Ursula's Beginning

33. A Tale of the Bottomless Blue

That afternoon, Flotsam and Jetsam arrived with a few key possessions and were greeted with shouts of joy from their master. Not an hour later, Ephram was stopped at the door by Siddikah. He tried to yell past the Squid Witch to reach Ursula.

"Can't you see?" he called out frantically. "When you turned down the role of High Priestess, you landed squarely on the only other path available to you! Surely you are not blind to this, Ursula!"

In truth, Ursula was creeped out by the prophecy and the careless manner with which she had agreed to apprentice with the most feared sorceress in the ocean, but she was far too proud to admit it.

"Send him away," she ordered in the most imperious-yet-bored tone she could fake.

Melisande and Dismas were also turned away, albeit more politely. "I'll write to you," Ursula said, as if she were going on a long vacation instead of plunging into the Dark Arts for a year. "There is nothing you can say to bring me back to Atlantica right now, and my letters will convey the full story."

Ursula wondered if Ganeon would come and what she would say to him if he did. As the day closed without sign of the prince, she knew she would not be hearing from him. Poor fool, she thought. Yet he knows his own mind better than Triton, and he's willing to act on his convictions.

That night she settled into her new bed, held the eels close, and wondered how she'd ever sleep again with the garden from hell carrying on as it did. As she shoved her ear deeper into the pillow Siddikah had provided, the point of the earring Triton had gifted her that morning jabbed her flesh. She wept anew as she thought about the evening that had been planned at the palace for her birthday and where she'd ended up instead.

But if it was fate, how was it her fault?

***

The next morning, Siddikah poked her head in Ursula's room. "I'm not going to let you lay around and cry today. So think about what you'd like to learn first."

"That's easy." Ursula sat up and rubbed her eyes, which were tinged pink. "How. To. Silence. THAT. GARDEN!!!!"

"Are you wearing the nautilus?"

"Yes," Ursula hissed.

"Then you already have all you need to accomplish that." The Squid Witch smiled mysteriously and slipped away.

Ursula flopped down on her back. "Attack her, boys," she grumbled, pointing at the empty doorway. Flotsam and Jetsam snickered. "No, wait!" she blurted, shooting up again. "Siddikah! Come back!"

The Squid Witch came fully into the room this time. "What is it?"

"What I really want is to learn about you. You've always ignored my questions, but you can't ignore them for a year."

Siddikah crossed her fibrous arms in front of her chest. "Try me."

"Come on. I'm here. I'm your apprentice. Shouldn't I know something about who I'm working under?"

Siddikah drifted down next to Ursula's low bed, chuckling quietly. "Very well. I think you're ready, now that you've had a run-in with reality."

Ursula shot her a dark look and hugged her familiars to her chest.

"My story is also one of infatuation. Infatuation with the sea, and with a boy. I was a human, Ursula. I was born in India--that's the land next to Oceanindia--and lived there until I was fourteen."

"So much makes sense already," Ursula whispered to herself.

"I was a creature of the land," Siddikah continued, "but utterly obsessed with the water. I spent all my time in the ocean, or on the beach, or looking at things in my room that the depths had gifted me...shells, mostly. I had a collection." She smiled sadly, remembering.