TWL 1302: “How Will You Woo Her?” by Sabella Dziabczenko

may be deeply personal, but we all share it. If at any time a story takes you to a place too dark, turn on the lights, press pause or press stop, and always remember that, unlike in the real world, these nightmares and your participation in them, are under your control. Welcome back to the Wicked Library. I'm Daniel Foytec and as always, thank you for joining us. A heartfelt thank you to our supporters on Patreon. You make these stories

possible and keep the shadows well fed. Today's tale drifts up from the darkest depths of the sea, where lullabies, lore, sailors to ruin, and the hungers of man leave nothing untouched. Before we begin, an additional content warning. As longtime listeners the Wicked Library know we love the older, darker fairy tales. These non sanitized tales were meant to caution, worn and disturb, leaving a deep, lasting impression on those who heard them.

They are the original horror stories. They never shied away from exploring the darkest depths of human nature, and Tonight's tale, while it is a modern story, follows in that tradition. Like many fairy tales, it contains elements of body horror, transformation, and unsettling themes of power, control and obsession. There are moments of intense violence, non consensual touch, psychological and physical trauma, and acts of unimaginable cruelty, including harm to the most

innocent among us. Yet, despite its horrors, this is a compelling and powerfully terrifying tale, one that calls to the depths like a siren's song, both haunting and irresistible, dragging you unrelentingly deeper into dark waters. Listener discretion is very strongly advised, and now settle in if you dare for a very dark tale told by the incomparable Addison Peacock, with a haunting original score by Niko Vites of the Inky Pop print.

in the water like strands of pale green kelt. Tiny shrimp darted here and there in it, brilliant flashes of bright blue and red. Grandmother, tell us a story. The other little maids set up a chorus, Yes, Grandmother, a story, a story, until the fish that encircled them were in quite a state of excitement, dashing to to and fro and fighting each other's flashing silver tails. Hush now, my pets, grandmother said, settling herself in a curve of coral, worn

smooth by years of contact with her coiled tail. Of course, I will tell you a story. The great octopus circled, rings of red and purple, pulsing a silent lullaby as he settled over the maids, tucking them gently beneath the canopy of his spread bulk. The maids snuggled down into his tentacles and looked up at Grandmother Hydra expectantly, their eyes black circles, and the pale ovals of their faces.

The shrimp and fish calmed, slowed, and finally settled into the gently waving forest of their hair, flashes of silver and red fading into the shadows. Grandmother Hydra smiled indulgently, her teeth white and sharp as broken shells. I'll tell you the story of little Sister, a story every one

of you should know and heed. Shining eyes searched Grandmother's face expectantly, each little rasp tongue was still Little Sister lived here in the Great Hall, and was most lovely, with scales like pearls, hair of dark help, and crowned with the most beautiful of anemonies. And her voice. Her voice was as lovely as her face, and she sang many and many a ship of men to the jagged rocks.

The little maids tittered, sharp little teeth glittering behind pallid lips, but continued Grandmother with a stern look, and the little maids fell silent again and curled their tails together. Beneath the octopus. On one of her visits, she sang to

a kingship. The sea was gray and throwing up great waves of froth, hungrily crashed against the ship, But it being the ship of a king, the sides were sturdy and the sails tall, and though the sea raged about it, the ship held so Little Sister sang and sang until her throat was raw and her voice ragged with her effort. She sang to the men of the wonders to be found under the gray waves, of the white breasts and

golden treasures of our family. And the men, sick with desire for the sound of her voice and the images of her song, turned the sturdy vessel onto the rocks and flung themselves into the icy sea. And oh how little Sister laughed and laughed at the sport of it. But one man did not fling himself into the brine. For he had seen Little Sister, seen her in the waves, seen her dark eyes and her white shoulders, the wild green fall of her hair, and the flash of her teeth.

He saw her pale lips parting to sing, and her song filled his mind with black water, and his human heart with a crushing desire. So focused was Little Sister on her song and the delight of the sailors gasping their last and sinking around her, that she did not realize she had been seen. The little maids, pale as sea, bleached bone, shrunk against the octopus and chittered their sharp little teeth, until the octopus calmed them with his caressing

tentacles and settled his bulk comfortingly around them. Grandmother Hydra paused, looking into their upturned faces, then continued. Too late. Too late, Little Sister saw him, saw that his eyes were upon her, crawling upon her with a mad hunger. She dove, swimming as fast as her lovely tail would take her, but with a terrible sense of dread in her pain breast.

