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.

"What happened when you were fourteen?" Ursula prodded.

"At that age, I began loitering on the docks. I so envied the men that got to go out, explore, experience waters and creatures I'd never be able to see. That is where I first saw Surya, on the docks."

Ursula wiggled upright. "What did he look like?"

"Like his namesake...like the sun. Golden, perfect. His smile was blinding. I kept out of his sight day after day, but basked in the heat I felt rolling off of him. It was the first time anything had rivaled my thirst for the ocean."

Flotsam and Jetsam slipped out of Ursula's arms and hastily swam away. They had heard enough. Ursula patted the empty space next to her in bed, and Siddikah settled in next to her. "Go on," Ursula urged.

"Surya was a lascar. I eavesdropped constantly, learning everything I could about him, his shipmates, their ship, where they had just been. And then I found out they were set to leave again and wouldn't be back for close to a year, maybe even more than a year. I couldn't bear to be without my sunlight that long."

"What did you do?" Ursula breathed.

"The only thing that seemed reasonable to a fourteen year old in love with the ocean and a lascar...I disguised myself as a boy and joined the crew."

"You left your family just like that?"

Siddikah sighed and nodded. "It wasn't even a hard decision. And disguising myself was just as easy. You see I don't have much now," Siddikah said, motioning to her slight breasts. "And I had even less then. A little binding, a haircut. It was simple."

"But--but..." Ursula spluttered, trying to collect her thoughts. "How long did you think you could go undetected, living among men like that? And how were you going to get Surya doing this?"

"I didn't know how. I simply knew I couldn't be without him. So you see, I understand how Triton made you feel. I understand obsession and how it can make us blind and crazy."

"Speak for yourself," Ursula huffed.

Siddikah laughed. "It's alright, minnow. Relax. So! Three months in, they discovered me. Stripped me down on the deck, brought me to the captain. He ordered them to throw me overboard. I just stared at Surya, tracked his face in the crowd. He looked horrified."

"How cruel!"

Siddikah shrugged. "They threw me over the side and he ran to lean over the edge of the ship. Even as I struggled to stay above the water, our eyes remained locked. But the water was winning. The waves were picking up. I cried out to Surya that I loved him. Then I let go of the boy and surrendered to the ocean, my first love. I descended without resistance and without regret. How else to live and die, but by the heart's compass?"

Ursula waited, wide-eyed.

"When one of the Diaphanous came along and spoke to me--sang to me--I thought I was hallucinating on my way to death. But then the creature kissed me on the mouth and I found I could breathe again. Before I could say a word, it delivered images to my mind. I saw an octopus, a jellyfish, and a squid, and I understood I was to choose among them for some reason. I'll never know why my intuition bent towards the squid, but it did, and the rest is history," Siddikah concluded with a flourish of her thin red tentacles.

"I hardly think so!" Ursula protested. "I have even more questions now. How did you learn magic, how did you end up living here, and--"

"Ah, ah, ah. We have time for all that, plum. I'll tell you more soon. This is what I really want you to know. Because my infatuation with Surya never went past longing and into a real, intimate relationship, he haunts me to this day. He remains perfect in my mind...to me, he's an abstraction, a projection, never tested against reality. You are actually most fortunate because you got to be with Triton long enough to see he's imperfect. He's real, and real beings are bound to disappoint us."

"He's a real disappointment, yes," Ursula mumbled.

"My point is that you will get over him as a result. It won't be like my pining for Surya," Siddikah said softly. The water suddenly felt very heavy around them.

Ursula reached out and squeezed the hand of the sorceress. "Take me up there," she said suddenly. "I want to see the world you come from."

"You want to Transform into a human on your second day here?" Siddikah laughed. "It's not quite like the mermaid stint. It's a very different world up there."

"Yes. I could use a break from this world."

"Then I suppose it's time to start teaching you how to perform your own Transformations."

"Finally!" Ursula exclaimed in an irritated tone.

"But you're going to have to master various underwater permutations before we work on becoming human, angelfish."

"Fine," Ursula sighed. "Just keep me busy. I don't want to think about Triton anymore."

"This is going to be such fun!" Siddikah's eyes sparkled.

Thus began Ursula's formal education in the Dark Arts. She would throw herself into studying even more passionately than usual, for this time her sanity depended on it. She decided that her shattered spirit and psyche would be cemented back together by new spells, new incantations, new powers, and a whole new world--the human world--which she was determined to master as thoroughly as she had mastered the ocean.

***

Header art "Ship" by RobertoGatto; see more by this excellent artist at https://www.deviantart.com/robertogatto