The Tail of Emily Windsnap - Liz Kessler [47]
Suddenly, I heard a swooshing noise. Hammerheads! Coming nearer. I flicked my tail as hard as I could and swam to the end of the corridor. I had to get around the bend before they saw me!
With one last push of my tail, I zoomed around the corner — into an identical tunnel.
Identical except for one thing. The numbers all started with E. The East Wing!
I swam carefully up to the first door. E 924. I tried to remember the number from that note in Mr. Beeston’s files. Why hadn’t I written it down?
An old merman with a beard and a raggedy limp tail was inside the cell, facing away from me. I moved on. E 926, E 928. Would I ever find him?
Just then, two mallet-shaped heads appeared around the corner. I hurled myself up against the next door, frantically twisting the brass knob. To my amazement, it wasn’t locked! The door swung open. Banking on the odds that whoever occupied it would be less scary than the sharks, I backed into the room and quietly shut the door. The whooshing noise came past the moment I’d closed it. I leaned my head against the door in relief.
“That was a lucky escape.”
Who said that? I swung around to see a merman sitting on the edge of a bed made of seaweed. He was leaning over a small table and seemed to be working on something, his sparkly purple tail flickering gently.
I looked at him, but I didn’t move from the door. He appearead to put the end of a piece of thread in his mouth and then tied a knot in the other end.
“Got to keep myself busy somehow,” he said somewhat apologetically.
I slunk around the edges of the bubble-shaped room, still keeping my distance. The thread he was sewing with looked as if it was made of gold, with beads of some kind strung on it in rainbow colors.
“You’re making a necklace?”
“Bracelet, actually. Got a problem with that?” The merman looked up for the first time, and I backed away instinctively. Don’t make fun of criminals whose cells you’ve just barged into, I told myself. Never a good idea if you’re planning to get out again in one piece.
Except he didn’t look like a criminal. Not how I usually imagine a criminal to look, anyway. He didn’t look mean and hard. And he was making jewelry. He had short black hair, kind of wavy, a tiny ring in one ear. A white vest with a blue prison jacket over it. His tail sparkled as much as the bracelet. As I looked at him, he ran his hand through his hair. There was something familiar about the way he did it, although I couldn’t think what. I twiddled with my hair as I tried to —
I looked harder at him. As he squinted back at me, I noticed a tiny dimple appear below his left eye.
It couldn’t be . . .
The merman put his bracelet down and slithered off his bed. I backed away again as he came toward me. “I’ll scream,” I said.
He stared at me. I stared back.
“How in the sea did you find me?” he said, in a different kind of voice from earlier. This one sounded like he had molasses blocking up his throat or something.
I looked into his face. Deep brown eyes. My eyes.
“Dad?” a tiny voice squeaked from over the other side of the cell somewhere. It might have been mine.
The merman rubbed his eyes. Then he hit himself on the side of the head. “I knew it would happen one day,” he said, to himself more than me. “No one does time in this place without going a little bit crazy.” He turned away from me. “I’m dreaming, that’s all.”
But then he turned back around. “Pinch me,” he said, swimming closer. I recoiled a little.
“Pinch me,” he repeated.
I pinched him, and he jumped back. “Youch! I didn’t say pull my skin off.” He rubbed his arm and looked up at me again. “So you’re real?” he said.
I nodded.
He swam in a circle around me. “You’re even more beautiful than I’d dreamed,” he said. “And I’ve dreamed about you a lot, I can tell you.”
I still couldn’t speak.
“I never wanted you to see me in this place.” He