Kraken Up
“Kraken!” Ollie shouts as Blackbeard raises a sword from his sheath and begins running at one of the giant tentacles slithering across the deck.
“Everybody move!” Jax shouts as more tentacles begin climbing up onto the deck. The fleshy limbs are covered in slimy suction cups with rows of teeth.
“Defend yer ship before it pulls us under, mateys!” Blackbeard stabs a tentacle and it recoils. There is lots of shouting out commands as the crew swipes at the tentacles with their swords. Ollie, meanwhile, is desperately trying to get the ship to move and not succeeding.
“But you said they were just a myth!” Maxine shouts as a tentacle comes dangerously close to hitting her in the back.
“Because that’s what Hayley said in her letter!” I pull Maxine out of the way and look for something to defend ourselves with. Doesn’t Blackbeard have a cannon on this thing? Yes! I pull Maxine up the steps to the higher end of the deck where the cannon is. “None of this is real.”
A tentacle hits one of the ship’s masts, and it crashes to the deck with a loud thud.
“Looks pretty real to me,” Kayla says, using her wand to send a spray of sparks at the nearest tentacle. We hear a withering shriek, and the tentacle disappears over the side of the ship.
“It’s working!” AG says happily. But seconds later, the tentacle shoots out of the water again and comes right for us. Maxine, Kayla, and I dive out of the way.
“Get to the cannon,” I tell them and we spring up, running as fast as we can past Jocelyn.
“Take that, you giant, smelly squid!” she cries as she tosses fireball after fireball at the creature with little effect. “Not enough? Well, how do you like this?” She begins to mouth something I can’t hear and raises her hand to the tentacle nearest her. The tentacle begins to shimmer and glow and then bursts into hundreds of butterflies. “Ha!”
The rest of us cheer. Maybe Jocelyn can turn the whole Kraken into a giant butterfly. That wouldn’t be too tough to fight, would it?
The butterflies suddenly fall to the floor and transform into hundreds of tiny tentacles that start to grow.
“Move back! Move back!” Blackbeard tells us, using his sword to send the tiny tentacles flying off the side of the ship. “Ollie, me matey! Get ye ship moving, or we are going to wind up in Davy Jones’s locker!”
“Ah-whoo!” I hear a wolf growl and look over. Allison Grace has transformed into her beastly form. She leaps high into the air in her pink party dress and clings to the tentacle, biting into it with her sharp, daggerlike teeth. The tentacle swings back and forth, trying to shake her off, then disappears over the side of the ship.
“AG!” I scream as Kayla flies past me.
“I’ve got her!” Kayla shouts, nimbly dodging the beast as she flies right, left, then dives low. She pulls AG up out of the water and starts flying toward the island. At least the two of them are—
“Gilly!” Jax plows into me, knocking me to the deck. I slide across the wet surface and crash into the bow, looking up in time to see Jax get plucked by a tentacle that apparently was about to snatch me. It twists itself around him and pulls him into the air.
“Jax!” I scramble to get up, slipping and sliding across the deck as I race toward the beast before it disappears in the water with Jax in its clutches. “Jax!” My heart is pounding as I try to reach him.
Jocelyn sees what’s happening and starts firing orbs at the tentacle, almost striking Jax in the thigh.
“Watch where you’re aiming!” Jax shouts.
“Sorry! Just trying to help you live!” Jocelyn fires back.
“Hang on!” I shout to Jax.
“I’m trying!” Jax pounds at the tentacle, willing it to unwind its tight grasp.
The ship lists again, tossing us all across the deck.
“I think I got the anchor free!” Ollie shouts. “Or someone did!”
“It be me lady!” Blackbeard runs past me, slicing two tentacles in half with his sword. “She has the mermaids helping her. I can hear her siren song!”
I can’t hear anything in all this commotion, but I’m almost to the top of the deck where I can reach Jax. The tentacle is swinging wildly, trying to avoid Jocelyn’s flaming orbs. I dive under one and can almost reach Jax’s leg. He sees me and his eyes widen.
“Gilly, stay back!” he says, struggling against the tentacle’s hold.
“And watch you become fish food?” I grab one of the pulleys on the deck and race to the mast. I hoist myself to the top. “I don’t think so!”
“I just saved you! You getting caught right now would kind of defeat the whole purpose!” Jax shouts, trying to kick out from the squid’s suction-cup tentacles.
“That’s what you’re worried about?” I slide across the mast’s horizontal yard, trying to hang on as the ship veers to its side again.
“I don’t need saving!” Jax goes flying back in the grasp of the tentacles.
“Looks like you do!” I yell as I pull myself up and stand on the yard.
BOOM!
I see the cannonball fly through the air at the kraken and hit one of the tentacles. I cheer as the kraken screeches, and the tentacles begin to writhe. The one holding Jax releases him, and he starts to free-fall to the water below. But at the last second, another tentacle grabs him and begins to pull him under the choppy water.
