Poor Unfortunate Soul: A Tale of the Sea Witch (8 page)

Pflanze hopped down from the mantel and squinted at Nanny. “Don’t you go giving me the side-eye now, creature! You know exactly what I’m about to do!”

I
t didn’t take long to get the furniture shifted and all the candles placed and lit, with Nanny orchestrating the scene like the greatest of maestros. The room was brilliant with light, and sitting at the center were Nanny and Pflanze. They were encircled by many rings of candles, which seemed to go on infinitely when reflected in the many mirrors that adorned the room.

Pflanze had heard Lucinda say many times that fire and water did not mix, and she knew even without reading her mind what Nanny was up to. She was creating a wall of fire to keep Ursula from entering their magical circle again.

They were going to summon Circe, and this time Ursula wouldn’t be able to interrupt.

T
he odd sisters had spent far too much time fretting over the Dark Fairy’s message, leaving Princess Ariel to find her way into Prince Eric’s home by the sea. Luckily for the sisters, however, she hadn’t found a way into his heart. Not yet. “We must focus all our attentions on Ariel,” said Lucinda. “Where are Flotsam and Jetsam?”

“Oh! I’ll get the mirror!” Martha shouted, scuttling off to find one of their enchanted mirrors so they could keep an eye on Ariel and the prince.

Ruby was shaking; she couldn’t turn her mind from the Dark Fairy’s warning. “Why did she have to send that message now, when we’re trying to find Circe? Do you think she’ll interfere?”

Ruby’s endless fretting over Maleficent’s message only succeeded in making Lucinda more infuriated with her old friend the Dark Fairy.

“I won’t have her mentioned again, Ruby!” Trying to distract her sister, she continued: “Look, here is Martha with the mirror!”

“I have them! I have them!”

In the mirror Martha was struggling to drag into the room, the witches could see the images of Flotsam and Jetsam. The two creatures were spying on Ariel and Prince Eric.

“Someone help me!” Martha squealed, tripping on a snag in her tattered dress.

“Good gods, Martha! Why didn’t you bring one of the smaller mirrors? Here, let me help you!”

The ladies successfully propped the mirror against one of the onyx raven statues that flanked the fireplace so that the sisters could warm themselves by the fire while spying on Triton’s youngest daughter. Collectively they wondered if they were doing the right thing. A terrible sense of foreboding and anxiety was just under the surface, threatening to burst forth. They had been very careful not to fall into their old habits of interfering with others, casting harmful spells, or even succumbing to their usual fits of lyrical mayhem. The sisters had in fact been rather subdued, and it was all for Circe. For their dearest little sister. They were even speaking normally, or doing so as much as they were capable, so their sister would accept them. She hated their odd rhyming speech. They wanted nothing more than to make her happy, make her proud of her older sisters. But wouldn’t meddling in the affairs of Ariel and killing her father besmirch them further in their little sister’s eyes? Surely it would.

But could they truly be certain? Perhaps it wouldn’t bother Circe. In fact, they assured themselves, Circe might actually be pleased.

After all, Circe loved Ursula; she had said so herself. And if Circe knew the terrible things Ursula’s brother, Triton, had done to her—not just the legends but the truly awful deeds—then she would help them.

How Triton had treated Ariel would be enough for Circe. She had no regard for fathers who kept their daughters from their true loves and destroyed their most cherished possessions. If Circe were there, she probably would have granted Ariel’s wish to be human without payment, punishing Triton in the process. No, Circe wouldn’t mind their schemes with Ursula. In fact, she’d probably help them.

“I don’t think she would. She’s too good,” whispered Martha. “I don’t think she’d like it at all.”

Lucinda sighed. “We’re doing it
for
Circe!”

Martha and Ruby weren’t convinced. “But that is what we thought with the Beast prince!” “And now Circe is angry, refusing to see us!”

Lucinda was clenching her fists, willing herself not to unleash her fury on her sisters. “Ursula promises to help us find her! Once she has Triton’s power there isn’t much she won’t be able to manage. Now, please, let’s focus on helping Ursula.”

