Mermaid Magic (10 page)

Rani knew that there was no time to lose. She had to use the sea-spell. She took the golden shell from her belt and clasped it tightly in her hand, concentrating as hard as she could on starting up the magic. Gold dust began to trickle out from inside the shell – the spell was being released! Rani closed her eyes to help her focus better. When she opened them again, the water in the room was sparkling.

“What’s happening?” someone cried out.

The whole room and its contents – except for the mermaids themselves – seemed to have frozen. A huge piece of ceiling had stopped in mid-water as it fell. A heavy rock from the roof garden, which had been about to fall on top of the band, was suspended in the water, not moving.

“Quick!” shouted Rani. “Everyone must swim out. Now!”

It took several minutes to clear the whole room so that only Rani was left. A layer of sparkling water surrounded her as she closed her eyes again. Now, all she had to do was fix the ceiling and the roof garden would be saved. She remembered everything Morva had taught her and concentrated very hard on the spell.

Everyone cheered as the ceiling slipped back into place and the roof garden was restored.

Rani’s grandmother leaned closer to Miriam as they waited for Rani to join them outside. She spoke very quietly so that no one else could hear. “I understand now what you mean about Rani,” she whispered. “She is very special.”

Miriam nodded. “I know.”

“She may want to go and find her true home one day,” the old mermaid added gently. “You realize that, don’t you, my dear?”

Rani’s mother didn’t reply.

When she was sure that the spell had
really
worked, Rani swam outside to join the others. She knew that her mother and grandmother had been watching her very carefully, and now Miriam seemed quiet. “Mother, is something wrong?” she asked, swimming up to her. “You look sad.”

“I’m fine, Rani,” Miriam replied. “We all are ...Thanks to you.” And she pulled Rani close and gave her a very tight hug.

Suddenly, there was a big shout behind them. It was Octavius, still clutching his bowl of trifle. “You mermaids really aren’t very good at cooking,” he muttered, fishing something hard and shiny out of it. And Rani saw that what Octavius was holding up – half covered in gooey trifle – was her amber pendant!

Chapter Six

“
O
ctopuses are very emotional, aren’t they?” Kai said the following morning, as they waited for Octavius to finish saying goodbye to Flora. Having argued for most of the visit, the brother and sister were now embracing each other and getting horribly tangled up.

Rani had finally got the chance to speak to Flora on her own but she hadn’t really discovered anything more about the mysterious red-haired mermaid. Flora was certain that her amber pendant had been the same kind as Rani’s, though, and she had added that the young mermaid had been very sweet-natured. But apart from that Flora couldn’t tell her anything else. She didn’t know what had happened to the mermaid after she had left her – or to her baby.

Murdoch gently reminded everybody that they needed to set off.

“I can’t wait to see Pearl again!” Kai said, as she waved goodbye to her grandmother.

“Me too,” said Rani. “And Morva!” Rani was longing to tell Morva everything that had happened.

But the journey home seemed to take for ever. Roscoe was so tired that he kept falling asleep holding on to Miriam’s hair.

“We’re probably tired out from all that dancing,” Murdoch said. “That’s why it seems like it’s taking longer. We’ll stop and rest soon.”

Rani turned to her mother and noticed something.

“Where’s Roscoe?” she asked.

Roscoe was no longer attached to Miriam’s hair – he had definitely been there the last time she’d looked – and he wasn’t swimming along beside them either. In fact, he was nowhere in sight.

Everybody stopped swimming and started to call out Roscoe’s name.

“He must have got lost,” Murdoch said, frowning. “Come on. We’d better go back and look for him.”

“I just hope he hasn’t got himself eaten,” Octavius said. “There was an extremely large fish back there. Did you see it?”

“Octavius,
please
,” Miriam said.

“Sorry, sorry,” muttered Octavius. “Of course, sea horses are very difficult to digest. That fish will probably just spit him straight out again if it’s got any sense. Of course, fish
don’t
have a lot of sense—”

“Octavius,
be quiet
!” Murdoch hissed. “I think I can hear something.”

When the others listened they could hear the noise too. It sounded like someone shouting from a long way away.

“Come on,” said Murdoch. “Stay close to me.”

They swam off in the direction of the sound. As they got nearer they could tell that it was definitely Roscoe.

“HELP!” Roscoe was shouting. “GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

“I hope he’s not shouting from inside that fish’s stomach,” Octavius said gloomily.

“OCTAVIUS! “
Miriam and Murdoch snapped at him together.

They swam on a little further and then they saw him.

“Oh no!” gasped Rani. The little sea horse was stuck in the middle of a gigantic silver web.

“Keep back, all of you!” Murdoch called out, sharply. “That’s a Giant Sea-Spider’s web. That silver stuff is spider glue. If you touch it, you’ll get stuck too.”

“Father, what are we going to do?” Rani asked, starting to panic. Giant Sea-Spiders caught other creatures in their webs in order to eat them. Everyone knew that. And any spider with a web as big as this one had to have a very large appetite indeed.

“Find some rocks to throw at the web and we’ll try to break it that way,” Rani’s father said. But he sounded very worried.

As the others began to collect rocks, Rani hovered beside the web. If only she hadn’t used up the sea-spell. Surely there was
something
she could do. After all, she knew how to do a mending spell, didn’t she? Surely a
breaking
spell couldn’t be that different?

She closed her eyes and concentrated, holding out her hands so that they were just above the edge of the web. She focused as hard as she could on conjuring up a picture in her mind of the web breaking. Her belly button started to tingle and the tingling quickly spread up over the rest of her body and down her arms. Her fingertips felt hot. She opened her eyes and saw that golden sparks were jumping from her fingers to the web.

“Look at Rani!” Kai shouted.

For an instant the whole web sparkled. Then there was a sudden burst of golden light, the web broke with a
ping
and Roscoe was hurled straight into Rani’s arms.

“It’s OK, Roscoe. You’re safe now,” Rani cried, hugging the trembling sea horse.

The others were amazed. They knew that Rani was learning to do magic but none of them had ever seen her use it on her own before.

“You’re just like Morva!” Kai stammered, looking at her sister in awe.

“Not quite,” Rani laughed, pulling sticky bits of web out of her hair. “But I hope I will be, one day.”

Just then, a large sea snake slithered over Rani’s tail, followed by several babies. “Don’t worry,” the mother snake hissed. “We’re not poisonous. But
she
is!” She flicked out her tongue to point at the huge, hairy, eight-legged creature crawling along the seabed towards them. “I’d get out of here if I was you!”

“SWIM!” commanded Murdoch, grabbing Kai and Rani and using his large, powerful tail to propel them at top speed through the water.

“Come back,” shouted the sea-spider. “I won’t eat you! I only put that web up because it looks pretty!”

“Do you think that’s true?” Rani gasped, as they kept swimming.

“Somehow,” Murdoch said, slowing down as they reached a safe distance away, “I didn’t feel like taking her word for it.”

“I have always thought that there is something quite
unnatural
about a creature with hairy legs,” Octavius shuddered, waving his arms about in disgust.

“Come on,” laughed Murdoch. “Let’s go home.”

Chapter Seven

M
orva was trying to sing Pearl to sleep when they got home. She had tied some shells to some seaweed ribbons and made a beautiful shell-mobile which was dangling from the ceiling above Pearl’s cradle. Pearl shrieked with excitement when she saw her parents and sisters again, and stretched out her chubby arms to be picked up by Miriam.