On the fourth tide she was back at her lagoon as promised.
Flounder leapt into the air, flipping himself like he hadn’t since he was small.
“Ariel!! Talk! SAY SOMETHING!” he cried.
She smiled, feeling her cheek tug to one side the way it used to when she was indulging her best friend. She closed her eyes and put her hands in a student-y clasp, reciting:
“There was a young guppy from Thebes, whose fins would often grow—”
“Ha-HA!”
Flounder leapt into the air again.
She laughed, too, and ran into the water to hug him, unconcerned about her clothes. They were uncomfortable and hangy and close anyway, much heavier than what mer chose to wear. Flounder cuddled and leapt and nuzzled her like a puppy before recovering himself.
“Tell me all about it!”
So she did. And it was strange, telling a story with her mouth. She let her hands do some signing. It would have been uncomfortable keeping them still.
“Wow,” Flounder said when she was done. “That’s all…crazy.”
Jona dropped silently from the skies and landed on a nearby rock with the delicacy of something that wasn’t a seagull. “What did you learn in town?”
Ariel sighed and sat down in the shallow water. A warm breeze picked up the tendrils of her hair that were sticking out of the head cloth. She wrapped her arms around her knees, feeling young and exposed.
“I learned it is the wrong season for cal?ots. I learned about tattoos.
“I learned that Ursula is using Tirulia as the jumping-off point for her private empire, seizing land from neighbors who probably aren’t strong enough for reprisals, and that she is antagonizing other, larger powers. I learned that the town is full of soldiers. I learned that twenty-three of them have died in her crusade and yet dozens more boys go to join up because of the promise of gold for their families and the gold buttons on their uniforms.”
Flounder gulped. Jona let out an avian hiss.
“And all I can think of are these two things. One, I am in some ways responsible for those twenty-three who will swim no more.”
Flounder started to open his mouth; by long habit Ariel just held up a finger to silence him.
“Two, I think about what I would do as ruler of Tirulia. If I were Eric, thrown into this mess now. Human politics and life seem far more dynamic than mer. I’ve never had to deal with anything like it in my time as queen. Nor has my father. Nor my father’s father.”
“Oh, but what about the Great Kelp Wars?” Flounder asked with a shiver.
“That was over an eon ago,” Ariel pointed out gently. “There have been no wars, no battles, no…large disagreements since then. We’ve lost touch with the Hyperboreans and haven’t heard from the Tsangalu in decades. We exchange Great Tide gifts with the Fejhwa but little else. We have had naught but silence and peace for decades.”
“Sounds like a utopia,” Jona said. “Especially if no one is grappling over the last tasty morsel.”
Ariel smiled. “Yes. Nothing but arts and leisure, beauty and philosophy…But it’s all the same, and no one has had a desire to go find out what happened to the Hyperboreans or Tsangalu, or acquire anything from them besides presents. Surely their art and philosophy would be interesting, and might invigorate our own…somewhat static culture? The humans, on the other hand, are still exploring their world, every crevice and cranny.”
“But…” Flounder made a face. “But we were here to get your father back. Not to get involved in human things.”
“Yes, but the two are intertwined,” Ariel said, though she was impressed with his desire to stick to the point. The old Flounder would have let her talk indefinitely and hung on her every word. This was better. She needed friends like him right now. “I had to find out what the consequences of my actions were, and unfortunately, I have satisfied that. I have a duty to make things right for the Tirulians, in addition to—after—saving my father. He can help us defeat Ursula once he’s back in his original form and king again.
“Unfortunately, it’s also going to be much harder to find him now, because as I said before, she has been alerted to my presence. I made the first move, I had the element of surprise, and I blew it.”
“Stop beating yourself up, Ariel,” Flounder said sternly. “There’s no guarantee you would have found him the first time you looked, anyway. Ursula isn’t stupid. She’s not going to leave the king around in a vase labeled Ariel’s Father, Don’t Touch. Just because you made the first move doesn’t mean you would have been successful. Games take a long time, and a lot of moves, before someone wins.”