Soon every one was gone, and Beattie floated on the shockey track, the Clippee cartoon still dancing on the board over head.
The twins were curled up at the side, making Steve a little sand castle on the sandy stadium floor.
“Excuse you! More turrets.”
“Something is wrong,” Beattie said. “Ray Ramona is wrong about finding the palace mermaids on land.”
“We did it, Beattie,” Zelda said as she stuffed Steve in one of the turret windows. “Relax. They’ll find the palace mermaids.”
Beattie shook her head. “No. Ommy said he’d stashed them some where safe and THEN he took Arabella Cod to the human on land.” Beattie pulled at her plait. “So they must still be some where in the Lagoon. And I bet wherever they’ve hidden the palace mermaids and the dolphins was where they hid the Ruster Shells—some where secret where no one would see them glow.”
“Beattie’s right,” Mimi said.
Zelda folded her arms. “But where? Where do you hide over one hundred palace mermaids and some blindingly bright shells?”
Beattie smiled and began drawing a map of the Lagoon on the stadium’s sandy floor. North. South. East. West. “Mermaids have been secretly looking for Arabella Cod and the palace mermaids—Rachel Rocker said she sneaked into the palace, and mermaids were looking all over Swirlyshell. Ray Ramona has been looking, and Goda Gar.”
“What about Oysterdale?” Mimi suggested. “They were in on it, so it would make sense that they would help Ommy hide them there.”
“I thought about that,” Beattie said. “But there’s nowhere big enough in Oysterdale to stash over a hundred palace mermaids, apart from that theater or Silvia Snapp’s sand castle. But we saw inside both of them, and you destroyed the sand castle.”
Mimi looked guiltily at her hands.
“No,” Beattie said confidently. “When Arabella Cod wrote that we were the only mermaids who could help, she knew we were the only mermaids who could move around the Lagoon freely. And there’s only one place where no other mermaids could look. Only one place that isn’t a city. Only one place where no mermaids live.”
She drew a little ship between Anchor Rock and Lobstertown and looked up at them all.
“But that means—” Steve said slowly.
Beattie nodded. “The Merry Mary.”
THE SCRIBBLED SQUID
Sinkers! Eye Mask
Recently been in a trance that made your eyeballs glow? Well then, look no further than the Sinkers! Eye Mask. Made by the Swirlyshell joke shop, this eye mask promises to calm, soothe, and leave a silly squid-ink pattern on your face.
BLINK AND YOU’LL MISS IT! BUY IT NOW!
33
The Merry Mary (Oh Cod)
Beattie guided the clam car shakily through the curtain of jelly fish surrounding the Merry Mary and parked outside the ancient wreck. The water was cold, and the old masts of the grand ship creaked like they were in some sort of creaking competition.
She tried to block out all the haunted stories about the place that were flooding her mind—the ghosts and ghouls and twisted mermaids—but they kept coming, like a tidal wave that wanted her to turn back.
But she didn’t turn back.
Inside, the Merry Mary was all peeling wallpaper and creaking furniture.
On a desk Beattie saw piles of fresh seaweed slips covered in doodles for a magnificent display cabinet.
“Look at that,” Beattie said. She swam over to the desk. “It says ‘The Swan’s Shell Top Collection’! Liberty Ling didn’t want to put every one in a trance. She just really liked shell tops. Look, she’s also got a cabinet for her collection of dried shrimp in hats.
“MELP, MET US MOUT!” came cries from the next room. The double doors had been nailed shut with piranha teeth.
“Quick!” Beattie said, grabbing the desk.
“I’ll just fin-fu chop the doors,” Mimi said casually, inspecting her nails.
“NO!” Beattie and Zelda cried at once.
“We don’t want another Smug Street castle scenario while we’re inside the ship, thank you, Mimi,” Zelda said, rolling her eyes.
“As you wish,” Mimi said with a shrug, floating over to help them move the desk. Steve sat on the desk, directing them.
“Excuse you! Left. Left.”
They aligned it perfectly with the double doors.
