Part of Your World (Twisted Tales)(46)

She looked up, her eyes suddenly set and certain.

“Grimsby.”


Carlotta led Ariel by the hand into the castle, screaming nonsense at her and waving a hand in her face at just the right time when people looked too closely—especially the guards. The Queen of the Sea just let herself be dragged along; she was too terrified just being in the castle to do much else. Ursula could always be counted on to make good with her threats; Triton’s life was definitely being put in danger by this. And Carlotta had only slightly eased her fears, bragging about the number of secret lovers’ trysts she had covered for.

Ariel was also strangely embarrassed—and it wasn’t just because she was being pulled along by the housemaid like a girl in trouble. They were going to see Grimsby. Although the butler bore no real resemblance to her father (and was, moreover, a servant) he nevertheless possessed an air of ancient patriarchal wisdom. His was the final and correct word in the castle. Sometimes more so than his master’s.

The butler was downstairs in his tiny “office,” little more than an upright desk in an oversized closet. He was admonishing a footman for some indiscretion. The young man was handsome, olive-cheeked and blushing fiercely. While Grimsby spoke mildly, his eyes were ironic and cold.

But when he saw the look on Carlotta’s face he changed his tone, hurrying the whole thing along.

“Yes, well, don’t do it again. Am I clear? You’re dismissed.”

“Yes, Mr. Grimsby, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Grimsby….”

The youth, overwhelmed at the shortening of the lecture and cancellation of whatever punishment he had assumed he would get, practically fell over himself to get out of the room. In doing so he tangled with Carlotta and caught sight of Ariel, who was hiding behind the maid. She smiled at him. A dazed expression came over his face: one of utter rapture. It was a full moment before he recovered himself and ran down the hallway.

“Carlotta, what is the matter?” Grimsby demanded.

She didn’t say a word, just stepped aside to reveal Ariel.

Ariel found herself shy, unqueenly, overcome with the urge to look down at the ground. But she didn’t.

Grimsby’s eyes, sunk deep behind veils of skin like parchment, widened like a child’s. There was recognition, and for the most painful fraction of a moment, delight.

Then all too swiftly his face hardened and his eyebrows set like thunderheads over a cliff. The change was like a spear of ice thrust into Ariel’s heart. She hadn’t realized how much she had looked forward to seeing the old man again.

“Ariel, you look well,” he said coldly.

“And you look as dapper as ever,” she responded.

The thunderheads shot up, high into the sky of his brow in surprise.

“Yes, I can talk, and please”—she stepped forward and took his hand in both of her own—“I know things are…confusing, and they ended poorly, and involved me, but I’m here to try to make it right.”

“You have Princess Vanessa’s voice,” he said, seizing the one thing that he could comment objectively on.

“She’s not a princess, she’s not Vanessa, and it’s my voice. That she stole. If you allow me, I’ll fill in all the details of the story that both of you are probably just remembering.”

Grimsby shook his head, obviously unhappy with the untidiness of it all. “Well, come in, shut the door, and tell me.”

It was more than a little cramped in his tiny space; Carlotta’s breathing seemed to take up most of the room. Ariel told her story as quickly and succinctly as she could.

When she was done there was silence but for the forlorn calls of a gull outside somewhere.

I’ve got to make myself seen through a door or window before they get too worried, she thought, imagining an all-out gull attack on the castle.

“You see?” Carlotta said. “That’s why I figured she had to talk to you. It’s all…very complicated.”

“So—Ariel. You fell in love with Eric and became a human, and this…sea witch also became human, probably to make sure you failed in your quest,” he recited the facts in his clipped Bretlandian accent, as calmly as a teacher lecturing history.

“Yes,” Ariel said.

“But the sea witch never returned to the sea. She…stayed. And became our princess. And now rules Tirulia. With an iron fist.”

“Yes,” Ariel said, a little less certainly.

“And you’re here to find your father, restore him to his rightful throne, and depose the sea witch.”

When you couldn’t speak, you couldn’t say ummmm or errr or use any space-filling noises to indicate thinking or forestall potential embarrassment. All of which would be very nice right now. But queens don’t do that, either.

“I came to find my father,” she answered as truthfully as she could. “Everything else depends on that. We will do all we can to free you from the sea witch, afterward.”

“Yes…about this ‘sea witch.’ Do we have proof that she is indeed a…cecaelia?”

“Cecaelia?” Carlotta interrupted.

“Half human, half octopus,” Grimsby explained. “Like a mermaid, but with tentacles.”

“Half in the form of the gods,” Ariel corrected gently. “We are not humans who are half fish, the way you people always say. We are children of Neptune and are not like you—even half you—at all.”