A/N: It's only taken an age and a half, but here's the promised Ariel Chapter. I know that some of you noticed that the last two chapters disappeared and then reappeared suddenly. I realized just an hour or two after publishing them that I'd completely misnamed a character. Not to worry, you lovely readers don't have any big catch up to do. It was a small think—but quite confusing if one character suddenly switches names. According to my charts, I think I caught the trouble before anyone had the time to read them, but just in case!
As always, I love hearing from you! On the days when I have to decide between The Writing and The Anything-But-Writing, a comment can change the course of the work.
Making this chapter was certainly FUN! The adventure moves forward. (At last!)
Chapter 14 ArielAriel woke up with a jerk—both figuratively, and literally. Even asleep, Joe could still keep her from swimming off with one tentacle, and he muttered horrid, annoying things in his sleep. Things like: fix this mistake, and, trying to help you, and dithering, idiotic mermaid. Can't you see those are sharp? And—and her name.
Suddenly, Ariel didn't need any rays of natural light, or annoying blowfish announcements to know that the sun had set, and a wave of understanding hit her like a pry-bar to the head. Joe was taking her to fix this mess—if that were even possible, and—and then her breath hitched when another flood of memories from the day before hit her. She had done a truly spectacular job of making a royal loach of herself.
And, what was it she'd called Joe? She cringed as the insults came back to her, flying one by one into her head in her own voice, and hitting her like they'd been aimed at herself. Poseidon's crooked left thumb. What hadn't she called Joe?
The cecaelian in question must truly have been tired because when she rolled over to see him, he didn't stir. Though it didn't relinquish her, even in his sleep, the tentacle he'd kept on her tail to keep her from swimming off into the darkness just rolled with her. Looking around into the darkness, the little stars of light he'd created the day before from the ingredients in his bag had faded, pulsing faintly with each of his breaths. She felt her lips quirk up. She hadn't known it was possible to tie magic to something as simple as that.
His starlight floated almost protectively around their little campsite, enough to illuminate the warmer Joe had built, the slight rise and fall of Adin's gills as he snored softly into the silt, and Joe himself. It was just enough light to stave off the shadows that seemed to dart all around the monolith just beyond her line of sight. If Joe hadn't kept a hold on her while she slept, there was no telling whether or not she'd have swam off into that cold abyss. Even with Joe's keen eyes, she would have been easy to lose. She shuddered. That would be a wretched way to die.
That time her jerky movement stirred Joe, but not enough to wake him. The tentacle around her tail coiled a little more firmly, and she couldn't say whether the sensation was magical or not, but a feeling of gentle warmth flowed from it up her tail, soothing the stiffness she'd gotten from sleeping in sand, and banishing the last of the sleepy murk left from the curse's daytime muddling. It was a difference noticeable enough that she did suspect, for a cold minute, that some sort of innate magic from Joe's sleeping person was seeping into her, but when she examined his sleeping face and got another save of the same feeling, something told her it wasn't.
Just a few feet away, Joe's face was relaxed in sleep, the bulk of his stars floating gently somewhere above his head, winking in and out with his silent breathing. For the first time since she could remember, the stern lines of his brow, usually etching the evidence of his daily challenges across his forehead were softened, and she'd never seen his skin quite so smooth. Where it usually flowed above or behind him as he darted through his day, a halo of his silvery-white hair spilled out over the sand, making him look younger, and Ariel had to remind herself that despite his capable nature, Joe's age was only a few years from her own. Without his purposeful gaze, there was an unfamiliar air of vulnerability she'd had yet to meet. Bare-chested that he was, excepting the bag he kept belted to his waist and over one shoulder, she could see the scars that he'd accumulated over the years, some fresher than others, that glowed faint white. He'd always told her that they were old, or that he couldn't remember how he'd got them, but as the years passed over their friendship, he'd gained noticeably more, and though she knew he was lying, she'd never pressed. Now, her curiosity burned as she examined him, tracing the scars with her eyes from his neck to his tentacles and down. There were so many.
