by Liz Braswell
And there was Ursula, perhaps rightfully exiled from the kingdom, but exiled nonetheless. Aged. Forced to deal with her fate alone. Bitter and resentful. In swims this pretty mermaid…
“Oh, my cod,” Ariel said, putting a hand to her head. “What an idiot I was. I didn’t even stop to think….She’s a witch. ‘Hello, could you give me a pair of legs? For close to free? Even though you don’t like my father?’”
“Exactly. Then she wins the bet, you lose your voice, she gets your dad, she becomes princess, you swim sadly back down to the bottom of the sea…But then you resurface in her life, and you’re Queen of the Sea. You manage to get your voice back. You control storms and the heart of the man she is married to….”
“I do?” Ariel asked with delight.
“I’m just telling a story here. But yes, obviously. You’ve become a queen, a woman with a complicated personality. You have hidden depths and a wisdom and intelligence that all went unnoticed before by an idiot prince whose heart couldn’t listen to anything his ears couldn’t hear.”
Ariel felt a little giddy. “I control storms and the heart of a prince. I like that.” If she were in the sea she would have been swooning, thrashing her tail and spinning in circles until she was dizzy.
Well, as a girl. Not as queen, not where anyone could have seen her.
Eric smiled. “I think my character would have a song about how he’s been caught by a siren and is under her spell.”
Ariel made a face. “I’m not a siren. Trust me. I have cousins…distant cousins…We don’t get along. But what were you saying? About Ursula?”
“Just that everything she did to you and your father didn’t keep you down. You popped up, older, stronger, more powerful than ever. She realizes she didn’t beat you enough last time. Now she wants complete victory, which involves wiping out your home.”
“If she wants complete victory, why not kill my father outright?”
“Well, that’s the thousand-gold-piece question, isn’t it?” Eric said with a frown. “Why bother pretending to ship him off to Ibria—why bother keeping him here at all?”
“She’s up to something,” Ariel agreed. “Something involving him. I feel like I started some sort of chain of events in her mind when I reminded her of my existence.”
“Well, maybe this has something to do with it,” the prince said, pulling out the piece of vellum Vareet had drawn on.
“Oh,” Ariel said, taking it. “What a cute…um…walrus.”
“It’s a bunny,” Eric corrected with great dignity. “You’ve never seen one. Anyway, it’s what’s on the back that’s important. Ursula’s maid risked a lot by letting me ‘discover’ this….”
Ursula’s maid again. Ariel’s heart broke a little when she thought of the girl, remaining silent so the mermaid could sneak out with the necklace unseen. Despite her life being in danger now, she still chose to help Ariel.
The pictures on the back of the strange-feeling vellum were far more disturbing than the weird Dry World creature on the front. There were lines and shapes that looked like they could be runes but shuddered when she tried to look at them too closely. Curves somehow didn’t bend properly on the paper, and constellations of dots made her sick when she studied them, suggesting terrible things.
Ariel shook her head at the blasphemous sigils. “I don’t know what these say for certain. They aren’t mer runes; they’re like a twisted, upside-down version of them. If I had to guess I would say they’re black runes of the Deep Ones. Forbidden, evil…the whole deal.”
“Can you read them at all?”
“This is just a noise, I think,” she said, pointing. “Like äi äi. No idea what ‘phtaqn’ means. This here I think refers to a circuex, a powerful spell that is capable of disrupting—or joining—worlds. This looks like the mer word for ‘blood,’ and that looks like a determinative for ‘god.’ Or possibly ‘great’ or ‘lots.’”
“So…”
“So she needs blood, the blood of a god.” Ariel bit her lip, seeing where it was all leading. “Ancient blood flows through my father’s veins….That would explain why she’s keeping him around. She needs him for something, something involving magic. But for what exactly I can’t tell.”
Ariel felt sick as she said the words. She pushed the paper back at him.
“Here, please take this. I don’t enjoy the feel of dead human skin.”
“Dead…? Human…?” Eric took it back, aghast.
