by Liz Braswell
But she was uneasy.
It wasn’t a feeling she liked.
She looked out the window at the passing scenes: gigantic ancient trees with their hard stems and their weeping branches, a group of soldiers sharing a flask, a school of little brats chasing each other around in the dirt. Almost in the way of the carriage. Tempting.
Being among the humans for all these years had been fun. There was a learning curve, of course, but that was fine: up till then it had been literally decades since the witch had been forced to learn anything new. Her mind had relished the opportunity and the chance to start again. In the Dry World she had remade herself into a ruler. In the Dry World she had no magic powers—yet—but something almost better: power over people. In the Dry World, blood flowed down, in a stream, to the ground, and pooled and dried there.
But…that stupid little mermaid. Just when Ursula was about to launch her wars and move up the ladder to queen, or empress, Ariel came back. To take it all away. Just like Triton had taken it all away from Ursula: the kingdom, her title, her entourage, her life.
What was wrong with the two of them? Why couldn’t they just leave her alone?
Ursula twisted in her seat, really thinking about the sea for the first time in years. The place where she once had power, and where the stupid mermaid should have stayed. All of Atlantica just sat there, smugly, under the water, not caring if the sea witch was exiled to a nearby cave or the Dry World or the moon. She didn’t matter to any of the merfolk at all anymore, except for Ariel and her father. It was like her revenge counted for nothing.
She began to drum her fingers on the ledge of the window. Thoughts ponderously swirled in her mind, like the slow circling current that foretold an eventual whirlpool.
Real revenge would be wiping the mer off the face of the planet. All of them.
Even if the humans never found out or understood what she had done, she would know. Anyone who survived would know. The fish would know. They would all know about an ancient, mysterious civilization that had just…vaporized one day, leaving relics and mysteries behind them.
And…if Ariel were on land when it happened, trying to find her father, and escaped the destruction of her people…She would also know. And so would her father. They would have to live with that for the rest of their lives.
And merfolk—even as polyps—lived for a very, very long time.
But if Ariel were in the sea and died with her people, well, that would mean a tidy end to all of Ursula’s problems. She would be free to play with her humans, unimpeded, until the end of time. Or until she grew bored. And bonus: Triton would be extra miserable.
A hideous grin began to spread across Vanessa’s features, far wider than should have been possible with the lips she had.
How perfect! No matter what happened—she won! Those were the sea witch’s favorite odds. And no messy spells involving the Elder Gods were needed.
“Flotsam!” she shouted, knocking on the window. “We’re making one stop before the castle. Take me to…the shipyards.”
Flotsam touched his hat.
Ursula began to laugh, feeling like her old self again.
She lay in the warm sand, exhausted and not a little stunned. Clean, fresh seawater lapped at her feet.
Flounder turned sad circles just off the shore. Jona stood close by Ariel’s head, obviously resisting the urge to comfort-groom her.
“What now?” Flounder eventually asked.
“I thought this would be it this time, I really did,” Ariel said, a little hollowly. “Once again, I thought I would rescue Dad and he would forgive me and we would return home and everyone would be happy. Am I stupid?”
“No, you’re not stupid, Ariel!” Flounder said, worried at her tone.
“I believe your sea witch has been practicing evil and trickery for centuries,” Jona pointed out reasonably. “You haven’t even practiced evil once. She’s much better at it than you.”
Ariel smiled tiredly. “Thanks, Jona.”
She sat up and hugged her knees, looking at her toes, the sand, the water beyond.
Ursula isn’t sitting around gloating—or maybe she is, but she’s also planning her next move. Get up, girl! No time for self-pity.
She stretched the kinks out of her body and stood, ready to make the sad walk back into the sea.
“What about Eric?” Flounder asked. “Are you going to let him know what happened? So he can go back to searching?”
Oops. Of course she had to let Eric know what had happened. She was so consumed with her own failure she had entirely forgotten the prince—who had a whole kingdom resting on the fate of Ursula. Thoughtless, Ariel.
