Suggested by: Ashleigh Meikle
The List:
-Leroy
-the 1700's
-a ship or dockyard
-a net
The Result:
"Stranger Tides"
He saw her the moment he stepped off the train. She sauntered down the street, moved by an invisible current. Her delicate body undulated like a blade of sea grass. Her dark hair cascaded down her back like an inky waterfall.
He saw her, and he wanted her more than anything else in the
world. He glanced up at the red-white-and-blue flag of France over the door of
the military office. There were certain duties he needed to fulfill first. He
glanced back to fill his eyes with the girl.
She had turned to stare at him, herself. Her eyes sparkled,
and she gave him a small smile and a tiny wave. He felt the warmth radiate from
his racing heart radiate to the furthest reaches of his body. She disappeared
around the corner, and he all but floated into the outpost. He was so elated
that he almost didn't know how to answer when the gruff clerk demanded,
"Name?"
"Uh..." His brain suddenly could think of nothing
else but the mysterious beauty. He imagined introducing himself to her.
"Charmont," he spluttered. "Leroy Charmont."
"Papers!" Perhaps the frosty lady was used to
dealing with utter ninnies like himself, the ones who had not been this far
from home unaccompanied before. He dug the requisite forms out of his small
valise and handed them to her. She squinted to see that everything was in
order, stamped her approval on it, and rattled out, "Report back here at
five hundred hours Monday morning for deployment. Next!"
Leroy couldn't believe his luck. Monday! That gave him three
whole days in which to enjoy the company of the charming young woman. He dashed
back onto the street and glanced around.
For several agonizing minutes, he could not see her—
And in the next instant, he nearly tripped over her.
"Oh dear!"
"I'm sorry!"
Leroy stumbled backwards and grasped her wrists to keep them both steady. Her skin felt soft and cool at his touch, like holding smooth river stones. She smiled at him again.
"Are you all right?" The words tumbled out of his
mouth.
Something in her gaze shifted, and her smile dimmed. Leroy
felt a pang in his chest. "Did I hurt you?"
The eyes widened, and she gasped, "No! I am quite all
right."
How wonderful her voice sounded, clear with a little hint of
a laugh, like a quiet brook.
"What is your name, mademoiselle?"
She smiled and relaxed, even if just for a moment. "I
am—" she hesitated, as if she had nearly said one thing but decided on
another. "Belle," she said. "They call me Belle; what is your
name?"
"Leroy," he answered.
"So, Leroy, what brings you to Moulin Blanc?"
Leroy gestured over his shoulder at the outpost. "I am
to be deployed from this harbor."
"Ah," said she. "The war."
The War—not much else needed to be said about that. The
world had weathered one before, and countless others before that; surely the world would not be so eager to prolong a second world war.
"Belle..." Leroy looked down at his feet and
fidgeted a bit to get the words out. "I was wondering if you—"
Belle had been looking at something behind him, and now she
gasped. "I'm sorry; I have to go."
"What? Why?" Leroy spluttered. He turned to see
what had scared her so badly, but nothing out of the ordinary caught his eye.
He turned back to Belle.
Her lips trembled. "I wish we could have known each
other," she said.
"I will come back for you!" Leroy promised.
She shook her head. "No; you must listen to me. What
you want can never be. Not with what I am. Goodbye, Leroy. Be safe."
With that, she pulled away and vanished into the crowd.
The rest of the weekend dragged on like an eternity for the
young cadet of the French Foreign Legion. He and his unit left France, headed
northward, but all the time they were fighting, Leroy never forgot about his
brief encounter with the enchanting Belle. Her last words haunted him:
"not with what I am." What did it mean? Was she afraid he would
reject her for her upbringing? That did not matter to him! Merely thinking of
her helped him survive the next two years. While the shells thundered and the
screams of dying men filled his days, the sound of her voice and the soft depth
of her eyes filled his mind and his dreams.
At last, it was over. Five years after the day it all began,
Lieutenant Leroy Charmont stepped off the boat onto the dock of Moulin Blanc,
much taller, stronger, and more worn than he had left it. He wandered back
toward the military outpost as a man just waking up from a very long dream.
There she was. Standing there, exactly as if she had been
waiting for him after all. Leroy dashed forward and put a hand on her shoulder.
"Belle!" He cried.
She twisted away from him, her eyes filling with fear.
