by Liz Kessler
“So tell me again.” Mom twirled her new bracelet around and around on her wrist, watching the colors blur and merge, then refocus and change again, while Millie looked on jealously. “What did he say, exactly?”
“Mom, I’ve told you three times already.”
“Just once more, darling. Then that’s it.”
I sighed. “He says he’s always loved you and he always will. And he had stacks of poems that he’d written.”
She clutched her poem more tightly. “About me?”
I thought of the one in my pocket. “Well, yeah. Mostly.”
Mom smiled in a way I’d never seen before. I laughed. She was acting just like the women in those horrible, gooey romantic films that she loves.
“Mom, we have to see him again,” I said.
“He’s never stopped loving me, and he never will,” she replied dreamily. Millie raised her eyebrows.
A second later, a huge splash took the smile off her face. We ran outside.
“Trying to get one over on me?” It was Mr. Beeston! In the water! How did he get past us? “After everything I’ve done for you,” he called, swimming rapidly away from us as he spoke.
“What are you going to do?” I shouted.
“I warned you,” he shouted, paddling backward. “I won’t let you get away with it.” Then in a quiet voice, his words almost washed away by the waves, he added, “I’m sorry it had to end like this, Mary P. I’ll always remember the good times.”
And then he turned and swam toward the Great Mermer Reef. Mom and I looked at each other. Good times?
Millie cleared her throat. “It’s all my fault,” she said quietly.
Mom turned to Millie. “What?”
“I loosened the ropes.” Millie pulled her shawl around her. “Only a tiny bit. He said they were hurting.”
Mom sighed and shook her head. “All right, don’t worry, Millie,” she said. “There’s nothing we can do now, is there?”
As we watched Mr. Beeston swim off into the distance, Shona appeared in the water below us. “What’s up?” she called. “I thought I heard something going on.”
“It’s Mr. Beeston,” I said. “He’s gone!”
“Escaped?”
“He went over there.” I pointed toward the prison. “I think he’s up to something.”
“Should we go after him?”
“You girls are not going back there!” Mom said. “Not now. It’s too dangerous.”
“What, then?” I asked. “How will we get back? We don’t have any fuel; the sail’s broken. Shona can’t tow us all the way back to the harbor.”
“We could radio the coast guard,” Mom said.
“Mom, the radio’s been broken for years. You always said you’d get it fixed at some point —”
“But I kept forgetting,” Mom finished my sentence with a sigh.
“We could always meditate on it,” Millie offered. “See if the answer comes to us.”
Mom and I both glared silently at her. Ten seconds later, the decision was taken out of our hands. A loud voice wobbled up from below the surface of the sea. “You are surrounded,” it gurgled. “You must give yourselves up. Do not try to resist.”
“Who are you?” I shouted. “I’m not afraid of —”
“Emily!” Mom gripped my arm.
The voice spoke again. “You are outnumbered. Do not underestimate the power of Neptune.”
Before I could think about what to say next, four mermen in prison-guard uniforms appeared on the surface of the water. Each one had an upside-down octopus on his back. In perfect formation, they leaped from the water, their tails spinning like whirlpools. They flipped on their sides, the octopus legs swirling above their backs like rotary blades, and headed toward us. Between them, they plucked Millie, Mom, and me from the deck, spun themselves around, and held us under their arms as they plopped back into the water.
“I can’t swim,” Mom yelped.
For an answer, she was dragged silently under the water. Gulping and gasping, we were shoved roughly into a weird tube-thing. My legs started turning into a tail right away — but, for once, I hardly noticed.
We slid along the tube, landing on a bouncy floor. The entrance we’d slipped through instantly closed, leaving us staring at the inside of a white, rubbery bubble. Two masks hung from the ceiling. They looked like the things they show you when you go on a plane.
I grabbed hold of them and helped Mom and Millie put them on. Then we sat in silence as we bumped along through the water. Millie pulled some worry beads out of her pocket and twirled them furiously around her fingers.
