Adapted in part from Disney’s The Little Mermaid
Cover Illustration by Jeffrey Thomas
Copyright © 2016 Disney Enterprises, Inc. Published by Disney Press, an imprint of Disney Book Group. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney Press, 1101 Flower Street, Glendale, California 91201.
“Poor Unfortunate Souls”
Music by Alan Menken, Words by Howard Ashman
© 1988 Wonderland Music Company, Inc. (BMI) / Walt Disney Music Company (ASCAP)
All Rights Reserved. Used With Permission.
ISBN 978-1-4847-2518-4
www.disneybooks.com
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter I: The Sea Witch
Chapter II: The Witches on the Cliff
Chapter III: Witches in Ipswich
Chapter IV: The Little Sea Poppet
Chapter V: The Visitor
Chapter VI: Poor Unfortunate Souls
Chapter VII: The Witch’s Lair
Chapter VIII: Nanny’s Secret
Chapter IX: The Dark Fairy’s Warning
Chapter X: Callers at the Gate
Chapter XI: The Odd Sisters’ Lament
Chapter XII: A Set of Stolen Pipes
Chapter XIII: Prince Popinjay’s Regret
Chapter XIV: Her Ultimate Design
Chapter XV: An Unexpected Message
Chapter XVI: Tea with Popinjay
Chapter XVII: The Witches’ Solstice
Chapter XVIII: The Betrayal of the Sea Witch
Chapter XIX: Circe’s Despair
Chapter XX: Triton’s Regret
Chapter XXI: The Witches’ Sleep
Epilogue
About the Author
Dedicated to my mom and pops for all their love and support
And to the memory of my bewitching feline writing companion, Pflanze, who I miss dearly
—Serena Valentino
A dark gray mist followed Ursula like creeping tentacles as she made her way through the seemingly abandoned town of Ipswich. Ursula’s laugh echoed through the boarded-up cottages, their pitiful denizens huddled within, terrified of the vengeful sea goddess who had descended upon them like a waking nightmare.
She had altered herself into her human form for the excursion, and used her magic to control the mists, creating long menacing tentacles for herself that curled around and trailed behind her, blighting everything they touched. She left a path of destruction in her wake, black like oil, and putrefying.
She moved toward the main square and stood beneath the clock tower. Her tentacles assaulted it, turning the pillar into a wide black obelisk that might have been used for more sinister purposes than keeping time.
Hate.
Her magic was infused with it. And in that hate was a deep, penetrating sorrow. Those humans had taken from her the only person who had loved her, and she was going to make them suffer. She cast her ghostly appendages toward the sea, calling forth her dark minions.
Sirens.
These were a hideous mix of human and sea creature, like something conjured by the most deranged, visionary mind. Pale, haunting beings with dark smoldering pits for eyes emerged from the sea. Wide grinning mouths gnashed endless rows of sharp yellow teeth. Their skin was like thin, translucent milk, and through it one could see their deep blue veins and grotesque endoskeletons.
Though their song caused humans to tremble and their ears to bleed, it was beautiful to Ursula. She found it winsome, intoxicating, and overwhelmingly beautiful. Its haunting melody compelled those vile humans to emerge from their boarded dwellings, drawn to the siren song and spellbound to their call.
How weak they are, she thought. She grinned at the befogged looks on their wretched faces and laughed at their impending doom. They walked on, blind to their own destruction, powerless to stop it and powerless to save their own lives as blood dripped from their ears and poured from their mouths; they were choking on it, sputtering, unable to scream at the horrors around them. Ursula thought it was the most beautiful and thrilling thing she had ever beheld.
If the sea witch had let the sirens’ chorus continue, it would have brought death to the humans. But letting them die was too easy, wasn’t it? She wanted to see their terror and watch them suffer. She wanted them to become the thing they feared and hated most.
She wanted them to show their loathsomeness.
