Turtle Terror

by Ali Sparkes

  “You know . . . we’re actually dinosaurs,” Josh said.

  “We what?” Danny flipped round again and stared at his brother in fascination.

  “Yup—we date right back to the Cretaceous period,” Josh said proudly.

  “For once, freaky little nature nerd—that’s quite cool!” Danny admitted. “Best S.W.I.T.C.H. ever,” he murmured, again.

  “We’d better not get too far out,” Josh warned. “We don’t know when it’ll wear off. We ought to head for the shore.”

  They turned toward the beach. They didn’t need to bob up out of the water to check the direction—they seemed to have an internal compass that just told them where to go.

  “I’m hungry,” Danny said. And he turned and shot sideways toward a small pulsing cloud that was drifting through the water. Josh knew what it was immediately, but he wondered whether he should tell Danny. His brother had a habit of eating stuff while S.W.I.T.C.H.ed that freaked him out later when he S.W.I.T.C.H.ed back again.

  But Danny was already swimming into the cloud of delicate white parachutes with see-through bodies pulsating through the water. Before Josh could say anything, he opened his mouth and slurped one in. It struggled briefly in his throat but could not escape. Josh knew this was because his brother’s reptilian throat had backward-facing spines to prevent his lunch from swimming back up it again.

  “What does it taste like?” he asked Danny as the living cloud scattered and swam away fast.

  “Um . . . what? The . . . sea jelly?” Danny asked, after a gulp.

  “Yes . . . the ‘sea jelly,’” Josh said, making air-quote movements with his flippers. “What’s it like?”

  “Well . . . quite nice,” Danny said. He started to look a little sick. “I . . . just ate something icky, didn’t I?”

  “Not for a turtle,” Josh said. “It’s turtle takeout, that is. You ate a jellyfish.”

  “Eeeeurgh!” Danny said. “Why did you let me do that?”

  “Well . . . you said you were hungry!” Josh shrugged and laughed. “And that’s what leatherback turtles eat. That reminds me,” he added as he and his brother swam on toward the shallows. “There is something that can kill you here.”

  “What?” Danny spun round, making a small vortex of sand and bits of floating seaweed. “A shark? A whale?”

  “Far worse than that,” said Josh. “A plastic bag.”

  Danny cuffed his brother’s gray, white, and beige patterned head with one flipper. “You really had me worried there!”

  “Well, you should be worried if you’re going to swim around scarfing stuff without checking what it is first,” Josh said. “Hundreds of leatherbacks die every year because they’ve mistaken a plastic bag for a jellyfish. Floating in the water they look really similar. The plastic bag blocks up their insides and stops other food from getting through. It makes them starve.”

  Danny grimaced. “Um . . . that was actually a jellyfish I ate, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes—it was,” confirmed Josh.

  “Phew!”

  They coasted over some rocks and stumps of old wood. And then Josh stopped. Very abruptly. He had not intended to stop. Something had stopped him.

  And that something was not planning to ever let him go . . .

  For a few seconds Danny didn’t even notice. He swam on toward the beach, loving the way the sunlight dappled down through the warm waves and made ever-shifting patterns across the seabed. And he still hadn’t even needed to take a breath! This was so amazing! He and Josh should just forget about giving the S.W.I.T.C.H. spray back to Petty and keep it all week. They could swim out in the sea every day—maybe even go offshore for miles and swim down to explore wrecks!

  He started to say this to his brother—and then he noticed that his brother wasn’t next to him. Or behind him. Or anywhere.

  “Josh? Josh? Where are you?” He waited, effortlessly treading water as his call traveled through the sea. At first he heard nothing . . . and then . . . a kind of squeak. He flipped round and swam straight for the source of the squeak. He still couldn’t see Josh, though, and now his heart began to skip about, rather fast. What had happened? Had Josh S.W.I.T.C.H.ed back to a boy already? That could mean trouble.

  Josh had not S.W.I.T.C.H.ed back, but he was still in trouble. He was trapped.