“Oh, yes…But I don’t know how to let him know. I can’t get near the castle.”
“I can,” Jona volunteered.
“That’s right, you can! Hmm…” She took off the leather strap she had been wearing on her wrist, the one with the little golden bail that once held the nautilus. Then she tossed it into the air and touched her comb, using the power of the trident to summon and affix something to the end.
“Here.” She threw the necklace to Jona. “Give this to him. He’ll understand. And now…I have to return to Atlantica and face everyone.”
“You won’t do it alone,” Flounder promised, patting her with a fin.
He paced the castle anxiously, waiting for—something. Some kind of word. Everything, the last few years of his tortured life, could be resolved in the next few hours if she succeeded! And if not…
…Well, if not, we’ll deal with it.
He was so deep in his thoughts he slammed, head-on, into Carlotta.
“Egads! Sorry!” Eric extricated himself from the folds of cloth and aprons and clothes she was carrying.
“It’s all right,” Carlotta said, patting herself down as best she could with one hand and fixing her little hat. “I was just coming to do the princess’s linens.”
“You? Isn’t that one of the younger maids’ jobs? Maria, or Lalia, or one of those younger girls?”
“Well”—Carlotta bit her lip—“it takes a special touch to, er, tuck in the edges properly and…poke around a bit, you know….”
Eric gave her a severe look. “Carlotta, is the entire downstairs staff in league together on something?”
“No,” she answered primly, refolding a pillowcase expertly over her arm. “That’s why I’m the one fussing about the princess’s room, and not someone as can’t be trusted.”
The prince sighed. “I don’t know whether to be relieved or annoyed that you’re involved. I suppose I’ll tell you as straight as I can: Grimsby will get into serious trouble if he’s caught helping out, er, foreign powers. So far I’ve heard nothing about you.”
Carlotta growled and put her hands on her hips, pushing her chest into the prince’s. “Why, that low-down, dirty…so-and-so! She threatened Mr. Grimsby? How much more can she get away with? Prince Eric, it’s not my place, but Tirulia is a modern country. We will not be subject to the policies and habits of such arcane despots! You must reveal her to the public as the beast she is!”
“Er…” He looked side to side desperately for an escape. She had him pressed practically against the wall.
“And also that she is a murderer,” Carlotta whispered, raising her eyebrows suggestively.
“Carlotta, hush, you’re talking about Princess Vanessa. That’s treason. And besides, she couldn’t have done it. Her powers don’t work—uh, I mean, the Ibrian just seemed to have died.”
“She’s a clever little sea princess,” the maid said. “Do you think she might not be working on ways around her…limitations? That she hasn’t found some? Perhaps, Your Highness, you haven’t been following her latest hobbies.” She gestured with her chin out the window. “Although many noble ladies do garden, I suppose—there’s nothing unusual in that. And now, I really must make the lady’s bed before the lady threatens me with something or other.” And with that she flounced off.
Eric looked out the window she ha
d indicated, at the neat rows of flowers before the willow grove. Everything looked normal, if a little dull since his grandmother had grown too frail to keep taking a personal hand in her seaside garden.
Then, squinting, he saw a patch that looked different from the rest. Freshly turned, and irregularly planted.
He leapt downstairs as fast as he could and ran outside.
The fact that there was an entirely new, if tiny, garden on castle grounds that Eric hadn’t heard anything about was…disheartening. It was just one more detail that cemented Eric’s flailing, ignorant, and useless place in his own castle. His grandmother would have known about it immediately. Would have been told the moment the gardeners started spending their time on anything besides her heirloom roses and exotic perennials.
The plants growing in this new patch were not roses—though they did more or less fall into the category of exotic perennial. Eric studied the leaves and little identifying tags.
Artemisia. Okay, that was like wormwood, what they made absinthe out of. His grandmother had always liked their pretty woolly silver leaves.
