The homes of cecaelia were notoriously dark and difficult to find. Their natural camouflage usually kept them in cozy caves or the occasional grotto, but the remaining cecaelian sea witches bordered on the fanatically dark, and ventured into the territory of 'horribly creepy.' The sea witch Ursula claimed she had chosen a great fossilized whale skeleton, unfortunate enough to have died over the barren trenches, for its structural size and 'convenience,' but Joe had never seen a whale of that size alive, and suspected that the both the beast's size and position when it died hadn't been an accident. When he was a younger boy, he'd believed Ursula's story, but now as a man, he had serious doubts as to the legality of the creature having appeared in this trench—and whether it was a whale at all.
Ursula had probably enlarged the rib cage of the beast to protect her grandiose collection of ingredient stores and cauldrons, and elongated its throat to make the entryway more impressive. Joe didn't particularly care about her tastes, aside from the jagged bits of rock she'd fastened into the whale's jaws. Enormous teeth made of rock, metal, and the occasional mer-skull decorated Ursula's entryway, making it both appropriately spooky, and hazardous. Krill and Joe both had had their fair share of cuts coming in and out of the place life forced them to call home.
"We shouldn't be here," Krill said quietly, as they descended along the spine into the whale's belly. "We only have half the blood, and you know how she gets…"
"We're going to have to wait until nightfall before the crabs come back, anyway," Joe soothed the younger boy. With a decade more experience with Ursula than Krill had, Joe was confident he could handle her outbursts. At the same time, if he was present, then Ursula was far more likely to target him out of habit than Krill.
"Do you think Ariel and Adin are going to be okay?" asked Krill a second time, the tips of his tentacles nervously shifting to blend in with the bony floor as they moved past the throat, and into the empty cauldron room.
"Ariel will be okay if she stops following Adin into those idiot forbidden territories…and perhaps if she's a bit more assertive in making her choices," Joe growled. Krill jumped next to him, and his tentacles flushed the gray-scale of the walls. Joe took a deep pull through his gills and forcibly uncurled his tentacles. "And Adin will be okay if he stops bringing her to them to show off, and honors his princess's choices. You really did well today, Krill. I was almost too slow," Joe praised.
They waded carefully into the cauldron room, where the freshly-scrubbed cauldrons and pots of that morning sat waiting for their work.
Ursula's cavern had seen better days, despite being under Joe's care. He'd simply been too busy with…well, with the last three years, he admitted to himself. As Ursula's reputation had worsened, many of the more menial and benign spells had fallen to him. Where Ursula used her own ink-contracts to bind merfolk to her in some way, Joe used them more as receipts of payment, and never made the sort of demands that she did. For some reason, the tension of the day highlighted the tasks that remained undone in the belly of the colossal sea beast that they called home.
At the exit to the throat, the creepvine curtain that kept the outside currents from chilling the beast's innards closed naturally behind them, but without enough sunlight, the vines were once more wilting in the gentle light of glowing algae and potions peeking out from thin cabinet doors, and the leaves weren't thick enough to entirely warm the place, giving it an eerie and chilled feeling when they stayed still too long.
Slipping through the narrow gaps between rib bones the size of roman columns, the central room near the heart chamber of the cavern, the corals and algea that survived on the calcium deposits left in the ancient skeleton seemed to dance to an unseen rhythm that Ursula had long since lost touch with. The ceiling at least remained its healthy, lively self—a mosaic of breathtaking, undulating polyps that made their home there, the ceiling was lit like an ethereal tapestry, pulsating with a hypnotic glow as the polyps waited to feed on the cauldron fumes that Joe and Ursula produced. The gentle hum of their anticipation added a certain lively ambiance to the sea-witch's lair.
In the center of the cavern, a natural underwater pool formed, collecting the residual magic from unused ingredients over the years, and filled with tainted waters that shimmered with an iridescent glow. Ursula's collection of cauldrons surrounded the pool, ready to be tipped in if ever one of their mixtures failed and couldn't be wasted. A cluster of phosphorescent sea anemones surrounded the border of it, growing in the shadows of the cauldrons, and lighting the base of the sleeping enchanted boilers. This pool was often the source of the magical energies that radiated from the cavern, drawing in many of their customers.
Krill was too quiet as Joe began preserving the ingredients they'd found in Ursula's plain sea glass bottles. He frowned. Ursula was nearly out of sponges and corks and hadn't told him. He'd have to add those to the collection list for that night, or he would get the blame all the same.
