Bad Mermaids Make Waves Read online

  Also by Sibéal Pounder

  Witch Wars

  Witch Switch

  In loving memory of my granddad Paddy: fishing buddy, comedy hero, excessive decorator of ice creams

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: In a Fish Tank on Land

  Chapter 2: Crabmail!

  Chapter 3: So Long, Legs

  Chapter 4: No Legs Beyond This Point

  Chapter 5: Carp

  Chapter 6: To the Secret Entrance

  Chapter 7: The Mermaid with the Lobster Tail

  Chapter 8: Piranha Nails

  Chapter 9: Whale or Hat?

  Chapter 10: Throne Room

  Chapter 11: Clam Car

  Chapter 12: The Kelp Forest

  Chapter 13: It’s You

  Chapter 14: Hammerhead Heights

  Chapter 15: Inside Jawella’s

  Chapter 16: Crime

  Chapter 17: The Ommy Show!

  Chapter 18: Sandcastles

  Chapter 19: Silvia Snapp’s Alibi

  Chapter 20: The Mysterious Mermaid

  Chapter 21 : Fish Lips

  Chapter 22: Curly Clips, the Hairdresser

  Chapter 23: Um . . .

  Chapter 24: To Anchor Rock

  Chapter 25: Goda Gar’s Yacht House

  Chapter 26: Brilliant Beattie

  Chapter 27: Ommy Flips

  Chapter 28: A Fishnap

  Chapter 29: Lobstertown

  Chapter 30: The Lobsterdome

  Chapter 31: Disaster

  Chapter 32: The Palace Mermaids

  Chapter 33: The Merry Mary (Oh Cod)

  Chapter 34: BUT . . .

  Authors Note

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Prologue

  Mermaids have been flopping all over this planet for a really long time. And yet no submarine, ship, or sinking scientist has ever discovered their whopping world.

  Only mermaids know how to get to the Hidden Lagoon. Deep down beneath the waves, just past the NO LEGS BEYOND THIS POINT sign, is a small shell, and inside that shell is a keypad made of old pearly buttons. To open the gates to the Lagoon and all the cities within it, all you have to do is type in the secret code. The code that for thousands of years has kept mermaids hidden from human sight—

  The unbreakable!

  The UNFAKEABLE!

  Ihavenolegs.

  1

  In a Fish Tank on Land

  “May I borrow a pen, please?”

  “A pen?” an excitable lady squawked, waving her arms elaborately like someone swatting at least forty flies. She tottered over to the fish tank, her large feet clad in spotted socks and squeezed into a pair of stilettos.

  “Yes, please, a pen,” came the tired voice from somewhere in the tank’s murky water. An elegant hand, fingers adorned with pearl and crystal rings and a wrist stacked with swirly shell brace lets, flopped out of the tank.

  “WE’RE COMMUNICATING!” the excitable lady wheezed with joy. She tossed a pen into the tank. “Me and you. You and me. You and your fin. Me and my socks.”

  There was a sigh from inside the tank.

  “I heard that!” the excitable lady snapped. “I’ve installed very sensitive microphones in that tank.”

  There was a deliberately loud burp.

  “And that,” the excitable lady groaned. “Oh, I can’t wait to show you to the world! I’ll be famous. They won’t believe how I got you! NOW GIVE THE PEN BACK.” She banged on the glass before reaching a hand in and wrenching the pen from the mermaid’s grasp. “You’re mine now, Arabella Cod.”

  “No!” Arabella Cod gasped. “I hadn’t finished!”

  The excitable lady squealed as she caught a flash of pearly fin. “What did you write?!”

  “Nothing,” Arabella Cod said quickly. “I . . . just wanted to hold it.”

  The excitable lady twirled around the room, laughing uncontrollably. “WHAT A DAY!” she roared, punching the air. “ARABELLA COD, THE MER MAID QUEEN, MY PRISONER FOREVER!” A tiny crab hastily heaved itself out of the tank and scuttled quickly along behind her, carrying a sloppy lump of seaweed.

  The excitable lady twirled in its direction.

  It froze.

  She twirled on her heel once more to face the tank, peering eagerly inside and stroking the glass affectionately. The crab took its chance and scuttled out the door.

