by Liz Braswell
She dipped her hand and the dagger turned into a comb once more. She set it carefully back in her hair.
How much more time did she have to search the bedroom? Had that interruption lengthened or shortened Vanessa’s bath ritual?
Ariel risked another peep to see if she could tell.
Ursula appeared to be lounging carelessly in her bath again, full-on Vanessa, no tentacles in sight.
The mermaid could now see that standing close to the tub was a little maid waiting in attendance, maybe eight years old. Though her body faced the bath and Vanessa, she kept her eyes directed out at the sea, through the windows. She hugged a giant fluffy towel tight, ready for the moment Ursula decided it was time to get out.
She was biting her lip.
It was obvious she knew something about Ursula’s true nature—how could she not, as bath attendant? She must have seen things even more terrible than tentacles….
Ariel said a silent prayer for the poor girl and prepared to tiptoe back.
But just as she reached the door, something glittery caught her eye from the frumpy pile of Vanessa’s hastily cast-off clothes.
She gulped, for once glad she didn’t have a voice to vocalize whatever it was that came up from her heart.
The nautilus.
Ursula’s totem of power, the necklace she wore everywhere. The token that held Ariel’s voice.
Barely able to believe it was true, Ariel ducked down and crawled over to the chair.
With a gesture that was less “regally acquiring what was rightfully hers” and more like the crazed swipe for a sea bean by a starving mer, she snatched up the nautilus and held it to her chest. Dazed and in shock from her find, of having it in her hand, she rose and stumbled back to the door.
The little maid spotted her.
Ariel’s mouth went dry and her heart sank.
She stared at the girl, and the girl watched Ariel with large, hollow eyes.
Realizing how strangely ironic it was, Ariel put a finger to her lips.
Please.
The little girl glanced over at Vanessa in her bath.
“My dark and villainous plans, how they unfurl—no, wait. Was that how it went? I can’t remember…” Ursula sang and muttered to herself, heedless of her maid.
Please!
Ariel threw the word through her eyes, across the space between her and the little girl, praying for her sympathy.
The little girl gave the faintest nod.
Ariel put her hands together as best she could, clutching the nautilus, and bowed her head.
Thank you. If ever I find a way to repay you, I swear I shall.
Not that the little girl would ever know, but the gods would.
Ariel crept to the door…and then bolted out of the castle.
She pounded through the castle as fast as she could, new heels hitting the stony floors with surprising force. Faces were a blur as she sprinted to the exit.
“Woof?” came from somewhere near the ground at one point.
Max! Your dinner is ready! she thought, and mentally promised to pet him later, if there was a later. She risked looking up to see if Eric was there with him—but he wasn’t.
As soon as her feet touched sand she redoubled her pace, making for the hidden lagoon. Several guards looked after her curiously, but not too curiously; she was behaving like a scorned lover or someone who had been in a fight with a friend. In a castle full of enemies and noble spies, a scampering maid drew little interest from people with better things to do.
The hot sun hit her back like a reproving shove. At that moment she hated everything about being human. The long skirts of her dress tangled in her new legs and chafed her skin. Her stupid boots were clumsy in the sand, like she was stepping into holes and pulling her feet out of sucking, grabby mud.
But soon she was in the blessedly quiet cove where the wind was still and the noises of humans and their activities far off and easily forgotten. She sank down onto the sand like she would have as a mermaid: tail folded under her, leaning to the side a little, one hip up, the other down. The instinct to flip her fin impatiently went nowhere; the thought traveled down her spine and stopped where her legs split.
She opened her tightly cupped hands and looked at what lay in her palm.
The nautilus shell was exquisite, brown and white and perfectly striped. The math that lay like a dazzling creation spell over all who lived in the sea showed clearly in the spiral, each cell as great as the sum of the two previous sections. Everything in the ocean was a thing of beauty and numbers, even in death.
Mermaids could live for a long time, but their bodies became foam that dissipated into nothing when they died.
The poor little mollusk who lived in this shell had a very short life, but his shell could last for centuries.
Ariel sighed and brushed her fingers over it, feeling strangely melancholy despite the triumph she literally held in her hands. Years of being mute could be swept away in a second. Years of frustration, years of silent crying, years of anger.
And then what?
If she destroyed it, what would it change?
Ursula would immediately know she was back. That she had been in the castle, practically under the sea witch’s nose.
And then what would happen to Ariel’s search for her father? This was more complicated than a simple diversion; this could set everything back and make her whole task harder.
Queen Ariel held the nautilus and considered thoughtfully.
But the little mermaid didn’t think. She acted.
Before she realized fully what she was doing Ariel had smashed the nautilus on a sharply faceted rock.
It didn’t break like a normal shell. It shattered like a human vessel. Shards flew in all directions equally, unhampered by gravity or luck.
Ariel pitched forward.
She choked, no longer breathing the air of the Dry World. Her arms flailed up like a puppet’s. Her torso whipped back and forth, pummeled by unseen forces. Something flew into her mouth, up her nose, and suffused her entire body with a heat that threatened to burn. It rushed into her lungs and expanded, expelling whatever breath she had left, pushing blood to her extremities, pushing everything out that wasn’t it, leaving room for nothing else.