How had she never noticed?
In the last few months, Joe had been so busy—much of it her fault between her charting, and his obsessive work-ethic. She never knew why, except for meeting the demands of Ursula's contract with him, Joe pushed himself so hard.
Even when he had the opportunity to sneak away and stargaze by the cliffs, or explore the sunken ruins for books and records, Joe was always hunting for ingredients, or studying reactions between odd substances, or meeting with people along the way. When Ursula had found a second apprentice in Krill, she'd thought his workload would diminish, but in fact he'd been more busy ever since Krill had come to live with him and Ursula. At first, Ariel had thought it was because he wanted to teach Krill, and needed more time and resources for it. Then, she suspected he wanted to do the work of both of them so that Ursula never felt the need to bind Krill into an apprentice's contract. Either way, the feeling of warm safety he gave her wasn't just now, and wasn't just for her. As curmudgeonly as Joe could be, his instinct to protect was simply him. She suspected that in the same way people like the palace guards, or the ruffians in the slums sensed danger from Joe, safety radiated from him for her and Krill. At the same time, she didn't really mind Joe being a little more busy. He could be filling a dozen orders a day, and if he let her tag along, she would learn more with him about the people in her kingdom than she did in months of her private instruction in the palace—or at least, she'd felt that way until her sisters started to surpass her in her subjects. Still, she hadn't really anticipated she would have needed to care as much about the palace instruction, as the youngest in her line. An alliance as powerful as the Aegeans was supposed to have gone to one of her older, more competent sisters, although now, she wouldn't wish them on any of them.
With Joe, she could rant and rage, and generally be as un-royal as she felt like, and he would still make her feel at the end of the day like a princess in her own right—not one that had to grovel or bribe or connive, but one that simply was. They could spend whole days nattering on about things both interesting and completely unmemorable, and the time passed faster than Sebastian with a plate of sea-lettuce.
However, none of her ranting or raging had ever been as nasty as the day before. She wanted to bury herself under the monolith so that he would never have to look at her again.
And that's the future Prince Ellian has set me on, if Joe can't break this… she thought. any warmth starting to be eaten through by her despair, when Adin flopped over on the sand with the loudest snort she'd ever heard.
At the noise, Ariel let out a small cry and jumped backward away from Adin—and landed on Joe's middle.
"Mmph," he grumbled awake. Once his eyes opened, she immediately saw the hard edge of suspicion.
"Sorry!" she blurted. Looking over, Adin was still dead asleep, and somehow, she didn't think that telling him about the noise would lend anything to his good opinion—much less convince him that she wasn't trying to attack him, as he seemed to have concluded. "It was just….a nightmare, I think."
Something in Ariel still hated the idea of the day before being real, and still hoped that she would wake up from all of this, and it would be over.
But it was all too complex to have just been dreamt up, said the Voice of Reason.
Joe gave her a narrow look, his purple eyes glittering in the light of the little magical stars that grew brighter around them as Joe regained consciousness.
"I should hope so, Princess. I'd hate to think you wake up like that normally."
She groaned dramatically, and gave him a playful shove. "Don't ever call me that. Ever."
He leaned back, and let out a stream of bubbles in a sigh that seemed to take all of the tension of his muscles with it. "You're back," he said simply; then, "is there a particular reason you're sitting on me, Ariel?"
She crossed her arms, willing the blush that threatened to creep up her tail to go away. She hadn't realized she was still perched on his lap, but she also wasn't ready to move. "What, are you disappointed you rank above the silt?"
She felt a little heavy, and the cold that was setting into her fins was starting to numb them. Moving away from Joe would mean sacrificing the little warmth she had left, and though it was unusual, she stayed put, curious to see what he would do.
"You certainly didn't think so a few hours ago," he pointed out.
She winced, and felt her hands covering her face before she could think of a good reply. From what she remembered of the day before, any apology she could offer him now would be weak.
