Ursula's Beginning

22. I fortunately know a little magic (continued)

She fled the house at once in nothing but a dressing gown and her usual tangle of necklaces. She had been too tired and apathetic to remove them the night before. Flotsam and Jetsam kept pace by her side.

Everything looked peaceful outside the castle. The wing that contained the royal bedchambers was dark and quiet. Ursula looked at her familiars desperately.

The eels had put their heads together so that their yellow eyes were side by side. They squinted their other eyes shut. It gave the illusion of a whole new animal—one with only yellow eyes. They gazed their answer right into Ursula's skull. "The cave," they urged silently.

"Right."

She was there in record time, moving too fast to feel doubt or fear or dread. And there he was, crumpled in the back of the cave. She had to wade through a cloud of blood, swirl some away with her hands, to get a good look at her beloved. There was an enormous gash across his abdomen and his mangled organs were spilling out. His face showed signs of the fight that must have preceded the blow to his guts. Triton appeared to be dead, but groaned softly when Ursula scooped him into her arms.

"Support his fins," she instructed her assistants. They slipped under the prince and bore the weight of his lower body on their backs.

The three of them carried him to Siddikah's. They went into the Leviathan without asking and sailed straight through to her casting room as if they lived there themselves. The Squid Witch watched them pass and rose wordlessly from her turtle shell bed. She followed them into the dark room.

"The tentacles," Ursula demanded.

"Are you sure?" Siddikah asked.

"Don't ask me that. Get them now." Ursula lifted her glass vial necklace over her head and smashed it on the ground, freeing the needle inside. "Something to stitch with," she commanded her elder.

Siddikah brought everything without comment, and Ursula set to work.

She felt nothing but determination as she hacked her own preserved limb apart to create pieces to fit the bloody puzzle before her. Triton passed out from the pain, leaving her free to reach inside, feel around, tug, stitch, rearrange, meld. Her voice delivered incantations clearly and steadily.

Ursula used most of one tentacle to replace the missing and badly damaged parts of Triton's insides. Siddikah resealed the other tentacle into its glass home, then assisted Ursula in wrapping the prince's torso with lengths of medicinal kelp. The sorceress ushered Flotsam and Jetsam out of the room so that Ursula could tend to his battered face alone.

It was quiet inside the Leviathan. Even Siddikah's garden was mercifully silent, as if its inhabitants could tell someone nearby was in misery and deserved their own moment; they in the garden had eternity to moan and could spare this much.

Ursula emerged from the casting room. She had poured so much energy into her work, her flesh was more gray than lavender.

"Well, there's no going back now," the Squid Witch sighed as Ursula took a seat beside her on the turtle bed.

"Meaning?"

"Meaning you're bound forever?" Siddikah's voice rose sharply.

Ursula looked at her blankly.

"Basic magical principles?" Siddikah's eyes were bulging.

Ursula furrowed her brow. "Of course I want us to be bound together forever. But what are you talking about?"

Siddikah leapt off the bed. "I thought you knew what you were doing in there!"

"Yes...he's going to make it."

"I mean with using your own flesh to patch him up!"

"You said my tentacles were 'pure healing magic' so what better material to use?"

"They are! But plummy, what are they teaching you in that temple?"

Ursula groaned and fell backward onto the bed. "I'm really too tired to be teased right now, Siddikah."

"I'm not teasing. Ursula, a part of you now lives in Triton. You cannot hurt him without harming yourself, and vice versa."

Ursula shot upright again. "Wasn't that already the case? Isn't that how love works? You can't hurt someone you love without suffering yourself. Why would I ever want to harm him in the first place?"

Siddikah shook her head; she found this protest pitiable. "Oh, minnow. But there's more. You just created a merman capable of performing magic!"

Even the gray drained from Ursula's face. "But mermen aren't supposed to—"

"Magic comes from tentacles!" Siddikah shrieked. "That's why ALL of you in the temple are tentacled! Have you never reflected upon this?"

Ursula flinched. "W-well, sure," she stammered. "B-but I...di-didn't know it would transfer if I...I mean, y-you said 'healing magic' s-so I just thought it w-would help heal him."

"You've given Triton tentacles! He just has them in an unconventional way! And the day will come that his trident responds different to his hand. That will be when he finds out he has abilities!"

Ursula rose shakily from the bed. "Why his trident?" she asked.

"If he becomes king, that trident will become an extension of him. And it approximates a long appendage. A tentacle. It will concentrate and channel the magic that's now inside him."

"That's crazy!" Ursula shielded her eyes with both hands.

"Ha! You think that's crazy? Even humans have known something about this! That's why they hold sticks in their hands when attempting magic. Wands, they're called. They try to concentrate and direct their measly magic with wands. Of course, today's humans don't know they are trying to recreate the power of a tentacle by doing that. The old knowledge has been lost. If they really understood, they'd attach something really long to all ten fingers and all ten toes, to mimic the effect of having multiple tentacles, as we have." Picturing this, Siddikah started to laugh.

The laughter echoed throughout her home and took on a wild edge. Jetsam looked uneasily at Flotsam. Planete arrived from nowhere and nudged his master with his snout. She quieted and began to pet him between the eyes. "Now, there is one group of humans that seem to have retained a bit of the ancient wisdom," she continued, her voice merry. "The people that live near Oceanindia. They still worship gods and goddesses that are half human, half animal. They often depict them with multiple sets of arms and colorful skin...blue, green, a purple so dark it's almost black. And a moment ago, when you were doing that grisly work on Triton, when you were fierce and bloody and benevolent, you reminded me of a goddess they call Kali."

Ursula looked to the eels, hoping they'd transmit an idea of how to respond to all this. They looked back blankly.

"That's...very fascinating," she ventured. Groans from the casting room overlapped with her words. Multiple levels of relief flooded Ursula's body. "Let me check on him," she said.

As she swam towards Triton, a beautiful phrase echoed in her head.

Bound forever.