Pirate Song
The story begins in some bygone era where pirates still ruled the seas and merpeople and fairies still existed, perhaps in the 1700's or 1800's. Captain Riptide Song got his name from his ability to woo the Princess Ondine of the merpeople on the jagged rocks, enough that his ship always passes safely through. This makes him both envied and feared among the pirates. However, Princess Ondine cannot wed a commoner—although, at a stretch, she can marry a human. When the Pirate King Aegir organizes a fleet against the merpeople, who have caused too many shipwrecks for far too long, Captain Riptide sides with the merpeople and meets Aegir in battle, defeating him and becoming King of the Pirates. With that title, Captain Riptide becomes eligible by the ancient laws of the merpeople to marry Princess Ondine. He also brings peace between all merpeople and pirates to the chagrin of Ondine's father who still must secede the throne now that Ondine is of age.
Captain Riptide promotes his first mate to Captain of the ship and still while remaining Song, the Pirate King, Princess (now Queen) Ondine casts a spell that allows him to join the underwater world from the coral reefs to the deepest part of the ocean. Captain Riptide finds a hoard of sunken treasure, which Ondine tells him is property of the sea now, tithe to the Kraken which the merpeople worship. Riptide Song thinks is just a giant ancient crustacean. He proves himself right when it falls asleep and he is able to steal some of its hoard and makes for the surface world to the great resentment of all of the merpeople. Instead of undoing the spell that allowed Riptide to live underwater, Ondine allows him to get away and adds on a curse: until he returns all of the stolen treasure, he will not die.
After Riptide Song returns to the surface and to the land with his hoard of treasure, he sells the treasure and funds his eternal life of illness. He moves to different places, disguising himself as his own son at times, faking certification, and making investments to keep his wealth. He invests in jewelry, a business that grows and expands from metals and precious gemstones, to semi-precious gemstones and corals. By this time, it's the modern age and Riptide Song's name was changed to Pyke Steele. One of the activists who protests the harvesting of red coral from a protected reef bears a striking resemblance to Ondine. She goes by Raina Steele, and confronts Pyke Steele at another socialite's party. During their conversation, Pyke discovers that she is fully human and knows nothing about seventeenth century pirates or the existence of merpeople. She is a marine biologist and is very confident that merpeople do not exist. Pyke agrees to shut down the division of jewelry that deals with coral and continue to focus on making jewelry out of precious metals and precious stones.
After that event, Pyke makes a deal with the organization to additionally have his designers create something similar to the sort of jewelry that he saw in a previous incarnation as Riptide Song, worn by the courtiers and royalty of the undersea kingdom. He markets them under the heading that all proceeds will be donated to the Same Boat foundation to which Raina is affiliated.
Raina asks Pyke out to a sushi restaurant and Raina talks about how Pyke is not ordinarily the type of person who she would date in terms of things that they have in common. However, she can see that he has the potential to be an honest and loyal man, virtues which are even more important. The date is then interrupted by Pyke's guilt-ridden panic attack.
When Pyke recovers, he invites Raina to a new home that he purchased by the sea. It is there on a moonlit balcony on a house on a cliff overlooking the sea that he shows her their wedding ring and she remembers that she is Queen Ondine, who had taken human form for all these past generations, to seek out Riptide Song. She admits to Pyke that he was right in that the Kraken was simply an overgrown sea creature and more of a mascot that didn't even miss the treasure that he stole. Even so, she admits that she was a Queen first and needed the support of her people, which was tenuous considering that Riptide dishonored their customs. More than that, he personally betrayed her for gold that he wouldn't have needed had he simply lived as the good king of their undersea kingdom.
Pyke reminds Ondine that she married a pirate, who is not noble in any sense of the word,. The title wasn't inborn and it wasn't earned by honorable conduct. The time he spent away with his curses taught him to have a greater perspective and to invest rather than take opportunities as they came. He also learned that he loved Ondine, which was a harsh lesson to learn when he had told himself all along that he was only using the mermaid queen for everything that she had to offer. The defeat of Pirate King Aegir was Riptide's ambition, but if he had the maturity that he had now, he would have done the same thing for the reason he said—to be worthy company for Ondine.
In terms of the use of magic, once the terms are fulfilled then all the magic will leave. Pyke's business had donated enough to the work of cleaning up pollution and defending marine sanctuaries that Ondine-as-Raina was able to count it towards returning the treasure stolen from the realm of the sea. But because he had gone on so long about it, for centuries at least, Queen Ondine does not know if Pyke will age supremely fast and die.