"Sorry," he amended, before she could come up with a response. "I know it wasn't…you."
"Nothing I said yesterday is how I feel—or think," she said quietly, not quite ready to look him in the eye. "I…there really are no words."
He made some strangled sound of disbelief. "Oh, but there were. In fact, I didn't know you possessed quite so many words, and that really is saying something."
She made some embarrassed sound into her fingers, and had just decided that she should keep her face there permanently, when Joe hooked her chin with one finger and lifted her face to look at him, and she saw the smirk.
It rallied something in her, and she managed to pinch his ear before he could swat her away. "And you said I had cheek! But Joe, I'm—I'm mortified, really. Are you doing alright after…well, you recall."
"About what was said, in particular, or the rather colorful way you're able to express the sentiments?" Joe needled, his smirk spreading.
One of his tentacles reached up and flicked her nose, and she realized with that small gesture that Joe was laughing at her.
"Wow, you've mastered the art of being pompous and difficult."
"I had ample instruction yesterday," he rebutted, giving her hair the kind of fond ruffle she'd seen him do to Krill. That simple feeling of his fingers and his directness about the whole thing made her feel better, if just a bit, but waltzing along with that comfort was the tiniest bit of shock. Joe never touched her casually like that. Joe never touched her at all.
Sensing some sort of change, she leaned forward, wondering if he would let her.
"Um, Joe, would you mind if—" Then, Ariel put her arms around his middle. The cold had spread from her fins to her tail, and though she thought it had been from shame, her teeth were starting to chatter from the cold. "It's completely freezing down here."
She regretted giving up her view of his face when it took Joe a little longer than she'd have thought to respond, until with a click of his teeth, a small puff of black water descended down over her ears, and she coughed heartily when it hit her nose.
"What—ack!"
"Many apologies," Joe said softly above her head. "I'd forgotten it was about time to renew you and Adin. He'll have a few more minutes than you, but even so, I won't cut things so close tomorrow."
Breathing in his ink, the cold started to abate, and eventually, her teeth went still enough to talk through again. "Any idea how much farther we have to make it—"
"Poseidon's shedding tailfins!" Adin yelped, shoving himself up abruptly from his sleeping place. It seemed he wasn't the only one who'd slept fitfully down here. Ariel hadn't noticed when his snoring had stopped, and neither, it seemed, had Joe. "How long was I asleep? O—oh! You two are—are…"
It seemed Adin couldn't quite put words to the scene of Ariel perched on Joe's tentacles, nor the sight of her wrapped around his torso. As Adin's eyes darted faster and faster between those two particular parts of Ariel's behavior, she herself realized how it could be interpreted, and probably would have disentangled herself if Joe hadn't gently unwrapped her and placed himself several feet away. Probably. The natural warming that came from being next to Joe faded almost instantly once her fins hit the chilled sand.
"Wait, I didn't mean let her free completely! I mean, I don't want her head getting bashed, it's just—" Adin blushed deeply, and his mouth flopped several times as he searched for the words. "It's just that being that close could be construed—"
"Adin, I'm back. It's just me, now," Ariel tried to explain before Adin said something she'd regret, a blush of her own starting to creep back. Joe, with the stern lines having returned to his face in their full depth, seemed the only one of their party unaffected. However; Adin didn't understand in the least.
"Yes, Princess," Adin spluttered. "I can see that, but—"
"Dear Poseidon ascended! Adin, please don't call me that. We're just going to get this curse fixed, and we're doing it as jolly friends who hopefully won't freeze or get crushed to death or eaten along the way," she ranted.
"I—erm," Adin didn't seem to be able to process what he'd heard. "Well, it is getting cold, now you mention it."
It took Joe only seconds to send Adin into his own coughing fit, and Ariel breathed a sigh of relief when it seemed to distract him hard enough to not question too much what he'd seen. It really hadn't been anything—at least, not anything like that.