"Adin will still be friends with you, I'm sure," Joe said in a gentler tone, when Krill didn't speak for some minutes, and had gone nearly all white to hide on one of the whale's bare ribs. "We just might have to see less of him once he gets promoted this year."
"He'll still come around," Krill said distractedly, and finally, he peeled himself off the wall to come and help with the bottling. "He'll have to have fun with all of that extra work they'll give him. I just think he's mad because you looked better than him today in front of Ariel. I'm pretty sure he likes her." Krill wrinkled his nose, and Joe didn't hold back a snort of bubbles. If Adin was obnoxious enough that even Krill had noticed then perhaps he wasn't as impatient as he'd thought.
"Just remember not to be so annoying when you like someone," Joe admonished, which only earned him an annoyed shove from Krill, and Joe realized in his tired state that Krill thought he wasn't taking him seriously. Joe sighed. "Adin will have plenty of opportunities to show off for Ariel back at the palace where he won't almost get her eaten." He made a small sound of amused disdain, and poured more of the anemone-spawn into the last bottle. Up until now, it had always seemed as though Ursula had a bottomless supply of bottles and such, and now they were either all full, or missing. He would have to remember to ask her about them later.
"If you hadn't been there today…" Krill started, a frown very unbecoming of his age wrinkling his forehead.
Joe reached out a tentacle, and pushed Krill's gray hair back just enough to tug the lines on his face smooth again. "But I was."
He would never say it out loud, but he sometimes shared Krill's worry. Joe, however, knew that Ariel's future couldn't keep mixing with theirs. Afterall, they were on borrowed time as it was, and had maybe only a few years left until Ariel's royal duties caught up with her. As for himself, the waters near Atlantis were still dangerous for Cecaelia, and the time until his contract with Ursula expired, and Krill was forced into one by her was only three years. He had just a few short years to figure out how to get them out, and where to go, and managing Ursula's orders in the name of protecting some poor unfortunate souls from her dirty cecaelian-ink-contracts was proving more exhausting and time-consuming than he'd planned.
"And just where have you two been?" Ursula's snarling hiss echoed from behind the largest cauldron. "You're late!"
She came billowing out from the back fin corridor where she kept her private rooms in a wave of black and green, her long white hair a testament to her age. Arms crossed over a mottled sea-gossamer dress, she wore the sickly smile reserved for customers, or dastardly deals.
Joe considered lying, but Krill beat him to it.
"We found the hemo—the hemysi—" he mumbled.
"Hemocyanin." To Krill's visible relief, Joe produced the bottle of extracted blood and tossed it into Ursula's open claws.
"Oh…oooooh!" she crooned, stroking the bottle. "This is the quality stuff, perfect for your little lunar-protection potion, I say, Joe." Then, as expected, her face twisted in annoyance. "But where's the rest of it?"
"This is Krill's assignment, mine still needs collecting," Joe said, crossing his arms protectively, though even he couldn't do anything when Ursula's arms shot out and smothered Krill.
"Oh, Krill, my baby! My boy! Most older apprentices struggle with this sort of thing—" there she glared at Joe, "—and you're already extracting blood this fine! You're going to make the best of apprentices when you come of age! What's this, Joe? Letting the little one show you up already?"
"There was a giant squid in the valley today!" Krill defended—or at least he meant to.
Ursula's white eyebrows shot up her head. "Then, I don't suppose you boys brought me back some powdered beak? No?" She glowered over their empty-handedness. "Oh, you don't have to tell me what really happened… don't you think auntie doesn't know what goes on with her boys?"
"Ursula," Joe said quietly, trying not to look at Krill's panicked face as Ursula squeezed him just a little hard between her long, black and green tentacles. The sickly smirk returned to her face at his concern, and though she loosened her grip a little, Joe could see her filing this information away for later. Though he'd considered lying to her, that was always a gamble since Ursula had her seeing-pearl. She often watched the currents outside of her cavern, and she certainly didn't need spies when the crystal could tell her more than just the visual events. A pearl of her strength could see intentions, direction, potential futures, and even sometimes the feelings of those living them. Of course, there was no way she could watch all of that information all the time, but Ursula would have had to be blind or very unlucky not to know about their friendship with Ariel.
Ursula glowered, and he knew she meant to let him know that scolding her was a mistake, although after so many years under her service, he knew better than she where her limits were. Still, her tentacles twitched menacingly at Joe in her annoyance, and she drew closer, as though to grab him, too.
"Returning empty-handed? Behind on orders? Cheek? It's a wonder you have the time to run about chasing a little tail, Joe," Ursula hissed teasingly, and Joe fought to keep his shoulders relaxed as she pulled a shaking Krill close enough into her chest to pet his little gray head. "I was gazing at the pearl today, and I saw all sorts of things. She's quite smitten, your little princess… such a shame."
