Ursula's Beginning

20. Look at this stuff--isn't it neat?

Ursula woke from a dreamless sleep. She was in her own house, her own bed, and she felt good.

She studied her companions, still slumbering at the foot of her bed. They were tangled together, mouths agape. Ursula grinned at them. She knew she would never have another nightmare about eels for as long as she lived.

She was less certain, however, about her ability to interpret dreams correctly. Fortunately, she knew some individuals that could tutor her. Cosmos happened to be one of them.

Ursula stretched. It felt strange because two of her limbs were missing. Gone forever. Her hands sought out the places beneath her hips where those tentacles should be. There was nothing but a smooth gap. The flesh was entirely healed—not even a scar to show for the trial she'd endured just two nights ago.

It was one of those things that the Squid Witch had warned her about: healing magic doesn't work in predictable ways when a Transformation spell is in the mix. Apparently, not even after a transformation is over. There was some kind of lag, some lingering after-effect that stripped Ursula's healing techniques of their effectiveness. Or perhaps Ursula had simply been too weak to cast effectively.

Either way, she had stopped the bleeding easily enough but couldn't reattach her tentacles. They couldn't call for help; Ursula wasn't supposed to be in the Uncivilized Waters, after all. And Siddikah couldn't help, so she busied herself with sealing the limbs into a large container. She promised to store them, untouched, in her casting room. The sorceress said they were pure magic—ironically, pure healing magic. "You'll want to use them someday for something, but you'll need to choose wisely. This is powerful stuff," she said as she tapped the large cylinder. Ursula's amputated limbs jiggled inside.

Ursula spent the entire day following the attack inside the Leviathan, recovering. The eels happily fetched everything she asked for. Siddikah had never seen the pair before, much less sent them.

"So these are my familiars? They chose me?" Ursula had asked incredulously. "They just...knew where to find me in my time of need?"

"You got it, rainbowfish," Siddikah had said with a twinkle in her eye. "You need to listen better to old Siddkah."

Sometime in the afternoon, Ursula remembered the knife. She pulled it from her bag and as she inspected it, her heart began to splutter. The beautiful scrimshaw handle featured a human man shaking hands with a merman. At the base of the handle was a trident with an elegant 'A' placed over the middle prong.

"Siddikah?" Ursula's voice shook.

"What?"

"Come see. You have a lot of human stuff around here, right?"

"Yes..."

Siddikah took the knife and looked it over briefly. "This came from humans. I'm sure of it."

"That's the knife Alphon used on me."

Siddikah traced the trident and 'A' with the tip of her middle finger. "Then it looks like Prince Alphon has made some human friends."

Ganeon was right! Ursula marveled. And that means his gull informant was right!! But they were wrong to call it a fascination with humans—Alphon has a relationship with them.

Ursula was going to ruin her attacker, and the attack itself had given her the opening she needed. 

Though gleeful about the incriminating evidence, Ursula was still weak and tired as afternoon turned to evening. She had to get back to Atlantica; she had been missing for a full day at this point. And she had a plan she was impatient to carry out.