Part of Your World (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,31

dance with him but once, I know he would love me....One waltz in the sand; I would be free..., I don't know, it's really not so great. Not much to write home about. The sand, I mean. It gets positively everywhere and feels nasty in your foldy bits.''

When Vanessa stopped singing and lapsed mto her own editorial comments, the cognitive dissonance was almost overwhelming. Ariel's voice was higher than the sea witch's and lacked the burrs and tremolos the cecaelia was fond of throwing m when she was being dramatic. Yet still the tone and nuance was all Ursula.

Ariel edged silently out onto the mezzanine and peeped over the side.

Vanessa was clearly enjoying the bath. Her brown hair flowed around her in slippery wet ringlets that very much brought to mind the arms and legs of a squid. Great quantities of bubbles and foam towered over the top of the tub and spilled out onto the floor, slowly dripping down like the slimy egg sac of a moon snail.

Vanessa was splashing and talking to herself and playing m the bath almost like a child. Ariel remembered, with heat, when she had been in that bath, and was introduced to the wonders of foam that wasn't the just the leavings of dead merfolk. The whole experience had been marvelous and strange. Imagine the humans, kings of the Dry World, keeping bubbles of water around to bathe and play in. There was no equivalent under the sea; no one made "air pools" for fun and cleanliness.

For just a moment—so quickly that Ariel could have dismissed it as a shadow or a trick of the light and bubbles if she didn't know better—a tentacle snaked out of the water, then quickly back m, like it had forgotten itself for a moment.

Unthinking, Ariel reached for the comb hidden in her hair. True, the trident's power wouldn't work on dry land. But she didn't need its power. With barely a thought to nudge it in the right direction, the comb melted into fluid gold and reformed mto something with heft: a three-pronged dagger, deadly and sharp.

If she had been human born and raised, she would have attempted to hurl it mto the witch's heart. She had a perfect view and the advantage of height.

But she had been raised in a watery world where friction was a constant enemy. Except for the strongest, no one ever threw things across or up; stones slowed down and sank almost immediately.

Ariel crouched down, preparing to sneak and then run, driving the dagger mto the witch's flesh with her own hands.

She lifted one delicate foot....

"What's that?" Ursula suddenly demanded.

The mermaid froze.

"Did you hear...? Was that a..."

Ariel put her back flat to the cabinet that was right behind her: sucking in her stomach and trying to shrink.

There was splashing, frantic. It sounded like far too many appendages or people were in the water for it all to be one person.

"No one is supposed to interrupt my baths!" Ursula shouted.

Ariel could tell by the change m pitch that the sea witch was standing up now, possibly on six of her legs.

The mermaid tried to slide along the cabinet toward the dressing room door, but the revolting carved-ivorv handles and drawer pulls kept tangling in her ugly dress. One particular thread pulled tightly across her legs until she couldn't move.

Ariel gritted her teeth and forced her hip slowly out—and the string popped with a heart-wrenching twang. She stopped breathing.

"Vareet! Vareet!'' Ursula called out. "What is that? Go investigate!"

What if she just got up and ran? Would Ursula be able to see who it was? Would the)- send the guards after her? Would she be able to make it out in time? Ariel worked muscles that were still new to her, stretching and bending her foot, trying to silently move her thighs so she could crab-walk to the door. "Maaaaaaax..." came a lilting voice from the distance. The same infuriating maid from before.

"Ugh," Ursula swore, strangely echoing her own feelings. "If that stupid dog comes m here I'm having it muzzled. And Max, too."

There were more splashmg and sloshing noises; the sea witch was settling back down into the water. Ariel could once again hear her own voice, muttering and grumbling to herself. A pail of water was poured, a tap turned, the tub refilled.

Relief and disappointment and contmued fear competed like braids in a lock of hair hanging from Ariel's soul. She fell back against one of the cabmets. What ami doing? She