“But isn’t that what the Dark Fairy fears? Perhaps she is right? Should one witch have so much power?”

Lucinda grabbed a glass jar and threw it at the wall. It shattered, casting orange dust throughout the room with an explosion of fury.

“Do not speak of Maleficent again!”

Once over the shock, Ruby and Martha started screeching. “You’ve ruined the divination powder!” “Oh, Lucinda! You ruined everything!”

Lucinda rolled her large dark eyes at her sisters, wondering how she managed this long-suffering affair. “I’ve ruined nothing, you featherbrains. Martha has already conjured them in the mirror! We saw that as she entered the room.”

The sisters mumbled in embarrassment and nonchalantly turned toward the mirror.

Within the mirror the sisters spied Flotsam and Jetsam swimming near Ariel and Eric’s boat. “They’re about to kiss!” squealed Ruby. “How could we have let this happen? Ursula is going to be furious!”

But before the witches could start screeching incantations, Ursula’s devious slithering minions overturned Eric and Ariel’s boat. The odd sisters sighed with relief while Flotsam and Jetsam gave each other mischievous grins, congratulating themselves for ruining the romantic scene.

“See? There is nothing to fear! Our distractions haven’t led Ariel and Eric down the sickening path of love!”

“Not yet,” said Ruby, who was clearly still distracted by other matters.

“What? What is it?” Ruby said nothing.

“Tell me!” Lucinda demanded.

Ruby, careful not to mention Maleficent’s name, sputtered and twitched but managed to share her fears. “What if we can’t trust Ursula? What if her story is lies? How do we know her brother truly did the things she said? And where is Pflanze? She’s been missing since Ursula’s visit!”

Where is Pflanze?

Pflanze. She was the last thing Lucinda needed to worry about now, what with the cryptic message from the Dark Fairy, Circe gone beyond their magic, and now her fretting sisters. Lucinda was full of rage but she could not place where it should be directed. Should it be aimed at her sisters for questioning her authority? Or should it be at Maleficent for interfering in their plans to find their sister? Most troubling of all, she wondered if she was enraged at
herself
for blindly trusting Ursula.

Whatever the cause, it needed to stop. They couldn’t go into their scheme with doubt or fear. She walked to the wall on which she had thrown the powder and gathered some from the floor, forgetting to be mindful of the broken glass. Her blood mingled with the orange powder, turning her hands a deep crimson, making her recall the Dark Fairy’s warning:
Ariel’s blood will be on your hands.

She threw the powder she had gathered into the fire.

“Let us see times gone past when Triton and Ursula spoke last.”

“That’s not the correct meter, Lucinda!” hissed Ruby, who was very grateful Lucinda did not have the power to kill with a single look, because if she had, Ruby would have been lying on the floor, choking on her own blood.

“Silence, Ruby! I won’t have you ruining this spell!” But she amended the lines just in case her sister was right.

“Let us see in times gone past when Triton and Ursula did speak last!”

She brushed the rest of the orange dust from her hands into the fire, conjuring Ursula in the flames. Ursula was on the shores of Morningstar Kingdom, saying her good-bye to Princess Tulip the day she had saved the poor girl from her sorrow and fear.

“Now, my little angel cake, I trust you won’t go flinging yourself off any more cliffs for the love of a man who doesn’t deserve you. And I daresay if another man does fall in love with you, you’ll know he loves you for yourself and not how your beauty reflects upon him, and, my sweet cheeks, if that day comes, I will return to you your voice.”

Tulip answered Ursula with a weak smile, and Ruby looked to her sisters, who were intently watching the scene. “This is the day Ursula saved Tulip from drowning after the Beast prince broke her heart. Where is Triton? We asked to see the last time brother and sister spoke, not this nonsense!”

Martha looked panicked. “I think you did the spell wrong, Lucinda. I told you the meter was off! This isn’t even the right time period!”

Lucinda looked as though she might strangle her sisters. She could see herself taking their skinny little necks in her bony hands and squeezing the life from them.

“Well, that’s a pretty scene you’ve conjured, Lucinda, I must say!”

