by Liz Kessler
OK, thanks, Aaron. I got the message loud and clear.
We sat looking out at the sea in silence for a minute. Other than the fact that my face was burning from making a fool of myself and I’d quite happily have hidden under a rock for a while, I could have stayed there all day. Aaron and I here together, sharing a view of the most beautiful wide blue sea. It was as if there was no one in the world except us. Nothing at all moved.
And then . . .
“Aaron.” I nudged him.
“What?”
I held my arm straight out ahead, toward the horizon. The tide was a long way out, but there was still a lot of sea. It wasn’t the water I was pointing at, though. It was what was on the water. “That.”
Aaron followed where I was pointing. “A tall ship!” He jumped up out of the seat. I joined him at the edge of the plinth and we stared at the ship.
It looked like something out of a film. A long boat, rising up at the front and back, it had three tall masts with what looked like very straggly white sails hanging loosely from each one.
I squinted into the sunlight to stare at it. It was half facing us, half facing toward the edge of the horizon, and gliding across the water so gently that it almost seemed to be hovering above it.
“Is it coming to the island, do you think?” I asked.
“It seems to be,” Aaron replied. “Must be a couple of miles away at least, though.”
“Maybe it’s something that Lyle’s planned for us!”
“That would be so cool!” Aaron turned to me and grinned. “Although, from what we’ve seen of his organizational skills so far, I wouldn’t bet on it.”
“Agreed.”
We watched the ship a bit longer. It was mesmerizing. One moment, the sails looked torn and useless. The next, they filled with wind, billowing like a proud sergeant major sticking out his chest to fill his lungs with air. Each time it did this, the ship edged forward. The next moment, the sails would drop, falling back to their lifeless, ragged shape.
And then something really weird happened. A line of mist seemed to grow from behind the ship, starting beyond the horizon and enveloping the boat, as if someone were creeping up behind it to throw a sheet over it and hide it away.
The mist crept closer and lower, until it was covering the ship completely. Moments later, the sun came out from behind the mist and started to burn it away. It glared so brightly I had to close my eyes.
When I opened them again, the sea was flat, the air was still, and the mist had vanished.
And so had the ship.
Aaron looked at me. “Where’d it go?”
I stared out at the sea, waiting for the ship to come back into sight. “Maybe it’s just dipped behind a wave,” I suggested.
“There are no waves. The sea is as flat as a flounder,” Aaron said. “There’s no wind . . .”
“And no ship,” I finished.
Aaron shook his head. “Maybe it turned and went back over the horizon while the mist was covering it.”
“I guess so. It must have changed course,” I said, although, to be honest, I could hardly see how. The ship had been hidden by the mist for only a few seconds, half a minute at the most. But I couldn’t think of any other possibilities. That must have been what had happened.
Aaron glanced at his watch. “I bet we’ll be last in the treasure hunt by now.”
I looked across toward the steep steps. “Come on, let’s head back anyway. You never know, we might have gotten far enough ahead with the first few questions that we still have a chance.”
I pulled the sheet out of my pocket and studied the map. Now that we’d discovered the fifth bay, I could figure out where we were on the island. A tiny squiggly line led from here back to the main road. That would be the one we’d found at the end of the ditch.
I pointed at the map to show Aaron where we were. “We just have to go back up the steps, then take the path up that way, and we should get back on track.”
“OK. Let’s go. What was the next question again?”
I turned the sheet over and read it out. “‘Bring back a stone from Pebble Bay. And we’ll know if you cheated, by the way.’”
“OK. Pebble Bay, it is,” Aaron said as he headed back across the plinth to the steps. “Let’s see if we can get back in the race.”
Needless to say, we didn’t win the treasure hunt. Luckily, some of the others had found a few places difficult to find, so we didn’t come in last, either. We were somewhere around the middle — good enough not to attract attention, despite coming back looking like extras from a street urchin scene in Oliver Twist.
We caught up with the rest of the class at the finish point in the woods. Mandy gave me a wave. She and Julie were sitting with some of the others at the foot of a tree farther down the path.
“What happened to you?” Mandy asked me.
“What do you mean?”
She pointed at my left arm. “You’ve got a massive bruise all down your arm.”
I twisted my arm to study it. She was right. It was turning bluish purple already, and there was a cut streaking down the center of the bruise.
“And your other arm is bleeding,” Mandy added. “Plus, your legs are covered in mud. And you’re limping.”
“We got a bit lost,” I said casually. Then I added in a whisper, “I’ll tell you more later.” Miss Platt was coming up behind us, and I didn’t want her to overhear me telling Mandy that we’d deliberately set off down a path to a bay that we’d been specifically told to keep away from.
“OK. And, um . . . you do know you’re not wearing any shoes, don’t you?” Mandy added.
I nodded. “I’ll explain that later, too.”
“All right, kids. Well done, all of you. Let’s head back to the house now,” Miss Platt said as she gathered us together. “Go and get yourselves cleaned up and we’ll meet in the dining room in twenty minutes. After lunch, you can have some free time while Lyle and I mark the treasure-hunt sheets. Please, can I have some volunteers to help prepare the food?”
