AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Don’t fight it, my darlings!” She laughed. “Or perhaps you should! It hurts more to struggle!”
This was far more rewarding than she had imagined. It was splendid, this hate, this utter destruction.
It was glorious.
Ursula’s laugh thundered as she stepped into the encroaching waves at the shore, encouraging all her new creatures to journey into places unknown to them, dark places they had been too frightened even to contemplate. Places they had only visited in their nightmares or anxious, fevered daydreams.
The creatures were hers now—servants—and she would use them at her will and to their torment. As the waves touched her human feet, she slowly transformed. It seemed the creature within her had no choice other than to burst forth from the human flesh, desperate to be seen and aching to be in the waves.
She was growing to leviathan proportions now, towering over her terrified minions, bawling with laughter at their plight.
Then, unexpectedly, a figure emerged from the water, like the Flying Dutchman breaking the surface.
“Stop this lunacy at once!” The voice was louder than the crashing waves.
Whereas Ursula seemed nothing but darkness, he appeared like shining light. He was beautiful—too beautiful—and seemingly too good. Those were traits she found all too prevalent in males of higher rank in those lands. She had no idea who that minor god might be, but she already knew she didn’t like him.
“W
ho are you to command me?” she asked, snapping her head to the right to get a better look at this mockery of the gods.
“Did you not call upon the old gods? I have answered.”
“I called for help, not interference!”
“Look around you! Look what you’ve done to this land! Everything is scorched with your hatred. It is blighted as the lands of the old queen. Don’t take her path, little sister. Come home with me, where you belong.”
Ursula was silenced, perplexed.
“Hear me, Sister. See that necklace you are wearing? It was a gift from our father. We thought you were lost to us forever. I hoped one day you would come to know your power and call upon me, but I didn’t expect to find this.” His face was screwed up with a look of disgust as he surveyed the destruction Ursula had wrought.
“You know nothing of my life! I was left here alone with these humans who feared and hated me. You have no idea what I’ve suffered!”
“Ursula, do you truly not remember me? I am your brother. Triton.”
Ursula looked at Triton, furious and confused. Unable to place him.
“I’m sorry, Ursula. It’s time I brought you home.”
It had been many years since Ursula had seen her dear friends the sister witches. Not since right after her exile from Triton’s court had she paid them a visit. There was so much to catch up on, and as she made her way, she saw light dancing across the rippling water and knew she was at last reaching the surface. She could almost make out the shadowy images of the three sisters standing on the shore, waiting for her arrival.
It has been a rather long time, she thought, and decided she might as well make a grand entrance, with a great spectacle. She felt herself growing, her tentacles elongating—a sensation that always made her feel like the dominant force of the seas that she was.
I haven’t felt this power within me for ages.
She’d taken down massive ships in that form, splintering them, casting their remains deep into her dark, foreboding realm. She saw the looks of astonishment in the odd sisters’ bulging eyes as she rose out of the water to towering heights. The trio of sister witches—Lucinda, Ruby, and Martha—looked small standing on the wet black rocks and shivering in the cold.
Ursula thought the sisters possessed a grotesque beauty, with their too-large eyes, tiny mouths, and pale haunting faces that were framed far too perfectly by their raven ringlets. She found them beautiful even if the mists clinging to the feathers in their hair made them look like frightened, soggy flightless birds.
One wouldn’t know it by their frightful state, Ursula mused, but those witches were the things of legends. They were cousins to the old king, the father of the queen called Snow White. And they were great benefactors to the Dark Fairy and her sleeping princess. Though Ursula would never say so aloud, she owed her newly regained power to the odd sisters. They had returned her necklace. Although, she considered, it was a fair exchange for something their little sister had desperately wanted.
Lucinda gasped as water spilled from Ursula’s massive form onto the witches’ awestruck faces, their ears splitting with Ursula’s thunderous laughter and booming voice.
“I’m so happy to see you, sisters. It’s been far too long.”
The sea witch leaned down to be at eye level with the odd sisters. They were really quite striking, she thought.
But too much beauty without the proper proportions.