Or, so she'd thought. Adin was looking at her more strangely than the night before—or was it the day before?
"Well?" Joe slid back to his cool, business-like self before Adin could breathe enough to keep speaking, holding out a hand to her, though he no longer looked at her directly.
With Joe's ink in her bloodstream, she could no longer feel the crushing weight of the ocean, nor its frigid chill, but she may as well have with the weight of awkward tension that descended over her head when Joe ignored Adin's incredulous Look, and assisted her to the whirling current above. She almost felt like she was committing some unspoken betrayal when she accepted it, but couldn't for the life of her say over what, or why.
"We don't have all night. On through," said Joe, though whether for hers or Adin's benefit, she didn't know.
It seemed the currents would only be getting stronger as they got closer to the kingdom, because the current they found at the end of this tentacle's light stream seemed set on making up for the hours they'd spent resting by it. This was of course alright by Ariel. The more she thought about what the curse made her become, the more eager she was to find the Kingdom of the Depths, and soon.
Now that she had her mind back, solving the next two tentacles was much faster. The third asked them to press a series of levers in the monolith, the order of which she cracked in under five minutes, although she certainly needed Joe's length to reach the right switches. The fourth, Joe recognized as asking for one of the ingredients he happened to have on him, and Ariel was inordinately relieved he was with her. Having to go back to the beginning now to collect something might have meant a life-sentence.
It was their arrival at the fifth monolith when things began to get complicated.
The stone tentacle rising from the sandy ground when they reached the curren't end was different from the others. In fact, everything was different. Instead of being deposited at the foot of some empty, sand-covered waste, the current let them out at the base of a colossal, tentacle-shaped monolith that was at least ten times the size of the others, standing as a sentinel before an endless, foreboding cliff. The black wall of rock loomed endlessly in either direction, the statue the only thing to interrupt the geology.
The statue itself was an awe-inspiring sight. Unlike any other formation Ariel had seen, it possessed an eerie quality that seemed to blur the line between the organic and the artificial. The carefully-worked stone was free of most of the parasitic life that seemed to crowd around the others, leaving it of itself to seem almost alive. The glowing letters displayed on its middle undulating ever-so-slightly as if responding to the hidden rhythms of the abyss.
The serpent's path be peril dight,
With scales of silver and eyes of light.
I am the companion that walks beside.
Those who leave me woe betide.
Trace the trail, avoid its bite,
And reveal passage by the name of night.
"These are getting worse," Joe remarked when he'd finished finding, and scraping away the barnacles that seemed to insist on growing over the glowing script on each of the tentacles. Perhaps the magic there fed them more, which was why they were extra-clingy.
"Are we going to have to fight some kind of sea-snake?" Adin asked, wide-eyed, once more taking the riddles at face value.
Ariel managed to prod one of Joe's tentacles with a finger before he swiped himself away from her. Since the beginning of the evening, he'd been keeping a stricter distance than usual, and that marked space only underlined any awkwardness left over from when they'd woken up. It didn't help that every time she swam close to Joe, Adin's facial expressions seemed to reach new records of pulling and pinching. He obviously didn't like it, but what she couldn't tell was what he was thinking. He'd never had a problem with her friendships before, had he?
Between not noticing Adin's newfound…whatever it was, and Joe's scars, and the true insidiousness of the Aegean agenda, Ezra's words were ringing in her skull.
"Don't ignore those around you for the sake of what you want to see, or you'll wind up getting stabbed in the back, princess," he'd said over a game of War at dinner. She wondered what else she'd been missing.
"There aren't any currents open around here that I can sense, and this…this thing is too big to swim around." Joe was swimming in his version of a pace around the monstrous curve of the tentacle's base.
Ariel smiled as Joe's frustration pulled her out of her own. She might not know what she had been missing yet, but she did know what Joe was.
"You did just say I had a thing with words, Joe."