At that Krill's nose screwed up in confusion, but Joe needed no more explanation. Ursula wasted no opportunity to remind him what they all were, and trying to make him think that Ariel would have feelings for him was one of her tactics for trying to make him feel hopeless—or at least so that he would keep up a friendship with her so that she would remain useful. "Still, I suppose the palace brat has had some use over the years. I don't know of any other sea witch who has such a reliable astronomical predictor. If she were a proper Cecaelia, I'd take her on, too! Hah!"
For one long, tense moment, Joe waited for Ursula to make her decision about him, wondering if she would consider the goading consequence enough. Abruptly, she let go of Krill, swooshing over to a cabinet and pulling out a familiar bottle. Joe watched Ursula take a long draught of bright pink absinthe, now too distracted to try to inflict some sort of punishment. He swallowed a disgusted noise in the back of his throat. He could smell it from across the pool.
"I don't suppose I need to ask why we need to order more bottles," he said when Ursula drained one and smashed it against one of the freshly-cleaned bone walls, staining the fibers a tacky shade of pink. No doubt Krill would be up late trying to bleach the toxic alcohol from the bones, and now that Joe knew where to look, it seemed as though he'd be sweeping up a fair amount of invisible glass shards as well.
Taking up another pair of odiously-colored bottles—likely of her own brewing, Ursula swathed herself over a banister to the outer corridors, and at last looked like she was going to leave.
"You do what you must, Joe, believe me, Auntie understands. Besides, I don't have time to scold you all day, or rather, you don't have time for me to scold you all day." At that, Ursula produced a scroll from her pouch. The edges were gilded, and the script written in natural cecaelian ink. "I've received a message from an old friend. We'll have a very important customer tomorrow. Be sure to have the other orders done before he arrives. That's an order. I don't want the rabble seeing him—nor him, them," she said with a disdainful sniff. "Don't forget the price of neglecting my orders. It's not my fault breaking contract would cost you a tentacle, boy."
Both Joe and Krill cringed, and Joe wanted to point out that everything in Ursula's contracts was very much 'her fault' as she wrote them. Joe had had to regrow several tentacles over the years when Ursula's indulgent requests resulted in a 'breach of contract.' While it seemed both of them wanted to ask who in all the oceans would call himself an 'old friend' of Ursula's, the desire to see her leave overpowered any of those questions, and neither boy said anything as she disappeared into her private brewery.
The next day was a trial in keeping his eyes open. Ursula had only emerged from her chambers since the night before to bark orders and add tasks to their already impossible list for the day. When she wasn't in the heart chamber, there was at least enough peace for him to prepare extras of the usual orders, but strange smells and smokes were tainting the water that bled out from beneath her door, which made it difficult for Joe to keep his brews pure.
Krill had offered to help gather the last of the supplies Joe would need, but his work was superfluous, as Ursula demanded that Joe keep an overstock of all the more vital materials. What Joe truly needed was another mage to assist the brews, but Krill was still vastly untrained. Still, insisting on finding something to help, Krill left early-morning to chase after the remaining items on Ursula's personal list.
Truly no good lie goes unpunished, Joe thought when Krill was sent out for the rest of the crab blood in his stead. Joe's lie about Krill's success the day before had certainly saved him from punishment, but when Krill had been sent out, it didn't do anything to lighten Joe's load for the day.
Mermen and women, tropical fish, and out-of-kingdom visitors alike poured in through the creepvine curtain, making Joe seriously doubt the wisdom of opening the cavern to the public on half-moon. Any that were unfamiliar with Ursula's cavern got tangled in the leaves at the cavern's throat, often unintentionally pulling them out by the root. Doubtless this inconvenience would spread more unsavory rumors about Ursula's place, and Joe made a mental note to fix them when disgruntled clients interrupted his brewing more than once, leaving him swimming frantically between them, and keeping Ursula's favorite cauldrons from exploding.
Joe had to make a few custom mixes for frantic border-dwellers preparing for the eclipse that Ursula had somehow managed to advertise since Princess Ariel's prediction. One wanted a spell to make the currents around his home's windows more gentle as the moon's pull strengthened. Another wanted a way to get a guard to invite her to some royal ball that week. Everything from safe egg-laying elixirs and powders to ward off the attention of undesirables seemed to sell by the crate that afternoon, and every request was more vain than the last. From cures for tail rot, bottles of gill-shine, and skin-care, the clients hardly seemed to see Joe as he darted about with last-minute batches, all clamoring for more beauty products than Joe had seen sell since Princess Adriatta's engagement ball.
