Ursula's Beginning

22. I fortunately know a little magic

For the first time in her life, Ursula was too upset to eat. Anxiety and anger whittled away at her body each day. She swaddled herself in gowns, piled on more necklaces to obscure the growing definition of her collarbone. Her hair was left down to float about her face; an updo would only draw attention to her changing jawline and prominent cheekbones.

At night, her phantom limbs ached. This was a new experience as well, and one that ruined sleep. She would toss and turn, unable to get comfortable, until the eels came and stood in for her missing tentacles. Somehow they knew what to do--one would lay along her left hip and straighten its body to fill the space where her tentacle had been, and the other would do the same on the right. The pain would dissipate, and she would drift off for a couple hours.

In the haze between sleep and wakefulness, an epiphany tried to surface repeatedly. There was something profound about losing these two limbs and finding two limb-shaped familiars at the same time. She was sure of it. But the exact message, the lesson, never broke through to her waking consciousness. Confusion and uncertainty reigned at all hours of the day and night.

Once a week Ursula visited the Leviathan to vent to Siddikah. There was no one in Atlantica she could confide in regarding her illicit relationship, after all. Yet Siddikah's patience and sympathy waned over time. A month into the breakup—if that's actually what it was--a topic of endless speculation on Ursula's part--the Squid Witch snapped.

"If it's not going to work out with him, what's preventing you from staying here and apprenticing with me?"

Ursula glared at her. "Let's not talk about this right now."

Siddikah glared back. "Very well."

Ursula shoved a mass of hair away from her angular face with irritation. "I wish I could get all that human stuff from Alphon's quarters and show it to you. I bet you could tell me what all those little devices do. You seem to know so much about that world." She looked pointedly at Siddikah's belongings surrounding them: objects of human origin were everywhere. "May I ask you, finally, why you have all this stuff? And how you got it?"

"Oh, this is all flotsam and jetsam," the sorceress replied. Ignoring questions she did not want to answer was as easy to her as performing magic.

Ursula felt an odd thrill at these unfamiliar words. "Flotsam? Huh?"

"Flotsam and jetsam. They're human terms, squirt. Flotsam is wreckage from a ship you find floating in the water. And jetsam is the stuff that's washed ashore. Humans are forced to throw perfectly good things overboard when their ships are in peril and they need to lighten their load."

"I see. I never go looking for such things. We are forbidden to own anything like that in Atlantica." Ursula leaned forward. "But how do you know human terms like these?"

Siddikah just winked.

"Ugh!" Ursula cried out in frustration. She wanted answers, yet was vaguely pleased to have something besides Triton to sulk over—and Siddikah delivered.

A whirl of disturbed sand rose between them, cutting through the tension. The two watched as Ursula's eels played hide-and-seek with Planete. The monster croc was snapping his jaws playfully near their tails as he chased them and the eels were hissing with laughter, their eyes rolling back in their sockets in crazed delight.

"I know this makes no sense, given the meaning of the terms 'flotsam' and 'jetsam', but that's what I'm naming my eels."

"Really?" Siddikah chuckled.

"Yes. A peculiar sensation came over me when you spoke the words. I knew their names would simply come to me, just as the two of them did."

"You're really progressing, sweet plum. This is much less forced than Barry the Barracuda," Siddikah teased. "So, which is which?"