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“But isn’t that what the Dark Fairy fears? Perhaps she is right? Should one witch have so much power?”
Lucinda grabbed a glass jar and threw it at the wall. It shattered, casting orange dust throughout the room with an explosion of fury.
“Do not speak of Maleficent again!”
Once over the shock, Ruby and Martha started screeching. “You’ve ruined the divination powder!” “Oh, Lucinda! You ruined everything!”
Lucinda rolled her large dark eyes at her sisters, wondering how she managed this long-suffering affair. “I’ve ruined nothing, you featherbrains. Martha has already conjured them in the mirror! We saw that as she entered the room.”
The sisters mumbled in embarrassment and nonchalantly turned toward the mirror.
Within the mirror the sisters spied Flotsam and Jetsam swimming near Ariel and Eric’s boat. “They’re about to kiss!” squealed Ruby. “How could we have let this happen? Ursula is going to be furious!”
But before the witches could start screeching incantations, Ursula’s devious slithering minions overturned Eric and Ariel’s boat. The odd sisters sighed with relief while Flotsam and Jetsam gave each other mischievous grins, congratulating themselves for ruining the romantic scene.
“See? There is nothing to fear! Our distractions haven’t led Ariel and Eric down the sickening path of love!”
“Not yet,” said Ruby, who was clearly still distracted by other matters.
“What? What is it?” Ruby said nothing.
“Tell me!” Lucinda demanded.
Ruby, careful not to mention Maleficent’s name, sputtered and twitched but managed to share her fears. “What if we can’t trust Ursula? What if her story is lies? How do we know her brother truly did the things she said? And where is Pflanze? She’s been missing since Ursula’s visit!”
Where is Pflanze?
Pflanze. She was the last thing Lucinda needed to worry about now, what with the cryptic message from the Dark Fairy, Circe gone beyond their magic, and now her fretting sisters. Lucinda was full of rage but she could not place where it should be directed. Should it be aimed at her sisters for questioning her authority? Or should it be at Maleficent for interfering in their plans to find their sister? Most troubling of all, she wondered if she was enraged at herself for blindly trusting Ursula.
Whatever the cause, it needed to stop. They couldn’t go into their scheme with doubt or fear. She walked to the wall on which she had thrown the powder and gathered some from the floor, forgetting to be mindful of the broken glass. Her blood mingled with the orange powder, turning her hands a deep crimson, making her recall the Dark Fairy’s warning: Ariel’s blood will be on your hands.
She threw the powder she had gathered into the fire.
“Let us see times gone past when Triton and Ursula spoke last.”
“That’s not the correct meter, Lucinda!” hissed Ruby, who was very grateful Lucinda did not have the power to kill with a single look, because if she had, Ruby would have been lying on the floor, choking on her own blood.
“Silence, Ruby! I won’t have you ruining this spell!” But she amended the lines just in case her sister was right.
“Let us see in times gone past when Triton and Ursula did speak last!”
She brushed the rest of the orange dust from her hands into the fire, conjuring Ursula in the flames. Ursula was on the shores of Morningstar Kingdom, saying her good-bye to Princess Tulip the day she had saved the poor girl from her sorrow and fear.
“Now, my little angel cake, I trust you won’t go flinging yourself off any more cliffs for the love of a man who doesn’t deserve you. And I daresay if another man does fall in love with you, you’ll know he loves you for yourself and not how your beauty reflects upon him, and, my sweet cheeks, if that day comes, I will return to you your voice.”
Tulip answered Ursula with a weak smile, and Ruby looked to her sisters, who were intently watching the scene. “This is the day Ursula saved Tulip from drowning after the Beast prince broke her heart. Where is Triton? We asked to see the last time brother and sister spoke, not this nonsense!”
Martha looked panicked. “I think you did the spell wrong, Lucinda. I told you the meter was off! This isn’t even the right time period!”
Lucinda looked as though she might strangle her sisters. She could see herself taking their skinny little necks in her bony hands and squeezing the life from them.
“Well, that’s a pretty scene you’ve conjured, Lucinda, I must say!”
Lucinda looked at Ruby as though she were a strange bug. “‘I must say’? Since when do you say things like ‘I must say’?” She scoffed and continued. “Sisters, please! I’m sure Triton will show eventually.”
In the flames Ursula sighed as she watched Tulip walk the path that led to her father’s castle; then the sea witch disappeared beneath the water. She actually felt bad for the poor little princess, not because she had lost her beauty, but because she had never truly appreciated it when she had it. Ursula was swimming home, feeling sullen, for her own losses as well as Tulip’s, when a tightening grip seized her stomach at the sight of Triton’s shell chariot outside her entrance. A deep anger swelled within her as she thought of him in her home. How dare he enter without my permission! He had often taken those liberties with her, not because they were kin, but because he saw it as his right. He had forsaken her long before, when he had banished her from his kingdom—not that he’d ever accepted her into his life during her time at the palace. He had never really tried to love her as a sister.
But that was a lifetime ago, she thought. Those days when she’d lived in his kingdom were like a faded nightmare now, hazy and out of reach. Now she lived in her own waters, the Unprotected Waters, far from Triton and his sycophantic subjects. Only the most desperate of those subjects came to Ursula’s realm, and she was more than happy to oblige them.
