But no one’s allowed to build fires on the shore, she thought, just as she reached the bend in the creek. With two swift paddle strokes, she had turned the kayak and found herself gliding onto a large pool of water.
On the right side of the pool, there was a clearing ringed with oak trees. In the middle of the clearing, a small bonfire was burning merrily.
And around the bonfire were three girls, dancing.
Poppy performed a backward power stroke to stop her kayak from moving closer to the shore. She waited in the shadows, just outside of the ring of light cast by the bonfire, and watched.
The figures were moving around the fire in a circle. Two of the girls looked like teenagers and one girl looked close to Poppy’s age. An older woman with silver hair that fell to her waist sat nearby, on a log, playing what looked like a small harp and singing.
The dance didn’t look formal. It almost seemed that they were drifting around the fire aimlessly. But the more she watched, the more Poppy noticed that there seemed to be a pattern to the dance, although she couldn’t quite figure out what it was. The figures would weave in and out, first blocking the fire so that they were dark shapes against the blaze, then moving on so that the flames blazed brightly against the dark woods.
Poppy blinked, frustrated that when she thought she had grasped what the pattern was, the figures would move again and the meaning of it would escape her.
The music was just as maddening. There didn’t seem to be a tune, just a wavering melody that went up and down. And yet, every once in a while, a few notes would seem to resolve themselves into something that sounded like a song . . . and then the next instant it would be lost again.
Poppy let her gaze slip past the dancers to see if she could spot some clue to who they were and what they were doing there.
Not that it was really any of her business, of course. It was just that the scene seemed so odd, so out of place.
She remembered some of the bedtime stories Mrs. Malone used to tell them when they were small, in the fond belief that they would find them soothing and would fall asleep more quickly. Stories about fairy rings and the Other Folk who would steal babies from the cradle or lure grown-ups under a hill, where they would vanish, never to be seen again . . .
Inevitably, Franny would start humming with her fingers in her ears, and Will would shove his head under his pillow, and Poppy would begin arguing with her mother, saying that these horrifying tales could not actually be true, even as her heart beat a little faster.
“How could fairies dance by the moonlight without anyone seeing them?” she would demand. “How could people not notice that a ring of stones suddenly appeared in the landscape, then disappeared five days later?”
Finally Mrs. Malone had decided, with a sigh of regret, not to use folktales as bedtime stories anymore. “They’re too young to understand the deep truth hidden inside the old folklore,” she said to Mr. Malone. “We just need to wait until they’re a little more grown-up, that’s all.”
Poppy had overheard this conversation and had, even at six years old, scoffed at the idea that she would ever believe such silly stories.
But now, watching the dancers in the flickering firelight, she could understand how people in the past—people who didn’t know as much about science as she did—might have thought they were strange, otherworldly beings.
Poppy’s attention focused on the youngest person in the group, the girl who seemed (from a distance, anyway) to be about her own age. She had a small face with a pointed chin and long red hair that hung almost to her waist in a mass of curls that glowed copper in the firelight. She seemed to be wearing a piece of fabric that wrapped around her body and was tied with a knot at the shoulder.
Poppy thought that it was a sarong, a piece of material that women in tropical parts of the world wrap around their body to fashion a dress. (She was surprised that she knew this. Poppy knew a great deal about many topics, but dresses was not one of them. She had, however, recently been the unwilling victim of a fashion makeover, conducted by Franny. Most of that horrible afternoon was just a blur now, but she had retained a few completely useless bits of information.)
The two older girls had secret smiles on their faces, as if they knew something no one else did and were quite smug about it, but the girl who was Poppy’s age just looked annoyed. It was an expression that Poppy recognized. She was pretty sure she had worn it on her own face from time to time. It was the expression of someone who was being forced to take part in something she had no interest in (a paranormal investigation in Poppy’s case, a weird dance in the woods for this girl).
“Don’t stop dancing, Nerissa!” the silver-haired woman with the harp said encouragingly. “Remember, the circle must not be broken, my dear. And you’re doing wonderfully well, truly you are!”