And she was right to feel so, for the man who had seen her was none other than the King himself, and he vowed if it took his lands, his riches, his mind, and his very soul, he would have her. Grandmother piped up a tiny voice from the pile of

little maids. What is a soul? Grandmother smiled again, that this smile was dark, her lips curling like sea worms, her eyes black as muscleshells well, my little loves, this is a part of the story you must learn, and though you are young, must hold too tight so that you may not suffer little Sister's cruel fate. A soul, my sweet darlings, is something with which man is cursed, a horrible thing that gives them a great and grasping hunger that will not let them be once it has

been stirred. And it is thus that the and of man knows no lasting happiness, and why the family of man can never live in harmony. So it was that little Sister stirred the King's soul, and how it was that it refused the king any peace, any rest, until he found her and possessed her. Such is the clutching, ravenous way of a soul, my darlings, Part two, Not with pouring of cups or with breaking of bread, but with wood that is cloven and wine that is red.

The king, whose people had lived long and long near the sea, knew of the sea witch. There was a shrinking of tiny, pale bodies into the comforting weight of the octopus at her mention, and so he knew that she, and she alone might help him. So the king came to the sea, and brought with him all of the gold and jewels from his treasure hull, and poured them into the sea, winking brilliant red and blue and yellow

as they sank beneath the gray waves. And he begged the sea Witch to hear him, but she did not, for the Sea Witch is strange, beyond strange, my darlings, and her heart is perverse and cruel above all things. And so the treasure lay in great, untouched heaps on the seafloor, and the shrimp and crabs played amongst the lost wealth of the king's realm. The king wept on his knees at the shore, promising the sea Witch all

his power and land. But as we know, this was a fool's promise, for the Sea Witch's powers surpassed even those of great Father Dagard. Here grandmother paused the long webbed bones of her fingers, dancing a secret symbol in the water. All the little maids obediently followed, their green locks, stirring as they dipped their heads respectfully. The sea Witch

has no desire for the land of man. So he had offered her his riches and his power and his lands, but for naught, and his wretched soul burned and tormented him night and day, and the memory of little sisters, pale wet breasts and dark eyes, and of her song, oh, my darlings, her song, haunted him, and there was no rest to be found for the king. His beard and his hair grew long and touched with white, and his

eyes became wild with a tortured longing. It passed that he brought to the shore other things with which he might gain the attention of the sea Witch. And so it was that slaves were captured and marched across the wet sands, and their deaths at the king king steel knives turned the water scarlet until you could not tell where the bloodied sea ended and the blazing sunset began. The sea Witch took notice of this and was pleased.

In her weird fashion, she came to the king in his fitful dreams, and touched his fevered mind and asked of his desire. So it was that little sister swam into the visions of the sea Witch with the pearl of her tail and the kelp of her hair, and so it was that she was doomed. But the sea Witch did not hasten, for time is different in her deep caves, and she had want of still more from the king. And so he stood on the shore, raving and tearing at his black hair until bloody clumps of

it floated on the red water. And still the sea Witch waited until the king demanded the lovely mates and all his lands loaded onto his boats and set to sea, where the sails were touched with torches, where there were brothers and fathers who resisted. The blood flowed over the land, until nothing remained of the King's people but stone eyed soldiers, breathing mothers and starving children, And nothing remained of his

lands but dark and smoldering villages. When the last of the King's ships were aflame, and the screams of the burning daughters and the scent of the slaughtered suns reached the deep halls of the sea Witch, finally she smiled her ghastly smile and reached out for a little sister. Part three. With rings? Will I woo her? With chains? Will I wed with ships that are broken, with blood

that is shed. When sister awoke, her heart wept, The fish that swam, and the creatures that crept glowed a terrible green and stared at her with their great blind eyes. The waters were cold, so cold, and blacker than any she had ever seen, and she knew at once she was in the cursed hall of the Sea Witch. And though Little Sister half swooned with the terror and the

crushing depth, still she struggled. But it was for naught, my darlings, for nought, because she was chained fast to the rotting timbers of a vast wrecked ship, an iron chain of man fastened cruelly about her neck and her slender, white wrists. So she wept, but her pleased to her father, to her sisters, and even to the sea Witch. Herself rose from her mouth in silver bubbles and were lost

