Part of Your World (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,65
"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 fm? 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.
"Oh, boy," Eric said with a grimace. "This is going to be harder than I thought."
If a person had been watching, she wouldn't have seen the obvious transformation of a human to a mermaid. She wouldn't have been able to believe her eyes, or explain what had happened so quickly in the dusky half light of early evening. It could have been a trick of the light, a curious seal, a strangely shaped piece of driftwood; anything but what it actually was.
Ariel did a couple of rolls and then floated on her back, looking up at the mixed sky of clouds and stars. Everything was quiet. She felt her hair loosen from its braids, yearning to float free in the water as it once did. She took the comb out, and it was a trident once again m her hand—but the braids remained firmly wound.
Half in and half out, she thought, then rolled and submerged herself into the depths. It was slightly slower gomg this time, what with the burlap sack of apples she dragged along.
Flounder appeared surprisingly quickly; he must have had every undersea eye and electroreceptor keeping watch for her.
"Ariel! You're back! Do you have him? Is that him—uh, in the sack?"
"No, I failed. Those are apples. But I am back, for a little while."
Flounder bumped his head against her hand—a safe gesture because no one was around. He didn't need the world to see that he still enjoyed bemg petted. But he wasn't young anymore, and didn't miss the meaning below her words.
"You're going back with the full moon, aren't you? When the trident is back at its peak power?" he asked, full of disappomtment. "Flounder, I didn't find him. I need to go back," she said gently. "But I have a clear path now."
"Clear path? " he said with a snort. "I can't wait to hear you say that to Sebastian."
Ariel smiled. Flounder was one of the very few people who could use that tone with her. He was dead right. Now that she could speak again, she was already using words like a trickster. Clear path. What did that even mean? She had allies, she had a goal. That was all. It wasn't like a parrotfish had just chomped through a snarled lump of dead coral, revealing a beautiful cave of treasure beyond.
She needed a plan, a direction, in case Eric failed.
She ran a hand along the base of Flounder's dorsal fin. "Nothing is easy. I can't go back to the castle at all now, although Eric is looking, for me. And I assume Ursula knows I'm back, and has hidden my father someplace "All those things sound like the exact opposite of easy."
"I know. Also, why is she keeping my father around at all? You'd think she'd at least want to use him as leverage for bargaining... .Like, she would give him to me in return for our never bothering her and Tirulia again." "Would you take that trade?" Flounder asked curiously. "And abandon Eric?"
"Well...I think I've learned the hard way that there is no fair bargaining with a sea witch. Also, I wouldn't just be abandoning Eric. I'd be leaving his kmgdom to a terrible fate as well. Our worlds should never have collided, and the people of Tirulia are dealmg with the results of..."—a rash decision by a lovesick mermaid—"choices I myself made years ago."
"Fine, but," her friend said with wry smile, "you still have to come down and check in with His Crustaceanness. And explain all of this to him, too."