Ariel closed her eyes and rubbed her knuckles into her forehead. “This is all…so…frustrating! We do one thing, and she does another to block it. We think we know what her plans are; it turns out she has something even bigger and sicker in mind. She always has an answer, always has a countermove. And she knows what my weaknesses are—and yours, too. If I didn’t care about my father, if you didn’t care about Grimsby or your people, this would all be over in a flash.”
“Back to your old ‘children playing a game of koralli,’” Eric said with a wry smile. “But if we were human kids playing chess, at least, an adult could come over and put an end to everything eventually.”
An interesting point, but how relevant? If it were her and Eric against Ursula, who was the adult in the scenario? Her father? An Elder God? Or…
Something was just at the edge of her mind, like a playful eel nosing in and out of the sunlight at the edge of the shore. Slippery, sparkling, and just out of her grasp.
“I think if adults—if everyone just knew what she was really like,” she said slowly, “who she really was, they would do something. But how do we convince anyone she’s an evil tentacled sea witch?”
“I don’t know. Even if you just managed to show one person…there’s no way to prove it to anyone else, much less everyone else. Enough people to do something about it,” Eric said.
Ariel thought of poor terrified Vareet, who had seen her mistress change in the tub. She was the only one in the entire castle who knew the truth of the matter—very viscerally—besides Grimsby and Carlotta.
“But don’t worry, we’ll figure it out,” he added, seeing the look on her face. He took her hand and squeezed it. “We have to, and soon. So she doesn’t have a chance to do that ritual or whatever.”
But Ariel didn’t feel as much faith in them as Eric did. Somehow, despite being a rapidly aging human, he had managed to keep some of his youthful optimism, while she had lost some of hers. It was kind of adorable.
She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.
He smiled in surprise. He put his hand up to touch her face, perhaps brush away a stray hair…before his fingers did what they really wanted and pulled her chin closer to him.
He kissed her on the lips.
It was brief, but in the moment their skin touched she closed her eyes and consumed him: his smell, his warmth, the movement of his mouth against hers.
It was like…
A good-night kiss.
Over too quickly, but every moment of it meant a universe.
All those years before, and all those years in between…She had dreamed so many different scenarios of this moment! Ariel as a human, Ariel as a mer. Eric as a mer! Eric opening his eyes right when she rescued him and kissing her, falling in love with her on the spot. Eric kissing her in the boat, when she really, really thought he was going to, and the night was so romantic….Kissing her on any of the three mornings, or realizing at the last minute Vanessa was a fake and kissing Ariel instead, and the wedding would have been for them….
And here it finally was. She was a human—temporarily—and he was a human, and it was night, and they were getting ready to leave, and it was cold, and she had barnacle-bumps on her skin, and her feet hurt, and…
She found herself laughing, albeit a little breathlessly.
“That wasn’t the way I imagined it would be….”
“‘Imagined it would be’?” Eric asked with a smile. “You’ve been thinking about me? Does that mean I have indeed caught the heart of a mermaid?”
>
“You did years ago when she was an idiot minnow, and look where it got us,” she said, pushing his chest. “Where it got me.”
“I know, I was just—” He sighed. “I know.”
She kissed him again on the cheek.
“Let’s…just…see how it goes,” she said, heading off to the water.
He watched her walk straight into the waves, no hesitation, no floating, until it was up to her neck.
“Hey—aren’t you going to ruin your clothes?” he called.
She rolled her eyes and dove, letting her tail hit the surface like a whale’s, slapping a spray in his direction.
He watched Ariel’s head disappear under the waves and a fin appear in its place. He couldn’t help smiling.
He had just witnessed the transformation of a girl into a mermaid. Back into a mermaid, he corrected himself. Despite the terrible things they had endured—and probably more before it was all over—despite the years he had lost in a haze to Vanessa’s spell, he felt like a delirious little kid who had seen his first firefly, or bioluminescent jellyfish, or shooting star. Everything was beautiful and anything was possible: the world was an amazing place just waiting to be explored.
