The Dragon in the Sea (11 page)

“Really?” she said, narrowing her eyes. “Or are you just saying that to make me feel better?”

“Really!” Daisy said, clasping Star’s hand. “I’ve never had so much fun as I’ve had today, swimming around with this tail. It’s beautiful under the sea. Weightless and free. I
love
it!”

The portals had dwindled down to plain lacquered doors. It was darker, too, and Star had to use the conch lantern to light the way.

Jesse asked, “What makes that shell light up like that?”

Star stopped and turned, the lantern shedding a golden halo of light in the dark passageway. “It’s the phosphairies. See?” She held out the shell.

Jesse and Daisy peered inside. A ring of glowing miniature merfolk with tails and finny wings swam in a bright circle inside.

“Nifty,” said Jesse. “I mean, gnarly.”

When they arrived at their cabin, they found two conch shells lying on either side of the door. Star bent down and shook some of the phosphairies into them, handing one each to Jesse and Daisy.

“Brekkie is at six bells. Sleep well,” said Star as she swam off down the corridor.

“Wake me up if I sleep through brekkie bells,” Jesse mumbled to Daisy as they swam into their cabin.

“I like Star,” said Daisy.

“I like her, too,” said Jesse. “And she likes Reef and Coral. After what happened this afternoon, I wasn’t so sure about their mom, but I’m thinking maybe my first impression was right about her, too.”

“Jess, what in Sam Hill are you
talking
about?” Daisy asked.

Jesse removed from his sweatshirt pouch the softball he had picked up in the Lost and Found
and placed it next to his phosphairy lantern on the bunk-side table. “You know how you didn’t much like the Driftwoods when we first met them? Well, I saw them again today, and I tell you, the mother acted like a
witch
,” he said, pulling up his seaweed blanket and yawning. “But now I’m thinking maybe she isn’t so bad, after all. Maybe she was trying to tell me something. How do you make this lantern go out?”

Daisy said, “Try blowing on it. What’s this about seeing the Driftwoods, Jess? I didn’t see them. Tell me what’s going on.”

Jesse blew lightly on his conch shell, and sure enough, the phosphairies extinguished their light. He lay back and closed his eyes. “I’ll tell you about it tomorrow. I’m too tired to talk right now. I need to …” And just like that, Jesse fell fast asleep.

Daisy was tired, too, but Jesse had gotten her mind churning with all his mysterious talk about the Driftwoods. On top of Emmy’s story, it was enough to keep a person awake all night. She would have to read herself to sleep. She chose a book from her bookcase, then slid under her own seaweed quilt and started reading.

It was a story about a human girl who went out in a rowboat to fish one day and got lost in the fog. When the fog lifted, she found herself in a sea of
beautiful giant flowers. She had just met a little mergirl her own age who made her home in one of the big bell-shaped blossoms, when Daisy drifted off to sleep.

Daisy awoke suddenly in the deepest darkness she had experienced since being trapped in the mines of the hobgoblins. The lantern was dark but she didn’t remember blowing it out. At first, the darkness was alarming. Then she breathed deeply and told herself,
I’ll turn over in my bunk and go back to sleep until six bells
. She was just drifting off again when she heard the noise.

It was a steady
squeak-squeak
ing sound.

She sat up and cocked her ear. It was the sound of something rubbing against glass and it was giving her a serious case of the heebie-jeebies.

Daisy slithered out of her bunk and swam over to the row of windows set high on the wall. An eerie yellow light shone from somewhere outside. Suddenly, a greenish face pressed itself against the glass. Daisy pulled back with a gasp. It was a mermaid with red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes. She scraped at the glass with long, blackened fingernails—
squeak! squeak!
—as if begging to be let in.

In a flash, Daisy was over at Jesse’s bunk, shaking him awake.

“What? What?” he said, his voice making pale,
sparkling bubbles in the dark water. “I was just resting.”

He sat up and shook his phosphairy lantern until it lit up, as Daisy pulled him over to the window.

“What?” said Jesse, staring through the glass.

The face was no longer there.

Daisy tapped the glass with her fist. “It was a water zombie, Jess. A girl one. She was right there a minute ago. I saw her, I swear!” Daisy said.

