Moonfin

by L. L. Mintie

  “More like ‘entrails of the sea’—but heart sounds much nicer,” the boy chuckled, and the water shook as he did so.

  Lizzy smiled. A joke. She hadn’t expected that.

  “You remember Tevu? He has come to help instruct you.”

  “Instruct me in what?”

  “It’s time, Lizzy, for you to know who you are,” he said in a low, and vaguely familiar, voice. “Step into the water with us, please.”

  Lizzy hesitated. She glanced back at Kai and Jeff, who were breaking out the chips and soda. They already know I’m a little different, I guess this won’t be a shock.

  She dove into the water and the change came at once; it was pure joy after being trapped in a pit on land all day and night. Never before had she glided through the water so well, so fast, and with complete ease.

  Xili and Tevu swam next to her, and the more she concentrated on the ocean, the music and heartbeats—oh, so many hearts she could sense there!—the more her companions came into clearer focus. It was as if a dark and warping film was peeling away from her eyes.

  “You swim like a pro,” smiled Tevu, flying effortlessly along on his side, keeping up with her speed.

  Then his face turned serious.

  “Lizzy … I have something to tell you.”

  She gave him a quick glance while trying to concentrate on swimming. She didn’t want to run into a walrus or anything—that’d be embarrassing.

  “I was the one who left the scales on the Pinkerton’s yacht for you to find.”

  Lizzy was surprised.

  “Why?”

  “They might help you when the time comes.”

  “Are they from Moonfin?”

  He nodded mournfully. “Yes, she sheds them all the time—I ran across a few.”

  Lizzy gazed steadily at Tevu and could see more clearly his coal-black hair and gray eyes, which were awash of one color, no distinguishable pupils or white. His ears were small, probably half the size of her ears, angular and fan-like. She thought his clothes were the most strange! Dark clouds and stars slid across his chest—like the reflection of a summer storm on the surface of a pond. She also noticed that she, herself, had changed, and timidly pulling down a curl in front of her eyes, saw that it shone brightly like burnished metal pulled fresh from the fire.

  They stopped to watch some seahorses dancing around a crop of flowering plants. Lizzy held out her hand and they seemed to play a game of tag in her palm. One even curled its long tail around her wrist and started cooing softly.

  “They’re not afraid of me!”

  “No,” said Xili, “they know who you are.”

  Lizzy was wondering something and, turning to Tevu, asked, “Soooo, is this the Great Deep Iddo keeps talking about?” She swept her arms around in a wide circle, thinking the Deep was some special place near the islands.

  “Yes. Magnificent, isn’t it?”

  “Um, yes … it is,” she said, puzzled, not seeing anything special or out of the ordinary.

  Tevu noticed her confusion.

  “What do you see?”

  “Well, a kelp bed … some seaweed … green water—the usual. It’s always beautiful.”

  He frowned.

  “Anything else?”

  “Nope.”

  Xili glanced anxiously at Tevu.

  “That is not it. Try closing your eyes … yes … now concentrate. Think about the Deep. Let it fill you up, and when you are ready, open your eyes and tell us again what you see.”

  Lizzy did as she was told. She thought hard about those two words for several seconds: The Deep. Then she opened her eyes, palms raised, in excited expectation …

  Her face drooped.

  “Anything?”

  “It’s the same.”

  Tevu considered the problem. “When you first met Xili, could you see her or any of the Glimmruyn clearly?”

  “Well, no, not at first. It took a few times. I can see you the most clearly now, as a matter-of-fact.”

  Xili shrugged and shook her silvery head.

  “All I can say is your eyes are not fully developed yet. Perhaps in time …”

  That was a big letdown. All she’d been told by this lot was to remember the Way of the Deep, and now she couldn’t even see what in the world they were talking about.

  “But—but what does the Deep look like to you?”

  “It’s … wonderful,” Tevu said mysteriously. “I can’t explain it with words you will understand. It’s our home.”

  Lizzy looked away, disappointed. What about the bubble she saw up on shore, and the words floating inside it? She was sure that was real.

  “How did you do that, Xili?—that message in the bubble, I mean.”

