This is a story. Not, perhaps, the true story, for that is lost to time. But this is certainly closer to the truth than most things these days. This is a story about pirates, a prince, and twenty-three little mermaids... who weren't mermaids at all.
It was a tempestuous night that Ariel was born. The seas tumbled and the waves crashed against the pirate ship Mermaid, but inside, all was happiness. The captain of the ship, a woman of thirty or so, had been taken by surprise. Her baby was not due for another two weeks, at least. But time had no influence on Ariel, and so that was the night she was born.
She was a chubby baby, with wide gray eyes and a small tuft of red hair. She came into the world surrounded by her adoptive sisters, orphaned and abused girls taken to safety by Ariel's parents. No two of them looked alike, appearances ranging from the pale, light-haired Serene to May, who had skin and hair as dark as night. But Ariel was the only one with such red hair.
These pirates were unique, for no one knew they existed. Instead, there were reports of vicious mermaids who sunk ships and stole cargo, luring them through the rocky straits and tearing gashes into their barges.
These mermaids, of course, were the girls.
It was an ingenious method, really. If the sailors chased the "mermaids," they were obviously either men with no morals who would attack young sea maidens, or men who were interested in the science of mermaids. It was rarely the latter, and when it was, the girls simply dove down and disappeared, leaving the intellectually-minded sailors to their own devices. But with the lure of the mermaids, the ship of pirates made a fortune.
Ariel loved it. From the day she could walk, her sisters taught her to swim, to kick with her feet together, and eventually, to wear a tail. They taught her to hold her breath for minutes on end. The girls were as at home in the sea as they were in the boat. Life was good.
Until it wasn't.