We shuffled quickly across the road and over to the house before Miss Platt “volunteered” us for kitchen duties.
“Did you see that amazing ship?” I asked Mandy as we went to the room we were sharing with some of the other girls.
“Which ship?” Mandy asked.
“Big tall ship out on the horizon with massive sails. It looked like it was coming this way but changed course.”
“Er, nope.” Mandy shook her head. “Are you sure you didn’t imagine it?” she joked, reminding me it wasn’t so long ago that she’d bullied me and taunted me and called me names. Those days were gone now, though, weren’t they?
Mandy must have seen me flinch. “Hey, I’m just teasing,” she said more gently. “I was probably on the other side of the island when you saw it.”
“Yeah, probably,” I agreed. But I wasn’t too sure — and I decided not to mention the ship again, to Mandy or anyone else. Something about it was niggling at me. What was it? The way it had moved? The way it had seemed to come from nowhere and disappear so suddenly? The sails that at one moment had looked ragged and torn and the next had filled with air to propel the ship forward?
Or all of it?
Either way, as I dug in to my chips and my cheese-and-pickle sandwich, I forgot about the ship and got back to the things that really mattered: planning what to do with my friends in our free time.
It wasn’t a difficult decision. The sun was still shining, and Mandy and Aaron agreed with me: Sandy Bay was our free time destination.
The first thing we did when we got there was look for our sandals. The tide had come in quite a bit since Aaron and I had been down here earlier, but it was still a long way from the top of the beach. They were exactly where we’d left them.
Mandy took her shoes and socks off and put them with ours. “Let’s go for a wade,” she suggested. Then she stopped and looked from Aaron to me. “I mean, if that’s . . . if it wouldn’t make you . . .
if you don’t mind . . .”
“It’s fine,” I assured her. “We don’t sprout tails until we’re halfway into the water. Even if we did, it’s not a problem.” I rolled up my pant legs and waved the others on. “Come on, race you!”
We ran down the beach and into the water. Some of our classmates had had the same idea and come down to Sandy Bay, too. We joined them, splashing one another and racing along the shore, shrieking as we ran.
Then Mandy stopped running and pointed out to sea. “Hey, look,” she said.
My heart quickened. Was it the ship again? I looked where she was pointing. It wasn’t the ship. It was even better than that — a shoal of dolphins was swimming, diving, and zooming through the waves. They were carrying bags on their backs. And there were people in between the dolphins.
Shiprock School had arrived!
I looked at Mandy. She smiled. “It’s fine. Go and meet them. There are plenty of others on the beach,” she said, reading my mind in a way that she had never done before, and that only really good friends do. I smiled back and couldn’t help thinking how far we’d come since the days when she’d called me “fish girl.”
Without stopping to think, I gave her a hug. “Thanks, Mandy,” I said.
She awkwardly hugged me back, then pulled away. “You’re soaking me!”
I laughed. “Like you’re not already drenched.”
She shrugged. “True.” Then she nodded toward the group coming ever closer. “Go on. Go and welcome them to the island.”
I dived into the water and swam out to meet them. Aaron had been playing football with some of the other boys on the beach, but when he saw me turn and dive into the water, he swam out to join me.
Shona was right at the front of the group. We practically swam headfirst into each other.
“Emily!” Shona beamed as she pulled me into the biggest hug.
“You’re early!” I said as we swam along. “I thought you weren’t coming till tonight.”
“We were loaned Neptune’s top fleet of dolphins, so we made it in half the time.”
Aaron whistled. “Nice. How did you manage that?”
At which point, someone else swam up beside Shona. “It helps if you have the right contacts,” he said with a grin.
“Seth!” Aaron swam over to Seth and slapped him on the back. “How come you’re here?”
“He came up with an ingenious plan,” Shona said.
Seth continued, “I persuaded Neptune that something as important as the first joint school outing between merfolk and humans needed someone to supervise it.”
Shona smiled at Seth. “Seth made it sound like Neptune’s idea.”
“And Neptune went for it!” Seth finished with a grin. “So here I am! Probably just for a couple of days, but it’s better than nothing.”
“Swishy!” I said.
“Isn’t it?” Shona added shyly.
“So where are you staying?” I asked Shona.
“Mr. Finsplash says it’s close to one of the bays. Dark Blue Bay, is it?”
“Deep Blue Bay?” Aaron suggested.
“That’s it. There are some tunnels there that have been adapted into a mer-motel.”
“Cool. That’s where Aaron and I went earlier,” I said. “It’s just around this corner.”
As we passed the rocks at the far edge of Deep Blue Bay, we swam up to the surface to take in the surroundings. It looked different from this morning. Then, the sea had filled the area of the bay, but it hadn’t come up as high.
Now the water came so far up the cliffs, you couldn’t see the orangey red of the low rocks. We’d thought it was deep earlier. Now it was probably half as deep again. The water had more energy, too. It lifted and lowered us as we talked.
“It’s the deepest bay on the island,” Aaron said.
“There are five bays, but we’re allowed to visit only four of them.” I added.