  Xili’s face brightened.

  “Oh! You did see that. Very good!” she said excitedly. “We can send bubble-mail to whomever we wish. Messages can also be sent by Blabberfish, but they are unreliable, often getting people and messages mixed up, or the mail never gets delivered at all. The bubble-mail works so much better.”

  At least that’s something, thought Lizzy.

  The life of the sea moved all around them like a busy city street corner: a cuttlefish scampered by, stalking a crab for dinner. Sea snakes whisked along the floor and hardly noticed them. Out of nowhere, two humpback whales barreled right at them in high gear. This made Lizzy nervous and seemed to startle the others also.

  “It’s Notch and Scartale,” said Xili, looking concerned. “They never come to us like that. It must be serious.”

  “Why do you call them by those names?” asked Lizzy, but before Xili could answer, she saw why. Notch had a jagged cut in his fin, and a deep set of six grooves was etched in the other whale’s tale.

  “It’s just what we call them—we can tell them apart in other ways. For instance, the songs they sing are very different,” said Tevu. He broke away and swam right up to Scartale’s wrinkled eye and started communicating in melodies and clicks.

  “Wow, Tevu speaks ‘whale.’ Impressive,” said Lizzy, amazed to hear the exchange between them, although she could feel in her heart that something was wrong, somehow.

  He returned to Xili and Lizzy in a hot rage. “It’s the dolphins! The slaughter ritual again!”

  Never before had Lizzy seen Xili look so pained. She swam up to Notch and spoke soothing words to him while petting his injured fin. After many words of comfort, she sent both whales off into the teal sea.

  “It is bad enough they have to eat mercury-tainted fish, and the poison courses through their veins, but to be so brutally killed!” Xili’s gleaming eyes flashed darkly. “Dolphins are so much like the puppies of the sea and need to be enjoyed, not destroyed. Such a shame!”

  “I don’t understand—who would do such a thing?”

  Tevu balled up his fists angrily. “There is a sect of people on land who consider it a sport to kill these guileless creatures for no reason at all. They take their vessels out in the cloak of night and cowardly seek out helpless schools to butcher,” he said bitterly.

  Lizzy gasped. “Maybe there’s a good reason for it … like they wish to use them for food?”

  “They do not,” he growled and swam in impatient circles. “I must go immediately.”

  “Yes, of course. We will tell the others,” said Xili. He burst at sonic speed after the whales, leaving them in a ring of bubbles behind him.

  “What can he do?” Lizzy said sadly.

  “He will draw as many away as possible. Others, he might be able to heal, if he can get to them in time.”

  Lizzy felt sorry for the dolphins and wanted to help. Xili answered her thoughts with, “No, you are not ready yet,” which caused a curious confusion as to what she meant.

  Ready for what exactly?

  Lizzy puzzled over another comment Xili had made earlier—

  “What did you mean when you said, ‘the seahorses know me’?”

  Xili’s lips parted, but no words came out. Rhizoo and Cheroo suddenly materia
lized, swimming up next to Xili, and joined in gaping at Lizzy. It was all very unsettling.

  Lizzy stared back at them with arched eyebrows the way Sugar did when she was leery of Lizzy’s food experiments. And while they all goggled at one another, Lizzy noticed a few things about Xili, Cheroo, and Rhizoo, now that she could see them more clearly.

  Cheroo and Rhizoo looked much older than Xili. Both had round orange eyes that reminded Lizzy of the candy drops sold in Mrs. Doyle’s shop. Cheroo had snow-white hair, which grew down to his waist, along with a cottony beard. He held himself proud and important when he spoke, as if he were an official of some sort. Rhizoo’s white hair was also quite long; she tied it neatly behind her head with elaborate braids wrapped ornately around shells. Rhizoo was smaller, more scattered and nervous, and clearly the least composed of the group.

  Their clothes seemed to take on some aspect of the sea or nature. Lizzy noticed Xili’s was like the glassy, blue stones found along the seashore. Cheroo was dressed in the likeness of grains of sand, and Rhizoo was the most colorful, displaying the regalia of the abalone shell with streaks of silver, white, and green throughout.

