The Tail of Emily Windsnap (6 page)

I couldn’t stop staring at the ship. It was like something out of a film — not real life. Especially
my
life! It shone as if it had the sun inside it, as though it were made of gold.

Made of gold?
A shipwreck made of gold?
A queasy feeling clutched at my insides.

“Shona, the masts —”

“Are you okay?” Shona asked, taking a look at me.

“I need to see a mast!”

Shona pointed up into the darkness again. “Come on.”

Neither of us spoke as we skirted around the hundreds of tiny fish pecking away at the ship’s sides and swam up to the deck. Yard after yard of wooden slats: some shiny, almost new-looking; others dark and rotting. We swam upward, circling one of the masts, wrapping our tails around it like snakes slithering up a tree, my heart hammering loud and fast.

“What is it?”

“What?”

“What’s the mast made of?”

Shona moved back to examine it. “Well, it looks like marble, but that’s —”

“Marble? Are you sure?”

A golden boat with a marble mast.
No!

I let go of the mast and pushed myself away, scattering a shoal of blue fish as I raced back down to the hull. I had to get away! It wasn’t right! It didn’t make sense!

“Emily, what’s wrong?” Shona was behind me.

“It’s — it’s —”
What?
What could I say? How could I explain this awful panic inside me? It didn’t make sense. I was being ridiculous. It couldn’t be — of course it couldn’t! I pushed the thought from my mind. Just a coincidence.

“It’s nothing,” I said, laughing off my unease. “Come on, let’s go inside!”

Shona slithered along the hull. Fish nibbled at its sides next to her. I shivered as a silky plant brushed against my arm, swaying with the motion of the sea.

“Found one!” She flapped her tail excitedly.

I slithered over to join her and found myself in front of a broken porthole.

She looked at me for a second, her bright face reflecting the boat’s light. “I’ve never had a real adventure before,” she said quietly. Then she disappeared through the empty window. I forced the fear out of my mind. Shona didn’t think there was anything to be afraid of. Then I held my arms tight against my sides, flicked the end of my tail, and followed Shona through the porthole.

We were in a narrow corridor. Bits of wallpaper dripped from the ceiling in watery stalactites, swaying with the movement of the sea. Below us, the slanted floor was completely rotten: black and moldy, with random floorboards missing. The walls were lined with plankton.

“Come on.” Shona led the way. Long thin fish silently skirted the walls and ceiling. Portholes lined the corridor on our left; doors with paint peeling and cracking all the way down faced them on our right. We tried every one.

“They’re all locked,” Shona said, wiggling another rotting doorknob and pushing her weight against another stubborn door. Then she raced ahead to the end of the corridor and disappeared. I followed her around the corner. Right in front of our eyes, a white door seemed to be challenging us. It was bigger than the others, shining and glowing, its round brass handle begging to be turned. A big, fat, beady-eyed fish hovered in front of it like a goalie. Shona tossed her head as she leaned forward to try the handle, her hair flowing out in the water. The fish darted away.

The door swung open.

“Swishing heck!” she breathed.

I joined her in the doorway. “Wow!” Bubbles danced out of my mouth as I stared.

It was the grandest room I’d ever seen — and the biggest! Easily as big as a tennis court. At one end, a carpet made out of maroon weeds swayed gently with the sea’s rhythm. At the other end was a hard white floor.

“Pearl,” Shona said, gliding across its shiny surface.

I swam into a corner and circled one of the golden pillars shining bright light across the room. With every movement, rainbow colors flickered around the walls and ceiling. Bright blue-and-yellow fish danced in the light.

Below huge round windows, benches with velvet seats and high wooden backs lined the walls, large iron tables dotted about in front of them. I picked up a goblet from one of the tables. Golden and heavy, its base was a long skirt, the cup a deep well waiting to be filled with magic.

Above us, a shoal of fish writhed and spun along the yellow ceiling. The ceiling!

“Shona, what’s the ceiling made out of?”

She swam up to its surface. “Amber, by the looks of it.”

I backed quickly toward the door, flicking my tail as hard as I could.
A ceiling of amber, a pavement of pearl.
No! It couldn’t be! It was impossible!

But I couldn’t brush away the truth this time.

It was the boat from Mom’s dream.

“Shona, we’ve got to get out of here!” I pulled at her hand. My fingers shook.

“But don’t you want to —”

“We have to get away!”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. Something’s not right.
Please,
Shona.”

She looked at my face, and for a moment I saw shock — or recognition. “Come on,” she said.

We didn’t speak as we slithered back down the narrow corridor in silence, Shona following as I raced ahead. I swam in such a panic that I went straight past the broken porthole and almost all the way to the other end of the boat! I turned and was about to start swimming back when Shona tugged at my arm.

