The Bloody Nightingale: Adult Fairytales

Voice of the Waves

Ursulom was a sea mage: an outcast collector of heart's desires who had learned his magick from Lord Leviathan. He lived at the bottom of the Atlantic, in a castle of shipwreck and bone. King Ursulom was drinking seaweed tea, brewing a potion to collect a virgin siren's sighs, when his enchanted spindrifts of wave alerted him to a presence at his castle gate.

"Well well, a visitor, as usual," Ursulom said, annoyed. He did not like to be interrupted. His venomous fangs (half squid, half man, all handsome werekraken) were bothered by the intrusion. "What is it, another seaman trying to win a lass' love? Will the naval man sacrifice his own soul to win a mermaid's affection?"

Ursulom looked into his crystal glass of quartz and bubbles – a gift from the nymph Charybdis of the fuming water pit: it showed a young mermaid, barely eighteen, with black hair, cinnamon skin, and lips like powdered sugar from the Cays. She had Dominican hips, proud and tan, and he shuddered at the fire in her eyes.

"Crap, it's the princess again," Ursulom groaned. "Shall I see her, Spinny?" he asked his favorite spindrift, a steed shaped like a hippocampus.

Spinny neighed, pleading for scratches in his eyes. Every day, Princess Bianca, his too-many-grands niece, had banged on the moat door, braving seven trials of dead sea knights, enchanted manta rays, and mazes and traps, to come demand a favor of the Sea Wizard Ursulom.

To say he did not get along with his "family" was an understatement. Ursulom was the bastard brother of her ancient great-great-great (too many more greats) grandfather. Ursulom was the family outcast in the Caribbean. Davy Jones was Ursulom's drinking companion, and Blackbeard had learned from the Sea Mage how to cock a gun. A spitfire princess lusting after a maidenly wish was the last thing Lord Ursulom needed. He preferred, when not drinking or pirating, to be left alone to his own devices. He abhorred idle conversation, and prattling sea-maids. He could not stand the company of strangers, only his beloved sharks and enchanted servants.

"Fine, fine Spinny, I'll go tell her off. You just want her sea apple treat," Ursulom sighed, mounting the hippocampus spindrift and riding through the squalls of his drowned halls to the seafire gate.

Ursulom opened the latch, and great sharks lowered the moat. Princess Bianca could not pass the sea fire - only a kraken could soothe the sea fire waters with their ink to cross into the abode. And Ursulom was the only kraken of his kind, a mutant aberration from generations ago.

"Uncle, I have a wish. I have met a prince," Bianca said fiercely, a harpoon spear in her hand. It was bloody from the sea knight wraiths he had sent to torment her – the warriors all useless and bone now, thanks to the feisty princess' fiery temper.

"Princes are only good for breaking hearts and stealing maidenheads," Ursulom grumbled. "Niece, quiet your begging, I am working. I have much more pressing matters than a simpering princess' bargains. Go back to Atlantica."

"No!" she threw a sea apple to Spinny, and suddenly, before Ursulom could dismount, Spinny galloped across the moat to fetch the sea apple, Ursulom aback him in writhing tentacles. Bianca took hold of the hippocampus' holster, rode sidesaddle with her jeweled pink tail, and sent Spinny on a wild chase back through the gates as she clutched Ursulom's side. "I bow to no man, wicked mage or not!" Bianca spit, then swore like a sailor, as the sharks instinctively closed the palace door, recognizing her royalty.

Ursulom chewed his bottom lip with his serrated teeth, drawing blood. "I see you take after me, Bianca," he sighed. "Tell me, you have crashed my castle for seven days, but this is the first time you have had enough treachery to enter - what could you possibly want?"

"Legs with which to become a pirate," Bianca said fiercely. "The men of our family may walk on land, but women are expected to be good sea wives, tending the kelp hearth and flocks of fish. Father Poseidon has bartered my marriage to some bullheaded wereshark. But I have fallen in love with a pirate captain – Redbeard. I have no interest in brooding schools in my egg sac for the fish-children of a brutish king. I want to be like you, Uncle Ursulom. To walk the land."