Emily Windsnap and the Siren's Secret (15 page)

“Oww!” I tried to break free from her grip. My shoulder felt as though a scorpion was biting into it. “I mean I
can’t sing
!” I said. “I’m not a siren and I can’t sing. If you want beautiful singing, then you need to ask Shona!”

Shona. My chest leaped at the thought of her. Where was she now? How long had I been in here? Was she still waiting for me?

One of the mermaids pushed past Lorelei, picking her hand off my shoulder. She gently took hold of my arm and swam us away from the others.

“Hello, dearie,” she said. “I’m Amara. Now then. Tell me about Shona,” she said softly. “She’s a friend of yours, is she?”

I nodded. “My best friend,” I said, gulping back a rock-shaped tear in my throat.

“And this Shona,” she went on. “She’s a good singer?”

“She’s the best in her school!” I said proudly.

Amara smiled. “And where do we find her?”

“You tell me!” I cried. “We came out here together. We were looking for —” I stopped, and looked around at the mermaids, all staring intently at me. I’d been right earlier. A mysterious place, hidden in the deeps of the ocean, miles from anywhere. I swallowed down a mixture of fear and excitement. “I think we were looking for you,” I said.

Nerin, the first mermaid, joined Amara and me. “Never mind that,” she said. “Tell us more about Shona.” I could tell she was trying to sound all friendly and nice, but her voice came out desperate and rasping. “Where is she? Where can we find her?”

“I don’t know! I’ve told you. We came here together. We were looking for —” I felt my cheeks heat up and I stopped.

Nerin nudged me. “Go on.”

“We were looking for the lost sirens,” I said, looking down at the sand as I spoke, so I didn’t have to see their shocked expressions, and I could pretend I hadn’t noticed the gasps at what I’d said. I guess they didn’t know they were a well-known ocean myth that mermaids studied at school.

Two long, thin, bright yellow fish wove in between us all, as though having a slalom race with each other. “We decided to go in different directions and meet up again in ten minutes,” I went on. “But then I got dragged down this kind of underwater waterfall and couldn’t get out again.” I looked up at Nerin. “Then you found me and brought me here.”

Nerin turned to the others. “We need to find this Shona,” she said ferociously, the nice act all but gone now. “We
must
have her!”

Amara pursed her lips into a frown. She glared into my eyes. “Try, anyway,” she said.

“Try what?” I asked.

“Sing,” she said simply. “Do it.” She turned to the others. “You never know, she might just be over-modest, after all. It’s worth a try.” She turned to Nerin. “Go to the place,” she said. “Hurry. And come back immediately if anything changes.”

Nerin hurried away and we waited in silence.

What was she talking about? What place? And what were we waiting for?

Before I had time to ask, she’d turned back to me. This time there wasn’t even a pretense of a smile. She waited for a minute or two, and then her lips rolled into a snarl. “Come on, child,” she said. “Sing.”

I had no choice. Anyway, what harm could it do to try? Except that my mind seemed to have gone completely blank. I couldn’t think of a single song.

“Sing!” Amara repeated impatiently. “What are you waiting for?”

My mind grasped the only thing it could think of. A nursery rhyme.

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,”
I began. It didn’t come out how I’d hoped. I cleared my throat.
“How I wonder what you are.”

I stopped. The mermaids were all looking at me, their faces an identical picture of horror.

Amara was the first to speak. “What in the ocean’s name was that?” she spat.

“I
told
you I can’t sing,” I protested.

Moments later, Nerin swam back into the clearing and joined Amara. “Nothing,” she said. “The force is just as strong. We need to find the other one. This Shona. If the two came together, she must be nearby.”

“And if they really are such good friends, surely she’ll come looking when she realizes her best friend has gone missing,” Amara added. “We need to find her.”

“You’re right,” Merissa said, her voice dripping with desperation. “She can’t be far away. We should split up and go in search of her.”

The five of them talked among themselves at the other side of the clearing, hatching a plan to find Shona. I could hear snatches of their conversation, but none of it made any sense to me.

“We
have
to find her!” one of them was saying. “Maybe she will have the voice that can get us out of here. We need to hear her sing.”

“This is our best chance in years,” another replied.

“Our best chance ever, you mean,” the third added. “Find this siren and it could all be over.”

“As long as she came in.”

“We
need
this siren to get out of here.”

I swam toward them. “What are you talking about?” I asked. “I’ve got a right to know!”

Amara threw her head back and laughed. “A right? You want to talk about rights, do you? Ha!” She swam straight up to my face and stared into my eyes. “I’ll tell you what we’re talking about, you useless disgrace of a merchild.”

I flinched as though her words had hit me. I didn’t speak, though. I waited for her to continue.

“We’re stuck here. You’d probably figured that much out for yourself. We don’t know why, and we don’t know how. And after all this time, we don’t even know when.”

Morvena swam toward Amara. “Come on, it’s not the girl’s fault,” she said. “Let’s —”

Amara shook her off. “And not only that. Every one of us has been stripped of our singing voice,” she went on. “Do you know what that means to a siren? To the best sirens known for miles and miles around?”

“Amara, you know we weren’t the best,” Morvena said. “Melody was the best. We backed her. It’s not —”

“That’s right. Stick up for Melody, just like you always do. Not that she ever bothers to stick up for herself nowadays.”

“She doesn’t even
show
herself nowadays,” Nerin added.

“Too good for us, isn’t she?” Amara sneered.