Even from a distance, Poppy could see the girl Nerissa scowl.
“I hate this, Coralie,” she said to the older woman. “I can’t dance, I never could dance, I never will be able to dance—”
“Nonsense,” the older woman said briskly. “You just need to try a little harder.”
Nerissa sighed but raised her arms in an unenthusiastic manner and began shuffling around the fire again.
The two other dancers exchanged amused glances. They were around Franny’s age. In fact, one looked a bit like Franny, with her curly blond hair and upturned nose.
The second girl had short, spiky black hair, a pointed chin, and a superior expression that made her look remarkably like a cat.
“Maybe you’re trying a little too hard, Nerissa,” the blond girl said sweetly. “You should focus on relaxing your shoulders. See? Like this.” As she swayed gracefully around the fire, she turned her head to gaze in admiration at the movements of her arms, just as Franny would have done.
Nerissa rolled her eyes. “Thanks for the suggestion, Ariadne,” she said. “But if I start thinking about waving my arms in the air, I’ll trip over my own feet, you know I will.”
The dark-haired girl snickered.
Nerissa turned to glare at her. “Stop laughing, Kali!” she snapped. “You’re always making fun of me and I’m sick of it.”
Kali’s expression shifted to one that was so serious that, even from a distance, Poppy could tell she was mocking Nerissa. “I wasn’t laughing at you,” Kali protested in an injured voice. “I want to help you. Why don’t you try moving your hips a little bit,” she said. “Like this . . .”
Kali joined Ariadne and they began dancing around the fire again. They dipped and swayed and whirled like leaves blowing in a breeze. Watching them, Poppy felt as if she were falling under a spell.
Then Nerissa, frowning in concentration, tried to copy their moves. It only took three stumbling steps, accompanied by a few hopelessly awkward waves of her arms, to break the spell.
Nerissa stopped and let her arms drop to her side. “I can’t do that,” she said to the woman named Coralie, nodding toward Ariadne and Kali, who were still circling the fire. “No matter how hard I try, I’ll never be able to do that.”
Coralie frowned. A cloud crossed in front of the moon, making the night even darker.
“You would not have a problem if you would just apply yourself,” she said in exactly the same exasperated tone Mrs. Malone had used last fall when Will had gotten a D in math (he claimed that long division was so stupefying that he fell asleep every time he tried to do his homework). “You simply need to embrace your true nature. Do that, and all will fall into place.”
But the girl Nerissa shook her head gloomily. “I’ve tried,” she said. “Nothing works.”
“Maybe that’s because your great-great-grandmother fell in love with that sailor in Scotland, then ran off and married him,” Ariadne said in a teasing voice. She glanced at Kali, and they shared an amused look.
“That’s right,” said Kali. “Maybe you’ve got a bit too much of his blood running through your veins—”
“I don’t! Stop saying that!” snapped
Nerissa. “Just because I’m not very good at dancing, that doesn’t mean—”
“Of course it doesn’t.” Coralie’s tone was soothing now, although she shot a warning look at the other two girls over Nerissa’s head. “Kali, Ariadne, how many times have I told you—Nerissa is your little sister. You should help her and encourage her.”
Ariadne’s perfect little rosebud mouth pouted, and Kali raised one dark eyebrow rebelliously, but they both said in unison, “Sorry, Coralie. Sorry, Nerissa.”
Coralie waited a moment, then nodded, her hair flashing silver in the firelight. “Well, then,” she said. “We begin again—”
As the dancers wound their way in a circle once more, Poppy’s gaze slid past the circle of firelight to the trees surrounding the clearing. There was one huge old oak tree, gnarled and twisted, that seemed to sparkle. Poppy looked closer. As the firelight danced and flickered in the dark, she saw that there were sequined cloaks draped on the branches. At that moment, a breeze sprung up and the cloaks swayed, flashing silver and blue and moving almost as if they were living things. . . .