Ariel collapsed.
It was over.
It was like the thing, whatever it was, had been absorbed by her body and had now dissipated into her blood and flesh.
She took a breath. Her heart started beating again.
She hadn’t been aware it had stopped.
She coughed. A few grains of sand came out.
And then she sang.
His hands were raised, trying to draw more out of the violins with his left while holding back the percussion with his right.
He fumbled.
It was like a pile of books had fallen from a high shelf onto his head, and, having broken his skull, somehow managed to directly impart their contents into his brain.
It was like a sibling had snuck up behind him, and, thinking he was prepared—expecting him to get out of the way—whacked him with a wooden baton. The crack on the pate was twice as painful as it should have been, the simple blow compounded by shock that a sister would strike so hard. Feelings and pain were utterly mixed.
It was like he were suddenly afflicted by a grievous, mortal fit of the body: as if his heart or kidney or some other important organ had seized up and failed.
He experienced the wonder of taking a first breath after the terrible pain receded with a clearheaded, deep relief that presaged either death or recovery.
Eric blinked at the orchestra and singers before him. Instruments faltered. A hundred pairs of eyes looked back at him expectantly.
He saw, as if for the first time, the plain yet comely smile of the second soprano, the brown mole on the likeable brow of the basso profundo, the L-shaped smudge on the copper timpani. A veil had been drawn away.
He was Prince Eric, and he was conducting a practice
session for an opera.
Not sailing a pleasure ship or playing his recorder to himself, or, more appropriately, running this part of his parents’ kingdom, which was his duty, his chore, his right.
Something was very, very wrong.
He gulped.
But the people before him waited on his very fingertips. For now they were his kingdom. They needed their prince.
He would deal with personal revelations later.
And so he conducted, and when the soprano sang he winced, and tried not to think of another singer with hair as bright as fire and eyes like the sea.
Vanessa stood in the tub slowly drying herself, starting with her face. She always left the lower half of her body in the water as long as possible.
She sang quietly, luxuriating in the gradual process. The one thing the humans did right—at least the princesses did—was take the proper time and care in making themselves presentable to the world.
Her little maid stood attentively nearby.
“Mmm, something-something, and I shall be Queen of the Sea, mm-hmm…keeRACK!”
Suddenly the princess heaved violently. It felt like her uvula had been pulled violently out through her lips. Like her mouth had been turned inside out. Like the meat and blood of her lungs were following close by.
She coughed, certain that blood was going to spray out. But there was nothing on the piles and piles of white, sweet-smelling bubbles that filled the tub. No scarlet spittle, no physical proof of the massive change within her.
“My voice,” she said, the words coming out in a low-pitched growl. The tenor of a much older, much larger, much…different woman.
“MY VOICE!” she screeched, pretty red lips squared and askew. She clenched her hands into fists, shaking with rage.
Her maid looked concerned, obviously unsure what had caused this outburst. She waited nervously for orders.
Vanessa, princess of Tirulia, clawed her way out of the tub and stalked up the steps, white foam trailing off her like smoke. Naked and not cold. Vareet, unnoticed, hurried after her with another towel. The princess dug desperately through the pile of clothes she had taken off so carelessly before and threw them every which way in her panic.
“Where is my necklace?!”
But of course it was gone.
She spun to focus her wrath on the tiny maid, who tried to hide behind the giant towel she still held at the ready. Not that her mistress hadn’t lost her temper before, of course; she had many times, when no one else was present. But this time seemed particularly bad. Vanessa’s teeth bit into her bottom lip; she didn’t even notice the tiny droplets of dark blood that welled up. Her cheeks sucked in under high cheekbones until her face looked like a skull. Her eyes were wild and the whites seemed almost yellow, and sickly.
“WHERE IS MY NECKLACE?” the princess demanded again, tapping her chest to indicate it where it used to hang.
Vareet shook her head, terrified.
“BAH!”
Vanessa drew her hand back. For a moment it seemed like she really would strike the girl. But the sea witch wasn’t dumb; the maid had been within her sight at all times. She had nothing to do with the missing nautilus shell or its obvious destruction.
It could have been a simple sneak thief, of course. It could have been some sort of accident. But it wasn’t. It was…
“The hussy,” Ursula growled, rolling the words out.
She paused her rant, savoring the sounds. Her stolen voice had been fun to play with, worked wonders on others, and caused pain for the one from whom it was ripped. That was more than enough. But…she rather enjoyed hearing her real voice again. It was a voice with depth, with command. With character and substance. It was so her. Not at all like that bubbling, perfect-pitched, whiny little merthing.
“The hussy is back,” she repeated.
Vareet took one timid step backward, obviously torn between terror at this strange change in her mistress—and fear of her mistress herself.
“She was in here, somehow, and stole my necklace, and destroyed it.”
Vanessa looked around, at the door to her changing room that led to her bedroom…but there was no evidence of anything out of place.
