by Liz Kessler
Neptune wrinkled his forehead sternly. “What IS happening in Shiprock?” he asked. “My updates have been getting unacceptably unreliable lately.”
“They’re turning against humans more fiercely every day,” I said. “They’re feeling under threat because of the development in Brightport.”
“And can you blame them?”
“Well, no, but perhaps if you let the sirens go, they could join us in trying to calm the situation down. Humans and merpeople working together, to show Shiprock that there’s nothing to fear . . . somehow? Perhaps that could be a condition of their release.”
Neptune rubbed his beard. “Hmm, OK, let’s say I do that,” he said quietly, talking to himself, thinking aloud. “Attach conditions. Yes, I like that. But on the other hand . . .” Then he nodded. “Right, that’s it!” he barked. “I have decided what we will do.”
I froze as I waited for him to continue. What was he going to say? Would I ever see Shona again? Had we made a massive mistake coming here? Please help us. Please don’t send us away with nothing.
“I shall undo the waterfall curse on the caves,” he announced. “The sirens will be free to leave.”
“And Shona?” I asked, hardly daring to hope.
Neptune waved my question away. “Yes, yes, of course, all of them — including Beeston and your friend.”
Aaron caught my eye and gave me a thumbs-up. We’d done it! Shona was going to be free!
“I haven’t finished!” Neptune boomed before I had the chance to get too serious about the idea of celebrating. “Here are my conditions.”
We waited in silence.
“ONE: you are to redouble your efforts with the task you have been set. I gave you a mission, and I intended for you to take this mission to heart. Until now, I can see no serious progress. You are to make significant progress. And this progress is to begin with settling the situation with Brightport and Shiprock. I want it taken care of. You hear me?”
“Of course,” I said. “We’ll do everything we can to —”
“You will not do everything you can to make this happen — you will MAKE THIS HAPPEN!” Neptune bellowed. “Or else you will face my wrath!”
“Absolutely, Your Majesty. We will make it happen,” I hastily agreed.
“TWO: the memory drug remains lifted in Brightport.”
My hopes began to sink. The whole of Brightport was still on a mission to catch a mermaid. How could we keep on living there? We’d have to move. Or I’d have to get a plastic surgeon to give me a new face. I opened my mouth, about to ask Neptune to reconsider this condition. I couldn’t imagine trying to convince Mom and Dad to start again in yet another new town. And if I was honest, I quite liked my face the way it was.
“Nonnegotiable!” Neptune said, reading my thoughts and cutting them down in one simple word. “How do you expect to bring together the human and the mer worlds if you wish the one to be in darkness about the other? How do you expect the people of Brightport to care about their neighboring town enough to stop destroying it if they don’t even know it EXISTS?”
He did have a very good point.
“You will make this work,” he said somberly.
I let out a sigh. “OK,” I said eventually — not that we had any choice in the matter, so I don’t know why he was waiting for us to agree each condition. Then I had a thought. “My grandparents,” I said.
“What about them?”
“Well, if we agree about the memory drug staying lifted in Brightport, will you lift it from them too — permanently?”
Neptune’s face reddened. “Do not PRESUME to barter with me!” he roared. “I, and only I, make conditions! Do you understand?”
“Yes, of course, Your Majesty,” I said meekly. “I’m sorry.”
Neptune thought for a moment. “If I do not know where your grandparents are, there is nothing I can do,” he said. “But I will grant you this: if they come to Brightport, the rule will apply to them also. That is the best I can offer you.”
“Thank you sir, thank you, Your Majesty,” I gabbled.
Neptune raised his hand again. “There is one more condition,” he said. “The most important of all.”
This was it, then — the bit where he told us that I had to give up Aaron and Shona, never see either of them again, or leave Brightport forever, never to return, live out my days in a solitary, dark —
“You must give up your power,” he said. For the first time ever, he seemed uncomfortable, awkward, almost like a normal person.
“Our power?” Aaron asked. “You mean . . .” He took hold of my hand. Curling his fingers around mine, he held our hands up in front of us. “This?”
Neptune clutched his trident. “No one should have the ability to undermine my power,” he said. “It is not right; it is not how things should be; it is not what I intended with that verse. But once it is done, the nature of the magic you have claimed means that I cannot undo it.”
“You can’t undo it?” I repeated. “How is it undone then?”
“You must relinquish it,” he said starkly. “You must agree to give it back to me. On this, and this alone, I need your agreement.” He held his trident over our hands. “You must willingly give it up. If you both agree to do this, the power can be returned to me.” He held tightly on to his trident. “Do I have your agreement?”
I looked at Aaron. He didn’t have to worry about his best friend being trapped in an underwater cave with a bunch of evil sirens. He might not want to give up such a cool power.
He didn’t look back at me. Without blinking, Aaron tightened his grip on my hand. “We agree,” he said firmly.
As soon as he’d spoken, I wanted to leap up and hug him. I wanted to throw my arms around him and — and — my face burned when I realized what I wanted to do, and for once I hoped he couldn’t read my mind. I wanted to kiss him.