This was so beautiful, and so unexpected, that Poppy gasped.
Instantly, she knew she had made a mistake.
Every one of the figures in the clearing turned their heads in her direction. For one frozen instant, she thought that, if she stayed very, very still, she might escape detection.
But then, somewhere behind her, she heard Will shout, “Poppy! Where are you?”
Without meaning to, she turned her head—and she was discovered.
She heard someone call out something. The words were indistinct, but the note of alarm was clear enough.
All four figures ran to the oak tree and grabbed their cloaks, then raced toward the shore. They moved incredibly fast, like raindrops sliding down a window. With one fluid move, three of them dove into the water and were gone. Only the youngest hesitated on the shore, still holding her cloak in her arms.
Poppy blinked. The dark water of the lake was unnaturally still. There wasn’t a ripple to show that the surface had just been disturbed.
Shivering, she picked up her paddle and started to turn her kayak around. Without even thinking about it, she found that she was paddling gently, as if not to disturb the water too much. As if not to let anything underneath the surface know where she was . . .
A hand shot up from the water and grabbed the side of her kayak. A second later, a head emerged. It was the silver-haired woman. She was floating in the water next to Poppy, her icy blue eyes fixed on Poppy’s face, smiling strangely.
“Hello, my darling,” she crooned. “What are you doing out here on the water, so far from home?”
“N-nothing,” Poppy stuttered.
Another head emerged from the water, then another. They were the dancers from the clearing, only they were no longer smiling. They stared at her with distrust and dislike.
“Spying, more like it,” said Kali, the girl with the dark spiky hair. “What shall we do with her?”
The coldness in her voice made Poppy gulp.
Kali reached over the side of the kayak and grabbed Poppy’s arm with a hand that felt as cold as ice. Poppy squeaked and tried to pull away, but the girl’s grip was strong.
“Pull her into the water,” Kali said in a deliberate voice, as if she’d given the matter a great deal of thought. “Pull her under the waves.”
“You can’t do that!” Poppy cried out. “If you hurt me, you’ll get in trouble.”
Kali gave her a sly look. “Will we, now? And who is here to see what happens to you?”
Poppy pulled back with all her strength, which only made the kayak rock to one side and almost capsize.
Kali laughed. It was a laugh like none other Poppy had ever heard. It made her heart race with terror.
“It looks as if she might do our work for us, it does indeed,” she said, her eyes gleaming with malice.
“Stop it!”
Startled, Poppy jerked her head up to see Nerissa, who was now standing on a large rock at the edge of the cove and staring at Poppy.
“Don’t hurt her! She didn’t do anything. Let her go.”
Poppy felt a wave of gratitude wash over her. Finally, someone was saying something reasonable! Now if only the others would listen—
But Kali just laughed her bone-chilling laugh again. “Ah, Nerissa, you have such a warm heart,” she said mockingly. “Full of compassion and pity and kindness!”
“No, I don’t!” Nerissa snapped. “But if we hurt her, we’ll only be bringing trouble upon ourselves, will we not? And how smart is that?”
The others broke into peals of laughter.
“Poor Nerissa, mer on the outside and mortal in the middle,” called out Ariadne.
A clear, cold voice broke through the murmurs. “Nerissa is right,” said the older woman. “Let the girl go.”
Poppy thought she had never heard the word “girl” said with such disdain. Before she had a chance to feel insulted, however, the grip on her arm loosened.
She pulled away and rubbed the spot where Kali had been holding her. It felt cold to the touch, as if she’d been holding an ice pack there.
“Who are you, anyway?” she asked. Her voice wavered and she cleared her throat before adding, “What are you doing here?”
No one answered. They all stared at her. Poppy stared back into their blank eyes and felt a prickle on the back of her neck. She could hear her mother’s voice saying, “Centuries ago, people used to say they had encountered the uncanny when they had, in fact, encountered the paranormal. The surefire way to know that you were in the presence of the uncanny, they said, was when the hairs on the back of your neck stood up. . . .”
