The Fisherman's Daughter

Once upon a time, there was a fisherman, and his wife, and his daughter. His wife died when his daughter was not yet ten years old, and though he kept himself together as best as he could, he began to go mad with grief. By the time the girl was fifteen, she was an orphan, stuck providing for herself with the fishing supplies her father had left behind.

It wasn't too bad. She lived right on the coast, with a spot to dock her boat right outside her house, and the fish were plentiful in the sea. She rarely went hungry, but she never had a chance to rest.

And then one day, she caught the biggest fish she had ever seen. It strained against her line, and she pulled back with all her might. In one swift motion, it flew out of the water and knocked her onto her back. Her boat rocked. The fish flapped. It moved to dive back into the water, and she grabbed it before it could. It was maybe the size of a toddler; it could feed her for weeks.

"Please!" it exclaimed as she grabbed a knife. The girl spun around in shock. "I'll do anything," said the fish. "If you spare me, I can turn into a handsome prince who will shower you with riches. All you have to do is marry me, and you'll never want for a thing again."

The girl furrowed her brow. Fish couldn't turn into princes. But fish also couldn't talk. Her stomach grumbled as if to answer for her, and she said, "Fine," the words tinged with golden memories of the days both her parents were alive and she never wanted for a thing.

The fish said to the girl that if she let it go now, it would arrive in her village tomorrow, wearing the face of a man. She looked at it doubtfully. "How do I know you won't just swim away?" she said, thinking that she must be going mad to even consider letting a week's worth of dinners go.

"I keep my oaths," said the fish, and offered no other explanation before gracelessly flopping out of the boat.

The girl slowly rowed home, unsure what to make of the whole scenario. As impatient as it made her sound, she couldn't afford to wait for promises of riches if she couldn't survive a week waiting. She'd have to be back out on the sea tomorrow. It was endless, she thought. The sun warmed her back as she tied up her boat and dragged in the catch. Enough to eat tomorrow, but not the day after. Maybe she'd spend the next day salting and preserving it to make sure she'd be here when -- if -- the prince arrived.

Do I even want to marry a prince? she thought. She liked her freedom. She couldn't see herself -- calloused hands, stained canvas trousers, tangled hair, face browned by the sun -- sitting primly in a gown, sipping tea with her pinky held out. A crown atop her head? It was unfathomable. She wished for a chance to relax, true, and a break from the constant day after day under the hot ocean sun, waiting for fish to catch on her line, but she owned the entirety of her house, her boat, her life. If she were to marry, her husband would automatically gain all her property. A fish probably wouldn't like her to continue eating his brethren, she thought. But she liked eating fish, and she liked the repetitive rocking of the waves beneath her boat as she waited with a cast line, and she liked the hard work of gutting and preserving all the fish she didn't sell at the market.

Was it too late to say no? she wondered.

(It had been too late since the minute she reeled the fish onto her boat.)

True to his word, the next morning a strange traveller arrived in the village. News reached the girl faster than she'd thought possible, her closest friend -- who wasn't really that close at all -- poking her head into the girl's house, cheeks flushed, and rambling about a handsome stranger. "He's so tall," she gushed, "and his hair is like that of an ancient god, black and wavy and just past his shoulders. And his clothes are just stunning! You must tell me who he is," she said, grabbing the girl's hand despite her protests. "You must, because he's looking for you! Can you believe it? I certainly can't -- have you met him before?" She pulled the girl from her workroom, barely stopping her chattering to take a breath.

A crowd had gathered in the town square. The girl was slightly annoyed to find out that the man the fish had made itself into was beautiful after all. Just like her friend had said, he had wavy black hair that called to mind ancient heroes and gods. He was wearing a coat with silver embroidery along every hem, and the shiniest boots the girl had ever seen. And when he caught her eyes, she cursed her heart for beating faster. He just wants to take your livelihood, she told her traitorous heart, but it didn't listen.

