The Witching Hours #4: The Mermaid Wreck by Jack Henseleit

Author:Jack Henseleit
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing
Published: 2022-08-23T00:00:00+00:00

10

A NERVOUS WRECK

THE REEF WAS MUCH LARGER THAN ANNA HAD first thought. The outcrop where she had woken up had been relatively close to the surface; now she was far below it, the pressure in her ears tightening as she dropped to new depths. Flowing strands of seaweed brushed against her arms and legs as Sylvie led her through the coral mass, slithering through holes and squeezing under ledges, following fish of all colours as they twisted and teemed through the cold, dark sea.

‘Not long now,’ called Sylvie. ‘The shipwreck is just up ahead.’

She wriggled through a narrow gap, her ribcage glimmering in the dim ocean light. Anna had begun to notice that the further underwater they travelled, the less Sylvie looked like a human girl. When Sylvie grabbed onto a handhold, the bones in her hand seemed to disappear, allowing her fingers to curl around the coral like the tentacles of an octopus. At other times, when she changed direction quickly, her translucent skin would shimmer and, for a moment, Anna was able to see the thousands of tiny scales covering her body. But the strangest things of all were her legs. Anna could see the two sets of bones stretching down to Sylvie’s feet, and yet her legs always moved as one, sliding through the water like the tail of a serpent. Anna knew that mermaids were supposed to be half-human, half-fish, but Sylvie’s body wasn’t split as neatly as the pictures she had seen in her books. As she swam through the tangled reef, Sylvie seemed to have fishy features from head to toe.

‘Has anyone else ever been this way?’ said Anna. Her voice was still a burble, but she pressed on anyway. ‘I mean, has anyone else ever visited the shipwreck?’

‘Only once,’ said Sylvie. ‘Years ago, now. It was a surprise. I thought the humans had forgotten all about it. I thought it was mine.’ She shrugged. ‘She didn’t see me. She never came back.’

Anna remembered the wetsuit and the oxygen tank in her bedroom cupboard. She pictured Madeleine Graves descending through the coral, pursuing her quest to the bottom of the ocean, bright eyes watching her from the shadows. Wasn’t it terribly dangerous to go scuba diving without a partner? When you dive alone, you die alone – she had read that somewhere once, a long time ago.

Before, she had thought that she and Madeleine might have shared the same curiosity. Now she wondered if they shared the same recklessness as well.

‘We’re here,’ said Sylvie.

She turned and swam down a coiling red path, the coral squiggling like a brain spilled down a staircase. Anna followed her around the bend – and gasped.

Resting on the ocean floor was a ship – an enormous ship, at least twenty metres long, its hull coated thickly with coral growths. Two great masts rose imposingly from the rotting wooden deck; the sails they had once carried were nowhere to be seen, lost to the water long ago. The lower deck seemed to have disintegrated entirely.

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