Honestly, I'm still not sure what the heck she was planning, or even how this spell would work out. It's not as if she went about explaining everything to me. We obviously aren't buddy-buddy or enemy-buddy relations. 

 

I only knew it was a spell because one, she's a witch and that's what witches do, and two, she told me it was a spell.

 

Chen was currently swimming about the dark cave, preparing the spell. At least, that's what she told me. She would grab containers and place them in the center of the room—right next to me. Then, she'd head to another part of the room and grab something else, only to repeat the process.

 

I was pretty much left to my own devices, and when you're tied up, there isn't exactly a whole lot you can do.

 

Really, the only thing I could do was think about the mess I was suddenly in.

 

I mean, whoopee for me, I now get to spend my life as a human, trying to er some human prince into falling desperately in love with me, then get him to marry me, and then I get to make the wonderful choice of who to hand over to the crazy woman who'd gotten me into this mess in the first place. Oh, and did I forget to mention the fact that I lose all connection with my world, unless you count talking to sea creatures. And, with the exception of dolphins and whales, getting said sea creatures to shut up is all but impossible. All they do is whine about how horrible their lives are or the latest fishy gossip or whatnot, to the point you curl into the fetal position and just cry.

 

Life wasn't exactly looking up for me.

 

My fate was depressing me, so I decided to try to figure out why Chen hated my father and brought about this whole mess to begin with.

 

"Um… chen.. was it?" I began, a little hesitant because I had no idea what she'd do. If she was crazy enough to cast this psycho spell on me, she was crazy enough to do almost anything.

 

Chen grunted. "Actually Kim Jong Dae for the witches sake, but yes Chen and call me Chen only Chen."

 

"That's Korean," I said, surprised.

 

She shrugged. "I used to be the Korean ambassador before I was banished all those years ago. That was the name they gave me."

 

"Why were you banished? I mean, what did you do?"

 

She gave a humorless laugh. "I didn't do a thing. At the time, being an ambassador carried great weight, even though we had to give up our tails for a few months to carry out our work on land. Of course, the rest of the year they met with us at the water, but that wasn't always convenient, so sometimes we had to walk on land with the land-walkers themselves. Anyway, my father was the ambassador before me, but the position was given over to me at his death. He, too, had been killed in a human accident. Someone stabbed him and left him to bleed far away from the sea."

 

I winced. That wasn't a fun way to go. It was generally well-known that the merpeople could heal their wounds quite easily—but only as long as saltwater touched their entire bodies. With no seawater around, he would have bled to death, much slower than your average land-walker, and then, still living, but barely, his body would have disintegrated to nothing more than a pile of dust.

 

However, none of that told me what happened.

 

"And?" I prompted.

 

"I met your king father, child," she said with a cackle. "He was quite a catch, too. We were the talk of the kingdom, and we went everywhere together. We must have courted for months and I knew I'd be the one to marry him and share the power he held. Then, suddenly, something happened, and he told me he never wanted to see me again. He banished me to here i live now."

 

I think I'd have been a little cranky too, after all of that. Here though overall not a bad place and had an exceptional ruler, had been specially designed to hold troublesome merpeople. The kingdom was lovely, but it had natural ice-cells in the glaciers and ice burgs that were occasionally used to hold such people. The ice-cells kept the merfolk in the ocean waters, but severely limited them, though I wasn't sure exactly how it worked.

 

However, her story didn't add up to what I knew of my father, so I wasn't inclined to take everything at face-value.

 

"A few decades later, someone else was thrown in my ice-cell and we quickly became friends. She wanted my beauty in return for her magic. It wasn't a hard choice to make. We escaped and now I'll have my revenge. I just knew he'd married, but I never imagined he was the child-rearing type. Too bad it didn't work out for him." Chen now wore a nasty grin.

 

I could tell from the slight pauses in her story that she'd left some things out, and this further encouraged me to not take everything at face-value. Besides, what witch would willingly hand over power that could lead to her escape?

 

"Story time's over, though," she continued cheerfully. "The spell's ready, though I made a few minor alterations."

 

I was too curious—and terrified—to keep silent. "What kind of changes?!"

 

Her grin was demonic. "Oh, nothing major. Just things like you'll lose your memory and other little things like that."

 

My memory?!

 

She was kidding!

 

She had to be!

 

"I'm not joking, either, child," she said, and I briefly wondered if she'd read my thoughts or if my fear was just that apparent. "Also, I'm adding in an extra-special small something that will allow me to find you if need be, and allow me to check in on you without you being aware." She shrugged, still grinning that sick grin. "Nothing major. But I will be in total control, not that you will know. As soon as I cast the spell, you'll forget all of this. You'll find yourself on whatever shore on whatever land that I decide to place you on—if you survive long enough to get there without air. I don't know if you will."

 

Oh, that's just a bunch of kelp.

 

I may not even survive?

 

What kind of witch was she?!

 

Well, on the bright side, if I die, my father and the unfortunate human that gets to marry me will be safe.

 

But I didn't think for a second I'd be that lucky.

 

"Enough chit-chat. It's time to cast the spell," she declared. With a wave of her arms, the ingredients swirled together, forming a golden-black dust. The dust swirled about me, faster than my father could cause a hurricane if the mood struck him, and then settled all over my body.

 

The witch breathed in, then blew on the dust.

 

I felt excruciating pain, then my chest felt like it was constricting.

 

I lost consciousness, and the last thing I heard was Chen's creepy laugh.