Before I had a chance to worry too much about what I wanted and whether he wanted it too, and whether it was ever going to happen, Neptune was speaking again. “Now, you must keep your side of the bargain. Do not forget the first condition. I will give you and your families one week to show me you are serious about your task. If I do not see evidence by then . . .”
He didn’t even need to finish his sentence. I knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of Neptune’s threats. He didn’t make them lightly, and he didn’t hold back in carrying them through.
“We’ll do it, Your Majesty,” I said. “We promise.”
“Very well. As long as we understand each other,” he said.
Oh yes, we certainly understood each other. The shiver that ran menacingly through my body, carrying with it memories of monsters and curses and storms unleashed by Neptune’s temper, reminded me precisely how well I understood him.
“Now, hold your hands still,” Neptune instructed us. We did what he said, and he held the trident over our outstretched hands.
“Power that should never have been set free,
Now you shall return to me,” he intoned.
A millisecond later, my hand burned and itched and tingled. Aaron gripped it harder and I held on to his hand as tightly as I could while flashes of power and light surged through me. It felt as though someone had shot a massive bolt of electricity into me. The volts ran up my fingers, through my hands, along my arms, danced their way through my whole body — and stopped.
Nothing.
Neptune removed his trident. “It is done,” he said. “Thank you. Now, we must return to the caves, and I shall complete my side of the bargain. Come, you shall travel with me.”
And with that, we turned and followed him out of his grand chamber, out of the palace, and into the chariot that was waiting, with its gold-adorned dolphins, to take us back to the caves.
It took moments. Neptune held his trident over the waterfall and muttered something in a low rumble. Then, with a brief nod at us, he said, “It is done,” and left.
As I watched him ride away, I let out a breath
so big it was as though I’d been holding it since we were in his palace. Then, as the chariot became a dot in the distance, I turned toward the well, now still and calm — thanks to his side of the promise.
One by one, the sirens swam shakily up the well and out into the open depths of the ocean. Each one nodded a silent “thank you” to me. None of them actually came over to talk to me. Maybe they were too embarrassed after the way they’d treated us.
Then Melody came out. She swam straight over to me. She took hold of my hands. “Emily, you have no idea what you have done for me today,” she said, her voice husky, her eyes shining with tears. “I am in your debt — for always. If there’s anything you need, come to me and I will help you. Remember that.”
“I will,” I said, twiddling a finger through my hair.
Melody touched my cheek with her finger. “I mean it,” she said. “Anything. OK?”
I held her eyes for a moment. “OK,” I said. “Thank you.”
Melody laughed. “You have nothing to thank me for,” she said. “Nothing at all. And I have everything to thank you for.”
I nodded toward the other sirens. “What’s going to happen to them?” I asked.
Melody smiled. “They’ll go back to the lives they had, and hopefully in time, they will forgive me. They’ll be fine,” she said with another smile. “We all will.”
A moment later, Shona’s head appeared at the top of the well and I swam straight over to her.
“Emily!” She threw her arms around me. “You did it!” she breathed. “You got us out! It’s over!”
“It is,” I said, hugging her back. I didn’t want her to see my face. If she did, she might see the worry on it, and realize it wasn’t over at all. We had a week to come up with an incredible world-changing idea, or I would face the terror of Neptune’s rage — again.
Mandy stared at us, wide-eyed and speechless, while we caught her up with everything on Monday evening over at her house. “Wow!” she said eventually.
“Wow? That’s it?” I laughed.
Mandy shook her head. “What else can I say? It’s amazing. You’re heroes.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I said.
Aaron nudged me. “Hey, what’s up? You should be happy.”
“I know, it’s just . . .”
“The task,” Mandy said. “You’ve got a week to show Neptune you can really make a difference and figure this situation out.”
“Exactly. We’ll never manage to make a difference in that time. And you haven’t seen what he’s like when he’s disobeyed,” I said with a shudder. “I can’t be on the receiving end of that again. I just can’t!”
Aaron patted my arm. “Hey, we’ll think of something,” he said with a weak smile. He sounded as though he believed it about as much as I did. “Look, you got all the sirens out from that cave where —”
“We got them out,” I reminded him.
“OK, we got them out. But what an amazing achievement, right? They’d been in there for years! You saw how grateful Melody was that we rescued her. Remember the look on her face the next time you need something to remind you how swishy you are!”
I smiled. Aaron seemed to have picked up Shona’s knack of saying just the right thing at just the right time to make me feel better. “Thank you,” I said.
Just then, a door behind us opened, and Mandy’s parents came in, laughing and chatting with a man I’d never seen before.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
Mandy glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, him. That’s Mr. Beckett, the editor of the Brightport Times. He and my parents have been best buddies ever since they all made thousands of dollars from Mom and Dad’s sea monster photos.”
“Hi, kids!” they called, and disappeared into the sitting room.
