When The Ocean Wept

When I was younger, I thought my mother was a mermaid in the way that all children make believe. I thought she was a mermaid, but I didn’t think I was right.

Her hair was always slightly damp, and when I kissed her cheek I would taste salt. She would take me on strolls on the beach, and she would tell me the names of every shell. Scallop, she said, taking my hand and pointing it to the sand. Cowrie. Conch. And her favorite shell, Oliva. My name.

An Oliva shell sits in my palm now, a gift from a woman who was not who she said. The elongated oval shape folded over itself, and fine markings whorled the shell into beauty.

When I was eight, I saw my mother in the ocean, which had parted to make way for her. I saw a flash of green fin, a sparkle of blue, and then it was gone. Mother shook her head violently and stumbled away, the water lapping against her heels. The white foam whispered, stay. It whispered, don’t go.

But she always left. So one day, they came.

A woman knocked on our door and my mother shoved me away, to the side, anywhere but where they where. Still, the strange woman caught a flash of my hair and I caught a glimpse of her skin. She saw brown curls, I saw green flesh. 

“You must come home,” the strange woman whispered. “Come home, sister. You’ve been gone far too long.”

Mother spoke. “Your hair has grown back.”

“It was always going to, Sister. But fins don’t grow back. Not without a price.”

I peered around the corner. The woman stood unsteady as a toddler, her skin tinted like grass- or seaweed. Her eyes were shards of ice and her hair, brushing the nape of her neck, was like a vine of dead, white coral. She looked unearthly, and I knew at once that she did not belong here.

Neither did my mother.

“What was your price, Alana? What did it cost you to grow feet and fins whenever you wished?”

The woman- Alana- froze. “I would give up anything for you.”

My mother spat, “And I would give up anything for her.”

Alana sniffed, the shattered ice in her eyes chilling. “A child. Is it his?”

Mother yielded a step back. “Does it matter? She’s mine. That’s enough.”

Alana stepped forward, her gaze cold as the water of the deep. Mother almost backed up, but she caught herself this time, glancing at me fearfully. “Alana…”

“Sister…” Alana sneered. “Does it know? Does the child know what you did to her father? How his brother searches for you still?”

“Oliva is not an it,” mother said, and if Alana was ice, Mother was fire, angry and hot. “She is my daughter, and I would die for her.”

Alana’s head turned. “Would you kill for her, Sister?”

Mother was a rock, and Alana was a hammer against her surface. “Oh, but you already have, haven’t you. With the sword we gave you, to give you back your voice and fins in exchange for our hair.”

“You know nothing,” mother said, and her voice trembled.

“I know everything,” Alana hissed. “I know you carried his child. I know you loved him. I know he chose to wed another.”

Mother shook her head, but Alana was relentless.

“I know he scorned you and your - his - child. I know we gave you the sea witch's sword.”

Her voice dropped, steel against stone and just as harsh. “I know what you did with it.”

Mother’s finger rose, pointing to the door. “Out, Alana. You seek to chain me to the ocean, to keep me away from freedom just as our father did. You are no sister of mine.”

Hurt flashed in Alana’s eyes, and she faded into a sea breeze. The salt stung my eyes, sprayed my hair like a warning. Soon, it whispered. We will come for you soon.

But it was not soon. Years passed, leisurely swimming in a slowed current. 

But riptides come without warning. They cut the air from your lungs and hurl you towards your death.

This time, the waves were not calm. They battered against the shore in warning. He is coming, they cry. He has found you.

Mother seized me and dragged me away from the shore. The ocean no longer spoke to her, but she could still read their words.

“Listen to me,” she said heavily. I was twelve now, and I had learned how to pretend. Once I pretended to be reassured by her lies.

But the time to reassure had passed. The ocean’s tides had risen, and so had the tension.

“Your father…”

Mother tried again.

“Your father was a wealthy man.”

Mother shook her head. “No. Let me start over. From the beginning.”

And so she did. She told me a story, of a princess under the waves. She told me of a strict father who looked at her like a prized cow, the fatter the better. 

She fled, once. She broke the surface for the first time and found she could not breathe, so she dove underwater for a breath and saw him.