“Ready?” Beattie said.
“ALWAYS!” Zelda roared, pushing the desk forward. It crash ed through the doors, sending glamorous palace mermaids spilling out. They were all sporting pearly outfits and matching white hair pulled into sculpted shell shapes.
“Well done, little fish!” Mimi and Zelda’s mom cheered, her dark purple lipstick slightly smudged around the edges.
The twins’ dad wore over sized round glasses that rocked precariously on his bulbous nose. “You little mermaids did great!”
“Beattie figured out you were here,” Zelda said proudly.
The palace mermaids hoisted Beattie up and clapped, slapping their tails on the ship’s old wooden floor.
“Bea-ttie! Bea-ttie! Bea-ttie!” Steve shouted, trying to get a chant going, but the palace mermaids weren’t paying attention.
Mimi wrenched open a large cupboard and two furious-looking dolphins shot out—and straight through one of the ship’s portholes, the glass shattering loudly as they did so.
“Arabella Cod’s dolphins,” the twins’ dad said knowingly. “I wouldn’t like to be the human who’s keeping her captive on land . . .”
“So they must’ve stashed Arabella Cod here too, before they transported her to land,” Beattie mused. “Liberty Ling met her just outside Lobstertown, then I bet she lured her here somehow.”
“She probably used the same tactic she used to get us in the whale,” the twins’ mom said.
“What was that?” Mimi asked.
“Oh, she said she’d met a ghost named Carl by the ship. It sounds silly, but we were all very excited!”
“Very sad he wasn’t real,” said a tiny palace mermaid with sagging earlobes. “Very sad.”
As the palace mermaids soared off in their incredible shell-covered carriages, Beattie, Mimi, Zelda, and Steve sat on the roof of the clam car staring out at the Swirlyshell spires glinting in the distance.
There wasn’t a sinister cloud of squid ink or a piranha in sight.
“This is more like it,” Beattie said with a sigh.
Zelda put her arms around Beattie and Mimi. “I’M ONE HAPPY HOT DOG!” she shouted, making them all snort-laugh.
34
BUT . . .
They all climbed into the Clamorado 7.
“We’d better return this to the Snapps now,” Beattie said, just as there was a crash from inside the Merry Mary.
They all looked at each other.
“It’s probably just a jelly fish,” Zelda said.
“Or a ghost,” Mimi whispered.
“There’s not really much difference between a jellyfish and a ghost, appearance-wise, is there?” Steve mused.
Beattie couldn’t resist. “I’ll just be a second.” She swam back into the Merry Mary, her heart pounding.
“She just can’t resist,” Zelda said. “Like mother, like daughter.”
Steve followed, then Mimi.
“Oh, can’t we just go home? Ghosts aren’t real!” Zelda called after them. She waited on her own for a moment. A jelly fish wafted past her left cheek, making her scream.
“WAIT FOR ME!” she wailed, bursting through the Merry Mary’s crumbling door.
The four of them floated nervously, staring at the cupboard. Inside, they could hear movement. Banging. A weird sort-of squeak.
“HELLO?” Mimi shouted.
“Mimi,” Beattie hissed as Steve dived into the false teeth in her hand.
Zelda floated at a safe distance, all the way across the other side of the room.
Beattie was sure she could hear grunting coming from inside. “What’s in there?” she whispered.
“I’ll ask,” Mimi said, casually throwing the door open.
Beattie winced and dived out of the way. But there was no need. Standing in front of them in her ridiculous hat and suit of smugness was Hilma Snapp.
She glared at them. “What? So I thought I’d see what you were all doing . . . and then I got stuck.”
“I wonder what this does?!” Zelda called over from the other side of the room. She was pointing at a small shell button.
Mimi’s eyes widened.
“Zelda,” Beattie said, approaching slowly. “Don—”
But it was too late.
She pressed it.
The ship began to rock.
Lights flickered.
Beattie looked out the window—an old steel-pipe entrance opened up, just like the one they’d used to sneak into the Lagoon!