"Who are you? How do you know me?"
Leroy stepped back. "Belle, it's me, Leroy! Don't you
remember?"
She squinted, and recognition flooded her face.
"Monsieur Charmont?"
Leroy nodded. "Thinking of you was the only way I
managed to survive the war." He gestured to all his shipmates, celebrating
and cavorting in the street. "And now that it is over, I was hoping—"
he clasped her wrists, held that delicate, smooth hand firmly in his.
Belle shook her head and tried to pull away. "No, you
don't understand," she insisted.
"What is there to understand?"
The beautiful dark-haired woman shook her head. Twisting her
hands free, she gently pushed his shoulders and darted away from him, across
the street. He lost track of her in the sea of moving bodies.
“Belle, wait!” Leroy cried, stumbling after her.
He barely caught sight of her forest-green skirt
disappearing into an alleyway. Leroy shouldered people out of the way as he
lunged after her.
“Belle, wait—“
He stopped, standing just behind her. Belle stood frozen in
place, as a large, burly man in ragged, soiled clothes leered at her from the
shadows at the back of the alley.
The man smiled, showing the glint of at least one gold tooth
among the rotted, yellowed others.
“Well, what have we here?” he rumbled. “My forefathers have been chasing a legend since the 1700's, and it turns out that all I had to do
was wait for her to come to me!”
Leroy instinctively stepped closer against Belle, grabbing
for her hand.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
The man’s accent sounded rough, like the Americans Leroy had
fought with during the war. “Shouldn’t you be asking her that, boy?”
Belle, meanwhile, cowered against Leroy as the man advanced
closer. She looked up to meet his eyes. “Don’t let him take me!” she whispered.
“Who is he, Belle?” Leroy whispered back. “Why has his
family been searching for you? What is this man to you?”
The man stopped just out of arm’s reach. He smirked at
Leroy. “You mean you don’t know what she is, boy? You really have no idea?”
Belle was trembling all over now; Leroy could feel her
terror. “What are you talking about? Why would you terrorize an innocent girl?”
A footstep crunched in the dirt behind him, and Leroy turned
to see a second thug closing the gate to the alley behind them. When he faced
the first man again, the thug held a stout fishing net.
Belle scrunched even smaller and whimpered, “Don’t let that
net anywhere near me!”
“Innocent girl!” scoffed the man with the net. “Is that what
you think she is?” He cackled cruelly. “Let me show you the truth, boy!” He
nodded to the other thug.
Leroy heard the sound of breaking pottery, and felt Belle
going limp in his arms. He looked down at her.
“Belle!” He gasped.
The man laughed again. “There’s your precious, innocent girl, boy!”
Belle’s skirt clung to her legs at first, but in a few
moments, Leroy watched the material change form, going from soft and damp to
slick and scaly. Her feet vanished, replaced by a wide fin. Small gill slits
opened in the skin of her neck.
It took all of his willpower to keep from dropping her to
the ground then and there. “What are you?”
he gasped.
Webbed hands now clung to his shoulders as the—creature’s—voice came in between quick, desperate gasps.
“Please, Leroy! I never want to hurt you. I am a mermaid. My real name is
Yssandra. I came ashore two hundred years ago, because I was
young and foolish and I sought to find love—“ She turned her head to scowl at
the gleeful thug standing before them. “But all I found was hate and greed. I
have been trying to hide from this man’s family ever since.”
The man advanced closer. “It’s a long-standing family
tradition, chasing after the fish-girl who jilted my great-grandfather.”
The second man took up the other side of the net and
advanced toward them.
“So what's it gonna be, Froggy?” The man asked. “Are you
going to stick by this fish-girl who is older than you'll ever be, until she
snaps and disappears on you forever because she can't stay out of the water for
long? Or are you going to let me put her back where she belongs?”
The young mermaid was fast withering in his arms. He would
need to make his choice soon, or risk losing her forever. Leroy adjusted his
grip on her body, supporting her against him.
He nodded to the man. “You will take her—“
Yssandra gave one last feeble gasp, “Leroy, no!”
Leroy’s hold on her never slackened. “Over my dead body!” he
finished.
The man only hesitated a moment before drawing a long,
wicked-looking knife. He grinned at the couple.
“That can be arranged.”
Previously in This Series:
#15 "Rendezvous"("Soul Mates" Part 6/"Serenity's Light" Part 2)
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