Pirate Princess (26 page)

The men rowed faster, trying to get out of the wake’s range, but it was too wide. The squid passed under us, his head as large as the volcano’s mouth, his one giant eye looked at me as he swam away, his tentacles at least one hundred feet long each, and then the boat capsized. I swam upward, kicking my legs with every bit of strength that I could muster and gasped for air when I surfaced.

Tilia. Tilia. Tilia. Where is she?!

“Finn!” I yelled, looking around the choppy water. Most of his men were a hundred or so yards away, trying to flip the boat back over. I swam towards them to help, but something grabbed my boot and pulled me back under the water. I knew better than to scream, held my breath, and turned to see what was attacking me. A mermaid! Mermaids had scales all over their body, but the upper half was shaped more like a woman with arms and a torso and a head with hair. Their face looked nothing like a human, but more like a shark’s with rows of razor sharp teeth and eyes on the sides of their head. This mermaid was green and blue and showed me her teeth as she dragged me deeper into the ocean.

Tilia. Don’t die. Please be fine. Where is she? I can’t see her!

I took out a dagger and cut two of her fingers off, forcing her to release my leg. She screamed, her yell sounding like a screeching owl. I kicked as hard as I could. I had to swim up before she came after me again. I broke the surface, gasped in a breath of air, and she grabbed me by my hair and started pulling me down again with her uninjured hand. I tried to turn around to attack her, but she had control over my head, twisting me around so I couldn’t turn to face her. I reached back and cut half of my hair off. She shot downward with the rest of my hair in her hand for a moment before realizing what I had done. She turned around and I faced her, dagger in hand.

Why hasn’t she surfaced? She can’t breathe for that long underwater. I can’t see her! I can’t swim randomly in there without seeing her! I can’t lose you, Tilia. Help her, Aquin!

She flicked her tail back and forth and showed me her teeth. She released my hair, letting it float down to the bottom of the sea and then shot forward faster than a shark towards me. I lifted my arm, dagger pointed out and flipped my body upside down in the water, cutting a thick line from her shoulder down her back and almost to her tail. Her blood clouded the water around us and she screamed long and loud. I swam towards the surface, hoping I had injured her enough to deter her from attacking me anymore.

My throat burned from lack of oxygen and I felt my body start to convulse as it tried to force me to gasp for a breath. I could see the sun above me, swirling in the water above. I was almost there. My eyes grew heavy and my legs grew slow and numb. The ocean was actually peaceful now that the giant beasts were gone and the mermaid had left me alone. It would be nice to live down here.

I’m afraid of losing you.

I opened my eyes and kicked with the last bit of strength I had. It wasn’t enough. I couldn’t reach the surface. I relaxed my body and it floated up to the surface.

Three sets of hands grabbed me out of the water, pulling me into a boat. “You alright?” Tom asked as he looked down at me.

I spit up water I hadn’t realized I had swallowed and gasped in a few breaths. “I hate mermaids,” I grunted, gasping for more breath that my lungs had been denied while fighting her under the water.

Was that her? Did they find her? Aquin, please let her be safe.

“That’s what you were fighting?” someone asked.

I nodded my head and finally convinced my hand to let go of the dagger. It rolled out of my hand and onto the bottom of the boat.

“Did you find her?!” Finn yelled anxiously.

“I’m alive,” I called back, raising my arm up.

“You are one crazy girl,” Tom said with a shake of his head.

“Can you sit up?” Paul asked.

“I’ll sit up when we reach the ship,” I whispered, closing my eyes.

Someone slapped my face. “Ow!” I screamed, grabbed my dagger again and opened my eyes to look at the men sitting around me. “I will cut your hand off if you do that again.”

“You have to stay awake,” Tom said.

I sighed and put my arm down. The boat hit something hard and I was beyond delighted to find that it was the ship. Tom helped me sit up and then stand. I put my dagger away and Paul handed me my mask. “It was floating on top of the water,” he told me.

“Thanks,” I whispered, turning the mask over. I saw the cut string and reached back, touching my now shoulder length hair. “Stupid fish.”

I climbed up the ladder and felt bad that I couldn’t go any faster. When I finally reached the top, Finn pulled me over the side and onto the deck, hugging me against him. “I thought I had lost you.”

