At first, the ship hardly seemed haunted. It was a 200-year-old ship, yes, with broad, square sails and canons on the deck. But the sea parted for it like any other vessel, with deceptive acceptance, as if the ocean did not hold the ship in its hand, could not crush or invert it on a whim.

 

There was nothing out here but the sea. Nowhere a person could find solid footing except that ship. It frightened Elise, even as she treaded water with ease, even as she dipped her head below the surface and breathed. She didn’t need solid footing, she reminded herself. Right now she didn’t even have feet.

 

The people on the ship didn’t need help, either. They were beyond it. From the water, Elise could see ghosts at the railing, in the rigging. They were moving, but never got anywhere: they climbed up masts and back down again, walked forward a few feet and immediately reversed, only to walk forward again. Elise supposed it made sense. They had nowhere to go.

 

At times, the ship wavered in the evening air, as if Elise were looking at it through a misshapen lens. Tomorrow, if the legend was true, it would be far more solid, coming to life on the anniversary of its death.

 

“It is real,” Elise said. “I can hardly believe it.”

 

Mari didn’t look terribly impressed. “Why did you want to see this thing? It’s creepy.”

 

“Who wouldn’t want to see a ghost ship?”

 

“Normal people. Come on, let’s go home.” Mari ducked beneath the water in obvious relief. It was difficult for her to stay up at the surface, her blue crab legs treading water inefficiently. No doubt she’d rather have solid ground herself—in her case, the sea floor.

 

Dear, sweet Mari had no idea how spectacularly abnormal this situation was for Elise. She was miles out to sea, floating among unseen creatures, some of them no doubt large enough to swallow her whole. The ship sailing by had burned to the waterline two hundred years earlier, taking all souls with it.

 

Mari herself was even stranger. She was the most beautiful creature Elise had ever seen: a crab mermaid, with blotchy blue skin and eight spider-like legs, bright blue hair that curled beneath her chin, and um. Well. No clothing. Mari was plump, and so she had a pair of quite, ah, shapely—anyway, her nipples were also blue, and that was as far as Elise was going to allow her train of thought to go. (Although one could argue that having a crush on a woman with a fantastic rack was, in fact, entirely normal for Elise.)

 

Elise probably seemed a little more normal herself—she was the sort of mermaid people expected, with a fish tail (white) and long hair (blonde) and small breasts (covered, because Elise was not going to roam the ocean tits-out). In fact, Elise wore two articles of clothing: a t-shirt that said _Oregon Coast Aquarium_ with a little octopus on it, and a purple shell amulet on a chain, which made all the rest of it possible. Because that was the least normal thing about the whole situation. Elise was not a mermaid. She was a human with a magic necklace, passed down in her family as an heirloom, and fortunately the actual mermaid she’d met hadn’t figured that out yet.

Oh, right, and tomorrow Elise was planning to board that ghost ship and steal a treasure. So yeah, normal could get fucked.

 

~ * ~

 

As a child, Elise had been told the story of the Doris, a ship carrying nearly 300 passengers and crew, most of them immigrants planning to build a new life in a new country. One moonless night, far out to sea, clouds began to cover the sky until they’d blocked every star. In the utter blackness, the Doris was seized by a storm that shook the ship like the insignificant bit of wood it was.

 

Perhaps those aboard wanted to be able to see the mountain-sized waves looming over them, the troughs like holes in the ocean. If they did wish for light, they soon regretted it, because it came in a flash of lightning that ignited the mainmast of the Doris. Far out to sea, the ship and everyone on her suffered an unwitnessed death of fire, wind, and rain.

 

Perhaps, Elise’s mother said, that was why the Doris still sailed. She wanted someone to know how she died.

 

Once a year, according to legend, the Doris retraced her final days. At first she would appear like a normal ship, though silent and idle, sailing by without aid of wind, but also without distress, disappearing after a few haunted moments. That was the sign for sailors to clear out of the area, fleeing the waters where a dead ship sailed.

 

Because the following night, the Doris would be a little clearer, a little stronger, and then would come the storm: phantom wind and waves, and finally, the stroke of lightning. The Doris would burn. Its passengers would be lost.

