Ariel stumbled over to the fountain, her father still clutched in her arms. In the blurry depths she could see Ursula’s massive body…and Flotsam’s dagger somehow buried in her chest. The witch’s face was growing pale, and her mouth hung open slackly. Her servant was stunned, entangled around her in eel form. Underneath the two of them Eric struggled weakly.
“Here!” she commanded, thrusting her father into Vareet’s hands. “Guard him with your life!”
Trying not to choke on water polluted with the sea witch’s foul ichor, Ariel dove in, reverting to her real body immediately. Tentacles and arms and legs were everywhere. She wrestled with the slick cecaelia body, heaving it aside. Grabbing the front of Eric’s shirt, she pulled him away from Ursula, wedging her tail against the dead woman’s midriff.
All the years she had thought about what she would do when she finally defeated Ursula, what she would say or experience…and now the sea witch was just an object, a blunt obstacle that was keeping her from saving Eric.
With a mighty heave Ariel managed to fling Eric out onto the side of the fountain, his chest cracking against the marble. 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 in 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 captain; 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 something 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 continuing 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, placing themselves between the prince 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 into 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 in his current state Eric couldn’t help watching the mermaid with her glorious tail thrown out for balance, sparkling in 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 something 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 forming as she did.