Joe hardly had the time to wonder what in the oceans was going on with the kingdom that they would get such a rush, particularly when so many of the customers seemed to come from other quadrants of the city, though he had his suspicions. A lunar eclipse like the one Ariel had warned them of would break or undo a lot of the magic that normal sea-witches sold. He himself had used the advance notice to make a moonstone protection for his new potions that would let them hold through the eclipse, and to his knowledge, Ursula's cavern was the only one offering such a solution. Likely, Ursula has seen fit to capitalize on that, and while the income would be good for all of them, she had certainly waited until the last minute to advertise. The rush of customers was evidence that she'd wanted to give any other competition in the kingdom no chance to catch up before the eclipse came, making today one of the worst days for service Joe had ever seen.
Consumed by the business of what had to be the busiest sell-day any sea-witch of the kingdom had ever seen, Joe didn't notice when the last customer came in that evening.
"Oh, do come in," said Ursula, pouring herself over the banister when the cavern had nearly emptied. At last he saw what she'd been doing in her room all day. It appeared as though she'd spent at least half-a-crate of beauty potions on herself. Her wrinkled purple skin had smoothed back to a lighter lilac, and her hair had been meticulously brushed and styled. She had even managed to remove the reek of alcohol from her black tentacles, and slimed them to a highly-polished shine. The effect of her efforts made her look at least twenty years younger. Her appearance marked the arrival of the final guest, and since she had yet to seat a single client that day, Joe continued his work on a final replacement batch of hair-restorative, and let her take the initiative. "Ezra told me you'd be coming. Looking for something…special?"
Joe blearily looked up from his stirring to the merman flitting around the entrance, and instantly disliked him. The merman had a long orange and yellow eel's tail, covered in black spots that dotted up both his tail and torso. His yellow hair and complexion were entirely unremarkable, apart from a lone black spot that seemed to have strayed onto his cheek. In all, he would have been the most ordinary merman in the world had it not been for the gilded tunic he chose to wear, and the orange copper spear he carried, painted to match his tail. The most noticeable quality of this eel was the self-important way he held himself as he slithered into the cavern—as though already challenging Joe for the right to his territory.
"Ezra assured me you would be…discreet?" said the eel-mer, in a tone of such arrogance, Joe was tempted to fling pink absinthe all over his highly-stainable tail.
"But of course," Ursula preened, as she looped past him to welcome the eel further into the cavern. Clearly, Ursula had been busy that morning, and not with work. She'd taken extra care to lace her hair with floating magic so that it trailed in a great white blanked behind her when she moved. Joe might have been impressed by that clever bit of magic if her help hadn't been so badly needed in the cavern. "What can we make for you? Ezra mentioned your predicament was…interesting."
The eel cleared his throat with a haughty tip of his angled jaw. "Well, I can't say as though I think it's a dire need. Only, erm, time sensitive, if you catch my drift."
"Yesss?" Cirinna cooed.
"I'm here to buy a love potion," he scoffed importantly.
Cirrinna covered her smirk with one pale, long-fingered hand, batting her lashes sickeningly at the eel. "Not for a specimen such as yourself, surely."
Ah, and there it was. The eel shifted uncomfortably under Ursula's gaze, as though the idea were preposterous, even to him.
"It's more for, ahm, insurance, you see." The eel set to swimming a small pace around the entrance. Though he seemed smart enough to stay away from Joe glaring over his finished cauldrons, he kept his chest puffed, and his head annoyingly cocked to one side. "I'm more than confident I can turn the girl in question to my many finer qualities, but you see, as I have no choice in the matter—"
More like the poor girl in question has no choice, Joe wanted to growl, but he also needed to get out of the cavern. While he might sympathize with the unfamiliar girl, Krill had been gone all day, and with the giant squid in season, the deeper waters were unsafe.
"—I need something fool-proof! Something discreet, easy to use, and of course it should preserve most of the girl's faculties. I do need her functional for a time."
"But of course," Ursula smarmed, already pulling a black sheet of oiled vellum from a shelf. "I assume you can afford a single spell? This kind of custom magic isn't simple."
"Oh, most assuredly!" the eel primped. Joe rolled his eyes. "I've come with a fresh bag of Tyrian snails, a rather fetching set of green pearls for you, my lady, and if I may say so, a fine pair of mer-dorsals."