 

The treasure on board would sink again.

 

It wasn’t something that would strictly be called treasure. Just a necklace, with a plain red pendant. But it was no ordinary piece. Like the purple amulet Elise wore, this necklace could turn its wearer into something else: in this case an air spirit. (No one in the family knew exactly what that meant, but Elise had always imagined becoming a dragon.)

 

The red amulet was on the Doris, with the ancestors of Elise’s family, lost to the storm and fire. But once a year, the Doris returned. And maybe, Elise theorized, on the haunting’s strongest night, when the ghost ship was solid, the magic amulet would be real, too. Nobody in the family knew for sure, because until Elise, nobody had ever been the right combination of brave and batshit to give it a try.

 

Anyway, so now Elise was hanging out in a sea cave with a naked crab mermaid. The caves had seemed like a great place to hole up and wait for the _Doris_, but Elise had been surprised to find one occupied, surprised her amulet gave her merperson language as well, and surprised by how ridiculously hot a woman could be when her lower half had eight jointed legs.

 

Mari’s “feet” made clicking noises as she moved across the cave floor, deboning a fish with her sharp fingernails.

 

“Looks good!” Elise lied, and Mari smiled. God, she had an incredible smile, and maybe it should have been a turn-off that her teeth looked sharp enough to bite somebody’s fingers off, but unfortunately, it was not.

 

“So you like that creepy ghost stuff, huh?” Mari asked. She didn’t really have a way to sit down, but she sort of lowered herself a bit. Not that Elise had any idea how to sit down on a fish tail. She tried to bend in the middle as Mari passed her a piece of fish.

 

“It’s not that scary,” Elise said. “I mean, it’s just a ship, not a—” Elise was going to say sea monster, but then she had the awful thought that perhaps it would be considered rude to use such a term. “Not something evil.”

 

Mari got a rather wicked smile on her face, and then stuffed half a fish in her mouth. “Not like the Dutchman, then,” she said, crunching bones.

 

“Do you mean the Flying Dutchman?”

 

“Mmm-hmm. That one’s cursed. One of the sailors had a ring stolen from a dying plague victim, hoping it would protect him. You know humans and their weird magic objects.”

 

Elise almost choked on a bite of fish. Her type of mermaid apparently didn’t have sharp teeth, so the bones were a problem. “Yeah, those—those humans. With their weird objects.”

 

“You ever heard the story of the Dutchman?”

 

“Probably not the way you tell it,” Elise said honestly.

 

Mari snapped up a stray piece of fish that was floating by. “So imagine you’re a human on a ship. You know what it must be like. The ship’s big, yeah, but out there all alone on the ocean, it seems so small. And you know there are creatures under you that are quite large. Some might be even larger than your ship. The ocean’s got room, hasn’t it?

 

“When the weather’s calm, you can see those creatures as they drift up to the surface. Squid, whales. Pieces of them. Maybe just tentacles or the long, long backbone of something that winds through the water like it’s still alive.” Mari’s voice had grown low and heavy, mesmerizing. With her sharp teeth flashing, she looked strangely, beautifully dangerous. “But that’s all they do, they float there, staying right where you can see them. When the storms come, though—”

 

Elise fought down a shiver. “I thought you didn’t like creepy stuff.”

 

Mari grinned. “Doesn’t mean I don’t know how to tell it. When the storms come, the waves grow taller than the ship. And you know in your heart that each and every one of those mountains of water could have something in it. That if you chanced to look up as lightning flashed behind a wave, you might see something huge and alive suspended there, above you.”

 

“Mari.”

 

Mari shrugged. “It’s probably nothing. Seaweed. Piece of someone else’s lost ship. But in the storm, it’s dark, and you doubt. The captain of the Dutchman did that. He doubted. Doubted his eyes. Doubted his sailors. Doubted his God. And when you’ve taken a cursed object on board, that is a very dangerous thing to do.

 

“Eventually, one of those waves looming over his ship had something in it. If the captain had caught sight of it, he would have seen something large and dark, a shape that twisted and writhed. Then the ship dropped into a trench, and when the wave crashed over the deck, it brought something with it.”

