Bad Mermaids Page 9

  ‘I CAN HELP WITH ANYTHING,’ Gronnyupple said cheerily as she swam back over to them. ‘Thanks for letting me make a call,’ she added, giving a thumbs up to the waiter.

  ‘Not before we find my mother,’ Paris said.

  Zelda leaned over the bar and handed the waiter the crabagram. ‘This is a freebie – don’t listen to any weird messages like this, OK? It’s a hoax.’

  The waiter read it carefully and then rushed into the back room and closed the door. There was a sploshing sound and soup dribbled out around the door frame.

  ‘He made the venomous soup,’ Zelda mouthed to the others. ‘Unbelievable.’

  ‘Where would your mum go around here?’ Beattie asked Paris.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I know that she wanted to dig things up for her Mermaid World – she needs landmarks, mermaids for tanks. The crabagrams were a distraction, but she’s probably well on her way to phase two of her plan. We’re one step behind her when we need to be one step ahead.’

  They fell silent. The phone started ringing and the waiter answered it.

  ‘Right you are, six Jellywiches for Hilma at the Redmelt coming right up.’

  ‘Did he just say Hilma?’ Zelda asked.

  Beattie leapt up. ‘Wait, Susan Silkensocks is planning to dig things up. The Kingdom is far too huge to fit in her factory at home, so she’ll have to be selective. That means we just need to figure out what would appeal to her. What would she go for?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know!’ Paris said, diving off her stool and swimming around in frustration. ‘This is all my fault!’ She swam outside and flopped on to a rock.

  ‘Paris!’ Beattie said, following her and flopping down next to her. ‘It’s not your fault your mother is making terrible choices.’

  Paris felt the tears streaming down her face. She looked up, as if by doing so they’d dribble back into her eyes.

  And then she saw it.

  ‘F,’ she said, a smile spreading across her face. ‘That F!’

  Beattie was staring up at it too. A giant billboard with an ornate F on it. The small print read:

  FLUBIÉRE: Stuff for Your Face.

  ‘That F has followed me around my whole childhood!’

  ‘OK, you have completely lost me,’ Beattie said. ‘That’s a mermaid make-up brand.’

  ‘She has a box with that exact F on it. She’s obsessed with it – she said a mermaid gave it to her. It means more to her than anything,’ Paris rambled. ‘She was here earlier, so she would’ve seen this billboard too. Plus there were promotional pufferfish for Flubiére on the whale bus. Oh how could I be so silly! She must know by now. She couldn’t have missed it!’

  ‘So what you’re saying is –’ Beattie began.

  ‘She’ll start by digging up Flubiére,’ Paris said confidently. ‘That will be her plan.’

  THE SQUEAKER

  CHOMP SPECIAL BEHIND-THE-SCENES TOURS

  Ever wondered what it’s like behind the scenes at the Chomp? Well, now you can spend a morning working on the Chomp trains, exploring the tunnels and learning how we keep the ancient network of Chomps running smoothly.

  CANCELLED UNTIL WE GET THE CHOMPS

  RUNNING SMOOTHLY AGAIN.

  26

  Flubiére

  Flubiére HQ was nestled at the farthest corner of Emerald Cove, the Kingdom’s most expensive city. The city was made entirely of emerald stone, and the crocodiles that swam the waters had emerald claws. There was a general DON’T TOUCH THAT! rule in the city, which made it difficult to get around without someone shouting ‘DON’T TOUCH THAT!’ at you.

  They parked the clam car in one of the emerald parking caves and swam out.

  ‘DON’T TOUCH THAT!’ a mermaid shouted at Mimi as she leaned against the wall.

  A bunch of young mermaids swam past and stopped when they saw Steve.

  ‘YOU’RE THE FACE OF SEAHORSE SURPRISE!’

  ‘Can we have a picture with you pleeease? We love you!’ one of them said, and he chucked an old human Polaroid camera at Beattie.

  Mermaids didn’t have cameras, but there were plenty of shops that sold sunken human ones.

  Steve bowed gracefully as the mermaids huddled around him.

  Beattie snapped a picture. There was a gurgling whirr and out came a photo. It was soggy and smudged.

  Steve floated on the spot looking pleased with himself.

  Mermaids lazing on flat rectangular emeralds whizzed by, chatting and laughing.

  ‘What are they travelling on?’ Beattie asked, her head turning from left to right as she watched them pass by.

