Mermaid Magic

  Mermaid Magic

  Gwyneth Rees is half Welsh and half English and grew up in Scotland. She went to Glasgow University and qualified as a doctor in 1990. She is a child and adolescent psychiatrist but has now stopped practising so that she can write full-time. She is the author of the bestselling Fairies series (Fairy Dust, Fairy Treasure, Fairy Dreams, Fairy Gold, Fairy Rescue), Cosmo and the Magic Sneeze, Cosmo and the Great Witch Escape and Mermaid Magic, as well as several books for older readers. She lives in London with her two cats.

  Visit www.gwynethrees.com

  Also by Gwyneth Rees

  Fairy Dust

  Fairy Treasure

  Fairy Gold

  Fairy Rescue

  Cosmo and the Magic Sneeze

  Cosmo and the Great Witch Escape

  The Magical Book of Fairy Fun

  Look out for

  Fairy Secrets

  For older readers

  The Mum Hunt

  The Mum Detective

  The Mum Mystery

  My Mum’s from Planet Pluto

  The Making of May

  Gweyneth Rees

  Mermaid

  Magic

  Illustrated by Annabel Hudson

  MACMILLAN CHILDREN’S BOOKS

  Mermaid Magic, Rani’s Sea Spell and The Shell Princess first published 2001 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  This edition first published 2003 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  This electronic edition published 2008 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Basingstoke and Oxford

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-0-330-50392-1 PDF

  ISBN 978-0-330-50391-4 EPUB

  Copyright © Gwyneth Rees 2001

  Illustrations copyright © Annabel Hudson 2001

  The right of Gwyneth Rees and Annabel Hudson to be identified as the author

  and illustrator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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  Mermaid

  Magic

  For Mum and Dad, with love

  Chapter One

  Rani swam down through the turquoise water until her belly was flat against the sandy bottom of the seabed. Then she did a quick flip with her tail so that she somersaulted upwards again.

  “Show-off ! “she heard, as she flicked her hair out of her eyes.

  She looked suspiciously at her pet sea horse, Roscoe, who had been perched on a nearby rock with his mouth shut the whole time, looking innocently in her direction. Strange things had been happening to Rani recently. She kept hearing odd, whispery words when nobody near her had spoken. At first she had thought it was just Roscoe playing tricks on her but the little sea horse had denied it.

  Before she could give it any more thought, the conch sounded. That meant it was time for them to go back into the school cave for more lessons. Rani swam over to where her sister, Kai, was sitting on a rock twisting her long blonde hair into a tight spiral. Rani hadn’t told Kai about the strange whispers. For some reason she felt that she should keep them secret. Which was strange because she and Kai always told each other everything.

  “School is boring, boring, boring,” complained Kai loudly, letting go of her hair so that it swished out into a gold mass that enveloped her. She flicked herself off the rock and kicked up a load of sand with her tail, nearly bumping into Marissa and Marina, the twins, who swished their golden tresses outwards proudly as they swam by.

  Rani sighed. She wished she had beautiful golden hair like all the other mermaids. Her mother kept telling her that her red hair was beautiful too, but Rani didn’t think so.

  The conch sounded again just as a whole shoal of rainbow fish swam past, heading towards the reef at top speed.

  “What’s the hurry?” Kai called out after them.

  “Our babies are hatching!” one of the fish called back.

  “Wow!” exclaimed Kai. “I’ve never seen baby fish hatching before. Let’s go and see!”

  And before Rani had time to protest that they really should go back to school, Kai had set off after the fish.

  “I suppose we could always say we didn’t hear the conch,” Rani muttered doubtfully, as she followed her sister.

  Rani loved Tingle Reef. The water was warm and crystal clear and the reef was full of friendly sea-creatures who all lived happily together in their colourful underwater home. It was the only home Rani could remember. She had been found as a baby by Kai’s parents inside a Giant Clam-Shell at the edge of the reef. No one knew where Rani had come from and it was a mystery how she had got there. Kai’s family had adopted Rani as their own. Rani felt that Murdoch and Miriam were the best parents she could wish for and that Kai was the best sister. The only time she ever felt different was when anyone commented on her appearance.

  Rani looked very different from the other mermaids. It wasn’t just her hair. Her scales were a deep orange colour whereas all the other mermaids had green tails. Instead of having eyes that were sea-blue or sea-green, Rani had goldy-brown eyes.In fact, Rani’s mother often joked that Rani didn’t look like she came from the sea at all.

  Kai suddenly stopped dead in mid tail-flip and Rani crashed right into her. She was looking at the rainbow fish, whose pink and yellow stripes made them the most colourful of all the fish in the reef.

  “Look. There are the baby ones,” Kai whispered to Rani, pointing at the tiny fish who had just hatched out of their eggs and were now swimming along beside their mothers. “Aren’t they sweet?”

