Lagoona by A. W. Emersleben

Author:A. W. Emersleben
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kelpforest Press
Published: 2022-06-08T00:00:00+00:00

3

She swam for a while towards the islands as the boy had told her. However, after a while, she forgot that she was supposed to swim into the north to find the islands and thought that it was dull swimming through the open water. She plunged into the water and could see something glittering on the sea ground, and thought it would be more interesting to follow the glow instead. The water became shallow again, and soon she could see large dots of the glittering below her. She dived deeper to see what it could be that would make the sea ground shimmer like that, and the deeper she went, the more colourful the sea ground became. She could see corals covering the sea ground, in all colours that she could have imagined, but something was wrong. There were barely any fish, or other living creatures, and the only animals she could see were starfish covering the sand, and oddly gleaming jellyfish floating through the water. She hopped over to a large, violet, odd-shaped coral and wanted to put her teeth into it, when she realised that it was not a coral after all. It was a crystal. Lagoona looked around and it dawned on her that every coral in this peculiar, glowing reef was actually made of crystal. Some of them were so large that they loomed out of the sea surface; transparent pillars reaching towards the surface, sharp as spears. Others were small and round, like globes. There were corals the colour of amethyst, that grew in small depressions in the sea ground, and delicate, rose-coloured corals covering the rocks like anemones.

Lagoona stared at the reef for a while, before she realized that the boy from the islands had told her not to come here.

There came harsh voices from behind a large crystal, and she halted.

Lagoona hopped behind a particularly large, bluish stone.

It was two merelves, or so she guessed, because they did not come to the reef very often. They were scaly, and both were carrying long spears, and one of them was pulling a carriage loaded with crystals.

‘Always dragging these crystals through the reef,’ moaned one of them as they walked past where Lagoona was hiding. ‘As if the old sea-king hadn’t already been given enough gems. He will only be pleased when there aren’t any more crystals in Methardruîn.’

‘Pearlville doesn’t even try to stop it,’ said the other. ‘Meanwhile they drag treasures from all Seas through this reef, to ship them to the sea-king. Every sunken ship, every lair in the Deep Sea, every mine in Anemonadise, everything is being raided for treasures, and all of it is being shipped to the city of the mermaids. And what do we get from all of that dragging and lifting and mining? Nothing!’

Lagoona was harkening her ears in her hideout. She had heard of the sea-king in the south, who commanded to have all treasures brought to him, and being apparently so close to him, and the city of the mermaids from which he ruled, made her feel flustered.

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