in the black waters. It would have been a kindness of little Sister's mind, could have floated away in a silver bubble, lost among the glowing grotesqueries of the Witch's hull. But alas, my darlings, it did not. When the Sea Witch arrived, and as she laid out her rusted, ancient tools, and when she smiled her hideous smile as she began her work, little sister was awake for all part four, not with gold, for a ring, nor kisses on lips,

but with slaying of sailors and breaking of ships. When the witch had finished her unspeakable work, the iron chains fell away, and Little Sister was seized by every manner of slippery, stinging creature, held fast by clawed pincers, her face wrapped in grasping suckers, The writhing mass carried Little Sister to the surface, and though many of them died along the way, their bodies bloating and bursting into stinking slime, no longer held tight by the depths, Finally they broke

the surface, throwing her from the sea and onto her fate. Onto the wet sand went Little Sister, gaping, gasping, her lungs searing, breathing the hot air of man. The sun beat down upon her, the glare of it blinding her, the heat of it burning her. She covered her dazzled eyes with one pale, bruised arm and sobbed until darkness took her. When she awoke again, this time in the dim twilight, the king crouched over her, his eyes feverish,

his face quite mad. He reached a trembling hand out to touch Little Sister, and his hand warm as a basking rock. As he stroked her sent her into a shuddering fit of fear and loathing. S mild with his strange, blunt teeth and murmured words of love and desire, his hands roaming over her, tangling in her hair, Grasping at her breasts. He ran his hands down her lovely belly, lower and lower, until she screamed suddenly in a great agony.

It was then that the King saw what the sea Witch and her perverse cruelty had done to the Little Sister. How the witch had answered his fevered prayers. Her finn, the parts which had not been devoured by the witch's hoard, lay in bloodied tatters on the sand. Little Sister's gorgeous tail, which had once fanned the waters and shimmered like sunlight on the sea, had been raggedly hacked up the center

by the sea Witch's blades. The bones of a sea bleached skeleton's legs gleamed here and there from betwitching red muscle sewn on the Little Sister's flesh with indifferent stitches. Skeletal feet poked from the ragon ends like an eel's bony snout, from the rocks, they looked into each other's faces, Little Sister's eyes mad with pain and revulsion, the king's eyes dark the weight and the cost of his lust.

When he mounted her, roughly, spreading her bleeding tail apart on the gray sand, his black beard digging into her throat, Little Sister's mind finally found a silver bubble and floated away into deep black waters. Part five, And how will you tame her? This mad maid of thine? With kisses for seal with gold as a sign, the King wed Little Sister in a celebration that reached even the great halls of Father de The sky was lit in gold

and red with fireworks. Banners flew, and the king fed his soldier's joints of cooked beast, which is the way they do such things, and soft white bread, and much ale and wine. The king held fast to his pale bride all throughout the day and the night, and he never left her side or let his arms from about her waist. Her throat paloe as oyster shell grew red, the caresses of his beard and his teeth upon her skin, and her breasts ached with the pawing of his hot hands.

The heat of his body pressed to hers made her head heavy, her eyes half litted, her limbs slow as drifting kelp. She found that she could balance on the tattered wreck of her tail to move about in the manner of men, But the rust of the sea witch's blades bit into her anew. With each move, the stolen bones creaked, and crooked black stitches tore. In time, her little tongue grew bloody, and her jaw grew stiff with

the clenching of her teeth against the pane. Though her husband took his rough way with her and clutched her to him and kissed and pawed her, he could not make her speak or sing, which was his wish. Her mind, my little ones was too far away, her body too sick with the heat and the light and the noise and the dreadful pain of losing her family and the sea.

And though the king dressed her in gowns of heavy silk and draped her with jewels and gold, he could not stop the bleeding from her ruined tail, which followed her everywhere, leaving strange skeletal footprints throughout the halls, and rusty puddles at all the windows which faced the sea. Part six with a bit for the mouth, and a ring for the hand, with a neck chain of foam

or a waste chain of sand. As the months passed, the king raged at her, tore at her green hair, and threw her about with his heavy hands, as if to shake a song from her lips. Yet in all his anger, he still held her close through the day and through the night, and his desire for her knew no bounds. The bloodied halves of her tail bloomed black and purple with the marks of his hips, her white breasts marked with the scarlet moons of his teeth, and always,

