Prologue

The sailors once told a story of the girl with the anemone in her hair. She wore it down against her shoulders, pressed to cover her ample breasts, a red golden in the sunlight and a misty rouge in the moonlit waves in which she swam. Always tucked behind her right ear, they used to say, she wore one white anemone, one so brilliant as to call the moonlight that reflected off the waters around her pale. One always in its peak of beauty, petals crisply curled back to reveal its deep, enchantingly dark center. Black as midnight, they used to say, like the darkest, most forsaken midnight.

They warned others with their tales of her shocking beauty. She could stop a ship with a mere glance, they said, her eyes grey blue with the light mist of the morning sea. Never look into them, they would say, because that was certain death. Sailors were said to have walked from their decks straight into the welcoming sea, her arms wide open to greet them into her bottomless depths. They never surfaced, it was said, because the girl met them under the salty waves, where she stole their breath with one kiss from her heart shaped lips.

Some called her a mermaid, a maiden born and raised in the sea, half woman and half fish. They told of the beautiful glitter of her silvery green tail, the tips of it always escaping a man’s hand as he longed for her. And long for her they did because she stole their hearts and took them to the sea. That’s when men became pirates, they say, because their hearts were chained to that fair maiden, skin whiter than even the pearls they took in for treasure. She pulled them along the silvery string of dreams, is how it is told, and one night, they thought they saw her on land.

And so the wars began: the pillaging, the raping, and the burning. They say the pirates were looking for their beautiful sea maiden, in search for their hearts. She possessed them, some say, and would haunt them in even their fairest dreams of her. She would watch them with her eyes, beckon them with her smile, and with her single anemone in her hair, she would take them under into the darkness where they would lose their souls.

But one night she was conquered. They say a young prince charmed her, his chiseled face and golden hair godlike. He took her to his palace where he made love to her, they say, and in his passionate act she disappeared, nothing left but one white anemone. One white anemone that would never fade, its purity always contained in its perfect petals, and the black always reminiscent of the depths from whence she came. The depths into which they hoped she had returned and from whence they prayed she would never resurface.

So they say, so they say.