Belladonna. Clary sage, henbane. Old-fashioned herbs.
Mandrake.
He recognized the last because a sailor had once shown him a particularly fine specimen of the root; it looked like a little person. “There’s folks in Bretland will pay a king’s ransom for this. I just have to tell them it screamed when the farmer pulled it out of the soil.”
Eric shook his head in wonder. Even to someone more skilled in the arts of the sea and music than farming, it was obvious Vanessa was trying her hand at a witch’s garden.
Her magic didn’t work on land. So she was trying to learn new magic. Land magic.
Was that…a thing?
Was witchcraft real?
If it was, could Vanessa harness its powers? Would she be able to summon undead armies to do her bidding, call down storms and plagues on countries they were at war with?
Would she be able to cast new charms? Would Eric once again find himself foggy and forgetting, hypnotized and half-awake? Would he do everything his terrible wife said?
He swallowed, trying to control the panic that was coming on.
Boneset. Some said it was good for aches and pains. Modern doctors disagreed.
Wolfsbane.
Foxglove. A pretty flower, and dangerous to animals. It was also known as digitalis and contained a substance that destroyed the heart—literally. Eric remembered his father telling him not to let Max anywhere near it if they found some in the woods.
Whether or not witchcraft was real, poison certainly was.
No one really believed the Ibrian had died of natural causes. And here, more or less, was the proof: holes in the ground where some of the flowers had been pulled out. Used. The plant could be put into anything: tea, soup, tobacco mix for a pipe…Vanessa could make good on her threat at any time. Grimsby would keel over from a heart attack and no one would suspect anything—it would be sad, but an entirely natural, predictable death.
Nothing Eric could ever do would convince the butler to abandon his post, short of tying him up and putting him on a boat to the lands in the west against his will. Eric ran his hands through his hair, frustrated and at wit’s end.
A large bird landed on a statue behind him, casting a cold black shadow. The prince turned, fully expecting a crow or raven, as befitted the mood of the garden.
But it was a seagull. With something stringy and brown in its mouth.
“Hello,” Eric said politely. “Did Ariel send you?”
The bird answered by dropping the thing it held onto the ground. It squawked.
“Thank you…?” He picked up the leather cord; it was the one Ariel wore around her wrist. Now, letting it flow through his fingers, he realized it was the strap from the necklace that Vanessa used to wear, the one with the nautilus on it.
(Now the princess wore a gold chain that dipped down under her bodice. He had no idea what sort of pendant was on it—probably something unsettling and hideous.)
A white scroll was tied to one end of the strap; it unfurled of its own accord into his hand. On it, sketched in gold, was a carriage with a half-octopus, half-woman thing emerging through the door. There was also a drawing of a crown with what looked like a slash or a tear through it.
Eric swore when he realized what it meant. “It was a trap. The king wasn’t even there!” The little scroll faded into glitter, disappearing entirely even as he tried to grasp at the bits.
But if Ariel had cast this pretty little spell, he realized, it meant that she had to be in the water. Which meant she was safe. Just…disappointed, and probably grieving. His heart went out to the poor queen of the merfolk. They had both been so sure their respective ordeals were almost over….
“Is it back to searching the castle again, then?” Eric asked aloud, partially to the seagull. “Well, if that’s what we have to do, that’s what we will do. Guess I’d better expand the search to the rest of the grounds, too, huh? I wish you could help. I could use another set of eyes. Ones that aren’t easily fooled by magic. I wish I had an animal friend who could watch Grimsby for me. I’m afraid Max isn’t much up to the task.”
The bird squawked again and shook its tail. Almost like it was saying, Yes, but what can you do? Then it settled down to preen itself.
Eric laughed and reached out to scratch it on its neck, like he would have Max. The bird seemed to enjoy it immensely.
I deserve this, Ariel thought as she delivered the news of her failure again and again and again. Of course the general populace was disappointed. She expected the frowns and the occasional dramatic tears.