He laughed and picked up a handful of sand and pebbles, throwing it into the ocean.
Though her whole walking straight into the water without floating or swimming thing was more than a little creepy. Almost like a lead soldier.
Eric took off his shoes to walk his way back home barefoot; despite how cold it was he wanted to feel the sand on his feet. It was part of the sea, part of her home.
When he entered the castle with his hair askew and trailing beach detritus, no one was much shocked. It was just Mad Prince Eric, out on one of his walks again.
He thought about Ursula. Sometimes winning wasn’t just about playing fair, but knowing the rules so well that you could exploit discrepancies. That was the sea witch’s whole method of operation.
He puzzled over ways to expose her true identity to the people who fawned on her and protected her. But as a musician and a prince his ideas were mostly dramatic, elaborate, and complicated. Like throwing a magnificent masked ball, for instance, and installing a hall of mirrors like at Versailles, and then having a bathtub full of salt water there somehow as a prop for Ursula to fall into, causing her to revert to her cecaelian state. Then her image would be reflected a thousand times, and everyone would see….
He scribbled that down as an idea for a later opera. Rather unwieldy in real life.
The prince felt bad about the opera he was supposed to be working on—he hadn’t been to a rehearsal in days. Still, kings of the sea, mermaids, and evil sea hags came first. The real ones, that was.
(Eric did, however, make time to occasionally visit the poor polyps still trapped on Vanessa’s vanity. He gave them little updates on things and told them to buck up. He had no idea if they understood, but it seemed like the right thing to do.)
He found it easiest to think logically when he worked at the puzzle the way an artist or musician would: by sketching out a stage direction plot, with Ursula in the middle and, around her, all the people she had vowed to kill if she was ever threatened in any way. He almost felt like his old self, sitting at his desk under the window and scribbling away—but this time clearheaded and glamour-free.
“Prince Eric,” Grimsby greeted him, a trifle coldly, bringing in hot tea. It was served the traditional Tirulian way, with lots of sugar and cinnamon and cardamom.
Eric sighed. The other man had still been distant and, well, grim, since the prince had ordered him to stop helping.
“Grimsby old boy, someday you’re going to have to forgive me for trying to protect your life. It’s what princes do. Well, good ones, anyway.”
“Of course, sir,” Grimsby said crisply. He put down a napkin and the saucer and eyed Eric’s drawing. “Oh, you’re still working on the opera. I daresay you have a lot else on your mind right now….”
“No kidding. And no, this isn’t for the opera. I should really just put that on hold for a while, until other things…clear up.”
“I wouldn’t necessarily do that, Your Highness. Everyone is looking forward to the show. Now may not be the best time to ostracize your subjects. And it’s a convenient way to keep certain people thinking you’re, well, thinking about other things. Distracted, you know, when your keen mind is focused elsewhere…”
“That’s not a bad point, Grims. All right, then! The show must go on!”
“Good for you, sir. You know…I must really get the carpenters and seamstresses to redo the royal box at the amphitheatre. Apparently, it’s been quite…decorated by seagulls and the like. We don’t want to upset the…er…refined sensibilities of Princess Vanessa. You know how she likes everything around her to look perfect when she’s the center of attention. Probably have to add some gold flourishes or something, too…”
“Yes, she…wait…What?” Eric suddenly looked up at his butler. “What did you just say? What did you really just say? About Vanessa?”
“The princess enjoys flaunting her questionable taste and wealth?” Grimsby stammered.
“Grimsby, old man, you’re a genius!” Eric kissed the confused butler on both cheeks, the Tirulian way, and ran out of the room.
“Thank you?” the Bretlandian said, dabbing at his cheek with the napkin.
“Whuff?” Max asked, watching the prince go.
“No idea,” Grimsby said with a sigh.
“Sssso, which one did she wind up choosing to send to Ibria, in Triton’s place?”