Mom clutched my fingers, holding them so tight it hurt.
“We’ll be fine,” I said, putting my arm around her. Then in an uncertain whisper, I added, “I’m sure we will.”
The good news: they didn’t keep us in that tiny, wobbly cage forever. The bad news: they separated us and threw us each into an even tinier one. This time it was more like a box. Five small tail spans from side to side and a bed of seaweed along one edge. It was all Mr. Beeston’s fault. How could he have done this to us?
I sat on my bed and counted the limpets on the rocky wall. Then I counted the weeds hanging down from the ceiling. I looked around for something else to count — all I could find were my miserable thoughts. There were plenty of them.
A guard swam in with a bowl of something that looked nothing like food but that I suspected was my dinner.
“What are you going to do with —”
He shoved the bowl into my hands and disappeared without answering.
“It’s not fair!” I shouted at the door. “I haven’t done anything!”
I examined the contents of the bowl. It looked like snail vomit. Green, slimy trails of rubbery goo spread on top of something flaky and yellow that looked suspiciously like sawdust. Gross. I pushed the bowl away and started counting the seconds. How many of them would I spend in here?
The next thing I knew, I was lying on my side on my horrible bed. Someone was shaking me and I slipped around on the seaweed.
“Mom?” I jumped up. It wasn’t Mom. A guard lifted me up by my elbows. “Where are you taking me?” I asked as he clipped a handcuff onto my wrist and fastened the other one onto his own.
But of course he didn’t answer. He just pulled me out of the cell and slammed the door behind us.
“Strong, silent type, are you?” I quipped nervously as we swam down long, tunnel-like corridors and around curvy corners then down more long corridors. We soon arrived at a mouthlike entrance with shark teeth across it like the prison door.
The guard knocked twice against one of the teeth, and the jaw opened wider. He pushed me forward.
Once inside, another guard swam toward us. I was attached to a different-but-similar wrist and whisked along a different-but-similar set of corridors.
And then I was thrown into a different-but-similar cell.
Super.
I’d only gotten as far as counting the limpets when they came back for me this time. And this journey took us somewhere different-but-different. Very different.
We reached the end of another long corridor. When the guard pushed me through the door, there were no more tunnels. I was looking out at the open ocean again. For a moment, I thought he was setting me free, except I was still attached to his wrist.
The sea grew lighter and warmer. Something was coming into view. Color — and light. Not dancing and jumping around like the Great Mermer Reef, but shimmering and sparkling from the depths of the sea. As we drew closer, the lights emerged into a shape. Like a big house. A huge house! Two marble pillars so tall that they seemed to reach from the seabed to the surface stood on either side of an arched gateway, a golden sea horse on a plinth in front of each pillar. Jewels and crystals glinted all the way across the arch.
“In there.” The guard gestured toward the closed doorway, nodding at two mermen stationed on either side. They both had a gold stripe down one side of their tails. As th
e mermen moved apart, the gates slowly opened.
We swam toward the arch. Long trails of shells dangled from silver threads above us, clinking with the movement of the water.
“What is this place?” I asked as we swam inside. We were in some sort of lobby — the fancy kind they have in really expensive hotels, only even more lavish, and kind of dome-shaped.
Chandeliers made from glasslike crystals hung from the ceiling, splashing mini rainbows around the walls. In the center of the room, a tiny volcano shot out clouds of bright green light — an underwater fountain. The light flowed over the top of the rocky cauldron, bubbling and frothing and turning blue as it melted onto the floor.
“Don’t you know anything?” the guard grunted. “This is Neptune’s palace.” He pushed me forward.
Neptune’s palace! What were we doing here? I thought about all the things Shona had told me about him. What was he going to do to me? Would he turn me to stone?
We swam across the lobby. Two mermen with long black tails passed us, talking hurriedly as they swam. A mermaid looked up from behind a gold pillar as we came to the back of the lobby. Reaching into his tail, the guard pulled out a card. The mermaid nodded briskly and moved aside. There was a hole in the wall behind her.
