The Siren Princess

by Lichelle Slater

  “I only wish to speak with you!” I tried to remain calm but was completely helpless as they dragged two of the pirates deeper into the waiting darkness beneath me.

  “Prince Ulrich will be anxious to speak with you, witch,” the one on my left snarled.

  I tried to look over my shoulder and back at the boat, hoping to catch a glimpse of James, but it was surrounded by sirens. The men dragged me toward the drop-off.

  “Ow! You don’t need to be so rough!” I protested.

  “You didn’t show us any kindness.”

  From the edge of the precipice, I could see mysterious lights at the bottom. The men didn’t pause before they carried me down into the suddenly cooler waters.

  Debris littered the ground—pieces of stone and broken buildings. There were few corals or natural underwater features.

  “Is that Delphi?” I asked hesitantly.

  “Yes.”

  “How long ago was she sunk?”

  “We were taken into the sea before the winter ball,” the man on my left answered.

  “And no one has come to save us.” The other glared at me.

  As we drew nearer, the shapes in the darkness revealed their true form as the remnants of Delphi. Mighty marble pillars lay toppled in the streets or resting against crumbled walls or the side of a building. What should have been a road lined with small homes was a broken pathway lined with gaping holes. Those had once been the homes of politicians, tradesmen, maybe even fishermen.

  I could only imagine how grand this city had been on the land with the white stones glistening under the afternoon sun, reflecting and igniting the land. I imagined the king and queen of Terricina had been very proud of their home.

  Now, the buildings appeared ancient and forgotten. Glowing algae had been smeared on the walls of the buildings to offer some light and décor, though it was a poor excuse for paint. Small sea anemones were beginning to set up their homes in the crevices of the broken pillars and between the stones of the buildings. Small schools of fish darted about.

  At the edge of the light, I caught the reflections of eyes, much like a wild animal’s. Beyond the light, I saw a parent draw their child to safety. Neither was a siren like those I’d met at the Siren’s Gate.

  I tried to round my shoulders, appear braver than I felt, for as I neared the palace, my stomach lurched as if I’d been caught in a storm again.

  The palace was shaped like an I with longer wings out in front. It was rather boxy but had two floors on the main and back section, while the front wings were one level. The top floor was crumbled on one side, and the sea-worn copper roof was missing on the front right wing. Other than that, the palace appeared well intact.

  “Get Prince Ulrich,” the man to my right called out as we neared the entrance.

  Someone had been smart enough to use wood debris or seaweed to make small cages in which floated glowing jellyfish. I had to hand it to these people, they were resourceful.

  A young man appeared. He had dark hair and striking green eyes, full of anger. He had a long iridescent blue and black tail. By the intensity of the glare on his face, I knew immediately he must have been Prince Ulrich.

  “You,” he hissed at me, hands balled into fists. “Are you satisfied?” He stopped mere inches from my face. “Was this your plan all along?”

  I stared at him in stunned silence several seconds before I convinced myself to blink. “Do I know you?”

  He laughed. “You . . . you’re clever enough to have deceived my father, but you won’t deceive me.” He turned and faced me again. He eyed me up and down. “Hiding yourself as a pirate. I never would have imagined. Not until one of the scouts reported to me that an ancient siren pulled a girl into the sea and she became one of us.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt your monologue, but I truly have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve never seen you before.”

  “Maybe some time alone will help you remember.” Prince Ulrich pointed with his right hand. “Take her to the cave.”

  The men pulled me away from the front of the palace.

  “You don’t need to be so harsh!”

  They took me to a mountain of stone with a gaping cave mouth. They shoved me in, and Ulrich stopped in the doorway with his men flanking him.

  “Where is the contract?” he demanded.

  I threw my arms up in frustration. “What contract?”

  He folded his arms over his chest. “You truly don’t remember?” He gave a little snort. “How convenient.”

  I sighed. “Not really. About seven months ago, I got injured and can’t remember,” I explained.

  His face fell, and his eyes narrowed. “You mean you honestly don’t remember? That means you don’t remember how to undo the spell?”

  “What spell?” I almost shouted in exasperation.

  “The one that dragged us into the ocean, you fool!” He lurched forward, hands balled into fists.

  My first instinct was to punch him, and my blow landed square on his cheek. Apparently, hitting as a siren was different than hitting as a human, and Prince Ulrich’s head actually snapped to the side. I seized a rock and threw it at him. It turns out, stones don’t really throw well under water, siren or not.

  Ulrich blinked at me, stunned, and held his hand up quickly toward his men, who lunged forward to defend him. “If you were the sea witch, you would have used your magic, not your fist.”

  I blanched. “What? The sea witch? First, I’m not old enough to be the sea witch. Second, I don’t have any magic. Third . . . what in the deep blue sea made you believe I’m a witch?”

  His shoulders slumped. “I was told you turned into a siren,” he repeated. “A pirate who is also a siren? I thought . . .”

  “That automatically makes me the sea witch?” I rolled my eyes. “You’re that desperate for help, aren’t you?”