  He hadn’t seen it because it was pale and almost transparent. But the abandoned fishing net had wrapped itself around him as if it was a living predator. He had swum right into it and become entangled in moments. Part of the net was firmly anchored in some rocks. In its frayed grip were several dead creatures—some fish and some crabs. They had tried to escape and failed. But surely he, a great big strong leatherback turtle, could get out of this? It was only after he’d tried—and then tried some more, and then some more, flapping about more and more agitatedly—that he started shouting for Danny.

  At last Danny came back for him. “What have you gone and done?” He chuckled and started trying to unravel the netting from his brother’s flippers, shell, and head. But all too soon he realized that he couldn’t do it. The more he tried to unravel Josh, the more the net seemed to tangle and snag and tighten.

  “Stop!” Josh yelled, eventually. “You’ll end up getting caught in it too!”

  “I’ll bite through it!” Danny said and went to snap his mouth on the thin, strong fibers. But it was no good. He had only one pointed sort of tooth at the front of his mouth—all the other spiky “teeth” were right down in his throat. He just wasn’t designed for gnawing.

  “Josh!” he puffed, feeling really scared now. “You’ve got to get out of there!”

  “Yessss,” Josh said. “I had worked that out!”

  “We could S.W.I.T.C.H. back at any time now!” Danny said, slapping his front flipper against his scaly forehead.

  “Well done for reminding me!” Josh glared at him balefully through the criss-cross net.

  “But if you S.W.I.T.C.H. back still stuck down here, you’ll have to breathe right away!”

  “Correct! Have a gold star!”

  “And then you won’t be able to, and . . .”

  “Well, thanks, Danny—for predicting my funfilled future!” Josh snapped.

  “I’m going for help!” Danny said. And, although he hated to leave his twin, he turned and sped away through the water as fast as he could. And that was very fast. In less than a minute he had reached the beach and was clambering up onto the sand.

  And then he realized he had some problems. To start with, all of a sudden he was slow and clumsy and heavy. He couldn’t move fast at all on his belly and weird, flippery legs. And, of course, he couldn’t shout for help either. What on earth was he going to do? How could he possibly save Josh? As soon as he S.W.I.T.C.H.ed back he could run for help, of course . . . but as soon as he S.W.I.T.C.H.ed back, Josh would be S.W.I.T.C.H.ing too, just seconds later.

  Danny’s head swam with panic. What on earth was he going to do?

  Then he heard a very familiar sound. A yapping sound. High-pitched barking and the scamper of long claws across rock. Piddle! He had obviously gotten bored up at the cottage and come down to the beach to find them.

  “PIDDLE!” Danny yelled. “COME HERE!”

  Of course, nothing much came out. No human would have heard anything. But back in the summer, when he’d been a frog stuck in Piddle’s mouth (just about to be squelched between his pet’s gooey teeth and hot tongue) Danny had managed to get through to the dog. He knew that as well as vibrations and smells and body language, which so many of the creatures he’d S.W.I.T.C.H.ed into used, there was a strange kind of telepathy going on between animals too.

  He tried it now, with all his might, concentrating hard on Piddle’s flappy ears as the dog wandered along the rocky bits of the beach.

  “PIDDLE!!! PIDDLE!!! HERE, BOY! HERE! COME TO ME! COME TO DANNY!”

  To his amazement, Piddle looked up, cocked his black and white head to one side, and then came trotting down the beach. In a few seco
nds, Danny was getting his face licked by an excitable terrier, who was wondering why one of his masters’ voices was coming out of this big weird squashed ball thing with legs and a face. But he was getting used to this kind of thing ever since Josh and Danny started hanging out with that odd lady from next door.

  Now what? Far away along the beach, Danny could make out an orange shape. Could that be Petty Potts in her raincoat? “PIDDLE! GO AND GET PETTY POTTS!” Danny yelled at the dog. Piddle stepped back, cocked his head again, and then looked around the beach, wagging his tail.

  “YOU KNOW—PETTY POTTS FROM NEXT DOOR!” Danny yelled, waving a flipper in the direction of Petty. “GET HER OVER HERE! JOSH IS IN DANGER!”

  Piddle ran round in a circle and peered at Danny’s waving flipper. Then—in a weird pulse of telepathy—these words came back: “Fat lady smells funny?”

  “YES! YES! FAT LADY SMELLS FUNNY!” Danny agreed. He knew that Piddle had gotten it right. “She’s here on the beach! FIND HER!”

