Emily Windsnap and the Monster from the Deep

Close your eyes.
   Think of the most beautiful place you can imagine.
   Are you seeing golden beaches? Gorgeous clear blue sea? Perfect sky? Keep your eyes closed.
   Now multiply that by about a hundred, and you’re halfway to picturing what my new home is like. The softest, whitest sand, palm trees that reach lazily out from the beaches, tall rocky arches cusping the bays, sea that sparkles like crystals in the sunlight. All thanks to Neptune, the ruler of the ocean.
   He sent me here with my mom and dad to start a new life. Somewhere we ­could live together. Some­where our secret would be safe.
   One of Neptune’s guards, Archieval, accompanied us here. He’s a merman. He swam beside our ­little sailboat, King, all the way, swishing his long black hair behind him and occasionally ducking under, flicking his tail in the air, silver and sharp, like a dagger.

We edged slowly into a horseshoe-shaped bay filled with shiny turquoise water. Soft foamy
waves ­gently stroked the white sand. A few boats were dotted about in the bay, half-sunken, silently sloping. Some were modern yachts, others great wooden crafts that looked like ancient pirate ships.
   A tall rocky arch marked the end of the bay. Through it, the sand and sea continued around a corner. I caught my breath as I stood and stared.
   “Shake a tail, someone,” Archieval called up. “I ­could use some help here.”
   I leaned across to help him pull the boat along­side a wooden jetty as Dad swam around to the back and tied the ropes to a buoy. Mom was still inside with Millie. That’s her friend from Brightport. Millie used to read fortunes on the pier. She did a tarot reading for Archieval before we left, and he liked it so much, he invited her to come with us. They had to check with Neptune first, but Archieval is one of Neptune’s top guards, so he’s pretty much allowed to do as he likes.
   Then Millie said she’d have to let the cards decide, so she set the pack out in a star shape and sat looking at it in silence for about ten minutes, nodding slowly.
   “Well, it’s obvious what I have to do. You’ll never catch me ignoring a call from the ten of cups,” she said enigmatically before throwing her black cape over her shoulder and going home to pack her things. Millie says ­every­thing enigmatically. I’ve learned to just nod and look as though I know what she’s talking about.
   Archieval swam around to the side of the boat. “This is it, then,” he said. “North Bay, Allpoints Island.”
   “Why’s it called Allpoints Island?” I asked.
   “It’s right in the center of the Triangle.” He stretched out an arm as he spun slowly around in a ­circle. “Where the three points meet.”
   The Bermuda Triangle. I shivered. He’d told us about it on the way here, about the boats and planes that had mysteriously disappeared inside it. An ocean liner had been found totally intact but utterly deserted. Twenty tables were set out for dinner. Another ship was found with skeletons on the decks, its sails ripped to shreds all around them. Others had vanished without a trace, often after frantic mayday calls from pilots and fishermen who were never seen again.
   I ­didn’t know whether to believe the stories at first, but something had happened out at sea. We’d been sailing along normally, the swells rising and falling, the boat ­gently making its way through the peaks and troughs. Then it changed. The water went all glassy. The engine cut out; ­every­thing died. Even my watch stopped working. It felt as if the sea had frozen, almost as if time itself had frozen.
   Then Archieval yanked his long hair into a ponytail with some string and disappeared under the water. A few minutes later, we got moving again, gliding silently across the glassy sea.
   “That was it,” he called up. “Bermuda Triangle. That’s what’ll protect you from the outside world now. No one knows how to get through it except for a few chosen merfolk.” He threw a rope onto the deck. “Well, a few chosen merfolk and . . . no, I’d better not tell you about that.”
   “What? Tell me.”
   Archie beckoned me closer. “I ­shouldn’t ­really tell you this,” he said, “but there’s a raging cur­rent down there. Not any normal kind of current either, oh no. This one’s linked to something that lies deep down in the sea, even below your island.”
   “What? What is it?”
   “What is it? It’s the biggest, scariest, most powerful —”
   “I hope you’re not filling my daughter’s head with any more of your lurid tales, Archie!” Dad said, suddenly turning up beside Archie. “She has enough nightmares as it is.”
   I’d told Dad all about my nightmares on the way here, the ones I used to have in Brightport: swimming around in a fish tank surrounded by my old classmates, all shouting “Freak! Freak!” at me, or being chased by a scientist with a big net.
   How many more nightmares was I going to have? Would I get to leave them behind? Would I ever stop feeling like the odd one out?
   Archie lowered his voice. “Just be careful,” he said. “That glassy plane marks out the Triangle, but it’s only like that on the surface. It’s a huge well below, leading down to the deepest depths of the ocean. And you don’t want to go disappear­ing down a hole like that.”
   I rubbed the goose bumps crawling up my arms.
   We’d sailed on calmly after that, slipping through water that grew clearer and lighter ­every moment, melting from deep navy to a soft baby blue. I tried to push Archie’s words to the back of my mind.
   Gradually, the island came into view. It was quite small, perhaps only a few miles across: a tall cliV at one end, a ­couple of lower peaks at the other, and a low, flat stretch in between. As we drew closer, I ­could see that the coastline was made up of long white bays fringed with tall palm trees and clusters of rocks and arches. It looked like a postcard. I’d always thought those pictures must be made up somehow and that when you got there, you’d just find a clump of high-rise apartments next to a building site.
   But it was real. And it was my new home.