It could have been a simple sneak thief, of course. It could have been some sort of accident. But it wasn’t. It was…
“The hussy,” Ursula growled, rolling the words out.
She paused her rant, savoring the sounds. Her stolen voice had been fun to play with, worked wonders on others, and caused pain for the one from whom it was ripped. That was more than enough. But…she rather enjoyed hearing her real voice again. It was a voice with depth, with command. With character and substance. It was so her. Not at all like that bubbling, perfect-pitched, whiny little merthing.
“The hussy is back,” she repeated.
Vareet took one timid step backward, obviously torn between terror at this strange change in her mistress—and fear of her mistress herself.
“She was in here, somehow, and stole my necklace, and destroyed it.”
Vanessa looked around, at the door to her changing room that led to her bedroom…but there was no evidence of anything out of place.
“This is a problem,” she said, fingering her throat. “A disturbing development I need to deal with immediately—and permanently.
“GUARDS!”
She sang.
Wordless hymns of the sea: immediate, extemporized passages about waves and sunlight and tides and the constant, beautiful pressure of water on everything. The glory of seaweed slowly swaying, the delicious feeling that foretold a storm in the Dry World and turbulence below.
The music came out of her without pause, driven by years of observing, seeing, listening, enjoying, experiencing the world and unable to express it. The wonder and sadness of being alive. The joy of being a mermaid; the pain of being the only one like herself—the only mermaid who had been mortal, temporarily, and then lost everything.
When she finally stopped, her eyes were closed and her hands rested on her human lap, and she felt the dry, human sun and imagined wet things.
She opened her eyes.
The silence was now deafening in the lagoon.
She had the voice of the gods, some had said. The sort of voice that could lure landlubbers to sea and sailors to their deaths, a voice that could launch a thousand ships. She had the voice of the wind and the storm and the crash of the waves and the ancient speech of the whale. She had the voice of the moon as it glided serenely across the sky and the stars as they danced behind. She had the voice of the wind between the stars that mortals never heard, that rushed and blew and ushered in the beginning and end of time.
She sat for a moment quietly, remembering how it sounded but enjoying the silence.
The songs were from the old Ariel. Perhaps the new Ariel, too.
She coughed and tried again, cocking her head and effecting a stern look.
“Just do it, Flounder; I need the tax audits by the third tide so we have something to present to the council.
“Sebastian, I don’t care about the gala or its details. I’m sure it’s all fine in your very capable claws.
“And with the cutting of this ribbon, I hereby declare the Temple of Physical Arts open to all!”
Ariel smiled, then threw back her head and laughed—but it was brittle.
She picked up a shard of the nautilus and sighed.
Her voice had been such an important part of her life before. The merfolk celebrated her for it. Her father excused her occasionally questionable behavior because of it. Eric loved the girl who rescued him, because of her singing…
But…
…she’d never really enjoyed singing for anyone else. In fact, she hated audiences. She sang because she liked to sing. She just…felt…something, and had to sing it. If she were happy, or sad, or angry…she would go off by herself and sing to the coral, sing to the seaweed, sing to an audience of sea snails or tube worms （who listened, but never commented）。 Most of her mergirlhood had been spent swimming around, exploring, singing to herself. Making up little stories in her head and then putting them into song.
Ruefully she remembered the concert that Sebastian had so carefully planned, which she had missed, which her dad had punished her for, which led him to set the little crab on her case, and so on…
She hadn’t been deliberately disobedient. She just…forgot.
Sometimes people thought she was a snob because of the way she acted. But she wasn’t trying to be a diva—she was just a young mer whose head was full of fantasies.
And by taking away her voice, Ursula had stolen what Ariel treasured most: the only way she knew how to express those stories.
Without spoken language—and no knowledge of signs, back then—she wasn’t able to tell Eric what had happened to her or how she loved him. She wasn’t able to tell her father not to trade places with her. She wasn’t able to rule her kingdom without the help of a fleet of people to interpret and speak for her.