by Liz Kessler
“Emily!”
Aaron was calling out to me through the whirling, crashing water. I tried to find him, but all I could see was froth and foam. Then I felt him careen into me and we started to spin together, banging against each other.
“Take my hand!” he shouted. “It’ll keep us from getting separated.”
I fumbled and flailed around, and eventually found his hand. I took hold of it, gripping hard and wondering how long we could survive, and why I’d agreed to this ridiculous idea in the first place.
And then something really weird happened.
It stopped.
Just like that.
The whirlpool suddenly wasn’t a whirlpool anymore. It was the stillest, calmest pool you’ve ever seen in your life, so smooth and gentle you’d think it had been lying empty and undiscovered for years.
We bobbed up to the surface, still holding hands, both bedraggled and breathless.
“What — what happened?” I asked.
Aaron shook his head. “It stopped,” he said, pointing out the obvious.
“Neptune’s whirlpools don’t just stop,” I said, looking around to see if there was someone nearby. Maybe even Neptune himself was here, watching us, ready to tell us off for going where we shouldn’t and then start the whirlpool spinning again.
Then Aaron started swimming to the edge of the pool, his grip loosening on my hand.
That was when everything suddenly clicked into place.
“No!” I held tightly on to his hand.
He stopped and turned to look at me. “What is it?”
“Wait! Don’t let go of my hand.” Could it be? Could I be right?
Aaron smiled again. “OK,” he said, turning slightly pink. He seemed to do that quite a bit lately.
“I just had a thought,” I said. “I know it’s crazy, but — well, you and I both had curses on us, didn’t we?”
“Had, yes. Not anymore.”
“No, I know. But how did we overturn Neptune’s curse on us?”
“We found the rings he and his wife had given to each other. What are you —”
“We didn’t just find them,” I went on. “We wore them, and then what did we do?”
“We brought the rings together,” Aaron said. “Emily, I don’t see what this —”
“Our hands! We held hands! We brought our hands together and overturned Neptune’s power!”
Aaron’s eyes opened wider. I could see that he was starting to catch up with my thinking. I struggled to remember what Mr. Beeston had told me. What was it exactly? “‘Only the hand that is mightier than my own,’” I began.
“‘May undo the magic from my throne!’” Aaron finished.
“That’s it!” I stared down at our hands, locked tightly together. “We broke the curse when we held hands.”
“In other words, our hands together were mightier than his,” Aaron said.
“Exactly! Which means that maybe we can undo his magic power.”
“As long as we hold hands.”
It fit with what had happened with Mandy and my grandparents. Except — well, it seemed so incredible! We could overturn Neptune’s power?
“Aaron — it’s crazy,” I said. “Surely it’s not possible!”
We both looked down at our hands, and then at each other.
“We can really do it,” I said in a whisper. If I said it too loud, maybe it wouldn’t be true. “We really can overturn Neptune’s power.”
“Which means . . .”
“Which means perhaps all’s not lost with my grandparents,” I said.
“Or with the peacemaking mission!”
We locked eyes, making a silent deal with each other.
“Come on,” Aaron said.
We swam back to Brightport as fast as we could. We both knew what we had to do.
Sunday morning I woke up early with the biggest smile on my face. I couldn’t think why I was in such a good mood at first. Then I remembered. We’d overturned the memory drug! Mandy and I were friends again! And I thought I could even break the spell on my grandparents.
Surely that was a start! For the first time, I really believed we could do what Neptune had ordered us to do. We’d create a new world, just like he’d said. One where humans and merfolk would live together in harmony, side by side. And it was all going to start in Brightport! We would pass Neptune’s test!
I jumped out of bed. It was still early, and I could hear Mom’s snores coming from her bedroom. I decided to go up to the shop and get her a newspaper and some fresh bread as a treat.
I crept quietly out of the boat. Dad had already gone off to Shiprock. He and Mr. Beeston had a meeting with the mer-mayor today. They were going to explain what was going on and see how they could work together to deal with the situation. I smiled to myself. The “situation” wouldn’t be a problem much longer. I just knew it. We were going to mend fences, join the worlds together. Things were going to be great.
I was still smiling to myself as I headed down the pier.
I was still smiling as I walked into the store and picked out the bread.
I was even still smiling as I walked over to the newspaper stand.
And that was the point at which I stopped smiling.
“I — can I have a —” I pointed to the pile of Sunday newspapers stacked on the counter, feeling like someone in a foreign country with a vocabulary of about five words and lots of hand gestures.
“You want a Brightport Times, hon?” the woman behind the counter asked.
I nodded.
“Going like hot cakes today, these are,” she said. “Not often you get something like this on the front page.”
I tried to reply. I opened my mouth; I even moved it a bit, opened and closed it a couple more times, but nothing came out. Eventually I just nodded.
The woman gave me a sympathetic look and handed me a paper with my bread. “Two fifty-three,” she said loudly, as though I were a bit slow or stupid. I handed her some money, grabbed my things, and bolted.