“Look,” she said, pointing at the floor.

“What?”

“Can’t you see?”

I looked closer and noticed a shiny section of wood, newer than the other floorboards, the size of a manhole. It had a handle on it shaped like a giant pair of pliers.

Shona pulled at the trapdoor. “Give me a hand.”

“Shona, I’ve got a really weird feeling about all this. We really have to —”

“Just a quick look.
Please.
Then we’ll go — I promise.”

Reluctantly, I pulled at the handle with her, flipping my tail to propel myself backward. Seconds later, it creaked open. A swarm of tiny fish darted out from the gap, shimmering in a flash of silver before disappearing down the corridor.

Shona flipped herself upside down and poked her head into the hole, swishing her tail in my face. “What can you see?” I asked.

“It’s a tunnel!” Shona flipped back up and grabbed my hand. “Have a look.”

“But you said we could —”

“Five minutes.” And she disappeared down the hole.

As soon as we got into the tunnel, the golden light virtually disappeared. Just tiny rays peeping through the odd crack. We felt our way along the sides — which wasn’t exactly pleasant. Slimy, rubbery things lined the walls. I decided not to think about what they might be. An occasional fish passed by in the shadows: slow and solitary. The silence seemed to deepen. Inside it, my unease grew and grew. How could it be the same? How
could
it?

“Look!” Shona’s voice echoed in front of me.

I peered ahead. We’d reached another door, facing us at the end of the tunnel. “Locked,” Shona said quietly. “Hey, but look at —”

Suddenly a luminous fish with huge wide-open jaws sprang out of the darkness, almost swimming into my face.

I screamed and grabbed Shona’s arm. “I’m getting out of here!” I burst out, forgetting about the ballroom, the slimy rubbery walls, the trapdoor. All that mattered was getting away from that ship.

We sat on Rainbow Rocks, low down by the water’s edge, out of sight from the coast. Water lapped gently against the stones. Shona’s tail glistened in the chilly light. Mine had disappeared again, and I rubbed my goosepimply legs dry with my jacket. Shona stared. She obviously found the transformation as weird as I did.

“Do you want to tell me what that was all about?” She broke the silence.

“What?”

“What happened to you back there?”

I threw a pebble into the water and watched the circle around it grow bigger and wider until it disappeared. “I can’t.’”

“You don’t want to?”

“No, I mean, I really, actually can’t! I don’t even know what it’s about myself.”

Shona fell quiet again. “I understand if you don’t trust me,” she said after a while. “I mean, it’s not like I’m your best friend or anything.”

“I haven’t got a best friend.”

“Me, either.” Shona smiled a little bit, her tail flapping on the rock as she spoke.

Then we fell quiet again.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” I said after a while. “I do. It’s just . . . well, you would think I’m crazy.”

“Of course I wouldn’t. Apart from the fact that you’re a human half the time and a mermaid who sneaks out to play at night, I haven’t met anyone as normal as you in ages!”

I smiled.

“Come on, try me,” she said.

So I did. I told her everything; I told her about the swimming lesson and Mystic Millie and about Mom’s dream and the ship being exactly the same. I even told her about seeing Mr. Beeston on my way home that first night. Once I’d started letting things out, I couldn’t seem to stop.

When I finished, Shona stared at me without speaking.

“What?”

She looked away.

“What?”

“I don’t want to say. You might get mad, like last time.”

“What do you mean? Do you know something? You’ve got to tell me!”

Shona shook her head. “I don’t know anything for sure. But do you remember when we first met, and I thought I’d heard your name before?”

“You said you’d got it wrong.”

“I know. But I don’t think I did.”

“You had heard it?”

She nodded. “I think so.”

“Where?”

“It was at school.”

“At
school
?”

“I think it was in a book. I never knew if it was true, or just an ocean myth. We studied it in history.”

“Studied
what
in history?”

Shona paused before saying in a quiet voice, “Illegal marriages.”

“Illegal? You mean —”

“Between merpeople and humans.”

I tried to take in her words. What was she trying to tell me? That my parents —

“There’ll be something in the library at school. Let’s go back.” Shona slid down off her rock.

“I thought you finished at lunch time on Saturdays.”

“There are clubs and practices and stuff in the afternoon. Come on, I’m sure we can find out more.”

I slipped into the water and followed her back to mermaid school, my thoughts as tangled as a heap of washed-up fishing nets.

Back through the hole in the rock, back along the caves and tunnels and tubes until we came to the school playground. It was empty.