Joe nearly choked when he saw the display laid out by the eel. As usual, his gut feeling had been correct. The snails and pearls were valuable enough, but he found himself biting back bile at the dorsals. Mermaids or mermen had lost fins to this man, and would be floundering for life if they were even still alive. Mer-folk didn't just regenerate tentacles like cecaelia, but Ursula, of course, was purring over the whole set, no doubt having heard from her 'old friend,' of some horrible potion that could be brewed with merman parts.
"That will almost do, sir," Ursula uncurled a tentacle to present him with the vellum contract she'd already draw up, the ink already changing under her magical direction to reflect the payment he offered—and then a little more, of course. Joe bit back a grunt. This eel was truly foolish to have given Ursula advance notice of his arrival, and even more so to have offered all of his trinkets upfront. Had he arrived after the rush, Ursula might have drawn him up a fresh contract—and she might have left the eel some loopholes, perhaps made some mistakes.
Though perhaps of all the mer to come to her, this one deserved what he was about to sign up for, he thought.
"I'll take these…and one of your spots. Shall we say…that one?" Ursula pointed at the spot on his cheek, grin spreading over her face when the eel coughed, and the yellow bits of his tail paled. Joe couldn't fathom what she would need his spot for, and concluded that she only wanted it for the sake of making the eel squirm, as was her habit.
"My—my spot?" the eel spluttered, slinking back from her half a stroke. "Out of the question, I'm afraid. No, no. You see, this isn't any spot," he said, indicating the hideous black mark on his face with what was probably supposed to be a regal wave. "This! This is the royal birthmark! A symbol of my right to inherit! A sign of my claim to princehood since birth!"
"Yesss." Ursula swished around the eel, waving a tentacle distractingly at the contract, and producing a pen from one of the cavern's dozens of shelves as though the eel had just agreed to her offer instead of his hesitant refusal. "You want the girl to fall in love with you, yes? Not just anyone, I reckon, either. Who is she? Not a peasant, to be sure. Those are too easy of prey for a prince. A wealthy noble's daughter, perhaps? Another sea-witch to do your bidding? My, my, the possibilities. Therefore, I need a bit of you, and not just any bit will do, dear."
'I—I see." The eel cleared his throat nervously. He obviously did not see.
"Don't go anywhere just yet, dear!" Ursula called over her shoulder.
"I'm not—!" The eel huffed, thinking she was calling to him, but Joe froze mid-swim. During Ursula's rant, he'd carefully camouflage his tentacles to match the cauldrons. Then the floor beside them. Then the whale-bone walls. He'd almost been out of the room and swimming away from the cavern when, with her longer-than-average-Cecaelian reach, Ursula caught Joe around the middle before he could slink from the room. The eel jumped as he let his camouflage drop, and returned to his usual black. To the unobservant prince, Joe had likely appeared out of thin water.
"Joe, don't you see we need you still? One more spell for today, I think."
"Oh, there are two of you!" the eel cried, looking from Ursula to Joe. "With the tentacles, I thought…I just—"
"Snapper got your tongue?" Joe smirked down at the eel through pointed teeth, unwilling to let Ursula or him completely have the upper hand, even if he had been trying to escape.
The eel shut his mouth with an angry click.
"Now boys," Ursula shot a warning glance at Joe, "A love potion is tricky business. Let's assume, my handsome fellow, that you want your girl in love with you….or at least to think she loves you. The mind is much easier to mess with than the heart. An unimportant difference, you'll find. Trifles! Now, young prince, I can make her fall for you completely in just three days."
With that, Ursula waded over to a locked cabinet, and opened the mechanism seamlessly with the tip of one of her tentacles. She began pulling out a set of rare ingredients that had taken Joe months to find, and laying them out impressively on one of her work tables.
"Sprinkle the potion in the sunlight, where she can breathe it in—gills, mouth, nose, it doesn't matter. Then, you have until the last light of the lunar eclipse before the spell becomes permanent."
"Why the sunlight?" the eel asked.
"Sunlight starts the clock, dear," said Ursula, placing an expensive bottle of sardine entrails next to a knot of hatchling hair. "It also completes the potion. I don't have every ingredient here locked in a bottle, much as I'd love to." She shot a wicked look at Joe.
The eel looked unconvinced, trying to flip his hair back nonchalantly. "What happens during those three days? She won't love me then?"
"Oh, she will," Ursula assured, pulling Joe back down to his place behind an empty cauldron. "It will just be more…spotty than afterward. Afterall, I'm only taking a spot. Unless you'd rather I took your heart? Or your tail? Those would work much faster."
The eel blanched again, shaking his head.
Ursula cackled. "I didn't think so. Now…sign here."