I Sold My Voice And I Must Weep

20250525

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

Oh how I lament the foolishness of youth! Love led me astray and now I am but seafoam and bitter regret.
I wish that I had never laid eyes on that human prince; that I did not save his life; that I did not sing to him; that I did not go to the sea-witch and trade away my voice for suffering and disappointment; that he did not fall in love with that human woman; that my soul was dashed to pieces in the waters which drowned me instead of lingering.
Is there any creature more piteous?
Days pass and finally the waves bore of tossing me about like a toy. I am abandoned to sink deep, drifting through my old home. I usher voiceless pleas to the currents and eventually one carries me to the home of the sea-witch.
She tuts and shrugs and says I am beyond her power. And besides, I have nothing left to pay for her services. So my soul is cast out into the ocean once again.
I wordlessly beg of the currents again, and at last one carries me to the palace of my father. I expected to find it draped in mourning, yet all was bright and merry as when I left.
Watching this familiar joy stabbed my soul with a pain comparable to how the magic tortured my unnatural legs. Oh, had I eyes to weep and a mouth to cry out! But I simply wafted around the gardens unable to voice my sorrow.
It was a small and bitter solace to watch my sisters going about their lives, but that solace was all I had; so I came to settle amongst the corals in their favourite garden where they gathered to gossip and sing together.
Then one day I heard my sixth sister say “I wonder how our little sister is getting on, in the world of the air-breathers?”
“Who cares?” Cried our eldest sister. “She has left us all, and sends no messages. Our father was right to disown her.”
So then I knew why there was no mourning, and once again ached for lack of weeping; the waves had not recognised me as I drowned, so news had not been carried to my father.
As I was consoling myself that perhaps this was for the best, that my family was not burdened by sorrow like I was, Sixth Sister spoke again. “I am minded to find her and see that she is well, for I worry.”
“Ah? And how would you do that?” The others cried, and Sixth Sister said “I will ask the sea-witch for her magic, and use it to brave the air and seek our little sister.”
I remember still the pains of each step. The isolation and bewilderment of that strange world. How it led me to this.
Had I still a heart it would freeze solid in fear.
But I have no heart, nor voice, nor hands.
Yet I must save my sister!

Prompt was “Write a story based on the worst case scenario in a classic fairy tale.”
[I chewed over various options, verging on choice paralysis, then eventually opted for the fairly stock The Little Mermaid. Honestly the worst-case of a lot of old fairy tales would just be “everyone gets eaten/dies” which I found hard to make interesting.]