed to go out in the day, that was her father’s one strict rule. To him, light was sorcery, an evil that played tricks. Perhaps that’s why he had gouged out his eyes. 

“Ursula,” Her father continued. “Tonight is your eighteenth year beneath the moon. You were born in darkness and we will celebrate in darkness. I wish to give you a gift.” 

“Oh father, that is kind of you - but I want nothing.”

The old creature processed this information carefully. “Nothing? But how can that be? All seabeings want something. For the crab, it is the perfect shell. For the clownfish, the largest anemone. For the merman, a merwoman,” the old creature paused. “You want none of these things?”

“No, father,” Ursula replied. “I am content to be here with you.”

“Hmm,” he rustled in his place. His tentacles slithered against the sands like snakes. “Give me your pearls,” he said. 

Ursula jumped in surprise at the request. How had he known? She tugged at the pouch around her neck and passed them to him curiously. His tentacles flicked busily for a moment before they stopped to display the finished project - her pearls beautifully clasped to a chain of small shells to form a necklace.

“Oh father,” she hushed. “It’s so beautiful I can’t accept it.”

“This is no simple pretty trinket,” the being boomed. “It will give you what your heart most desires. When this moment of realisation comes, simply fasten this trifle around your neck and your wish will come true. Be sure to use it wisely.” A tentacle delicately placed the necklace back into her hand

“I will.” Her mind was already racing to that moment. Racing to tonight on the shore, when she would embrace Phillipe with her arms wide open - not with a tail - but with two long, human legs. She would never have to return to this dark chasm again. “I will, father. I promise you I will.”

The day crept by more slowly than ever in that colossal darkness. Finally, night fell, and she was released from her duties with a flick of a tentacle and escaped from the black. This was what it was probably like to be born, to swim upwards towards a light that was both welcoming and warm as you moved further and further away from the dark. 

Phillipe was on the crag again. He was as constant as the waves; receding, leaving, but always always to return once more. They welcomed each other with an embrace. She wondered when it would be best to place the pearls around her neck. She wanted to start her new life as soon as possible, but it was strangely difficult to leave the one she knew so well behind. What if Phillipe didn’t like her with legs? It was decided - she would spend one more night with him in this way. She would change with the sunrise.

Soon the sky changed from black, to blue, to pink. Phillipe looked tired and solemn as he bent his forehead to hers to bid goodbye once again but she quickly moved away and gestured with her hands frantically. His face contorted with confusion. This night went against the routine of all other nights they had shared before.

From her pocket she protruded the pearls. She watched Phillipe’s continuing confusion as she delicately moved to unclasp the necklace, to carefully place it around her neck, to feel the burn of a transformation…

...and burn she did. It was agony. The pearls scorched her skin like acid, choked her like a noose as she tried to prise it from her skin. Phillipe cried out as she thrashed amongst the waves like a fish caught in a shark's jaws. She was aware of Phillipe jumping into the water beside her, of his boots splashing through wet sand as he moved to wrap his arms around her body just as a huge dark mass slowly moved up from the depths…

Everything happened in moments. There went the flash of Phillipe’s knife as he desperately tried to anchor the blade beneath the binds of the pearls as the breath choked shorter and shorter from Ursula’s chest. And there the knife fell uselessly as her tail swatted it away - no, not her tail - a tentacle.

And there Phillipe shuddered in horror as two empty sockets well-known to Ursula fell upon his as tentacles dragged him beneath the surface of the water…

...and his body turned to seafoam.

A scream writhed from Ursula’s body as her hands clasped hold of the fallen knife, as it cut through the binds of those poisonous pearls around her neck as they spilled into the ocean. There went the knife as she descended furiously, ferociously upon the bulbous tentacled mass that was dragging her back into the darkness. She plunged the knife deep.

She thought her father would scream. She thought her father would choke. He did neither. 

A loud bellowing laugh flooded from his bulbous body as a black essence swallowed Ursula whole. It delved deeply down her throat, penetrating to the very depths of her body. She was aware of being split into halves, quarters, eighths. She imagined that this was how being struck by lightning would feel, as if you were being cut again and again. No longer did a tail glide before her, but tentacles, tentacles that slid and tangled and collided with one another in this gross and egregious change. She could feel herself sinking deeper and deeper, crashing against rocks, against coral and creatures as the darkness enveloped her and grew blacker and blacker before her body folded with a final crash against the seabed.

She retreated back into that blind cavern just as her father had once done.

She did not emerge for many months at a time. She did not want to see herself in the light. She was a bulging beast. A monster. Ugly.

Phillipe’s face stayed with her in her dreams for many nights before it started to fade. She would look upon a shell, or look up towards the orange glow of the sunset upon the ocean and question why it was so familiar. Then only Phillipe’s eyes remained as a memory. Months went past. They became forgotten altogether. Her heart turned harder and harder like a cankerous barnacle before it was completely turned into stone. 

The sea witch was born.

Many years later a couple walked along the beach, hand in hand. There they spied it. 

A single pearl washed ashore, half buried in the sand and resting beside a shell.