The old woman’s eyes widened.
“I’ll take this,” she said, choosing a gold coin, “and this,” she said, choosing a pearl. Then she took her large hand and closed up Ariel’s hand with the rest of the things. “And you just put that away. I’ll get you a sack.”
The woman rummaged around her stand and managed to fish out a dirty but sturdy burlap bag. With a sweep of her arm she guided the apples into the sack like a magician; not a single one spilled. She shook them down and then tied it with a piece of twine.
“Don’t know how useful it will be, underwater, but it should hold for a while,” the woman said.
“Thank you, I…what?”
“It’s a marvel…Your kind do like fruit of the land.”
“I haven’t the foggiest notion what you are talking about,” Ariel said with great dignity.
“Those coins haven’t been used in two hundred years,” the woman said, nodding her chin at Ariel’s satchel. “And those pearls and gems didn’t come from no stronghold, no stolen purse. By the smell of ’em, they came straight from Davy Jones’s locker.”
“I…found…a chest…when I was walking…on the beach…and…”
As queen and as girl, as someone who could sing like the gods and someone who had been mute as a stone, one thing about Ariel had never changed: she was a terrible liar. Most of the time it didn’t even occur to her to lie.
Which, now that she thought about it, would have made things a lot easier with her dad.
“Oh, a treasure chest found on a beach, like a pirate left it there,” the old woman said, nodding seriously. “To be sure.”
Ariel tried to think of something else.
The old woman leaned forward.
“Your secret’s safe with me, seachild. I would give you all my apples in return for a favor someday instead, if I didn’t need the money.”
“What would you ask for?” Ariel asked, too intrigued to bother pretending further.
“I’d ask…well, if no emergency popped up to use it on, like ‘I wish for someone to save my grandgirl from drowning’ or something, well…” The old woman looked faintly embarrassed. “I’d ask to see you, in your true form, swimmin’ out to sea. If I could see that, I’d know all the tales were true, all the good ones and bad ones. That there is more to the world than I see with my old brown eyes every day, and I’d die a happy woman, knowing there was magic.”
Ariel was silent, overcome by the woman’s words. The mermaid had probably been a little girl at the same time as this old woman. And the woman would die, happy or not, many hundreds of years before the Queen of the Sea had to begin contemplating her own mortality.
Ariel put her hands on the woman’s and squeezed them.
“There is magic,” she said softly. “There is always magic. Even if you can’t see it.”
The old woman looked at her for a long moment. Then she laughed. “Ah well, ye already paid, so no favor’s necessary. But it sure would be nice to see you anyway—I’ve never inked a mermaid from real life! And I do them all the time…Used to, leastways…”
“Inked?” Ariel asked curiously. “Are you an artist?”
“An artist of the skin. Argent the Inker, at your service!” She pushed up her sleeves and showed Ariel her arms. They were dark and freckled with even darker spots, scars, and other spots of varying shades without a name or purpose. But in the places where the skin hadn’t aged or stretched or sagged so much were some of the most incredible pictures Ariel had ever seen.
A ship with its sails billowed, a fat-cheeked cloud puffing wind to speed it along. A single wave, curled and cresting with foam flying off, so full of life and movement Ariel almost felt it on her cheeks. A fish caught midjump—honestly, in an unlikely contrapposto of tailfin and lips, but still—seemed to glitter in the light.
Everything was a single shade of dark blue; Ariel’s mind filled in the color without her even realizing it. The fineness of the lines was almost unimaginable from such a mortal creature; all the pictures were as detailed and delicate as scrimshaw.
On skin.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Ariel breathed. Of course sailors drowned, and sometimes their bloated bodies sank to the bottom of the sea before scavengers tore them up. Often they had tattoos: blurry, dark images of anchors and hearts and words like Mom. Nothing that bore any resemblance to what she saw now.