Category: Children Publisher: PublishAmerica
ISBN-10: 1424118689
Type: Fiction
Copyright: April 2006
When Retishella Mermaid falls ill from a mysterious illness there is only one cure - to dance with the Dolphin King.
Retishella mermaid discovers that the only way to cure her of
her mystery illness is a trip across the ocean to find the Dolphin King.
The journey is a memorable one, where Retishella and her father encounter
kindness and brutality in equal measures from the sea creatures they meet
on the way.
But the most memorable part of the whole journey is Retishella's meeting
with the Dolphin King, an event she will always treasure.
Excerpt
Chapter 1
Retishella the mermaid was feeling strange. Not weird and wonderful strange like a trip to the Zooquarium to see the Sea Magic show, or amazing strange like a brilliant birthday, but the kind of strange that gives you a bad stomach or an achy head. Ever since she lost her sister’s junkball in the stripweed bushes and had to search among the stinking blue weed to find it she had not felt quite right. She knew from her mother’s frequent warnings that it was not wise to go near the stripweed beds, but she hadn’t felt anything bite or sting her so she thought no more of it. Now she was feeling very peculiar indeed.
She wondered momentarily if this is what guilt felt like. Next time she would ask Seeley if she could play with her junkball.
She held out an arm and noticed that her smooth skin was starting to wrinkle up like the face of a wizened walrus. She looked down at her beautiful shiny tail and gasped. The silvery scales were swelling and had that pitted look like the skin of a pineapple.
More worrying still was the fact that she couldn’t control the colour of her eyes and hair. This was particularly disturbing because a merperson with no control over their colour can’t show others how he or she is feeling. Herr hair and eyes were changing form red to purple to blue to grey to green to yellow again and again, and it was making her feel quite dizzy. She leant on a seabed rock until the feeling passed.
Taking a deep bubbly breath to calm her shattered nerves, she closed her eyes and pulled her comb and mirror our of her seaweed bag. She flashed her eyes open to take a quick peek and gaped in horror like a fish on land. Reflected in her silver mirror was a sight that turned her warm blue blood to ice: her hair and eyes had lost their colour. Both had gone from a healthy range of vibrant colours to a sludge brown that did not change.
She combed her hair vigorously in the desperate hope that she could coax some colour into it. But it didn’t help. Now she knew how it felt to be a landish girl.
She tried to swim, but her normally powerful muscles felt as weak as a newly-hatched mewler crab. By the time she managed to flip and flop across the sea bed back to her merfamily cave her initial horror was turning to panic.
Retishella’s mother caught sight of her through the mercave window. When she was her daughter slumping across the sandy yard outside the cave she dropped the seaweed tail wrap she was knitting and dashed out in a fluster of concern. She caught Retishella just as she collapsed in a drooping heap by the door. Retishella saw her mother’s hair and eyes turn black with shock.
“Retishella, what on earth is wrong?” she heard the concern cracking her mother’s voice.
“Mother,” croaked Retishella, lifting her head and wincing with pain. “I’ve lost Seeley’s junkball, she’ll never forgive me.” She sank back down to the sea bed, too weak to move.
Retishella’s mother swallowed hard and squashed a tear out of the corner of her eye. Forcing flecks of calm green into her black eyes and hair, she picked Retishella up like she had done all those years ago when she was a merbaby and laid her tenderly on the rock lounger. She stroked Retishella’s wrinkled forehead and wiped her sludge brown hair out of her eyes. Then she turned and stuck her head out of the cave window.
“Seeley!” Retishella’s mother called for her other daughter, “Fetch your father. Retishella’s sick and I’m taking her to the Ocean Room.”
Seeley took one look at her mother’s appearance. She saw the colour of her mother’s hair and eyes. She saw the serious look on her mother’s face and realised that something terrible had happened. She waved her agreement and with a powerful thrust of her tail launched herself in the direction of the breakwaterweed beds her father was tending.
“Retishella, what on earth have you been doing?” her mother grilled her impatiently. “Have you been playing in the stripweed bushes again? Oh how many times have I warned you about the dangerous sea creatures that lurk in the stripweed bushes?” Her mother’s worried ranting would normally induce Retishella to dissolve into remorseful tears by now, but she felt so ill everything sounded like she was hearing it from a long way away, as if she was listening through a tube or at the end of a tunnel.
Her mother noticed the distant, almost vacant look on Retishella’s face. “Don’t worry my little maid,” she crooned, gently picking up her sick daughter. “It’s not far to the Ocean Room. I’m sure they’ll be able to sort you out.”
She tightened her grip on Retishella and swam out into the blue-green ocean until they came to a gap, a wide crack in the rocky seabed that stretched in both directions across the bottom of the ocean as far as the eye could see.