  Then someone said it. Maybe it was Xili, she didn’t know, because it didn’t feel real anyway. They were the most incomprehensible words to Lizzy’s mind …

  “You are one of us …” echoed softly through her skull, then loud, like an angry prisoner banging on the locked door of her memory.

  It was a long time before anyone spoke. Every movement became trapped in molasses. Lizzy could hear every purl and tweedle from a nearby toadfish, her heartbeat pounding in her mind like an unwelcome locomotive. Cheroo and Rhizoo cast sympathetic looks her way; they seemed a lot nicer to Lizzy right now, not like the first time they’d met. Then her brain caught up with her mouth—

  “I-I am from the Waterpeople! H-how can that be? I have a family!” she practically shouted, fighting a very strong urge to run away and hide.

  “Please try to remember, Lizzy,” Xili said gently as a wave of passing sardines drifted by, a good many of which got caught in her silvery strands. “We are an ancient race called Glimmruyn. When you look at the water and see the streams of light shooting through it, such is our realm.”

  “There are Nine Pillars of the Glimmruyn,” Cheroo added quickly, seeing the frightened look on Lizzy’s face. “Those of us living in these waters are from the same place: the Protectors.”

  “Nine Pillars,” mumbled Lizzy, not comprehending a single word. “I can’t seem to … I’m sorry …”

  Out of the blue she thought of Corky, only because it was a weird thing she did to the bleeding cut on his leg.

  “I was able to heal the sea turtle.”

  “Yes,” flittered Rhizoo, “the Protectors are given the gift in order to serve those in their charge.”

  Xili suddenly noticed a seal tangled in vines on the seafloor. Lizzy watched as she broke away to pull him free. He frolicked around her in gratitude while she petted and hugged him affectionately, then he nuzzled her hair with his snout and swam away cheerfully.

  “Eerrm—I know this is a great deal to take in, but you chose to leave us to save the sea dragon, Moonfin,” Cheroo said in a crisp, officious tone, looking into her eyes to see if his words had any effect on her. “It was the only way. I have only known of a few—those who left the Glimmruyn to become human—in thousands of years.”

  Lizzy was speechless. Part of her knew this was all true. But her whole twelve-year-old world seemed to be exploding at that moment, and she didn’t know what to do or how to think.

  “Th-that’s … wh-what the turtle-shark from the cavern m-meant … when he said … ‘you are here and not here at the same time,’” she faltered.

  “Yes, you are human and Glimmruyn all at once. A child of two realms: water and air,” said Xili kindly, returning from her task.

  “I can breathe underwater without the conch now.” She looked down at her hands. They still looked like the same hands to her … maybe a little sparkly or something, but still hers.

  “Yes, yes!” said Rhizoo most tremulously.

  “But what about my mom and dad?” Lizzy looked up at Xili, imploring, reeling from confusion.

  “They discovered you alone on the beach when you were just two years old in human age.”

  “They found me wandering all by myself?”

  “You chose them, mhmhmhmmh. You made us promise to put you up on the beach when they were taking a stroll one evening. They adopted you when no one claimed you as their own.”

  Lizzy pondered her words.

  “I am a Glimmruyn? That’s why I changed in the water when I chased that shark?”

  “When you made the decision to be brave, it set your change in motion—more changes will come,” Xili answered.

  “But … why haven’t I ever heard of this ‘Glimmruyn’—like in school?”

  “Have you ever read books about the fairy world?”

  “Of course. We all grow up on those stories.”

  “The name given to us is the Sprite from those stories. It means spiritus or ‘breath.’ But Glimmruyn was from before that time. Glimm means ‘light,’ and ruyn means ‘song.’ But it is the same.”

  “Lightsong …” Lizzy breathed.

  Xili smiled at hearing her say it.

  “Yes, it is as you say.”

  It was getting late, and Lizzy was starting to worry about leaving Kai and Jeff alone on the beach. “I must go,” she said anxiously, turning away from them, desperately wanting only to get back onto dry land and to what she knew was normal. Rhizoo and Cheroo swam off. Xili followed closely behind Lizzy.