“You’re not that lucky,” I whispered, enjoying his warmth since I was very cold from the frigid ocean.

“Sail in the opposite direction those things went until they’re a speck in the distance!” Finn ordered his crew.  “What happened?” he asked me, putting his arm around my waist and practically carrying me towards the cabin. “I saw you surface after that freak of a squid capsized the boat and then you disappeared again.”

“Mmmm…mmmm…mermaid,” I finally spit out around my chattering teeth.

He opened the door and then slammed it closed with his foot behind us. “You need to get into dry clothes and warm up,” he ordered. He forced me to sit in one of the chairs around the table and rummaged through my bags to find new clothes for me. He opened up several of his drawers, pulled out clothes for himself and then tossed me a towel.

I reached down to unbuckle my belt that held my sword to my waist, but my fingers wouldn’t work right. Finn knocked my hands away and unbuckled it for me, pulled all of my daggers out, dropped them on the table and then pulled me to a standing position. He started pulling my shirt up and I slapped his hands.

“Nnnnnoo,” I stuttered.

He frowned at me. “I am not trying to take advantage of you. You need to get redressed quickly and get warm.”

I turned to face away from him and slowly lifted my arms up as far as they would go, which ended up being shoulder height. He grabbed my shirt at the bottom hem and pulled it up. He used one hand to lift my arms up and then pulled the shirt the rest of the way over my head and off my arms. I wrapped my arms around my chest and would have blushed if my skin wasn’t ice cold. I had expected him to give me a shirt, but instead he jerked my pants down to my knees.

I squealed in shock and tried to grab them, but he put an arm around my waist and held me in place. “Stay still,” he growled into my ear. I froze in place except for my shaking body from the cold. He pulled them off the rest of the way, lifting my feet one at a time out of the legs of the pants. He reached around me to grab the towel and wrapped it around my body. It was warm and soft and smelled like him. He rubbed my arms and back briskly through the towel and said, “I’m going to change real fast. Sit down and try to dry yourself off.”

I sat down, being sure to face away from him and simply gripped the towel as tightly as I could. I heard his wet clothes hit the floor with a thud and closed my eyes tightly to resist the urge of turning around and peeking. I listened to him pulling his new clothes on and then he grabbed me by the shoulders and made me stand up.

“We need to get you dressed,” He said.

“Nnnnoo,” I said again, trying to sound stern.

“Can you dress yourself?” he asked. “Fast?”

I knew I couldn’t, but I didn’t want to admit it. He grabbed the shirt from the chair beside me, put my head through the hole and turned around. I put my arms through their respective holes, but couldn’t pull it down. “Fffiinnnn,” I whispered with my back to him.

He turned around, grabbed my shirt and pulled it down the rest of the way. My bare butt was there for his view, but I couldn’t do anything about it. He put a long sleeved shirt over my head and helped me get my arms through it, rubbing my arms after it was on before he grabbed the pants and helped me put them on as well as thick wool socks. I felt my body warming up and my shivering slowed. He pulled a cap onto my head, down over my ears and sighed. “What happened to your wonderful hair?”

“Mermaid grabbed me by it and I had to cut it to get away,” I explained, looking down at my arms that were crossed over my chest. Finn had just seen me naked.

He grabbed each of my hands, pulled them around his sides and then wrapped his arms around me, rubbing my back briskly to warm me up. “It’ll grow back,” he whispered as if consoling me, or perhaps he was consoling himself. I tried to pull away, still feeling embarrassed, but he wouldn’t let me go. “I thought I had lost you,” he whispered.

I tilted my head back to look at him. “I told you, you aren’t that lucky to lose me so soon.”

“I never want to lose you,” he whispered.

“I could hear your thoughts at first,” I admitted, “but then it stopped and I can’t anymore.”

“The ring wasn’t fit for my finger and it slid off into the water,” he admitted with a sigh. “I didn’t even notice until I was back on the ship.”

“I heard…” I stopped and cleared my throat, “I heard your fear.”

