A Mischief of Mermaids (7 page)

This was so beautiful, and so unexpected, that Poppy gasped.

Instantly, she knew she had made a mistake.

Every one of the figures in the clearing turned their heads in her direction. For one frozen instant, she thought that, if she stayed very, very still, she might escape detection.

But then, somewhere behind her, she heard Will shout, “Poppy! Where are you?”

Without meaning to, she turned her head—and she was discovered.

She heard someone call out something. The words were indistinct, but the note of alarm was clear enough.

All four figures ran to the oak tree and grabbed their cloaks, then raced toward the shore. They moved incredibly fast, like raindrops sliding down a window. With one fluid move, three of them dove into the water and were gone. Only the youngest hesitated on the shore, still holding her cloak in her arms.

Poppy blinked. The dark water of the lake was unnaturally still. There wasn't a ripple to show that the surface had just been disturbed.

Shivering, she picked up her paddle and started to turn her kayak around. Without even thinking about it, she found that she was paddling gently, as if not to disturb the water too much. As if not to let anything underneath the surface know where she was . . .

A hand shot up from the water and grabbed the side of her kayak. A second later, a head emerged. It was the silver-haired woman. She was floating in the water next to Poppy, her icy blue eyes fixed on Poppy's face, smiling strangely.

“Hello, my darling,” she crooned. “What are you doing out here on the water, so far from home?”

“N-nothing,” Poppy stuttered.

Another head emerged from the water, then another. They were the dancers from the clearing, only they were no longer smiling. They stared at her with distrust and dislike.

“Spying, more like it,” said Kali, the girl with the dark spiky hair. “What shall we do with her?”

The coldness in her voice made Poppy gulp.

Kali reached over the side of the kayak and grabbed Poppy's arm with a hand that felt as cold as ice. Poppy squeaked and tried to pull away, but the girl's grip was strong.

“Pull her into the water,” Kali said in a deliberate voice, as if she'd given the matter a great deal of thought. “Pull her under the waves.”

“You can't do that!” Poppy cried out. “If you hurt me, you'll get in trouble.”

Kali gave her a sly look. “Will we, now? And who is here to see what happens to you?”

Poppy pulled back with all her strength, which only made the kayak rock to one side and almost capsize.

Kali laughed. It was a laugh like none other Poppy had ever heard. It made her heart race with terror.

“It looks as if she might do our work for us, it does indeed,” she said, her eyes gleaming with malice.

“Stop it!”

Startled, Poppy jerked her head up to see Nerissa, who was now standing on a large rock at the edge of the cove and staring at Poppy.

“Don't hurt her! She didn't do anything. Let her go.”

Poppy felt a wave of gratitude wash over her. Finally, someone was saying something reasonable! Now if only the others would listen—

But Kali just laughed her bone-chilling laugh again. “Ah, Nerissa, you have such a warm heart,” she said mockingly. “Full of compassion and pity and kindness!”

“No, I don't!” Nerissa snapped. “But if we hurt her, we'll only be bringing trouble upon ourselves, will we not? And how smart is that?”

The others broke into peals of laughter.

“Poor Nerissa,
mer
on the outside and mortal in the middle,” called out Ariadne.

A clear, cold voice broke through the murmurs. “Nerissa is right,” said the older woman. “Let the girl go.”

Poppy thought she had never heard the word “girl” said with such disdain. Before she had a chance to feel insulted, however, the grip on her arm loosened.

She pulled away and rubbed the spot where Kali had been holding her. It felt cold to the touch, as if she'd been holding an ice pack there.

“Who are you, anyway?” she asked. Her voice wavered and she cleared her throat before adding, “What are you doing here?”

No one answered. They all stared at her. Poppy stared back into their blank eyes and felt a prickle on the back of her neck. She could hear her mother's voice saying, “Centuries ago, people used to say they had encountered the uncanny when they had, in fact, encountered the paranormal. The surefire way to know that you were in the presence of the uncanny, they said, was when the hairs on the back of your neck stood up. . . .”