He smiled and strode out of the crowd towards the girl, who tensed her shoulders against his delighted grin. "Hello!" he said, eyes bright. She let down her defenses, just for a second, caught off-guard at how open his face seemed. "I take it that you are the one I'm looking for -- the fisherman's daughter, correct?"

Every wall inside of her instantly built itself back up. "I've been the only fisherman for four years now," she said. "My father is no longer on thia earth."

"But you are the one who I -- um. Who was out fishing yesterday?"

"Were you here looking for me then too?" she asked, knowing the answer.

"When we met," he hissed in her ear.

"Of course," she said calmly. She wondered what the rest of her life would be like married to him.

"Are you a fisherman, too, then?" asked someone standing nearby. They looked pointedly at the stranger's fine clothes.

"Oh, no," he said. "I was, er, out boating. With my father." The crowd nodded. This made much more sense. "But her beauty captivated me and I simply had to speak to her again."

The girl restrained herself from rolling her eyes. He was laying it on rather thick -- no one would believe him. She hadn't brushed her hair in at least three days, and was dressed in her father's torn old clothes. Even if there was something ethereal behind her eyes, the fishy scent that lingered on her body no matter how hard she scrubbed kept people away. No one would be captivated by her beauty as long as she caught and sold fish for a living -- a pleasant side effect of her occupation.

She forced a blush anyhow, already afraid of angering him. (You have the upper hand, said a little voice inside of her. He might walk like a man and talk like a man, but at his core, he is still a fish, isn't he? And you've killed a thousand fish.) He took her hand and beamed. "Let me take you to dinner," he said.

"I've really got to get back to work --" she said.

"Nonsense," he said. "I've got more than enough money to keep you on dry land for the rest of your life."

"I can't very well leave dead fish unpreserved on my kitchen counter in this weather," she said. "Just think of the smell!"

He gave a tight little frown. "I suppose," he said.

"And besides," she added as they walked away from the town square, "I don't want to stay on dry land for the rest of my life." That horrid vision from the day before plastered itself behind her eyes, the tight pastel dress, the floor too clean to dare step in the wrong place, the tea party full of vapid laughter. It wasn't her. Perhaps when the fish had made its offer yesterday, she should have just asked for a hundred gold coins and left it at that.

"And besides," he said, mirroring her, "I don't want you risking your health on the sea for the rest of your life. And catching fish besides."

"What else am I to do?" she said. "It's my livelihood, and it was my father's before me."

"I have riches enough for the both of us," he responded.

"I like it out there."

"Ah, but see how it has weathered your skin? How it has calloused your hands? You could be so beautiful if it were not for the sea."

She sighed. This was not an argument she was going to win. So instead she looked at her husband-to-be's shining hair, his iridescent eyes with their too-wide pupils. They were the one part of him that looked just the same as they had when he was a fish. If she watched him for long enough, he began to look like a fish again, which for some strange reason comforted her. If everything went wrong, she could just remind herself that he was a fish and kill him. Or something. It was almost certainly more easily said than done.

Over the next couple days, her apprehension melted away. With the exception of his insistence that she stop fishing, he was lovely to be around. He didn't mind that she more often than not looked like the haggard victim of a shipwreck, and he was funny, and true to his word, he was plenty rich. She loved the way people in town spoke to her when they went places together, all in awe that the messy fisherman's daughter had managed to captivate the most beautiful man on this stretch of coast.

His money gave her the chance to rest like she hadn't done in living memory, and provided she left her nets and lines at home, she could row out to sea whenever she wished. Perhaps it wouldn't be all that bad, she thought. Perhaps everything would work out. Perhaps she could sneak a fishing line or two onto her little boat, bring fish back one by one, until he forgot the promise he'd forced her to make, and perhaps he would leave for some long adventure but leave her perfect access to all his money, and perhaps everything would end happily ever after.

But such things are so rarely the case.

