Part of Your World (Twisted Tales)(14)
She flowed her hand across her body, like a tide: It’s time.
Flounder nodded and swam next to her. Together they rose.
They moved almost as one unit, his body bending back and forth in the middle, her tail pumping up and down in almost precisely the same rhythm. After a few minutes he ventured:
“It’s just like old times, isn’t it?”
Ariel turned and gave him a smile: so rare, these days. She had been thinking the exact same thing.
When her head broke the surface this time it was less revelatory but still exhilarating. The little gull was almost exactly where they had left her.
Ariel realized she didn’t have a sign for gull.
“Great,” the bird said. “I was really hoping you would come back.”
Ariel blinked. What a weird, banal thing to say.
“Yes, well, and here we are,” Flounder said, a little flippantly. “And by the way—this is a secret mission. No one should know about how the queen is leaving her kingdom to pursue matters on land…especially matters involving her father. Especially with the sea witch Ursula involved.”
Jona stared at him.
“Kingdom? Or queendom?”
“What?” Flounder asked, exasperated.
“The mer are ruled by a queen. Shouldn’t it be queendom?”
“No, that’s—well, I guess so. Maybe. Does it matter?”
“It does if you’re the queen,” the bird pointed out.
Ariel had to hide her smile; she would have laughed, if she had the voice for it.
“I will fly ahead and find Great-Grandfather,” the gull said, correctly guessing that her new friends were losing patience, “so we can prepare a diversion for the few guards left at the shore. We should arrange a signal so I know when you’re ready to emerge onto dry land.”
Flounder watched Ariel’s signs carefully and then translated. “A fleet of no fewer than…thirty-seven flying fish will arc out of the water at the same time, heading west.”
“All right, I will look for thirty-seven of the silver, flying, hard-to-catch, rather bony, but oh! very tasty fish, flying to the sunset.”
“What’s that in gull?” Flounder asked, translating Ariel’s curiosity.
The bird squawked once, loudly.
It sounded like every other squawk.
Then she took off into the high air without another question or sound.
Ariel jerked her head and she and Flounder dove back under the water. They kept fairly close to the surface, skimming just below it.
She could sense the approach of land—taste when the waters changed, feel when currents turned cool or warm—but it didn’t hurt to keep an eye on the shore now and then, and an ear out for boats. The slap of oars could be heard for leagues. Her father had told tales about armored seafarers in days long past, whose trireme ships had three banks of rowers to ply the waters—you could hear them clear down to Atlantica, he’d say. Any louder and they would disrupt the songs of the half-people—the dolphins and whales who used their voices to navigate the waters.
Even before her father had enacted the ban on going to the surface, it was rare that a boat would encounter a mer. If the captain kept to the old ways, he would either carefully steer away or throw her a tribute: fruit of the land, the apples and grapes merfolk treasured more than treasure. In return the mermaid might present him with fruit of the sea—gems, or a comb from her hair.
But there was always the chance of an unscrupulous crew, and nets, and the potential prize of a mermaid wife or trophy to present the king.
(Considering some of the nets that merfolk had found and freed their underwater brethren from, it was quite understandable that Triton believed humans might eat anything they found in the sea—including merfolk.)
Interested and curious sea creatures passed Ariel and Flounder, bowing when they thought to, staring when they didn’t. Even without her crown, the queen was well known by her red hair and her friend’s constant presence. It was a good thing she had warned Sebastian not to mention her mission; gossip swam faster than tuna.
She stuck her head out of the water and was delighted to discover that she had kept their direction true. They were at the entrance of the Bay of Tirulia, just beyond where spits of land on either side had been extended with boulders by the Dry Worlders to keep their ships safe. Inside these two arms the sea grew flat. On the southern side of the bay, the land was rocky and grey like southern islands where octopuses played and olives occasionally fell and floated on gentle waves. For a very brief stretch, in the middle of the shore near the castle, the rocks gave way to beach. North of that were tidal flats where the sea became land more slowly, gradually invaded by grass and rich brown tuffets of mud where all sorts of baby sea life began: mussels, clams, oysters, crabs, eels, and even some fish. Beyond that were the marshes proper, brackish water that mixed with a river that went, Eric had once claimed, all the way to the mountains.
And between the mermaid and the shore were the ships.
Small fishing boats with bright blue eyes painted on their prows to ward off bad luck. Fast and sleek whalers. Tiny coracles for children and beachcombers, for puttering around the marshes and low tides, for teasing out the eggs, shrimp, shellfish, and tastier seaweed eaten by the poor but prized by the rich.
Towering over all of these were mighty ocean-faring tall ships, giant white sails unfurled, ready to cross the open water and come home again laden with spices and gold, chocolate and perfumes, fine silks and sparkling salts.