“Poppy!” Will's voice called out.

Coralie's head turned sharply in the direction of his voice.

“Dive.” The older woman's voice snapped out with an air of command.

There were three small splashes and they were gone.

Only Nerissa remained where she was, standing on the rock. She was looking at Poppy with intense curiosity.

“Poppy!” Henry yelled. “Where are you?”

Nerissa blinked and turned her head sharply in the direction of the voices. Then she flung the cloak around her shoulders in one graceful move, stood on her tiptoes, and dove off the rock into the lake.

The whole thing happened so quickly that Poppy almost missed it.

She stared at the spot where the girl had disappeared.

“Oh, there you are!” Henry's voice sounded both exasperated and relieved. “Why didn't you answer us? Didn't you hear us calling you?”

She turned to see Henry and Will paddling into the cove.

“Yeah, what's wrong with you?” Will said. “We've been looking for you forever! Mom and Dad are going nuts. They picked up some kind of weird blip in the sky, just south of here, and they want to raise anchor and head after it.”

“They said the blip was zigzagging all over the sky!” said Henry excitedly. “I can't believe we might have found a UFO on our very first day on the lake!”

Will gave him a pitying look. “Don't get your hopes too high. The last time they thought they'd seen a UFO, it turned out to be the local TV station's traffic helicopter.”

Henry was not willing to give up so easily. “But your dad said the flight plan was completely abnormal! Not like any plane or helicopter known to man!”

“Henry, Henry, Henry.” Will shook his head sadly. “He always says that. Trust me, we're not going to encounter anything strange this week—”

“Did you see her?” Poppy interrupted. “Did you see that girl?”

Will and Henry exchanged puzzled looks.

“What girl?” Henry asked.

“The one who was standing right there.” She pointed to the rock. “She just dove into the lake.”

“Don't tell me
you're
seeing things now,” said Will. “It's bad enough that Mom and Dad keep getting fooled—”

“I'm not imagining things!” Poppy's voice was tense. “You'll never believe what I just saw—”

“Yeah, yeah, we want to hear all about it,” said Will. “Later. Mom and Dad sent us on a mission and the mission was to find you and get back to the houseboat.”

“Listen—” Poppy began, but Will and Henry had already turned their kayak around and were paddling out of the cove.

With a quick thrust of her paddle, she followed them. But as she left the cove behind, she glanced back over her shoulder one last time.

She knew what she had seen.

When the girl put on her cloak, it had seemed to melt into her body, covering her shoulders and legs with scales that sparkled in the moonlight. And when she dove into the water, a large, spangled tail had flipped into the air before disappearing under the waves.

As hard as it was to believe, Poppy was absolutely certain of one thing: She had just seen her first mermaid.

A
s soon as Poppy set foot on the deck of the houseboat, she knew that no one would have the time or patience to listen to anything she had to say.

Mrs. Malone, her eyes bright, was waving a printout of a photo in the air.

“Look at this image,” she cried. “It's clear as day! There's a UFO in the skies above us!”

Poppy took the paper from her hand. She stared at it for a long moment, then raised one eyebrow and said, “It's a white smudge.”

Her mother snatched it back. “That's what a blazing light that flashes across the sky looks like in a photograph,” she said. “And look!” She stabbed a finger at the paper. “See these little dots here? If you connect them to the bright light, it forms a triangle.”

She paused and gave them all a meaningful look.

“A
triangle
,” she repeated, in case they had missed her point.

“But you can play connect-the-dots with any random number of points and come up with a shape,” Poppy said reasonably. “Triangle, square, trapezoid, polygon, rhomboid—”

“I think you've made your point, Poppy, thank you,” said Mr. Malone, who had emerged from the galley in time to hear this. “However, you're ignoring a key factor. Forty-three percent of UFO witnesses report that what they saw was triangular in shape.”

He stopped long enough to give her a gloating look, then added, “Makes you think, doesn't it?”

“Yes,” Poppy snapped. “It makes me think that people are seeing what they want to see.”