  ‘Emerald Quicks,’ Gronnyupple said. ‘They were invented in Jewelport.’ She jumped on to an empty one and pulled Beattie up. The emerald Quick felt warm under her tail.

  Mimi, Paris, Zelda and Steve piled on to another one.

  ‘TO FLUBIÉRE!’ Gronnyupple shouted, sending the emerald Quick shooting forward.

  ‘Wah!’ Beattie screamed, grabbing the sides so she didn’t slip off.

  ‘I feel like an insect on an ice rink!’ Zelda shouted from behind them. She was flopped on her front, clinging on for dear life.

  ‘What’s an insect?’ Gronnyupple asked. ‘And an ice rink?’

  ‘I LOVE YOU, EMERALD QUICKS!’ Paris shouted into the watery depths, making them all laugh.

  Beattie and Gronnyupple zigzagged though some buildings at speed, disappeared through an emerald window and emerged further on with a bunch of jellyfish stuck to them.

  Gronnyupple threw them off one by one, hitting other emerald Quicks as they passed.

  ‘Look,’ Paris cried. ‘That must be it!’

  A towering emerald building decorated with a pair of giant eyes and long green eyelashes glinted up ahead. Thousands of the Flubiére promotional fish whizzed in and out of it. Huge clusters of bubbles streamed from the many windows, and as a bubble passed her Beattie could see it contained a Flubiére lip-gloss compact.

  ‘It’s how they deliver the make-up to customers and shops,’ Gronnyupple said, spotting Beattie gawping at it.

  Beattie reached out to touch it.

  ‘DON’T TOUCH THAT!’ a mermaid shouted.

  The bubble burst with a little pop, and the compact began to sink towards the streets below. A frustrated Flubiére fish zoomed down and gobbled it. Then spat it out in a nice fresh bubble.

  The emerald Quicks sped up and soon they were at the foot of Flubiére HQ. It smelled a little like burned hair.

  They rolled off the emerald Quicks outside the front door. A little Flubiére fish swam up to Gronnyupple and began applying eyeshadow.

  ‘BACK OFF, BUDDY,’ she shouted.

  ‘Look! There’s Susan Silkensocks. That’s my mother,’ Paris whispered urgently.

  They darted behind the Flubiére tower and peered around the side.

  ‘You were right, Paris,’ Beattie said, giving her a low five.

  ‘Pretty impressive fake tail,’ Zelda said.

  ‘She looks more like a mermaid than an H-word,’ Gronnyupple said. ‘You’re sure that’s her?’

  ‘Of course,’ Paris whispered. ‘I can spot her a mile off.’

  Susan Silkensocks swam up to the building, stopping every so often to inspect parts of it and peer through the little windows. She drew closer to them.

  They edged back.

  ‘She mustn’t see me,’ Paris said, shaking her necklace twice and morphing into a dolphin.

  Streams of promotional pufferfish swam around Susan Silkensocks, trying to get past with their deliveries. Their lips were glowing.

  ‘Ooh! The new glow in the dark lip gloss!’ Gronnyupple said loudly, but Zelda shushed her.

  There was a mermaid floating outside in a Flubiére T-shirt. She was sipping a takeaway drink and flicking though Squeaker magazine.

  ‘Are you on a break?’ they heard Susan Silkensocks ask her.

  ‘No, we’re closing,’ the mermaid replied.

  ‘So in a few minutes everyone will have
left the building?’

  ‘Nah,’ the mermaid said. ‘The pufferfish live in the building. And they don’t sleep until midnight.’

  ‘That’s in a few hours,’ Susan Silkensocks said thoughtfully, before swimming off.

  ‘WRONG!’ Gronnyupple shouted in Paris’s face. ‘She didn’t dig it up.’

  ‘She’ll be back,’ Paris said. ‘At midnight. And we have to be ready for her.’

  27

  Magic Traps

  Gronnyupple tipped Paris’s backpack upside down and gave it a good shake. Magic bottles and boxes floated out.

  ‘What if someone finds us in here?’ Beattie whispered. They had sneaked into the top floor of Flubiére, right between the massive eyes. Beattie didn’t like the thought of getting caught. They could be sent to Viperview Prison.

  ‘They won’t find us!’ Gronnyupple said loudly. ‘They’ve gone home. We’ll set the traps, catch Susan Silkensocks, and then we can tell Krilky we did a little extra mission. I’ll definitely get some bonus catalogue orders for that!’

  Beattie floated over to rest against a stack of Flubiére boxes, plucking one of the bottles out of the air as she went.

