Emily Windsnap and the Siren's Secret - Liz Kessler [34]
Which I was starting to think she must have. I didn’t say anything, though. Shona loves an adventure more than anything, and I didn’t want to take it away from her. And anyway, I didn’t have anything better to do. There was no way I could go back to Brightport yet, and I wasn’t exactly welcome in Shiprock. The best thing I could do was find the lost sirens and plead with them to let me be lost with them.
“How about we split up?” I suggested. “You go that way.” I pointed over to my right. Long, thick trails of seaweed stretched up like thick ropes. “I’ll go this way.” To my left, pink spongy fingers reached upward, open and outstretched as though they were silently begging. Deep, jagged rocks lay all around us, purple and green twigs and sticks littering every crevice. “Give it ten minutes and then meet back up again,” I said.
Shona pointed to a moss-covered rock with a tree growing horizontally out from its side. “Meet you over there,” she said.
“Ten minutes,” I repeated.
Shona nodded. “Good luck.”
Shona swam away to the right, and I swam off the other way.
Please let me find them, please let me find them, I thought as I swam, scanning every bit of rock and seaweed I could see, just in case there was a secret entrance hidden inside it. Please don’t make me go back to Brightport till it’s safe.
I swam across reeds like bunches of thick-cut spaghetti, big leafy plants like giant cabbages, bright red rocks, shining like mottled marble. A long eel, green with white spots, slithered in and out of the reeds, poking its head into holes, then slithering out again and slinking away. Two round fish smooched past in a perfectly synchronized dance. Everything moved slowly along. Nothing was in a hurry down here.
And there were no lost sirens, either.
I was about to head back to meet Shona when something stopped me.
A current was tugging at me. It reminded me of what happened at Allpoints Island if you swam out too far and got caught in the Bermuda Triangle. A shiver flickered through me like a wriggly fish squiggling through my body. What was it? Where was it taking me?
But this wasn’t like that current. It wasn’t dragging me out anywhere; it was hardly pulling at all. It felt more as if it were leading me somewhere, directing me, helping me. I wanted to follow it!
I let go of my resistance and let the current do the work. Soon I was zooming through the water, racing against a stripy yellow-and-black fish, whizzing past trails of fern and weed.
And then the current slowed. The sea had turned darker, and colder. The fluttery feeling came back. What was I doing, floating along on a current that had led me this far down? I hadn’t even looked where I was going. How was I ever going to get back and find Shona again?
And where was I, anyway?
I looked around. The current had pulled me to the top of a circle of tall rocks. I couldn’t see the bottom of them, but they were grouped around a dark hole, like an enormous well. I swam to the edge of the well and looked down. It was foaming and rushing with water that poured down like an underwater waterfall.
I could feel the current again. It was lifting me, edging me closer to the top of the well. It seemed to be teasing me, daring me to go down. Should I? Could I?
Before I had time to decide, the current nudged me right to the edge of the well. A moment later, I was hurtling over the top, into the waterfall.
Water rushed at me from every side, turning me over and around, pulling me farther and farther down, dragging me ever closer to the bottom of the sea. I tried to fight against it, tried to swim upward, but it was impossible. The current was dragging me lower and lower, throwing me down faster than anything I’d ever known. It was like a rocket — only heading down, toward the seabed.
Eventually, I gave in and let it pull me. And then, before I knew what was happening, it stopped.
Bedraggled, exhausted, and disheveled, I had landed — in a dark, enclosed, rocky hole at the bottom of the ocean.
I glanced around, my eyes gradually adjusting to the darkness.