"That I did," Joe grunted, drifting down from the upper foot to eye-level with Adin and Ariel, who had taken the opportunity to rest at the statue's base, and waited expectantly. "Does that extend to puzzles, or am I about to become audience to round two of your explanations of my incompetence?"
He was only half-serious, but it irked her that he would be so rough only an hour after dismissing the whole thing.
Ezra's words echoed in her head again.
That's right, she told herself, at last understanding some of what he'd meant. Joe isn't angry with me, he's angry that he's not solving these as fast as he wants. He's doing this for me. He's not going to toss me out into the abyss.
"Stop it, Joe," she bit right back at him. "There's only so much I can do to help; let me feel better about putting you out so much and speed this along."
"You know already? You're getting these quickly, Ariel," Adin flattered, swimming up from where he'd been fiddling with something at the monolith's side. He was clearly oblivious to the frustration and tension going on above him, although as he looked from her to Joe, Ariel didn't want to give him enough time to guess. Adin's cheeks were probably already hurting from all the faces he'd pulled at them that night.
"This one is easier than the others, shall I reveal the answer?" She gave a flourish with enough dramatic flair to win a spot in a traveling cabaret.
Joe only twitched in annoyance and visibly restrained himself from flicking her again, although his posture belied less frustration than before.
"Well?"
"Well, the first part is a warning," she explained, "but it doesn't mean a literal serpent. In old astrological lore, there's a story about a serpent that loved mischief so much, the waves never stopped moving over his tricks. Eventually, Poseidon himself banished him to the sky where he could still work the tide, but wouldn't wreck cities or start storms."
"The moon?" Adin guessed, apparently eager to appear helpful.
"Well caught, slick," Joe mumbled. Adin preened. "And the rest?"
"The companion that always walks beside is a shadow," Ariel said confidently, "so it apparently wants us to stick to the shadows wherever the next current is sending us, but it doesn't give a direction like the other ones….speak the name of night…"
"Moonshadow," Joe said clearly. "It's an ingredient in—"
But he never finished what he had to say, because once the riddle's answer had finished reverberating up the length of the monolithic stone, the whole thing shuddered into motion, stirring up sand and silt as it did so. Unlike the other tentacles, however, this one was so carefully balanced on its pivots, and so carefully free of barnacles and clinging mosses, that it made no sound as it slowly bent away from the cliff face, and settled suckers-downward into the soft sand without so much as a thud.
The statue's great fall, however, was nothing to the scene it opened way to.
The gaping mouthway the tentacle left behind opened into a deepwater valley that stretched like a scar across the ocean floor. Its rocky walls rose all the way up to the ocean's surface, both magically and naturally pulling down ethereal slivers of moonlight that shimmered in patterns bright enough to illuminate craggy corners and oddly patterned stones littered just beyond the entrance.
Joe examined the gaping opening with a focused glitter in his eye, and his carefully schooled features twitched an infinitesimally small amount, but Ariel caught the tiniest amount of awe all the same.
"Trust a politician to deal in doublespeak and backwards lingo," he said at last.
She blew an errant strand of hair out of her face, glad he was at least a modicum more his usual grumpy self, although the awkwardness of earlier wasn't entirely cleared from the water. "This was written by your people. Aren't riddles written into your nursery rhymes and fed to you in a spoon from birth?"
He rolled his eyes. "And trust a politician to turn it around as if it's all your fault from the start."
"You're impossible."
"You're lucky I am."
That took all of the wind out of Ariel's sails. She bit her lip and followed Joe into the narrow valley. Wearing an uncomfortable expression that she couldn't fathom, Adin insisted on taking the flank position, lurking behind her like some socially-deprived remora.
"Ariel," Adin hissed and grabbed her arm when they'd gone only a few meters. She nearly helped when he yanked her back from a small finger of light she'd been swimming past. "I think…I think that statue wasn't joking about us having to stay out of the light."
"Adin, I'm pretty sure that was just a guide to show us which way we have to—oh!"
