The Trench

Ariel gave her tail another flick. She couldn’t help it; it felt so good to finally swim again, to be free of the restraints she’d been kept in during her long tides of recovery. She could still feel the rub marks and scars around her wrists from the seaweed used to keep her secured to her bed. Thankfully, the old witch’s potions had kept her mostly unconscious the entire time. She could barely remember anything, save for a lingering sense of pain and righteous anger.

How foolish she’d been. The storm above had been too appealing, too wild and beautiful. It had drawn her to it and so, despite Queen Triton’s orders, she’d broken the surface just in time to watch a warship founder beneath the wrath of the waves. Something had leapt from the ship’s side; a two-leg, a human, the enemy of her people, but Ariel had felt nothing but compassion at the sound of his terrified scream as fire drove him into the waves.

She’d fought through flaming debris to find him and pulled him to the surface. He’d gasped for air, blinked open blue eyes and, for a moment, she’d thought him beautiful. But those eyes the color of the sky had darkened at the sight of her. And her reward? His knife, ripping apart the muscle of her once powerful tail as she tried to flee his frightened wrath.

The sea witch had come to Ariel as she drifted, in pain and near death. Stemmed her bleeding, warded off predators, ferried her home. Seeing the old hag’s face used to terrify Ariel but not anymore. Now Ursula was a friend, an ally, someone who knew and understand the danger these humans brought with them. And, when Ariel had healed, Ursula had pressed a potion in her hand.

“Go to the deeps,” the witch had rumbled. “Release the potion, focus on your hatred. Let it fester and boil and you will have your revenge, Princess.”

Ariel could almost feel the potion burbling in its murky glass container, protected by layers of seaweed. This was what she needed. Well, this, and one other thing, a small thing really, something she tried to tell herself that she would never miss. But doubt gnawed at her the closer they got to the deep waters, the more she felt the temperature around them plummet.

At her side, her cousin hummed to herself, a steady drone of lament and concern. Ariel had seen sixty-three dolphin migrations, while Coralia had barely seen twenty-five. Sometime around her sixteenth migration, Coralia had attached herself to Ariel and refused to budge, a fact that Ariel had hated then and still hated now. Coralia’s brood mother had been overjoyed; after all, as Queen Triton’s only surviving child, Ariel was heir to the throne.

Even now Ariel should be learning about her people, the Maramāṇa, as well as the various creatures that shared her habitat, how to care for them and ensure their livelihood. But she fought it tooth and claw. Her older sister, Galene, should have been queen. She had been the responsible one, the calm and patient one, the one ready from birth to succeed their mother.

But Galene was dead now. Murdered when a shipwreck landed on their reef along with Ariel’s other nine sisters. It had not been the first tragedy to befall their peaceful home but it had been the one that had first begun to open Ariel’s young eyes to the state of their world. Things had changed since her hatching. Evil crawled above, selfish, awful creatures intent on taking everything and leaving only destruction behind.

Ariel clenched her teeth and immediately regretted it as one of her fangs nicked her lip. A bit of inky blood leaked out from between her lips and she swallowed fast, wincing at the bitter taste. Blood in the water was the last thing she wanted this close to the deeps. Who knows what kind of creatures would scent her torn flesh and come to investigate.

“Cousin,” Coralia hummed at last, her worry clear in every bit of vibrating water. “Are you sure this will work?”

Ariel slowed to a stop and turned to look at her cousin. The little one’s round, black eyes were wide, the gills at her neck fluttering and tinged blue with fear. For a split second, Ariel felt a pang of guilt but she pushed it down with a surge of anger, buried it beneath her rage.

“It took weeks of planning to escape Queen Triton,” Ariel snapped back with a pulse that made the water twitch with her frustration. “Weeks of careful observation of the reef guards, weeks of quiet meekness and submission until at last I was able to slip free. You will not ruin all that hard work.”

Coralia blinked rapidly and the spines on her head raised defensively. “Please, cousin. I am afraid.”

Ariel forced her hearts to beat slower, to mold her features into something comforting, and she laid a hand on her cousin’s arm. “Coralia, you saw what they did to me. You see what they have done to our reef.”

Coralia’s inky black pupils dilated and she gave a nervous flick of her tail. “Yes. Your tail torn to shreds, our reef covered in that black ooze.”

“We have a responsibility to protect our people. From all threats, inside and out. And our Queen will not allow us to fight.”

“They can’t know we’re here,” Coralia whined. “My mother says they’ll kill us all if they find out about us.”

Ariel glared out into the depths, where the dark blue water met the black. “We must wake our ancient protectors. With their flock patrolling our waters, the two-legged beasts will never come near us again. Trust me, cousin.”

Coralia hummed low in her throat then nodded. “Very well. Let us continue.”