Pyke admits that he would willingly die in exchange for Ondine's forgiveness and a moment of her love. With that, Ondine breaks the spell, embraces Pyke, and leaps from the balcony and into the ocean.
Underwater, Pyke is relieved to find that he is alive and still young but no longer so immature and re-introduced to the merpeople as their exiled king redeemed.
SETTING:
The seas are a wild place at the time the story begins. The merpeople do not believe so, with even the royal family subject to strict rules of their realm. For example, Princess Ondine would become Queen Ondine on her 1200th birthday on the lunar calendar of twelve months. Her father, the King, might continue to rule as a regent if Queen Ondine wants to continue to play at the surface of the ocean (and she does) but she would be queen with or without a husband. This prioritizes governance of the merpeople over romance and alliances by marriage. That said, only someone with a royal title may wed Queen Ondine. Another rule is that the ancient Kraken is holy and all offerings to it such as shiny golden treasure must remain in the Kraken's pit.
CHAPTERS:
Chapter one: It's a sunny day over the ocean and the pirate ship has un-hoisted the sails because the merpeople don't want them to destroy the reef with their anchor. The pirate captain stands on the rocks and says that he will wait for the mermaid who saved him from drowning when he went overboard at some unspecified time in the past. During the evening, the water rises and the pirate begins to wade and risk drowning once more. A mermaid, whom he recognizes, swims up to the shore and introduces herself as Princess Ondine. The pirate captain introduces himself as Riptide Song. The other pirates know him as that because Princess Ondine saved him instead of luring him with song and sending his ship to crash against the rocks, like many mermaids have done. Princess Ondine confesses that it was a moment of weakness because she likes the pirate and especially likes that his new name is something that she had a hand in giving him. Riptide Song tells her that if there were an alliance between a pirate and a mermaid, there would be more order among the pirates who the people inland do not respect. He says this in a seemingly sweet, but truly deviant ambitious way that Ondine doesn't catch. Ondine says that she cannot wed somebody who does not have a royal title and Riptide suggests that she attempt to persuade the pirate King Aegir, who has waged war against the merpeople. While Ondine doesn't believe that he can touch them under the deep, especially because humans do not have the magic that merpeople do. Aegir plans to hunt down any merpeople who dares to come to the surface. Riptide plays the naïve love struck young man and says that he will take his lonely ship and fight against Aegir's entire fleet, just so that he can create a world where he can continue to see Princess Ondine again. Princess Ondine swims with the pirate on her back to a lifeboat that Riptide's crew set out for him and bids him goodbye.
Chapter two: Riptide's ship stands against an approaching fleet of pirate ships. When King Aegir and Riptide make exchanges, the merpeople come up from the deep and begin to raise the storms. King Aegir declares a charge, guns and harpoons are loosed against merpeople as the merpeople sing tidal pools into the ocean. At Ondine's command, Riptide's crew is protected from drowning (although one or two are shot with pistols). Riptide swings into King Aegir's ship and engages the pirate king in a swordfight. He wins, although he is grievously wounded, and when he sinks into the ocean, Ondine goes to him and swears that if he should die, she would use her magic to put her spirit in human form and wander the land until she finds him again.
Chapter three: It's now modern day and jewelry business owner Pyke Steele is told that his pirate-themed line of gold jewelry is not selling well. It's considered tacky costume jewelry with high-end materials used to make it. In their conference room, a financer advises them to diversify. If their jewelry has this reputation, then they might as well ride the coast of costume jewelry and expand into semi-precious stones. Pyke doesn't mind, saying the value of a thing is more difficult to predict that he'd thought. The others in the conference dismiss him as a trust-fund baby and his parents were “new money”and classless. Pyke laughs to himself, and then goes home to have a nightmare about being a pirate king and fighting pirates. He goes to his safety deposit box and finds a gold ring, hoping aloud for Ondine to find him.