  They watched happily until all the fish had swum by.

  Then Rani noticed that the rock where they had stopped to watch the fish was now far behind them. “We’ve drifted with the current,” she said. “We’re near the edge of the reef. We’d better swim back.”

  Kai and Rani were not allowed beyond the edge of the reef, where the sea dropped away suddenly to form the darker waters of the Deep Blue. It was easy to get lost in the strong sea currents, and fierce creatures lurked in the darkness beyond the reef. But this part of the reef was also scary for another reason. It was close to the Secret Cave.

  The Secret Cave was somewhere on the edge of the Deep Blue. Long ago a strange mermaid called Morva had been banished to the cave after she had done something terrible using bad magic. Morva was known as the sea-witch. None of the mermaids liked to swim too near her cave, even though no one had seen her in years.

  No other mermaid had ever been inside Morva’s Secret Cave but Rani had heard stories about it since she was tiny. Its entrance was hidden by a magic bush that would catch you in its branches if you tried to swim through. The sea-witch used starfish as spies, so if anyone swam near her cave she would know they were coming. Whe
n the water at the edge of the reef got rough and murky, the mermaids said that Morva must be practising her sea-spells. Morva was said to be capable of changing the colour of the sea from turquoise to inky black if she lost her temper.

  The more Rani thought about Morva, the more she wanted to leave quickly. “Come on,” she urged her sister.

  But before there was time for Kai to reply there was a terrible splashing and churning of water behind her and a crackly voice screeched, “What are you doing outside my cave?”

  Chapter Two

  Rani screamed. So did Kai.

  Then came the sound of laughing and Rani saw that it was only the twins talking in cackly voices and hiding their faces behind some clumps of black seaweed.

  “I am the sea-witch! I’m going to take you to my cave and turn you into a sea-frog!” Marissa hissed, as Marina rolled about in the water clutching her side from laughing so much.

  “You should see your faces!” Marina gasped.

  Rani and Kai glared at the twins.

  “What are you doing here?” Kai snapped.

  “Look who’s talking!” Marissa and Marina answered together. “What are you doing missing school?”

  “We thought we’d follow you and see—” Marissa said.

  “— what you were up to,” Marina finished for her.

  “You thought you’d spy on us, you mean,” Kai retorted crossly. “You’re worse than Morva’s starfish, the way you spy on everyone!”

  As the girls argued, Rani felt as though her body was filling up with pins and needles. The feeling seemed to start in her belly button and run up across her chest to her shoulders, then down her arms and into her hands. It was as though her fingers had an electric current in them as she held them out in front of her. She stared down at them but they didn’t look any different. Then she was sure she heard a whispery voice calling her name. She closed her eyes tightly and shook her head.

  “What’s wrong with you?” the twins sniggered, staring at Rani.

  Rani quickly opened her eyes. “Nothing,” she said. “I thought I heard a strange voice, that’s all.”

  “A strange voice?” Marina scoffed.

  “Yes,” said Kai, sounding scared. “I heard it too!”

  Rani looked in amazement at her sister. “You did?”

  “Of course. You don’t think ...” Kai looked frightened. “You don’t think it really could be the sea-witch this time, do you?”

  Marissa and Marina looked at each other, clearly having one of their private conversations just by thinking. Mermaid twins are able to read each others’ thoughts, something which Marissa and Marina used to full advantage when they wanted to play tricks on people. Without saying another word, they swam off at high speed in the direction of home.

  Rani turned to her sister to suggest they do the same, but Kai no longer looked scared. Instead she was laughing.

  “Good one, Rani!” she said. “They really believed us!”

  “But, Kai ...” Rani stopped, starting to get a sick feeling in her stomach as she realized that Kai had only been trying to get her own back on the twins.

  Her sister hadn’t really heard the strange whispery voice at all.

  *

  The following day there was no school. Rani was washing out shell-dishes outside their cave while Kai was inside helping their mother cook lunch. Their father had gone to a special meeting of the community leaders earlier that morning and he had been gone for a very long time.

  “Ouch!” Rani complained as she accidentally grazed her hand against the rocky wall of the cave.

  Roscoe was bobbing about, peering into each shell to check for plankton. Plankton gets into everything, including all your shell-dishes, if you don’t watch out.

  He came over and had a look at Rani’s hand. “Yuck!” he said. Roscoe

  was always squeamish at the sight of blood. Being a sea horse, he was lucky enough not to have any himself. “You’ve missed some sand in that one.” He clanked his tail against the dish then ducked away from her and headed off in the direction of the shell-garden, which was his favourite place to relax.

  “Mother, how come mermaid twins can read each others’ thoughts?” Rani asked, as she carried the clean shell-dishes back into their cave. She made sure she hid her injured hand from her mother because she didn’t want her to fuss.

