The Tail of Emily Windsnap (14 page)

You don’t realize what it is at first. It feels like the end of the world, stretching up and down and across, farther than you can see in every direction. I shielded my eyes from the brightness. It reminded me of the school dance we had at our graduation at the end of last year. They’d borrowed a machine that threw disco lights across the room, swirling around and changing color in time to the music. The Great Mermer Reef was a bit like that, but about a million times bigger and brighter, and the colors swirled and flashed even more.

And somehow, we had to get past it! It was the only way to the prison.

As we got closer, the swirling lights became laser-beam rays, shooting out at every angle from jagged layers of coral heaped upon coral.

Sharp, spiky rocks were piled all the way up to the surface and higher, with soft, rubbery bushes buried in every crevice in the brightest purples and yellows and greens you’ve ever seen. A moving bush like a silver Christmas tree flapped toward us. Two spotted shrimp dragged a starfish along the seabed. All around us, fish and plants bustled and rustled about. But we were stuck — in a fortress of bubbles and bushes and rocks. We couldn’t even climb over the top; it was way too high and rough. Above the water, the coral shot diamond rays where it sparkled with stones like cut glass. I was never, ever going to find him.

“It’s hopeless,” I said, trying desperately not to cry. It was like that darn game about going on a bear hunt. You keep coming across things that you’ve got to get past. “We can’t get over it; we can’t get under it.”

Shona was by my side, her eyes bright like the coral. “We’ll have to go through it!” she exclaimed, her words gurgling away in multicolored bubbles. “There’s bound to be a gap somewhere. Come on.” She pulled at my arm and dove deeper.

We weaved in and out of spaghetti-fringed tubes and swam into bushes with tentacles that opened wide enough to swim inside. But it was the same thing every time: a dead end.

I perched on a rock, ready to give up, while Shona scaled the coral, tapping it with her fingers like a builder testing the thickness of a wall. A huge shoal of fish that had been sheltering in a cave suddenly darted out as one, writhing and spinning like a kaleidoscope pattern. I stared, transfixed.

“I think I’ve found something.” Shona’s voice jolted me out of my trance. She was scratching at the coral, and I swam closer to see what she’d found.

“Look!” She scrabbled some more. Bits of coral crumbled away like dust in her fingers. She pulled me around and made me look closer. “What can you see?” she asked.

“I can’t see anything.”

“Look harder.”

“What at?”

Shona pushed her face close to mine and pointed into the jagged hole she’d scraped away at. She pushed her fist into it and pulled out some more dust; it floated away, dancing around us as she scraped.

“It’s a weak point,” she said. “This stuff’s millions of years old. I’m sure they have people who check the perimeter and maintain it and stuff, but there’s always going to be a bit of it that they miss.”

I pushed my own hand into the hole and scrabbled at it with my fingertips as though I were digging a hole into sand. It felt different from the rest of the wall. Softer. I pushed farther.

Scrabbling and scraping, we’d soon scooped all the way up to our shoulders, white dust clouds billowing around us.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Make it wider. Big enough to swim into.”

We worked silently at the hole. The coral didn’t glint and glisten with colors once we got inside it. We scraped and scratched in darkness.

Eventually, as my arms were going numb and my whole body was aching and itching from the dust particles swirling all around us, Shona grabbed my arm. I looked up and saw it. The tiniest flicker of light ahead of us.

“We’re through,” I gasped.

“Nearly. Come on.”

Filled with hope, I punched my fist deep into the hole, scratching my hand as I pulled at the wall. The hole grew bigger and rounder, eventually large enough to get through. I turned to Shona.

“Go on. You first,” she urged. “You’re smaller than me.”

I scrunched my arms tightly against my body and flicked my tail gently. Then, scratching my arms and tail on the sides, I slid through the hole.

Once on the other side, I turned and carried on scraping so Shona could get through as well. But nothing came away in my hands. No dust. I cut my fingers against jagged rock.

“I can’t make it bigger,” I called through the hole.

“Me, neither,” Shona replied, her voice echoing inside the dark cavern I’d left behind.

“Try to squeeze through.”