Ariel saw what Adin had.
Amidst the rocks and crevices, strange and grotesque shapes loomed in the shadows ahead, but those weren't nearly as unsettling as the things in the moonlight.
The patterned stones thought she'd seen from the entrance littering the floor of the valley were bones. Thousands of skulls, ribs, and pieces of shattered spines littered the valley floor where the light touched, leaving the only clear spaces where the shadows led through. Most of the bones had belonged to small fish, or the occasional bird that had likely fallen from much higher above, but others were clearly mer. The most unsettling of all was that some were cecaelian.
"J—J—" she found herself trying to call, but her voice had frozen in her throat.
Adin took her hand, and pulled her away from the light. Moving through the shadows, it took them a full minute to catch up to Joe, who had either not noticed, or didn't seem to mind that his people had apparently constructed a death-trap.
"Joe!" Adin hissed again, pointing at the piles. He would have had to be blind not to notice them. "Joe, we can't go through here!"
Joe faced them calmly. "Is there another option?"
"We'll go over it! Around it! Anything!" Adin snapped.
"The walls went on for miles, and the walls reach quite literally to the surface. Unless you're suggesting we fly."
Adin floundered, his mouth gaping like a fish out of water. "Still," he whispered, still regarding the piles with the same horror as Ariel. Joe, however, glanced over them with the sort of indifference as though they were just a different color of sand. "Does the light…do you think it burned them?"
Ariel had noticed the cleanliness of the piles as well, although in her nervous state, she didn't know how. The bones were perfectly clear of any debris or markings. It was as though they'd been sucked or bleached clean. At the same time, the valley didn't seem stuffy or stale. A steady pull of water was wafting from somewhere. The whole eerie place seemed to breathe.
Joe only shrugged as though this was his idea of a weekend visit. "It's possible, although I don't know of anything that does that, there are certainly potions that are light activated. Right Ariel?"
Ariel would have rolled her eyes had she had more presence of mind. Their voices were all too loud, somehow, echoing uncomfortably off the cliff walls.
"If there's somehow a potion pumped into the waters here, then we should be fine. Many of them are incomplete without certain types of natural ingredients anyway. And if not, that would at least be something I could fix if it takes hold. Nothing like that is ever immediate."
There was something slightly off about Joe, as though he were leaving something out, bus just as soon as the thought occurred to her, it was gone. What he said made sense.
"Joe," she finally coughed out in a much quieter voice, "are you sure about this?"
Joe actually snorted bubbles. "What you two bubble-heads have failed to realize, is that not a single one of these bones are fresh. Look at them—really look. If anything, I'm surprised we haven't seen more remains down here. Where do you think everything goes from the above? Nearly everything ends its existence down here in one way or another. It just looks like all of the currents we've been passing have funneled them here."
"R—right," Adin said at last, looking a little foolish. "But the riddle did say we have to stick to the shadows."
Ariel followed Joe's train of thought faster than Adin. "So if magical currents brought us here, they could be waiting to set us back if we trip through the light?"
"Something like that, perhaps," Joe encouraged.
"I'm still not convinced they weren't burned," Adin mumbled, curling his fins just a bit.
Joe placed a hand on either of their shoulders and faced them toward the end of the valley in the unmarked distance.
"So we've got to stick to the shadows. Should be easy enough for us peasants. Think you can avoid the limelight long enough princess?"
"I am not a peasant—" Adin started to protest over Ariel's own complaints.
"I'll have you know I've spent years practicing avoiding notice. Any of the palace guards can tell you that."
He rolled his eyes at her, though without any real rancor. "If they can tell you that, then they've noticed."
"Let's go, then," said Adin. "I still don't like this place."
Ariel squinted forward. "If we hug the left, we should be clear for most of the way, she said, noticing how the moonlight avoided the more ghostly rocks under the valley's ledges.
"Let me lead this one, Ariel," Joe said gently, turning her to the right. "Yes, it's clear for about a hundred meters, but then it runs up against a wall."
