‘I’ve got to find Maggie,’ Sam said. ‘She’ll know what to do. If it’s the wet witches, she’ll stop them.’
‘Yes, of course she will,’ Bladder said, ‘and what’ll she charge you to put it back the way it was?’
Daniel sighed. ‘It’s true. She’ll help you, but she’ll probably ask you to build an army to do the work, and once they have finished helping you, that army will look forward to eating humans. If she has a strong enough army, they won’t need to hide any more – they could come out of the shadows and fight back. At the moment, humans are far too strong for them to be openly destructive.’
‘Well, what can I do to help them?’ Sam gestured at the sea creatures.
‘I wouldn’t make Maggie the first person I asked,’ Bladder replied.
Daniel agreed. ‘Let’s try to do this ourselves first, with no magic help. So, what can we do right now?’
Sam watched the sea creatures. They were grouped in their species, and the water rocked and waved as the bigger creatures cruised below. The dolphins circled the legs of the pier and came back to stare at him, willing him to tell them something.
Sam leaned over the barrier. ‘Can everyone understand me?’
Every sea creature near the water’s surface turned to him, then paused before many of them dived back under.
‘Maybe not,’ Daniel said.
Sam exhaled, disappointed.
‘Wait, look,’ Bladder said.
More heads popped up and seals further out nudged schools of fish. Their glittering heads broke the surface, gasped as they stared at him. Sam knew they couldn’t breathe above water, so they were going without for a few seconds to look at him. From Brighton Pier to the Palace Pier, crowds of sea creatures stared back at him.
‘I’d take that as a sign,’ Bladder said.
Sam raised his voice so he could be heard above the wind. ‘I need you to stay here. Between the piers. We’ll try to figure out how to get you home. On two legs.’
He guessed his words didn’t carry far, but the fact he could tell them anything felt reassuring.
The creatures who could make a noise hooted and bellowed, chittered and roared. Those ones who couldn’t – fish mainly – opened and shut their mouths. So many, in fact, it created a bubbling sound. A seal floated up behind the dolphins and waved a fin at him. Sam wondered if he knew it from school. Wilfred, Amira and Hazel jumped out of the water, creating celebratory splashes.
‘They seem safe enough. Still here and not eating each other,’ Sam said.
‘They’ll get hungry soon,’ Bladder said.
‘Books!’ Daniel said. ‘We need some books.’
‘Seriously?’ Bladder asked. ‘Is this really the best time to start a reading club, Egghead?’
Daniel ignored the gargoyle and flew off into the wintry grey sky.
He returned after a few minutes, carrying a large leather-bound book. Gold words stamped on its cover read The Book of Water.
Daniel handed it to Sam. The cover fell open, and Sam flicked through the first few pages. The first one, the flyleaf, was blank. The next page was a painting of a trio of beautiful girls motioning a young man into a lake. The man was looking at the girls with the same lost and blank expression Sam remembered on the faces of the kids as they’d walked into the water. The song did that. Sam decided he didn’t like the picture at all. He stood up and looked over the side of the pier. The three dolphins were bobbing around each other in the water. He held out the book.
‘What’s out there in the water? Who was singing that song?’ Sam asked. ‘Is it ladies like these ones?’
All three dolphins looked at the pages and then around at the hundreds of splattering fish, schools of identical herring, identical cod, identical salmon, tiny silver whiting. They didn’t reply.
‘Perhaps they don’t know either. They can’t have swum too far out before the song stopped,’ Daniel said.
‘What else does the book say?’ Bladder asked.
Sam slid back down to the decking and turned the next page. At least it had a contents page. It listed ‘Large Saltwater Monsters’ first: ‘Behemoth’, ‘Cetis’, ‘Charybdis’, ‘Giant Octopus’, ‘Kraken’, ‘Leviathan’, ‘Morgawr’, ‘Nessie’, ‘Scylla’, ‘Tamingila’, ‘Yacumama’. Sam turned the page. There were four times as many names in the next few pages. He didn’t understand how they were grouped.
‘Move on from monsters. We should look for something that can perform great magic,’ Daniel said.
Bladder fake coughed into a paw. ‘Fairy dust.’
‘You still think Maggie caused this?’ Sam asked.
‘She’s been handing it around like it’s a bag of sweeties. That poor little fairy I met, she’d torn his wings off just to get the stuff,’ Bladder said.
They stared at him. ‘That sounded almost sympathetic,’ Daniel said.
Bladder muttered. ‘Why has everyone got this impression that I have no sympathy for anyone else? Just because I’m not a sentimental sop …’ He stopped and belched. Sam thought it smelt like eggs again, maybe with vegetables in it.