Shona’s head came close to the hole. “It’s my shoulders. I’m too big,” she said. “I’ll never manage it.”

“Should I pull you?”

“I just can’t do it.” Shona backed away from the gap. “I’ll get stuck — and then you won’t be able to get back through.”

“I can’t do it without you.” My voice shook as it rippled through the water to her.

“I’ll wait here!”

“Promise?”

“Promise. I’ll wait at the end of the tunnel.”

I took a deep breath. “This is it, then,” I said, poking my head into the opening.

“Good luck.”

“Yeah.” I backed away from the hole again. “And thanks,” I added. “For everything. You’re the bestest best friend anyone could want.”

Shona’s eyes shone brighter in the darkness. “
You
are, you mean.”

There was
no way
I’d been as good a friend as she had. I didn’t tell her that, though — I didn’t want her to change her mind!

Then I turned away from the hole. Leaving the Great Mermer Reef behind me, I swam toward a dark maze of caves covered in sharp, jagged pieces of coral.

“I’m going to see my dad,” I whispered, trying out the unfamiliar thought, and desperately hoping it could be true.

I swam cautiously away from the reef, glancing nervously around me as I moved ever closer to the prison. A solitary manta ray slid along the ground, flapping its fins like a cape. Small packs of moody-looking fish with open jaws threaded slowly through the silent darkness, glancing at me as they passed. Ahead of me, a barrel of thick blackness rotated slowly. Then suddenly, it parted! Thousands of tiny fish scattered and reformed into two spinning balls. Beyond them, a dark gray shadow, bigger than me and shaped like a submarine, moved silently between them.

I held my breath as the shark passed by.

As I drew nearer to the prison, the water grew darker. Dodging between rocks and weeds, I finally reached the prison door. It looked like the wide-open mouth of a gigantic whale, with sharp white teeth filling the gap. In front of the door, two creatures silently glided from side to side, slow and mean, with a beady eye on each side of their mallet-shaped heads. Hammerhead sharks.

I’d
never
get past them. Maybe there was another entrance.

I remembered the note in Dad’s file. “East Wing,” it had said. It was a shame there wasn’t one of those
You are here
signs, like you get at the mall.

I figured I’d been heading west since I’d set off from Brightport, because I’d been chasing the setting sun all the way. Shona and I had turned right from the boat to head toward the reef, which meant I should now be facing north.

I turned right again to go east. In front of me was a long tunnel attached to the main cave. It reminded me of those service stations on the highway — the kind on the median that join the two sides together. Apart from the fact that this was made of rock, that is, and it didn’t appear to have any windows, and was about fifty feet under the sea. The East Wing?

Swimming carefully from one lump of coral to another and hiding behind every rock I could find, I made it to the tunnel. But there was no entrance. I swam all the way along it, right to the end. Still no opening.

The front gate must be the only way in. I’d come this far for nothing! There was
no way
I’d get past those sharks.

I started to swim back along the other side of the tunnel. Perhaps there’d be a doorway on this side.

But as I made my way along the slimy walls, I heard a swishing noise behind me. The sharks! Without stopping to think, I flicked my tail and zoomed straight down the side so I was underneath the tunnel itself. Pressing myself up against the wall, I wrapped a huge piece of seaweed around my body. Two hammerheads sliced past without stopping, and I inched my way back up again, scaling the edge with my hands and looking around me all the way. A minute later, I noticed something I hadn’t seen earlier. There was a gap. I could see an oval shape about half my height and slightly wider than my shoulders with three thick, gray bars running down it. They looked like whalebone. The nearest thing I’d found to a way in — it had to be worth a try.

I tugged at the bars. Rock solid. I tried to swim between them. I could get my head through, but my shoulders were too big to follow. This wasn’t going to work.

Unless I swam through on my side. . . .

I tried again, coming at the bars sideways. But it was no good. I couldn’t squeeze my face through the gap. I never realized my nose stuck out that much!

I held on to the bars, flicking my tail as I thought. Then it hit me. How could I have been so stupid? I turned to face them. Just like before, I edged my head through the bars, as slowly and carefully as I could. All I needed to do now was flip onto my side and pull the rest of my body through.