  Walking out of the ocean with ease, she stood facing Xili, who took her watery-person form.

  “Can I do that—you know, be a watery, drippy person like that?” she croaked into the cool night air.

  “I am not sure. When you took human form, some things were lost as Glimmruyn, and some things were gained as a human. Once you step from the water, you take on flesh as was permissible. We are not even sure it is permanent.”

  “Not permanent … great.”

  Lizzy wiggled her toes in the cool, supple sand. Roaming the water realms and breathing in the air realms were so very different, but she could feel the two were connected inside of her. She started to understand why finding this Moonfin was so important for the safety of both worlds—

  “Oh Xili! I almost forgot to tell you—Krell made a clone of Moonfin. We saw it in this creepy place called the Quarantine Room inside the aquarium. It’s the most frightful creature and so full of rage!” she cried in one long, shuddering breath.

  “Then both mankind and seakind are in great danger.”

  “And I haven’t set Moonfin free.” She gave Xili a withering look. “I have failed my mission, if it is as you say. I don’t even know where she is.”

  “Ah! That is why the map was placed upon you. It was the best way for it not to get lost.”

  Lizzy glanced down at her right hand and back up at Xili with understanding, then she dropped to the ocean’s verge, dipping her fingers into the wet foam. The markings appeared as a ring around her thumb like they always did when water touched her skin—a series of several small ovals and symbols.

  Xili explained, “You see, the large streak is Otter Island. The six smaller dots are the islands surrounding it. This upside-down ‘V’ is a volcano in the center of the island, and not far from that is a symbol on the end, shaped like a star. That is Frog Mountain. We have heard reports that she is being held within that mountain somewhere.”

  Then it happened again: a chicken hijacked Lizzy’s lips.

  “Umm—I have no idea how to get to the star on this map from here. And how do I set her free? I don’t have a key or anything. And did I mention I am a scaredy-cat….” she rambled on, trying to talk herself out of the inevitable.

  Xili smiled patiently and waited for Lizzy to finish her rant, somehow knowing none of this would be easy. “That is for yo
u to discover and why you have feet to walk upon!” she gently reminded.

  Lizzy breathed out a feeble “okay,” trembling from head to foot.

  “Be brave, little one, we can only tell you what we know. There is an underground sea, and the only way of escape is by a door that is covered with bars so strong, they are unbreakable. Moonfin is there. We believe she has escaped from there in the past, so Krell has her chained up as well. We know no more.”

  Lizzy sighed resignedly. “Why can’t you or Iddo set her free?”

  Xili looked distressed. “No one has heard from him—we are trying to keep hope. Finding a way in on land is the only way. We have not been able to determine the entrance to the cave from the sea realms, or a way to lift the gate.”

  “I don’t see how Krell could hold such a creature, if she’s as powerful as you say.”

  “It is true. She is shrewd and has the strength of a hundred whales. It was not an easy task for Dr. Krell to trap her, and it will not be easy to set her free. But we must try, Lizzy,” she said earnestly. “If we do not, he will fill the oceans with her kind, and I shudder to think of what will happen to all the rest who live here!”

  Xili’s voice softly faded and she began to descend into the ocean.

  “Find the lair Dr. Krell works from on this island, and you will find the way to set her free.”

  “Yeah, well—that’s if we don’t get swallowed up by a purple jello pit again. Do you know anything about those? We became trapped in one for twenty-four hours—we’d still be there except, somehow, water flooded in and we floated out.”

  Xili looked up into the dense forest, and in one last breath, whispered, “Be careful, Lizzy, this island is not as it seems.”

  Then she melted into the glistering sea.

  Lizzy trotted up the beach to Jeff and Kai, who were busy munching on apples picked from Sugar’s orchard.

  “Look what survived the goo-pit! We washed them in the ocean and they taste great,” said Kai, tossing a shiny piece of fruit her way.

  Lizzy suddenly missed Sugar’s home cooking. “Thanks—and great job keeping the fire going.” She plopped down next to the warm flames.

  “Any news?”