  ‘Tiny-It,’ she said, reading the label. ‘Are we going to shrink Susan Silkensocks?’

  Gronnyupple shrugged. ‘Depends if the H-word wants us to shrink her mother?’

  ‘Do whatever you need to,’ Paris said, reluctantly biting into a Jellywich Mimi offered her. ‘Just don’t kill her.’

  ‘We’re mermaids,’ Gronnyupple said, ‘not murderers.’

  ‘What do we do until then?’ Zelda groaned, deliberately knocking over a pile of Flubiére compacts with her tail.

  ‘We set the trap,’ Gronnyupple said. ‘We’ll make a route that she’ll have to follow. We’ll do some magic, capture her, and then I will get the glory and catalogue things from Krilky, and you will all get to go home.’

  Paris frowned. She wasn’t sure she wanted to go home.

  The five of them and Steve raced around the empty Flubiére building, swerving to avoid the promotional pufferfish wearing their glow-in-the-dark lip gloss. They planted Ka-Pop potions and Tiny-It bottles as backups, but the star of the show was one of Gronnyupple’s most powerful catalogue purchases.

  ‘So let me get this straight,’ Beattie said. ‘Gronnyupple will hide in this room between the big Flubiére eyes, with the Frostopia Freeze potion ready to go. Steve will lead Susan Silkensocks in here by –’

  ‘Being a miracle,’ Steve said, snapping open his false teeth before disappearing inside again.

  ‘And then we’ll freeze her,’ Beattie went on. ‘And then figure out a way to get her back to land. If she gets away, she’ll swim into the other potions and spells – and it’ll be up to me and Paris to activate them.’

  The others nodded.

  ‘Now what?’ Paris said.

  ‘I’m going to answer some of my agony aunt letters for the Squeaker,’ Gronnyupple said, waving a stack of seaweed papers. ‘Mimi, you’d be a good agony aunt – why don’t you help me?’

  ‘Oh, no thank you,’ Mimi said politely. ‘I don’t like to be in agony.’

  Zelda put her head in her hands and groaned.

  Mimi thought for a moment. ‘And I don’t think I’m an aunt.’

  ‘No, Mimi,’ Beattie said with a giggle. ‘An agony aunt is someone who answers readers’ letters! They write in with their problems and then the agony aunt answers them.’

  ‘Oh,’ Mimi said. ‘I can do that. But I still don’t understand what it’s got to do with pain and relatives.’

  Dear Agony Aunt,

  My hair is just horrible. I hate it. It’s green, but not a nice bright green, it’s a dull swampy one. All my friends have bright green hair.

  Please help,

  Wendy Scales

  Dear Wendy Scales and her hair,

  Firstly, your name is excellent. Secondly, I’m sorry you two aren’t getting along right now. Wendy, instead of answering your question via a letter from me, I’m going to write the letter as if it is from your hair.

  Dear Wendy Scales,

  Yes, you are right, I am not bright green but swampy, which makes your hair look different to most of the other mermaids you know. But that only makes us stand out. Also, do you know how hard I work to grow out of your head? It takes a reeeeeally long time and all my effort, and I have no time to play sports or even have any friends. We are a team – an excellent, swampy team, and I am yours and no one else’s.

  Sincerely,

  Your swampy hair (who loves you very much)

  Mimi handed the letter to Gronnyupple, who scanned it quickly.

  ‘It’s perfect,’ she said with a smile. ‘And your handwriting looks exactly like the kind of writing hair would have if it had hands.’

  Outside, in the middle of Emerald Cove, a dolphin squeaked midnight.

  ‘So now all we have to do is wait for her,’ Zelda said.

  They didn’t have to wait long.

  28

  Susan Silkensocks Susan Silkensocks

  ‘I heard something,’ Beattie said, making the others jump.

  ‘Was it Gronnyupple eating a Jellywich?’ Zelda asked.

  ‘No,’ Paris whispered, ducking down under the window. ‘It’s my mother. She’s here!’

  Before anyone could say anything, Steve – ever the professional – swam out of the false teeth, nose in the air.

  Beattie scrambled to the window and peeked out.

  Steve made his way up to Susan Silkensocks.

  ‘Hello,’ he whispered.

  Her mouth fell open. She tried to grab him. He moved to the left, then the right. He ducked under her, sending her somersaulting forward.

  ‘COME HERE, YOU TALKING THING!’ she bellowed.