As her hate penetrated Ipswich, she was surrounded by wrecked lands as far as she could see. She stood within the landscape like a shining thing of beauty among the ruin, her face pale from rage, her eyes mournful but brimming with revenge. Her heart full of hate.
Divine hatred.
That was what it was.
Divine.
She felt truly alive for the first time. She felt no pity for them as she watched them bleed; there was no hesitation on Ursula’s part, and she had no time for pleading or crying. They had been silenced by the song of the sirens. They stood before her, sickly and foul, watching in silent horror as Ursula led them to their destruction.
“The power of the old gods, I call you to me,
the Deep Ones, to claim these humans for the sea!”
With this spell the humans fell to the ground, convulsing, struggling for air. They looked around, gasping, and saw their fellow villagers transform into horrific sea creatures. Now they were forever bound to Ursula, to do her bidding. Forever inhuman. Forever monstrous and vile.
Ursula’s laugh swelled from her gut and sounded throughout the lands, reaching the ears of every witch in the many kingdoms. It sent a shiver through even the most powerful among them—dark and light—because they felt the weight of this. They knew the power of hate-infused magic and the destruction it could bring. The dark gray mists curled around Ursula as she watched the terrified humans struggle against their transformations, their silent screams making the scene more beautiful to her.
“Don’t fight it, my darlings!” She laughed. “Or perhaps you should! It hurts more to struggle!”
This was far more rewarding than she had imagined. It was splendid, this hate, this utter destruction.
It was glorious.
Ursula’s laugh thundered as she stepped into the encroaching waves at the shore, encouraging all her new creatures to journey into places unknown to them, dark places they had been too frightened even to contemplate. Places they had only visited in their nightmares or anxious, fevered daydreams.
The creatures were hers now—servants—and she would use them at her will and to their torment. As the waves touched her human feet, she slowly transformed. It seemed the creature within her had no choice other than to burst forth from the human flesh, desperate to be seen and aching to be in the waves.
She was growing to leviathan proportions now, towering over her terrified minions, bawling with laughter at their plight.
Then, unexpectedly, a figure emerged from the water, like the Flying Dutchman breaking the surface.
“Stop this lunacy at once!” The voice was louder than the crashing waves.
Whereas Ursula seemed nothing but darkness, he appeared like shining light. He was beautiful—too beautiful—and seemingly too good. Those were traits she found all too prevalent in males of higher rank in those lands. She had no idea who that minor god might be, but she already knew she didn’t like him.
“W
ho are you to command me?” she asked, snapping her head to the right to get a better look at this mockery of the gods.
“Did you not call upon the old gods? I have answered.”
“I called for help, not interference!”
“Look around you! Look what you’ve done to this land! Everything is scorched with your hatred. It is blighted as the lands of the old queen. Don’t take her path, little sister. Come home with me, where you belong.”
Ursula was silenced, perplexed.
“Hear me, Sister. See that necklace you are wearing? It was a gift from our father. We thought you were lost to us forever. I hoped one day you would come to know your power and call upon me, but I didn’t expect to find this.” His face was screwed up with a look of disgust as he surveyed the destruction Ursula had wrought.
“You know nothing of my life! I was left here alone with these humans who feared and hated me. You have no idea what I’ve suffered!”
“Ursula, do you truly not remember me? I am your brother. Triton.”
Ursula looked at Triton, furious and confused. Unable to place him.
“I’m sorry, Ursula. It’s time I brought you home.”
It had been many years since Ursula had seen her dear friends the sister witches. Not since right after her exile from Triton’s court had she paid them a visit. There was so much to catch up on, and as she made her way, she saw light dancing across the rippling water and knew she was at last reaching the surface. She could almost make out the shadowy images of the three sisters standing on the shore, waiting for her arrival.
It has been a rather long time, she thought, and decided she might as well make a grand entrance, with a great spectacle. She felt herself growing, her tentacles elongating—a sensation that always made her feel like the dominant force of the seas that she was.
I haven’t felt this power within me for ages.
