Ariel allowed herself a small smile.
I’m going away for a few days.
“Royal vacation! Aww yeah! You could use it, clearly. I’ve been saying for ages now you need to relax and kick back for a bit. Haven’t I been saying that? Your skin looks terrible. I’m so glad you—oh. Not a royal vacation, I can see that now.”
Attina said all these things quickly, one after another: revelation, opinion, realization. When people could speak aloud, Ariel had realized long ago, they spent words like they were free, wasting them with nonsense.
Her sister frowned. “Where are you going?”
Ariel didn’t make a complicated sign. She just used her index finger and pointed. Up.
“What?” Attina wrinkled her nose, confused.
Ariel waited for the meaning to sink in.
“Oh, no.” Her sister shook her head, eyes wide. “You cannot be serious.”
Ariel nodded.
“No. Nope. No, you don’t,” Attina said, crossing her arms. “Not again. We lost Dad when you did that last time. You’re not doing it again.”
The other sisters felt the tension in the water and swam silently up, watching—hiding—behind the oldest.
Attina—Ariel didn’t spell out the sign; she moved her hand to suggest the robes of a goddess, the sign for Athena, for whom her sister was named. There was an implication of regalness and wisdom; Ariel was appealing to her oldest sister for her best values. Attina, he may still be alive. That is why I am going.
Several of her sisters gasped. Tails lashed.
“Nuh-uh,” Attina said firmly.
Then she whispered: “Really?”
There’s a chance. Someone I trust saw him, as Ursula’s prisoner.
“Huh,” Attina said, crossing her arms again. “Huh.”
“Let her go,” said Adella, swinging her ponytails.
“She needs to go,” Andrina, the one closest to Ariel in age, whispered.
“You should go now!” Arista urged, tossing blond hair out of her face. “Get Daddy back!”
Alana and Aquata were silent, looking at their leader, Attina.
“Can’t you send someone…” Else, the oldest sister was going to say. But she shook her head. “No, I guess you can’t.”
I have to do this, Ariel agreed.
“You sure this isn’t just a chance to see your little human prince again?” Alana asked flatly.
Ariel felt her face redden. Her left hand clenched around the trident, her right hand clenched in the water, around nothing, around everything—she could throw foam into her sister’s face and it would become a poisonous, spiky urchin, or a handful of sharp sand, or a thousand little scale mites.
Attina made her lips go all squooshy the way she often did, like a puffer fish before it puffed. She raised a hand to silence Alana. Not now.
Ariel reflected, for a moment, how much communication was in sign, even for those who could speak.
“Fine. Good luck. I hope you bring Father back,” Attina said, perfunctorily. “You can go.”
Ariel could feel the twists in the water: the oldest sister, who had tried to take over as mother when their real mother died, and never succeeded in that role. The other sisters, who liked the idea of power and ruling and strength and crowns—for someone else. They all just wanted everything the way it had been when Ariel was one of them, when they were all the same.
But Ariel had never really been the same.
I don’t need your permission, she signed. I was merely letting you know.
“Well!” Attina said, raising her eyebrows.
You made me queen.
“Yes…I suppose we did.”
The five other girls flowed and slipped into the currents, their fins flickering sinuously into the depths. Attina swooped and followed behind. “I really hope you do find him,” she called over her shoulder.
No one’s going to volunteer to come along? Ariel signed, half ironically; with her back turned, there was no way her sister could have known she was saying anything.
She watched them all go back to exactly what they’d been doing before: fixing their hair, gossiping, swirling around each other in a scene that used to delight their father.
Don’t you ever get bored with your lives? she signed, even though no one would see it.
Aren’t you even a little bit curious?
She mouthed these words, trying to will a sound to come forth. This one time.
Nothing but water flowed out.
It’s been over one hundred years since Mother died!
No one saw her. Her hands, useless for communicating, gripped the trident tightly.