Lilophea, the Bride of the Sea King. Natalie Yacobson

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      Did the murmuring of the fountain’s jets really make her hear those words? Or was she only imagining it?

      The peacock on her shoulder grumbled.

      “I want to buy a monkey and wear it on my shoulder, too,” said Morissa dreamily. “It would be both a pet and a fun addition to my outfit. What do you think?”

      “You can have a monkey from the King’s menagerie. You have my permission.”

      “No, I want to bargain some cute and scholarly monkey from the sailors myself. And then I’ll teach her all sorts of tricks.”

      Lilophea only shrugged her shoulders. Her confidant, Morissa, was sneaky and charming. Often, through flirting, she found out information that even spies would not have known. But even she knew nothing about underwater states.

      “Ask your suitors,” the princess insisted. “You have so many of them on the dock.”

      “My suitors are nothing but pirates,” Morissa snapped back. “They are more interested in those who can be robbed, and mermaids are not one of them. So they know nothing of the underwater kingdom. But I know a lot about pirates, and how nice it is to kiss them, and get presents from them. I can tell you all about it.”

      “What would your father say if he knew how you spend your leisure hours here?”

      “It’s a good thing my father isn’t here. Besides, he’s so busy trying to find me a decent stepmother, he doesn’t think about anything else.”

      Morissa was right. Lilophea sighed sadly. Not everyone has good fathers. And some mothers left a lot to be desired, too. Many of the maidens complained that their noble mothers had been unnecessarily strict with them as children.

      Lilophea thought that her kind and caring father would one day be forced to give her in marriage to someone she had not chosen herself, and she immediately felt gloomy.

      Iridescent streams flashed in the water in the fountain, as if someone was trying to comfort her. But the box of pearls in her hands became heavier.

      “Who gave it to you?” Morissa asked.

      “I don’t know? But I think each one of these pearls has a woman’s name.”

      “Is that so?” The girl giggled softly.

      “My peacock says that all the pearls are the souls of drowned women.”

      “But I hear him say nothing but silence.”

      Morissa even began to tease Seneschal and provoke him to say something, but he remained stubbornly silent.

      “You see! It looks like he is deaf and dumb.”

      “It is not true!” Lilophea herself did not understand why she had to defend him. Seneschal was so often rude to her.

      “By the way, have you seen an unusual ship by the shore, looking like a large carved figure of a mermaid?”

      Morissa shook her head in the negative. She and Lilophea were getting out of the crowd that had gathered for the reception, because they were both tired of it. Thankfully, Aquilania was a tropical island nation, and they didn’t have much regard for etiquette. Besides, the king never reprimanded his daughter for her manners, nor did he let others.

      It was a good thing he didn’t know yet that seafaring gifts had begun to be delivered to the princess’s palace. Boxes appeared by themselves at springs, fountains, and once, instead of a jug for washing, Lilophea found an amphora with pearls and a wonderful mirror in which you can see the underwater world.

      Morissa had already traded the monkey from some pretty caper by then. But the mirror, which could see mermaids, schools of fish, and tridents of newts, fascinated her so much that she was ready to give the monkey in exchange for it.

      “Curious, how does it work?” She was nervous. “I knew a toy-maker in the province, where I lived with my father. He made such marvelous mechanisms, but even he couldn’t have made such a marvelous thing.”

      “What if it was magic?” Lilophea watched the swarms of piranhas that pounced on those drowning in the water, wrinkled at the sight of the mermaids picking up and eating the bodies that fell into the sea after the battle of the ships above. In the mirror there were glimpses of sunken palaces, lagoons of sirens, colorful jellyfish, and some strange underwater flowers that caught and devoured the fish that swam by.

      “Do not show it to anyone,” Morissa advised in a whisper. “If it really is magic, it is better to keep it a secret.”

      Lilophea wanted to tell her that the jewels she had been given by someone unseen were also magical, but she did not dare. What if Morissa started sneaking them around and something bad would happen to her. She herself remembered what visions began as soon as she tried on one of the gifts.

      Lilophea went for walks closer and closer to the sea shore, but she no longer saw a ship in the shape of a mermaid. But once she noticed a strange girl, who was diving into the sea waves and after a couple of minutes swam out. Her hair shimmered in the setting sun with multicolored strands. Strangely, there wasn’t even a dress thrown on the shore. What had she come to the sea in? Her shoulders, occasionally peeking out of the waves, were definitely bare. The swimmer suddenly disappeared for a long time under water, and Lilophea even worried about whether she would drown, but a bright head with purple-green strands suddenly came up very close. The stranger and the princess were separated only by a coastal boulder.

      “Hello!” The stranger’s voice sounded like the echo in a shell. Lilophea only now noticed that her pale face had some bumps on it, and the pearl on her forehead looked as if it were growing right out of her skin.

      “Who are you? I have not seen you at court. You must have just come in from across the sea.”

      “You could say that.”

      Probably she was by that peculiar ship that looks like a mermaid.

      “I am Nereida,” the setting sun disappeared behind the horizon, and the girl in the water suddenly began to behave more bravely.

      “And I am Lilophea.”

      “I know.”

      She must have heard the name of the local princess before. But how does she know that it is the princess who walks unaccompanied on the seashore?

      “I wish they would let me swim in the sea,” Lilophea sighed. “Sometimes I want to dive into the waves too.”

      “Try it!” Nereida beckoned her with a pale hand. “Come on, let’s swim together. Let’s dive deep! It’s very exciting.”

      Lilophea didn’t mind, but she was ashamed to take off her dress. What if someone walked along the shore and saw her naked. Besides, a corset without a maid couldn’t be undone. Better just to chat with a new acquaintance for now.

      “Are you from far away, Nereida? Your homeland must be very far away.”

      “It was measured by depth or height.”

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