Ariel had repeated it twelve times—with no intention of stopping—when she was interrupted by a familiar voice.
“I’m so sorry, my lady.”
Ariel looked up. Argent the Inker stood there, a disgusted look on her face. She put a hand on the mermaid’s shoulder.
“I wanted to see you again to thank you for the extra coins and gems you gave me, but this isn’t the way I’d hoped we would meet.”
“What goes on here?” Ariel demanded.
The old woman made a face, the divots and wrinkles in her skin pulling into a rictus of contempt. “The castle is offering a reward for the capture of a ‘magical fish.’ A trunk of gold and an estate and a title to whichever fisherman brings it in.”
“Magical fish?” Ariel repeated slowly, hoping she had heard it wrong.
“Princess Vanessa has finally lost her mind—at least, that’s what some people are saying,” the woman said with a snort. “Maybe she never had one to begin with. Maybe she kept that hidden until now. But people don’t care—who would? A trunk of gold and a title for one fish. Whether it’s actually magical or not. But I assume, with you here, of course, there’s a chance it actually is…”
“What is this magical fish supposed to do? What does it look like?”
“No idea what it’s supposed to do. I guess that if it grants wishes, it’s probably not going to get turned over to the princess, if you know what I mean. They say it doesn’t look like the normal fish we catch around here. It’s slow-moving, and fat, with yellow and blue stripes.”
For the second time that day Ariel felt a wave of nausea pass over her.
Of course. Of course. She should have guessed.
Flounder.
Ursula had set a reward out for the capture of her best friend.
Something changed in Ariel.
Over the span of a single breath, the nausea subsided, along with the sadness and sickness and helplessness. Something far more solid—and terrible—took its place.
“I would suggest you and whomever you love stay off the ocean for the next tide,” she said as calmly as she could.
“What…？”
Argent searched Ariel’s eyes, huge and aquamarine, clear as the seas in Hyperborea. She must have found something there. Blue anger? Or perhaps it was just Ariel’s confidence: the calm assumption that she could back up insane statements with an even more insane reality.
The eyes of a queen.
“Yes, thank you. Of course, I’ll tell them,” the old woman said quickly. “Thank you, my lady.” She practically bowed. Her earrings jingled as she ran away on her long, rangy legs.
Ariel spun around and regarded the piles of fish, the laughing and angry men and women, the boats out at sea, one last time.
Not caring who saw, she took off down the dock and dove into the water, her tail beating the water into foam before she was even submerged.
Ariel surfaced just beyond the bay. She was consumed by fury over so many things: the piles of dead fish, Ursula tricking her with the carriage, her own inability to find her father, the loss of her voice, the loss of who she was when she first had a voice.
A wave formed, swelling around Ariel’s body. It lifted her up higher and higher—or maybe she herself was growing; it was hard to tell. She held the trident aloft. Storm clouds raced to her from all directions like a lost school of cichlid babies flicking to their father’s mouth for protection. Lightning coursed through the sky and danced between the trident’s tines.
Ariel sang a song of rage.
Notes rose and fell discordantly, her voice screeching at times like a banshee from the far north.
She sang, and the wind sang with her. It whipped her hair out of its braids and pulled tresses into tentacles that billowed around her head. She sang of the unfairness of Eric’s fate and her own, of her father’s torture as a polyp, even of Scuttle’s mortal life, slowly but visibly slipping away.
Mostly she sang about Ursula.
She sang about everyone whose lives had been touched and destroyed by evil like coral being killed and bleached, like dead spots in the ocean from algae blooms, like scale rot. She sang about what she would do to anyone who threatened those she loved and protected.
And then, with her final note, she made a quick thrust as if to throw the trident toward the boats in the bay, pulling it back at the last moment.
A clap louder than thunder echoed across the ocean. A wave even larger than the one she rode roared up from the depths of the open sea. It smashed through and around her, leaving her hair and body white with foam. She grinned fiercely at the power of the moment. The tsunami continued on, making straight for Tirulia.