The Dragon in the Sea (6 page)

The fastest water zombie reached out and grabbed the tip of Daisy’s tail fin. She let out a shriek and zigzagged to shake him off, whipsawing her tail and catapulting herself through the water.

“Whip your tail like this!” she called out to Jesse, demonstrating how.

Jesse copied her and, in this way, the two of them pulled out well in front of the advancing army of zombies. They whipped along through the water like a pair of dolphins fleeing sharks.

A dark green thicket loomed in the near distance. “Let’s lose them in the kelp!” Daisy shouted to Jesse.

Jesse and Daisy dived into the kelp, the slimy tendrils trailing past them. Just as quickly, they were on the other side. Daisy dared to look over her shoulder.

As if the switch had been thrown again, the zombies, now strewn with kelp, were once more moving in dreamy slow motion.

“Keep going!” Jesse called out to Daisy. “Just in case they get a second wind.”

They maintained a breakneck speed until they were almost even with Emmy.

“Hold up a sec!” Daisy called out.

Jesse and Emmy came to a halt and looked back. Daisy settled on a rock near a big orange sea fan. There were strands of kelp tangled in her hair. As she forked it out with her fingers, she looked back and saw not a single water zombie in sight. “I think we might have lost them!” she said.

Emmy and Jesse swam back to join her.

“Boy, is my tail tired,” Jesse said, settling on the rock next to Daisy. “That was way too close for comfort.”

“Where to now?” Daisy asked.

“Beats me,” Emmy said, peering around. “I forgot my undersea road map.”

“I think it’s called a chart,” said Jesse.

“I hate to say this, guys,” said Daisy, “but if the merman won the Battle of the Backpack, the egg is probably back there in that icky jungle. Don’t you think?”

“Could be. But let’s take a good hard look around and make absolutely sure it’s not somewhere else before we go back there,” Jesse said.

“Good idea,” said Emmy. “But searching for the Thunder Egg down here is like looking for a needle in a smokestack.”

Jesse was too distracted to correct Emmy. Besides, in a way, she was right. Being under the ocean wasn’t like being on the land, where, on a clear day, you could see for miles. Poor visibility kept the undersea world from seeming too vast, but it also made it hard to figure out where you were and where you were headed, much less look for something small.

Still, it was beautiful. If the Coral Jungle
reminded Jesse of the Deep Woods in winter, where they were now reminded him of the Dell
behind their house on a dew-soaked spring morning with the wildflowers all in bloom, except that the wildflowers were seaweed swaying gently in the current.

Suddenly, something small and dark came scuttling from behind a cluster of pink seaweed.

Daisy started, swiveling her tail out of its way. “What is that?”

“Sand witch,” said Emmy.

“So
that’s
what a sand witch looks like!” said Jesse.

“It doesn’t look anything like a crab,” said Daisy, peering at it.

The creature looked like a corroded knight’s helmet, a dome with eyes staring out of two holes in the top.

Daisy addressed the eyes. “Excuse me, but we’ve lost a round rock about this big,” she said, making the familiar gesture with her hands. “You didn’t happen to see it, did you?”

The knight’s helmet kicked up a cloud of sand and, when the water cleared, it had disappeared.

“
That
was a big help,” said Daisy, lying back on the rock.

“Polly said they were terrible gossips,” said Emmy. “It’s probably just a matter of time before
the word’s out that I’m down here. Maybe I should mask again, just in case.”

“Please don’t!” Daisy sat up quickly. “You’re much prettier as a dragon.”

“
I
liked your dragon fish,” said Jesse. “I thought you were awesome.”

“Thank you, Jesse. And don’t worry, Daisy Flower,” said Emmy. “I’ll only do it if I sense danger. Or need to be small.”

“Thanks,” said Daisy.

“Hey, what’s that?” Jesse said, pointing.

From a distance, they looked like three full-grown human figures made out of clear gelatin—humanoid jellyfish with long arms that ended in silvery tassels. Three dolphins accompanied them, one swimming beside each figure.

“Underwater ghosts!” said Daisy.

