by Dash Hoffman
“You’re so lovely!” Emma began with her big smile. “How is it that you know my name?” She asked, tipping her head to the side a little.
The mermaid laughed. “We know a great deal about Neverland.”
Emma felt her heart begin to race. She could scarcely believe that she was talking with a mermaid; a real, live, stunning mermaid.
“Well, that’s wonderful! Especially because, well… because the Lost Boys and I are trying to find something that’s missing, and we thought that maybe you might know where it is.”
The mermaid still hadn’t blinked, and Emma found that she had to look away from it now and then so that she didn’t feel quite so awkward, as though she was staring at it.
“What is it that you are looking for?” The mermaid asked in her haunting sing-song voice.
“We’re looking for the Jolly Roger and that atrocious Captain Hook.” She furrowed her brow as she mentioned his name. Her dislike of him was growing considerably.
The mermaid turned her head and looked out to the sea. “He is sailing around the isle of Neverland, searching for the Sea Swan treasure.”
The Lost Boys, who had been huddled together a short distance away, all shuffled their feet and moved, almost as one unit, closer toward the mermaid.
Emma perked up. “The Sea Swan treasure? What is that please?”
The mermaid looked back at her and the boys shuffled just a little bit closer, watching intently and listening closely.
“The Sea Swan is a sailing ship that came from very far away, almost another world; the same place that James Hook came from. It was here long before he arrived, and it sank near the island many moons ago. Men of the sea tell tales, and Hook heard of the treasure that was onboard the Sea Swan. He has been hunting for it since the day he first came to Neverland. He has never found it, and when he isn’t trying to kill Peter Pan, he continues to search for it.”
Her melodic tones felt spellbinding to Emma, but she shrugged off the strangeness, and turned to look at the boys.
“Did you hear that? He’s out sailing around the island!” She announced anxiously.
Firefly stood tall and folded his arms over his chest, speaking firmly. “Then we go out and look for this ship and find it! When we find it, we search it! If Hook wants that treasure, then we want to get to it first!”
“Hear, hear!” Called Pip, followed by the other boys.
Emma frowned and her shoulders fell a little. “But how are we going to find it when it’s underwater? We can’t breathe underwater!”
That familiar, friendly voice in the back of her mind spoke quietly. “You are in the Neverland… remember… use your imagination!”
Emma jumped to her feet and began to pace across the sand, holding her chin in her hand as she stared downward, just in front of herself.
“She’s thinking.” Scout said quietly, watching her.
“That’s what she does when she’s thinking!” Tumbles added; his eyes on Emma as well.
“She’s a good thinker.” Patches chimed in.
“A clever thinker!” Shortly chipped up to them.
“She is a clever one.” Chance reiterated from the night before.
Emma stopped and closed her eyes tightly. Pockets reached a hand out to hold on to Patches’ patched up vest.
“She stopped! She must have thought of something!”
“I imagine the rare and wonderful… Bubble Fish!” She announced loudly. “It’s so rare that there’s only ever one in existence at a time! And… and he loves to swim in the moonlit lagoon!”
She opened her eyes and looked around. The Man in the Moon was sitting up in the sunny midday sky, shining brightly down upon them and the lagoon. He gave Emma a wink and a smile. Emma waved back at him and grinned.
“We need some moonbeams if you please!” She curtsied to him.
The Man in the Moon closed his eyes and shone down a brilliant beam of moonlight, right through the middle of the day, into the lagoon.
The mermaid was staring at Emma, as were the Lost Boys. She turned and looked into the water, and there, swimming around in the shallow waves before them, was the rare and wonderful Bubble Fish. The body was shaped like a perfect bubble, as was its head.
“Oh GOSH! Look! It’s the rare and wonderful Bubble Fish!” Emma cried out blissfully. She ran into the shallow waves and the boys followed her.
Chance reached down and picked Shortly up, resting the boy on his shoulders. Firefly did the same for Bandit.
“Why are we looking for this strange fish?” Scout asked, peering curiously at it.
“Because we need it! We need it if we’re going to find the Sea Swan! Now… we need to surround him, but carefully! Don’t startle him away!”
The Lost Boys all moved slowly and methodically until they were in a wide circle, and then they began to close in slowly until they had the Bubble Fish surrounded.
“Well done boys!” She gazed around at them in delight.
“Now what?” Pip asked, eyeing the fish suspiciously.
“Now,” Emma said, leaning down toward the Bubble Fish, “I’m going to tickle him just behind his right fin. When he laughs, bubbles will come out. Grab one and pop your head into it. Then we can swim underwater while we wear them, and we can find the ship!”
The boys stared at her again in amazement.
“She’s truly clever!” Chance shook his head.
Emma reached her hand out and gently wiggled her fingers behind the Bubble Fish’s right fin, and just as she had said, he laughed, and a big bubble the same size as his body, formed at his mouth and then popped out and landed on the water, floating merrily along.
Firefly grabbed it and jammed it over his head. In an instant his head was inside the bubble, which closed around his neck. His eyes went wide in shock, and he looked around at all the rest of them with a great grin on his face. Holding two thumbs up, he nodded.