After about a year of something close enough to pretend it was bliss, wherein the girl lost her touch for catching fish, wherein her hair grew longer than it had been since before her father died, wherein she nearly scrubbed the smell of fish out of her skin, wherein her body lost the sharp edges of hunger, she went to the market. This was not a strange occurrence, but for one reason. A new fisherman had moved to town a couple months ago, and the girl had a craving for cod. She struck up a conversation at his stall, just a tad jealous at how he'd taken her place. She mentioned a little bit about how dearly she missed being out on the sea, and he laughed at her jokes and smiled with a warmth her husband had never had. They talked until the sun set and the full moon began to rise, reminding the girl that there was someone waiting for her at home -- the person who had really stolen her life's love from her.

She turned to leave, and found that her husband had been lingering behind her for some time. She didn't have any excuses when he looked at her with narrowed iridescent eyes and frowned just a bit, letting out a huff of air.

"Can I not make conversation at the market anymore?" she asked.

He didn't say a word in response.

Over dinner, her husband paused eating and looked at her. "Have you ever thought about living somewhere else?" he said.

"It's just that -- I think this place is a bad influence," he said.

"Bad for your self-control, I mean," he said.

"I've got a place we can go to, if you'd like," he said.

"I like it here," she said.

"Just a trip."

"I've never lived anywhere else, and I don't particularly want to."

"It's an even nicer coast than here."

"I like it here." She cursed herself for sounding whiny, but she couldn't help it.

"The beaches are wide and sandy, and the sky is always blue. The water is warm, the food is wonderful, and my house is divine, if I do say so myself. I think you will love it," he said.

"I like our rocky beaches, and I like the overcast sky better than being sunburnt. Our water isn't too cold, and I like my house," she said. The words came out of her mouth before she had the chance to stop them.

"Then it's settled!" he said. "We'll leave tomorrow at noon. In fact, I've already bought the train tickets."

The girl stared at him. It was as though he'd completely dropped his facade of being a good husband. He couldn't possibly be that mad about one fish. "Well," she said, dropping her dish unceremoniously into the sink. "I think I will go pack, then."

The first thing she slipped into her bag, before summer clothes or even the stuffed bear she'd had her whole life, was the thin, serrated knife she used to use to cut up the fish she caught each day. (It might come in handy, she thought.) She shook her head to send the dark thoughts away. But she didn't take the knife out of her bag.

Her husband's other house -- why did he have another house? Wasn't he a fish at his core? -- was a mansion twenty hours south. True to his word, it sat overlooking a wide beach of fine, pale sand, every fifty feet marked by lines of stones leading into the water. The waves were calmer than back home, and not a single cloud marred the sky's blue face. The house itself sprawled across the beach, only two stories tall, with floor-to-ceiling windows marching across its whole facade. It was quite the contrast to the cramped, crooked houses the girl knew from back home, three or four haphazard stories pushed next to each other like sardines in a can.

She didn't like it.

He's just a fish, she reminded herself, fingering the knife inside her bag. Just a strangely rich, strangely charismatic fish -- just look at his eyes. (You know how to deal with fish that think they can get away.)

How bad could it be? she thought, most certainly jinxing any chance of the mansion being nice.

They were greeted at the door by a servant in a deep bow -- why did a fish have servants? -- and led to the loveliest room she had ever seen, with sweeping views of the ocean and a gigantic bed. It was somewhere the girl in her vision would live, she thought, imagining dresses that looked like puffballs and hair combed straight every day. A bed so soft it would smother her, a house so large she could get lost in it. A nightmare waiting to happen.

Dinner was a great big feast, three courses plus dessert. Grilled vegetables, a chicken soup, something saucy made with rice, and the most gorgeous cake she had ever seen. It was three tiers, with little fish made out of frosting piped across the bottom one, waves around the second, and a man and woman standing in front of a gray collection of buildings on the third.

