The Sea King's Daughter Read Online Free PDF

"How can you say that, little sister? I will miss you most of all."
    I used my free hand to claw at her fingers until she let my wrist loose. She gasped as my nails tore her skin. "Leave me alone," I cried out again, and fled down the hallway toward the stairs. When I slowed at last and looked behind me, she hadn't followed.
    I took that as proof she didn't love me.
     
    My world was falling apart.
    As the days passed, I went through the motions of living. I endured lessons with my tutors, meals in the great hall, afternoons in the gardens or the tower room, without the slightest joy. Grandmother, the servants, and my sisters -- even Thetis -- took pains to avoid me. They didn't say a word about my overnight disappearance, although I often caught them looking at me with strange expressions on their face. I could tell they felt nothing but contempt for me.
    The palace bustled with preparations for Thetis' wedding. Grandmother directed the rush and hurry as servants readied the rooms for our guests. King Meros would arrive soon, bringing the young bridegroom and the rest of his court. The fishermen of my father's kingdom worked night and day to supply enough tunny and bream for the marriage feast. Grandmother set me to work gathering bright coral, red gorgonians, and delicate seashells to decorate the grand ballroom.
    Everyone seemed exceedingly pleased by Thetis' engagement -- everyone but me. As for my eldest sister, she floated around the palace in a dream. She nearly glowed with anticipation. Small, secret smiles tugged at her lips. She was apt to burst out laughing when the rest of us saw nothing funny. Her pleasure transformed her, until my normally plain and quiet sister became animated, joyful, and very nearly beautiful. 
    Her happiness only made me more resentful. How could Thetis prefer a strange prince, someone she'd met only once, to her own flesh and blood? Yet Thetis never hesitated. She never even questioned whether she should leave her family for King Meros' realm.
    When, finally, I couldn't tolerate another stifling moment in the palace, I began to slip away and swim to the surface. No one stopped me. My father must have spoken to Grandmother and the palace guards.
    In the days that followed Father came to see me several times, in my chambers before I went to sleep, to find out how I felt. I put on a brave face and told him I was better, but I think he knew it was a lie. Once, visiting me, he picked up the statue of my mother and turned it around in his hands, then set it down again without speaking.
    I never stopped thinking about the young man I'd left on the beach, never, not even for an hour. As the weeks passed, he came to occupy my mind more and more. I remembered every sensation, every curve in the planes of his face. I wondered if he thought about me. Did he remember my face from that one moment when he opened his eyes underwater?
    I imagined us dancing together, his hand laid lightly against my back, but in my fantasies we danced in water laced with light and still he did not drown. I even dreamt about him in the night, and woke with my eyes red and burning, missing what I'd never had.
    It was like a sickness, like the time three summers ago when I'd contracted gill fever. For days on end I'd tossed and turned, plagued by strange visions and sharp, stabbing pains. This was worse. I was sure I'd never recover.
    Soon I became convinced that seeing him again, even just once, was the only thing that could bring me peace. I had to find him.

CHAPTER SIX
     
    It wasn't as simple as that. I learned, soon enough, that the human world was far larger than I'd ever dreamt.
    I went out every afternoon. I scoured the shores of every island, every spit of beach, every place with signs of human life. At first I returned again and again to the beach where I'd left my prince, but I never saw any sign of him. Sometimes I spotted young girls in white robes gathering sea-polished shells and wished I could ask them where