Chapter four: Pyke attends a socialite party some time later during the evening. He meets a woman who introduces herself as Raina Lear, an environmentalist and marine biologist affiliated with the Same Boat foundation. Raina tells him that the business he expanded into now harvests red coral from protected reefs. Pyke is haunted by how much Raina resembles somebody he used to know and jokes about merpeople not liking their reefs to be damaged. Raina, clearly showing that she does not know what Pyke is going on about, launches into a long explanation about the ocean's delicate ecosystem, how her parents were scuba divers and she would want her children or other people's children to be able to enjoy clean water, biodiversity, the taste of fish that are going extinct, and for them to get the most out of their life on earth. Pyke is persuaded by her impassioned speech and agrees to dissolve the costume jewelry faction of his business. He begs her forgiveness, which Raina is too flabbergasted to accept.
Chapter five: Pyke dreams of being Riptide Song again and of being healed. His crew informs him that the mermaids healed him, and the rest of the crew, and they essentially won the war. Riptide, who met King Aegir in battle and defeated him, is now king of the pirates. Riptide names his first mate captain of his ship and says that he will propose to Princess Ondine. Princess Ondine, now Queen Ondine, accepts a marriage proposal from King Riptide Song of the pirates. Riptide says farewell to his crew, and says that he will return, even though the pirates say that they've heard stories about the merpeople having distorted time under the ocean. Riptide goes with Ondine, who uses her magic to give Riptide the ability to breathe underwater and she adopts the human marriage practice of exchanging metal rings. Riptide lives in the luxury of the underwater realm while Ondine negotiates between warring tribes of themerpeople. Riptide sees the sort of fashionable jewelry that they wear. He wanders the deep, almost coming to the chasm of the Kraken. Ondine catches him, saying that the Kraken is too old to be a danger, but she wants to tell Riptide about the significance of the Kraken to the sovereignty of her kingdom. Basically, the Kraken is the mascot. Riptide notices that the Kraken has offerings of sunken treasure. Ondine explains that they are sacrifices.
Chapter six: Pyke surprises Raina at the Same Boat Foundation headquarters with a plan to market jewelry with proceeds that will go the foundation. Raina is jubilant at his change of heart and asks him out to a new restaurant. Pyke tries to tease out of Raina her romantic history and Raina confesses that Pyke is really not her type, but she sees that he can be a good man. Pyke has a panic attack and faints.
Chapter seven: While delirious in the hospital, Pyke re-lives his memory as King Riptide of sneaking into the Kraken's chasm with a sack and stealing the Kraken's treasure. When he recovers, Pyke asks Raina out to a weekend at his house by the beach.
Chapter eight: On a moonlit balcony of his mansion on a cliff by the sea, Pyke shows Raina his wedding ring, making Raina panic that they are moving far too fast into a commitment. Pyke confesses that he wants her to remember that they have been married for two hundred years and that this was the one piece of treasure that he could not bear to spend. He has a flashback as he tells Raina how the holy merpeople caught him robbing the Kraken and called for the Queen to be alerted to Riptide's treachery. In the flashback, Riptide swims as hard as he can towards the island as the Queen goes into her chambers and bids all the gods of the undersea to make her curse come true to make Riptide immortal for as long as there is saltwater in his blood and tears and until he mends the rift caused by his betrayal.
Chapter nine: By the magic of his story, Raina remembers being Ondine. They talk about his betrayal, what he did with the treasure (invested it), how his crew had been correct and he spent far more time away than he'd thought he'd spent in the undersea kingdom—although, he did not swim to a modern day shore, but had to continue to invest to hide his immortal identity. They talk about his redemption and the magic that Raina used to change herself from Queen Ondine to the human Raina Lear. They also talk about the risks of magic and how Pyke is willing to take that risk to redeem himself with his one true love.
Chapter ten: Ondine breaks the curse, they both jump into the ocean, and Pyke is welcomed back as king of the merpeople.
CHARACTERS:
Raina Lear
Age: 27 Height: 5'7” Hair: wavy, dishwater blonde Eyes: green
Gender: Female Build: statuesque
Raina is the mermaid queen Ondine reborn as a human with no memory of her life as a mermaid. Her human parents were scuba divers. As Ondine, she can work great magic, strong enough to keep a human breathing underwater and immune to the weight of the ocean at the deepest pits, as well as give a human immortal life. However, all the magic she wields is channeled through the obligation she has to her people.
Pyke Steele
Age: appears 25, has 200+ years of life experience Height: 5'8” Hair: wavy, black Eyes: hazel
Gender: Male Build: average, athletic
Pyke is susceptible to panic attacks and bleak depression because he once betrayed his true love for gold. As Pirate King Riptide Song, he used to be brave for all the wrong things and think clever what other people would consider treachery.