"I forget how well you can see, sometimes."
He flicked her arm playfully with one of his feet, and even he looked surprised at that particular tentacle's behavior.
It must have been about an hour picking through the light patches behind Joe as they moved forward along the valley floor, and after so long in it, the identical piles of bones were indeed as boring as Joe had marked earlier, the cliff-walls as unthreatening, and even the more sinister shadows seemed to be taking a snooze. Eventually, Adin began whistling a jaunty tune that Ariel recognized from the third ring, and was mildly surprised when Joe began to hum along.
After a few minutes of humming, and uneventful swimming, the place was downright cheerful.
"Ariel, have you ever wondered what it would be like to replace the seahorses in the king's jousting matches with other things?" asked Adin, clearly daydreaming.
Ariel let out a laugh, watching Adin curl gently through the water after Joe. She couldn't remember the last time he'd called her by name so casually. It was a relief.
"No. Like with what?" she asked.
"Something faster," he said. "We could use kelpies, sailfish, trained sharks…I'd really like to see the sharks."
"I have it on good authority the guards in your contingent are pretty fast," she pointed out, recalling their escape.
Up ahead, she could have sworn she saw Joe smother a smile.
"What, piggyback each other for the games?" Adin asked hotly.
"Don't tell me you wouldn't like to see Pastian trying to out-horse his own ride," said Ariel.
When Adin smirked, she knew she had him. "See? Not the worst idea."
"It's not the sort of idea they'd let me pitch, though…" Adin said a little quieter, and for the first time, Ariel saw the sadness in his fins as he thought about his contingent.
"What sort of ideas do they let you pitch?"
His silence was the only answer she needed.
"They're puffer-faced idiots for not listening to you, Adin," she huffed, indignant on his behalf. "But, I'm sort of glad they are. If they weren't they'd have found us before we got to the drop off. When we get back, I'll recommend you to Father's security."
"Thanks, Ariel" he said, brightening up considerably. "But, I mean…wouldn't it have been better if they'd found you? There are other mages in the kingdom for whatever…whatever this is."
"You can't still think I wasn't potioned, right?" She tried gently. Joe admirably pretended not to hear.
"I think…I know there's something up," Adin said eventually. "I just don't know if all this was necessary," he motioned to the nearest ominous rock as if it had personally offended him and sent them on this journey, "and if…well, Ariel, are you sure it was the prince?"
Ariel had to stuff the anger that flared up at his question under three layers of mental sea-sponges. "Yes, Adin, I'm sure. Nothing else makes sense. And when the sun rises again…Adin, I hate what this thing makes me. You can't think I'd want it to be permanent? I was meaner than a grouper! When I think of…"
Of the things it made me say to both of you. Of the things it might make me do if I had the backing behind my orders. Of the monster it could make me.
"I think it puts you in a frame of mind to act more like a princess." Adin's words shocked her. "And, you know you'd have to be one eventually, right?"
"Is that what you think royalty should be?" she said quietly.
"I think royalty should act like it has the power to keep the Kingdom's order, and then do it. If you learn to direct it eventually, I'm not so sure it's a bad thing."
It was like a slap in the face coming from Adin. Did everyone close to her see her as the weaker sister? She'd thought she had at least hid it better.
"I know I'm not usually very...commanding," she said more to herself than Adin. "But I'm the youngest. Why would I need to be?"
Adin either didn't hear her, or didn't answer.
"I can't believe I'm the one pointing this out, but you two need to liven up back there. Adin, what happened to singing Sugar in the Rum, or My Maiden Was a Fish? I didn't think you knew any tunes from up above!" said Joe, as always, breaking into her thoughts just in time to save her from drowning in them.
"Those are songs from the above?" Ariel gasped. "How do either of you know those?"
