"I have the last of the topsider prisoners," her captor said.
The merman guard nodded. "You may pass." He swam over and pushed the door open, allowing them to enter a great seaweed-covered hallway. They continued through another doorway, this one unguarded, and down a flight of steps. At the bottom Sabrina saw several heavy wooden doors with metal bars on their windows. The merman took a set of keys from his belt, opened up the closest door, and shoved Sabrina inside. Daphne and Uncle Jake sat on a bench in the corner of the room. Daphne looked at her disapprovingly, while Uncle Jake gave her a pitiful smile.
"You will be held here in the dungeon until her highness seeks your presence," the merman barked. "Then you will be given five minutes to plead your innocence or guilt. Shortly after, you will be executed and your bodies fed to the lake's parasites and bottom-feeders."
"What if we're found innocent?" Sabrina said.
"No one is found innocent," the merman said. He exited the room, slammed the heavy metal door, and locked it tight.
Sabrina turned back to her family. "I dropped the wand into the boat."
"It doesn't matter anyway," Uncle Jake said. "It won't work underwater."
"If I am fed to bottom-feeders, I will never forgive you!" Daphne said. "You had to use magic. Granny said there was always a price, but you wouldn't listen. What are we going to do now?"
"I don't know. We're in big trouble," Uncle Jake said.
Sabrina and Daphne looked at each other. They didn't have to say what they were thinking. In the short time they had known their uncle, he had been Mr. Confidence. If he was giving up already, then the situation was really bad.
"You don't know?" Sabrina said. "You've got an overcoat filled with magic stuff. Start searching your pockets."
"I doubt anything will work. Magic doesn't like getting wet," Uncle Jake said.
"We don't need any of your magic," Daphne said. "I'll do all the talking. I'll tell the princess why we need her part of the sword. She's the Little Mermaid. She's really cool and nice and she'll totally understand."
"Daphne, this isn't the Little Mermaid from the movies," Uncle Jake explained. "In that movie she fell in love with the prince and was happy, but in the real story, the one Hans Christian Andersen documented, the princess gave up her entire life to be with her prince and he abandoned her for another woman. He rode off and completely forgot about her. She's never really gotten over it, and is still a little resentful toward humans. Actually, that's an understatement. She hates humans, especially men. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."
"What does scorned mean?"
Daphne asked her sister.
"It means she got dumped," Sabrina answered, then turned her attention back to her uncle. "So what are we going to do?"
Just then, the door flew open and two hulking merman guards entered. They wore heavy steel helmets and carried silver tridents, which they pointed at the group.
"The princess will see you now," one of them shouted as he swam over and grabbed Jake. The second brute clamped his big hands on the two girls and dragged them out of the cell. The guards forced the family down the hallway, and into a massive, high-ceilinged room and up to a pair of enormous doors covered in seaweed. An elderly merman with a bushy white beard and spectacles stood nearby at a podium reading a soggy book.
"Yes?" the old merman said without looking up.
"I have the topsiders who stole from the princess," one of the guards said respectfully.
The old merman took off his glasses and squinted as he examined the group. "Yes, yes, let them in," he shouted. Instantly a school of catfish swam up to the door. Each grabbed on to a strand of seaweed with its mouth and together they swung the mighty doors open.
The room on the other side was expansive, and though constructed out of trash, everything gleamed as if it were made from marble. In the center of the room was the backseat of an old car. It was strung with brilliant white pearls and sat on a pedestal of discarded milk crates. Sabrina thought it resembled a throne but it hardly seemed regal.
The merman guards escorted the girls and their uncle up to the pedestal and forced them onto their knees.
"Show some respect, ground-walkers!" one of the guards barked.
Just then, a door on the far side of the chamber opened and several mermen swam into the room, carrying dented and broken musical instruments. They blew some bubbly, off-key notes, then a tall, thin merman holding a stone tablet swam forward. "All hail, Poseidon's princess. Her majesty, the Little Mermaid!"