  He slowly let his breath out, looking rather defeated. He reached up and grabbed a pendant hanging from his neck. “Yes. Because if I don’t break this by the summer solstice, Delphi will be stuck here forever, as will my people.” He gestured behind him. “Not to mention, my kingdom on land will have no ruler.”

  “That’s foreboding,” I said.

  Ulrich made a very human gesture by running his fingers through his hair. “You have no idea. I need that contract. I need to break it.”

  “What’s in the contract?”

  “If I knew how to break it, do you think I would be demanding answers from you?”

  I tilted my head. “I can understand why you might be upset. But I barely learned—or remembered—that I’m even a siren at all. I don’t know how to help you.”

  “Perhaps you are too low on the rung of leadership to know,” he pondered aloud.

  “Unless, maybe, you have the summer stone.”

  He looked me up and down. “How do you know about that?”

  “Everyone does. Just like they know about the witch,” I shrugged.

  “Well, it was lost when the witch sunk us. I recommend you get some rest.”

  I gasped. “You’re leaving me here?”

  Ulrich pointed to a hole at the top of the cave. “You’ll get sunlight for the next few hours. I’ll bring you dinner when the sea grows dark. If you won’t answer my questions, perhaps your friends will.”

  I swam to the doorway and watched Ulrich’s hand glow white. A gigantic boulder grated on rocks as it rolled and blocked my only escape route. I pressed my hands against it, then heaved with my shoulder.

  And I was alone again.

  Alone in a cave beside a city I supposedly helped sink.

  twelve

  I wished Ulrich had taken me with him so I could have at least overheard their discussion. After what seemed like ages, I wondered if they’d forgotten about me. I had no sense of time in the ocean, though I
kept glancing at the opening in the cave above to try and gauge the passage of time. Slowly, the light overhead began to fade.

  The sound of the rock grinding open actually made me excited.

  Ulrich entered. “Your dinner. He held a dead fish in his hand.

  I stared at the fish, then looked at him. “That is my dinner?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s raw!”

  There was a long pause between us while Ulrich let me process the stupidity of my statement.

  “Of course it’s raw,” I finally muttered. “We’re fish too.” Still, I looked down at the fish carcass held out to me and couldn’t imagine how it would taste. “Distract me with conversation. You mentioned old sirens. What did you mean?” I took the fish and turned it over, trying to figure out the best way to eat it. Ulrich hadn’t brought any utensils, so I assumed he wanted me to just tear into it, but that thought was disgusting.

  “When my people were pulled into the sea, we were all transformed into this.” He gestured to himself. “We discovered some are more fish-like. Few can speak anymore, but one explained they have always been part of the sea. The longer we stay, the more like them we will become. At least, that is what they said. I wouldn’t be surprised if they eventually lost their humanity completely. Flotsam and Jetsam, the two you met, say the sirens further down the coast have already resorted to nothing but singing and shrieking.” He paused, watching me still examining the fish. “If you keep thinking about how to eat it, it’s only going to be worse for you.” He reached out, grabbed on to the fish in my hands, then tore the fin off and peeled it open, exposing the meat. “Aren’t you a pirate?”

  “Yes, I’m a pirate, but I’ve never had to eat raw fish like this!” I gagged.

  “It was hard for all of us at first, but you will get used to it if you want to survive.” Ulrich studied me with handsome green eyes, not so different from my own.

  I bit into the fish and it tasted . . . just like fish. There wasn’t anything exciting about it, just the strange squishy texture. It wasn’t half as bad as I thought it would be until I realized on my third bite that I had to have eaten some of the entrails because the fish hadn’t been gutted prior to me eating it, and therefore each bite I’d managed to get that stuff in my mouth too.

  That was enough to make me shove the fish back at Ulrich and grip my stomach to stop myself from vomiting. I didn’t want to experience vomit under water in a small cave with no escape.

  “It happens to the best of us,” was all Ulrich had to say. “I must admit I’m surprised you have no powers.”

  “I told you I didn’t,” I growled.

  “We couldn’t believe that until your inability to escape proved it.” He gestured to the open entrance. “Would you like to come stay in the castle? I’m afraid the accommodations aren’t what they would be on the land.”

  “I want to know what happened,” I said firmly, not moving toward him. “I want to know about this sea witch and whatever spell she put on your people to make you sink. Why did she feel your people were such a threat? And what did you talk to the other pirates about?”

  Ulrich shook his head. “You ask a lot of questions. I don’t believe we were a threat. My father hasn’t allowed men to murder sirens in years, and the shipping lanes don’t cross in sirens’ waters. As for your men, they confirmed you are not the sea witch and you’ve lost your memories fairly recently.”

  “What is next for us then? What do you want?”

  Ulrich rubbed his chin. He was about a year or two younger than me but definitely seemed older. “If I show you what happened that day, perhaps you can see something I don’t? Since I can’t find the physical contract, this may be the best way to try and find a hint.”

  “How do you plan on doing that?”

  He reached out a hand toward me.

  I refused to take it.

  “I don’t bite.” Ulrich gave me a sweet half-grin.

  “I don’t know that.”