 

“Mari—” Elise was squirming, her unfamiliar body folding itself into odd shapes.

 

“It was hard to see it in the darkness. But the whole crew felt the impacts on the deck: here, there, ahead of them, behind them, but all different parts of the same thing. They all heard the slithering.”

 

Elise could take no more. “Oh, but I’m sure it was just some harmless sea creature hitching a ride!”

 

Mari made an irritated noise. “Elise! That was just getting good.”

 

“Yes, but, if it gets any better I’ll be too scared to see the ship tomorrow.”

 

Elise made a little squeak of surprise when Mari put an arm around her and pulled her closer, Elise’s scales sliding against the cold cave wall.

 

“I’m sorry,” Mari said. “Have you ever been on a human ship?”

 

Elise had no idea whether she should answer that question.

 

“I’ve been on two,” Mari said. “Not like this, of course.” She waved a hand at her body.

Elise had no idea what that meant either, but she nodded anyway.

 

“Humans are weird.” Mari’s blue nose scrunched up and it was adorable. “You never know what they’re going to do.”

 

“That’s for sure,” Elise said. Mari’s arm around her shoulders was a little clammy, but there was an underlying warmth to it, and an obvious strength. If Elise hadn’t been underwater, her mouth would probably have gone dry. She could feel Mari’s breast and one peaked nipple pressed against her t-shirt, and she didn’t dare look down. Which meant she kept looking right at Mari’s face. And now her face was a lot closer than it had been.

 

What did it say about Elise that she didn’t like scary stories, but was honestly considering whether it would be a bad move to kiss someone with a mouth full of sharp teeth?

 

But she couldn't. As Mari leaned in, Elise pulled back. Mari froze a second in Elise’s airspace—waterspace—and then her shoulders slumped and she shifted away.

 

Maybe tomorrow, Elise told herself, after the red amulet was in her hand, she’d tell Mari the truth.

 

Or maybe not. Maybe even humans themselves were never sure what they were going to do.

 

~ * ~

 

Case in point: “What the hell are you doing?” Mari hissed.

 

Elise hadn’t expected Mari to come along to see the ghost ship a second time. She’d tried very hard to dissuade her, in fact. But Mari had gotten this odd look on her face and said she knew Elise was going to go home after seeing the ship, so they might as well spend their last night together and now Mari was here and that was a _problem_.

 

The _Doris_ had reappeared a few minutes ago, a dark silhouette against the setting sun, and Elise had positioned herself right in its path. She could feel the wind picking up this time, and she wondered how strong a phantom storm could actually be. “I’m going on board the ship,” she confessed.

 

“What? Why?”

 

“There’s something valuable there.”

 

“You mean like treasure?”

 

“Sort of.” The growing wind tangled in Elise’s half-dry hair, bringing with it the sounds of creaking wood and flapping sails.

 

Mari was frowning, treading water mostly with her arms, her legs clacking together. “This seems like a fantastically bad idea.”

 

“It does,” Elise admitted.

 

“Aren’t there, like, three hundred ghosts on board?”

 

“There are.”

 

“With guns and stuff?”

 

“They’re ghosts. What are they going to do?”

 

Mari raised a blue eyebrow. “So the treasure’s real, but not the weapons?”

 

“Um—”

 

“This is so dumb. I’m coming with you.”

 

“What?”

 

“And I’m assuming we’re doing this as humans?”

 

“What?”

 

“Cause honestly, it’s easier for me up at the surface if I’ve just got the two legs.” Mari tipped her head back and gave a long sigh, and then her movements became smoother, and there was no more sound from her crab legs. In the dim light, her skin tone had evened out and paled. Her hair was still blue, though. “Oh yeah, that’s better,” Mari said.

 

“Back—back up the truck,” Elise said.

 

“What’s a truck?”

 

Elise put a hand on Mari’s bare shoulder. Which suddenly suggested another bit of information, and she snatched her hand back from the now-probably-completely naked woman beside her.