“This is fine!” He called to them, and they could hear him, though it sounded as if there was a slight echo.
Emma continued to tickle the Bubble Fish, and he chuckled, and then he laughed, and then she tickled him so much that he rolled over onto his back and guffawed. Bubbles popped out of him in a steady stream, and there was nothing the fish could do but keep laughing as tears rolled out of his eyes.
Everyone got a bubble and placed it on their head. Chance and Shortly, Pockets and Patches, Pip, Bandit, Scout, Tumbles, and even little Tinkerbell. Pockets got a bubble to put Britely in, except Britely fit all the way inside of the bubble and found itself floating around, bouncing off of the bubble wall.
When Emma finally let the Bubble Fish go, he was so worn out that he didn’t swim away, he just floated and relaxed. She scooped up the last bubble and fitted it carefully over her head.
“Are we ready?” She asked, looking at all of them with their bubble helmets on. They all nodded excitedly and held their thumbs up.
“If you will keep the Sea Swan treasure away from that shameful Captain Hook,” the mermaid from the shore said as she swam toward them, “I will take you right to the ship. We do not let Hook find it, but if the treasure is no longer on the ship, and is instead on land, and Hook does not know it, then he will search the seas forever and find nothing. That would make us all laugh as much as the rare and wonderful Bubble Fish.” She laughed then, and it sounded like the high notes played on a harp.
“Onward then!” Firefly called out, diving straight into the water and becoming the first to use his bubble to breathe below the surface of the sea.
The rest followed him, though some of them were more cautious than others, not entirely confident that their bubbles would work.
When they had all grown comfortable breathing in their bubbles underwater, the mermaid waved to her sisters, and each one of the Lost Boys and Emma was surprised when a mermaid floated above their backs, taking hold of their waists with both hands, and began to swim with them, as fast as an arrow, down into the darkened depths of the water.
Pockets held firmly to the bubble that Britely was in, while Patches held on to Tinkerbell, who was also completely enveloped in her own bubble, just like the baby star, though she was none too pleased about it at all.
It was with incredulity that the children realized just how much the moon affected the Bubble Fish and its laughter bubbles. As they went deeper into the sea, the bubbles began to glow outwardly with the brilliance of the moon, and the deeper they went, the brighter the bubbles glowed, shimmering and swirling with moving luminescence like the full moon on the water, lighting up the mysterious world of Neverland in the sea.
“I didn’t even think about what the Neverland would look like under the surface of the water!” Emma exclaimed in amazement. “Of course it would be as wonderful and magical and beautiful as it is above the surface of the water!”
The boys realized that she was right. There was a whole other world down below the Neverland seas. There were small cities and castles of coral, there were valleys and mountains and streams of iridescent color like the shining rainbows inside of seashells. The streams flowed like narrow rivers right along the currents of sea water that they passed by.
The mermaids swam with them past sea creatures large and small; some were familiar, and some were the likes of which none of them had ever dreamed. Giant eels with ugly twisted mouths and razor sharp teeth glared at them, but the mermaids sounded a dangerous tone from their throats, and the eels zipped away, disappearing.
The group navigated around the dangerous kelp forests and peered in at sea caves of many sizes as they passed them by.
The children were amazed at all that they saw, waving back and forth at one another and pointing at various things that delighted them. They called out now and then to see if they could hear one another as they were carried along.
After a time, they came to the edge of an abyss that reached fathoms down. There the ocean was so dark that it changed from cobalt blue to violet and from violet to almost black, because the sunlight above could not reach that far into the water.
With their bubbles glowing brighter and brighter the deeper they went, the children almost held their breath at the eerie scenes that appeared around them.
Jagged rocks shot upward like spears aiming for the surface, frozen in place. Some were larger than others, some wide, and others narrow. They were razor sharp at their tips, hidden just far enough below the waves as to be unseen in the depths, but not far enough to be missed when sailed over, if there was a low tide.
Staring wide-eyed at them, it was easy for Emma to see how a crew on a ship might not see them below in the water. The cutting edge points and angles of the rocks would shred the bottom of a ship.
That was precisely what had happened to the Sea Swan. The mermaids slowed and came to a place where there were several pillars of rugged and craggy rocks, spiraling and twisting upward to the surface. It was practically a forest of them. There were sharp edges and points all along the length of the pillars from their bases, which were shrouded somewhere far below in cold, black depths to their tops; stone-still and lethal, hidden just below the surface of the sea.
The mermaids wound very slowly and carefully around the rock pillars, holding firmly to the children; their wide and dark unblinking eyes looking all around.
The children saw it all at once. The wrecked ship was lodged in between three pillars that were formed nearly in a triangle.
There was a great hole in the bow of the ship, and the children could see that the ship must have struck the pinnacle of one of the pillars and immediately taken on too much water to bear.
It had sunk in between the three pillars and become lodged in their grasp, much too far below the surface ever to be found unless someone was searching deeply and meticulously for it. It was also in a very dangerous and precarious place, for the wooden ship had rotted in the currents so much that it looked as if it might, at any time, come loose of the rocky clutches of the pillars, and tumble all the way to the bed of the sea, leagues upon leagues below them.
