Not Quite a Mermaid (4 page)

and years and no one has ever got her one. Poor Gran.' She looked at Sam's and Sasha's uncertain faces. ‘I bet if we got her one, she wouldn't stop smiling for…for a whole
year
!'

‘I suppose it would make her happy,' Sam said, looking tempted.

‘Sam!' Sasha exclaimed. ‘We can't go!'

Electra saw that Sam was weakening. ‘Just think of Gran, all happy and smiling,' she said to him. ‘And if we do see the sea snake, well, it's only a tiny, baby one and we'll easily be able to swim away from it…'

‘All right. I'll come!' Sam decided.

He swam to the entrance and joined Electra and Splash.

‘Wait! What about me?' Sasha wailed. ‘I don't want to be left here on my own!'

‘Come with us then,' urged Electra.

‘Yes, go on, Sasha!' Splash said. ‘Pleeeeease!'

‘Oh, all right!' Sasha said. ‘But we just go there and back,' she added quickly to Electra. ‘No exploring. No trying to see the sea snake. No…'

But Electra wasn't listening. ‘Come on!' she cried, diving out through the shell curtain. ‘Let's go!'

Electra and the others swam down through the turquoise water. Shoals of stripy orange clownfish and silvery angelfish swooshed around them. Electra twirled around in the glowing cloud of fish. Excitement was buzzing
through her. This was going to be fun!

As they got closer to the deepest caves, they saw huge clams with open mouths. White and pink anemones covered the rocks, their fronds waving in the water. The water changed from turquoise to indigo. Electra knew it never got really dark in the waters around Mermaid Island. It was

different, though, out in the deep sea beyond the reef. There the water got as black as the night sky. Electra had swum out there a few times and had seen all sorts of weird fish with sharp fangs, gulper eels and hungry sharks.

The deepest caves in the reef around Mermaid Island were usually safe, although sometimes dangerous creatures like the giant sea snake did manage to find their way in.

But it's just a baby sea snake
, Electra told herself.
It won't be able to hurt us much and we'll probably be able to swim away from it. I bet we won't see it anyway
.

They reached the entrance to the caves. A rocky barrier had been put up by the adult merpeople to keep the snake out of the waters on the inside of the reef in case it did find its way through the caves and tunnels. It didn't take Electra long to pull out enough rocks so that there was a hole big enough for them all to swim through.

‘We must be quick,' said Sasha. ‘What if Dad comes back early and finds we're not at home?'

‘We won't be long,' Electra reassured her. ‘We'll just swim to the first cave, scoop up a sea mouse and take it home. Come on!'

They swam through the hole and into the tunnel that linked the caves. It was quite dark and Electra swam to the bottom of the tunnel and, touching it, said,
‘From the deeps of the sea, mermaid fire come to me!'

A stream of glowing green mermaid fire flooded into her hands and formed into a ball. Electra placed some of it in the tunnel so that they could see. As they swam along she put a ball of fire down every so often so that they could see through the gloom. However, to Electra's surprise, there wasn't actually much to see at all.

In the first cave they came to, although there were spiny sea urchins and a carpet of pale anemones, there were no sea mice. The sea mice could usually be seen swimming along the bottom of the sea, their bright eyes darting from side to side, their coats fluffing up in the water. But today there wasn't a single one.

‘Where have all the sea mice gone?' Splash said in surprise.

‘I don't know.' Electra glanced around. ‘There are no other fish either.'

‘And no sea horses or crabs,' Sam pointed out.

Electra frowned. Usually there were lots of fish and small creatures in the
caves. ‘I wonder where they have all gone?'

‘Maybe they're further in,' Splash suggested.

They swam further along the tunnels but every cave they came to was completely empty.

‘I don't like this,' Sasha said, looking worried. ‘It's like the fish and other creatures are hiding from something.'

Electra's skin began to prickle. Sasha was right. Something didn't feel quite normal.

‘I think we should go back,' Sasha said nervously.

Electra hesitated. She
really
wanted to get a sea mouse for Gran. ‘Let's just go on to one more cave…'

Sasha interrupted her with a squeal.

‘Electra! Look!'

Electra swung round and gasped. A black and red sea snake was swimming round the bend in the tunnel ahead. It was about as long as Electra's arm from her elbow to her hand.

Sam yelled.

‘Quick!' Sasha cried, panicking. ‘Come on!'

‘Wait!' Electra exclaimed. ‘Look how small it is! We don't need to run away from that.'

Sam and Sasha paused in mid flight. ‘I guess it is really small,' Sam said hesitantly.

‘I'm not scared of it,' Electra declared.