But what if I got stuck — my head on one side, my body on the other, caught forever with my neck in these railings?

Before I had time to talk myself out of it, I swiveled my body onto its side. I banged my chin, and my neck rubbed on the bars — but I’d done it! I swished my tail as gently as possible and gradually eased my body through the gap.

I thought back to the time when we were changing to go swimming and how I hadn’t wanted anyone to see my skinny body. Maybe being a little sticklike wasn’t such a bad thing, after all.

I rubbed my eyes as I got used to the darkness. I’d landed in a tiny round bubble of a room, full of seaweed mops hanging on fish hooks all around me.

I swam to the door and turned a yellow knob. The door creaked open. Which way? The corridor was a long, narrow cave. Closing the door behind me, I noticed a metal plate in the top corner.
NW: N 874.
North Wing? I must have gotten my calculations wrong!

I swam along the silent corridor, passing closed doors on either side.
N 867, N 865.
Each one was the same — a big round plate of metal, like a submarine door; a brass knob below a tiny round window in the center. No glass, just fishbone bars dividing each window into an empty game of tic-tac-toe.

Should I look through one?

As I approached the next door, I swished up to the window and peeked in. A merman with a huge hairy stomach and long black hair in a ponytail swam over to the window. “Can I help you?” he asked, an amused glint in his eye. He had a ship tattooed on his arm; a fat brown tail flickered behind him.

“Sorry!” I flipped myself over and darted away. This was impossible! I wasn’t even in the right wing. And there were scary criminals behind those doors! Which was only to be expected, I suppose. This was a prison, after all.

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 swam around his cell, quickly putting his jewelry things away. He picked up some magazines off the floor and shoved them into a crack in the wall; he threw a vest under his bed. “No place for a young girl.”

Then he swam back and came really close to me; he held his hand up to my face, and I forced myself not to move.

He cradled the side of my face in his palm, stroking my dimple with his thumb, and wiped the tears away as they mingled with the seawater.

“Emily,” he whispered at last. It was him. My dad!

A second later, I clutched him as tightly as I could, and he was holding me in his strong arms. “A mermaid as well,” he murmured into my hair.

“Only some of the time,” I said.

“Figures.”

He loosened his arms and held me away from him. “Where’s your mother?” he asked suddenly. “Is she here? Is she all right?” He dropped his arms to his sides. “Has she met someone else?”

I inched closer to him. “Of course she hasn’t met anyone else!”

“My Penny.” He smiled.

“Penny?”

“My lucky penny. That’s what I always called her. Guess it wasn’t too accurate in the end.” Then he smiled. “But she hasn’t forgotten me?”

“Um . . .” How was I supposed to answer that! “She still loves you.” Well, she did, didn’t she? She must, or she wouldn’t have been so upset when she remembered everything. “And she hasn’t
really
forgotten you — at least, not anymore.”

“Not anymore?”

“Listen, I’ll tell you everything.” And I did. I told him about the memory drugs and Mr. Beeston and about what had happened when I took Mom to Rainbow Rocks. And about our journey to the Great Mermer Reef.

“So she’s here?” he broke in. “She’s that close, right now?”

I nodded. He flattened his hair down, spun around in circles, and swam away from me.

“Dad.”
Dad! I still couldn’t get used to that.
“She’s waiting for me. She can’t get into the prison.” I followed him over to his table. “She can’t swim,” I added softly.

He burst out laughing as he turned to face me. “Can’t swim? What are you talking about? She’s the smoothest, sleekest swimmer you could find — excluding mermaids, of course.”

My mom? A smooth, sleek swimmer?
I laughed.

“I guess that disappeared along with the memory,” he said sadly. “We swam all over. She even took scuba lessons so she could join me underwater. We went to that old shipwreck. That’s where I proposed, you know.”

“She definitely still loves you,” I said again, thinking of the poem and even more sure now.

“Yeah.” He swam over to the table by his bed. I followed him.

“What’s that?” I asked. There was something pinned onto the wall with a fish hook. A poem.