 

When Elise had planned this stage of the adventure, she’d expected the nudity to limit itself to her own lower half. So the bag she carried contained only two pieces of clothing, wrapped in plastic: jogging pants and an oversized sweater. She dug into the bag and was startled to feel Mari crowd up behind her, looking over her shoulder. “Oh, right, humans wear clothes. Got any for me?”

 

“Sweater,” Elise managed to say. “Might fit you.”

 

“Cool!” Mari’s form darted away again—she was still such an able swimmer—and Elise passed her the sweater without really looking. She wasn’t sure why she’d bothered with the plastic wrapping, since everything immediately got soaked anyway.

 

While Mari was distracted, turning in a circle as she struggled to get the sweater on, Elise gripped her amulet carefully and drew it over her head. In an instant, she became herself again, a human woman in the middle of the ocean.

 

It was fucking freezing. Elise gasped, her bare legs trembling, sore and rapidly growing numb. She shivered so hard she dropped her pants, and they began to sink into the darkening water.

 

A pale hand snatched them up. “You okay?” Mari asked.

 

Elise caught a mouthful of water and spluttered. It was so much easier to tread water with a fish tail.

 

“Oh, yeah, legs are weird, aren’t they?” Mari asked sympathetically. She grasped Elise around the waist with a firm grip. “Just hang on to me.”

 

Elise could do nothing else as Mari maneuvered her legs into the jogging pants, Mari’s hands hot and strong on Elise’s bare skin. When Elise was dressed, Mari drew her back against herself, holding her steady in the choppy water, her warmth so welcome. They looked up to find the Doris had almost reached them, her deck alive with people who were not alive.

 

“Are you always this cold in human form?” Mari asked.

 

Elise could answer that one honestly. “In the water.”

 

“All right, let’s get you up and dried off, then.”

 

“You know you don’t have to do this, Mari.”

 

“Neither do you,” Mari pointed out.

 

Elise laid her head back on Mari’s shoulder so she could see her face. Mari’s beautiful dark eyes were wide in the dim light. “I’ve come so far,” Elise said. “Did so much to get here.”

 

“And you’re stupid.”

 

Elise laughed. “What does that make you?”

 

For a second, Mari’s gaze fell to Elise’s mouth. But she shifted Elise off of her, clutching her hand and swimming strongly toward the ship.

 

Elise had prepared for climbing a rope onto the Doris. She’d prepared to hide from ghosts if they noticed her, prepared to search for a necklace in the middle of a storm. She was not in any way prepared to do any of that in the company of a gorgeous, scantily clad woman.

 

Mari should not have been hotter with clothes on. But fuck the rules, apparently. Elise’s sweater—blue, of course—was just barely oversized on Mari. Soaking wet, it clung to her body, showing her nipples through the fabric, hanging just low enough to conceal her rear end. Thus Elise could see nearly every inch of Mari’s now-human legs. They were as plump as the rest of her, pale and lovely, right down to her—

 

Elise made a strangled noise.

 

“Oh,” Mari said. She was clinging to the edge of the life boat they were hiding behind, looking like a not-quite-metaphorical fish out of water. “Yeah, I’m not good at feet, sorry.” Mari peered down at Elise’s feet, white with cold. “What are those again?”

 

“Toes. Toes are what go on legs. Not fingers. Fingers go on hands.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Bipedalism.”

 

“But then you can’t pick up stuff with your feet.”

 

“That’s...a fair point.” Elise resolved to avoid looking below Mari’s ankles. But of course, the rest of Mari was distracting as well. Ghost ship, Elise reminded herself. Magic amulet. Not inconveniently beautiful women. “The treasure should be in the passenger quarters. This way.”

 

It was creepy as fuck to be on a ghost ship in the black of night, with a storm brewing. Elise wasn’t sure what else she had expected. She clung firmly to Mari’s hand, and not just because it was, in fact, difficult for Mari to walk on foot-fingers. (Also, like a crab, she tended to walk more sideways than forwards, which was adorable.)

 

The ghosts did not seem to see them, or if they did, they had worse problems. The ship was pitching as the sea roughened, and even as they went below decks, Elise could hear the rumble of thunder.

 

Elise had studied this ship and its legend for so long, but it was quite another thing to see its passengers looking like living people with frightened faces. Elise hated that there was no way to help them, no way to keep them from suffering a fate that had already happened.