The ghosts approached at a rapid clip, the dolphins keeping pace with them. What little sun had penetrated to this depth shone like prisms in the bodies of the ghosts and sparkled in their tasseled hands like Fourth of July sparklers.

“They’re like rainbow people!” said Jesse.

“Actually, they’re water sprites,” said Emmy. “I can’t remember if Polly said they were good or bad. Just in case, I think I’ll mask before they get any closer.” As quickly as that, Emmy was
back to being a fierce-faced dragon fish.

In no time, the water sprites and the dolphins were upon them.

The sprites had no faces or features. They came right up to Jesse, Daisy, and Emmy and stopped, their gelatinous shapes shifting.

Jesse raised a hand and said, “We come in peace.”

Daisy gave him a look. Jesse shrugged.

The dolphins swam up and nuzzled Jesse and Daisy beneath the chins with their bottle-shaped noses.

“That tickles,” Jesse said, giggling.

“They’re so sweet!” Daisy said, stroking one dolphin while another one ran its nose through her hair.

The water sprites didn’t say a thing. Slowly, they began to back away, waving their tassels like an airport landing crew directing planes.

“I think they want us to follow them,” said Daisy.

“Do you think we should?” Jesse asked.

“I don’t know … the dolphins are so nice,” said Daisy. She turned to Emmy. “Do you think we should?”

“Ess,” Emmy said as she set off after the water sprites.

Jesse and Daisy followed through the rolling
underwater meadow. Before long, a white arch loomed ahead of them.

“It’s the jawbone of some kind of whale,” Jesse said. “A really big one. Maybe even a leviathan.”

“What’s a leviathan?” Daisy asked.

“Like in the Bible,” Jesse said. “An enormous undersea monster. Look at the size of that thing!”

The closer they got, the larger the jaw became, rising up as high as a ten-story monument and lined with hundreds of sharp teeth. But it was the sight framed by the arch that really took their breath away.

It was a massive sailing ship, its hull sparkling black and its sails looking as if they had been woven of pure gold. Twenty-four sails were unfurled and full, as if in readiness for a voyage beneath the sea.

The water sprites and dolphins led Jesse and Daisy and Emmy beneath the arch and right up to the stern. There, the dolphins nosed their way up the side of the ship, followed by the sprites, who disappeared silently in a burst of bright color that faded into the watery haze.

“Now what?” said Daisy.

“Ooool,” said Emmy.

“It is cool,” Jesse agreed. “It’s a square-rigger.”

“It’s got to be longer than a whole city block,” Daisy said.

They swam alongside it, level with the rail, inspecting its hatches and cabins and lockers and rigging, from stern to stem, from the mizzen topgallant to the flying jib. Although she was yar—ropes coiled, rigging made fast, deck and hull spotless and scraped clean of algae and barnacles—she was, to all appearances, a ghost ship. There was no one on board.

It took them ten minutes to swim her full length, every detail somehow familiar to them, until they came to a huge striped canopy with heavy brocade curtains erected on the poop deck. It looked so utterly out of place that it brought all three of them up short.

“What is it?” Daisy asked.

“Eats me,” said Emmy.

Jesse said, “It looks like something you’d see on Cleopatra’s barge.”

They swam closer and discovered that the canopy and curtains were not striped silk and brocade but seaweed and seashells woven tightly together.

“What’s behind the curtains, I wonder?” said Daisy. Her fingers itched to draw them aside. But the others were already swimming on, so she turned tail and joined them.

Even before they got to the big golden dragon
carved into the prow, they knew what they were going to find emblazoned on the hull. Still, it gave them the shivers to see it:
The Golden Dragon
.

But they didn’t get a chance to talk about it, because a voice called down to them, “Ahoy there!”

Two creatures appeared on the bridge above them. One of them looked like a broad-shouldered man wearing a black hooded wet suit with long floppy fins on his feet and hands. His head was disproportionately small and nearly neckless, and he had big, soft golden eyes and a plump upper lip bristling with stiff white whiskers. His companion looked like the head-butting sea horse they had tangled with yesterday: a kelpie.

“Request permission to come aboard,” Jesse called up to them.

