“Oh, Scuttle, I’m so sorry…” She nuzzled his beak with her nose, closing her eyes. “As soon as I get my father back on his throne, I’ll have way more time to visit.”
Scuttle looked delighted—and a little surprised. “So you’re just gonna…come up now? To the Dry World? To stay? Or visit a lot? I mean, after whatever happens with your dad?”
Ariel paused. Once it was all over, of course she would go back to hanging out with her friends, old and new, in the world beyond the sea. But…how would she do it without the trident? Would her father help her? Even if she successfully rescued him, his views on the matter certainly wouldn’t have improved by years of imprisonment. What if he refused? What if he didn’t let her go?
I’ll just have to find a way on my own.
But…another part of her pointed out, that was how this whole thing started in the first place. Her father had refused to let her go, so she found another way, and it led to him being captured and her losing her voice and Tirulia gaining a tyrant. She squinched her face up at the conflicting thoughts.
Deal with it later, Ariel, she ordered all the voices, wrapping her headscarf tightly around her face and neck once again. She would get the job done first—find her father, defeat Ursula, set everything right. Then she could work on the happily ever afters.
She had just reached the edge of town when Jona wheeled down out of the sky to perch on a rock nearby.
“I was looking for you,” the gull said. “Be careful. There are a lot of shiny buttons walking around. I think you’re a persona non grata here.”
She tried not to look proud of the words she used, but failed badly.
“Shiny button—oh. Soldiers. Yes. That’s why I…Wait, how did you recognize me?”
She had to push the headscarf fully out of her face to see the gull clearly at all.
“I can spot half a sardine carcass sticking out of a flowerpot a quarter mile away,” Jona answered. “I’m a gull.”
Ariel smiled.
She carefully clambered up the rock next to the bird. Climbing things was still a tricky proposition; you hurt if you fell in this world, where everything was heavy and hard and inclined to falling. A very light breeze tickled her forehead as she stood on her tiptoes get a good view of the town…
…which brought with it one of the most revolting odors she had ever smelled. Bodies, rotting flesh. Death and decay in staggering amounts.
She almost fell off the rock.
“Are you all right?” Jona asked politely.
“What is that…horrible…stink…？”
“You mean the gigantic piles of dead fish the humans are leaving on the wharf.”
She had, at least, the good taste to avoid smacking her beak as she spoke.
“Scuttle said…I didn’t think…Why aren’t they being…”—she tried to swallow her nausea; she had to know—“eaten by the humans?”
“Don’t know,” Jona said with a wingy shrug. “But it’s been a very popular development among us and the rats and cats.”
Ariel couldn’t see anything from her higher position, and the wind was terrible, so she slipped back down from the rock, stomach still a little rocky itself. You’re a queen. She pulled herself upright as best she could.
“I’m…going to go look into this,” she said, trying not to breathe through her nose. Eric, even her father could wait. She had to find out what was going on to leave her subjects dead and rotting in piles. Jona nodded and launched herself into the air above her.
As she approached the main street Ariel noticed that even the humans who regularly ate fish were covering their faces and noses with cloth; she didn’t stand out in the crowd wearing her headscarf. The stench was overwhelming. Some people looked sour and complained bitterly. Others looked excited and rushed to and fro, mending nets, grabbing friends, chatting and shrieking in glee.
And there, on the docks, just as the gulls had said, every kind of fish was rotting in piles. From the species that humans loved to hunt and eat to the ones that were deadly poisonous. Squid, octopodes, eels, sharks, branzinos, rays, hake, oarfish, at least one small dolphin…they were all represented among the dead, baking and decaying in the sun.
The Queen of the Sea just stood there staring, overwhelmed by horror and sadness.
Finally she began to do the only thing she could for all of them now: she whispered a prayer. Again and again, willing their spirits to find the eternal ocean of heroes, where they could be happy and free forever.