Hugging her daughter tightly to her Retishella’s mother took a deep breath to calm her tattered nerves and dived resolutely down into the seemingly bottomless gully. As they swam deeper and deeper it got darker and colder. Just when they felt the darkness closing around them like a thick curtain of impenetrable weed they stopped on a ledge cut like a doorstep into the rock. On their approach the ledge began to shine, like a security light on a front door. The plankton that lived on it had been trained to light up when a living creature was nearby.
Retishella was feeling very tired and dizzy, and wearily closed her eyes for a moment. She heard the sound of her mother singing the rock door song, followed by a scraping, grating rumble which churned up the water around them and compelled her to open her eyes just in time to see a huge boulder above the light of the doorstep rock slide into the side of the rock wall. Behind it was an amazing room.
The first thing Retishella noticed was that the room was huge. She looked up and could just about make out the outline of the ceiling far, far above them. The room was round, like an enormous bell, roughly hewn out of the sandy-brown rock and lit on all sides by banks of glass tanks full of glowing fish the like of which Retishella had never seen before. Merpeople of all shapes and sizes were milling around, many of them being supported or carried by others. “Goodness,” thought Retishella out loud, “I didn’t realise there would be so many sick people here.”
“Yes dear,” Retishella’s mother answered in that vague voice parents use when they’re not really listening. She was too busy trying to work out where to go. She put her arm around her daughter to support her and they swam together towards the far wall of the Ocean Room. Chopped into the vast walls like nibbles in the rock were thousands of little alcoves, each one labelled with the spirals and squiggles that made up mermaid writing. Retishella’s mother read several labels and stopped by the one that described Retishella’s illness. She helped Retishella place both her hands into the alcove and they waited until a thin slice of dark red rock was dispensed into the middle of one of Retishella’s upturned palms. Retishella’s mother picked up the rock and avidly studied the instructions on it. It didn’t make very encouraging reading.
If a mermaid has lost her colour
‘Tis a very serious thing
She must go and find the dolphins
And dance with the Dolphin King.
Chapter 2
Retishella looked up at her mother as she read the slice of red stone. Her mother’s hair was a troubled deep blue-black that made Retishella shiver.
Retishella’s mother tucked the slice of red rock safely into her tail purse. She tenderly lifted up her weak and floppy daughter and swam out of the Ocean Room ad upwards in the direction of the merclan village where they lived.
Retishella’s father had been keeping an anxious vigil by the cave window and as soon as he spotted them in the distance he rushed out to meet them, flicking up a whirl of sand in his impatience to hear their news. Retishella’s sister and brothers bustled behind him in a swirling mass.
“Well tell me, how did you get on?” asked Retishella’s father urgently but before he had finished speaking he knew from his wife’s colouring that the news was not good.
Retishella roused herself to look into their blue eyes. She noticed their blue hair and felt scared. They all knew she was very sick.
“Oh husband,” sobbed Retishella’s mother, “it is truly bad news. According to the Ocean Room the only way we can cure Retishella is to get her to dance with the Dolphin King. What are we to do?”
Retishella’s father carefully took his daughter from her troubled mother, his strong arms lifting her easily, as if she was as light as an empty shell. He gently laid her on the soft sand of the seabed and covered her with a makeshift blanket of breakwaterweed. He needed time to think.
“I know!” he exclaimed, “Why don’t we all take Retishella to visit Mersia. In times like this a merrow like Mersia is the only person I can think of who could tell us what to do next.” They all hastily nodded their agreement, desperate for any offer of help at this time. They lent a hand to carry Retishella to Mersia’s cave.
Mersia was busy in her inner dark cave preparing some crystals she had just collected from the bluerock quarry when she heard merpeople outside singing a cry for help that no mermaid can ignore. She closed her eyes, held her palm against her forehead and listened intently for a moment. “Ah, Ridd,” she said to her pet ray who was nuzzling excitedly at her tail at the thought of visitors. “Retishella and her family. Sounds like the maid is in trouble. Better let them in.”
She majestically opened her purple crystal front door and with a grand gesture summoned them all in without a word. In glum silence they glided in at her beckoning. Inside her cluttered cave Mersia calmly signalled to the all to sit on the green dryrock circle in the innermost chamber of the cave. The rock turned deepest blue in sympathy with the feelings of the dejected merpeople sitting on it. Ridd cruised around, rubbing against their tails and hands in a gesture of sympathy.
“This is an unexpected pleasure merfriends,” greeted Mersia politely, “I can see you are in need of help. Tell me what the problem is.”
“Retishella has been playing in the stripweed bushes and is very sick,” blurted Retishella’s mother, petting Ridd absentmindedly. “The Ocean Room said she can only be cured by dancing with the Dolphin King.” Her strength left her and she blubbed such huge, fearful blue tears that she sent Ridd scuttling off in fright. He burrowed into his seaweed bed by the wall of the cave and stayed there, a pair of black beady eyes in a pile of green weed.