Bladder swallowed. ‘Doesn’t necessarily have to be Maggie. Could be someone who’s got into her stash. Wet witches, like she said.’
‘This is huge magic. Magic that has affected tens of thousands of children,’ Daniel said. ‘How much fairy dust would you need to change this many children –’ he waved his marble-white arm in the direction of the sea – ‘into sea creatures? Billions of thousands of fairy wings. This isn’t Maggie’s doing, or one of her cronies’. This is either true fairy magic, or something else entirely. And fairies have never been known to steal children en masse. So this is likely to be something else.’
Sam couldn’t help a little smile. He’d begun to wonder about Maggie too. He didn’t want to believe it, but Bladder had been convincing. It was comforting to hear Daniel’s certainty that this wasn’t her work. He turned again to get to the next section of the book, which was entitled ‘Smaller Saltwater Monsters (incl. Sea Imps and Wet Witches)’. It listed ‘Fish People’, ‘Rusalka’, ‘Selkies’, ‘Shen’, ‘Sirens’, ‘Umibōzu’, and so on. The legend at the bottom told him that the ones marked with a blue egg symbol were hatched. That meant they were made in The Hole. The first twenty on the page he was looking at were blue-egged.
‘How do sea monster hatchlings get out to sea?’ Sam asked.
‘They swim,’ Bladder replied.
‘From The Hole? There’s no water.’
‘Some have legs and make a run for the sea entrance. Their breeds can’t normally get to The Hole to fetch ’em and ogres find them particularly yummy.’
Sam remembered watching a documentary on turtles and how the babies had to make their way to the water without any help. Seagulls picked them off, but a few lucky ones survived.
‘What about the ones without legs?’ Daniel asked.
Bladder pretended to throw something. ‘They get lobbed in like a basketball.’
‘And they don’t get eaten?’
‘Thunderguts kept strict tallies on ’em. If they were underweight, they got thrown in the water, and ogres were only allowed a certain amount per batch. Otherwise …’ Bladder pulled a face. ‘Not a pleasant topic, shall we keep reading?’
A short list at the end was titled ‘Benevolent Saltwater Creatures’. It was short, mentioning only four species: ‘Merpeople’, ‘Nereids’, ‘Tritons’ and ‘Yacuruna’. ‘Merpeople’ was marked with a silver forward slash. Sam looked at the legend. The slash meant ‘Users of magic’.
He looked to see who else had a silver forward slash. None of the larger sea monsters did, but the rusalka, selkies and sirens did. ‘I’ll start with the sea imps and witches first. They have users of magic among them. I’ll skip the benevolent creatures for now. I’m guessing no one kindly is going to have done this.’ He flipped to the first silver-slashed page and read aloud: ‘“Rusalka can be saltwater- or freshwater-based creatures. The two different environs do not greatly alter their natures (see notes on page 172). Rusalka have a singular magic; they can change their appearance to become beautiful in a way that suits the taste of their prey. This magic …”’
‘Nup,’ Bladder said. ‘Moving on.’
‘Nup?’ Sam asked. ‘What do you mean, “nup”?’
‘Well, the magic going on here –’ Bladder gestured at the water – ‘is about changing the children, not the monsters changing themselves, and a rusalka’s magic is not what you need to get all the children here. Not unless she turned herself into an ice-cream van to lure them to sea. And we know that weren’t it.’
‘She could have—’
‘It was related to that noise somehow. Let’s not waste time.’
Sam turned to the page entitled ‘Selkies’. It started straight into their magic skills. ‘“Selkies are a type of water ’thrope, able to change from seals to humans and back again.” Nup,’ Sam said. ‘Not selkies.’
Bladder chortled. ‘That’s my boy. What’s next?’
‘Sirens.’ Sam gulped at the very first sentence. ‘“A siren has a magical voice that draws the hearer to a watery grave, calling human victims into the sea to drown.”’
‘That noise you heard, Sam,’ Daniel said.
‘It wasn’t beautiful, though.’
‘Not to you, but you don’t have human hearing. Maybe you heard it the way you did because you’re part gargoyle. Read on.’
Sam continued. ‘“Thelxinoe has been queen of the sirens since the early 1500s. Many of her sisters have held this title, and each of the sirens will take the throne for a period of time. Since sirens are immortal – unless they choose to die or are killed – this system seems most fair to them. It is estimated that sirens have sung hundreds of thousands of humans to a watery grave with their beautiful voices. Sirens can alter their song to suit their prey, which gives them the ability to specify a target of their choice, calling only to men at times, only to women, only to children at others, should they wish.”’