Perhaps her paranoia was misguided, she thought after dinner, standing on the beach with a drink in her hand and the waves crashing over her feet. Perhaps it was nice here. (Perhaps that was just the alcohol talking.) The sand was soft, the air was warm, the food was good. And what nonsense it was to think that the halls would twist around her until she lost her way, that the bed would let her sink in until she could no longer breathe, that anything nefarious was going on at all. (But isn't it strange that this place exists at all? The money was part of his promise -- that part wasn't strange -- but isn't it odd that a magical fish has a strange mansion and adoring staff and something is not right, she thought.)

Things continued to be wrong over the next week. The staff never looked her in the eye. Her husband ceased to address her by name. She realized that he'd never given her an end date for this trip. It must have been planned for a while, she thought, taking the strangest bit of comfort that at least if he killed her, it was because he was always going to kill her, not because she wanted to eat a fish sandwich. ("I mean," he'd said once when they argued about it, "why would you even want to eat fish? Besides just the fact that they don't want to be eaten, I mean. They smell absolutely rancid on your breath.") (What sort of man who used to be a fish cares about their briny scent? she wondered.)

She began to spend a lot of time sitting on the beach. Her skin tanned again until it was as dark as it had been back when she spent every day out on the water, and her hair regained the waves the salt air used to give it at home. The sand was soft beneath her feet, with only the occasional sharp shell to step on instead of small rocks everywhere. Despite the too-bright sun, the salt in the air and the sound of waves made her feel so at home she could nearly just how creepy it was inside the mansion.

The curtains were always drawn (to keep out the heat, her husband said), and the halls dimly lit (even a gas lamp will let out some warmth, and we can't afford for it to get any hotter in here in the summer, he explained). No one would meet her eye, and some of the servants seemed to be pretending that she didn't exist at all. There were strange noises in the walls, scratching and howling, that no one else ever noticed. The girl wondered if she'd ended up in one of the horrid novels her father used to read -- there was a huge collection of them scattered about her house, left over from before he died. They often had sinister mansions on the cover, wives locked in attics, drowned children, murders, and the like. When she laid in bed next to her always-freezing husband, listening to the noises in the walls (the scratching of claws... clicking of pincers... screams?) she thought about those characters.

A month in, she decided it was time to ask when they'd be returning home. She'd left food in the cabinet, after all, and she hadn't truly had time to pack properly. She'd forgotten her hairbrush, and her soap that smelled like the salt air, and if she'd known she would be gone for so long, she'd have brought her mother's old bird-shaped brooch. The hairbrush and soap had been easy enough to remedy, but if she was meant to live here for much longer -- could she go home, just for a week, just for a day, and pick everything she needed up?

Her husband refused, because of course he did. "We have everything here," he said. "And it's so much nicer besides. Why would you ever want to return?"

She didn't have a good answer, unsure what would convince him.

She thought about the bitterly cold sea wind, and waves crashing on rocks and rocky gray sand instead of fine white sand that sifted through your fingers. She thought about her little boat, and her thin, rickety house, and the perpetually overcast sky. The stinking seaweed that washed up on the beach after every high tide. The seagulls with too much pride, well-fed with fish and lobster scraps.

She thought about the sprawling mansion with its too-dark hallways. She thought about the blue sky and too-bright sun. She thought about how her bed was always cold here, about how no one ever talked to her or even looked at her.

She thought about the knife in her bag.

"I don't like it here," she said simply. He opened his mouth to protest, and she cut him off. "I like the cold, I like the gray sky, I like my tiny house, and it's creepy here. Can't you feel that something is wrong in the air?"

He looked out over the too-blue sea. "I don't know what you are talking about." He stood up and took her hand, pulling her with him. "It's nearly dinnertime," he said. "Let's forget about all of this."

The girl pulled her hand away. "I'm going to go home tomorrow," she said, unsure where the words came from. "You don't have to come with me. Don't come with me."