Mersia handed Retishella’s mother a soothchord hanky and for a few moments Retishella’s mother buried her face in the tranquil green velvet and gave vent to her feelings in an explosion of heartrending sobs. They waited while the sobbing steadily subsided and eventually stopped. Retishella’s mother wiped her face with the soothchord hanky, took a few deep breaths and looked at Mersia desperately.
“Where will we find dolphins at this time of year?” she pleaded.
Mersia nodded sagely, shaking silver sparks and tinkling shells in her glowing purple hair. She swept back her purple flashstring cloak and swam over to a deep ledge cut into the grey stone wall of her cave. On the ledge was a collection of rocks, stones and shells arranged carefully, no, scientifically according to size and colour. She considered for some moments and then chose a blue crystal, which she held reverentially out before her as she swam over to a white marble table near Retishella’s mother.
“I have always wanted to use this blue blaze crystal,” she mused excitedly, holding it up to the light. “It was sent to me by my sister Marla who collected it on her storytelling travels in the Spiral Ocean.”
“I never thought my daughter’s life would depend on a piece of rock,” muttered Retishella’s father pathetically.
“Sh!” urged Retishella’s mother, “Mersia will hear you. She’s only trying to help, anything is worth a try.”
“Sorry,” muttered Retishella’s father, and throwing his wife a look of contrition he concentrated his attention on Mersia again.
Mersia placed the crystal on the marble table, taking some care to line it up with one of the black veins. The crystal started to spin. As it span, Mersia sang the question song.
When she had finished singing, the crystal gradually slowed down and stopped spinning. Mersia looked down on the table. The black veins in the white marble had arranged themselves into a message in merwriting:
Dolphins come and dolphins go
But here’s your best chance
You must travel to the Pink Seabed
For they meet there when they dance.
There was a moment of stunned silence and then Retishella’s family gave each other a desperate knowing look.
“Well then family,” said Retishella’s father, the forced brightness in his voice barely concealing his rising apprehension. “We must get home and prepare for the long journey to the Pink Seabed as soon as possible.” They all forced a grimaced smile as they faced the enormity of the task ahead. They sang Mersia the thank you song and started to leave.
Mersia wished them good luck and held out a small, round, flat green rock. “This stone was given to my great-grandmother Marissa by a famous dolphin traveller who visited our mervillage over 100 years ago,” she told them. “He told her to use it if she ever wanted to find dolphins. Take the rock with you. When you are near dolphins this rock will turn grey and sing like a dolphin.”
Ten minutes later the family cave was in uproar as Retishella lay on the rock lounger watching her whole merfamily rushing about finding and gathering together all possible provisions for Retishella’s father. They all knew that the journey to meet the dolphins at the Pink Seabed was going to be a long and arduous one.
Retishella’s mother was deep in thought as she screwed the lid on the flask of hot bluerock juice she had prepared for the travellers. She handed it to her husband who was busy packing a bag of provisions. “Here,” she said kindly, offering him the flask of bluerock juice, “you’ll need this.” With a strained smile she continued “take care, you know how precious you both are…” she couldn’t suppress a sob and looked away.
“Oh wife, please don’t cry. I need to be strong for all of us while we are away. Anyway, I have travelled to the Pink Seabed before when I chose it as the location for my final merboy challenge, don’t you remember?”
His wife’s eyes and hair brightened up and flashed green momentarily as her memory took a trip far back into their happy past. “Yes, of course I remember,” she mused affectionately, “and I was so proud of you when you returned in triumph as a merman. I still believe that was the day I decided to marry you.”
She kissed her husbands bearded cheek and her cheerful green hair and eyes melted back to a worried blue. “But it’s not the same this time is it” she continued.
Her husband hesitated, trawling his mind for words of comfort. “I know I was a lot younger and stronger then and not carrying a desperately weak and sick daughter. I can only promise you, all of you that I will do everything in my power to find the Dolphin King before… well I will get there in time and that is that.”
He shook off his overpowering feelings of blue hair panic and forced a façade of more determined and steadfast orange for the sake of his family. He smoothed out Retishella’s seaweed shawl and used it to tie his daughter firmly to his back.
Retishella’s mother swam over to kiss them both goodbye. She reached inside her tail purse and took out Mersia’s stone.
“Don’t forget this,” she said handing it to her husband. “Keep it safe and bring back our daughter fit and well.” She swallowed a sob and squeezed back the tears before turning to join her other children by the cave door.
“Don’t worry,” Retishella’s father announced to his family in an almost convincing voice. “I’ll find the Dolphin King and the next time we see you Retishella will be back to her normal colourful self.” With a great flourish he deposited Mersia’s rock securely in his tail purse and headed out of the cave door.
It was with great effort he concealed the dark blue he was feeling as he hurriedly sang his family the goodbye song for luck.
Retishella’s family and friends anxiously waved and wished good wishes as her father swam off at great speed, carrying his precious cargo. They stood and watched his powerful tail swish rhythmically like the pendulum of an underwater clock until he disappeared into the deep blue wilderness of the Voluminous Sea.