“This is a problem,” she said, fingering her throat. “A disturbing development I need to deal with immediately—and permanently.
“GUARDS!”
She sang.
Wordless hymns of the sea: immediate, extemporized passages about waves and sunlight and tides and the constant, beautiful pressure of water on everything. The glory of seaweed slowly swaying, the delicious feeling that foretold a storm in the Dry World and turbulence below.
The music came out of her without pause, driven by years of observing, seeing, listening, enjoying, experiencing the world and unable to express it. The wonder and sadness of being alive. The joy of being a mermaid; the pain of being the only one like herself—the only mermaid who had been mortal, temporarily, and then lost everything.
When she finally stopped, her eyes were closed and her hands rested on her human lap, and she felt the dry, human sun and imagined wet things.
She opened her eyes.
The silence was now deafening in the lagoon.
She had the voice of the gods, some had said. The sort of voice that could lure landlubbers to sea and sailors to their deaths, a voice that could launch a thousand ships. She had the voice of the wind and the storm and the crash of the waves and the ancient speech of the whale. She had the voice of the moon as it glided serenely across the sky and the stars as they danced behind. She had the voice of the wind between the stars that mortals never heard, that rushed and blew and ushered in the beginning and end of time.
She sat for a moment quietly, remembering how it sounded but enjoying the silence.
The songs were from the old Ariel. Perhaps the new Ariel, too.
She coughed and tried again, cocking her head and effecting a stern look.
“Just do it, Flounder; I need the tax audits by the third tide so we have something to present to the council.
“Sebastian, I don’t care about the gala or its details. I’m sure it’s all fine in your very capable claws.
“And with the cutting of this ribbon, I hereby declare the Temple of Physical Arts open to all!”
Ariel smiled, then threw back her head and laughed—but it was brittle.
She picked up a shard of the nautilus and sighed.
Her voice had been such an important part of her life before. The merfolk celebrated her for it. Her father excused her occasionally questionable behavior because of it. Eric loved the girl who rescued him, because of her singing….
But…
…she’d never really enjoyed singing for anyone else. In fact, she hated audiences. She sang because she liked to sing. She just…felt…something, and had to sing it. If she were happy, or sad, or angry…she would go off by herself and sing to the coral, sing to the seaweed, sing to an audience of sea snails or tube worms (who listened, but never commented). Most of her mergirlhood had been spent swimming around, exploring, singing to herself. Making up little stories in her head and then putting them into song.
Ruefully she remembered the concert that Sebastian had so carefully planned, which she had missed, which her dad had punished her for, which led him to set the little crab on her case, and so on….
She hadn’t been deliberately disobedient. She just…forgot.
Sometimes people thought she was a snob because of the way she acted. But she wasn’t trying to be a diva—she was just a young mer whose head was full of fantasies.
And by taking away her voice, Ursula had stolen what Ariel treasured most: the only way she knew how to express those stories.
Without spoken language—and no knowledge of signs, back then—she wasn’t able to tell Eric what had happened to her or how she loved him. She wasn’t able to tell her father not to trade places with her. She wasn’t able to rule her kingdom without the help of a fleet of people to interpret and s
peak for her.
She had lost a means of communicating her desires, her commands, her wishes, her needs, her thoughts.
“How do you feel?”
Ariel looked up, suddenly aware of the gull who was perched quietly on a nearby rock, watching her with a curious, beady eye.
“Jona,” Ariel said, relishing the sound of the name. “How long have you been sitting there?”
“I spotted you the moment you came out of the castle. But it looked like you needed a moment to yourself. I was going to interrupt if you kept on with that singing.”
“That singing? Why?” Ariel asked archly. Her hands signed as she spoke, too used to the process.
“Well, you were getting a little loud.”
The mermaid blinked at the gull.
Then she began to laugh.
She laughed so hard she began to have trouble breathing. Great, pealing gulps of laughter and air: it felt good to laugh and have it actually come out, not just be a silent recognition of something mildly amusing.
“I…beg your pardon?” Jona said, a trifle offended.
“Oh…it’s just…” She breathed deep, trying to control herself, not wanting to. “I was just sitting here thinking about singing, and how much everyone loved to hear me sing, and how I was celebrated for my voice, and how someone fell in love with me for my voice, and you…” She lost it for a moment again.
Jona turned her head back and forth, trying to get a good look at the mermaid with one eye, then the other. “I mean, well, it was…nice. I just meant that you were going to call over the guards.”
“‘Nice’? You’ve heard better?” Ariel asked, half-joking, half-curious.
Jona opened her beak for a moment, closed it, choosing her words carefully now that it was obvious she had offended. “Your singing is extraordinary; it is epic; it has something in common with the very forces of nature, like the wind and the sea itself.
“If you were to ask me how I felt about it personally, however, I would say I prefer the cries of my own kind, or the mindless trill of a sandpiper, or the sad call of a plover. They’re more accessible.”
Ariel put her hand to her face to stop the next peal of laughter. She snorted instead.