Her husband furrowed his brow. She was caught suddenly by the beauty of his eyes, which, in the dusk light, looked like mother-of-pearl. "You can't leave," he said. "That -- that isn't how it works! You're in debt to me, I gave you riches and marriage and let you stop smelling like fish all the time --"

"That's not what happened!" she exclaimed. "Need I remind you that I spared your life? You gave me all that because you were in debt to me, and I think you've paid that off by now, and I would like my life back."

"Spared my life?" he said.

She gaped at him. "Do you not remember the way we met?" He frowned slightly. "I was out fishing, and I caught you, and you begged me to save your life. It took quite a bit of convincing, if I remember right, and to be perfectly honest, barely a day has gone by where I haven't regretted it." She wished this was happening back in their room, where her knife would already be in her hand, instead of on the beach, where he had every advantage.

He looked at her strangely, brow furrowed. "I would never beg -- you caught me?"

"You were a fish," she said. "Should I go over the story again? I caught the biggest fish I'd ever seen, and it said if I let it go it would turn human and marry me and give me all the riches I could imagine, and the very next day you showed up, controlling from the beginning."

He shook his head. "I would never be such a vile creature -- I'm a man. You can see that. We met when I was out sailing, and you were in a dingy little boat, looking so miserable that you struck a chord in my heart and I realized I needed to help you."

She wrinkled her nose. "Somehow that makes it much worse."

"But that's not quite right," he said slowly. "Why would I have ever gone so far north? Sailing alone -- how did I end up on the dock in your horrid little town --"

"Whether you were cursed and I freed you, or you were struck by pity and decided I was your next charity case, I am not in your debt."

"But look at what I've given you!" he exclaimed, waving his hands wildly.

"You've given me only misery," she said. "You took my livelihood, and my home, and my freedom, all because you took it upon yourself to help me, but need I remind you that I helped you first?"

"You didn't help me," he said, but he seemed unsure of that fact.

"The way I remember it, I gave you the consent that broke your curse and made you human again," she said, though in the back of her head she wondered if the fish had never kept its promise after all and perhaps this man was something else entirely. Had she ever seen a grand sailboat when she was out on the waves? When could he have noticed her? "And, I might mention, I saved your life."

"Saved it by changing your mind when you were going to take it does not count as saving --!" he exclaimed, then realized his mistake.

"So it was all true," she said. "And if you are nothing more than a wealthy fish, who's to say I still couldn't kill you? I've killed thousands of fish in my day."

"I am not a fish," he said. "It was a curse, and I've overcome it. No thanks to you -- if I'd needed you to end it, you'd have had to kiss me, or marry me, or -- I was human when we did all of that. I ended it all on my own -- and I am not in your debt. And besides, you couldn't have killed me --"

She cut him off. "Where in that curse did it say my knife couldn't cut you up?" His rambling seemed to shrink him down, and he now seemed rather pathetic compared to how terrifying he'd been just a few minutes ago.

He clenched his fists, and the colors in his eyes seemed to shift, almost like flames.

"What if I take away my consent?" she asked. "If I'm no longer willing to marry you or love you? Will it redo what I've undone?"

"It doesn't work like that," he said, but he looked unsure.

"I revoke it!" the girl said, sure she had won, but there was no flash of light or sucking of air or small pop. The man stayed just that, though his teeth looked a bit sharper, his fingers a bit longer, his eyes a bit less human. She'd done something, though she was not quite sure what.

The man grinned with his victory, his shape unchanged. He lunged at the girl, who stumbled backwards and missed his hands by sheer luck. She started running, unsure where she should go, but he caught her before she made it far at all. She cursed the soft sand beneath her feet, the way it slid and slowed her down.

"I would argue that I've given you far more than you gave me," he said as he spun her to face him. "After all, I've given you a month here, in paradise -- or at least, paradise compared to that stinking city you're dreadfully obsessed with -- and a year of riches and ease. Isn't that worth something?"

"Is that truly worth more than your whole life?" She wasn't quite sure whether he really thought he was in the right, or just hated to lose a fight. She suspected it was the latter.