‘Sounds like our lot,’ Bladder said.
Sam read on. ‘Those not summoned by the siren call are still affected by its magic. The song will stupefy them, keeping them asleep so the sirens can take their prey without interference as their victims head towards certain death. Towns have been nearly emptied of residents, and those who remain have no idea where the missing have gone.’
‘We may have found our culprits,’ Daniel said.
‘“Whole crews have walked off ships (Mary Celeste, USS Cyclops) and entire villages have been called into the sea. When a love interest eludes her, a siren can focus her song so powerfully that even inland areas are not safe. One of Molpe’s desired targets was so terrified of her he moved to an inland town in northern Canada (Anjikuni Lake). Even this did not save him, or those he hid among. Sirens may call one person (Owain Glyndwr, Harold Holt) or many (the entire Ninth Spanish Legion). Sirens are relentless.”’
‘Relentless? Oh, great,’ Bladder said.
‘But everyone’s been turned into sea creatures,’ Daniel said. ‘Is there anything about that in the book?’
There was another paragraph on other disappearances attributed to sirens, but nothing about any power other than their glorious voices.
‘So sirens could explain how they ended up in the water, but not how they turned into all these sea creatures. And look at this.’ Sam pointed to a handwritten note at the side of the page. It had almost completely faded. ‘“There are only two of the original sirens left, 1997.” Maybe other things about sirens have changed too. Maybe they’ve got bigger magic somehow …’
Bladder and Daniel looked doubtful.
Sam peered between the latticing of the barrier. The dolphins were staring at him again. He waved, and dorsal fins waved back at him and circled the seals.
‘What other magic-wielding creatures are there?’ Daniel asked.
‘Only the merpeople.’
‘Read it,’ Bladder said.
‘“Merpeople, often confused with rusalka, are in truth more like fairies. Merpeople are nature creatures. They are predominantly benevolent, but if they are crossed they can be exacting, callous and vengeful. They can be intensely dangerous, although it is rare for merpeople to war with each other and they prefer to stay out of the politics of other sea monsters and witches. Merpeople are fish-herds and farmers and wary of land dwellers, often attacking first and querying afterwards. The Merrow of Great Britain are a highly educated and peace-loving merpeople. They re-established the University at Atlantis in 967 AD, which still teaches philosophy, mathematics, art, magic and science.’
‘It doesn’t sound like they would have had anything to do with this,’ Daniel said.
A sudden shrill note pierced the air.
‘Oh, no,’ Bladder said.
More sounds followed, grating and grinding in Sam’s ears. The song had started again.
‘Oh, no,’ Bladder repeated, and pointed.
One of the tiniest whiting flapped out of the water, putting a sudden distance between itself and the others as it headed to open water. Its brothers and sisters flickered after it. A herring, silver and slick, looked at the shark and disappeared under the waves. The shark turned its concerned blue eyes towards the fish, then to Sam. Sam read begging in its eyes. A salmon flew over Hazel’s back and she caught it in her mouth to stop it swimming after the others. It struggled to escape, but she held tight. Its eyes changed as it panicked between her teeth, irises growing bigger and bigger, the slimy gold eating up the whites around it, becoming expressionless. It gasped in the air, so Hazel let it go with a panicked squeak. Sam saw two seals and a smaller dolphin stare at him with bland grey and black stares. As each set of eyes changed, the owner would skitter away and disappear into the water. Sam noticed the song increasing in volume.
Hazel swam under the waves, trying to herd back as many fish as she could. Sam saw her fin glinting as she worried the whiting, but they fled around her, their scales sparkling like Beatrice’s stars. A school of herring flooded away beyond her, racing after the smaller fish as they darted out to darker water.
Amira squeaked at Sam, and even without words, he understood her tone. It meant ‘hurry’. She was afraid.
‘They’re not human any more,’ Daniel said. ‘Siren song can’t do that.’
‘Looks like it can,’ Bladder said.
Sam couldn’t see the little whiting at all, the babies, but he could see many other fish as they left. The few remaining watched him with wide stares, every single set of eyes on him still human. Their mouths may have gasped and panted like fish, but those eyes pleaded with him to do something. He was their only chance.
‘I’ve got to get a boat. Something. We’ve got to follow them,’ Sam said.
‘You cant,’ Bladder said. ‘It’s magic. It’s dangerous. What can you do against all that?’
‘I have to go, Bladder. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, but the way to help them all is out there.’
Bladder swore. Sam sneezed.
Daniel peered at Sam in his pyjamas. ‘Sam, you’re freezing.’