“Up there.” The guard swam into the hole, pulling me along. Around and around, spiraling upward through tubes, we climbed the upside-down super-slide till we came to a trapdoor. The guard opened it with one push and nudged me through.
We came out into a rectangular room with glass walls. A giant fish tank — except the fish were on the outside! All brightly colored yellows and blues, darting around, looking in as the guard led me to a line of rocks along one edge and told me to sit down. A notice in front of my row had a word written in capital letters: ACCUSED.
Accused? What had I done?
In front of me, there were rows of coral seats. Merpeople were loitering here and there, dressed in suits.
One wore a jacket made of gold reeds with a trident on his chest. I watched him flick through files, talking all the time to a mermaid by his side. A merman on the row behind them in a black suit was whispering frantically to a mermaid next to him as he, too, shuffled through files.
At the front, a mermaid facing the court sat at a coral desk examining her nails. Behind her was a low crystal table — and behind that, the most amazing throne: all in gold, the back of the seat tapered upward into three prongs filled with pearls and coral, downward into a solid gold block. The round seat was marble, with blue ripples carved outward from the center to the edges. A golden sea horse stood on either side of the throne: each arm a sea horse body, each leg its tail, stretching downward and curling into a mass of diamonds at its base.
The throne towered over the court — powerful and scary, even when it was empty!
Every now and then, the mermaid in front of the throne rearranged the items on her desk. She had a row of reeds in a line across the top edge, with some plastic papers beside them. On top of these was a sign saying CLERK. A huge pile of files was balanced in one corner. In the other, a grumpy-looking squid sat with its tentacles folded into a complicated knot.
The mermaid kept glancing backward at a gateway behind the throne, which was gold and arched and covered with jewels, like the palace entrance. The gates within it were closed.
A splashing noise opposite me drew my eyes away from the front of the court. Two guards were opening a door in the ceiling; they had someone in between them.
Mom! The guards unhooked a mask from the ceiling, like the ones she and Millie had when we were captured. Mom clumsily strapped it over her face, a tube leading from her mouth up through the top of the box.
She looked around the court with frightened eyes. Then she noticed me and her face brightened a tiny bit. She tried to smile through her mask, and I tried to smile back.
Outside the fish tank, a row of assorted merpeople were taking their seats. A portly mermaid undid a velvety eel from around her neck as she sat down. She made the others all move up so she could make a seat for an enormous jewel-encrusted crab.
Another huddle of merpeople with notebooks and tape recorders chatted to each other as they sat down. Reporters, I guessed. Along the back of the court, a line of sea horses stood in a silent row. They looked like soldiers.
Then a hush fell on the room as a sound of thunder rumbled toward us.
As the noise grew louder, the water started swishing around. The clerk grabbed her table; people reached out to grip the ledges in front of them. What was happening? I glanced around as I held on to the coral shelf. No one else looked worried.
The waves grew heavier, the thunder louder, until the gates at the front of the court suddenly opened. A fleet of dolphins washed into the room — a gold chariot behind them, filled with jewels and crystals. The chariot carried a merman into the room. At least seven feet tall, he had a white beard that stretched down to his chest and a tail that looked as if it was studded with diamonds. It shot silver rays across the room as the merman climbed out of the chariot. Sweeping his long tail under him, he slid into the throne. In his hand, a gold trident.
It was Neptune! Right in front of me! In real life!
A sharp rap of the trident on the floor, and the dolphins swiftly left the courtroom, whisking Neptune’s chariot away. Another rap and the gates closed behind them. A third, and the water instantly stopped moving. I fell back on my seat, thrown by the sudden calm.
“U-U-P!” a voice bellowed from the front.
Neptune was pointing his trident at me! I jumped back up, praying silently that I hadn’t just doubled whatever sentence I was about to get.
