No sooner had they left than another knock came at the door. There was no wait for a response this time, however. Two little girls simply walked in as though it were the most natural thing to walk into a stranger’s room. They closed the door behind them and turned to study her.
“I don’t see why he wants us to stay away,” the younger one finally said to the older. “She can’t even walk.”
“I’m Claire,” the older girl said. “And this is Lucy.”
Arianna could have hugged them both. At last, here were two faces that were neither angry nor afraid. Just curious.
“I am nine years old,” Claire continued, smoothing her wrinkled gown delicately. “Lucy is seven.”
“Noemi won’t be coming to help you.” Lucy grinned, her little freckled nose crinkling. “We’re going to help you instead.”
Arianna looked at Claire in confusion, and Claire just rolled her eyes.
“What she means to say is that Bithiah told us to tell a servant to help you, but we thought we would do a better job. And,” she held up a bag, “we brought you a better dress.” She made a face. “That dress you’re wearing is horrid.”
For the first time, Arianna looked down to see what she was wearing. Someone had dressed her in a gown, but the gown itself was misshapen and possibly the reddest color of brown that Arianna had ever seen. It was large enough to hang off her shoulders like a bag, nothing like the slick, practical camicetts she was used to. And Arianna knew it was ridiculous, but her heart broke a little when she realized just how unlike it was to the dresses Prince Michael’s admirers had worn to the ball all those years ago.
But if the girls had brought her a nicer one, she was more than willing to try it.
Arianna watched in amazement as the girls set to bustling around the room. Claire produced a tear-shaped red glass jar. She shook the bottle several times into her hand, and out fell some little pink crystals that were smaller than the girl’s fingernails. With ceremonial solemnity, she dropped each crystal into the water, where it fizzled for a few moments until it disappeared completely. Lucy drew a little sponge from her bag, something Arianna was relieved to recognize.
“You need to take off your dress now,” the little girl said.
Arianna stared at her. Why would she ever do such a thing in front of children?
“Oh, come now.” Claire rolled her eyes. “It isn’t anything we haven’t seen before. We helped Bithiah bathe when she hurt her back.”
Arianna just frowned. But why was she taking off her clothes? How she wished suddenly that she had her waxy leaves and writing utensils.
“How else do you expect to get clean without getting in the water?” Lucy huffed.
So that was how the humans stay clean. The large bucket must be the bath Bithiah had spoken of. But why didn’t they just get clean in the ocean instead? It was right outside their palace.
Before Arianna could finish her thought, however, Claire had walked behind her and given the gown a few yanks. To Arianna’s horror, the dress began to fall off.
“I think she’s shy, Lucy,” Claire said as though Arianna weren’t there. “Let’s give her a moment to get into the water.” She glanced back at Arianna. “That bandage should make it interesting. I don’t think you’re supposed to get that wet.”
Arianna realized afterward that she should have taken the girls up on their offer to help her get in. But the puddle on the floor had been small and nearly invisible, and she hadn’t expected to fall so fast or so hard. With a splash that sent water flying far enough to hit the window and the door, Arianna landed in the giant bucket. As her bottom sank, her arms and legs shot out, hitting the sides of the tub and sending a pang up her leg from her throbbing ankle. Claire, widening her eyes at Lucy, took Arianna by an arm and began to haul her back up into a sitting position.
“Well,” Claire said with a smile that was a little too amused for Arianna’s taste, “at least you managed to keep your foot out of the water. Now the room gets a bath, too!”
“Bithiah’s going to be mad at you!” Lucy said, her green eyes wide. Then she brought her voice down to a whisper. “Want to know a secret? I hate baths, too.”
“That’s not a secret,” Claire said as she helped Arianna stay sitting up, which was hard with her foot sticking up out of the water. “Everyone in the palace can hear you howling whenever you take a bath. Now, hold on to the sides of the tub. I’m going to scrub your neck, but you have to stay upright.”
But Arianna needed to know something first. She plunged her head underwater and sucked in. Instead of regrowing her fins, however, or breathing below the surface as she’d hoped to do, Arianna found herself choking on mouthfuls of bitter-tasting water. Panic took her as she tried to spit it out, to swallow it down, but she couldn’t. Nothing she tried could clear her airway.
So this was how she was going to die. After surviving pirates and sea monsters, the youngest Atlantician princess would perish in a giant bucket. In water.
Something slammed down hard on her back. Once. Twice. On the third whack, the water dislodged itself from her throat and flew back down into the giant bucket in a most unladylike fashion. Arianna continued coughing and sputtering, but found to her immense relief that she could breathe.
“Are you well?” Claire looked on in concern, her hand poised for another strike, the sponge still in her other hand.
“What did you do that for?” Lucy gawked as though Arianna had lost her mind.
But Arianna only coughed harder as tears filled her eyes. Where had her true form gone? Had the Maker seen fit to take her fins from her as well? Had she lost even the little part of her that had been mermaid to begin with? And if she had, how was she ever to find her aunt?
The girls stared at her a moment longer before Claire finally shook her head. “We saw you when you crawled up out of the water. But you’re not a mermaid anymore. You need to do what people do now.”