“Poppy!” Will’s voice called out.
Coralie’s head turned sharply in the direction of his voice.
“Dive.” The older woman’s voice snapped out with an air of command.
There were three small splashes and they were gone.
Only Nerissa remained where she was, standing on the rock. She was looking at Poppy with intense curiosity.
“Poppy!” Henry yelled. “Where are you?”
Nerissa blinked and turned her head sharply in the direction of the voices. Then she flung the cloak around her shoulders in one graceful move, stood on her tiptoes, and dove off the rock into the lake.
The whole thing happened so quickly that Poppy almost missed it.
She stared at the spot where the girl had disappeared.
“Oh, there you are!” Henry’s voice sounded both exasperated and relieved. “Why didn’t you answer us? Didn’t you hear us calling you?”
She turned to see Henry and Will paddling into the cove.
“Yeah, what’s wrong with you?” Will said. “We’ve been looking for you forever! Mom and Dad are going nuts. They picked up some kind of weird blip in the sky, just south of here, and they want to raise anchor and head after it.”
“They said the blip was zigzagging all over the sky!” said Henry excitedly. “I can’t believe we might have found a UFO on our very first day on the lake!”
Will gave him a pitying look. “Don’t get your hopes too high. The last time they thought they’d seen a UFO, it turned out to be the local TV station’s traffic helicopter.”
Henry was not willing to give up so easily. “But your dad said the flight plan was completely abnormal! Not like any plane or helicopter known to man!”
“Henry, Henry, Henry.” Will shook his head sadly. “He always says that. Trust me, we’re not going to encounter anything strange this week—”
“Did you see her?” Poppy interrupted. “Did you see that girl?”
Will and Henry exchanged puzzled looks.
“What girl?” Henry asked.
“The one who was standing right there.” She pointed to the rock. “She just dove into the lake.”
“Don’t tell me you’re seeing things now,” said Will. “It’s bad enough that Mom and Dad keep getting fooled—”
“I’m not imagining things!” Poppy’s voice was tense. “You’ll never believe what I just saw—”
“Yeah, yeah, we want to hear all about it,” said Will. “Later. Mom and Dad sent us on a mission and the mission was to find you and get back to the houseboat.”
“Listen—” Poppy began, but Will and Henry had already turned their kayak around and were paddling out of the cove.
With a quick thrust of her paddle, she followed them. But as she left the cove behind, she glanced back over her shoulder one last time.
She knew what she had seen.
When the girl put on her cloak, it had seemed to melt into her body, covering her shoulders and legs with scales that sparkled in the moonlight. And when she dove into the water, a large, spangled tail had flipped into the air before disappearing under the waves.
As hard as it was to believe, Poppy was absolutely certain of one thing: She had just seen her first mermaid.
Chapter
SIX
As soon as Poppy set foot on the deck of the houseboat, she knew that no one would have the time or patience to listen to anything she had to say.
Mrs. Malone, her eyes bright, was waving a printout of a photo in the air.
“Look at this image,” she cried. “It’s clear as day! There’s a UFO in the skies above us!”
Poppy took the paper from her hand. She stared at it for a long moment, then raised one eyebrow and said, “It’s a white smudge.”
Her mother snatched it back. “That’s what a blazing light that flashes across the sky looks like in a photograph,” she said. “And look!” She stabbed a finger at the paper. “See these little dots here? If you connect them to the bright light, it forms a triangle.”
She paused and gave them all a meaningful look.
“A triangle,” she repeated, in case they had missed her point.
“But you can play connect-the-dots with any random number of points and come up with a shape,” Poppy said reasonably. “Triangle, square, trapezoid, polygon, rhomboid—”
“I think you’ve made your point, Poppy, thank you,” said Mr. Malone, who had emerged from the galley in time to hear this. “However, you’re ignoring a key factor. Forty-three percent of UFO witnesses report that what they saw was triangular in shape.”
A Mischief of Mermaids Page 5