  Piddle turned and ran. And all Danny could hope was that he knew where he was going—and he’d get there soon.

  Petty Potts was ready for some tea. So were Hector and Percy. They’d been S.W.I.T.C.H.ed into turtles three times today, and they’d had enough. Percy was so annoyed that he had tried to bite Petty’s bum several times through the pocket he’d been put into, but so far he hadn’t managed to gnaw through far enough to get a decent nip in.

  “Okey-doke, my brave little helpers,” Petty said, glancing up at the steep cliff path. “Scones and cream and jam, I think. Maybe some for you too. What I admire about you both is that, unlike Josh and Danny, you never complain.”

  Percy paused in mid-gnaw and squeaked, “If you only knew, old woman!” in Mouse.

  “I think I have a special empathy for animals, you know,” went on Petty.

  Across in the other pocket, Hector sat shivering and planning to wee on Petty’s scone if he ever got the chance.

  “Animals are so much more compliant,” Petty said, crouching down and gathering up her bag of scientific bits and pieces, including several spray bottles of S.W.I.T.C.H. and S.W.I.T.C.H. antidote. “No whining and complaining. It’s much more restful being around creatures that don’t viciously pester me!”

  At this point a creature jumped on Petty’s head and started to viciously pester her. Piddle yapped furiously in Fat Lady Smells Funny’s ear.

  “Get OFF me!” Petty shoved the furry missile away and got to her feet, clutching her bag. Piddle kept yapping and began running back and forth, casting urgent glances down to the water.

  “What is it, you incontinent animated rug?” Piddle ran toward the water—and then paused, looked back at Petty, and jerked his head in the direction of the Danny-squashed-ball-with-legs-thingy.

  Petty stared after him, her genius brain clicking slowly. Far in the distance she could see a turtle. Perhaps the dog was just excited by this—a genuine leatherback up on the beach.

  She squinted and shoved her spectacles up her nose. Hang on . . . genuine leatherbacks didn’t usually wave at you, did they?

  “OH HO!” she chortled. “Someone’s been very naughty, hasn’t he?”

  She followed Piddle and got ready to give the leatherback a severe talking-to. It would serve Josh or Danny (whichever one it was) right if that little glitch in the turtle formula did happen this time!

  She stood over the turtle and put her hands on her hips. “Oh dear, Danny! Or Josh! Got in a bit of a flap, have we?” She smirked.

  The turtle made a rather rude gesture at her. And then it pointed out to sea and and waggled its head in an anxious way.

  “What are you trying to tell me?” she asked, kneeling down on the sand.

  Piddle started yapping again. “Oh, do be quiet, you weak-bladdered ball of fluff!” she snapped. “I don’t speak Dog any better than I speak Turtle!” She grabbed her bag. “But this should help us out!” And she pulled out a small bottle of antidote spray and fired it at the turtle. Three seconds later Danny stood in front of her, still flapping his arms about in a frenzy.

  “Ah,” Petty said, eyeing him with concern. “I thought so. Well—it can’t be helped. If you will steal my REPTOSWITCH and help yourselves when I have expressly forbidden it, this is what happens!”

  “JOSH! JOSH IS OUT THERE!” Danny yelled, ignoring the funny look Petty was giving him. “He’s TRAPPED! He’s stuck in some fishing net! And he’s going to S.W.I.T.C.H. back at ANY time!”

  Now Petty did look alarmed. But she rifled through her bag again, extracted a large pair of scissors, and said, “Where?”

  Danny began to run back into the water, but now he was freaking out over a whole new problem. He could find Josh—the top part of the rocks he was snagged to just showed though the fast incoming tide—and it wasn’t that far away. But he was quite deep in the water now—the tide had come in even more! And how would he be able to get down and hold his breath and see what he was doing while he scissored Josh out of danger?

  “WAIT!” Petty yelled, running into the shallows behind him. “You’ll need this too!” She was holding . . .a snorkel !

  “PETTY! You are AMAZING!” Danny yelled. He grabbed the snorkel, snapped the plastic face mask over his eyes and nose and shoved the breathing bit into his mouth (trying hard not to think about Petty using it herself during that day’s rock pool research). Then he ran into the water, Piddle at his heels. As soon as he was deep enough, he dived under, heading back to Josh, swimming harder and better than he ever had in his life, even with his shorts and T-shirt slowing him down.