“No!” I grab the rope and start to slide down the mast, but by the time I hit the deck, Jax is gone. The others race to the side of the ship.
“I don’t see him!” Maxine cries.
“Jax! Jax!” I shout, but I know he can’t hear me underwater. “We have to do something!”
“We’ll get pulled under if we stay here!” Ollie tells me. “We’ll send the mermaids to find him.”
“But it will be too late!” I argue.
As the ship starts to move away, I see the tentacles emerge from the water again. I climb onto the ship’s railing and prepare to jump, but someone pulls me back.
“What are you doing?” Jocelyn shouts. “You’ll get pulled under!”
“But Jax is down there!” I cry, starting to feel panicked. I’ve already lost Anna. I can’t lose Jax too. He was my first true friend at FTRS. I pull my uniform skirt out of Jocelyn’s grasp, and she grabs it again. We are yanking and pulling at each other when we hear Maxine scream.
“Look! It’s Jax!”
Jocelyn and I lean over the railing. Jax’s head is bobbing up and down in the water. He appears unconscious, but someone is keeping him afloat. It’s Hayley! She sees me and motions toward shore. I’m so relieved, I could cry, but then I spy the kraken moving like a giant wave just below the surface.
“The sea beast be headed back! Get to yer positions!” Blackbeard shouts.
“Hayley and Jax are going to be swallowed up,” Maxine yells.
And that’s when I hear the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard. It sounds like bells tinkling, a waterfall rushing, and children laughing all rolled into one. But it’s none of those things. It’s actually a single voice. Madame Cleo’s!
“Me lady! You be all right!” Blackbeard cries, looking at Madame Cleo bobbing in the water a few yards away. She isn’t alone. There is a wall of merfolk with her, and they’re all singing the same lullaby. I feel my eyes drifting closed as Maxine snores next to me. She sounds like a wall about to crumble. As my eyes start to close, I see the kraken’s tentacles slowly drifting below the surface before everything goes black.
When I awake, someone is standing over me, their face blocked out by the sun.
“Hey there, thief.”
“Jax!” I sit up, feeling sand slip through my fingers. Somehow I’m lying on a beach. We’ve somehow made it to Shipwreck Cove’s shore. And Jax is all right. “I thought…” I’m so overcome with emotion, I don’t know what to say as he pulls me to standing.
“You were worried, I know.” He flashes me a charming smile, and I feel my cheeks start to burn. “I told you I had it covered.”
Someone behind us clears their throat. “Actually, I had it covered.”
“Hayley!” I throw my arms around my half-mermaid friend, thrilled for the distraction. Hayley’s in human form again, looking tan with almost white-blond hair from all her time in the sun. “There was a kraken! You saved Jax!” I turn and look at Jax. “And I wasn’t worried about you.”
He flicks a patch of sand off his wet uniform shirt. “You were worried.”
“It’s all right,” Hayley tells me, sounding calm. “Everyone is okay. Kayla and AG made it to shore, the kraken has been charmed back to sleep, and the ship only has minor damage.”
I look around. Blackbeard’s ship is anchored behind me, and Ollie and Blackbeard are making repairs while Madame Cleo suns herself on a nearby rock, playing hostess to a group of mermaids. Jocelyn, Kayla, and AG are putting up a pop-up castle on the beach, and there are lots of people milling about. Everyone seems unusually calm.
“You said in your letter the kraken was just a myth,” I accuse her.
“Well,” Hayley shrugs. “I couldn’t be completely honest with you over Snail Mail. Snails aren’t known for being brave, and if my note was compromised, I’d be giving away Shipwreck Cove’s biggest secret.”
“But we almost got destroyed,” I point out.
“You wouldn’t have been if Kirk was behaving,” Hayley tells me.
“Kirk?”
“That’s the name of the kraken,” Jax supplies. “Apparently he’s the mermaids’ pet.”
“Some pet,” I grumble.
“He’s great. He keeps all the ships away when they slip through the fog barrier, but today…” Her face clouds over. “He was under a spell we couldn’t control.”
I inhale sharply. “Rumpelstiltskin?”
Hayley nods, and I notice her eyes are teary. “He was here. Just a few hours before you. We couldn’t hold him off. Kirk was under a spell and…” Her voice fades away.
“He had all of Hayley’s family cornered, but Madame Cleo helped her free them from an underwater cave while we were battling the kraken,” Jax tells me. “That’s why it took them so long to get to the surface and sing Kirk their lullaby. Stiltskin and Alva bewitched it.”
“Where are they now?” I whisper.
“Long gone,” Jax says grimly. “And they’ve got Darlene.”
I sink down onto the sand again and hear Maxine sniffling as she walks over with Kayla, Jocelyn, and AG.
“You told her?” Maxine asks Jax, who nods. “I feel terrible.” Maxine is drooling badly. “Darlene is such a good genie. She wouldn’t hurt a soul, but in Stiltskin’s hands, we’re done for. She doesn’t stand a chance against him tied up in her lamp!”