She’d taken down massive ships in that form, splintering them, casting their remains deep into her dark, foreboding realm. She saw the looks of astonishment in the odd sisters’ bulging eyes as she rose out of the water to towering heights. The trio of sister witches—Lucinda, Ruby, and Martha—looked small standing on the wet black rocks and shivering in the cold.
Ursula thought the sisters possessed a grotesque beauty, with their too-large eyes, tiny mouths, and pale haunting faces that were framed far too perfectly by their raven ringlets. She found them beautiful even if the mists clinging to the feathers in their hair made them look like frightened, soggy flightless birds.
One wouldn’t know it by their frightful state, Ursula mused, but those witches were the things of legends. They were cousins to the old king, the father of the queen called Snow White. And they were great benefactors to the Dark Fairy and her sleeping princess. Though Ursula would never say so aloud, she owed her newly regained power to the odd sisters. They had returned her necklace. Although, she considered, it was a fair exchange for something their little sister had desperately wanted.
Lucinda gasped as water spilled from Ursula’s massive form onto the witches’ awestruck faces, their ears splitting with Ursula’s thunderous laughter and booming voice.
“I’m so happy to see you, sisters. It’s been far too long.”
The sea witch leaned down to be at eye level with the odd sisters. They were really quite striking, she thought.
But too much beauty without the proper proportions.
Ursula’s arms were outstretched, ready to embrace them. The sisters scuttled tentatively as one into Ursula’s embrace, which eased their concern and relaxed them with the fact that Ursula was not cross with them.
“I see you are wearing our gift,” said the sisters in unison, spotting the golden seashell necklace around her neck. All were worried Ursula would be enraged if she ever learned it had been stashed away in their pantry half-forgotten all that time.
Ursula laughed, this time at the sound of the sisters’ scratchy voices and at the state of the drooping feathers in their pitch-black hair.
“Thank you, my dear friends. You will have to tell me how you got it back from my brother at some point. Or was it Circe? I didn’t ask her when she brought it to me. And where is Circe? I’m surprised she isn’t with you.”
Circe.
The mention of her name was like knives being plunged into the odd sisters’ hearts. She had been a source of heartbreak for them, the reason Lucinda had called on Ursula for help. Circe was the reason the odd sisters cried endlessly, vainly crying her name into the darkness, hoping she would at last return on account of their pleas for forgiveness. Circe hadn’t answered her sisters’ calls, so they summoned the sea witch for help. Of course, Ursula would want something in return. She always did.
She was the maker of deals.
Lucinda spoke first. “Circe, our beloved, has gone far from us….” Her deep red satin gown was stained with tears, and like her sisters’, her eyes were smudged with black coal makeup that had streamed down her cheeks from long hours of crying.
“She’s so angry with us! She’s ventured where our magic cannot follow,” continued Ruby.
Martha’s sobs were almost too violent for her to speak. “That’s why we’ve come to you, Ursula. We want to see our little sister again.”
Ursula asked the obvious question: “Have you tried to summon her, dears? In one of your many enchanted mirrors?”
The sisters broke down crying again.
“She must have done a spell when she left that keeps us from summoning her!” Martha’s sad bulging eyes, which were so much like her sisters’, were filled with grief and fear.
Ursula could tell they were truly afraid. She couldn’t recall ever seeing her friends in such a state, so full of regret and so grief-stricken. “I promise you, Martha, I will help you find Circe. I promise each of you, my dearies, you will see your little sister again.”
Then Ursula smiled one of her magnificent grins, which slowly transformed into something a bit more mundane as she used her magic to assume human form and took the sobbing Martha into her arms. She knew the sisters would give anything to see Circe again, and as much as she wanted to help them—and of course she would be happy to do so—she just so happened to be in need of the odd sisters’ special brand of magic in return for her favor.
The dark green gingerbread-style mansion with gold trim and black shutters was perched precariously on the rocky cliffs. Its roof, shaped like a witch’s cap, was obscured in mist and encircled by screeching crows.