Lucinda looked at Ruby as though she were a strange bug. “‘I must say’? Since when do you say things like ‘I must say’?” She scoffed and continued. “Sisters, please! I’m sure Triton will show eventually.”

In the flames Ursula sighed as she watched Tulip walk the path that led to her father’s castle; then the sea witch disappeared beneath the water. She actually felt bad for the poor little princess, not because she had lost her beauty, but because she had never truly appreciated it when she had it. Ursula was swimming home, feeling sullen, for her own losses as well as Tulip’s, when a tightening grip seized her stomach at the sight of Triton’s shell chariot outside her entrance. A deep anger swelled within her as she thought of him in her home.
How dare he enter without my permission!
He had often taken those liberties with her, not because they were kin, but because he saw it as his right. He had forsaken her long before, when he had banished her from his kingdom—not that he’d ever accepted her into his life during her time at the palace. He had never really tried to love her as a sister.

But that was a lifetime ago,
she thought. Those days when she’d lived in his kingdom were like a faded nightmare now, hazy and out of reach. Now she lived in her own waters, the Unprotected Waters, far from Triton and his sycophantic subjects. Only the most desperate of those subjects came to Ursula’s realm, and she was more than happy to oblige them.

Triton had painted her as a creature capable of only evil and wrongdoing. He would never dare admit that she had something to offer his people, despite the fact that together they could have ruled far better than either of them could alone. Surely that was what their mother and father had planned when they were alive. That was why they split their power between them, putting his into his trident and hers in the golden shell necklace Triton had taken from her when she was sent from his kingdom. He couldn’t use her power even if he wanted to, not without her permission. Only she could wield her power, but he’d rather hoard it than let her have it, her rightful inheritance, and her rightful place at his side.

If she were able, she could reclaim that power, and with a little help from the sister witches, she might easily dethrone her brother. Lucinda, Ruby, and Martha listened intently to Ursula’s musings while watching her in the enchanted flames.

“Ah, there is the tyrant king,” said Lucinda as the sisters watched Ursula slither into the gaping-maw entryway of her home. They heard the little cries and pleas for help from the creatures in her garden of lost souls. Ursula smiled at Harold. He had been the first of her victims and therefore with her the longest; she had come to look at him as one of her favorites. There was something about his sorrowful gaze that made her smile.

“Hello, Harold, my pet.” She looked at all the souls she’d collected. “How are all my little darlings doing today?” She was trying to pretend she hadn’t noticed her brother standing just beyond the garden.

“I see you’ve been keeping yourself busy, Ursula.”

“I suppose you think you can enter any domain you choose, but I daresay you’ve overreached. You are, in fact, trespassing, sir!”

“I see the extent of your exile wasn’t sufficient, Ursula. Clearly you are weaving your dark arts with those brave enough to venture into the unprotected realms and look upon your revolting visage.”

Revolting visage.

Ursula choked back her pain, swallowed it, and turned it into malice.

“Your subjects wouldn’t come begging me for help if you didn’t oppress them with your lunatic standards of beauty! Dear, sweet, lovable, stupid Harold here is a prime example. All he wanted was to impress the ladies with the virtues you and your court hold in such high esteem rather than being his dear sweet self, and look where it got him.”

Triton tried to interrupt his sister. “Ursula…”

But Ursula kept talking.

“My contracts with your subjects are fair and binding. There is nothing your magic can do to help them,
Brother
.”

“Do not call me Brother. You foul, murdering, ugly monster!”

Foul.

Murdering.

Ugly.

Monster.

That was what her brother had thought of her since the day they met on the shores of Ipswich. She wished she had memories of her brother from before that day. To imagine them young together only made her feel the loss of him more profoundly. Perhaps it was better to think their origins lay on the shores of Ipswich. There was nothing she could say or do to make him soften to her. He would always see her as a monster. No amount of love or support of his kingdom changed his view of her. Even when she hid within that false aquatic form he demanded of her, in the guise of what he deemed beautiful, she could sense him looking straight into her heart, which he saw as cold and black.