“Come on, now. Let’s not fall out,” Morvena said. “I thought you wanted to find the young siren.”

Amara turned away with a swish of her tail so sharp it was like a scythe slicing through the water.

“You’re right. We’re wasting time,” she said. “Let’s help the others.”

“What about the girl?” asked Nerin.

Morvena broke away from the others. “I’ll see to her,” she said quickly. “You go ahead. I’ll follow.”

The sirens exchanged a glance. “All right,” Amara said finally. “Put the child somewhere safe. We can deal with her later.” With that, the three of them swam away. Morvena nudged me in the opposite direction. “Come on,” she said.

“What do you mean, you’ll see to me?” I asked as we swam up to the top of the clearing and along a dark ledge that ran the length of the walls.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you,” Morvena said. We swam along the ledge in silence, swimming past dark holes and caverns all the way along.

We passed a low cave with jagged rocks hanging in its entrance like a jail door. Green stone walls were decorated with pink ferns dangling down like a feather curtain; ledges with fat pillars stood on either side, and stone hills sloped down, lined with pillars and rocks in a hundred different shapes and sizes.

Morvena stopped in front of a large opening. “We’re here,” she said. “Come on.” She swam into the recess. I followed her to the entrance and looked around. Huge purple leaves fanned out around the sides. Bushy green moss formed spongy seats in one corner. A jelly-like bed ran along one side. A large rock was piled high with what looked like homemade jewelry made of driftwood and stones.

Morvena indicated for me to swim inside. “This is my room,” she said as I looked around. “Stay here.” Then she smiled at me. It wasn’t the way the others had smiled. She wasn’t snarling. “You’ll be fine,” she said. “Just wait here.”

“And what if I don’t want to stay here?”

Morvena smiled again. “Then don’t,” she said sweetly. “But I’m afraid you won’t be able to get out. This is as pleasant a place to wait as any, until you can leave.” She looked down, and her tail swished nervously in the sand. “If you can ever leave,” she added.

I didn’t reply, but as she swam away, her words gradually sank in. If I could ever leave? What did she mean?

The more I thought about it, the worse it looked. The lost sirens had been here for years and years, according to Shona’s teacher, and now I’d joined them. A cold shiver shot through me as I realized what I’d done.

I’d found my way in here, but getting out seemed impossible. And unless Shona managed to perform some kind of singing miracle, it looked as if there could only be one conclusion.

I was going to be trapped in here with them forever.

My stomach growled. How long had I been here? I wished I’d at least had some breakfast before coming out. Too bad I’d forgotten the loaf of bread I’d bought for mom. I’d left it on the counter — I’d been too shocked, and too desperate to get out of that shop. I doubted very much that my new friends were going to provide a banquet for lunch.

I swam around Morvena’s room, looking out to the larger caves beyond the entrance. What
was
this place?

Rocky ledges and walls sprawled out all around, lined with crazy shapes. A church steeple at the top of a hill, a giant upside-down jellyfish, a wedding cake, an elephant’s trunk — all of them and more lay scattered everywhere, as though the caves had stolen a hundred random objects and turned them to stone.

I saw a tail farther down the murky darkness of the ledge and darted quickly away from the entrance. Someone was coming.

I hid in the darkness, peering out while I waited for them to pass.

And then they did. Just one of them. I watched as she swished past me.

Wait a minute! That wasn’t one of the sirens; that was —

“Shona!” I darted out from the darkness and joined her on the ledge.

“Emily!”

“You found me!” I said. Then I remembered about the sirens going to look for her. I grabbed her and pulled her inside. “Oh — or they found
you
!”

Shona tilted her head to stare at me. “Who found me?” she asked. “What are you talking about?”

“They haven’t found you, then?”

“Who haven’t found me? Em, you’re being really weird. I’ve just —”

“How did you get here?”

Shona’s eyes widened as they always do when she’s on an adventure of some sort. “Well, that’s the weird thing,” she said. “I didn’t even try. I just felt this really strong current pulling me along. It was swishy! Next thing I knew, I was whizzing downward, water gushing all around me.”

“Like an underwater waterfall?” I said. “Inside a well.”

“That’s it exactly! I was pretty scared at first, but then when I got to the bottom, I looked up and it had disappeared. I figure as long as I can find that spot again, we could swim out whenever we want to go.”

“Did you try it?” I asked glumly.

Shona shook her head. I was about to explain that it wasn’t going to be as simple as she thought when there was a noise outside the room. Someone was coming.

I grabbed Shona and swam over to the purple ferns in the corner. “Quick! Get behind here,” I said as the swishing noise came closer.

“Why?” Shona asked. “Em, what’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” I said. “Just —”

But it was too late. The sirens turned a corner and came into the room. It was Amara and Lorelei.

They spotted me instantly and swam over to me. “No luck so far,” Amara snarled. “What shall we do with this one in the meantime?”

Then Lorelei glanced sideways and spotted Shona. “Wait!” she said. “What’s this?”

Amara looked across and saw her, too. In a flash, the snarl was gone, and she smiled with the warmth they’d turned on me earlier.
It’s an act, Shona,
I said in my mind, hoping she’d somehow hear my thoughts and trust me.
Don’t be taken in.

Amara swam over to Shona and stopped beside her, flicking her tail gently in the water below her. She looked Shona up and down. “Hello there, pretty one,” she said, her voice oozing with sweetness. “You must be Shona.”