A Mischief of Mermaids

by Suzanne Harper

  “Dad!” Rolly shouted.

  “What?” Mr. Malone snapped.

  Rolly was pointing at the empty lake. “I saw it.” His eyes were shining with what looked like joy—or, at least, a deep and intense desire to land an enormous fish.

  “Saw what?”

  “The lake monster! It jumped up in the air, right by the boat.”

  “Nonsense, Rolly. I told you where these obsessions would lead and I was right. Now you’re seeing things. So . . .” Mr. Malone turned back to his reluctant audience. “What was I saying?”

  “You were talking about how important it is to pay attention to what’s going on around you,” Poppy said. She couldn’t let herself look at Henry and Will, who were standing behind Mr. Malone, their faces red with suppressed laughter. “Especially if it’s strange or unusual.”

  “Exactly right!” said Mr. Malone. “Excellent observation skills! That’s key to being a good scientist. Now, back to our evidence . . .”

  He bent over the photos again. When no one else joined him, he stood up, pointed at Will and Henry, and said, “You two. Come over here. I have a job for you.”

  “We haven’t even had dinner yet,” Will protested. “And Henry’s our guest. I don’t think it’s fair to make him work.”

  “It’s not work if you enjoy it,” said Mr. Malone heartily. “And Henry is now a full-fledged, enthusiastic member of the team! Aren’t you, Henry?”

  “Yes, sir,” Henry said cheerfully.

  But Will’s face turned pale with dismay as Mr. Malone reached under the table, picked up a cardboard box, and dumped the contents on the table.

  “You’re kidding!” Will said. “There must be hundreds of photos there.”

  “Yes, and these are just the ones from last night,” Mr. Malone said with some satisfaction. “We may have thousands before we’re through. I don’t think any UFO investigator has ever managed to collect so much evidence in such a short amount of time. They all need to be logged in, then the time stamp on each photo has to be compared to any abnormal wavelength frequencies picked up by the spectrometer.”

  Henry gulped, but he was a true and loyal friend. “I’d be glad to help out, Mr. Malone,” he said. “With all of us working together, it shouldn’t take that long.”

  “Don’t fool yourself,” said Will bitterly. “This is just the beginning. There will be hundreds more tomorrow and the day after that and then the day after that—”

  “All the more reason to get started right away,” said Mrs. Malone brightly. “Otherwise, they’ll just keep piling up. Why don’t I bring you boys some sodas and snacks to hold you until dinner?”

  Henry’s eyes brightened at that. Will gave a resigned nod and slumped into a chair. He picked up a photo and stared gloomily at it. “Twelve-oh-two a.m.,” he said in a hollow tone. “Write that down, Henry. We only have about three hundred more to go.”

  Poppy caught Nerissa’s eye and tilted her head toward the galley. “Nerissa and I will go below and do some online research,” she said quickly. “Maybe we could, uh, check out some blogs to see if anyone saw anything in the sky last night. There’s a guy in a little town outside Austin who listens to a police band radio and writes a post every time someone calls 911 to report a UFO.”

  “That would be most useful, Poppy, thank you,” Mrs. Malone said. She flashed a brief smile at Poppy, but was quickly distracted by the sight of one hundred worms crawling—slowly but with wormy determination—across the deck.

  “Rolly!” she said. “Your worm bucket fell over again! How many times have I told you—”

  Poppy took advantage of this dramatic moment to grab Nerissa’s arm and escape.

  It was time, she thought, to come up with a plan.

  “I can’t believe it,” said Nerissa, fuming. “They’re luring her!”

  Poppy was sitting cross-legged on her bunk, searching the Internet on her laptop. “What are you talking about?”

  “Coralie and the others! They’re going to convince her to stay with them.” Nerissa was sitting on the other end of the bunk. She pulled her legs up under her and glared at Poppy. “Didn’t you notice how they started swimming between you and Franny? How they were separating her from you? They’re trying to pull you both apart.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Poppy, frowning. “Why would they do something like that?”