  “Don’t stop until you get there!” Arabella Cod shouted after it. “I’m sure they’ll figure it out! They have to . . .”

  The excitable lady turned to the door. But the crab was gone.

  “Who on earth are you shouting at, you strange lump of fish?” she spat.

  But Arabella Cod said nothing.

  Failing to see that crab would be the biggest mistake the excitable lady ever made.

  2

  Crabmail!

  “CRABMAIL!” Beattie roared as she slipped her feet into a pair of purple wedges and clattered out the door, letting it bang loudly behind her. Her friends Zelda and Mimi were sprawled on the sofa, napping. On a night like this! It was just like them to be dribbling and snoring away on crabmail night.

  She raced along the promenade, the warm California breeze whipping around her plaited hair. She took it all in. The jingle of shop doors closing, the smell of hot pavement and plastic pool toys.

  “Nice night for a run!” a girl called out from the little lopsided icecream stand that sat in front of an old, sprawling factory. Her creamy complex ion was decorated with swirls of sunburn. She waved a claw like hand, bent from constantly holding ice-cream cones.

  Beattie smiled and waved back as she tore along the wooden pier, each faded plank decorated with carvings and doodles—names, insults, a little crab drawing Beattie had carved on her first day there. She leaped and landed in the soft sand, plunked herself down, and pulled her skirt over her temporary knees.

  It wasn’t there. Not yet.

  “Well, I tell you, I can’t wait to get rid of these cumbersome lollipops!” Zelda said, slapping her legs and making Mimi snort. Zelda had gotten into the habit of using human words like lollipop to incorrectly describe stuff like legs. “And I’ve only had the lollipops for two weeks.”

  The two of them joined Beattie on the beach, sloppy hot dogs in hand. Although they were twins, they looked nothing alike. Mimi was the shorter of the two, clad in gold sandals and topped with messy hair pulled into two loose plaits.

  “Well, hello there, good sir,” she said, nodding at a folded sun lounger.

  Beattie and Zelda both stared blankly at her.

  “What?” Mimi whispered. “You don’t know what can hear you on land.”

  “Usually just the stuff with ears,” Zelda whispered back, taking a big bite of her hot dog and sending a spray of mustard onto her ripped jeans.

  Zelda was taller, with short, perfectly groomed hair, flicked for effect, and eyes so packed with mischief her eyelids looked like they were straining to contain it all. Her nails were short, bitten obsessively. Beattie had known them both forever and the three of them did everything together, which was why Beattie had managed to convince them to do a summer on land, with legs.

  “Where’s the crabmail?” Beattie said, pacing back and forth by the water’s edge.

  Zelda looked at Mimi, who poured some sand on her hot dog and took a bite.

  “That’s not what humans put on hot dogs,” said Zelda.

  Mimi eagerly dipped her hot dog in the sand and took another bite. “If I could, I’d tell the humans that sand is the ketchup of the sea! But then they’d know I was a mermaid, so I can’t.”

  “Wait,” Beattie said, squinting in the darkness. “There it is!”

  Zelda rolled her eyes. “I
’ve never seen someone so excited to read Clamzine.”

  Beattie waved a hand dismissively. “It’s our only link to home right now, Zelda. And my mom’s latest adventure article will be in it!”

  A crab scuttled up the beach, crookedly and with urgency, holding a chunk of seaweed care fully as though it were cradling a sloppy baby. It placed it gently on Beattie’s big toe.

  “Thank you, madam,” she said, yanking the loose sheets of seaweed out of the slippery envelope.

  CLAMZINE

  The number-one mermaid news and entertainment zine!

  SUNKEN SHIP, AHOY!

  Belinda Shelton, the bravest mermaid this Lagoon has ever seen, is currently on her biggest adventure yet in the dangerous, human-infested Upper Realms. Read the latest diary entry from our roving travel writer.

  “Today I stumbled across a rusty old sunken ship in an area that the humans call the Atlantic, but we know as Upper Realm 4, the rumored location of the hidden mermaid city of Octopolli. This is the least explored of all our upper realms.

  “My morale is high. My face is freezing.