“Not that we took any notice of —” Aaron began.
He was interrupted by Mr. Finsplash calling everyone back down to follow him.
“We’ll catch up with you later, OK?” Shona said. “They’ve told us we’re all meeting up in a bit, at the edge of this bay.”
“Great! See you later,” I said, and Shona and Seth ducked back down under the water.
Aaron and I were about to do the same and start heading back to Sandy Bay when something caught my eye on the cliffs. Or someone.
“Aaron,” I said. “Look.” Two of the others from our class were standing on the rocks, near to where we’d been earlier. They were perched on a rocky ledge below the path we’d walked along. They looked as if they were in trouble.
Aaron stared at the cliff. “That’s James and Annabel. What are they doing?”
We swam over to them and called up. Now that the tide was nearly high, we weren’t that far away from them — close enough to see their faces. They looked terrified. “Are you OK?” I called up.
Annabel just shook her head without replying. James called back to us.
“We’re stuck,” he said. “We walked around the top of the bay earlier, but we can’t get back now. We didn’t realize the tide would come in so quickly.”
I glanced across the rocks and saw what he meant. The water had risen so high, the two sides of the bay were now cut off from each other. As the tide inched ever higher, the swell was lifting and dropping us. One second, we were calling to them from a long way down; the next we were virtually slammed up against the cliffside.
“Why don’t you jump into the water?” I suggested. “Or climb down the ladder? We’ll swim across the bay with you.”
Annabel violently shook her head. “No way,” she called, watching the water crash against the rocks. “I’m not getting in there.”
A moment later, the sea itself replied to her fear. A wave rose so high and so violently against the cliff, it was as if it were reaching out to snatch and grab whatever it could for the ocean.
Annabel let out a scream and pressed herself as far against the back of the rocky ledge as she could. Two more waves rose up and lashed at the cliff — each one searching the rocks for debris to steal. The next three were calmer, but still pretty fierce.
I vaguely remembered Annabel’s attempts in the pool, back in Brightport. She was one of the weaker swimmers. I wasn’t surprised she was reluctant to take on the biggest, deepest bay, especially when there were waves like this to contend with.
I studied the coastline. She and James weren’t too far from where we’d come out of the water that morning. It wouldn’t be the easiest thing in the world for us to clamber up the ladder while the swell was this heavy, but I figured if we could get out and join them, we could help them back to the path.
Aaron looked at me. He was thinking the same thing — I could tell. “Let’s get out and help them,” he said.
I nodded. “Just stay where you are,” I called. “We’re coming up.”
Aaron and I waited for one of the less ferocious waves to raise us up, then we grabbed the ladder and climbed out of the water as fast as we could, before the next wave slammed us against the side. We held on to the top of the ladder as we waited for our tails to fade away and our legs to reform. Then we scrambled across to join Annabel and James.
“Thank you so much!” Annabel cried as we reached them and got our breath back from the climb.
I looked around. “OK, we just need to climb over a few of these rocks, and the path will be ahead of us.”
“I thought the path was that way,” James said, pointing across the bay.
“This is a different path,” Aaron explained. “You don’t know it’s there till you get over these rocks. Come on, follow us.”
Aaron and I took the lead. We clambered over the boulders like expert rock climbers this time. The final one was the toughest, and I reached down to grab Annabel’s hand and help her. Once we were all past the rock, the path opened up ahead of us. Aaron set off along it, and we followed behind him in single file.
We walked on silently till we came to the point where we’d fallen earlier.
“Careful here,” Aaron called back.
A few minutes later, we reached the path that led down to the chair. Part of me wanted to go back down there to see it again. The other part wanted to keep it a secret, just for Aaron and me. I couldn’t resist a glance as we passed, though.
I could see the steep drop down the cliff and the very edge of the plinth. From here, the chair was just out of sight.
“OK, we take this path here,” Aaron said, waiting for the others to catch up. Their faces were white from their cliff-edge walk. “It’s inland from here, and a much safer path all the way back to the road.”
“Thank you so much for doing this,” Annabel said as she started up the path. I was waiting at the corner for them to come past me. “I don’t know what we’d have done if you hadn’t been there.”
“I don’t even want to think about it,” James added.
I didn’t want to think about it, either. With the tide rising and the waves hitting the cliffside like they were, I guessed that another few minutes on that rock and the two of them would have been in serious trouble.
The others had gone ahead of me up the path. I was about to follow them when I heard something below us. It sounded like a splash. I glanced in the direction of the plinth, just in time to see a widening circle of ripples, spreading and growing like when you throw a stone into a lake — only much bigger and wider.
Then I saw something even more peculiar — below the surface of the water, a dark shadow was moving away from the ripples. What was it? A shark? A big fish? And what had caused the splash?
“Emily, are you coming?” Aaron called. The three of them had stopped to wait for me. Should I tell them what I’d seen? I looked back down. The shape under the water had disappeared now; the ripples had almost gone. What was there to tell? It was just a fish. And the ripples must have been caused by a loose piece of rock falling from the cliff. I mean, what other explanation was there?