Arianna tried to breathe normally as she looked at Claire in disbelief. Did everyone know she was a mermaid?
“You’re a person here,” Lucy finished for her sister. “And do you know what people do?”
She leaned forward as though to tell a secret, so Arianna leaned forward, too.
“They wash behind their ears.”
13
Who She Is
“A mermaid?” Drina clutched at her chair’s back. “Get her out! I’ll not have the enemy in my home!”
“Well, this one is staying.” Michael folded his arms.
“Have you lost your mind? They might have fled to their king, but that doesn’t mean they’re not looking for an opportunity—”
“This mermaid saved my life. And Claire’s.”
“How so?”
“On the day Father died . . . when the charms failed, she simply appeared. First she took Claire to the surface and left her on the beach. Then she came back for me.” When his mother rolled her eyes, he added, “She even stayed with us until the servants discovered us there.”
Michael’s mother blinked rapidly for a moment before she turned back to her vanity and tucked pieces of stray hair into her crown in dramatic sweeps. “It seems rather convenient that you should only remember to tell me about this now.”
“It was the day Maura and Father died,” Michael said softly. “I had other things on my mind. Besides,” he walked over to the ceiling-high window and stared at the city below, “the mermaid was young, only a girl when it happened.”
“That still doesn’t explain what she’s doing with legs or how you even know it’s her.” His mother stood and went over to her wardrobe, tilting her head and muttering to herself as she perused the mass of gowns.
“I cannot explain the legs. But, from what I can tell, neither does she. The poor thing hardly knows how to walk.” He pointed to one of the two gowns his mother held up. She immediately put it back in the wardrobe and laid the other out on her bed, so he spoke quickly. She would stop listening to him the moment she chose her s
hoes. “And I know it’s her because I remember her face. And . . . because her brother told me she has no voice.”
“Her brother?”
“Rinaldo Atlantician.”
She turned from her vanity and gave him a stare that rattled his nerve. “You mean to say that I have the daughter of Amadeo—the granddaughter of the Sea Crown—in my house?” Her voice was suddenly far too quiet.
“Rinaldo told me about her the night before he died.”
“Well, I would hardly trust the enemy’s son to speak honorably!”
“That is enough!” Michael put his hands on his mother’s to stop her from trying on another ring.
“You forget, son, that you are not the king yet! I hold the interim crown until you are married,” she hissed. “And since you see no reason to follow duty’s call when it comes to matrimony—”
“Do not speak to me of duty,” Michael said, holding her glare, “until you have spent at least an hour hearing the complaints of our people, or selling a few of those baubles to pay for our guards’ bread.” At this, he let go of her hand and stepped back, trying to ignore the disgust roiling in his stomach. “And Rinaldo was a good man, much better than his father. Do not profane the name of the dead. Especially that one.”
“How can you defend them? They killed your sister! And your father!”
Michael sighed and drew his mother into a hug. He mentally chided himself as she sobbed into his shirt. He knew better than to let her get him riled up like that.
“Arianna—”
“I hate that name!”
“—is no more to blame for the war than I was. Besides, as I said, Rinaldo said she can’t sing. That means she can’t do us any harm.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
Me neither, he thought glumly.
“I hope,” she said as she pushed him off and returned to her wardrobe, “that you’re not doing this simply because you feel you owe that boy something.”
“She saved my life and Claire’s. I think that merits help enough. But if you really must know, yes, I do believe we owe his memory some sort of boon. After all, it was our fault he died.”
“How so, pray tell?”
He was losing her fast. “If we had honored our agreement with the Sea Crown, the pirates would not have been bold enough to attack our allies right off our own coast!”
“And so after all this, do you suggest she stays here? On our coin?”
“About that . . . I had to send the girls’ nurse away a few days ago.”
That got her attention. “And just what are we to do with them?” She dropped the gown she’d pulled out to examine and then let out an oath about its wrinkles.
He briefly considered asking her why she needed a new gown for supper when she was already wearing one that was perfectly fine. But he knew better. “I was thinking that she could watch them,” he said instead. “They already like her.”
“No. I draw the line there! We will not have some mermaid playing all day with the girls. She’s likely to drown them.”
“Well,” he shrugged, “in that case I’m sure you would like to spend all day every day with your granddaughters.”
“You and your scruples,” she muttered.
“Well,” he said again as he turned to leave, “we might be in a better place now if Grandfather had kept any.”
“If we are done, then go away.” She waved a hand dismissively. “You’re giving me a headache. Now, where is my pink brocade?”
14
A Meager Night
“Rolf said he had one left over from the war,” Claire announced as she came in, this time pushing another one of the spindly chairs. But this one was on wheels. “Is she ready for supper, Lucy?”
“Almost.” Lucy shook a few wild locks of red hair from her face and stepped back to study Arianna. “Something’s still missing, though.”
