Part of Your World (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,99

mer. Eric as a mer! Eric opening his eyes right when she rescued him and kissing her, falling in love with her on the spot. Eric kissing her m the boat, when she really, really thought he was going to, and the mght was so romantic.... Kissing her on any of the three mornings, or realizing at the last mmute Vanessa was a fake and kissing Ariel instead, and the weddmg would have been for them....

And here it finally was. She was a human—temporarily—and he was a human, and it was mght, and they were getting ready to leave, and it was cold, and she had barnacle-bumps on her skin, and her feet hurt, and...

She found herself laughing, albeit a little breathlessly.

"That wasn't the way I imagined it would be...."

"'Imagined it would be'?" Eric asked with a smile. "You've been thinking about me? Does that mean I have indeed caught the heart of a mermaid?" "You did years ago when she was an idiot minnow, and look where it got us," she said, pushing his chest. "Where it got me"' "I know, I was just—" He sighed. "I know." She kissed him again on the cheek.

"Let's...just... see how it goes," she said, heading off to the water.

He watched her walk straight mto the waves, no hesitation, no floating, until it was up to her neck. "Hey—aren't you going to ruin your clothes?" he called.

She rolled her eyes and dove, letting her tail hit the surface like a whale's, slappmg a spray in his direction.

He watched Ariel's head disappear under the waves and a fin appear in its place. He couldn't help smiling.

He had just witnessed the transformation of a girl mto a mermaid. Back into a mermaid, he corrected himself. Despite the terrible thmgs they had endured—and probably more before it was all over—despite the years he had lost in a haze to Vanessa's spell, he felt like a delirious little kid who had seen his first firefly, or biolummescent jellyfish, or shootmg star. Everything was beautiful and anything was possible: the world was an amazing place just waiting to be explored.

He laughed and picked up a handful of sand and pebbles, throwing it mto the ocean.

Though her whole walking straight into the water without floating or swimming thing was more than a little creepy. Almost like a lead soldier.

Eric took off his shoes to walk his way back home barefoot; despite how cold it was he wanted to feel the sand on his feet. It was part of the sea, part of her home.

When he entered the castle with his hair askew and trailing beach detritus, no one was much shocked. It was just Mad Prmce Eric, out on one of his walks again.

He thought about Ursula. Sometimes winning wasn't just about playing fair, but knowing the rules so well that you could exploit discrepancies. That was the sea witch's whole method of operation.

He puzzled over ways to expose her true identity to the people who fawned on her and protected her. But as a musician and a prmce his ideas were mostly dramatic, elaborate, and complicated. Like throwing a magnificent masked ball, for instance, and installing a hall of mirrors like at Versailles, and then having a bathtub full of salt water there somehow as a prop for Ursula to fall into, causing her to revert to her cecaelian state. Then her image would be reflected a thousand times, and everyone would see....

He scribbled that down as an idea for a later opera. Rather unwieldy in real life.

The prince felt bad about the opera he was supposed to be working on—he hadn't been to a rehearsal in days. Still, kings of the sea, mermaids, and evil sea hags came first. The real ones, that was.

(Eric did, however, make time to occasionally visit the poor polyps still trapped on Vanessa's vanity. He gave them little updates on thmgs and told them to buck up. He had no idea if they understood, but it seemed like the right thing to do.)

He found it easiest to think logically when he worked at the puzzle the way an artist or musician would: by sketchmg out a stage direction plot, with Ursula in the middle and, around her, all the people she had vowed to kill if she was ever threatened in any way. He almost felt like his old self, sitting at his desk under the wmdow and scribbling away—but this time clearheaded and glamour-free.

"Prmce Eric," Grimsby greeted him, a trifle coldly,