With a gesture that was less “regally acquiring what was rightfully hers” and more like the crazed swipe for a sea bean by a starving mer, she snatched up the nautilus and held it to her chest. Dazed and in shock from her find, of having it in her hand, she rose and stumbled back to the door.
The little maid spotted her.
Ariel’s mouth went dry and her heart sank.
She stared at the girl, and the girl watched Ariel with large, hollow eyes.
Realizing how strangely ironic it was, Ariel put a finger to her lips.
Please.
The little girl glanced over at Vanessa in her bath.
“My dark and villainous plans, how they unfurl—no, wait. Was that how it went? I can’t remember…” Ursula sang and muttered to herself, heedless of her maid.
Please!
Ariel threw the word through her eyes, across the space between her and the little girl, praying for her sympathy.
The little girl gave the faintest nod.
Ariel put her hands together as best she could, clutching the nautilus, and bowed her head.
Thank you. If ever I find a way to repay you, I swear I shall.
Not that the little girl would ever know, but the gods would.
Ariel crept to the door…and then bolted out of the castle.
She pounded through the castle as fast as she could, new heels hitting the stony floors with surprising force. Faces were a blur as she sprinted to the exit.
“Woof?” came from somewhere near the ground at one point.
Max! Your dinner is ready! she thought, and mentally promised to pet him later, if there was a later. She risked looking up to see if Eric was there with him—but he wasn’t.
As soon as her feet touched sand she redoubled her pace, making for the hidden lagoon. Several guards looked after her curiously, but not too curiously; she was behaving like a scorned lover or someone who had been in a fight with a friend. In a castle full of enemies and noble spies, a scampering maid drew little interest from people with better things to do.
The hot sun hit her back like a reproving shove. At that moment she hated everything about being human. The long skirts of her dress tangled in her new legs and chafed her skin. Her stupid boots were clumsy in the sand, like she was stepping into holes and pulling her feet out of sucking, grabby mud.
But soon she was in the blessedly quiet cove where the wind was still and the noises of humans and their activities far off and easily forgotten. She sank down onto the sand like she would have as a mermaid: tail folded under her, leaning to the side a little, one hip up, the other down. The instinct to flip her fin impatiently went nowhere; the thought traveled down her spine and stopped where her legs split.
She opened her tightly cupped hands and looked at what lay in her palm.
The nautilus shell was exquisite, brown and white and perfectly striped. The math that lay like a dazzling creation spell over all who lived in the sea showed clearly in the spiral, each cell as great as the sum of the two previous sections. Everything in the ocean was a thing of beauty and numbers, even in death.
Mermaids could live for a long time, but their bodies became foam that dissipated into nothing when they died.
The poor little mollusk who lived in this shell had a very short life, but his shell could last for centuries.
Ariel sighed and brushed her fingers over it, feeling strangely melancholy despite the triumph she literally held in her hands. Years of being mute could be swept away in a second. Years of frustration, years of silent crying, years of anger.
And then what?
If she destroyed it, what would it change?
Ursula would immediately know she was back. That she had been in the castle, practically under the sea witch’s nose.
And then what would happen to Ariel’s search for her father? This was more complicated than a simple diversion; this could set everything back and make her whole task harder.
Queen Ariel held the nautilus and considered thoughtfully.
But the little mermaid didn’t think. She acted.
Before she realized fully what she was doing Ariel had smashed the nautilus on a sharply faceted rock.
It didn’t break like a normal shell. It shattered like a human vessel. Shards flew in all directions equally, unhampered by gravity or luck.
Ariel pitched forward.
She choked, no longer breathing the air of the Dry World. Her arms flailed up like a puppet’s. Her torso whipped back and forth, pummeled by unseen forces. Something flew into her mouth, up her nose, and suffused her entire body with a heat that threatened to burn. It rushed into her lungs and expanded, expelling whatever breath she had left, pushing blood to her extremities, pushing everything out that wasn’t it, leaving room for nothing else.