The waves licked at their feet -- the tide was coming in. The girl took a halting step backwards, and the man tried to yank her back. The backwash pull of the water was stronger, as if it was listening to them. Maybe it was, she thought. She just hoped it was listening to her.

Carefully, she spun them around as the man rambled about all the reasons he was better than her home, and how she was lucky to be here, and he was so thankful that she'd saved him from life as a fish -- though he was still sure she couldn't have really killed him, even as a fish he was far too strong for that, she had to understand -- and the only way he could fathom showing that thanks was through letting her live this lovely life with him, because there was obviously no higher reward... The girl bit her tongue to keep herself from rolling her eyes. Now her back was to the mansion, and his was to the sea. If she pushed forward just as the waves pulled, perhaps he would be pulled in.

She knew without a doubt that she was the stronger swimmer of the two of them. He seemed to have a disdain for the sea, and he'd grown up with these soft waves, while she'd grown up swimming in the far rougher currents around her home, jumping out of her father's fishing boat just for fun. Her muscles weren't as strong as they'd once been, but they were stronger than they'd been a month ago.

"And I know you think you like that place," he continued, "but don't you feel so much lighter since coming here? I know when I was living with you, the cold seemed to seep into my bones and it felt like its weight would never lift. The cold and the fog and the wind and the rain and how, simply how, do you enjoy it?"

She would have shoved him, but he still had a tight grip on her hands, so she slammed herself into him as the waves pulled back into the sea, and they both went down. He let go with a gasp, but she grabbed back onto him and started swimming.

"What -- gurgle -- what are you doing?" The words were half-coughed, punctuated with bursts of seawater flooding the man's mouth and him spitting them out.

The girl wasn't really sure what her plan was, so she didn't answer him. When she could no longer feel the ground beneath her feet, and the waves pulled her up and down enough that she thought maybe she would drown with him, and she couldn't tell which way the shore was because of the heavy curtains blocking any light from leaving the mansion, she let go.

"You're trying to drown me?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Can't you swim?" she asked in response. "After all, you were a fish when we met." She dove back in, fairly sure she was heading the right direction, and began to swim. A cold hand latched onto her ankle and she kicked, trying to fling him off.

"This is so --" A wave caught the man in his face. "-- SO --" He coughed out some more water. "What are you even trying to do here?"

A thought struck her mind. "If I bring you back to shore, you'll be in my debt, won't you?" the girl asked slowly. He'd seemed more focused on fairness than anything else while they'd fought, making sure that no one was in debt to one another. Or, more importantly, that he wasn't in debt to her.

"What? No! You brought me here to die!"

Did she want to be the sort of person who left someone to die? thought the girl.

(But would he think to spare you of your misery? asked the voice in her head.)

Before she could make up her mind, a wave overtook the both of them. Underwater, each second felt like a minute. She watched the man's eyes flash once more. He dove towards her, but he wasn't a very good swimmer. The water pushed him back, as if it was a creature with its own mind -- and in that moment, if someone told her the ocean was alive, she never would have doubted it -- and something in the water shifted, and then he was a fish again. The girl felt his curses resonate in the water around her, as though he wanted to force her to transform alongside him -- if he must be miserable once again, so must she -- but she turned away and pushed her head above the water, taking a deep breath.

She thought about bringing him back to the mansion and cooking him up for dinner. She thought about bringing him on land and leaving him on the sand where he couldn't breathe. She thought about clawing at her arm until it bled, attracting sharks, and swimming away before they could catch her, so that he would be all they found. Instead, she turned the way she thought faced shore and started swimming.

The water seemed to pull her with it, and any other day she wouldn't trust the ocean when it pulled her like that, but tonight she swam with it. Tonight was not any other day. She walked into the mansion like she owned it, throwing open every curtain she walked past though it was the dead of night. She piled all her things into a bag, and took several wads of the man's money from the cabinet where she knew he hid it.

She left without a word, finding her way onto the first train home without a single care as to what happened to that mansion for the rest of her life.