  “It is the most magnificent of all the ships. I had a lot of fun playing on its bow, arms out-stretched as if I was in—I don’t know—a famous film. Decaying curtains hang from the windows, tin plates sit stacked in the cupboards.

  “The local eels are very friendly and the water, while cold, is exceptionally calm.”

  TOP THING TO DO IN THE AREA:

  Arm wrestle an eel.*

  BELINDA SAYS: A MUST SEE. Or if you prefer: A MUST SEA.

  IF YOU LIKED THIS, YOU’LL LOVE: our Lagoon’s very own shipwreck, the Merry Mary. It was sunk and claimed by the infamous former Mermaid Queen, Mary Ruster, thousands of years ago. Unfortunately, it’s probably haunted.

  NEXT STOP: Upper Realm 2, the rumored location of the mermaids of the hidden Crocodile Kingdom.

  *Warning: If you lose, you become property of the eel, according to Upper Realm 4 arm-wrestling laws.

  Beattie hugged the Clamzine tightly. Sometimes she wished she and her mom were back in the Lagoon, but her mom was on one of her epic and unnecessarily dangerous adventures in the Upper Realms (which humans call oceans), and Beattie wasn’t due to give up the legs for two more months.

  “Wait!” Zelda said, reaching into the soggy seaweed envelope. “Oh wow, we’ve got a letter from the big chief herself!” She coughed, preparing to do her best impression of Arabella Cod.

  “Don’t do the impression,” Mimi said.

  “I’m doing it,” Zelda insisted, in a voice so high Beattie winced.

  Dear Beattie Shelton and the twins, Mimi and

  Zelda Swish,

  It is me, Arabella Cod, Queen of the Lagoon.

  Today marks your final day of life with legs. I hope this summer has been an informative experience for you and the catering we provided was satisfactory.

  As you know, I put this summer initiative in place so every young mermaid would stop complaining that they wanted legs, swim ming around singing songs about it, and just generally being insufferable. And as you know, very few mermaids have opted to keep the legs, and most choose instead to return home and embrace their fins.

  Many find the experience of legs to be traumatic: there is tripping, the bizarre big toe (why is it so much bigger than the others? We may never know), and you can’t out swim a shark (rest in peace, Katie Clearwater, who learned that lesson the hard way).

  “Final day? But we’ve only been here for two weeks!” Beattie cried. “This letter is months early! How unfair.”

  “And that Katie Clearwater story about the shark is definitely made up . . . isn’t it?” Zelda asked.

  Neither of them answered, so Zelda slowly read on.

  I do hope that this has now categorically confirmed in your minds that fins are the way forward. As my ancestor once said, “Finfou tabolt magegga onetup,” which roughly translates as “Obviously fins are better, idiots.”

  I assume your families have kept in close contact with you via crabmail, so there is no need to update you in detail on what has been happening in the Lagoon. I trust that you will begin your journey home to our glorious capital, Swirlyshell, at midnight without fail. Please see directions below.

  Yours leglessly,

  A. Cod

  Beattie picked up the letter and sniffed it. It smelled strange. She wrinkled her nose. Something was very wrong. . . . She rubbed the instructions with her finger and held it up to inspect it. Pen ink. That was what the smell was. Mermaids used squid ink. Beattie gawped at the stinking ink on her fingers.

  “You’re not going to lose your fingers too, just the toes,” Mimi said.

  “I know that!” Beattie said.

  “Then why are you staring at your fingers and looking all distraught?” Zelda asked.

  Beattie stared at the words scrawled in pen and rubbed her head, her fingers twisting in one of her plaits, making it loose and frizzy. She looked from the sea to the crabmail and back again. “This is not good. It looks just like a standard letter, one that Arabella Cod would send to every mermaid who ever does a summer on land with legs, and the instructions say to travel to the Lagoon from the pier, following a small luminous fish. And she gives us the pass word for the Lagoon.”

  “Right,” Zelda said. “And that’s strange because . . . ?”

  Beattie held the crabmail closer to her. “Arabella Cod has crossed out the usual instructions and written new ones. The new instructions are in pen ink.”

  The three of them huddled together and read on.

  You must enter through the secret back pipe entrance to the Lagoon. It is of the utmost importance that you do not draw attention to the fact you ever left.