  “Because they’re mermaids,” Nerissa snapped. “That’s what they do.”

  “But—”

  “Look.” Nerissa took a deep breath and then spoke very slowly and clearly, as if trying to explain something to a small child. “Mermaids used to lure sailors to their deaths—and that was just for fun! They like making people look like fools. They’ll get Franny to leave her family and become one of them, and then they’ll spend the next hundred years laughing at her behind her back.”

  “Franny would never leave us.” Poppy’s stomach suddenly felt hollow. “Never.”

  Nerissa gave her a scornful look. “Don’t you get it? It won’t be up to Franny! I’ve heard stories—”

  She stopped suddenly. Her gaze slid away as if she wanted to look anywhere except at Poppy.

  Poppy took a deep breath to calm herself. “Go on,” she said. “Tell me.”

  A fleeting expression crossed Nerissa’s face. Poppy shivered. It was the first time she had seen Nerissa look sorry for someone else. It was scarier than anything that had happened so far.

  After a moment, Nerissa nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I’ve heard stories about people who forgot who they were. If they want to, mermaids can make mortals lose every memory, every thought, every dream they ever had when they walked on land. They forget they were ever human. And if that happens to Franny, she might just stay a mermaid . . . forever.”

  “Oh.” Poppy couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

  Nerissa fell back against a pillow and added, “And Franny is my only hope of turning into a mermaid again. If she refuses to give me my cloak, I’m going to be stuck here forever.”

  “Oh, well, that’s the real problem, isn’t it?” Poppy asked, not even bothering to hide the sarcastic edge in her voice. “Forget what Franny’s going through; you’re worried about being stuck in the human world.”

  Nerissa blinked several times. “I think that’s what Coralie and the others want,” she said in a small voice. “I think maybe they like her better than me. . . .”

  But Poppy wasn’t listening. She had found what she was searching for online.

  “Um, Nerissa . . .” she began. She was trying to sound calm, but her voice came out squeaky and scared.

  Nerissa turned to look at her. “What’s wrong?”

  Poppy was still staring at her laptop. “Remember what you told me about how mermaids can only walk on land during a blue moon?”

  “Ye-es.” Nerissa frowned. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  Poppy kept her eyes on the screen as she clicked on another link. “Well, the first night we spent on the houseboat, I saw your lights on shore. That’s when you and the others were dancing. That was the first night of the blue moon.” She began scrolling through pages on another website. “Then the next day, I met you at the library and you stayed over at our house. That was the second night. And then today, Franny turned into a mermaid. Which means tonight is the third night.”

  “I can count as well as you,” said Nerissa, her voice on edge. “What’s wrong?”

  “A full moon only lasts for about four days,” said Poppy. “What happens if you don’t turn back into a mermaid by the time it’s ended?”

  Nerissa’s eyes widened. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Do you think—maybe I won’t be able to change back, even if I get my cloak?”

  “I don’t know,” said Poppy. “Maybe you’d have to wait until the next blue moon.”

  “So when would that be, then?” asked Nerissa, biting her lip.

  Poppy scanned the article on her screen. “Oh.”

  “How lo
ng?” Nerissa asked.

  “It’s not so bad,” Poppy said in a falsely cheerful voice. “Only another sixteen months . . .”

  There was a long silence.

  Then Nerissa almost shouted, “You mean I have to spend more than a year as a human being?”

  “Shh!” Poppy said, glancing nervously at the door. “What about Franny? By the next blue moon, she’ll be fifteen years old.”

  And who knows what she’ll be like by then, after all that time as a mermaid. . . .

  She drummed her fingers on her laptop and thought hard for a moment, then said slowly, “You said that mermaids like making humans look like fools. But they don’t like it when someone makes fun of them, right?”

  “What do you mean?” Nerissa frowned slightly, and a sudden sharp breeze blew the window curtains into Poppy’s face.

  “You know,” said Poppy, batting the curtain away. “They get all . . . huffy.”