 

At first, Elise didn’t want to touch the ghosts. Later she still didn’t want to touch them, but had no choice. The ship became crowded below decks. The first time Elise brushed shoulders with a ghost, she nearly gagged. Their flesh and clothes rippled like pudding, flowing away and reforming once Elise had moved past.

 

Then there was a sudden impact on the right side of the ship, possibly a huge wave. Everything tipped left, furniture and ghosts and would-be treasure thieves. As Elise stumbled, Mari caught her, remarkably steady as the ship rebounded and everything slid the other way. Elise looked down and found Mari’s foot-fingers gripping the floor.

 

“Told you,” Mari said, triumphant.

 

“You know, you could change back,” Elise said. “The ghosts can’t see us.”

 

“If you want my feet gone so bad, find your treasure so we can get out of here.” A ghost bumped into Mari and she shuddered.

 

“Should be the next couple of cabins,” Elise said. They moved into a corridor that was so narrow they could put their hands on both walls, which helped with the ship pitching, but not with avoiding touching the ghosts who were repeating their steps over and over. Thunder cracked above them, incredibly loud.

 

“So when does the lighting happen?” Mari asked. Her voice was trembling.

 

“The plan is to be out of here by then,” Elise assured her.

 

Mari made a noise that indicated she did not, in fact, feel assured.

 

“Oh, here it is,” Elise said. She grasped Mari’s hand, and they stumbled into a thankfully empty cabin. It was tiny, just three bunks on the wall and a couple of chests on the floor. According to Elise’s research, this was the cabin of her great-great-something-great-aunt. The woman was no doubt out there in the crowd somewhere, and Elise was very glad she didn’t know what she looked like.

 

Elise came down on her knees—how lovely it was to have knees again—and opened the first chest. She expected to find it contained clothing and keepsakes, money and papers. Instead, the chest was full of water, dark and smelling strongly of brine. It was like the ship had already started to sink, seawater taking over reality, creeping in at the edges.

 

“There’s something in there,” Mari said, and stuck her hand in the water, which Elise did not think was a very good idea. Mari brought her hand back up, dripping, and something solid rested on her palm. A red amulet on a string.

 

Elise reached for it, but Mari pulled it out of reach, examining the necklace in the gritty light of oil lamps. “This looks a lot like your purple one,” Mari said. She looked at Elise’s chest. “Which you’re not wearing.”

 

“Uh—”

 

“What is this, Elise?”

 

There seemed no reason to lie. “Magic amulet. It turns you into an air spirit. Probably.”

 

Mari’s eyes traced down Elise’s body, to her kneeling legs. “And what does the purple one do?”

 

Now there seemed a very good reason to lie. Only Elise couldn't come up with one. She looked up at the beautiful crab mermaid she was going to leave behind forever in a few minutes and said, eloquently, “Um.”

 

Mari groaned. “Fucking humans and their weird magic objects.”

 

“I’m really sorry,” Elise said. “I didn't know if I should tell you.”

 

Mari blinked, her eyes shining with saltwater. “So you don’t—you must think I’m hideous. All those legs.”

 

“I think you’re the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. With any amount of legs.”

 

Mari’s mouth fell open. Elise was unsurprisingly intrigued to see all her sharp teeth remained. “Oh,” Mari said.

 

Elise started to get to her feet, but the ship shook with another huge impact, and everything in the cabin was thrown sideways. Elise and Mari landed against the opposite wall in a tangle. It was only a few seconds later that Elise could smell smoke.

 

“Time to go,” Mari said, eyes wide. As they struggled to their feet, Elise accidentally stepped on one of Mari’s foot-fingers and they both yelped.

 

“How do you turn into a human, then?” Elise said. “I couldn’t ask you before. Are mermaids, like, shape-shifters?”

 

Mari had just enough time to give Elise a look that cast impolite aspersions on her mental acuity before they got thrown the other direction. They managed to keep their balance this time, but fell out the cabin door. Elise gave a little shriek.

 

The ghosts had stilled, motionless, every one of them staring off to the west. That was the direction of the nearest land, Elise realized. But it was far too many miles away. The ghosts’ expressions said they knew it.