I couldn’t go straight home. Not yet. I had to read the whole story; I had to prepare myself; I had to be alone.
I sat down on a bench and opened up the paper. The front page had a big banner headline running across it that made me feel sick.
MERMAID HUNT!
Under the headline, a few paragraphs filled in the story.
In the last twenty-four hours, the Brightport Times office has been inundated with phone calls from local residents claiming to have seen mermaids!
The claims reveal a remarkable consistency about the sightings, suggesting that they are indeed genuine.
Oddly, many of the sightings are reported as having taken place weeks and even months ago. The sighters seem to have forgotten about the incidents until just recently. Why that is the case remains a mystery.
Daniel Sykes is one of those who called our office. “I don’t know why I’ve just remembered,” he told the Brightport Times. “But I’m telling you, I can see her now, as clear as day. A mermaid in the sea, with a shiny blue tail.”
Mr. Sykes is just one of more than twenty people to have called our office so far. In every case, the caller only recalled the sighting since around lunchtime yesterday.
Join our mermaid hunt! Get in touch now and tell us your mermaid story! Rewards paid for all mermaid stories and pictures. Catch a mermaid and be a local hero! Turn to page 2 for more information.
I sat back on the bench, staring out across the bay. I really thought I was going to be sick this time. Catch a mermaid and be a local hero? I thought straight back to Allpoints Island — and me in a net while Mr. Rushton bragged to Mandy and her mom about how they would make a fortune displaying me to the world.
This was it. My nightmare was finally coming true.
My fingers curled up so hard I felt my fingernails dig into my palms. Mandy! She’d pretended to be my friend so she could play her cruelest trick yet!
But it didn’t make sense! How could she get all
those people to phone in? She might have a nasty streak, but surely she wasn’t that powerful — was she?
I looked back at the paper, turning the page as though in a trance.
And that was when I saw it.
A photograph. It was very blurred and hazy. You could only really see an outline, but it was obvious what the outline was.
A mermaid.
I looked closer, and my heart sank so low I could have sworn I heard it hit the floor. The photograph — yes, it was blurred; yes, it was hazy; yes, it probably looked like little more than a silhouette to most people. But I could see clearly what it was. The tail. The hair, even the expression on the face. To me it was so obvious they might as well have printed the name above it in capital letters.
It was a photograph of me.
I stumbled away from the bench, stuffing the newspaper in my pocket, out of sight.
What was I going to do? Where could I go? I couldn’t stay in Brightport. Sooner or later, someone would recognize me from the photo and reel me in to claim their reward. My worst nightmare really was going to come true.
I walked along in a daze, convinced that every person I passed was staring at me. Had they bought their morning paper yet? How long would it be before I was caught and dragged up in a net to be displayed for the whole town’s entertainment?
There was only one answer to my questions: I had to get away. I had to go to the sea.
I turned toward the beach. Right now I felt like I never wanted to set foot on dry land again. So much for bringing the two worlds together!
I hurried down to the beach and cast a quick look around, then ran to the point below the pier where I could slip into the water unseen.
Except someone was already there.
“Emily!”
I spun around. Mandy! She’d come to sneer. Now I knew she was the one who’d done this. I didn’t know how, but there was no other explanation. It had to be her.
“What are you doing here?” I snapped. “Come to gloat, have you? Had your fun and now you want to see the effect it’s had? Well, congratulations. You’ve done a great job this time!”
Mandy stared at me in astonishment. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
“I’ll bet you don’t! All those people seeing mermaids — funnily enough, since my conversation with you.” I grabbed the newspaper from my pocket and shoved it in her face. Mandy scanned the front page.
She looked up at me. “Emily, I don’t —”
“And a photograph — of me! Page two,” I said.
Mandy opened the paper and squinted at the photo. “How do you know it’s even you?” she asked. “Emily, no one would know who it is. You can hardly even tell it’s a —”
“Well, I know who it is. And you know who it is. And soon enough, the whole town is going to know.”
Mandy closed the newspaper and stared down at it. “Emily, I didn’t have anything to do with this,” she said. “You and I — yesterday, we were friends. Well, we made up ages ago. But yesterday I remembered. Do you have any idea how happy I was when I woke up this morning?”
I thought back to how I’d felt when I woke up, in those few minutes before everything had gone wrong yet again.
“Not just because of you and me being friends again,” Mandy went on. “That wasn’t the only thing I remembered. I remembered how it had felt when we saved all those people from the kraken. I remembered what it feels like to be nice. To do good things, to make people happy!”
I looked at her. She was smiling. Not her sneering, snarly smile. Her real one. The one that I hadn’t seen much of for years. “You really didn’t have anything to do with this?” I asked.
“I really didn’t,” she said. She drew a cross over her chest. “I promise.”
I slumped down on the sand. “Well, why did it happen, then?”
Mandy joined me. Picking up a handful of sand and letting it run through her fingers, she said, “Maybe it’s got something to do with you and Aaron.”