“She can’t wear shoes, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Claire joined her sister in staring at Arianna. She tilted her head for another moment, then her face lit up. “I know!” She darted out the door once more and was back a few minutes later, this time carrying something shiny in her hand. Once they had somehow maneuvered Arianna into the chair with wheels, Claire draped the shiny thing around Arianna’s neck and stepped back to admire her work. “Yes,” she said, placing her arm around her little sister. “I think we’ve done it.”
Arianna looked down and gasped when she saw a pink jewel shaped like a teardrop dangling from a thin but elaborate gold chain. It matched the pink gown perfectly. The dress’s material was the softest Arianna had ever touched. If one could pick up the ocean’s foam and sew it into a gown, it might have felt half as nice as this. Arianna wished again that she could walk, for even though she would have escaped to find her aunt, she might have paused to twirl a few times. It was exactly the kind of dress Arianna had imagined herself wearing. But where had the girls gotten such a fine gown?
Still, there was little she could do about it now, so she gave the girls her biggest smile. They really had been quite kind, fussing over her as though she were a doll. Thank you, she mouthed. They beamed back and then declared it time to bring her to supper.
As they pushed her down the halls, Arianna felt her mouth fall open at the ornate beauty of the Sun Palace, and she immediately saw why the building itself was such a topic of conversation underneath the sea. In the few bits of gossip she had managed to glean over the years before the war, she had never heard a bitter or salty word about the palace itself. The merpeople had never been on easy terms with the humans, at least as long as she had been alive, but to see the Sun Palace had been a privilege of the highest sort.
And now she was being pushed steadily, albeit not in a straight line, toward the great windowed dining hall that could be seen from miles out at sea. The halls alone were magnificent. Millions of pieces of mother-of-pearl had been laid down side-by-side and polished to perfection on the floors. The walls were not smooth or flat but made up of countless seashells, pearls, and other seafloor treasures that had been pressed and stuck into the surfaces in daring spirals and designs. Even areas of the ceiling were made of a blue etched glass that let in some of the sun’s dying rays.
The dining hall sat on the northwest corner of the palace. Two of its walls were made completely of windows that looked out to the ocean. Arianna had never been able to see past the windows’ reflections into the room itself, but she had spent hours imagining it. And as she finally entered, all of her fantasies fell far short of the truth.
The floor was made of a clear blue glass, and beneath the glass was sand covered in shells and sea treasures of every sort. Tables and chairs were lined up and about two dozen people were seated at them already. The tables and chairs were made of wood but had been carved and painted to look like green, purple, and orange seaweed and coral rising up from the blue glass below. Life-size likenesses of large fish and sea creatures hung from the distant ceiling above.
A slight hush came over the group of humans as the girls pushed Arianna’s wheeled chair over to a spot three seats down from where Prince Michael already sat. Arianna quickly lowered her head. Everyone was staring at her as though she’d grown a third arm. She had expected some curiosity, being new to the palace staff, but even the prince was looking at her with an expression of . . . well, she didn’t know what his expression was, but it certainly contained some emotion he hadn’t worn that afternoon.
As soon as her chair was set snugly in front of her place setting, the girls turned and began to walk away. Arianna caught Claire’s wrist and gave her an imploring look. But Claire just patted her arm and shook her head. “We have to sit at the end of the table. Grandmother’s rules.”
Arianna risked another glance around as the girls took their seats. Bithiah was there and the older man who had brought up her bath earlier sat beside her. Three or four other men and women of various ages wore what looked like servants’ garb. An older portly man with graying hair a
nd a red face sat across from the prince. His clothes were of higher quality than the servants’ clothes, although even his coat had a few patches on the sleeves. Then, of course, there was Prince Michael in the center with his back to the windows. And they were all staring at her.
If they looked any harder, their eyes would fall out of their heads.
“Why, who is this new beauty?”
Arianna turned to see a young man enter from the hall. He was just slightly shorter than Prince Michael, and his hair was lighter, the color of sand. But his twinkling hazel eyes might as well have belonged to Prince Michael had Prince Michael looked less miserable all the time. The young man bounded over to Arianna’s chair and took her hand in both of his. He kissed it gently before looking back up at her with soft wonderment.
“Lucas,” the prince finally spoke, his voice more composed than he looked, “this is Arianna.”
Arianna jerked back to look at the prince. Would he betray her secret by giving her full name? But to her relief, he added nothing else except, “Arianna, this is my brother, Prince Lucas.”
“What beautiful tide has brought such a gem to our door?” Prince Lucas asked, still staring into her eyes. “For your eyes sparkle like the very waters of the Sea Crown.”
“Sit down, Lucas,” Prince Michael said with a frown. “She doesn’t want to hear your incessant flirting.”
On the contrary, Arianna would not have minded at all. But the younger prince gave his brother a dramatic bow and seated himself on Prince Michael’s other side, cutting off Arianna’s view of him.
Which was probably for the best. Now if only her cheeks would return to their usual color. Arianna hated blushing. And yet, how could she not? It was the first time anyone had ever called her beautiful. Well, anyone besides her mother or aunt.
Silent Mermaid: A Retelling of The Little Mermaid (The Classical Kingdoms Collection Book 5) Page 9