 

Elise and Mari dodged people who had become roadblocks, shoving their pudding-bodies aside to get to ladders that led up toward the deck. The closer they got, the smokier the air became, shielded from the wind up top. The passengers would have had to make a choice in their final minutes, Elise realized: smoke or storm.

 

Until they reached the deck, Elise didn’t think she and Mari were facing the same choice. After all, they wouldn’t drown if they went overboard. But that assumed they could make it to the water.

 

Instead, Mari and Elise climbed the final ladder to find themselves surrounded by flames that had rushed down the mast and ignited almost everything on the deck: lifeboats, ropes, and railing.

 

“Oh, shit,” Elise said. She coughed as smoke and rain were thrown in her face. She clutched Mari’s hand as they moved cautiously across the deck, looking for any way out. The ghosts up here were also still, even if they were amidst the flames. At least their faces showed no pain, just sadness.

 

“There’s no way down from here,” Mari said.

 

“I’m sorry,” Elise said. “Oh, God, I’m so—”

 

“Wait.” Mari grasped Elise by the shoulders, clutching at the strap of her bag. “Where’s your purple amulet? Put it on.”

 

“But we can’t get to the water.”

 

Mari gave her a nervous smile. “Put it on anyway. In case I drop you.”

 

“What?”

 

Mari opened her hand to reveal the red amulet on her palm. “Thought I’d try being a shapeshifter.”

 

“Oh, fuck,” Elise said. She sat down to peel off her pants and put the necklace over her head. The fish tail appeared at once, and Elise slid across the tilted deck until Mari grabbed her hand.

 

Elise looked up to find Mari completely naked. But it only lasted a second: Mari slung the red necklace over her head and her body changed. The hand holding Elise’s grew claws, the attached arm blue scales. The scales spread everywhere across Mari’s body and face, swirling blue and white, as giant blue wings erupted from behind her shoulders. Mari kept her two legs, but her foot-fingers became talons, sinking into the deck. Mari’s eyes turned white, glowing in the midst of the storm.

 

“What the fuck am I?” Mari asked. If anything, her teeth looked sharper.

 

“Dragon?” Elise suggested.

 

Mari looked over her shoulder, as much as she could with the wings in the way. “No tail.” She seemed to meet Mari’s eyes. “Still hot, though?”

 

“As fuck.” Even though Mari was scaled now, she was still essentially naked, and Elise was very appreciative.

 

“Oh, good,” Mari said happily. There was a crash behind them as some large structure collapsed.

 

“Well, time to find out if the wings work!” Mari said, pulling Elise into her arms. Mari’s scales were cool to the touch, and Elise wrapped her arms around her neck. From there she could feel the muscles in Mari’s back work as the wings flapped.

 

A burning ship in the middle of a storm was probably not the ideal place to learn to fly. But after a few false starts, Mari managed to get into the air long enough to clear the first section of flames, then a small piece of intact deck, then more fire, and finally, the ship’s blazing rail.

 

“Letting you go,” Mari gasped, clearly overwhelmed, and Elise released her grip and fell into the ocean. It no longer felt freezing, but refreshingly cool after the heat of the deck.

 

A moment later, Mari splashed down next to her, back to her usual self, crab legs clicking together.

 

The final moments of the Doris were awful to watch, especially with the ghosts standing on the deck like memorial statues of themselves. As the apparition faded, the storm calmed, and Elise was once more left in the middle of the ocean with a naked woman.

 

Mari swam closer and pulled Elise into her arms. They began to sink, Elise breathing easily for the first time in hours.

 

“I’m starting to like the idea of weird magic objects,” Mari said. “But you have a lot to learn about being a mermaid.” She tugged on Elise’s t-shirt. “Will you please take this off? It’s been driving me crazy.”

 

Elise gladly stuffed the shirt in her bag. The purple pendant floated gently between her small breasts.

 

“Fucking beautiful,” Mari said. “Tell me you’re not leaving yet. Tell me I can come visit you when you do.”

 

Elise laughed. “Tell me I can kiss you and we have a deal.”