  ‘Told you she’d love Steve,’ Paris said with a smile.

  Steve weaved back and forth, up and down, reeling her in.

  Paris shook her necklace twice, morphed into a dolphin and made for the door. ‘She mustn’t see me.’

  Beattie held her breath as she saw Steve and Susan Silkensocks getting closer and closer to the window.

  ‘COME HERE, I WON’T HURT YOU!’ Susan Silkensocks shouted at Steve in frustration.

  ‘Almost there,’ Beattie whispered.

  Gronnyupple took the stopper out of the potion bottle.

  ‘One …’ Beattie said, ‘two … THREE!’

  There was a BANG! The pufferfish scattered, and there in the middle of the room floated –

  ‘OH, NOT AGAIN!’ Gronnyupple cried.

  Two Susan Silkensocks.

  ‘Small lumpy bottle is for the double potion,’ Gronnyupple said, smacking her hand to her head. ‘I was sure I read the label …’

  ‘I thought it was a freeze spell!’ Beattie shouted, as Susan Silkensocks and her double tore out of the room and headed in opposite directions.

  ‘Which one is the real one?’ Zelda cried.

  ‘I think the one that went left,’ Steve said.

  ‘Really?’ Gronnyupple said. ‘That’s interesting, I was thinking the one that went right.’

  ‘WE DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS,’ Beattie yelled.

  ‘She was definitely more on the left when we swam in,’ Mimi mused. ‘So that means –’

  ‘COME ON!’ Beattie grabbed her.

  Paris the dolphin appeared in the dark corridor and shook her necklace, morphing back into a mermaid. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Gronnyupple mixed up the potions again – we made two Susan Silkensocks. And now we don’t know which is which!’

  There was a bang downstairs, followed by a blubbering, bubbling sound.

  ‘I bet she’s gone into the bunk room and woken the promotional pufferfish,’ Gronnyupple said.

  ‘What is that?’ Beattie asked, but Gronnyupple was already out the door.

  Beattie tore down the corridor after Gronnyupple, who shot off to the left and disappeared into a room. A huge puff of smoke billowed out of it.
<
br />   ‘Gronnyupple?’ Beattie coughed, fighting her way through the smoke.

  ‘Ha!’ Gronnyupple cheered as she watched Susan Silkensocks rolling around with several pufferfish stuck to her. ‘Magnet spell. Worth every sharpit.’

  ‘EULCH! GET OFF ME!’ Susan Silkensocks cried.

  Zelda swam up fast behind them. ‘Paris just used the shrink spell on Susan Silkensocks upstairs. She’s swimming around in a tiny panic.’

  ‘This is the real one,’ Beattie said. ‘I think.’

  ‘WE NEED MORE MAGIC!’ Gronnyupple roared.

  ‘If anything,’ Zelda said, ‘the magic is making things worse. I’ll capture the double.’ She swam off.

  Beattie and the others swam backwards as Susan Silkensocks angrily pulled at the pufferfish stuck to her and clawed her way towards the door.

  ‘YOU!’ she seethed at Beattie. ‘I’m going to fishnap you!’

  Beattie backed away, her tail shaking. Mimi appeared behind her, holding a perfectly clear glass bottle.

  ‘THE FREEZE ONE!’ Gronnyupple cried, swimming above Mimi’s head and grabbing the bottle. She tipped it over Susan Silkensocks and –

  BOOM!

  ‘LET ME OUT!’ Susan Silkensocks roared from inside a huge block of ice.

  ‘Works every time.’ Gronnyupple kissed the bottle.

  ‘Is the bottle frozen to your lips?’ Steve asked.

  ‘My moant mo mot mou’re malking mamout,’ Gronnyupple said.

  ‘We did it!’ Beattie cried.

  ‘We should send her home now,’ Mimi said.

  Gronnyupple swam close to the block of ice and put her ear to it. ‘She’s saying something,’ she whispered. ‘Listen.’

  Steve leaned against the block of ice. Then Mimi, Paris the dolphin and Beattie did too.

  It was very muffled. Beattie stuck a finger in her other ear to hear more clearly.

  ‘It’s sounds like … wish pie?’ Gronnyupple said.

  Beattie felt her tail go cold. ‘Fish eye,’ she said. ‘She’s not the real Susan Silkensocks, she’s the double!’

  Mimi looked up. ‘If she’s the double, then what about –’

  ‘HELP!’ they heard Zelda shout. ‘FISHNAP!’