He leaned forward to talk to the clerk, gesturing toward me. The clerk looked up at me too, then picked up one of her reeds. Poking the squid with the reed, she wrote something down in black ink. The squid shuffled grumpily on the edge of the desk and refolded its tentacles.
Eventually, Neptune turned back to the courtroom. He stared angrily around. Then, with another rap of his trident, he shouted, “DOWN!”
Everyone took their seats again as the sea horses at the back split into two rows and swam to the front of the court. They formed a line on either side of Neptune.
The merman in the gold jacket stood up. He bowed low.
“APPROACH!” Neptune bellowed.
The merman swam toward him. Then he ducked down and kissed the base of Neptune’s tail. “If it please Your Majesty, I would like to outline the prosecution’s case,” he began, straightening himself up.
Neptune nodded sharply. “On with it!”
“Your Majesty, you see before you a mermaid and a . . . human.” He screwed up his face as he said the word, as though it made him feel sick. Pulling at his collar, he continued. “The pair of them have colluded and connived. They have planned and plotted —”
“How DARE you waste my time!” Neptune shouted. He lifted his trident. “FACTS!”
“Directly, Your Majesty, directly.” The merman shuffled through a few more files and cleared his throat. “The child before you today has forced an entry into our prison, damaged a section of the Great Mermer Reef in the process — and assaulted one of your own advisers.”
“AND? Is there more?” Neptune’s face had turned red.
“It’s all in here, Your Majesty.” The merman handed a file to Neptune, who snatched it and handed it to the clerk without looking at it.
The merman cleared his throat again. “As for the human”— he forced the word out —“the same charges apply.”
Neptune nodded curtly. “Once again, Mr. Slipreed, will that be ALL?”
“Absolutely, Your Majesty.” The merman bowed again as he spoke. “If I could allude to one outstanding area of this case . . .” Neptune clenched his fist around his trident. The merman spoke quickly. “In apprehending the accused, a merchild, acting with the help of another human”— he cleared his throat and swallowed loudly —“was discovered in the vicinity.”
Millie and Shona!
I slapped my hand over my mouth to stop from gasping out loud.
“Both merchild and the other human are being held awaiting instructions from the court.”
“From the COURT, Slipreed? ANY old court is that?”
“Your Majesty, they await your divine ruling.”
“THANK you, Mr. Slipreed!” Neptune boomed.
“If I may now call upon my first witness . . . Mr. Charles Finright Beeston.”
As Mr. Beeston entered the court, I folded my arms. I tried to cross my legs, but remembered they were a tail so I couldn’t. He looked different, somehow. As he swam toward Neptune, I realized what it was. I’d never seen him as a merman before!
Mr. Beeston bowed low and kissed Neptune’s tail. He avoided looking at me or Mom. “If I may refer to my notes . . .” A line of bubbles escaped from his mouth and floated up through the water as he spoke.
To your lies, you mean, I said to myself.
“Your Majesty, last night I was tricked into a rescue operation involving a yacht and a small motorboat. I was beaten around the head with a boom and tied up while the accused —” He looked quickly at Mom, then at me. Suddenly breaking his flow for a moment, he looked away again and coughed quietly before continuing. “Before they carried out their unlawful plans. Thankfully, the accused were amateurs and not equipped to deal with a high-ranking professional such as myself.” He paused and turned toward Neptune.
“BEESTON — do not presume to look to me for compliments! CONTINUE!”
Mr. Beeston’s face reddened. “Of course, Your Majesty. And so, I disembarked and sought the strong fin of the law.”
“You swam for the guards?”
“Indeed I did, Your Majesty.”
“Thank you.” Neptune banged his trident on the floor. “DEFENSE!” he bellowed. “Mr. Thinscale? Your first witness?”
The merman in the black suit jumped up. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”
I looked around the court, wondering who his first witness was going to be. “Get up,” the guard next to me grunted. “You’re on.” Then he pulled me out of my seat and pointed toward the throne. I swam nervously toward Neptune. Taking my cue from the others, I bent to kiss his diamond-studded tail.
