Part of Your World (Twisted Tales)(63)

Damn, this girl catches on fast.

“Yes. And time is wasting….The…ah…clock is about to strike the quarter hour, and we must proceed before…the halfway point….”

Julia looked at Vanessa, standing in the water: the princess with the wet skirts, in the deserted lagoon filled with black flies and the smell of rot.

“I do not like the feel of this, My Princess.”

“Don’t be silly, dear girl,” Vanessa spoke softly, wheedling. “It will be no problem for you. Three days is nothing. You will come to the banquet tomorrow night and sit by me, as my special guest. They have to pay attention to you then. Lords will be falling over themselves for you.”

“But why does the universe need my voice?” Julia demanded. “What am I getting in return that you couldn’t give me for free, without magic? The invites and the dresses and the introductions?”

“Oh, all right,” Ursula swore, giving up. “The universe doesn’t need your voice. I do. I want a young pretty voice to match my young pretty body. And if you don’t pay up, you will be nothing, nothing at all, for the rest of your life. Just a stupid, worthless, want-to-be member of the nouveau riche, never quite making it into the exclusive club of nobility. So make your decision, girl. Are you going to stay Julia, the gold-digging flirt whose father builds ships with callused hands, or become Princess Julia?”

“I am going to keep my voice,” Julia said, backing away.

“Come here!” Ursula ordered, wading through the water toward her.

Julia turned and fled.

Ursula lunged.

She missed entirely, flopping forward into the fetid, murky water. Slime ran down her borrowed, beautiful hair. Tentacles scrumped and played in the mud, happy to be free for a moment.

Julia didn’t even have the decency to drop the lantern and cause a big, gothic fire on the marsh. She just ran on, the lantern bouncing and growing smaller like the glow from a fading anglerfish.





The King of the Sea remained stubbornly hidden.

So the prince continued to stubbornly look for him.

Sometimes Eric wondered if he was still under a spell or suffering dementia. If the Mad Prince was rummaging around the castle in the middle of the night and stolen hours for imaginary friends and other things he had made up.

Well, if so, it was a pleasant way to devolve into insanity.

“Prince Eric, I’m afraid it’s time for the memorial service with the families of the deceased soldiers.”

Eric was just jotting down a tune for the knickknacks and bric-a-brac that decorated the public drawing room when Grimsby caught him. The prince was especially diligent around the orchids and assorted tropical plants in glass jars—they seemed like the perfect sneaky place to camouflage a polyped king.

“O-oh, yes. Of course. Immediately. I’ll go change,” he stuttered. “I’m just looking for…I just…misplaced…my…composition book. Again.” It was hard to lie to his old friend.

“Surely not the one you’re holding,” the old butler said dryly.

“What? This? Oh, no. This is…uh…another composition book…that I need. I’m redoing a bit for the encore performance of La Sirenetta. Fixing some things…can’t remember which page, you know? ‘Mad Prince Eric’ and all that. Maybe I’ve an early form of dementia.”

Grimsby sighed.

“Eric, you trust me with your clothes, your thoughts, your ideas, your Max….Perhaps you would be willing to trust me on other things as well.”

The prince looked at him for a long moment, weighing his old friend’s words. How much did he really know?

No, he couldn’t risk it. Vanessa had been quite clear with her threat.

“Grims, you can’t help me here. I won’t let you,” he finally said, putting a hand on the butler’s shoulder. “The best thing you can do right now is be there for me. A lot of this mess is my fault, and I don’t want anyone in the cross fire while I clean it up.”

He winced: terrible metaphor. Embarrassing for a poet. Mixed and meaningless.

“I understand, Eric. But sometimes…helping people isn’t about you at all. Or even the help. Sometimes it’s about the people who want to help.”

“Grimsby, I…” Eric wilted. He hated how this hurt his old friend. He hated how he couldn’t say what he wanted to say.

What he actually said was, “Just don’t ever find yourself alone in the castle. And don’t hang out near balconies. And don’t eat anything I don’t send to your study myself.”

“I am currently subsisting on a diet of biscuits directly from the homeland, thank you. In sealed tins. They are a tad dry but nutritionally sufficient. Here.” The butler pointedly handed him a folded piece of paper. “A receipt for the postage on a private package to be delivered to Ibria. Very expensive—I believe you stated a desire to approve all unusual expenditures above a certain amount?”

And with that he spun on his heel and clicked out of the room.

Eric sighed. It broke his heart to treat Grimsby this way. But I would feel even worse if something happened to him.

He opened the paper, wondering why the butler thought it was worth his time. It wasn’t even that high an amount—although ludicrous, really, for the shipping of a single package. There were international carriages for that sort of thing now. And all the instructions that were tacked on were absurd: