Emily Windsnap and the Siren's Secret - Liz Kessler [19]
As we swam, I caught her up on everything that had happened.
“It all sounds a bit grim,” Shona said. “Poor you.”
“Yeah, I know. The only decent thing is that I don’t have to go to Brightport High till the fall,” I said. And I get to hang out with Aaron. I had a feeling that Shona had started to get a bit tired of me talking about Aaron, and right now I didn’t want to do anything to annoy her, so I didn’t say that part out loud. I wasn’t going to risk upsetting Shona on top of everything else. I decided to change the subject.
“What’s it been like here?” I asked.
“Miserable! School’s no fun without you,” she said. “Nothing’s the same without you,” she added, making me feel even more guilty about the fact that I’d been so pleased that Aaron and I would get to spend even more time together. I hadn’t thought about missing Shona till this morning.
“In fact, nothing’s the same at all,” she went on. “The atmosphere at school is awful. Mrs. Sharktail’s been in a foul mood, and everyone’s scared of getting hauled up for a major telling-off in front of the school.”
“I wouldn’t wish that on anyone,” I said, remembering the shame of all those eyes on me while Mrs. Sharktail made me feel like I was the most disgusting thing on the planet.
“And all anyone can talk about is what’s happening over in Brightport and how it might affect us. We felt the walls shaking at my aunt’s last night — it was pretty scary. She thinks we should just pack up and move, but Dad says it’ll die down and we shouldn’t leap into anything drastic. The worst thing is just not knowing what’s going on. Have you heard any more about it?”
“Mom was talking to someone at the Laundromat,” I said. “They told her the council’s going to decide what to do at their next planning meeting.”
Shona nodded. “So all we can do is wait?”
“Looks like it,” I said. “I’m sure coming back here was meant to be better than this.”
“I know. The only good thing is Sirens and Seas. We’ve got a new teacher, and she’s been telling us some new siren tales that we’ve never heard before.” Shona’s eyes brightened in that way that only siren talk can make them.
“Like what?”
“The lost sirens!” Shona got up from the log and swam over to the anchor on the other side of the playground. She darted around it, swishing this way and that, making a shoal of tiny purple fish turn and dart away as one.
“There was a group of sirens who disappeared years and years ago. One of them was known all across the oceans for her singing. Fishermen deserted their boats and threw themselves into the seas to find her.”
Shona hesitated. Before we’d met, she thought nothing of the idea of luring fishermen to watery graves. Since we’d been friends and she’d realized humans could be OK, she wasn’t so comfortable about that part of a siren’s job anymore. And with a bit of luck, no one would see it as part of the job soon, if Neptune was serious about the two worlds coming together — and if we managed to make it happen!
“Anyway,” she went on quickly, “she was one of the top sirens, and then one day she vanished — just like that. Gone without a trace. There was a group of them. She and her friends sang together sometimes, and all of them disappeared overnight.”
“For good?” I asked.
Shona nodded and swam back to me, swinging on an abandoned rope and brushing the seafloor with it as she swam. A shoal of bright blue fish rushed out from underneath, zigzagging away from us. “None of them have ever been seen again.” Her eyes sparkled. “The legend says that they went off to a magical place that’s so well hidden it’s virtually invisible! And guess what else?”
“What?