“Anyway, it’s not just that,” I went on. “It’s Mom. If she knew we had a week to prove to Neptune that we can do this task, I don’t know what she’d do. She already feels terrible that we haven’t managed to achieve much so far.”
“Not managed to achieve much?” Mandy spluttered. “After what you’ve just done?”
I shook my head. “I know, but — well, she’s still upset about the other thing.”
“What other thing?” asked Aaron.
“My grandparents,” I said. “We still haven’t found them. Now that she’s seen them once, she’s been thinking about them more than ever. If only we could get them back here somehow. I can’t help feeling the same way as she does. How can we bring two worlds together if we can’t even bring our own family together?”
“Have you tried to get in touch with them?” Mandy asked.
“Millie has. She’s called them over and over again but they won’t answer. With the memory drug in place, all they’ll remember is that she’s the one who told them they’d won a competition, and then they got here and found it was all a setup. They’re not likely to listen to her again.”
“Why can’t your mom just call them?” Mandy insisted.
“She won’t. She’s too proud — or too stubborn. And after what happened when they came here, she’s not going to put herself up for another rejection.”
“Why don’t you call?” Aaron suggested.
“And say what? ‘Hey, you don’t know I exist, but I’m your granddaughter and if you could just come over to Brightport, you’ll suddenly remember me, honest’? I don’t think so!”
Mandy looked over to the sitting-room door with a strange expression on her face. A sparkle appeared in her eyes. “Hang on a minute,” she said. “I might have an idea. Listen up.”
Mandy’s idea was a good one, and we left her to try it. But any hope it might have given me that we were on our way to getting this whole thing sorted out was obliterated when I got home.
Mom and Dad were outside together, Dad in the sea, Mom’s dress trailing in the water as she sat with her legs dangling over the side of the boat.
“Hey, sausage,” Mom said flatly.
Dad gave me a weak smile.
“Mom, Dad, what’s up?” I asked.
Dad shook his head and didn’t reply.
“We’ve just found out the council met this afternoon,” Mom said.
“And?”
“Well, Mr. Beeston had been trying to get them to drop their development plans,” she went on. “But they’ve just voted unanimously in favor.”
“So what does that mean?” I asked.
“It means they’re still going to go ahead with one of the original schemes,” Dad said. “Both of which spell disaster for Shiprock.”
And for any hope of us miraculously doing something to please Neptune. Shiprock was doomed — and so was I.
“They’re going to decide which one at their next planning meeting,” Mom said.
“Which is when?”
“A week from today.”
Brilliant. The day I was due to tell Neptune we’d changed the world was the day my world would officially come crashing down around me. Just perfect. Why did everything I did always have to turn to disaster?
Well, OK, maybe not absolutely everything. We had rescued Shona and Melody and . . .
Wait! Melody!
What had she said? If there is anything you need, come to me and I will help you.
I allowed myself a brief smile as an idea took shape in my head. Maybe all wasn’t completely lost — yet.
“How did you find me?”
“Mr. Beeston — er, Charlie — told me where you were,” I stammered.
Melody smiled. “My son,” she said, enjoying the word as though it were a precious jewel that someone had just given to her. I guess in a way, it was.
“You, er, you know you said you would do anything you could to thank me for saving you?” I went on.
“Of course,” she said seriously. “And I meant it.”
“Well, there is something.”
I told her my idea. When I’d finished, she frowned. “Emily, I want to help you, I really do. But it’s years and years since I
—”
“You were the best,” I said. “You still will be, I’m sure of it.”
Melody turned away from me as she fiddled nervously with one of the sequins on her top. Where had I seen that gesture before? I suddenly realized, and laughed.
“He does that, too,” I said.
She turned back to me. “Who does?” she asked. “Does what?”
“Mr. B — your son,” I said. “He fiddles with the buttons on his jacket, just like that.”
Melody’s smile lit up the rocky room. Literally. The water turned warmer; the glowing lights in the rocks burned brighter. Even the rocks themselves seemed to glisten with a shimmering light. If just a smile from her could do that, imagine what would happen if she were to —
“All right,” she said eventually. “I’ll do it.”
Yes! Now I only had one more thing to organize — and I had the feeling I knew someone who could help.
Three days later, I was woken up by a knocking on my window. I pulled the curtain across the porthole to see Aaron’s face. He was standing on the jetty outside my bedroom saying something I couldn’t hear and waving at me to come outside.
I leaped out of bed and ran out to join him.
“Mandy’s plan worked!” he said. “I just heard them arrive.”
“You’re sure?” I asked, hardly daring to believe he could be right.
“I saw their car — and I saw them go in. It’s definitely them!” He grabbed my hand. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Wait,” I said. “What if — what if it hasn’t worked? What if they don’t remember anything?”
Aaron glanced down at the sea under the jetty washing slowly toward the shore and out again, breathing in, breathing out, always moving away, always coming back.
“We’re keeping our promise to Neptune. He will have kept his,” he said. “They’ll remember.”
I nodded. “In that case, wait here a minute.” I ran inside the boat.
“What are you doing?” he called after me.