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“No, I’m fine here, but the fleas are biting me,” he flicked a creature off his sleeve that looked more like a tiny scorpion than a flea. “They must have gotten to me from the skipper. But I didn’t come to you about fleas. And I didn’t come to you about a riot.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I found this in the helmsman’s things.”
“You went through the helmsman’s things?”
“I didn’t mean to, but it was like a mermaid’s voice called me and… you know how it is, you hear a song and you do something you didn’t mean to do.”
“It is nonsense!” Desmond was careful to hide the fact that he himself had fallen under the mermaid’s spell. He snatched a piece of paper from the young man’s hands. It turned out to be a wanted notice.
“I didn’t know they were going to catch me and hang me like any pirate!”
“Take a closer look,” insisted the young man. “The reward for you is very high – 1,500 gold coins. That’s a fortune. With it you can buy your own estate with plantations. For an ordinary pirate, you get a hundred gold pieces at most, but no more.”
“So I don’t remember doing anything outrageous to be valued so highly.”
“Or maybe it’s your past. The text at the bottom of the ad says that you’re being rewarded by the Mirid’s government, and that you must be captured alive.”
“You’re so damn literate!” Desmond crumpled up the wanted notice. It looked like the helmsman had turned out to be a spy sent from Mirid. He’d saved him for nothing. The case had almost solved itself when the helmsman had almost died on the voyage. Now he’d have to kill him anyway. Too bad the sea creature’s tentacles didn’t finish the job.
In the morning, we’ll have to see if there’s anyone on board who can replace the helmsman. With the last one injured, it won’t raise suspicion.
“Do you think your father has a reward for your capture?” The young man inquired cautiously.
Desmond could only laugh deafeningly.
“My father put a bounty on my head.”
“But it says you must be caught alive.”
“It’s a figure of speech. Pirates prefer to be caught dead.”
The coins he took from the morgen fell out of the chest on the shelf. The ship must have swayed, so they fell out. The gold glittered dazzlingly.
“It is sea gold!” The young man saw the crests with the kraken, crowns and mermaids. “They’re talismans, not money. You should drill a hole in them, string them on a string and wear them around your neck. They’d make excellent sea magic charms.”
The ship’s boy picked up one coin, and the skin on his palm from contact with the sea gold immediately began to turn blue and rot.
“Ouch!” The kid dropped the coin. “How can you even keep them in your house? Anyone else would have died of seasickness by now. It’s like you’re enchanted!”
It must have been Cassandra’s amulet. Although it seems he took the gold from the morgen long before he got the amulet as a gift.
Desmond followed the young man’s advice and made a necklace out of the coins. It was easy. Someone had already drilled holes in them. All that was left was to string them on a string.
“Didn’t you go down into the hold?” He asked the ubiquitous young man.
“No, the door was locked.”
“Have you heard any suspicious noises from down there?”
“I always hear a song without words, as if the mermaid is humming something under her nose,” admitted the young man. “You say she is in the hold now? Can I see her? I didn’t even see her when they dragged her on deck. There was nothing to see behind the backs of the older pirates.”
“Grab a lantern and let’s go!” Desmond found a shard of mirror in the chest and quickly combed his hair with his fingers. Somehow he was worried about how he would look, as if the sleeping mermaid could see him.
“You’re not as handsome as you were at court, but you still look good,” the young man praised. “You’re not so dapper anymore.”
Desmond could see that he looked bad himself, but once he had been considered the handsomest boy in Mirid. His golden hair had recently been trimmed with a dagger blade, but it was almost shoulder-length again. The ends were curling, and there were no scars on the skin of his face yet. Could a mermaid like him? Earth girls liked him. But what is mermaid flavor? Is it true that mermaids can only like drowned guys? Or was it all a sailor’s fiction?
Desmond threw on a tattered camisole and followed the young man carrying the lantern. The watchmen were asleep that night. This was not usually the case, not even during a feast. Just because it was night didn’t mean the ship couldn’t be attacked. Pirates were not allowed to be careless. Had the mermaid’s presence suppressed their will?
Nothing had changed in the hold. Barrels of rum, ale, and wine, taken from merchant ships that had crossed “The Triumphant’s” path, were piled around. Bales of cloth and spices were piled nearby, to be sold in Pion or Arcades. Only the container with the captured mermaid had changed location. It stretched to the ceiling. The mermaid was no longer lying down, but straightened up to her full height, as if she were floating on ice. In this position she seemed even more beautiful.
“Wow!” The young man whistled. “We have a sea goddess in the hold!”
The wax from the candle in the lantern dripped on the symbols on the floor, left by the morgen, and melted them. The ice inside the vessel immediately began to melt. The mermaid wiggled her fins. She woke up instantly, as if the magical protection that made her sleep had been removed. She was no longer motionless. Her webbed hands pressed against a thin partition that had not yet melted. Desmond even thought it was made of glass, not of ice. Or was it still ice? He ran his fingers along the partition. His fingers immediately felt frosty cold.
