Part of Your World (Twisted Tales)(77)

She almost fell off the rock.

“Are you all right?” Jona asked politely.

“What is that…horrible…stink…?”

“You mean the gigantic piles of dead fish the humans are leaving on the wharf.”

She had, at least, the good taste to avoid smacking her beak as she spoke.

“Scuttle said…I didn’t think…Why aren’t they being…”—she tried to swallow her nausea; she had to know—“eaten by the humans?”

“Don’t know,” Jona said with a wingy shrug. “But it’s been a very popular development among us and the rats and cats.”

Ariel couldn’t see anything from her higher position, and the wind was terrible, so she slipped back down from the rock, stomach still a little rocky itself. You’re a queen. She pulled herself upright as best she could.

“I’m…going to go look into this,” she said, trying not to breathe through her nose. Eric, even her father could wait. She had to find out what was going on to leave her subjects dead and rotting in piles. Jona nodded and launched herself into the air above her.

As she approached the main street Ariel noticed that even the humans who regularly ate fish were covering their faces and noses with cloth; she didn’t stand out in the crowd wearing her headscarf. The stench was overwhelming. Some people looked sour and complained bitterly. Others looked excited and rushed to and fro, mending nets, grabbing friends, chatting and shrieking in glee.

And there, on the docks, just as the gulls had said, every kind of fish was rotting in piles. From the species that humans loved to hunt and eat to the ones that were deadly poisonous. Squid, octopodes, eels, sharks, branzinos, rays, hake, oarfish, at least one small dolphin…they were all represented among the dead, baking and decaying in the sun.

The Queen of the Sea just stood there staring, overwhelmed by horror and sadness.

Finally she began to do the only thing she could for all of them now: she whispered a prayer. Again and again, willing their spirits to find the eternal ocean of heroes, where they could be happy and free forever.

Ariel had repeated it twelve times—with no intention of stopping—when she was interrupted by a familiar voice.

“I’m so sorry, my lady.”

Ariel looked up. Argent the Inker stood there, a disgusted look on her face. She put a hand on the mermaid’s shoulder.

“I wanted to see you again to thank you for the extra coins and gems you gave me, but this isn’t the way I’d hoped we would meet.”

“What goes on here?” Ariel demanded.

The old woman made a face, the divots and wrinkles in her skin pulling into a rictus of contempt. “The castle is offering a reward for the capture of a ‘magical fish.’ A trunk of gold and an estate and a title to whichever fisherman brings it in.”

“Magical fish?” Ariel repeated slowly, hoping she had heard it wrong.

“Princess Vanessa has finally lost her mind—at least, that’s what some people are saying,” the woman said with a snort. “Maybe she never had one to begin with. Maybe she kept that hidden until now. But people don’t care—who would? A trunk of gold and a title for one fish. Whether it’s actually magical or not. But I assume, with you here, of course, there’s a chance it actually is….”

“What is this magical fish supposed to do? What does it look like?”

“No idea what it’s supposed to do. I guess that if it grants wishes, it’s probably not going to get turned over to the princess, if you know what I mean. They say it doesn’t look like the normal fish we catch around here. It’s slow-moving, and fat, with yellow and blue stripes.”

For the second time that day Ariel felt a wave of nausea pass over her.

Of course. Of course. She should have guessed.

Flounder.

Ursula had set a reward out for the capture of her best friend.

Something changed in Ariel.

Over the span of a single breath, the nausea subsided, along with the sadness and sickness and helplessness. Something far more solid—and terrible—took its place.

“I would suggest you and whomever you love stay off the ocean for the next tide,” she said as calmly as she could.

“What…?”

Argent searched Ariel’s eyes, huge and aquamarine, clear as the seas in Hyperborea. She must have found something there. Blue anger? Or perhaps it was just Ariel’s confidence: the calm assumption that she could back up insane statements with an even more insane reality.

The eyes of a queen.

“Yes, thank you. Of course, I’ll tell them,” the old woman said quickly. “Thank you, my lady.” She practically bowed. Her earrings jingled as she ran away on her long, rangy legs.

Ariel spun around and regarded the piles of fish, the laughing and angry men and women, the boats out at sea, one last time.

Not caring who saw, she took off down the dock and dove into the water, her tail beating the water into foam before she was even submerged.


Ariel surfaced just beyond the bay. She was consumed by fury over so many things: the piles of dead fish, Ursula tricking her with the carriage, her own inability to find her father, the loss of her voice, the loss of who she was when she first had a voice.

A wave formed, swelling around Ariel’s body. It lifted her up higher and higher—or maybe she herself was growing; it was hard to tell. She held the trident aloft. Storm clouds raced to her from all directions like a lost school of cichlid babies flicking to their father’s mouth for protection. Lightning coursed through the sky and danced between the trident’s tines.