“I believe you,” Jesse said. Then he did what his mother always had done when he was little and shadows outside his window gave him the heebie-jeebies. He took the extra blanket off his bed and draped it over the windows. “Better?” he asked.

Daisy nodded, but Jesse could tell she was still spooked.

“We could go up to the poop deck and report it to Yar and Fluke,” he suggested.

Daisy thought about the long corridor full of portals and the hatchway that was like a deep, dark well. “No,” she said. “I’m sure the hammerhead shiver will protect us.”

Jesse nodded. He swam back to his bunk, and that was when he saw it—or rather,
didn’t
see it.

“My softball. Somebody took it, Daisy,” he said in a quiet voice. “I put it on the table right here next
to the lantern … and now it’s gone.”

“Are you sure?” Daisy had snuggled back under the covers. “Check under the bunk. Maybe it rolled away.”

Jesse swam around with his lantern and checked, but the softball was not anywhere in the cabin. Now Daisy was asleep and Jesse lay wide-awake. He wondered who would have taken his softball, and
why
?

Jesse woke Daisy up the next morning, hovering beside her bunk, holding a chipped soup bowl. The seaweed inside the bowl looked like dark blue shredded wheat.

Daisy sat up and Jesse handed her the bowl.

“Brekkie in bed,” he said.

“Don’t you mean
bunk
?” Daisy said as she sat up. “How is everything going in the deep blue sea?”

Jesse pointed to the windows. Through the sun-shot water, a shiver of hammerhead sharks swam by.

“I never thought I’d be happy to see sharks,” said Daisy.

“Eat up,” Jesse said. “When you’re finished with your brekkie, we’re expected down the hall in the Buried Pirate Treasure Portal for the mollycoddle.”

“What’s a mollycoddle?” Daisy asked around a mouthful of seaweed that tasted much better than it looked.

“I have no idea but it must be a big deal. Hundreds of selkies and kelpies and sprites and merfolk are pouring in there.”

“How long have you been awake?” Daisy asked.

“I was hungry. I went up and had early brekkie with the cap’n and the chief and Emmy.”

“And the egg?” Daisy asked.

“The egg didn’t have breakfast but Emmy ate with one hand and held the egg with the other. She said it’s starting to heat up.”

“That means it will hatch soon for sure!” Daisy said, setting her bowl down on the table by her bunk. Sweeping aside the covers, she tumbled headfirst out of the bed. “I forgot for a minute I didn’t have legs.”

“The exact same thing happened to me,” said Jesse.

Just then, Star darted into the cabin. She had piled her long dark hair on top of her head and wrapped it in strings of pink pearls.

“You look so pretty!” Daisy said.

“Thank you, miss. Would you like me to dress your hair?” Star offered.

“Would you, please?” Daisy asked. She had never had her hair dressed before. “And what’s a mollycoddle?”

“You’ll see,” said Star with a mysterious gleam in her eyes. She ran a small mother-of-pearl comb through Daisy’s hair until it was as smooth as corn silk. Then, with a quick twist, she bound it on top of Daisy’s head and held it in place with the comb.

“Thank you!” said Daisy, looking at her blurred reflection in a silver hand mirror. She thought she made a pretty respectable mermaid. Then she stuck out her tongue and crossed her eyes.

“If you ladies are ready,” Jesse said, “I’d really like to get to the mollycoddle.”

Star led Jesse and Daisy down the corridor, which today had totally different portals. They finally came to the gold and silver and gem-studded door Yar had shown them the day before.

“Get ready for the mollycoddle,” Star said as she opened the portal and hovered to one side.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT
THE MOLLYCODDLE

Inside the portal, it looked like the Sultan of Baghdad himself was throwing a wild party in Aladdin’s cave. Everywhere Daisy and Jesse looked, treasure chests overflowed with precious gems and
jewels, and barrels brimmed with gold and silver coins.

“Wow!” said Jesse. “It’s like all the sunken treasure in the whole wide world is right here.”