Telling her sisters was extremely unpleasant. They wept real tears and swished their tails back and forth in dismay. And then they swam off, all but Attina, who gave her a quick hug before leaving.
The Queen’s Council was also disappointed—though not terribly surprised, and quick to talk about the future, and Ariel’s loyalty to her people, and how maybe further rescue attempts should be turned over to those who weren’t the acting queen.
“We should send an army of merfolk—with legs—up through the castle, and seize it,” the captain of the merguards suggested. Her eyes shone and her partner, a giant bluefish, nodded eagerly. “It will be like battles of old, sword against sword! We will retrieve the king triumphantly and remind humans of our might!”
“And while you are waving your shiny swords, the humans will be shooting at you with their guns,” Ariel said wearily. “That’s why I wanted to do this alone—and stealthily. To limit the loss of life.”
“Forget the army. Use the power of the sea,” a merman senator suggested. “Use your trident and teach the humans a lesson!”
“Yes,” Ariel said, leaning back on her throne. “I’ve actually thought of that. I could destroy the castle and everyone in it with one mighty wave. The advantage of killing Ursula this way is that my father and all of her prisoners would be transformed immediately upon her death and released directly into the sea.”
Flounder and Sebastian exchanged surprised—and shocked—looks. Had she really considered this?
Ariel turned her eyes to the glowing dome of the surface to avoid seeing their faces. Yes, she had thought about it.
If her goal was truly just to get her father back and wreak revenge on Ursula, it was probably the most direct and efficient route. A giant tsunami wiping out a kingdom’s castle and all within…Some would call it a natural disaster, but others would suspect the truth and tell stories. Maybe people would start respecting the sea again, properly. Maybe they would stop fishing it out and dumping their garbage into it.
And, from an artistic perspective, how utterly apocalyptic and perfect: destroying her enemy and possibly her lover at the same time. Very Old God. They’d be singing about her for centuries.
One side of her mouth tugged into a wry smile. The old Ariel wouldn’t have even had these thoughts; she would have dismissed them immediately as horrific and
unthinkable.
Now she could think them. She just couldn’t do them.
“No, guys,” she said aloud. “I’m not actually killing everyone in the castle in a tidal wave of utter destruction.”
Sebastian and Flounder looked chagrined that she had read their minds—but also relieved.
“Your Majesty, I must attend the Planktonic Life Interior Committee meeting,” Klios the dolphin said apologetically, with a bow. “I will continue to ponder our problem of rescuing the king. But for now, other duties call.”
“Yes, go. We could all use a break anyway,” Ariel said, rubbing her head for the second time that week. “We’ll reconvene on the next tide to discuss further.”
As most of the council swam off, Sebastian approached her, sideways and slowly. “Well, then, while we are taking a break thinking about all this…maybe we can talk about something else? My next masterpiece, maybe? A celebration of the tides. A celebration of the sea. A celebration celebrating the return of your voice, starring…”
Ariel narrowed her eyes at him.
“…well, your voice?” He gave her a winning crabby grin.
“Queens. Do not. Sing. Sebastian.”
“But Ariel, now that you can sing again…”
“My father did not put on pantomimes or act in farces. My mother did not perform burlesque. My station does not allow for such gross frippery. No one would take me seriously again.”
“Your mother’s voice was terrible.”
“Sebastian!”
“Sorry, but it’s the truth. And you are not your father….”
“No, but would you suggest this if I were a prince? Somehow I think not.”
“But Ariel! Think of your people! They have lived without hearing your voice for so long! Don’t they deserve to hear your singing?”
“My singing is my singing,” she said, bending down to put her eyes on level with the little crab. “My voice is my voice. I gave it away myself and I got it back again myself. It is not for anyone else’s enjoyment or amusement. If I want to sing, I will sing. Right now I use my voice to give orders and run a kingdom. Someday, if our situation changes, perhaps I will consider your idea. Until that time, however, I ask that you not speak to me of it again.”