“Permission granted,” said the kelpie in a high-pitched voice that was like a whinny.

Daisy swam up close to Jesse’s face and whispered emphatically, “That might be the kelpie we tangled with yesterday. Maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to go aboard.”

“Yes, we should. If she has the egg,” Jesse whispered, “we need to get it back.”

“But what if it’s a trap?” Daisy said.

“We have to risk it,” Jesse said. “Besides, it’s
The Golden Dragon
, Daise, our favorite ship in the
whole wide world. How bad could it be?”

Daisy couldn’t argue with this, so she followed Jesse and Emmy. On the way, she noticed three deep punctures in the hull. Were the three holes what had caused the huge vessel to sink?

When they reached the deck, the seal-man twitched his whiskers and drew himself to attention. Had he heels instead of fins, he might have clicked them together smartly. “Chief Mate Yar, at your service. Allow me to introduce you to Captain Fluke.”

Fluke’s huge eyes were silver and spherical, offering up the group’s distorted reflection. Daisy was distracted by her twin reflections in Fluke’s eyes, from her plume of pale hair to her silvery tail. The only aspect of her appearance that didn’t please her was her hooded sweatshirt, but that couldn’t be helped. A bikini top made of seashells was probably not something she could pull off anytime soon.

“I’m Jesse Tiger,” said Jesse. “This is my cousin, Daisy Flower, and our, um, dragon fish, Emmy.”

Yar twirled his whiskers. “Hmm, yes, I see. Don’t get many dragon fish at this depth.”

“Ust isiting,” said Emmy through her overgrown fangs.

“Visiting? A dragon fish using words! You don’t see one of those every day,” Fluke said.

“She’s very precocious,” Jesse said, raising an eyebrow at Emmy to signal her to hold the words to a minimum.

“Lovely to meet you! We were just sitting down to sea tea. You and your talking dragon fish are more than welcome to join us,” said Fluke.

The kelpie led them onto the foredeck, where a big wooden table awaited them.

Meanwhile, the formerly empty decks had begun to fill up, whether with passengers or crew it was impossible to tell. There were more seal-people and kelpies, as well as water sprites and sand witches, most of them going about their business, but some paused to stare at the new arrivals with open curiosity. Jesse wondered where they had all come from: the sea surrounding the ship or from belowdecks?

“Do pardon the gawkers. We don’t get many visitors,” Fluke explained.

The table was neatly set for five with a purple coral centerpiece surrounded by mismatched salvaged teacups and saucers holding coils of red seaweed.

Daisy pointed and whispered to Jesse and Emmy: “Look-it, you guys.
Tea
weed.”

There were no seats or chairs at the table. Yar floated before one of the cups and pinched a bit of
seaweed between his finny fingers. He nibbled at it. “Ah! An excellent harvest, Cap’n!” Yar declared to Fluke.

“Do try it,” Fluke urged the others. “It’s fresh, imported from the Wide Sargasso Sea.”

“Isn’t the Sargasso Sea thousands of miles away from here?” Jesse asked.

“Oh, nothing is very far away from
The Golden Dragon
, as we like to say,” said Fluke. “Isn’t that so, Yar?”

“Rather,”
said Yar as, with crooked fin, he lifted the cup to his lips. “Well, pip-pip cheerio, and down the hatch!” He emptied the contents into his mouth. “I say! Curiously refreshing!”

Emmy buried her face in her cup and gnashed the seaweed in her fangs, shaking her head back and forth and making a fierce, snarling noise as she did it. Daisy cleared her throat and cast about in vain for a subject to distract their hosts from Emmy’s ghastly table manners, but their hosts merely looked away politely.

Jesse found it hard to believe that this refined sea horse was the same creature who had headbutted the water zombie. Maybe Daisy was wrong. Maybe all kelpies looked alike.

Jesse lifted his cup and tried not to slurp. The tea weed was really good, bursting with fruity flavor,
unlike anything he had ever eaten. “Not bad,” he said, smacking his lips. He looked around the table and fixed his gaze on Yar. “Now, we know Fluke here is a kelpie, but what exactly are you? Not to be rude or anything.”