She swam furiously down the narrow streets, rushing past the white coral houses squashed side by side. Speeding around a corner she swam straight into a school of butterfly fish. They startled and sped in all directions, bouncing off her head as they swam up over the houses. She hurried off twisting down the alleys until she came to the main street.
“Ouch! Watch where you’re going!”
“Sorry, sorry,” she panted as she hurried off up the main street.
It was busy. Merpeople criss crossed the street, in and out of shops with vibrantly painted signs. Brightly coloured schools of fish circled just above the street, waiting for crumbs to be dropped.
She dodged around a pair of seahorses pulling carts of sea fruit, squeezed past a group of kids chattering excitedly, and flew past a man selling red and gold coral necklaces. Finally she got to the large town hall and ducked up the alley running along the back of the building. Tucked behind the hall was another group of white coral houses. She could hear the screaming from the end of the street.
She swam as fast as she could up the alley and flung open the door of the tenth house on the right. The noise exploded in her ears. A green-tailed mermaid was in the centre of the small living room, her long blonde hair sticking up in all directions as she had two toddlers in her arms, crying at the top of their lungs. A third toddler was sitting on the dining table stuffing his face with sargassum biscuits, which were scattered all over the table along with the plates. A fourth toddler was sitting quietly in the corner munching on her own biscuit.
“There you are Storm!” the mermaid said angrily as she thrust one of the screaming toddlers into her arms. She whipped back to the toddler on the table.
“Calder, stop eating those biscuits this instant!” she shouted.
The toddler on the table laughed, and promptly stuffed two more biscuits in his bulging mouth, spraying crumbs all over the table.
“Stop it now! “Eyre, honey, shh, shh.” She patted the toddler on the back who started to calm down.
Storm swam over to the table, grabbing a biscuit from the corner of the table. She waved it in front of the toddler she was holding.
“Look Locklyn, a biscuit.”
Locklyn looked at the biscuit and slowly quietened down, eventually reaching out his chubby little arms to grab it.
The mermaid put Eyre down in a chair and grabbed Calder.
“Off to your room with you mister,” she scolded, and carried him kicking and screaming down the hall.
Storm started clearing up the table. Not long after the mermaid returned.
“Where in the sea have you been! I told you to be back twenty minutes ago!”
“Sorry sis, I lost track of time.”
“How can you lose track of time? The quadruplets have their dinner at the same time every night. How are you always late?!”
“Amaya and I found a new patch of dying coral in the Laguna District. It was huge and we got caught up in our study.”
“Ugh, well stop studying corals and start helping me finish the dinner.”
She turned back to the kitchen bench which had a half-made salad spread across it. Storm swam over, picked up one of the sharpened stone knives and started chopping.
“So where did you find the dying coral then?”
“The giant pocillopora in Laguna Park is dying. Large parts of it are bleaching.”
She stopped chopping and turned to her shocked.
“It can’t be dying, that coral is thousands of years old! Why is it dying?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. The cyphastrea boulders, the bubble coral bunches, and now the giant pocillopora. Something’s wrong.”
“Well you should tell the queen!”
“The queen knows, her guards were there today.”
Her sister side eyed her. “You weren’t sneaking around the guards again I hope. I can’t keep bailing you out of trouble, you know.”
“I know” But she avoided her older sister’s eye and turned back to cutting the kelp. She felt a surge of guilt as she thought of how her and a reluctant Amaya had snuck past the queen’s guards. They’d almost been caught but managed to hide under the pocillopora.
“If you keep this up the queen will have to give you a position on the Royal Investigation Squad.”
“Not likely,” Storm said dejectedly. She’d always dreamed of being a special investigator for the RIS but they didn’t take lowly merpeople such as her.
“Well it sounds like they could use you, you sure do a lot of investigating.”
They had a quiet family dinner, everyone seemed tired from the screaming. She helped tuck the quadruplets into bed, said goodnight to her sister, and curled up in bed.
In the morning she helped get the quadruplets ready for the day, then grabbed an anemone from the bowl on the counter and dashed out the door.
“Don’t forget to be back at five for dinner!” her sister called after her.
She waved her hand in response as she headed up the alley. She zigzagged across the busy main road and took a few twists down narrow streets until she reached a wider one. A tall coral house sat on the corner of the street. She swung open the gate and went up the front path, past two neatly trimmed lawns of seagrass, and knocked on the large door. It swung open immediately.
A small blue-tailed mermaid with short brown hair hurried out and closed the door sharply behind her. She was stuffing a bunch of papers in a bag which she swung on her back.
“Let’s get out of here before my dad starts lecturing me again!”
“Again!” Storm exclaims as they hurry back down the path and off into the busy streets.
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I only got an A in my advanced accounting paper this semester and he’s been lecturing me on the finer points of taxation since I got out of bed. I don’t even like accounting!”
“Well tell him then.”
The blue-tailed mermaid looked at her shocked.
“Come on Amaya, he’s always at you about one thing or another. You’ve got to stand up to him!”
“Are you mad! You don’t stand up to my father. It’s easier for everyone if I just try harder.”
“But you got an A. That’s amazing!”
“It’s not good enough. I got A+ in everything else.”
Storm looked at her in disbelief.
“Where are we going today?” Amaya asked quickly, before Storm could say anything more.
Storm regarded her friend for a moment but decided to drop it. “I think we should poke around the pocillopora again.”
“But we’ve already looked there.”
“Well where should we go then?” Storm demanded.
“Let’s go in here.”
Amaya grabbed Storm’s arm and pulled her into a little soft coral shop. They got two purple corals to snack on and disappeared to a table in the back corner. Amaya rummaged around in her backpack and pulled out a map of Opal Lagoon. She spread it on the table and pointed at some marks she’d made.
“Look, the dying coral we’re finding is making a pattern. Here…” she pointed at the bottom corner of the map, to an area just inside the south-western reef. “This is where we first found the dying Cyphastrea boulders, then here…” she pointed to a spot slightly north-east, “is where we found the Bubble bunches, then here…” she points to an area slightly north-east again, “is where the giant Pocillopora is. They’re all in a line from the edge of the Angelfish District to the Laguna District.”
Storm pulled the map towards her, tracing her finger to connect the marks Amaya had made.
“Well that means we should try and find the start of the line. We should go here,” Storm said, pointing at a large area which backed onto the south-western edge of the reef.
Amaya turned at her in horror.
“You’re joking right?”
“Nope. If we’re going to stop this we need to find the source. And according to this line we need to go to Cave District.”
“We can’t! You know we can’t! It’s too dangerous there. They’re isolated people out there, they hate the wider city. We’ll be chased out with pitchforks!”
Storm laughed. “Good thing we can swim fast!”
She took the last mouthful of her coral and made her way to the door. Amaya grabbed the map of the table and hurried after her.
“Are you mad!” Amaya hissed at Storm.
“Look, you can come with me or not, but I’m going. I have to find out what’s going on with the coral before it spreads too far.”
“Fine,” Amaya sighed. She stuffed the map into her bag and they hurried off down the street.
As they swam closer to Cave District the streets grew quieter. The houses got more and more squashed together, towering over the dark silent streets. Amaya glanced nervously around them and, although Storm tried to look confident, she too felt unnerved. A door slammed behind them, and they jumped.
“Come on Storm, let's move a bit faster.”
They picked up the pace, weaving through the unfamiliar streets. Suddenly they turned a corner and the tiny street opened up to a huge row of fields. But before they could take it in, someone crashed into them.
***
Read Mermaid Part Two - The Cup Coral Fields now!