  Nerissa’s eyes narrowed and the lightbulb in the bedside lamp popped. “I don’t,” she said. “I have a great sense of humor.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Poppy, trying not to roll her eyes. “Like in the library when you kicked that bookshelf and I laughed and suddenly all those dark clouds appeared? Or when you got mad at the mermaid show and a thunderstorm came rolling in? Or when Coralie got angry because she thought Will and Henry were mocking her—”

  “Okay, okay,” said Nerissa, rather grumpily. “So mermaids like to be treated with dignity and respect. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing,” said Poppy. “But it made me remember something. Hold on a second—”

  She reached down to grab a book from the floor. It was Mermaids in Myth, Legend, and Life, the book she had found in the library. As she began flipping through it, she said, “I was reading this the other night. There’s a story in here about a man who outwitted a mermaid—”

  “Impossible,” sniffed Nerissa. “Humans aren’t smart enough.”

  Poppy felt a flash of annoyance at that, but she said evenly, “Well, some humans are smarter than others, you know. And if this story is true and if we can figure out how he did it, maybe it will help us.”

  “If, if, if,” muttered Nerissa, but she waved a hand toward the book. “Go ahead, then. It’s better than nothing.”

  Poppy turned back to the book. After a minute, she said, “Okay, here it is.” She scanned the page quickly. “So this story is about a sailor who saw a mermaid sitting on a rock. She was combing her hair and singing and her voice was so beautiful—”

  “That he instantly fell in love with her,” said Nerissa impatiently. “All the stories start that way. And then the sailor forgets that he can’t swim, jumps into the sea to be with her, and drowns. The end.”

  “Hold on,” said Poppy. She turned the page. “This sailor happened to be a very careful person. So instead of just flinging himself over the railing, he leaned over to see how far away the water was—”

  “She must not have been much of a singer,” muttered Nerissa.

  “Anyway,” said Poppy firmly. “The sea happened to be very smooth that day, so he saw his own reflection in the water. As soon as he recognized himself, the spell was broken.”

  There was a long silence, then Nerissa’s eyes met Poppy’s.

  “So what are you thinking?” she asked.

  For the first time all day, a grin appeared on Poppy’s face. “I think we’ve only got one more day to turn Franny back into a girl and you back into a mermaid,” she said. “And I think I’m beginning to have what could end up being a brilliant idea. Even if I am just a human.”

  Nerissa bit her lip, then she started smiling, too. “Well, you are one of the smarter ones, I have to admit,” she said. “So let’s hear it. . . .”

  And together, Poppy and Nerissa cooked up the perfect plan to get Franny back.

  Chapter

  FIFTEEN

  “Franny!” Poppy called out. Her voice echoed over the water. “Where are you?”

  She paused and listened hard, but all she heard was the sound of waves lapping against the side of her kayak and a distant bird twittering cheerfully.

  “We’re not going to find her by yelling her name,” said Nerissa from the seat behind her.

  “Well, we can’t just paddle around the lake hoping we run into her, either,” snapped Poppy. “Maybe we should just go to the cove and wait—”

  Then she heard the faint sound of a girl’s laugh float over the water.

  “Wait, did you hear that?” Poppy asked Nerissa. “Was that her? It sounded like it came from those rocks by the shore—”

  The laugh sounded again, a little louder. This time it seemed to come from behind the kayak.

  Poppy twisted around, squinting against the glare of the sun. All she saw was calm, still water.

  “They’re playing tricks on us,” said Nerissa. “That’s probably Kali. She knows how to throw her voice so it sounds like it’s coming from in front of you, then behind you, then over to the side—”

  “Why would they do that?” asked Poppy. “They must know how worried we are.”

  Nerissa gave a skeptical snort. “I keep telling you—”

  “I know, I know,” said Poppy. “They’re mermaids.” She took a deep breath, then shouted, “If this is your idea of a joke, it’s not funny. We just want to see Franny and make sure she’s all right.”

  There was no answer.

  Poppy sighed and looked at her watch. Mr. Malone had been so enthusiastic about the UFO analysis that Will and Henry had done the night before that he had laid down the law—everyone was ordered to help out as soon as breakfast was over.