  Her mother stopped spreading plankton paste on to flat-weed cakes, turning so that her long golden hair swirled around her head. Rani’s mother had the thickest, shiniest hair of all the mermaids, the most elegantly tapered tail, and her eyes were deep turquoise just like the sea out by the coral reef.

  “You mean Marissa and Marina?”

  Rani nodded.

  “Well, we don’t really know. Some identical twins are better at it than others.”

  “Are identical twins the only ones who can read minds?” Rani asked.

  “As far as we know, yes. Except ...” Her mother paused. “There are stories about mermaids long ago who could read the minds of all the other sea-creatures. Nobody knows if they really existed or whether people just made them up.”

  She reached out and smoothed down Rani’s hair which had got tangled. Then she swam across the cave to check on Rani’s baby sister, Pearl, who was fast asleep in her cradle, which was suspended from the ceiling. Their father had made the cradle out of one half of the Giant Clam-Shell that had brought Rani to them all those years ago.

  Just then the seaweed door of their cave flapped open and their father swam in, followed by Kai. Murdoch’s big powerful tail made the water in the cave churn so badly that Pearl’s cradle rocked precariously.

  “For goodness’ sake, Murdoch! Please remember that this isn’t the Deep Blue you’re swimming in!” their mother said crossly.

  “Sorry, Sweetheart!” Their father sat himself down on his favourite rock and wriggled until he got the end of his tail comfortably wedged into the sandy floor. Then he held out his arms for Rani and Kai to come and balance on his tail.

  “Well, there haven’t been any other sightings but we’re going to send out a patrol this afternoon anyway,” he told their mother, cheerfully.

  “Sightings of what?” Kai asked.

  “Someone thought they saw a Yellow-back jelly fish this morning inside the reef,” he replied.

  Yellow-back jellyfish lived in the Deep Blue and they were very dangerous indeed. They were so poisonous that no one had ever survived one of their stings. If anyone saw one inside the reef, the community always took it very seriously.

  “It’s probably a false alarm,” Murdoch attempted to reassure them.

  Rani frowned. “I don’t think it is ...” she said slowly.

  Her mother looked at her sharply. “What do you mean?”

  Rani shook her head. “I’m not sure. I just have this feeling ...” She couldn’t explain it any better than that. She stared down at her hands. They were starting to tingle again. And – as if by magic – the graze where she had bumped her hand against the rock had completely disappeared.

  Chapter Three

  “Roscoe, you’ve got to help me!” Rani pleaded, as she found the little sea horse sitting in the middle of the roundabout in the shell-garden. The roundabout was made out of one half of a huge cone shell with a flat surface of tight weeds netted over the top. It was balanced so that it spun on the ground on its point. Normally the mermaids would cling to the edge and be spun round together, but this afternoon the shell-garden was empty apart from the two of them.

  “Push me round really fast and I’ll think about it,” Roscoe said.

  “Roscoe, I think something strange is happening to me,” Rani said, as she gave the roundabout a push. “Look at this.” And she held out her healed hand for him to see.

  As Roscoe passed he had a look. He spun round a couple more times and then jumped off. “Hmm. Very mysterious.”

  “And that’s not all!” She told him about the whispery voices and the strange tingling sensation in her hands.
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  “Even more mysterious,” Roscoe said. “Come on. You’d better come with me to see Octavius. He’ll know what to do.”

  Octavius the octopus lived next door to the school cave – in fact it had been his idea to set up a school for the mermaid children in the first place. Octavius was always saying that just because mermaids had tiny brains that didn’t mean they shouldn’t fill them with as much knowledge as possible.

  Octavius often complained about his huge brain and how it tired him out thinking so many clever thoughts each day. For that reason he liked to take a nap every afternoon after lunch in order to keep his brain cells refreshed. None of the mermaid children were allowed to interrupt his naps and if they ever made too much noise outside his cave and woke him up then he was always very cross indeed.

  Rani hung back. “But you know how grumpy Octavius gets when you ask him things.”

  “He only gets grumpy if you ask him things he doesn’t know,” Roscoe said. “Hurry up! We need to catch him before he goes to sleep for the afternoon.”

  “What if he doesn’t know about this?” Rani asked. “And what if he’s already asleep?”

  But Roscoe had already bobbed off in the direction of Octavius’s cave.

  The entrance to Octavius’s cave was covered by a beautiful yellow and red seaweed-flap with sea anemones growing round the edges of the door.

  Rani paused outside the cave. She knew she had to call out and say she was there, but she was too nervous to speak. Just as she was about to change her mind and go back, Roscoe knocked his bony tail loudly against the cave wall.

  “Who’s that?” a deep voice grumbled, and the seaweed-flap was pushed aside by two long wriggly arms. Octavius glared at them and Rani saw that another arm held a shell-plate full of delicious-looking food. He was washing his cooking pots with another two arms and with the remaining three he was stuffing food into his mouth.