“That’s most astute, young man,” said Yar, swimming up to them. He wore a heavy necklace with a rampant lion on it. “I see you admiring my gewgaw here. Fiendishly decorative stuff, which is why we hold all of our fetes here—aquinalias, sprees, cavorts … mollycoddles, in particular. And if I do say, this is the mollycoddle to end them all. No one in the Eighth would dream of missing it.”

“What
is
a mollycoddle?” Daisy asked.

Jesse broke in. “I don’t want to spoil the mollycoddle or anything, but Daisy saw a water zombie at our cabin window last night.”

“A what?” Yar said, cocking a budlike ear toward Jesse.

“You know, a mermaid with green skin and red-rimmed bloodshot eyes,” Jesse said.

“Ah! A Red Eyes. Did you now?” Yar asked. “A sign of their desperation, no doubt. They seldom stray far from the Coral Jungle. Not to worry, my dear,” he said to Daisy. “Security on board this ship has never been tighter in general, and in this portal in particular.”

It was at that point that they happened to notice
the shivers of sharks of all kinds—great whites, hammerheads, threshers—cruising the portal.

In light of all this muscle (and cartilage), Jesse felt foolish bringing up his lost softball, so he kept it to himself. There certainly was a lot to take his mind off the loss.

“We know that shark groups are called shivers. I wonder what they call a group of merpeople?” Daisy wondered aloud.

Jesse turned to Yar. “Do you know?” he asked.

Yar stroked his whiskers thoughtfully. “Why, I do believe that a group of merfolk is called a
welter
 … unless they are all of the female persuasion, and then it’s called a
bevy
. A male group is called a
heft
.”

“And a group of selkies?” Jesse asked.

“A group of us selkies is a
tide
 … and, just in case you’re curious, it’s a
drift
of kelpies, don’t you know?” Yar said.

There was a massive welter of merfolk here, from gray-bearded grandfathers down to toddlers and tiny little babes in their mothers’ arms. There were tides of selkies of all shapes and sizes and drifts of kelpies—and every single one of these creatures, young and old, was draped in precious jewels.

“Do feel free to deck yourselves out!” Yar said.
“There’s plenty to go around. Of course, it’s understood that nothing leaves the portal. I’ve posted a couple of bull sharks at the entrance just to make sure no slippery customers make off with the goods, don’t you know?”

“Hey, Keepers!” Emmy called out. She stood beside an enormous, open abalone shell, its top draped with strings of pearls and emeralds and rubies and sapphires. The bottom of the shell was filled with fine white sand, and in its center, the Thunder Egg lay nestled in the backpack.

“Aw,” said Jesse, “it’s like an undersea whatcha-macallit. One of those baby basket thingies.”

“A
bassinet
!” said Daisy. “That’s it! I know what a mollycoddle is, Jess! A mollycoddle is a baby shower!” Daisy exclaimed happily.

“Oh!” said Jesse. “Of course! And Emmy’s kind of sitting in for her mother.”

Seeing Emmy in her jaunty crown of topaz was enough to get Jesse and Daisy in the party spirit. Jesse found a simple golden crown with rubies and an armband big enough to fit around his hoodie sleeve. Daisy, not wanting to mess up her hair, settled on a necklace of emeralds and a ring with a diamond the size of a pigeon’s egg.

Fluke swam to the center of the gathering and clapped her tiny hands together. For tiny
hands they produced surprisingly loud claps.

Everyone stopped swimming and talking and bubbling and turned his or her attention to Fluke.

“As acting captain of
The Golden Dragon
, I am chuffed to report that, once again, the precious Thunder Egg is in our possession,” Fluke announced.

“Who’s got the egg now, eh?” Yar shouted.

The crowd shouted back, “WE’VE GOT THE EGG!”

“It’s like a cross between a baby shower and a pep rally,” Jesse whispered to Daisy.

“I am even happier to report that, after all these many long years, our little dragon will soon hatch,” said Fluke.

The water filled with a joyous burbling until a dip of Fluke’s nose brought on quiet and stillness again. “Present for the hatching, I am pleased to say, is the hatchling’s own sister, the honorable Emerald of Leandra and her Keepers, the Venerable Daisy Flower and Jesse Tiger.”