  Darting glances had flown among Will and Henry and Poppy when they realized that there was no way they would all be able to go back to the cove together. After a long, whispered argument, Poppy had been deputized to check on Franny, as long as she promised to return as quickly as possible. They had decided that Nerissa should be the one to confess that she had accidentally left the Geiger counter at the cove (Poppy knew that Mrs. Malone would never lecture a guest about carelessness). Their cover story accepted, the two had set off to find Franny.

  Now time was ticking on, Franny was nowhere to be seen, and Will and Henry were probably getting more annoyed by the minute as they waited for Poppy and Nerissa’s return.

  Poppy tried to stay calm. She sat very still and thought as hard as she could about where Franny might be. Her kayak rocked gently on the water. A drop of sweat rolled down her nose. In the distance, she could hear the sound of singing. . . .

  Singing!

  Poppy turned her head sharply. “Did you hear that?” she whispered.

  “Shh,” said Nerissa.

  Together, they held their breath, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from. A slight breeze seemed to make the voices waft into hearing. But then, as soon as Poppy caught the tune, the breeze would shift and the music would become fainter.

  “It’s coming from that direction.” Nerissa pointed past the cove where Poppy had first seen the mermaids.

  Poppy tilted her head and listened hard. “I think you’re right.” She took a deep breath and said, “Okay, remember the plan. We have to make sure Coralie thinks it’s all her idea—”

  “I know what we have to do!” snapped Nerissa.

  “Good,” said Poppy. “Let’s go.”

  Slowly, they began paddling along the shoreline, following the sound of singing. A few times, the sound seemed to disappear altogether, and Poppy’s stomach would clench, but then the breeze would pick up and she’d hear the voices once more.

  Finally, they rounded a bend and saw another inlet. Poppy guided the kayak through the opening and down a narrow stream, while Nerissa kept paddling. Then the stream widened and they found that they were gliding into another cove with several limestone boulders along the shoreline. And on each boulder sat a mermaid, singing.

  Ariadne was plaiting her hair into a long golden braid. Kali was gazing raptly into a ha
nd mirror framed in silver. Coralie was holding one slender hand in front of her, smugly admiring her fingernails. And Franny was combing her hair with an ivory comb. All of them were singing the strange, wandering tune that Poppy had heard and all of them had the half-smiling expression of someone who is quite pleased with the way she looks.

  Franny, Poppy noticed uneasily, seemed right at home.

  “Are you okay?” Poppy’s voice was sharper than she had intended, but it had the right effect.

  Franny blinked, as if she were waking from a dream. She turned her head and looked blankly at Poppy. Then she frowned, as if she were trying to remember who Poppy was.

  Or maybe, Poppy thought with a shiver, she was trying to remember who Franny was.

  After a long, long pause, Franny said, “Of course. I’m fine. Ariadne and Kali and I are having such fun.”

  Finally, she smiled—but that smile was sly and secretive, as if she were amused by a joke that only she understood. It didn’t look like Franny at all.

  Poppy said, “Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself, but—”

  “I can’t believe it!” Nerissa burst out, glaring at Kali and Ariadne. “You’re the ones who made fun of me because I was interested in mortals. Why do you want to hang out with her?”

  Kali raised an eyebrow and said sweetly, “Franny may be mortal, but she’s got a mermaid’s soul.”

  “Yes,” Ariadne added. “She’s one of us, deep down inside.”

  “She is not,” Poppy and Nerissa said together.

  “No, really, I think I could have some mermaid blood in me,” said Franny, her blue eyes wide. “Maybe generations ago, my great-great-great-grandmother was a mermaid who was courted by a handsome young man and they had children and the mermaid genes were passed down to me—”

  “Which is why you spend so much time taking baths,” Poppy said sarcastically. “Really, that explains so much.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?” said Franny, completely missing the point.

  “You are not a mermaid,” said Nerissa through gritted teeth. “I am.”