Mihi Ever After: Off the Rails by Keller Tae

Author:Keller, Tae
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Published: 2024-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Mihi bit down on the wood as the water swallowed her up. The change started immediately. Her neck tingled. Then her legs. At first, Mihi thought it was the cold, because the water was cold—shockingly so.

But it was more than that.

The tingle on her neck graduated to a prickle, then a burn. The wood in her mouth turned to a chewy putty, which she reluctantly swallowed.

Her legs turned to rubber. Her magical shoes popped off, and she scrambled to grab them. She couldn’t lose those. But as she attempted to slide them back on her feet, she saw, with horror, that her legs were stitching together. She reached up to touch her neck, and felt cuts.

She gasped in panic—and then realized that she could gasp. Underwater.

Reese swam into view beside her, and suddenly, everything made sense. Mihi looked down again to see scales blooming on her legs—or rather, her tail. And on the side of her neck: gills.

Mihi shuddered in full-bodied revulsion. Savannah, who loved aquatic animals, probably would have found this cool, but it gave Mihi the heebie-jeebies.

To her surprise, Reese also found it cool. “We’re mermaids,” she said, flicking her fin so she sped through the water.

“And you like that?” Mihi gaped.

“Of course. It’s interesting!” Reese said. Her words came out garbled and full of bubbles. Mihi had to strain to understand her. “And even better: It’s practical. Now we can reach Savannah.”

Reese zipped along as if she’d been swimming with a mermaid tail for years. Mihi, on the other hand, tried to swim, but twisted and tumbled. She began to panic.

If she couldn’t swim as a human, why did she think she could swim as a mermaid?

She closed her eyes. Breathe. Or—okay, maybe don’t breathe. Was it still called breathing if she was absorbing oxygen through gills?

The panic intensified.

“Mihi,” Reese called. “You coming?”

“Yeah, yeah. Definitely!” Mihi flicked her tail in another attempt. This had to work. She twisted, tumbled.

“Hey,” Reese said, swimming back to her. “It’s kinda hard to get the hang of, but watch.” She showed Mihi, moving her tail up, then down.

Mihi tried it, slowly … and she moved forward. “It worked!” she cried.

Reese nodded. “Again!”

So Mihi tried again, and before long, she’d mostly gotten the hang of it.

At last, they were swimming. They swam past a school of sequined fish, a thirty-tentacled octopus (“Triacontapus,” Reese supplied), and a dragon train that snaked through the water.

They swam deeper, and the water grew colder, darker, but they kept going.

“What are we looking for?” Mihi murmured when the sea had gone silent. Her words drifted up in bubbles.

“I don’t know,” Reese responded. “But monsters usually lurk at the bottom, and that horse was definitely a monster.”

Mihi looked up. The surface was a hazy, distant blur, and she wondered, brief ly, how much longer they had as mermaids. She decided not to think about that.

Finally, as they swam deeper into the navy depths, an image took shape, and soon, Mihi realized it was a large wooden ship:

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