  “Do you want to know or not?” One hand wrapped around the circular pendant I’d noticed earlier. It reminded me of my own pearl necklace.

  I didn’t know what he had planned, but I decided I had to trust this boy in order to find out or remain locked in a cold cave in a world I knew nothing of. I took his hand, and then to my complete and utter shock, Ulrich’s hand began to glow green. I looked up and saw the same green aura surrounding his entire body, and in the hand that had clutched the necklace, he now held a beautiful green stone.

  “The summer stone?” I muttered aloud.

  He smiled coyly.

  “You’ve had it all along?”

  “I had to make sure you weren’t the witch.”

  I gasped as I was suddenly pulled out of the sea and into a hazy memory.

  I stood in a bedroom, buttoning up a green vest with golden buttons, but quickly realized I was seeing through Ulrich’s eyes. I’d imagined, being a prince, he didn’t get out of the castle much, but his skin was tanned, and the light shade of his chestnut hair told me he spent a lot of time in the sun.

  He tucked in his shirt and pulled on an expensive silk vest but didn’t button it. Instead, he leaned over his desk, studying a parchment with neat writing. His voice echoed in my head as he read the text.

  Ulrich stopped to check himself in the mirror, remembered he needed to button his vest, and did so.

  From what I could see in the reflection of the mirror, the room was elegant yet simple. The walls were the same white limestone as the pillars in the city and only had one tapestry above the four-post bed, which had been built out of a rich dark wood. The bedding was askew, telling me the servants hadn’t been in yet to fix it.

  Ulrich tugged at the bottom of the vest, and I realized just how muscled he was. He was built more like a younger James, with broad shoulders and a thick chest, but not nearly as tall.

  He ran his fingers through his hair a few times to fix it, then returned to the desk. One paper had notes scribbled about it in a way I couldn’t follow, like a jumble of thoughts that take place as you wake.

  “There’s got to be something I’m not seeing,” he muttered.

  Ulrich’s gaze suddenly locked on a phrase toward the bottom of the contract, and I felt my face—his face—spread into a grin. “That’s it. That right there.” He snatched a quill from his desk and circled part of a sentence, then ran from the bedroom.

  He ran down a hallway lined with paintings, so familiar he didn’t take time to stop at any of them. One painting, however, caught my attention. It was a family—husband with dark hair, wife sitting in a chair with an infant in her arms. A daughter stood at her side, and the king’s hand was on her small shoulder.

  Ulrich slid around the corner and burst into the throne room. His father sat upon a white throne with emerald-green cushions. The king’s head with a simple silver and gold crown with white diamonds, his neatly trimmed hair and beard were starting to show graying patches, and age lines pinched the corners of his eyes and mouth.

  “I figured it out,” Ulrich blurted, rushing to his father’s side.

  “Ulrich,” his father said in a low tone.

  “Please listen. I’ve been trying to tell you all week something is wrong with this contract. I’ve figured it out.”

  “Ulrich, the advisors picked through every line.”

  “I know but look here.” He stuck the contract out to his father. “The beginning letter of each line makes the phrase, A curse to break. The end of each line says Summer Solstice. See?” He beamed with excitement. “It’s a curse!”

  The king, however, tilted his chin down. His eyes softened. Captain Avery had given me that look before. The look that told me I wasn’t right or that my idea wasn’t good.

  Ulrich felt the same gut-sinking feeling at the look I felt every time it was given to me. “You don’t believe me.”
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br />   “The advisors saw nothing wrong with it. I see nothing wrong with it.” He motioned, and for the first time, Ulrich turned to see the advisors standing at the foot of the throne. Feet away stood a woman in a flowing purple dress, but her face was hidden behind a black veil.

  “I . . . I don’t understand,” Ulrich said. “You’ve taught me my entire life to pick through contracts. It’s the one thing I excel at. I’ve caught numerous errors that saved our country money and maintained safety, and this one time you are going to trust your advisors over me?”

  His father didn’t reply.

  “Please think about this further,” Ulrich urged.

  “Think of the trade!” his father whispered back, excitement sparking in his eyes. “A new route is just what we need, especially with the siren pass causing delays.”

  Ulrich took a step back. “I never thought I would see the day where you would risk the safety of your own people to obtain more money.”

  “Then you truly don’t know your own father, boy,” a woman’s voice said.

  Ulrich turned and looked at the faceless woman. He wanted to say something. He returned his attention to his father and, one last time, pleaded with him not to make a foolish decision.

  But the advisors handed over the contract, and his father took the quill.

  “The land of Terricina will accept your trade offer.” He signed the document and handed the quill back to his advisor. He himself stood and approached the woman, contract in hand. “I look forward to our partnership.”

  The woman’s hands closed on the parchment, and she let out a deep, dark chuckle. “You foolish man. Now you will suffer for what you did to me.”

  The king’s body went rigid. “You?” he breathed. “Impossible!”

  “Not so, dear king. And now, you shall get what you deserve.” She took a step back, and the ground trembled violently. “You should have listened to your son. As the contract states, if someone doesn’t find a way to raise you from the depths of the sea by the summer solstice, you and your people will be mine forever!”