I stuck my feet into the sand. “What d’you mean? Aaron would never do anything like that.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Mandy turned to face me. “All these people have remembered since you and I became friends again, right?”
“Right,” I agreed.
“And how did you make that happen?”
I looked down. I still didn’t know if I could trust her, but I didn’t exactly have much to lose.
“Neptune has this thing called a memory drug,” I began. Then I told her about the verse, and why it meant that Aaron and I could overturn Neptune’s magic when we held hands.
“That’s it, then!” Mandy jumped to her knees, her eyes wide with excitement. What exactly there was to be excited about, I wasn’t so sure.
“That’s what?” I asked flatly.
“You undid the memory drug!”
“That’s what I just told you,” I said. “That’s why you remembered we were friends when Aaron and I held hands.”
“Not just on me! You undid the memory drug on the whole town of Brightport!”
“I — we —” I began. Then I stopped and stared at her. Of course! As soon as she said it, I realized that it was the most obvious thing in the world. So obvious that I hadn’t even thought of it!
Aaron and I must have been even more powerful than we’d realized. Mandy was right. It was the only answer that made sense.
“One thing I don’t understand, though, is why there are so many mermaids around here,” Mandy said.
“Shiprock,” I said simply.
“Ship what?”
“It’s a mermaid town,” I replied. “There aren’t many mermaid places near where humans live, but this one is close by, so it’s quite risky. I guess there’ve been a lot of accidental sightings over the years.”
Mandy looked as though she were going to say something. For a second, I thought the old Mandy was going to come back and laugh in my face. But she didn’t. She just nodded.
“What are you going to do?” she asked after a while.
What was I going to do? All I knew for sure was that I had to get away from Brightport. My first thought was to head for Shiprock, but I wasn’t even welcome there now! Then I remembered I was supposed to hang out with Shona today. It was Sunday — the day we said we’d go out looking for the lost sirens.
I leaped up. The lost sirens! Maybe I could hide away with them!
I shook the sand off my clothes and headed down to the water’s edge. Mandy was behind me. “What are you doing?” she asked. “Where are you going?”
“Look, just cover for me, will you? Tell my mom I forgot to tell her I was spending the day at Shona’s. I had to get going and I didn’t want to wake her.”
Mandy nodded. “So you’ll be gone all day?” she asked. She sounded disappointed. I’d be out at least all day, I thought. This problem wasn’t going to have gone away by tomorrow. But I’d worry about that later. At this point, all I wanted to do was hide.
“Yeah,” I said.
“What about Aaron?”
“Tell him I’ve gone to see Shona and I’ll catch him soon, OK?”
“OK.” She turned to walk away.
“And, Mandy?”
She turned around. “What?”
I smiled at her. “Thanks. I like being friends again.”
She held my eyes and nodded. “Yeah, me too,” she said.
And with that, I glanced around one last time, whipped off my sandals, and slid into the sea.
“So the whole town knows about you?” Shona asked as we swam along. I’d filled her in on the news in Brightport, but I didn’t want to tell her about Aaron — yet. I felt weird keeping a secret from Shona, but I felt even weirder telling her that Aaron and I had a special power — stronger even than Neptune!
“Well, not exactly about me,” I said. “At least, I hope not.” Maybe it would blow over soon. People would throw their newspapers out in a few days and forget all about it again. The picture was pretty b
lurred, after all. Perhaps it would be safe for me to return in a couple of weeks.
Yeah, and perhaps sharks would walk across the moon.
I might as well get used to the idea of living as a recluse.
We swam on, gliding over pastel-pink bushes and lime-green rocks. Sea urchins littered the seabed, still and spiky like curled-up hedgehogs. Black wavy rays with fins like Dracula’s cloak passed beneath us, tickling the sand as they slid by.
“Miss Merlin told us a bit more about the lost sirens,” Shona said as we swam.
“What did she tell you?” I asked, glad for a change of subject.
“She thinks she knows roughly where they were last seen. She said that after class last week, she looked into it more and she figured out some coordinates that no one’s ever worked out before, so I put them into my splishometer.”
“And? What did it tell you?”
“It’s about five miles away — hardly any distance,” she said, so excited that her eyes looked about ready to pop out of her face.
I thought about Brightport — people waking up and buying their local paper, all eager to catch a mermaid and win a reward. My photograph on page two. I shuddered and swam ahead. “Come on,” I said. “What are we waiting for?”
It felt as though we’d been swimming for hours. The sea had grown colder and deeper and darker. Lone, sleek, gray fish slid by, weaving among seaweed that trailed up from the seabed. Shoals of flat round fish swam toward us and then away again, flickering like mirrors in sunlight as they flashed by.
Ahead of us, below, all around us, sea life went about its business, oblivious to the two intruders swimming all around looking for something that might be no more than an ocean myth.
A lion fish with ornate markings around its jowls stared through us as we passed. A dancing crab with stick-thin legs jiggled sideways across our path. Ferns opened and closed with the rhythm of the sea. We swam on.