Part of Your World (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,57

strong for each other....Isn't that part of the reason you came back? To see him?"

She opened her mouth to disagree.. .but stopped. The old human was right.

He put a hand on her shoulder, like he might a soldier's. "You two. ..began a series of events which wound up involving all of us up in this mess. And I think maybe the two of you can get us out of it. It's fate, or some such. It feels rather right. Rather Greek. Don't you think, Carlotta?"

"It's fated," the maid agreed. "I don't know about the Greeks."

"Anyway, Carlotta was right to brmg you to me and I am right m sending you on. Whatever veil has clouded Eric's thoughts is gone now, and I think he would receive you in the right frame of mind."

"But how can I see him without Ursula finding out? She has guards and soldiers everywhere!" Ariel spoke the words clearly while her head was muzzy with possibility. "I won't endanger my father!"

"Eric goes for a walk after dinner," Grimsby said, straightening himself up. "Along the beach—a long way, north beyond the castle. He walks when he's not ...allowed to get on a boat."

"I can provide a distraction for the princess," Carlotta said. "There's a hatmaker been begging for an audience. Vanessa loves posing and preening. ...We' 11 keep her tied up in bows and feathers for at least a watch."

"Excellent. It's a plan," the butler said, clasping his hands together.

"Thank you, Grimsby," Ariel said, kissing him on the cheek. "This is all a little...difficult for me. It must be impossible for you."

"Oh, no, not at all, dear child," he said, blushing a little. "And think, when this is all over, I shall be able to publish my memoirs about how I helped a mermaid!"

She stood behind an old wreck, the hull of a fishing vessel that had been lost decades before and was then swept far up the marsh during a particularly stormy high tide. Blasted by sand and wind and sea, it now looked like the bones of a whale, its chest facing the sky.

When Ariel and Grimsby were trying to figure out the best place for her to meet Eric, Carlotta mentioned that the boat was a place where many couples, wishing to...speak in private...betook themselves. The thought should have given the mermaid a smile, but now she was overcome by the mood of the place.

The wind picked up and blew tiny whitecaps across tide pools like minnows jumping. Ariel put her hand up, feeling the breeze in her fmgers. Things changed much faster up here than they did under the sea.

And yet change came nonetheless; it had been several days now since the height of the spring tide, when the full moon worked with the sun to grant the sea her greatest reach over the land. Now tides were lower and weaker, and would become lower still in the commg week. So too the power of the trident dipped.

Soon she would have to return to the sea.

A movement at the edge of the marsh caught her eye. Eric emerged from behmd the stand of trees that blocked the view of the castle—and the view of anyone watching from the castle. His stride was sure and he looked around boldly, but it was with just a frisson of confusion; he had not been told whom he was meetmg, only that it was important. He wore his old boots and beige pants, and one of the thick-woven tunics sailors in Tirulia wore on wet and chilly days. A faded blue cap was pulled firmly down on his hair. His ponytail escaped out the back, curlmg around his left shoulder.

Ariel grasped the bleached wood of the boat at the sight of him. He seemed., .so much realer. All those times she had dozed off with visions of the young, handsome prmce in her head. ..and here he was actually coming to meet her. Life was far more detailed than dreams. His neck bent into his collar, his hands were shoved deep into his pockets like he was cold. Something unimaginable m a fantasy.

Ariel looked down at the outfit she wore, just a dress and apron. How cold was it? For humans? Was she dressed inappropriately?

Eric continued to look around for whomever he was supposed to meet. He put a hand to the back of his head and scratched there, pushing up the edge of his cap. It was this gesture, this boyish, unprincely, unrehearsed gesture, that made