“Is the Dark Fairy to join us?” asked Ursula as the four witches made their way to the odd sisters’ home.
“No! No! Water and fire do not mix!” said Lucinda as Ursula laughed. Ursula wondered why the sister witches so feared a convergence between her and the Dark Fairy.
“We fear nothing, Ursula, but we see and hear everything,” Lucinda said casually, giving her the side-eye as they headed up the crooked staircase, which creaked with every step.
Ursula mused over the many locations in which she’d visited the house. She wondered if it grew chicken-like legs and moved on its own steam or if the sisters just conjured it wherever they desired. Surely it was simply summoned, but she loved the image of the sisters riding in their witch’s-cap house powered by giant leathery chicken legs, the witches cackling within the entire way. The thought made her laugh as they entered the queer little house in which she’d so often been a guest. The location might have changed often, but the house, with its quaint little kitchen, remained the same.
The sun shone through a large round window on the main wall that looked out over the old queen’s apple tree and the waves crashing onto the rocks. The shelves were filled with beautiful teacups in differing patterns, as if collected from various sets. Ursula wouldn’t be surprised if the sisters simply slipped cups they fancied into their purses. She wondered if each cup had a unique story—the story of its owner and of its encounter with the dreaded sisters three.
Which of those cups, Ursula wondered, belonged t
o the old queen, or to the horrible sisters Anastasia and Drizella? And which belonged to Maleficent?
Off the kitchen was the main room with a large fireplace. Its mantel was imposing and flanked by two enormous ravens that gazed out into the nothingness with steely eyes. The room had an eerie light, colored by the stained glass windows with images of the witches’ various adventures. One of the windows had a simple red apple. It was lonely and sad, Ursula thought, but perhaps that was because she had heard the old queen’s tale from the sisters many years before.
How many stories had she been told sitting near that fire when she deigned to take human form? That human form—that creature, she thought—it wasn’t at all to her liking. She felt small and weak when hiding in her human shell. Her voice also sounded different—not as booming or demanding. There was no power in it.
No majesty.
She couldn’t fathom how humans had survived as long as they had in those weak sacks of flesh, always in pain, always walking or sitting on hard furniture. It was horrible, that human nonsense.
At least she had Lucinda, Ruby, Martha, and their charming cat, Pflanze, to distract her from the pains of being human. Pflanze, the sisters’ tortoise-shell cat, blinked her black-rimmed golden eyes slowly at the witches in salutation.
“Hello, Pflanze,” Ursula said, smiling. Pflanze adjusted her paws and blinked again, welcoming Ursula to her home. Pflanze could see through the sea witch’s human form to the creature she really was. And the cat thought that creature was even more beautiful than the form the sea witch had taken so she could walk among humans.
Oh, it was beautiful enough, Ursula’s human guise. She had large dark eyes and full deep-brown hair that framed her heart-shaped face. Anyone would find her beautiful, but Pflanze loved the sea witch’s true design, and it was easy to see the witch preferred it, as well.
Pflanze watched as her witches scuttled about the kitchen getting the tea ready for Ursula, who had her feet propped on a little cushioned stool Ruby had brought for her. Pflanze’s witches had been quite unlike themselves since their little sister, Circe, had left, and Pflanze was growing worried they would wither from their constant fretting. But what troubled the cat more was how quiet the sisters had become. She was used to their insane ramblings and manic chatter. But now the house was almost unbearably quiet without Circe to fawn over. Now the sisters would simply sit and mope, uninspired even to cause their usual mayhem. And when they spoke, they did so as coherently as they could manage, in an attempt to make their sister Circe happy when she finally came home. Pflanze presumed that if the sisters had hearts within their hollow, hateful shells, they had been broken the day the witches’ little sister left with hate in her eyes, anger in her words, and a deep sadness in her heart.
Poor Unfortunate Soul: A Tale of the Sea Witch Page 1