We’re all quiet, the realization of Maxine’s words sinking in. We’ve lost the battle before we even got started. Rumpelstiltskin is probably casting his curse as we speak. I inhale sharply, waiting for the world in front of me to swirl and disappear with a pop. I stare at Ollie, who has his eyes closed as if he’s thinking the same thing.
Ollie opens his eyes and looks at the rest of us. “Okay, why isn’t the curse happening? If he has Darlene and three wishes to make, why hasn’t he made them yet?”
“I don’t know.” Why hasn’t he cast his curse if he has wishes at his disposal?
“Darlene told us she can’t grant evil wishes. That’s why,” Maxine says.
“Yeah, but Stiltskin would find a way around that, wouldn’t he?” I ask, and we’re all quiet again.
Haley pulls something out of her pocket. It’s a small brown-and-white conch shell. “Maybe this will explain everything.”
“I’m not sure putting a shell to our ears and listening to the ocean right now is going to help,” Jocelyn says bitterly.
“Not that!” Hayley rolls her eyes. “Geez, that’s such an ocean stereotype—hearing the sound of the ocean in a shell. No, when Stiltskin found Darlene and became her master, she had this shell in her hands. I arrived just as he ordered Darlene back into her lamp, and this shell fell to the floor. She looked right at me as she dropped it and said, ‘Tell Maxine I’m sorry.’”
Maxine starts to audibly cry, and huge, fat tears fall onto the sand. “She thinks I blame her! Oh, Darlene! You don’t need to apologize to me!” She takes the shell from Hayley and holds it close to her heart.
“There has to be a reason she had a shell and dropped it,” I reason. “I’ve never seen Darlene leave items outside her lamp before.”
“She’s no litterer, that’s true.” Maxine sniffs. “Maybe the shell is a message.”
“I thought of that,” admits Hayley, whose eyes shift to Jocelyn, then downward. “But when I put the shell to my ear, there was no sound.”
“Oh, so maybe the shell-to-the-ear technique isn’t so ridiculous after all!” Jocelyn says.
“Did you rub it?” AG asks. “Like you would a lamp?”
Hayley’s eyes widen. “I didn’t think of that.” She takes the shell from Maxine and rubs it. Nothing happens.
“What a waste of my last few minutes in the kingdom,” Jocelyn mutters. “That curse is going to fall on us any second now!”
“Maybe the only way the message works is if Maxine rubs the shell,” I guess. “The message could be just for her since she’s one of Darlene’s former masters.”
Maxine cocks her head to one side. “You think?”
“Of course!” AG says. “She loved you!”
Maxine grins. “We did have a strong bond.”
Jax hands the shell to Maxine, who turns it over in her large hands. As soon as she rubs the top of the shell, a long, steady stream of smoke emerges from the opening in the conch shell. The smoke slowly transforms into Darlene; big, red hair, bright-gold dress, hoop earrings, and all. She looks like she’s ready for a night out on the genie town.
“Darlene!” Maxine cries. “You moved from your lamp to a shell. That’s so smart!”
Darlene blinks, looks both ways worriedly, then back at Maxine. “Maxine, I don’t have much time. Rumpelstiltskin has found Shipwreck Cove, and he’s searching for me as I speak. Any moment, I’ll be ripped from my lamp and have to accept that evil little troll as my new master, so listen carefully.”
“Cool! I want to learn to leave hidden messages in shells,” Ollie whispers, and the rest of us shush him.
“I’m afraid I have some bad news, dollface,” Darlene says, her ghostly pale complexion looking even whiter than usual. “I lied to you about the genie rules. I know what you’re thinking: ‘Darlene would never lie to me!’”
“Darlene would never lie to me!” Maxine repeats.
“But I did,” the genie adds.
Jocelyn whistles. “Uh-oh.”
“It’s true you only get three wishes, but beyond that, all the wish rules are my own,” Darlene says. “Why is that a problem? Because Rumpelstiltskin is about to become my master.”
“But you said you can’t grant evil wishes,” Maxine says as drool runs down her mouth.
“Yes, yes, I know I said genies can’t grant evil wishes, but that’s more like a standard I set for myself. Not a hard-and-fast rule.” Darlene puts one hand on her hip, or where it would be if she weren’t all smoke. “I am a classy genie, and as a personal rule, I don’t grant malevolent wishes. Who wants to grant a wish to destroy the kingdom? But as I said, it’s not a law. It’s more like a genie code of honor.”
“Oh no. Oh no. Oh no,” AG starts to hyperventilate, and I notice hair begin to grow on her face. She’s so upset, she’s going to transform again. I rub her back to calm her down.
“All is not lost, however: to try to make all genies follow the same code of honor, the genie council passed a law that says if a genie grants evil wishes, no matter what the extenuating circumstances, their powers will slowly diminish with each wish.”
“See, we’re fine!” