Part of Your World (Twisted Tales)(25)

Ariel saw padded cloth house shoes and closed her eyes, willing invisibility.

As if the person standing there knew Ariel’s position and were bent on drawing out her torture as long as possible, she continued to just stand there: neither leaving the doorway, nor entering Vanessa’s room.

Ariel felt the strange sensation of sweat popping out on the back of her neck. It was thoroughly unpleasant, and tickled besides. She had to fight down an urge to scratch, or move, or stretch. I am a queen, she told herself as the itch became maddening. I am not ruled by my body.

“Max!” the maid called out. Ariel could just see her skirts move as she put her hands on her hips. “Max, where are you? Dinnertime! C’mon, you silly thing. You can’t have gotten far….”

There was no impatience in her voice, only love for the old dog.

But Ariel was so angry with the servant’s existence she wanted to turn her into a sea cucumber. Just for a few minutes.

“Well, I know you wouldn’t want to be in here, the princess’s room,” the maid said, her final words heavy with meaning. She spun and left, going all the way back out to the hallway. “Maaaax…”

Ariel breathed a heavy sigh of relief. She unfolded herself carefully, avoiding hitting her head on the ornate edge of the vanity.

Whew! That was ridiculously, painfully close.

She proceeded into the dressing room, where Vanessa kept her ridiculous assortment of clothes: bright-colored gowns with tiny, corseted waists and laced bodices that dove deep to expose vast amounts of décolletage. Wraps and shawls and jackets and hats with jewels and goldwork and more often than not the feathers—and sometimes the entire body—of some poor, exotic, and thoroughly dead bird.

She felt the silk of one long pale-rose sleeve. It was expert workmanship and utterly beautiful and thoroughly disgusting that such labor had been wasted on the evil woman. In a fairy tale, Ursula would be the wicked, lazy girl who wound up with dried seaweed and empty shells. And maybe shrimp crawling out of her throat.

She noticed something funny about a button on the sleeve just as she was about to let it drop: it was etched like scrimshaw, with lines so fine and thin they must have been made by a master—or a creature of magic.

The design was of an octopus.

Not a friendly one, like many that Ariel knew; this was elongated and sinister, with strangely evil eyes.

Ariel’s own eyes darted around the room like a barracuda distracted by sparkly things. It was immediately clear, once she knew what to look for, that every piece of clothing and accessory had the octopus sigil somewhere on it: the diamond brooch on a collar, the buckle on a belt, a hidden embroidery on the more traditional Tirulian dresses.

Whatever her motivations were in staying among the humans she’d married into, Ursula had not forgotten her origins or her true self.

But there was nothing in the closet that could have been her hidden father; not a bottle or a jar or even a repurposed shoe. Maybe there was a hidden panel somewhere, or maybe the sea witch kept him locked up in a real dungeon, downstairs.

And then, along with a current of moist, soapy air…

…came a voice…

Her voice.

In the trailing end of a song.

“…up on the land, where my lover walks. But I can only pine from the foamy waves….”

Her voice.

She hadn’t heard her own voice in years.

The day when Ursula first took her payment, it had felt like Ariel’s very soul had been sucked out of her body. The young, silly merthing she was then hadn’t even realized it. Like a ghost she went on with her quest, her desires, intent on her prize, not even realizing she was already dead to the world.

Okay, perhaps it wasn’t quite that dramatic, Queen Ariel corrected herself gently.

But seeing Vanessa wed Eric, and her father killed, and realizing she would never get either man—or her voice—back…a part of her had truly died that day.

And now that witch was using her voice to sing in the bath.

Ariel wouldn’t let the rage that was coursing through her veins control her. She wouldn’t. She was a queen, and queens didn’t lose control. Not for sweat, not for rage.

It was no easy task; like sweat, this kind of anger was a new experience.

She had been sad. She had been melancholy. She had cursed her fate as a voiceless monarch, railing against her lot quietly. Once in a while she had a burst of temper when she wanted to be heard and no one would listen, when people were shouting over her and ignoring her hands, as if because she had no voice she had nothing to say.

This was like nothing she had experienced before. It was like lava, burning through her skin and threatening to consume her whole.

Without thinking she moved toward the direction of the sound.

“…heartless witch of the sea…ha ha!…heartless, heartless indeed, ensorcelling me…”

The air grew moister, but not with the accompanying clouds of steam one expected from a luxuriously royal bath.

“Oh, let him see me for who I am, for without a voice, my face alone must speak for me…”

This was a pretty, wistful aria, but Vanessa let the last note quaver just a little too long, seeing how long she could keep the vibrato going. Then she broke into a peal of laughter that, despite being in Ariel’s voice, sounded nothing like the mermaid.

Ariel pushed the far door open a crack. Some previous king or queen had designed the royal bath to look as dramatic as possible, almost like a stage, perhaps so he or she could soak while members of state gathered around asking for decisions. There was even a sort of viewing balcony or mezzanine that the hall led to, above the bath; this held a few cabinets to store bath-related bric-a-brac and a privacy screen for robing and disrobing—although despite the plentiful storage, Vanessa’s morning clothes were thrown carelessly over a chair. Wide and ostentatious spiral stairs led down to the bathtub itself.