166
" A paradisiacal lagoon lay below them. The water was an unbelievable, unreal turquoise, its surface so still that every feature of the bottom could be admired in magnified detail: colorful pebbles, bright red kelp, fish as pretty and colorful as the jungle birds. A waterfall on the far side fell softly from a height of at least twenty feet. A triple rainbow graced its frothy bottom. Large boulders stuck out of the water at seemingly random intervals, black and sun-warmed and extremely inviting, like they had been placed there on purpose by some ancient giant.
And on these were the mermaids.
Wendy gasped at their beauty.
Their tails were all colors of the rainbow, somehow managing not to look tawdry or clownish. Deep royal blue, glittery emerald green, coral red, anemone purple. Slick and wet and as beautifully real as the salmon Wendy's father had once caught on holiday in Scotland. Shining and voluptuously alive.
The mermaids were rather scandalously naked except for a few who wore carefully placed shells and starfish, although their hair did afford some measure of decorum as it trailed down their torsos. Their locks were long and thick and sinuous and mostly the same shades as their tails. Some had very tightly coiled curls, some had braids. Some had decorated their tresses with limpets and bright hibiscus flowers.
Their "human" skins were familiar tones: dark brown to pale white, pink and beige and golden and everything in between. Their eyes were also familiar eye colors but strangely clear and flat. Either depthless or extremely shallow depending on how one stared.
They sang, they brushed their hair, they played in the water. In short, they did everything mythical and magical mermaids were supposed to do, laughing and splashing as they did.
"Oh!" Wendy whispered. "They're-" And then she stopped.
Tinker Bell was giving her a funny look. An unhappy funny look.
The mermaids were beautiful. Indescribably, perfectly beautiful. They glowed and were radiant and seemed to suck up every ray of sun and sparkle of water; Wendy found she had no interest looking anywhere else. "
― Liz Braswell , Straight On Till Morning (Twisted Tales)
169
" This other Alice, this Wonderland Alice, on the other side of the glass, was someone very different.
She had dark hair, for one; stringy, long, unkempt. The rest of her features were hard to distinguish because a thick, ratty white blindfold was tied around her head. Streaked and streaming down her cheeks from beneath it was thick black blood. Her lips were cracked and also bleeding, her bare neck and shoulders smudged with dirt.
Alice swallowed. She had never seen anything like it. Even at the theater the blood was bright red and flowed easily and didn't cake up so. This was not a tableau; this was not fake blood. It was all too real- like something out of a scene of war, of a horror story, of a nightmare worse than any Alice ever had.
And then the picture moved.
Suddenly the other Alice was either screaming or grinning- impossible to tell which with her teeth outlined in more blood, her lips pulled away from them. She was holding up a banner that was delicately penned despite the poverty of her apparent surroundings.
MERRY UNBIRTHDAY
"
― Liz Braswell , Unbirthday
172
" But I wonder how much of this crime lies on my shoulders," she added quietly, to herself. "Too slow, too lazy, unable to make decisions... well, the evil is spread around, and some of it may be mine, Princess."
"I. Am not. A princess!" Rapunzel tried to keep her voice under control in deference to the old lady. She ground her teeth to keep from screaming.
"But of course you are," the old lady said in mild surprise. "You are the Crown Princess Rapunzel, daughter of King Frederic and Queen Arianna, heir to the throne. "
― Liz Braswell , What Once Was Mine
174
" She took out a charcoal stick and began to sketch-- on the workbench itself. Of course the moon wouldn't come to her in songs or poems or crystals or whatever... she felt the most centered, the most tranquil, when she was painting or drawing. Lost in her own world or in new ones she imagined. She shouldn't have made a chart; she should have drawn a circle, with the moons going from waxing to waning all the way around...
She hummed to herself a little, the way she always did when she painted.
Her hair began to glow.
A little shading here, a few light strokes in the middle of the full moon for the face that Rapunzel saw there... Circles and shadows and crosshatching... She worked extra hard on the profile of the fatter waxing crescent, where the moon would be now. She knew what it looked like as she felt her hand shape it.
Her power surged; her hair began to sparkle.
She looked around frantically for something to release her magic on. The first thing she saw was her tea, so she grabbed the red clay cup and wrapped the end of a braid around it.
Just like with Pascal, sparks sprayed off her hair and over the object.
When they faded they revealed...
... a heavy, crude clay cup.
Rapunzel started to slump in disappointment-- and then noticed something. Where the hair had touched the sides, the cup was now shiny black, like onyx or obsidian. "
― Liz Braswell , What Once Was Mine