The mermaid’s purple hair fluttered in the water like a scarlet storm. The open eyes were iridescent. They flashed alternately with different hues. The pearls growing in her skin also glistened and shimmered with pearlescent hues.
“Merediana!” Desmond whispered breathlessly, as if making a prayer to a goddess. Her eyes mesmerized him.
The mermaid was pounding against the partition, demanding.
“Let me out! Let me out!”
How could he hear her voice through the water? And why hadn’t the top layer of the tank melted? Desmond looked around for something to break it with. He hadn’t brought his saber. There were plenty of boarding hooks in the hold, and a harpoon among them.
“Don’t!” The young man was afraid. “What if she storms when you let her go?”
“We can’t keep her here like a fishbowl.”
“But you used to keep captives from foreign ships, who were sold as slaves in Pion,” the young man said reasonably.
“The mermaid is prettier, and she is magical. You can’t treat her disrespectfully.”
“Do you want to lose the King Opal’s favor? I hear he wants to marry one of the sea queens, perhaps her.”
“The King of Opal wants to marry a mermaid? I doubt it. That sounds more like gossip.”
“But in exchange for her, the King of Opal will give you anything you want. You could ask him to magically alter the Mirid’s Almanac. Then you can get even with all your enemies and reap the benefits. The King of Opal is rumored to be capable of all kinds of magical wonders.”
He didn’t care about the King of Opal. Desmond swung his harpoon and shattered the magic cage. Ice, sharp as glass, shattered into shards. A suspiciously large amount of water spurted to the bottom of the hold, as if a hole had reappeared in the bottom of the ship. The water level was rising.
Merediana shook her purple hair. Up close, she appeared so beautiful it took Desmond’s breath away.
“Just don’t cause a storm to flood my ship,” Desmond asked her. He was no fool, and he knew that the bubbling water was not flooding the hold by accident. It was already up to his shoulders. Cassandra’s amulet glowed alarmingly scarlet. It meant danger was near.
Merediana swam up to Desmond. He couldn’t resist touching her, and his hands slid around her waist and into her sharp scales.
“Who is more valuable: the whole ship or one captain?” Merediana ran her webbed fingers through his hair. “You’re not a typical pirate captain and you won’t drown.”
She noticed the amulet.
“How romantic?!” Merediana tried to rip the amulet from Desmond’s neck, but couldn’t. Her fingers burned from contact with the amulet.
“It is nasty Earth sorceresses!” The sea beauty cursed. Her arms wrapped around Desmond’s shoulders and held him captive. Desmond felt he could not move. All he could do was obey the mermaid. She pulled him with her into the water, and then under the water. A hole formed in the bottom of the ship, out of nowhere. Meredina dived into it, dragging Desmond as if he were a slave on a leash. In her embrace, Desmond could not think clearly. He did not even immediately realize that the mermaid was dragging him as a prisoner to the Underworld.
Mermaid’s captive
It was dark underwater. Then a light glimmered in the distance. Merediana was actively raking the water masses with her fin. Clumps of algae and coral grew all around. The mermaid swam between them as if through a tunnel.
The swim had been going on for about an hour. Desmond would have to drown. He did not immediately realize that he was living underwater against the laws of nature. People suffocate here. And he’s still alive. Do we have Cassandra’s amulet to thank for that? Or was it the embrace of the Princess of the Sea? Until Merediana releases him, will he not suffocate?
The mermaid hummed a song on the way about the pleasure of drowning handsome boys.
“How I love to drag someone handsome to the bottom, hug and kiss him and watch him suffocate and then become a skeleton on the bottom.”
Is she kidding? Can’t she see that Desmond isn’t drowning?
Merediana laughed. She pressed her lips against her captive’s for a moment. The kiss brought unexpected pleasure. Desmond was taken aback. Was the mermaid trying to give him artificial respiration or was this a kiss of love?
“Yes, you won’t drown,” Merediana concluded. “There are strong people. They have a harder time than the weak.”
On the way they began to meet flocks of motley fish. All of them, seeing Merediana, gave way to her. Even fish are afraid to swim close to her, but Desmond fell into her arms. The mermaid fluttered him like a doll, dragging him behind her, and he could not resist her. His whole body felt as if it were restrained. He was neither alive nor dead. What a trap he’d fallen into! Hadn’t he been warned how dangerous Merediana was!
The bottom appeared below. Plantations of seaweed stretched across it. In their thickets glimpsed the bones of human skeletons. Were all the drowned men victims of Merediana? Among them there was a chest full of gold. Here was a pirate’s dream of sunken treasure, but there was no way to retrieve it.
Desmond was a little disappointed in the sea kingdom. Where are the palaces, temples and various wonders? It’s just an ordinary, dreary bottom. It doesn’t look like a fairytale sea kingdom at all.
There was a surprise ahead. The shining gate, decorated with bas-reliefs in the form of heads of magical creatures, turned out to be the entrance to the real Underwater Kingdom. It turned out that the dreary thickets of seaweed were only the suburbs of the sea paradise. Beyond the gate stretched fabulous underwater gardens and pyramids of pearls.