Zelda and Mimi held on to the walls as the boat began to move.
“SOMEONE STOP IT!” Hilma screamed as Beattie tore across to the opposite window and peered out.
The spires of Swirlyshell vanished as the ship swirled and squeezed through the pipe, up and out, soaring fast through the mysterious waters of the Upper Realm.
Steve peeked out of his false teeth. “Oh, this is bad.”
CLAMZINE
MISSING IN THE UPPER REALMS!
Beattie Shelton, Mimi and Zelda Swish, Hilma Snapp, the Merry Mary, and a talking sea horse who responds to “Steve.”
If found, please return to the Hidden Lagoon near the NO LEGS BEYOND THIS POINT sign. Please drop off at Periwinkle Palace, Swirlyshell.
Password: Ihavenolegs.
Dear honorary mermaids,
I really hope you enjoyed your swim around the Hidden Lagoon as much as I enjoyed writing about it! You probably spotted that Beattie, Mimi, and Zelda are big fans of the Orange Bucket café in Lobstertown—it’s all fashionable mermaids and cool painted whales swimming around. And those foam shakes are the very best.
I realize you might just be a mermaid on land trying out some legs right now. In that case, you’ll need the secret foam shake recipe so you whip some up for yourself.
Yours leglessly,
Sibéal
Orange Bucket Foam Shakes
You’ll need (to make four foam shakes):
4 cups milk (or a substitute)
¼ cup sugar
1½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract
Caramel drizzle (human supermarkets sell this caramel stuff in squeeze bottles, or you can make your own from scratch)
Orange sprinkles
1Simmer the milk and sugar in a saucepan (get an adult human to do the hard work for you), stirring until the sugar is dissolved.
2Stir in the vanilla extract.
3Pour into four mugs. When on land, mermaids like to drink foam shakes secretly out of cool tin mugs. But you can use any mug, or a drinking shell.
4Drizzle the caramel over the top and add the orange sprinkles.
5Let it cool a little and enjoy! It’ll be just like you’re deep underwater at the Orange Bucket in Lobstertown.
Sibéal Pounder is the author of the Witch Wars series. She has written for publications including the Guardian, fashion-trend forecaster WGSN, Vogue.com, and the Financial Times, where she was the resident philanthropy columnist for the How to Spend It section for four years—interviewing everyone from Vivienne Westwood to Veronica Etro.
www.sibealpounder.com
@sibealpounder
Jason Cockcroft graduated from Falmouth School of Art in 1994 and has been working as an illustrator of children’s books ever since. He won the Blue Peter Book Award for his work on Geraldine McCaughrean’s retelling of A Pilgrim’s Progress and was the illustrator on the original covers of the final three Harry Potter novels.
jasoncockcroft.co.uk
BLOOMSBURY CHILDREN’S BOOKS
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This electronic edition published in 2018 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY CHILDREN’S BOOKS, and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published in Great Britain in June 2017 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published in the United States of America in May 2018 by Bloomsbury Children’s Books
Text copyright © 2017 by Sibéal Pounder
Illustrations copyright © 2017 by Jason Cockcroft
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Pounder, Sibéal, author. | Cockcroft, Jason, illustrator.
Title: Bad mermaids make waves / by Sibéal Pounder ; illustrated by Jason Cockcroft.
Description: New York : Bloomsbury, 2018.
Summary: Mermaids Beattie, Mimi, and Zelda are summoned back from a summer on land to save their underwater world from some seriously bad mermaids.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017034055 (print) | LCCN 2017049680 (e-book)
ISBN: 978-1-6811-9792-0 (HB)
ISBN: 978-1-6811-9986-3 (PB)
ISBN: 978-1-6811-9794-4 (eBook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Mermaids—Fiction. | Kidnapping—Fiction. | Kings, queens, rulers, etc.—Fiction. | Tabloid newspapers—Fiction. | Fantasy. | Humorous stories.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.P68 Bad 2018 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.P68 (e-book) | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017034055
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Bad Mermaids Make Waves Page 11