Emma and the Lost Boys didn’t dare speak at all, for there was a haunted feeling about the whole skeleton of the ship and the claw-like pillars that clutched it, which echoed the eeriness of a chilling graveyard, and none of them wished to make a single sound in the thick silence of it.
The mermaids swam with the children through the gaping hole in the bow, and they began to look everywhere that they could for the treasure, splitting up to cover more area.
The moonlight glowing off of their bubbles shone so brightly that the ghostly illumination cast even darker shadows in the places where light did not fall, and all of the children felt an icy rush of fear and the promise of imminent danger, though not one of them would admit to it.
Finding nothing but darkness and destruction in the remnants of the hull, they made their way to the upper levels and then Emma had an epiphany. Looking up at her mermaid, she pointed to a thick wooden door that was hanging on a rusty, old, algae covered hinge.
The mermaid took her to it, and she tried to give the door a push. It didn’t budge. She shoved and kicked hard at it, but it stayed fast. After watching her struggle with it for a short time, Emma’s mermaid held her close, shielding her, and then swung its mighty emerald tail against it with terrific force. The door shattered into countless pieces, and shards of wood went spinning off through the water in every direction. Emma turned and stared at her new friend. She grinned and the mermaid smiled at her.
They went in together, and Emma soon discovered that they had found the captain’s quarters. Not much was left in it, save for a bed with no linens, and a dresser that had fallen against a wall, remaining there at an odd angle, like a balloon stuck with static electricity.
A mirror sheathed in muck hung partly broken from another wall, and the hollow shell of a glass and brass lantern lay on the floor.
As she was looking at the lantern, Emma noticed that some of the floorboards were lifted at a different angle than the rest of the floor. It was a perfect row of three of them, all shifted slightly upward together, evenly, and she grew curious.
Pointing to it, she showed the mermaid, and together they drew near it; so close that Emma could touch it. She ran her fingers carefully over the boards and realized that it was actually a hatch to a secret nook.
Hoping that it would open easier than the door to the cabin, she pressed the heels of her hands against the thick edge of the wooden planks, and gave a solid push.
The hatch door gave way easily, and lifted almost as if nothing held it at all. Emma looked down into the nook and saw a chest of wood with brass framing and a latch at the front of it.
A thrill coursed through her. She reached carefully into the nook and pulled the box out. With a glance up at her mermaid, and a shared nod, the mermaid turned and swam with Emma back out of the room toward the main deck of the ship where the others were waiting.
None of the boys had anything, except Bandit, who clutched a golden quadrant to his chest.
The Lost Boys stared at her in fascination as she set the box gently on the sloping deck. Carried by their mermaids, Chance and Firefly came to hold on to it so that it wouldn’t slide away down off of the ship, and Emma turned the latch and lifted the lid.
She was stunned that there were only two things inside of the box. One was a music box with a mermaid inside who looked as if she might turn in a circle when the lid of the music box was lifted and the key was wound.
The other was a small, shining, golden sword, just the right size for a child. She eyed them both and held them up for the boys to see.
With nothing else in the chest, and the strange treasure found, it was time to go back to the surface.
The mermaids began to set off slowly away from the ship, and when Firefly and Chance let go of the chest, it slid down the sharply angled deck, toppled over what was left of the railing around the edge, and disappeared down into the inky blackness below.
Emma knew that one day the Sea Sw
an would finally crumble and meet the same fate. She felt incredibly lucky to have been the person to find the lost treasure aboard the ship, and for all that matter, the ship itself.
The mermaids zoomed back up out of the abyss, and as they neared the surface and the beaches of the Neverland, the bubbles the children wore began to dim and their light faded as moonlight does in the sun.
The water grew warmer and lighter in color, shifting from dark purple to cobalt, and then to emerald green and aquamarine as they finally came to the beach.
The mermaids brought them to the shallows where the children could stand up safely on their own.
Once there, they all slipped their bubbles off and tossed them onto the waves, setting them loose. The bubbles sealed themselves back up and floated, and the mermaids picked them up and played with them, bouncing them back and forth between each other like beach balls.
The boys and Emma trudged through the water to the sand and collapsed onto it, worn out from their incredible journey to the deep. Emma’s mermaid stayed with them and stretched her long shimmering tail out on the green Neversand.
“What a great game!” Firefly gushed excitedly. “I had no idea that Neverland was that way in the sea. I want to go back and take on those giant eels!” He tugged a roughly hewn wooden sword from his belt and jabbed it into the air several times as he battled in his mind.
“I’m so glad we’ve come back, because now we never have to go out and have that adventure again!” Patches moaned with great relief as he settled himself further into the sand and gazed regrettably at the sea before them.
Pockets took Britely out of its bubble and he and Emma gave it a good looking over to see if it was any worse off. They saw that the baby star, though quite ill, seemed to be holding on as well as it had been.
Tinkerbell hated her bubble and destroyed it after getting out of it. Her bell like tones jingled rapidly as she went on a rant about how it might as well have been a prison and how she would never be trapped inside a bubble underwater ever again. She folded her arms crossly over her chest and turned her back to the whole group for making her go.