Emily Windsnap and the Siren's Secret - Liz Kessler [35]
Where had the waterfall gone?
I tried to swim up the well again, but an enormous force stopped me. I kept on landing back in the same spot, shoved back down. The waterfall’s force was still there, but with no rushing water. Impossible — but real. It was like a magic trick.
Then there was a sound of movement from somewhere nearby. I whizzed around to see where it had come from. That was when I noticed that one side of the well had a hole in it, just big enough to swim through. A bunch of seaweed hung down from the top of the hole, like thick cord. I pushed through it and swam out of the well.
I found myself in a larger opening. Above me, the ceiling was smooth brown stone. Below, the sandy floor slipped away, sloping gradually downward. All around me, the walls were lined with stony, jagged pillars and arches and caverns. Trails of multicolored seaweed dangled here and there like Christmas decorations. Behind them, I heard the swishing sound again. In the growing light, I saw a tail flick sharply.
“Shona!” I cried in relief, swimming toward the tail.
But it wasn’t Shona.
“Who are you?” the mermaid and I said in unison.
She swam toward me. “How did you get here?” she said. “No one comes here — ever.”
“I — I — I swam,” I stammered. “Where am I, anyway? And who are you?”
The mermaid swam closer to me, looked me straight in the eyes, swam all around me, then came back to face me. Her face was lined and pale. She seemed old, but at the same time almost ageless, and strangely beautiful. Her silvery hair was so long it flowed all the way down her back and stroked her tail as she swam. Her tail was a musty, dusty mix of mauve and pink. She looked a bit like someone who’d just been presented with a fairly rare, and not particularly pleasant, geological finding.
She didn’t answer my question. “Come with me,” she said, tugging at my arm.
I pulled away from her. “Not till you tell me who you are,” I said. I hoped I sounded braver than I felt.
In reply, she gripped my arm more tightly and pulled me along behind her.
We swam down tunnels, around tubes of weeds, through high-sided channels, under rocks, and around corners until we came to a large sandy opening with an enormous pillar in the middle and caves and arches dug into the walls all around it.
Four mermaids were in the clearing. One was brushing her hair with a makeshift brush that looked as if it were made of twigs. Another had grabbed a passing shiny flat fish as it floated by and was peering into its skin to see her reflection. The other two were sitting on the sandy seabed; one looked as though she were making something out of reeds, the other seemed to be playing a game with stones in the sand.
“I found something,” the mermaid called out to the others. They all looked up — each face an identical mixture of shock and disbelief. A minute later, they had crowded around me, looking into my face, examining my tail, reaching out to touch me.
“Is she real?” one of them asked.
“Of course I’m real!” I snapped, and she jumped away.
“How did she get in here?” another one asked.
“I can talk, you know,” I said. “Why don’t you talk to me instead of about me?”
The mermaid who had been making something with the reeds pushed in front of the others, glaring at me so intently that I wished for once in my life I could have kept my mouth shut.
“Leave her be, Nerin,” she said. “She is a visitor. Is that not enough? And look — the child is scared. Give her some room.”
Her voice was soft and gentle. She seemed younger than the others, although as I looked more closely into her face, I could see that like the rest, she had tiny squiggly wrinkles across her forehead and little claw-shaped lines fanning out beside each eye. Her hair was silver too, but shorter than the first mermaid’s.
The others nodded their agreement. “Morvena