always his hands upon her. The weight of his lust for her, the cost of his prize, lay more heavily upon his head than a crown, And he knew no peace and gave her no rest. But the true depth of the Sea Witch's cruelty finally became clear one gray morning, when little Sister stared out the window at the sea with her dark eyes, her husband behind her, one of his heavy hands tangled in the waist of her silken gown, his face buried in the salt scent of her hair,

muttering his mindless promises of love and pain. When she felt a twitch in her belly, and she knew that the seed of her loathsome human husband, grew within her, that she would bring it forth in blood and suffering, like a beast of the land. There rose a horrified moan from the clam shell, and a sudden chittering of tiny teeth, sharpest coral. As the little maids writhed in sudden agitation, the green fires of many little eyes flashed

warnings into the dark water. Hush now, little Once Grandmother Hydra gently stroked one pearl white cheek. The story is nearly complete. The teeth gnashing quieted the green fire in each little eye, slowly winking back into black, and Grandmother continued. And so it was that little sister found she had been given the most horrible curse of all. She had been given a human soul. With a scream and a strangled cry, she tore away from her husband's grasping hands.

So startled was he to hear her make a sound after these many months, that he forgot for one moment to hold on to her. She raced down the stairs of the tower, heedless of the hot agony flaring up her tail, of the tearing of stitches and cracking of bones. Blinded by tears, she cried out in despair and helplessness for her sisters, for her father to help her. The little maids were silent as the moon, their eyes black and round as stones, hanging on every word of their grandmother,

and Little Sister reached the shore. She flung herself into the sea, her heart and mind broken, begging for Belise, clawing at the belly which had finally marked her as cursed,

and lost her family and the sea forever. Her piteous cries reached father Dagen, who saw what the sea witch had done to his daughter, And though he had no power over the witch deep in her dark caves and could not bring Little Sister back to the sea, he called some of his daughters to them and gave them a knife sharp as an eel's grin, and bid them

take it to their lost and grieving sister. They rose out of the water, with their hair around their white breasts like kelp and their eyes dark as abaloney, and the king, who had chased his cold bride to the sea, sat down upon the sand without a whimper, as if struck dead. The daughters sang out to Little Sister and gave to her the knife of their father, while the king sat senseless in the sand. Lost in their voices and their pale faces part seven with the wind for

a sa seal and the sun for a sign. And so I will wed her, this white wife of mine. And so Little Sister turned to the king, and with a gull's high scream of joy and triumph, seized a handful of his thick black hair, pulled his head back, and sliced his throat open from ear to ear, spilling his hot blood onto the sand and stinking steaming gouts. He fell onto the sand with a grunt, and Little Sister plunged Father Dagan's knife into his chest, tearing the

cage of his ribs apart. With her fine, strong hands, ripped his heart from the splintered bones and wet meat, and sawed it into two ragged halves, as had been done to her tail. With wild joy, she flung the halves of his heart aside and plunged the blade into her pale belly. She sank it again and again into her flesh, stabbing at the fluttering spark of cursed humanity within her, until the blood ran in red rivulets down her battered silk gown and the knife slipped from finger.

Growing numb and still sisters, she cried, father, I'm free, I am free. She leapt into the crashing surf as all her sisters sang to her, and the blood flowed, and the heavy gown that polled and her ruined tail that could not swim carried her down, down, down, into the lovely depths. As she sang, She sang, my darlings. She sang of her agony and her captivity, of her freedom and her release. Her body slowly dissolved into froth, shimmering and bobbing as it danced to the surface. And

so it was. Though Father Dagon could not return his daughter to the sea, he could free her from the sea witch's curse and turn her to sparkling sea foam. Her sisters tenderly wreathed their dark hair and pale breasts with shimmering mantles of this foam. Before they sank back into the shelter of the sea. They sang of the death of their sister, and sailors for miles shivered in their wooden ships, and the few soldiers still left in the cold halls of the king's castle slunk away into

the woods with not a single backwards glance. Grandmother Hydra gently caressed each little head, smoothed the gently waving hair, tucked every little chin down into the octopus, who pulsed gently with slow, soothing colors. Each little pair of black eyes was low lided, heavy with sleep and with the sad lesson of little sister. Remember, my darlings, when singing to the ships, be cautious and never seen, for the cruel and grasping nature of man's soul is not to

be forgotten. All the tiny heads nodded a sleepy agreement. The little black eyes closed a pair at a time, and the little maids slept, and far above them, beyond the crashing waves, the white moon shone on the glittering bubbles of sea foam and on the ancient remains of a silent, ruined kingdom.

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