Part of Your World (Twisted Tales)(53)

The shelf of terrifying, unknowable black instruments and dangerous-looking things made some sort of sense, at least. She was an enchantress. Or witch. Or something. The rest of her collection could only be explained by a childlike, endless need to find, keep, and store any sparkly—or horrifying—thing she saw.

He pushed aside books, clawed through chests, even looked under her bed and pillows. He went through the walk-in closet that led to the baths, shaking out each dress and squatting on the floor to look in the back corners, under petticoats. He tried not to think about the rumors that would result if he were caught doing that. Mad Prince Eric indeed.

Exhausted, with maybe only a few minutes before Vanessa returned to dress for the evening, he threw himself disconsolately into the poufy chair in front of her vanity. The top of the dressing table was covered with strange little bottles and jars and vessels and containers of every unguent known to man. Another ridiculous symptom of her never-ending collecting of garbage.

He looked at himself in the mirror. When they were first married—and he actually paid some attention to his beautiful, mysterious wife—the prince would watch her apply all these oils and astringents while she talked to herself, posing, primping, and making moues for her reflection.

(As time with her passed he chose instead to lie on his own bed in his own room with the pillow over his head, wishing she would shut up so he could sleep and escape his nightmarish existence for a few hours.) The way she behaved would be pathetic—if she weren’t actually evil. She always needed an audience. In public she surrounded herself with nobles and hangers-on. In private it was extremely rare that she was without her two slimy servants, or her little maid, Vareet. And when she was utterly alone, her other self was always here, listening to her boasts from the other side of the mirror.

Wait—

Eric frowned.

Was she talking to herself?

Wouldn’t a jar labeled something else be the perfect place to hide a polyp? He grabbed one and opened it up. Nothing—just some rose-scented powder.

He picked up another one.

Vanilla oil.

He picked up a third…and it didn’t feel right in his hands at all.

It sloshed. Despite its very clear label—BRETLANDIAN SMELLING SALTS WITH BRETLAND-GROWN LAVENDER FROM BRETLANDIAN FIELDS MADE AT THE REQUEST OF HIS MAJESTY KING OF BRETLAND, complete with a little Bretlandian flag—the contents flowed back and forth nauseatingly like a half-filled bottle of navy grog.

Eric’s first instinct was to shake it, but he caught himself just in time.

The tin had a pry-off cap, but as he looked around for something to wedge it off with—a knife or a makeup spade—suddenly it changed. When he tried to focus on the box, however, it was just itself again, silver, red, white, and blue.

He pretended to slowly turn away, but kept his eyes fixed on the label.

The outline blurred, as if it knew it wasn’t needed anymore.

“AHA!”

The prince couldn’t help calling out in triumph when he whipped his head back, “catching” it.

What was once a tin of stupid Bretlandian cosmetics was now a glass bottle with a cork stuck in the top. There was a little gravel in the bottom and it was filled the rest of the way with cloudy seawater. Sucking at the sides was a hideous thing: oozing and pulpy, with what looked like soft claws and human eyeballs. Yellow, but sentient. Barely.

It blinked at him forlornly.

Eric resisted the urge to throw the thing away from him.

He looked beyond it, back at the vanity. As if the spell had given up entirely, at least half of the cosmetic jars were now similar bottles full of similar slimy things. Emptied of beer or rum or wine, full of seawater and sadness. No two were alike: they were all shades of black and green with four, three, or no appendages. Some had suckers; some had horrid tendrils that they couldn’t seem to control. All had eyes. Some had heads so heavy even the buoyancy of the salt water they were in wasn’t enough to support them, and their faces looked up awkwardly at the prince from their prone positions.

Eric swallowed the bile rising in his stomach.

There were at least a dozen…all prisoners? Transformed merfolk?

It was like her own personal prison. Or a medieval torture chamber.

The prince crouched down to get a better look at the feeble creatures. They turned to follow him with their eyes.

“All right,” he said, clearing his throat. Whatever they looked like, whatever they were, now or before, they were prisoners of an evil witch and he was a good prince. There was protocol. “I promise you, each and every one of you, I will help free you. I’m not sure how to go about doing that right now, I admit. I don’t suppose I could just put you all back…in the ocean?”

There was a flurry of slow but desperate head shakes that was sickening to watch. Some let off little clouds of what he hoped was like squid ink, darkening the water around them.

“All right, all right. Find the king, set him free, defeat the sea witch, then turn you back. Nothing until then,” Eric said with a sigh. “So which one of you is King Triton?”

The large eyes looked at him unblinkingly.

“Any of you? Raise a…flap? A fin? Anyone?” Eric asked.

The one he had first picked up shook its head dolefully and made what looked very much like a shrugging motion with its appendages.

Slowly the rest copied it, shrugging and shaking.