  He desperately hoped he wasn’t too late . . .

  As if being trapped in a fishing net along with several other sea-life corpses wasn’t bad enough, Josh was now fearing for his shell. The incoming waves were getting more and more lively and kept cracking him against the rocks, first dragging him away as far as the firmly anchored net would allow and then smacking him back again.

  If he’d been another kind of turtle, this might not have been such a problem, but Josh knew quite a lot about leatherbacks. As the name suggested, their shells were softer than those of other kinds of turtle. Other kinds had shells with horny scales which acted like armour plating, but the leatherback was designed for speed and top hydrodynamics. It was the fastest turtle on the planet—a kind of sea-going reptilian Ferrari. Its bodywork was beautiful—but not so strong. He knew that eventually his shell would split if he kept being thrown against these jagged rocks.

  And if he didn’t drown first. He was beginning to feel the need to get some more air. It wasn’t desperate yet, but his panicky heart was thrumming away inside his pale flat chest and surely using up more oxygen because of it.

  “Bad luck, mate.” A spidery figure climbed elegantly and sure-footedly across the rocks beside him. “Nearly got me, that did. I had to use these!” And he raised his fabulous claws.

  “Can you get me out?” Josh begged, dimly aware that he was negotiating with a crab—possibly the same one he’d picked up a couple of hours ago. “Snip-snip?”

  “Sorry, mate,” went on the crab. “You’re too snarled up. It’d take me all day, and let’s face it—you ‘aven’t got that long.” And he went on his way, his little flickery mouth parts waving regretfully.

  Josh pleaded, “You could try . . . !” But the crab didn’t come back. Things didn’t get much worse, he reflected, than feebly begging for help from a saltwater crustacean.

  And then things did get much worse.

  There was a powerful thump in the water around him, and all of a sudden the net was biting hard into his skin. He had S.W.I.T.C.H.ed back into boy form! A moment ago he might have had five minutes of air. Now he had thirty seconds.

  Josh wriggled desperately, trying to reach his pocket. He could feel that the S.W.I.T.C.H. spray bottle was still in there, and it had to be worth trying to get some of it on his skin, so he could turn turtle again and have a few more minutes. He could spray it right into his mouth. That would work, wou
ldn’t it?

  But he just couldn’t reach his pocket. His hands were too tightly snagged in the net. In his mind, Josh sighed. Now he really knew what it was like to be a leatherback turtle—or a dolphin or a porpoise. Thousands of aquatic reptiles and mammals died in fishing nets every year. He was just about to join the sad tally.

  Then he felt something clawing at his arm. He looked around, his mouth clenched shut and his heart hammering, and saw . . . PIDDLE! His dog was scrabbling and biting at the net, his furry snout sending a plume of bubbles as he struggled to stay down underwater and help.

  And just behind Piddle was . . . DANNY! Danny as a boy, with a snorkel and—A BIG PAIR OF SCISSORS.

  Danny began hacking at the net, After what seemed like an eternity, just as Josh thought his lungs were going to explode, he was pulled free and shot up to the surface of the water. He burst through it and expelled all the dead air inside him in a cough before dragging in a huge, rasping breath.

  Struggling to stay above the waves, his feet sliding against the rocky outcrop he’d been trapped on, Josh breathed and breathed and breathed—in spite of Piddle doggy-paddling around him and trying to lick his face.

  Then Danny grabbed his arm and helped him swim back to the shore, which wasn’t that far. Over the past few minutes, it had felt to Josh as if it was ten miles away.

  The twins collapsed onto the beach and lay gasping, staring up into the late afternoon sun.

  “All right now, are we?” asked Petty Potts, looming over them and blocking out the light.

  “Yes . . .” puffed Danny. “Thanks . . . Petty. I’d . . . never . . . have done it . . . without you!”

  “Well, not for the first time,” Petty said, crisply. “And I think I’ll have this back now, thank you!” She reached into Josh’s soaked shorts pocket and retrieved the turtle REPTOSWITCH spray.