Instead of responding he kissed my lips fiercely. I kissed him back, balling my fists in his shirt. He pulled the cap off and slid his hand into my wet hair. He was so warm and alive and I knew he cared for me and wanted to be with me despite the short amount of time we had known each other. He picked me up by the butt, wrapping my legs around his waist and walked us to the bed where he lay me down and kissed my face and neck. I slid my hands under his shirt and dug my fingers into the muscles of his back, pulling him down to lay on top of me, his weight a pressure so unlike the weight of the water. He slid a hand down, wrapping it around my bottom and squeezed. I gasped and he pulled back, both of us breathing heavy and he leaned his forehead against mine. “You have an amazing butt,” he whispered with a wicked smile.

I pinched his side, making him jerk away and he pulled us up to stand in front of the bed. “You should check on your crew,” I whispered even though I wanted him to continue what he had stopped doing.

He kissed me roughly and said, “That’s probably a good idea. I don’t think I could stop myself again.”

I didn’t want him to and that scared me. I knew I couldn’t let that happen and yet because we had lived and I hadn’t died I wanted to experience the fullest life had to offer. He held me a moment longer and then jerked himself away as if it hurt to leave me. I collapsed on the bed and wrapped the blankets around me, feeling even colder without him there. The sun set as we sailed and Finn still didn’t return. Had I done something wrong? Was he mad at me?

I rolled onto my side and closed my eyes. He was probably angry at me for stopping him. He was probably angry that I had been so rude to him on our trip, the first place he had taken me. I needed to grow up and stop getting upset over everything. I was glad the ring was gone.

“You asleep?” Finn asked softly.

“No,” I replied, not moving.

He climbed onto the bed and asked, “Are you ready to eat?”

“Sure,” I whispered. I sat up and tossed the blankets off. He stood at the end of the bed and immediately pulled me into a hug.

“Are you mad at me?” he asked.

“Why would I be mad at you?” I asked him. “I thought you were mad at me and that’s why you didn’t come back all day.”

“I thought you were mad at me for, you know,” he said, looking off to the side of the cabin.

“If I had wanted you to stop sooner I would have stopped you,” I whispered despite how terrible I knew it sounded.

“Come on, the crew wants to hear about the mermaid,” he said, thankfully changing the subject.

The crew were accounted for and thankfully not severely injured. They sat together on the deck wearing blankets. The half of the crew who had been on the ship explained that the giant crab and squid had just leapt up out of the water with no warning and started fighting each other. Finn filled in our adventures and even told them about taming the jaguar.

“I didn’t tame it,” I corrected him. “I just convinced it that I was not the threat and not a good meal and it left us alone.”

“So after that huge squid’s wake capsized the boat, what happened to you?” Tom asked.

“I surfaced after we fell in and something grabbed my ankle and pulled me back under the water. I looked down and it was a mermaid.”

“A mermaid? What did it look like?” Tom asked in shock and curiousness.

“They’re hideous creatures with shark teeth and scales all over their body, but their upper body is shaped like ours. I don’t know why she didn’t just bite me since her teeth would have done a ton of damage, but I think she was trying to drown me instead. I cut off two of her fingers and managed to surface but she grabbed my hair and jerked me back under again.” I reached up and touched my shortened hair. “So I cut off my hair above where she was holding it. I faced her under the water with my dagger and when she attacked, I somersaulted over her and sliced her open shoulder to hip. She left me alone after that, but I was too low on oxygen and I couldn’t make it to the surface. My body luckily floated up and I was rescued and dumped into the boat.”

The men were staring at me as if I was the craziest person they had ever seen.

“That’s what that awful screaming was, wasn’t it?” Tom asked.

“Yes that was the mermaid,” I confirmed.

“You are the craziest princess I have ever met,” Paul said and laughed loudly. “Finn you sure know how to pick a good one out.”

Finn smiled proudly. “Thank you I think I chose well.”

“Do you want me to cut your hair so it’s even?” Bernard, the shipwright asked.

“Are you saying my rushed emergency dagger cut isn’t straight?” I asked with a smirk.

“It could use just a tad touchin’ up,” he replied smiling.

“I suppose I’ll let you touch it up,” I said with a sigh. I already missed my hair. “How am I going to keep it out of my face now,” I mumbled, “it won’t even fit into a band.”

“I can show you some braids that will keep it out of your face and can be held with clips,” Finn offered.