Read Online A Pirate's Dream by Marie Hall - Free Book Online

creeping with green vines had wrapped themselves around her tail. Nimue released a puff of awe as the creature stopped a few yards from Maiven, occasionally casting nervous, shifty glances in Nimue’s direction.
    “I’m... I’m so sorry, teacher. I did not... did not...” Tears suddenly sprang to her eyes as she began wringing her hands. “It was just so hot and my strength not—”
    Sighing, but not with exasperation, Maiven moved toward the mermaid and gave her elbow a quick squeeze. “It is quite all right, Ari, I forgot you’d be stopping by today. Give me a moment to clean my hands and we’ll start our lessons.”
    “Okay,” she said sweetly, glancing down at the tip of her flicking tail, but still looking curiously back and forth between it and Nimue.
    Maiven undid her apron, set it aside, and then hooked a finger in Nimue’s direction.
    “Wait here, Ari, touch nothing,” she said one final time and then headed toward her hutch.
    Nimue knew her great-mother wanted her to follow, but she was as curious of Ariana as the mermaid clearly was of her.
    “Hi,” she said it slowly.
    Ari laughed, the sound joyful and almost, childlike, that it threw Nimue to see it. Ariana was clearly a mermaid of fertile years. She had a slim waist and full bouncing breasts; her face was equally as mature, her lips full and ripe. Her eyes slanted and her cheekbones razor sharp. She was a striking woman.
    Realizing the mermaid wasn’t going to respond, Nimue followed her grandmother.
    She hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “What is—” But before she even got to finish her thought, her grandmother answered.
    “She is touched, dear.”
    “Oh,” she said shocked, and then, “oh. I’m sorry.”
    “No.” Holding up her palm, her grandmother began pulling out books from a bookshelf sitting beside her living room conch chair. “She is incredibly sweet, but I didn’t want there to be any confusion on your part as to why she sometimes acts as she does.”
    “What?” She glanced over her shoulder once again only to note the mermaid treading the same spot she’d been when Maiven had given her the order not to move. “Do you mind if I ask what happened?”
    It wasn’t often that she came across someone like Ariana, Nimue wanted to make sure that she was sensitive to the mermaid’s needs, but she was also intensely curious.
    “A boating accident. The maid swam too close. We told her to move away, but she got too close to its hull and...” she squeezed her eyes shut, trembling as though reliving the memory, “she very nearly died that day. When she awoke she came back to us this way. No one here really knows how to deal with her, though we try our best.”
    “What do you teach her?”
    Maiven pointed to twig shaped spirals of coral and some pencils with colored tips on them. “Nothing really. She calls them her lessons, but she draws. And she’s quite good at them actually.”
    Opening the journals, she swam aside so that Nimue could look at the drawings. Quite good was an understatement.
    Ariana might not be able to process the world as the rest of them did, but she captured the essence of life within the pages. There were images of grottos with mermaids languishing upon rocks.
    Rocks that formed into a skull. She smiled when she saw that one. “That’s one of my father’s holdings.”
    “Aye.” Maiven nodded, tracing her fingers over drawings as Nimue continued to turn the pages.
    She was impressed by the skill it took to make such fine, detailed sketches.
    Squealing with delight at the sight of Smee’s blue eyes staring back at her, Nimue said, “She’s seen Smee.”
    “Yes. She’s got quite the fascination with pirates and leggers in general. Though we tell her it’s no longer safe for her in the above, she rarely listens. But Ariana is as slippery as an eel to catch, and has no fear of using her voice should the need arise.”
    “Her voice?”
    “She’s a siren.”
    “I thought you were all