Part of Your World (Twisted Tales)(71)

That hadn’t changed.

“Working hard?”

Ariel jumped. Attina had swum up in her usual sneaky, silent way.

“I just…There’s so much here. Got lost for a second.”

“Is life down here getting boring?”

“Attina, just—all right,” Ariel said, throwing her pen down. It bounced slowly in the water, raising up a little bit of settled coral dust on the edge of her perfect marble desk before eventually skittering off the side and over to the seafloor. The two mermaids watched it in surprise.

“A little defensive, aren’t we?”

“You’re picking at me. Please just admit it.”

“Settle down, little sister. I know that you’re upset about not getting our father back—again.” But before Ariel could open her mouth to yell at her, Attina continued, louder. “And I know you are taking it much harder than the rest of us. Please.”

She added, more softly:

“I know how hard you’re trying. But you may, at some point, have to admit to yourself that it might not be enough. That it’s too hard a task even for the great Ariel, Queen of the Sea and Walker on Land.”

Ariel opened her mouth to say something, but couldn’t find the right words, overcome with what her sister had said. It was so understanding, so deep, so…

“Also, you are completely bored under the sea. It’s totally obvious.”

Ariel snapped her mouth shut. Attina was looking at knickknacks on her desk, specifically not at her, but there was a twinkle in her eye.

The Queen of the Sea managed a little smile.

“Well…to be honest, it is boring. But I have a thousand other, more important things on my mind! Why has Ursula continued to let our father live despite my repeated rescue attempts, and yet refused to use him as a bargaining chip? It’s unsettling, and it’s probably for very bad reasons. Where is he right now? What is she doing to him?

“I’m worried about the fate of two kingdoms and one old butler. I’m worried about time passing…and meanwhile, I have to go over some bizarre ancient contract specifying which member of the lineage of Kravi gets to perform which Rite of Proserpine in the Equinocturnal Celebrations. Like it matters?”

Attina looked over her shoulder at the paper. “Give the lead to Sumurasa. Her brother would just flub it up.”

“I mean, I know, but he was born first. There’s no way around that.”

“Well…find something else for him to do that sounds good but doesn’t have any real responsibilities. A nice title he can brag about.”

Ariel raised an eyebrow in surprise.

“That’s not a bad idea. Maybe you should start coming to the council meetings, too….”

“Nahh, not really my thing. Boring, like you said.” But Attina again avoided her gaze, drifting over to a golden bowl of bright sea leaves. She examined them closely: exotic oranges, reds and yellows, a single slender purple…and finally just plucked out the biggest one and began to munch on it. “Bah, not like an apple. How’s your little, uh, human toy doing up there?”

“Hopefully he’s looking for Father. Since I failed to find him.”

“You still love him?”

“Irrelevant to the matters at hand,” Ariel said primly.

“You are so strange,” Attina whispered with something like awe.

“I’m not—”

“You are. Don’t you get that? You always have been. As a girl you never liked anything the rest of us liked. We looked for shells, you looked for ship garbage. We swooned over mermen, you lusted after statues of creepy two-legged Dry Worlders. You had this beautiful voice that everyone envied—and you gave it away. You don’t like being queen, but you do it willingly and honestly as some sort of penance for what happened to our father. You’ve never tried to abdicate, though it’s pretty obvious you hate it.

“You don’t want to be here. You never wanted to be here.”

Ariel raised an eyebrow at her thoughtfully. “Mostly true. Nice use of the word ‘abdicate,’ by the way.”

“What I’m trying to say is…your stupid desires and wishes got us into this terrible mess and got our father taken away, and I’m still mad at you for that. But—if you do get our father back—you should…you know…go after that dumb mortal.”

The Queen of the Sea looked at her sister in shock.

“We’ll miss you if you go, of course. But I’d understand. Well, I mean, I don’t understand,” she added, twitching her tail. “Humans are ugly and dumb and evil and short-lived. But all that aside, there’s something a little Old God about you, Ariel….There’s something epic about loving a mortal and wanting to leave your eternal, paradisiacal world. Something the rest of us will never understand, but people write sagas about. Even your failure and sadness are the stuff of poetry.”

“Um. Thanks?”

Attina sighed. “You know, in your own way, you were once a super girly, carefree, bubbly, beautiful little girl. I still don’t understand how you got to be so strange underneath it all.”

Ariel was about to answer that very older-sister, not-really-a-compliment remark when Threll appeared.

“My Queen, Princess-Doyenne Farishal and her consort are waiting to speak to you about their children’s official Coming of Age?”