The Tail of Emily Windsnap - Liz Kessler [50]
“I found him,” I said simply.
“Swishy!” she breathed.
“Tell you all about it on the way. Come on.” I was desperate to see Mom. I couldn’t wait to see her face when I gave her Dad’s presents.
“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