My father.

He was drowning, and Mother saved him. Gazed upon his face for as long as her breath held.

Then she dove under the water again, and another took credit as his savior.

She told me of a sea witch, who she sought out. The witch could make her human, and take her away from her father and to my father.

She thought freedom would come from the man she had saved. She thought it was an omen.

The witch shook her head and warned her, but my mother did not listen. The witch finally agreed to her terms… on two conditions. 

Magic requires balance. For human legs, the witch tore Mother’s tongue from her mouth. For human lungs, the witch tugged the green from her skin. For human hair, the witch pulled the pearls from her throat.

And for a human heart, the witch gave a warning.

Do not fall in love without checking for a ladder.

But she fell in love, and the man was like most men at his time.

Arrogant. Wealthy. Powerful.

He told her he returned her feelings, promised to marry her, to shower her in gold and riches-

And when she revealed she was with child, he scorned her, struck her on the cheek. A gold band connected with her tooth, chipping the bone.

The gold band was a wedding ring.

Mother’s sisters came that night, their heads as bald and pale as the moon- but their love shined like the sun.

Still, Mother had known a human’s heart and love. It was full of fire, while her kin, cold-blooded creatures, were filled with ice that made her shiver.

Mother’s sisters handed her a magical blade. It would restore her magic, they explained. It would return her tongue, but only she could return her fins and the color of her skin- by returning to the ocean’s depths.

Mother agreed, and that night, she killed my father. Her lips would no longer be sealed, and she let out a scream of fury, though her voice was cracked and hoarse. She tore the wedding band from his finger and sold it to a jeweler, the money buying us our small cottage by the sea.

But my father’s brother, Arthur, knew of my mother’s treachery. He sought her, chasing after his brother’s murderer.

And now he had come.

Soon enough, Arthur stood on the sands of our beach. The gold dust pebbled his legs as a lazy breeze swirled around his body. 

“Ariel,” he said, and I saw then he held a gun. “I wish you no harm. I simply want to question-“

Mother cut him off. “Enough, Arthur. We know why you are here. I will not let you harm my child.”

His eyes sharpened, and his gaze fell on me. It was then I noticed the other men, drawing closer like a pack of wolves on the hunt.

Arthur, though, was the shark. And he had followed the scent of blood on my mother’s hands.

He raised his gun. They all did.

And then a wave swallowed us whole.

I must admit, drowning was not a fun experience. The waves knew no mercy, and to kill our enemies was to kill us all. Worse still, Mother was no longer a mermaid. She could die.

My eyes opened, despite the burn of salt, but I could not find Mother. I could not find her.

A few bubbles escaped my mouth, and in my panic, I followed them up.

My head broke surface, and I breathed a choking inhale of both water and air, coughing when the briny water hit the back of my throat.

I heard a garbled hush, a green hand flashing in and out of sight. I was being restrained, confined- I struggled and pushed-

Another wave swallowed me, and I sank back into the darkness.

The next time I woke, I was on the sand. My chest heaved, breathing in and out frantically. I spotted a woman with curls like my mother and eyes like my mother, but her skin was green and her hair was white. She looked at me. 

“Shh, my little shell. My Oliva. I love you.”

“Mama? What happened? Why…”

Heads bobbed out of the water, and I recognized one. A dulled memory. Mama’s sister. She viewed me with ice in her gaze. They all did.

“…Mama?” I watched her, scared. The warmth in her eyes soothed me- she was not gone completely. She lifted a webbed hand to my cheek.

“I could not let the ocean take anything else from me,” she whispered, and a pearly tear formed in her eye. Her sisters waited, impatient, as my mother slid an Oliva shell in my palm. I let it sit there, feeling the cold weight of it.

My mother smiled once more, then dived under the waves for a breath. When she rose again, her gaze was filled with a promise, and I heard her words the same way I always heard the ocean.

I love you. I will protect you. 

Then she dove into the waves, and I was left sitting in the sand, my hair clumped with seaweed and salt, as the sun sank below the horizon, clutching the shell with my name. And as I wept, I could have sworn the ocean cried as well.