Ariel's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Ariel pulled herself into the walking house. The chicken legs straightened under her. The floor tilted, then held. Barrels lined the walls. A cold fire burned green in the hearth. Baba Yaga set her golden staff against a beam and turned to face the mermaid on her floor. "Name the work," Ariel said. "I brought gold. I can pay." Baba Yaga snorted. "Gold." She waved a hand at the barrels, the beams, the whole strange house. "I have gold. I eat off gold." Ariel's chest tightened. "Then what?" The witch crossed the floor. She was short, barely taller than Ariel stretched on the boards, but the room seemed to lean toward her. She crouched. Her yellow eyes came level with Ariel's. "Your voice." Ariel drew back. "My voice?" "Legs cost a voice." Baba Yaga tapped Ariel's throat with one nail. "That is the price. Not gold." Ariel thought of the prince on the sand. She had sung to him while he lay half-drowned. He had opened his eyes to her song. That song was the only thing he knew of her. Without it, how would he find her? How would she tell him who she was? "There must be another way," Ariel said. "More work. Years of it. Anything but that." "No." Baba Yaga stood. She picked up her staff. "Voice or nothing. Choose." The threat sat behind the word. Ariel remembered the sisters' warning. Refuse the witch, and the witch eats you. The green fire popped in the hearth. The chicken legs shifted, and the whole house swayed like a ship. Ariel could keep her voice and die here. Or lose it and walk. She thought of the prince's face. She thought of never seeing it again. Her fear did not matter. It had never mattered. "Take it," Ariel said. Baba Yaga did not smile this time. She raised the staff. Its golden head glowed. She spoke three words Ariel did not know. The air pulled tight. Something tore loose in Ariel's throat. It did not hurt. It felt like a held breath leaving. A pale light rose from her open mouth, curled, and slid into the staff. The gold drank it. Then the light was gone. Ariel gasped. No sound came. She pressed her hands to her neck and tried to speak. Her lips moved. The house creaked. Nothing else. Baba Yaga leaned the staff against the beam. "Done." Ariel looked down. Her tail shimmered, then split. Scales peeled back. Two legs formed where the fin had been, bare and pale on the wooden floor. Her toes curled against the boards. She had legs. She had no voice. Baba Yaga turned back to her hearth. "Now the work. You stay until it's paid." Ariel opened her mouth to ask what work. Only silence came out. She closed it again and stared at her new feet, trapped in a house that walked, mute, a stranger to the surface she had bled to reach.