Part of Your World (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,114

He coughed and water came streaming out of his mouth. "She did it! She defeated the terrible sea monster!" the apple seller cried.

The crowd screamed and cheered and clapped and went berserk.

Eric was a mess, all broken and bloody and barely upright, legs still dragging under the water. But he was alive. Flounder kept his distance, not wanting to breathe m any more blood.

Everything around them was bruised and broken but the confusion seemed to be slowly clearing up. There was a pile of mostly unconscious soldier bodies on the dais—ones with tiny black octopus insignia on their sleeves. A triumphant ragtag crew stood above them: Argent with her stained and cracked walking stick, which she now held like a club; Grimsby, who had somehow managed to acquire a musket and was holding it quite steadily; two seagulls; several loyal soldiers and their captam; a soprano and two bass clarinetists.

Vareet stood by the fountain, Triton cradled safely in her small arms.

"So this is what winning feels like," Ariel said. "I think I like it."

Eric groaned and would have slipped back underwater if she hadn't grabbed him.

If it had been up to the prince, there would have been happily ever afters right then. The bad guy had been defeated, the love of his life was holding him, she had just said somethmg funny, the crowd was cheering—the perfect place for an opera to end.

Alas, real life was a little more complicated than that.

And real blood, not stage blood, was continumg to leak out his nose.

The captain and the remaining loyal guards—who would all be rewarded richly later—scanned the situation and reacted appropriately, placmg themselves between the prmce and the confused, curious, adoring crowd. "You, Decard," he said weakly. "Send two men to go find Carlotta in the castle....In the basement..."

"Yes, Your Highness, immediately." The captain saluted and spun off.

With that last order given, Eric succumbed to a wave of weakness and began to slip back mto the water.

"Nope—no, you don't," Ariel said, hoisting him back up and all the way out of the fountain. Grimsby was there instantly, offering his shoulder to lean on. Even m his current state Eric couldn't help watching the mermaid with her glorious tail thrown out for balance, sparkling m the sunlight. Behind them he could hear oohs and gasps as the townspeople saw her clearly for the first time.

He couldn't blame them. She was magnificent.

He tried not to put all his weight on the old butler. Things shifted perspective and swam before him—unsurprisingly, there was water in his ears.

"Well done, Prince Eric!" Grimsby said, voice shaking with excitement. "Good show!"

"It was you and Vareet and Max who really got the ball rolling," he said with a grin. Then he put his arm around the other man and gave him a good squeeze. "You mean so much to me: Grims. Have I ever said that before? I was so worried about you."

"O-oh, well—there, there," Grimsby stuttered, smiling but looking around with embarrassment. "You're a bit out of your head. Shhh."

Ariel was saying something to the fish in the fountain. Eric felt a strange sense of loss. The fish was truly incredible, unusual by any account. But all he saw was a glaze-eyed animal who apparently was saying somethmg in its silent fishy language, and it made Ariel throw back her head and laugh like a girl. She kissed it on its head and then slipped off the fountain, legs formmg as she did.

'Tm getting better at this," she said, turning to face her human friends and twirling the trident.

"I think this is yours," Vareet said, handing her the glass ampoule and curtsying. "What is it?"

"This, brave girl, is my father," Ariel said, kissing her on the forehead. She carefully set the jar down on the ground—then shot a bolt at it.

Smoke—no, water vapor—swirled up and up and up mto the sky. On the ground, the polyp grew and lengthened and stretched and hardened mto a man.

A man that Eric now remembered: he must have been seven or eight feet tall, broad, and somehow lit from within. He seemed more real than the petty humans around him, the cobbled streets, the fountain; as though they were all a child's drawings while he was the origmal, badly copied. His beard was white and flowed down over him, looking the way Eric had always imagined the patriarchs m the Old Testament. His skin was a coppers- shade, more precious metal than flesh. His eyes were almost hidden beneath a