“This way.” Shona pointed to a rocky structure standing on its own, spiral-shaped and full of giant holes and crevices. We swam inside through a thick crack and slithered up through the swirls, coming out into a circular room with jagged rocky edges. A few mergirls and boys sat on mushroom-shaped spongy seats in front of long pieces of scratchy paper that hung from the ceiling. They wound the paper up or down, silently moving their heads from side to side as they examined the sheets.

“What are they doing?” I whispered.

Shona gaped at me. “Reading! What do you think they’re doing?”

I shrugged. “Where are the books?”

“It’s easier to find stuff on scrolls. Come on. I’ll show you where everything’s stored.” She led me to the opposite side of the room and swam up to the ceiling. We looked through different headings at the top of each scroll:
Shipwrecks, Treasures, Fishermen, Sirens.

“Sirens — it might be this one,” Shona said, pulling on the end of a thick roll. “Give me a hand.”

We pulled the scroll down to the floor, hooked it in place on a roller, then wound an old wooden handle around and around, working our way through facts and figures, dates and events. Stories about mermaids luring fishermen into the ocean with songs so beautiful they were almost impossible to hear; of fishermen going mad, throwing themselves into the sea to follow their hearts’ desires; mermaids winning praise and riches for their success; ships brought down. We searched the whole scroll. Nothing about illegal marriages.

“We’ll never find anything,” I said. “I don’t even know what we’re looking for.”

Shona was swimming around above me. “There must be something,” she muttered.

“Why is it so illegal, anyway? Why can’t people marry who they want?”

“It’s the one thing that makes Neptune really angry. Some say it’s because he once married a human and then she left him.”

“Neptune’s married?” I swam up to join her.

“Oh, he’s got loads of wives, and hundreds of children! But this one was special, and he’s never forgiven her — or the rest of the human race!”

“Shona Silkfin — what are you doing here?” A voice boomed from behind us. We both spun around to see someone swimming toward us. The history teacher!

“Oh, Mrs. Tailspin. I was just, we were —”

“Shona was just trying to help me with my homework,” I said with an innocent smile.

“Homework?” Mrs. Tailspin looked at us doubtfully.

“At my school, in — in —”

“Shallowpool,” Shona said quickly. “My aunt and uncle live there; that’s where she’s from.”

“And I’m supposed to do a project on illegal marriages,” I continued as an idea came to me. Maybe the teacher would know something! After all, Shona did say she heard my name in a history lesson. “Shona said that she’d studied them. She was trying to help me.”

Mrs. Tailspin swam down to a mushroomy sponge-seat and beckoned us to do the same. “What do you want to know?”

I paused, glancing at Shona. What
did
I want to know? And — did I want to know at all?

“Emily’s doing her project on Shiprock,” Shona said, picking up my thread. “That’s why she’s here. We need to find out if there’ve been any illegal marriages around here.”

“Indeed there has been one,” Mrs. Tailspin said, patting the bun on her head. “Rather a well-known incident. Do you remember, Shona? We covered it last term.” She frowned. “Or were you too busy daydreaming at the time?”

“Can you tell me about it?” I asked.

Mrs. Tailspin turned back to me. “Very well.”

I tried to keep still on my sponge while I waited for her to carry on.

“A group of humans once found out a little too much about the merfolk world,” she began. “There had been a yacht race nearby. A couple of the boats went off course and capsized. Some mermen found them and helped them. They had to have their memories wiped afterward.” She paused. “But one was missed.”

“And?”

“And she didn’t forget. Word spread, both in her world and our own. They started meeting up. Humans and merfolk. At one point, there was talk of them all going off to a desert island to live together. The rumor was that there was even a place where it was already happening.”

“Really?”
Shona said.

“Like I said, it was a rumor. I don’t believe for one moment that it existed, or for that matter, exists. But they kept meeting. As I’m sure you can imagine, Neptune was
not
pleased.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“There were storms for weeks. He said that if he ever caught anyone consorting with a human, they would be imprisoned for life. He visited every merfolk area personally.”

“He hardly ever does that!” Shona said. “He always stays in his main palace, except when he goes on exotic vacations, or visits his other palaces. He’s got them all over the world, doesn’t he?”

“That’s right, Shona.”

“So he came to Shiprock?” I asked.

“He did indeed.”

Shona bounced off her seat. “Did you meet him?”

Mrs. Tailspin nodded.

“Really? What’s he like?”

“Angry, loud, covered in gold — but with a certain charisma.”

“Wow!” Shona gazed at Mrs. Tailspin.

“The preparation took weeks,” she continued. “As you know, Neptune can become most unhappy if he is not presented with adequate jewels and crystals when he visits. Our menfolk went on daily searches under the rocks. We made him a new scepter as a present.”