Emily Windsnap and the Siren's Secret by Liz Kessler Page A

like curled-up hedgehogs. Black wavy rays with fins like Dracula’s cloak passed beneath us, tickling the sand as they slid by.
    “Miss Merlin told us a bit more about the lost sirens,” Shona said as we swam.
    “What did she tell you?” I asked, glad for a change of subject.
    “She thinks she knows roughly where they were last seen. She said that after class last week, she looked into it more and she figured out some coordinates that no one’s ever worked out before, so I put them into my splishometer.”
    “And? What did it tell you?”
    “It’s about five miles away — hardly any distance,” she said, so excited that her eyes looked about ready to pop out of her face.
    I thought about Brightport — people waking up and buying their local paper, all eager to catch a mermaid and win a reward. My photograph on page two. I shuddered and swam ahead. “Come on,” I said. “What are we waiting for?”

    It felt as though we’d been swimming for hours. The sea had grown colder and deeper and darker. Lone, sleek, gray fish slid by, weaving among seaweed that trailed up from the seabed. Shoals of flat round fish swam toward us and then away again, flickering like mirrors in sunlight as they flashed by.
    Ahead of us, below, all around us, sea life went about its business, oblivious to the two intruders swimming all around looking for something that might be no more than an ocean myth.
    A lion fish with ornate markings around its jowls stared through us as we passed. A dancing crab with stick-thin legs jiggled sideways across our path. Ferns opened and closed with the rhythm of the sea. We swam on.
    “Are you sure you put the right numbers in?” I asked. “We must have swum more than five miles by now.”
    “It’s got to be around here somewhere,” Shona said, consulting her splishometer. “Unless Miss Merlin got it wrong.”
    Which I was starting to think she must have. I didn’t say anything, though. Shona loves an adventure more than anything, and I didn’t want to take it away from her. And anyway, I didn’t have anything better to do. There was no way I could go back to Brightport yet, and I wasn’t exactly welcome in Shiprock. The best thing I could do was find the lost sirens and plead with them to let me be lost with them.
    “How about we split up?” I suggested. “You go that way.” I pointed over to my right. Long, thick trails of seaweed stretched up like thick ropes. “I’ll go this way.” To my left, pink spongy fingers reached upward, open and outstretched as though they were silently begging. Deep, jagged rocks lay all around us, purple and green twigs and sticks littering every crevice. “Give it ten minutes and then meet back up again,” I said.
    Shona pointed to a moss-covered rock with a tree growing horizontally out from its side. “Meet you over there,” she said.
    “Ten minutes,” I repeated.
    Shona nodded. “Good luck.”
    Shona swam away to the right, and I swam off the other way.
    Please let me find them, please let me find them, I thought as I swam, scanning every bit of rock and seaweed I could see, just in case there was a secret entrance hidden inside it. Please don’t make me go back to Brightport till it’s safe.
    I swam across reeds like bunches of thick-cut spaghetti, big leafy plants like giant cabbages, bright red rocks, shining like mottled marble. A long eel, green with white spots, slithered in and out of the reeds, poking its head into holes, then slithering out again and slinking away. Two round fish smooched past in a perfectly synchronized dance. Everything moved slowly along. Nothing was in a hurry down here.
    And there were no lost sirens, either.
    I was about to head back to meet Shona when something stopped me.
    A current was tugging at me. It reminded me of what happened at Allpoints Island if you swam out too far and got caught in the Bermuda Triangle. A shiver flickered through me like a wriggly fish squiggling through my body. What was it?