  There are BAD MERMAIDS on the loose and you are the only ones who can stop them.

  “Bad mermaids?” Zelda laughed.

  “Oh, look, she’s written more,” Mimi chirped.

  I have been fish napped. You must go to

  A spindly line of pen ink trailed off the page. Beattie flipped the seaweed over. “She didn’t finish!”

  Zelda tutted. “Lazy.”

  3

  So Long, Legs

  “And what’s this?” Zelda said, pulling another couple of seaweed sheets from the envelope. “A new magazine?”

  Beattie huddled close to her so she could read it, while Mimi went wandering off toward the sea, trying to strike up a conversation with a discarded straw that was blowing around the beach.

  THE SCRIBBLED SQUID

  We are new and news less!

  Well, aren’t you just the luckiest mermaid in town, because today you are reading the first ever issue of The Scribbled Squid ! We decided to start The Scribbled Squid as a rival to Clamzine, which is full of news and facts and nice things. Instead, we promise to write gossip and lies and things you should definitely buy. If you have a gossip, a lie, or a thing to buy, send it to us! You can reach us by crabmail at The Scribbled Squid, 2 Smug Street, Oysterdale, The Hidden Lagoon.

  Now, our first article: ARABELLA COD HAS UGLY ELBOWS—and is also in charge of everything, but let’s not talk about that, let’s only talk about her like she’s a pair of elbows.

  By Parry Poach

  “I hate The Scribbled Squid already,” Beattie said, looking up from the magazine just as there was an almighty flash of light.

  Mimi flopped about by the water’s edge, her hair morphing from blond back to its multi colored glory, her stripy fin slapping the sand.

  “It’s happening! We’re morphing back!” Beattie screamed as she dashed over to push Mimi into the sea before a human noticed.

  “Don’t worry,” Zelda said, coolly scrunching up The Scribbled Squid and tossing it over her shoulder. “I’m sure the humans will just think she’s one of those multi colored pigeon things.”

  “A parrot!” Beattie shouted. “You mean a parrot!”

  The wind was picking up and the sea seemed to shake to life, the waves building and sending a frothy spray acro
ss Beattie’s purple plat forms, which now lay discarded on the sand, along with Zelda’s scruffy sneakers and Mimi’s gold sandals.

  “So long, legs,” Beattie spluttered as she spun madly about in the water, her view a blur of fuzzy sand and sea. She steadied herself and looked down at the long fin dangling below her. Her scales were back. Her hair glowed, no longer brown but bright purple. She shook her head from left to right and dived a little further down to where Zelda and Mimi were waiting. A luminous fish hovered in front of them.

  “Well, come on, you two,” Beattie said as the fish took off. “Arabella Cod said we’re the only ones who can stop the bad mermaids. Do you think that means we’re special somehow? She chose us, of all the millions of mermaids! Us.”

  “This has gone straight to your head, hasn’t it?” Zelda groaned.

  “Good evening,” Mimi said with a bow as they shot past a shoal of tuna.

  There was no evidence that fish actually under stood what mermaids said, but it was considered polite to speak to them, just in case. This was outlined in Arabella Cod’s first book on the subject, entitled Fish: A OneWay Conversation, and occasionally mentioned in her second book, Rocks: Even Less Talkative Than Fish.

  They glided down through the Upper Realms, passing a rocky canyon, clusters of glowing jelly fish parting as they went.

  “Do you think there really are more secret mermaid cities hidden in the rocks, not just the ones in our Hidden Lagoon?” Beattie mused. “My mom is convinced it’s true.”

  “Wish they did exist, then they’d have a café we could stop at on the way. I’m as thirsty as an elevator,” Zelda said, lolling her head.

  “Oh, oh, and I wonder if Arabella Cod announced her new SHOAL before she was fish napped,” Beattie said. “It’s my favorite event.”

  The SHOAL was made up of the Mermaid Queen, Arabella Cod, and her four chosen mermaids, who ruled in the north, south, east, and west of the Lagoon. Swirlyshell, the capital, sat smack bang in the middle. Every year, Arabella Cod chose different mermaids for the SHOAL, and every year, mermaids obsessively tried to guess who the four other mermaids would be.