Ariel turned again to stare at the deeps. She’d never been this far out before; it was forbidden, had been for generations. The Maramāṇa were the protectors of the seas but there were things here, dangerous things that didn’t abide by the laws of the ocean. These things were ancient, nightmarish beings, and had been around since before the Maramāṇa had evolved. They wouldn’t recognize Ariel and her cousin as anything but prey.

It was worth the risk. Ariel dove into the trench, arrowed down through the water, and felt Coralia follow. Just as the old witch had warned, her discomfort increased with every beat of her hearts. The temperature here felt freezing even to Ariel, who had lived deep beneath the sea her entire life, and she could feel a mounting pressure on every inch of her skin.

At last they reached the very bottom. Ariel felt the weight of it in her bones, as though the pressure of the entire ocean sat on her chest. The water rushing through her gills tasted of sulfur and she felt lightheaded and confused. Coralia looked no better; her gills seemed tinged a strange black and she moved sluggishly.

Ariel scanned the sea floor. There was little in the way of color here; everything looked greyish blue, but she saw what she needed to see. Boulders, dozens of them, massive and immobile beneath their shells of sand and rocks. The creatures above, the two-legs, they couldn’t come down here. Their weak little bodies couldn’t withstand the pressure and neither could their hideous metal machines. This was a sacred place.

“What now?” Coralia gasped out.

The potion. Ariel couldn’t quite remember pulling it from its pouch but it now sat in her hand, nestled against her scaly palm. Time had become a leaping, jerking thing filled with brief moments of clarity. That’s alright; the witch had warned her that would happen. The hard part was over. All she had to do now was pop the cork and wait.

Her thumb hovered over the stopper. It wasn’t doubt she felt now, more a deep sadness. For all the loved ones she had lost to the two-legged beasts; her dead sisters, the innocent animals and coral that had died in this latest attack on their reef. For the trash clogging the waters, the fires spewing from oil pipes, the fish caught in nets and dragged from their homes. Before she could lose any more time, Ariel ripped the stopper from the vial.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl. The potion looked impossibly colorful against the dark water, a glowing green brighter than any fish or coral. It crawled through the water and sunk down into the boulders, settled over them like a blanket. Ariel counted the beats of her hearts as the potion faded away and nothing happened.

A boulder twitched. Then another and another until the field of rocks larger than the blue-eyed human’s ship shifted and stretched like living things. And they were, or they had once been and now were again. Ariel drifted down to rest against the sea floor as the first creature opened its maw and shook the dirt from its back.

Coralia landed beside Ariel and pressed her palms into the sand. “What is it?” she trilled.

“Don't you recognize our cousins?” Ariel asked with a toothy grin. “Look at them and tell me what you see.”

Coralia’s black eyes took in the rows of triangular, serrated teeth, bulky bodies, and jutting dorsal fins. “They…look like sharks. But they are so large!”

“The sharks’ ancestors,” Ariel explained. “And ours, too. Long ago, they faced extinction. The survivors came here to rest, to slumber until they were needed once more. And we have such need of them.”

Coralia made herself as small as possible against the floor. “We should go,” she rumbled. “Before they see us.”

“They won’t hurt us.” Ariel’s head felt heavy and she let it fall back against the floor. “And there’s no escaping for us. You knew that.”

“The pressure.” Coralia let out a small whine. “We can’t get out.”

“No. We are trapped.” Ariel reached out and intertwined her fingers with Coralia’s. “Watch them with me, cousin. Until it’s over.”

They lay on the sea floor as the first of the ancient sharks lifted itself out of the trench. The force of its passing buffeted against Ariel like a riptide and she gripped the stones around her to keep herself still. Soon the water above them roiled as the enormous creatures, ravenous from their three million year-long sleep, set off in search of food.

“So beautiful,” Coralia hissed. “So majestic.”

The water echoed with the force of an impact. Ariel smiled as pieces of metal floated through the air; the first casualty in a new war. A war the humans started with their carelessness and flagrant disregard for their oceans. Soon they would fear the water; soon they would think twice before setting sail on its surface or setting their wicked traps of net and hook.

The water here was toxic. Sulfur and carbon dioxide belched from vents and stole the oxygen from Ariel’s gills. She could feel it working its way through her body; it hurt in more ways than she could count but the satisfaction she felt made it bearable. Coralia went into a series of convulsions and Ariel pulled her cousin close to her chest.

“They’ll spread,” she promised as her cousin’s body twitched and writhed. “Soon they’ll lurk beneath the face of every sea, waiting and watching. We have saved our people.”

Coralia let out one last whimper before going limp in Ariel’s arms. As the convulsions came for Ariel, she gave one last smile up toward the surface she could no longer see.

“They’re safe,” she thought as her body struggled for oxygen and found nothing but poison. “They’re all safe now.”