The two eels-become-men were walking side by side, shoulders touching, making their rounds of the castle. Paying out the spies, threatening servants who wouldn’t snitch, stealing bits in the kitchen in front of everyone and snickering about it….the usual afternoon’s work.
“Garahiel,” Jetsam answered, thin lips pulled back over a toothy grin. Neither one of them opened their mouths very far when they spoke; they were all teeth and tongue.
Flotsam laughed a long, hissing strain of laughter. “Excellent choice! I always hated him. Of course, I always hated all of them.”
“Oh, but he was a pretty one. He is ssso fit to be in the zoo of a king!”
“Well, he was a pretty one,” Flotsam amended. “And lucky fellow, too, escaping what Ursula has planned.”
“He’ll be the only one!”
They both laughed and laughed, and when a maid looked at them in disgust, they couldn’t quite hold back from snapping their necks and jaws at her like the predators they were.
Transformations only went so far….
It was a puzzle.
Not unlike the puzzle of finding the right member of the Kravi to sing the story of Proserpine in the Equinocturnal Celebrations, but far more important.
(She decided, as Attina had suggested, to have the younger sister sing it, and make the older brother Director of the Celebrations. It was an honor in name only. Everyone already knew what to do and where to stand; they had been performing the Rites for thousands of years.)
How could they expose Ursula’s true nature to as many humans as possible?
She signed bills, listened to complaints, chose chariots, finally worked out an equitable payment plan with the pesky barracuda, and considered the possibilities.
Ursula could…review all the troops. She could give a speech about the prowess of Tirulia as a military force while striding up and down in front of the rank and file of soldiers. But…by the sea! And then a giant wave could come and splash her….And her tentacles and true form would be revealed!
Ursula could…have a new warship built and take it out to christen it! Didn’t humans do that silly thing where they wasted a bottle of wine, breaking it over the prow of the ship? And while Vanessa was there, surrounded by her crew, a wave could lap over the side and…
What if Ursula had a birthday party, and the chef baked a giant three-tiered cake, and Ariel was hiding inside, and when the sea witch went to tas
te it, the mermaid burst out with a bucket of salt water, utterly dousing the birthday girl?
Ariel laughed quietly to herself. It was a pleasant and deeply satisfying fantasy.
“What’s with you, giggle-puss?”
Attina had been slinking around the public work rooms of the palace more and more often lately. A less forgiving sister might have thought she was hoping for apples, like a semi-feral seahorse—or that she found she liked the taste of power after all.
But maybe she just wanted to hang out and be near her little sister, offering what little support she could.
Whatever the truth of the matter was, Ariel was relieved at this new development and always happy to see her.
“You’re all smiley-faced and, well, not broody,” Attina pressed. “What’s going on?”
It was true—since Ariel got back she had been more lighthearted, smiling and flipping her tail more. But when Flounder and Sebastian asked her why, she felt like she had to keep it a secret.
Isn’t that what sisters are for?
She put down her whelk pen, deliberating. Attina looked like she was going to explode.
Finally the queen spoke.
“I kissed a boy.”
“WHAT?”
With two quick lashes of her tail, the auburn-haired older mermaid was over by Ariel, eyes wide.
“Eric. I kissed Eric. We kissed. Eric and I kissed each other.”
“When? How? What? Why? I mean, what took so long?” she added, trying to sound casual.
“Didn’t seem appropriate before,” Ariel said, shrugging. “There were too many other things to talk about, to plan….”
“You are so weird!” Attina practically shrieked. “And so is he. Who ever heard of a human waiting to kiss a mer? He must be weird, too. What was it like?”
“Not the stuff of a teen’s fantasy,” Ariel said with a rueful smile. “But it was genuine, and it was…nice.”
“Well. The sea be praised,” Attina muttered. “Something is moving ahead. What’s going on with our father?”
“I’m working on that. I think we’re going to have to get the Tirulians—uh, humans—to take care of Ursula for us. It’s tricky. Maybe you can help—come up with an idea, like you did with the Celebrations?”