"It makes travel easier sometimes to latch onto the ships if they're going the direction I need," Joe said, as though dragging himself through a ship's wake were the most normal thing in the world. "And they say and sing all sorts of things—mostly drivel. Most humans aren't that intelligent."
Adin nodded as though this were a well-known fact.
"Adin, you've gone up, too?" she demanded, almost running into a rock in her surprise. The shadows were getting harder to stick to, and getting thinner as they neared the valley's halfway point. "What's it like?"
"Well, there's not really anything to see up there, except for the constellations once the sun sets, but you know that. I'm amazed they all don't just stop existing from the boredom."
"Probably why they sing," said Joe, carefully.
It was obvious to Ariel that he knew more than he was letting on, but wasn't really in the mood to explain. In fact, as they passed the midway of the valley, he'd been growing more and more twitchy, and now that she paid more attention, the piles in the light here were larger and more complex, containing creatures she'd never seen before.
"How do the songs really go?" she asked, curious. "Do you two know the words?"
Joe might have hummed along, but Adin obliged her by starting into a song about a drunken sailor set to sea to hunt whales and find a fish for a wife. After a few verses, she had to admit it had a good story, even if she suspected Adin had made a few of the words up.
When he'd done, however, Joe was quiet, and began pulling them through the shadows under logs and through crevices where the light narrowed their path so much Ariel had to squeeze her fins to fit.
Adin wriggled through the crack right behind her, when his spear stuck and fell from his back into one of the piles.
Together, they all froze.
"Um…it's not sizzling or anything," Adin pointed out after a long, silent minute.
"It's driftwood and coral," Joe all but whispered, and then, "leave it."
"What?" Adin looked scandalized. "I can't just leave it! That's my only weapon! It was issued by the chief, himself! I wouldn't get another one issued if I offered him my fins in a pearl dish!"
Then, Adin lunged for the spear, and, quicker than Ariel would have thought possible, Joe shot out three tentacles, and yanked him back, this time thrashing and cursing.
"You've only got one life, too, Adin! Is it worth a fancy stick?" he hissed.
The stream of curses Adin let out at Joe would have made Ariel blush steam if she'd heard them, but he kept his voice low enough they didn't reach her.
"Look, Adin, you're not going to win a fight against Joe, I'll get you a different one when we get back, and—" but hearing that from her only made him thrash harder, until, Adin landed a lucky hit to Joe's jaw, and squirmed out of his tentacles and into the light.
Ariel gasped, sure that Adin was about to start screaming, or that some magical current would rip him away from them…but nothing happened.
Adin scooped up his spear
"Looks like you were at least right about something, Joe," he grumbled angrily. "These bones are ancient."
"Um, Adin…" Ariel examined the skeletons just under Adin's fins. The ones farther down certainly looked as though they could have been there for millenia, but the ones top were still tinged with a faint shade of pink. "Those don't look so ancient to me. Get out of there! Now!"
But Adin didn't listen to her, opting instead to examine his spear for any damage.
"There's nothing out here at all!" he argued vehemently. "No currents, no potions, look, I'm fine! I bet whatever it was supposed to be is long worn-off. Look, we could just swim right down the middle of this thing and be out of here in ten minutes!"
"Adin, move!" Ariel urged, but the problem was that he was moving too much. His movements were casting huge shadows on the far wall, and his voice was getting uncomfortably loud.
"Now you decide to go all princess-y on me," he grumbled, starting to move back. "But Ariel, let's just get out of here first. I promise I'll be a model guard when we get back, and all."
Then, though it looked like he would swim back to the shadows, he didn't, instead opting to swim through several more pillars of moonlight.
"Come on, guys! This is going to be faster. It really is fine."
"No," Ariel cried. "Joe, Joe, what—"
As Ariel turned to Joe, she saw that he was no longer watching Adin, and though she was about to enlist his help to get him back to the path outlined by the riddle, noticed something that made her fins drop cold.
Joe wasn't watching Adin because his eyes were trained on something else—something much more pressing than one errant merman.