Merediana swam up to the golden heads on the gate.
“I have brought a prisoner, let us both through!”
The golden faces suddenly came to life and gave the mermaid smirks that made Desmond’s blood run cold.
“Be careful, Merediana! They look too predatory!” He wanted to warn, but all he got out of his mouth was a gurgle. The water bubbled with bubbles.
“He is a prisoner! It is another one!” The faces sang out. “You have too many amusements! Leave them outside the gate when you’ve had your fill. Prostitutes are no good to anyone here.”
“This is a corsair and a mermaid kidnapper! A violator of the law of the sea! He will be judged by the sea king himself, for he has kidnapped the Princess of the Sea.”
“Wow!” The faces whistled, and winked at Desmond, saying, in their opinion, he is a hero for daring to do such a thing.
“You don’t know what’s going on the surface!” Merediana was angry. “Are you blind?”
The eyes of the golden faces were monochrome and golden, but they could not be called sightless. They seemed to see even more than they should.
“We don’t like to observe the surface. There are bad memories there.”
“It is not there, but in the sky!”
“The sky stretches right over the sea. How can you look at the surface and not see it?”
“I respect your grief, but the fall was a long time ago. Stop moaning and open the gate!”
The gate creaked reluctantly. Merediana sailed through the narrow gate and dragged Desmond through.
“Ouch!” one of the faces tried to bite his arm. Desmond was surprised to find that his voice could now be heard under water.
“They are biters,” Merediana nodded. “I don’t like them, but you can’t swim into the Underworld without their permission.”
She waved her fins more vigorously. The gate slammed shut, catching a piece of Desmond’s sleeve. If Merediana hadn’t swim at double speed, the pirate’s arm would have been elbow-deep in the teeth of the living faces.
The golden heads snorted in displeasure.
“You haven’t fed us! You haven’t paid the tribute for the passage to the Undersea Kingdom or sacrificed to us! We will report you to the Sea King Seal!”
Merediana turned around and flashed her tongue at them. Desmond flinched. Her tongue was a bifurcated stinger.
“They’ll report me to my father!” She pouted capriciously. “My father will punish them himself! I am his favorite daughter… after Yasmin.”
Merediana frowned.
“It’s strange that until Yasmin went to live on the islands of the Between Worlds, I wasn’t the foremost of the sea queens. The first seat in the sea court was only vacated by a pirate in Yasmin’s care, that’s the only reason you’re still alive,” Merediana shook Desmond like a toy. “I respect pirates. Without them, I wouldn’t be the most important of all the sea queens.”
And by far the strongest! Desmond was horrified at how much physical strength lay in the graceful mermaid’s frail body. Merediana could crush not only him, but his entire pirate crew with one fingernail. She could crush a ship and an entire fortress with her hands. Only magic can make a slender mermaid stronger than a giant. Surprisingly, with such strength, Merediana could not free herself from either the cube or the rune-stained chest.
The runes of the nameless morgen were far more powerful than the mermaid’s magic. Where is this morgen now? Why isn’t he rushing to the rescue? He should have sensed by now that the mermaid had freed herself. So why isn’t he rushing to help his business partner?
Desmond caught himself thinking that he didn’t want the release. The mermaid’s closeness was so sweet that he wished he could remain captive forever. If the fetters were Merediana’s embrace, he would gladly become her eternal captive.
That’s how people get dragged into the Underworld! It’s all due to the enchantment of the magical creatures of the sea. Proximity to them is like a magnet or a drug. You can step off a cliff or drown with them.
Merediana’s purple hair waving in the water was softer than silk. The mermaid’s skin was phosphorescent. The scarlet scales on her tail shimmered. Merediana was the most beautiful creature not only in the underwater world, but in the entire universe! If she wanted to keep him captive, he would be happy. Desmond was ready to give up his career as a pirate (if only criminal activity can be called a career), his dreams of glory, and even his long-standing enmity with the rulers of Mirid. He was even willing to drown for Merediana. He had to fall in love so hard at first sight!
Desmond thought that if Merediana were to leave him now, he would not return to land. Better to die in the water where she lived than to live on the surface of the water without her.
Cassandra would explain such a condition by saying that the pirate was bewitched by mermaid magic. Therefore, Desmond would not ask Cassandra’s opinion.
Beyond the golden gate stretched the underwater gardens. All the trees and bushes here were blue, blue, and rarely white. Pyramids of shells and pearls moved suspiciously, as if whole hordes of monsters lurked inside.
Paths of pearls twisted around a cluster of underwater flowers. Desmond wondered what the paths were for if the underwater creatures did not walk, but swam.
The water flowers turned out to be alive and predatory. They greedily caught the passing fry. One large flower the size of a hut tried to catch Desmond’s foot.
“Don’t dare!” Merediana hissed at him, and the petals of the predatory flower immediately froze.
