Part of Your World (Twisted Tales)(28)

Ariel pitched forward.

She choked, no longer breathing the air of the Dry World. Her arms flailed up like a puppet’s. Her torso whipped back and forth, pummeled by unseen forces. Something flew into her mouth, up her nose, and suffused her entire body with a heat that threatened to burn. It rushed into her lungs and expanded, expelling whatever breath she had left, pushing blood to her extremities, pushing everything out that wasn’t it, leaving room for nothing else.

Ariel collapsed.

It was over.

It was like the thing, whatever it was, had been absorbed by her body and had now dissipated into her blood and flesh.

She took a breath. Her heart started beating again.

She hadn’t been aware it had stopped.

She coughed. A few grains of sand came out.

And then she sang.





His hands were raised, trying to draw more out of the violins with his left while holding back the percussion with his right.

He fumbled.

It was like a pile of books had fallen from a high shelf onto his head, and, having broken his skull, somehow managed to directly impart their contents into his brain.

It was like a sibling had snuck up behind him, and, thinking he was prepared—expecting him to get out of the way—whacked him with a wooden baton. The crack on the pate was twice as painful as it should have been, the simple blow compounded by shock that a sister would strike so hard. Feelings and pain were utterly mixed.

It was like he were suddenly afflicted by a grievous, mortal fit of the body: as if his heart or kidney or some other important organ had seized up and failed.

He experienced the wonder of taking a first breath after the terrible pain receded with a clearheaded, deep relief that presaged either death or recovery.

Eric blinked at the orchestra and singers before him. Instruments faltered. A hundred pairs of eyes looked back at him expectantly.

He saw, as if for the first time, the plain yet comely smile of the second soprano, the brown mole on the likeable brow of the basso profundo, the L-shaped smudge on the copper timpani. A veil had been drawn away.

He was Prince Eric, and he was conducting a practice session for an opera.

Not sailing a pleasure ship or playing his recorder to himself, or, more appropriately, running this part of his parents’ kingdom, which was his duty, his chore, his right.

Something was very, very wrong.

He gulped.

But the people before him waited on his very fingertips. For now they were his kingdom. They needed their prince.

He would deal with personal revelations later.

And so he conducted, and when the soprano sang he winced, and tried not to think of another singer with hair as bright as fire and eyes like the sea.





Vanessa stood in the tub slowly drying herself, starting with her face. She always left the lower half of her body in the water as long as possible.

She sang quietly, luxuriating in the gradual process. The one thing the humans did right—at least the princesses did—was take the proper time and care in making themselves presentable to the world.

Her little maid stood attentively nearby.

“Mmm, something-something, and I shall be Queen of the Sea, mm-hmm…keeRACK!”

Suddenly the princess heaved violently. It felt like her uvula had been pulled violently out through her lips. Like her mouth had been turned inside out. Like the meat and blood of her lungs were following close by.

She coughed, certain that blood was going to spray out. But there was nothing on the piles and piles of white, sweet-smelling bubbles that filled the tub. No scarlet spittle, no physical proof of the massive change within her.

“My voice,” she said, the words coming out in a low-pitched growl. The tenor of a much older, much larger, much…different woman.

“MY VOICE!” she screeched, pretty red lips squared and askew. She clenched her hands into fists, shaking with rage.

Her maid looked concerned, obviously unsure what had caused this outburst. She waited nervously for orders.

Vanessa, princess of Tirulia, clawed her way out of the tub and stalked up the steps, white foam trailing off her like smoke. Naked and not cold. Vareet, unnoticed, hurried after her with another towel. The princess dug desperately through the pile of clothes she had taken off so carelessly before and threw them every which way in her panic.

“Where is my necklace?!”

But of course it was gone.

She spun to focus her wrath on the tiny maid, who tried to hide behind the giant towel she still held at the ready. Not that her mistress hadn’t lost her temper before, of course; she had many times, when no one else was present. But this time seemed particularly bad. Vanessa’s teeth bit into her bottom lip; she didn’t even notice the tiny droplets of dark blood that welled up. Her cheeks sucked in under high cheekbones until her face looked like a skull. Her eyes were wild and the whites seemed almost yellow, and sickly.

“WHERE IS MY NECKLACE?” the princess demanded again, tapping her chest to indicate it where it used to hang.

Vareet shook her head, terrified.

“BAH!”

Vanessa drew her hand back. For a moment it seemed like she really would strike the girl. But the sea witch wasn’t dumb; the maid had been within her sight at all times. She had nothing to do with the missing nautilus shell or its obvious destruction.

It could have been a simple sneak thief, of course. It could have been some sort of accident. But it wasn’t. It was…