“That can't be right,” said Mr. Malone. “Why, you ask?” (Poppy didn't bother pointing out that she hadn't.) He leaned forward and said triumphantly, “Because most people don't want to see aliens. They're too afraid!”

“That's true,” said Mrs. Malone. “Which is ridiculous, really, when you think of how much we could learn from any creatures who have the technology to zip over to Earth from who knows how many light-years away!”

Poppy took a deep breath. “Have you ever thought you might be looking in the wrong place?” she asked carefully.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean . . . well, what if the strange creatures aren't zipping around over our heads in little spacecraft? What if they're a little closer to home? Maybe even”—she pointed at the lake—“down there?”

“You didn't buy all that guff that Oliver was dishing out about lake monsters, did you?” scoffed Mr. Malone.

Poppy blushed. “I don't believe anything anybody says without seeing the evidence,” she said stiffly. “Especially not anything that Professor Asquith says. He's only interested in TV ratings.”

“Ha! Quite right, too!” said Mr. Malone. “You see, Lucille, even a young girl like Poppy can see through Oliver's never-ending quest for fame.”

“Now, dear,” said Mrs. Malone, sounding a trifle annoyed. “There's no need to be rude about poor Oliver. I admit, he can be quite imaginative, but he has had his successes.”

“Only because the viewing public has no taste.” Mr. Malone's mood had swung, as it usually did when Oliver Asquith was praised, from delight to utter gloom. “No taste and absolutely no understanding of the field of paranormal investigation. I blame our education system. What are kids taught in school these days? To answer multiple-choice questions and march in lockstep down the halls of academe! There's absolutely no attention being paid to clear thinking. Why, I remember when I was young—”

Poppy tried to get the conversation back on track before Mr. Malone started talking about the rigors of first grade, and how he'd mastered multiplication and long division by his eighth birthday.

“Anyway, I wasn't talking about a lake monster,” she interrupted. “There are other aquatic creatures, you know. I mean, what if you thought you saw, say—”

“Did someone see the monster?” Rolly was half asleep, but he got up from the deck chair and staggered toward them, his fishing pole clutched tightly in his hands. “Where is it?”

“
Shh, shh
, go back to sleep,” said Mrs. Malone soothingly. “There's nothing to see, nothing going on at all.”

Rolly stopped in his tracks and watched as Mr. Malone started the engine.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“To another part of the lake,” said Mrs. Malone. “Now why don't you lie down and think some happy thoughts, and before you know it you'll be in dreamland!”

Poppy shook her head, but said nothing. Her mother had been suggesting this ever since Rolly was one month old. It had never worked, for two reasons. One was that Rolly had decided, apparently on the day he was born, that he couldn't waste any time sleeping because he had too much to do in his life.

The second reason Mrs. Malone's strategy was useless, of course, was that Rolly didn't think happy thoughts. Cunning thoughts, yes. Obsessive thoughts, certainly. Stubborn thoughts, without a doubt. But happy thoughts? No.

“I don't want to nod off,” he said. “I don't want to go to dreamland. I don't want to sleep at all, not ever!”

“You have made that abundantly clear over the years,” said Mr. Malone through gritted teeth. “I don't suppose you'd try counting sheep?”

Rolly gave him a black look. “I don't like sheep.”

“Well, try counting lake monsters, then,” Mr. Malone snapped.

“Now
there's
a brainstorm!” Mrs. Malone said brightly. “In fact, why don't you just close your eyes for a few minutes. You don't have to actually sleep. You just need to rest for a few minutes and the best way to do that is with your eyes closed.”

Rolly thought this over, as if testing the idea for a trap, but finally nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I'll rest. As long as I don't have to sleep.” He fell back on the deck chair, screwed his eyes closed, and crossed his arms belligerently, as if daring sleep to overtake him.

For several minutes, everyone worked in silence, scarcely daring to breathe. And then, the most delightful sound interrupted the quiet of the night. It was a deep buzzing that sounded like a hive of irritated bees. It was the sound of Rolly snoring.