Part of Your World (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,5

hair. This was brown velvet with golden medallions around the crown and the plumes of rare foreign birds m the band... and she still left it carelessly on her bed. She quietly hummed one of the arias from the opera, one of the mermaid's arias, and then opened her mouth wider and belted it out, knocking the seagulls back a little with the force of her musicality.

It did not sound like when Ariel used to smg.

Oh, it was the mermaid's voice all right, and the tune was dead-on. But it was too loud, and the words had no soul, and the notes didn't flow from one to the other harmoniously. It was as if a talented but untrained child with no life experience to speak of had suddenly been commanded to smg a piece about a woman dying of consumption who had lost her only love.

Scuttle tried not to wince. Seagulls of course had no innate musical abilities themselves—as other birds loved to taunt—but the song still sounded blasphemous m Ariel's voice.

Vanessa laughed, purred, and made other noises with her throat Ariel never would have. "Did you enjoy that, mighty sea king? The little song from a lovesick mermaid?"

"I don't see a mighty sea king, " the great-grandgull whispered to Scuttle. "May-be she s mad. "

Scuttle had no response. He frowned and ducked and peered back and forth into every corner of the room that he could glimpse from the window But there was nothing, not even a small aquarium, that might hold a polyp.

Vanessa paused in front of the overwhelming collection of bottles and trinkets on her vanity: musky perfumes in tiny glass ampoules, exotic oils in jars carved m pink stone, enough boar-bristled brushes to keep an army of prmcesses looking their best. The one thing she didn't have—which Scuttle would not have realized—was a maidservant performing these ablutions for her. She made a kissy-face mto the mirror and then moved on, disappearing from view into her closet. It looked like she was holdmg somethmg, but it was hard to be sure.

The two birds strained and leaned forward, trying to follow her movements.

"I'm so sorry you missed such a wonderful opera, Kingv," she called from the darkness. After a moment she came back out wearing a bright pink silk robe. Now they could see that she carried a bottle half hidden in her voluminous sleeve. "But I think Eric may put it on again, one more time. Not that you'll get to see it then, either. Such a shame! It was so imagniative. It was all about a little mermaid, and how she loses her prmce to a nasty old sea witch. The hussy.'''

She paused... and then cracked up, her delicate mouth opening wider and wider and wider, billows of distinctly non-Ariel laughter commg out.

She turned to hold the glass bottle up to regard it in the light coming from the gull-decorated window...and the gulls gasped.

It was a narrow glass cylinder, like that which a scientist or a physic might use when doing experiments. On top was a piece of muslin held on with gobs of wax. Inside was filled with water., .and one of the most horrible things Scuttle and Jona had ever seen.

A dark green mass, gelatmous, with a vaguely plantlike shape filled most of the bottle. One knobby end kept it rooted on the bottom of the glass. Toward its "head" were things that looked like tentacles but floated uselessly in the tiny space; these were topped with a pair of yellow eyes. A hideous cartoon of a mouth hung slackly beneath. In a fmal bit of terrible mockery two slimy appendages flowed down the sides of its mouth, apmg the sea king's once foam-white mustache and beard.

The great-grandgull turned her head to avoid gagging.

"It's him!" Scuttle cried—at the last second covering his words with a squawk, remembering that the sea witch could understand the languages of all beasts, same as Ariel.

Vanessa spun quickly and suspiciously.

Jona thought fast. She pecked at her grandfather—realistically, as if she were trying to steal a morsel from him. Scuttle squawked. "What the..."

"NO IT'S MY FISHY!" Jona screamed. She widened her eyes at him, willing him to understand. Her great-grandfather just stared at her for a moment. Then he relaxed.

"What? Oh yeah, right," he said, giving her a big wink. "No—ray—great-grandgull—that—is—my—fish!" They both fell off the ledge, away into the air, wheeling and squawking like perfectly normal seagulls.

Vanessa ran to the window but relaxed when she saw just a pair