Part of Your World (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,86

bad idea. Maybe you should start commg to the council meetmgs, too...."

"Nahh, not really my thing. Boring, like you said." But Attina agam avoided her gaze, drifting over to a golden bowl of bright sea leaves. She examined them closely: exotic oranges, reds and yellows, a smgle 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 domg 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 somethmg 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 bemg 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 somethmg 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, m 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?" "Oh, joy," Ariel said grimly. "Excuse me, sister; duty calls."

"Of course it does," Attina said with a sigh, still chewing on a leaf. 'Hey! If you do see Eric agam, have him grab us some more apples, will you?"

"But when will my ships be done and ready to launch?"

It was getting harder and harder to pretend that the summer cold that had taken her voice was still hanging on, especially since she didn't act like the rest of the ridiculous, simpering ladies of the court did when they had ague or anxieties or chills or whatever else they complained of. Ursula continued to stomp up and down the castle corridors, and she ate like a champion.

But right then she didn't even care about her voice; she slammed her fists down on the table and bared her teeth at the broad-chested older man standing before her.

The fleet admiral regarded her with icy black eyes.

"We have employed every qualified shipwright in the kingdom, My Prmcess—and quite a few unskilled manual laborers. The shipyards are at capacity. If we had scaled this up properly, we would have built a second shipyard beforehand. You're asking for a battle-ready fleet to be amassed in almost no time, out of thin air. Give us more space and another month and you will have one of the finest armadas on the continent."

"In a week, if I wanted to, I could... set certain things m motion that would allow me to no longer require a month, or your pesky ships, or even vow," Ursula growled. "A month is too late. For your own health, if nothing else, get those ships on the sea and loaded with explosives, now. "

Anyone else would have looked uncomfortable at the order, but rarely did any emotion pass over the dark skin stretched tightly over the bones in the admiral's face.

"I don't care if you're actually a witch," he finally said. "I don't care if you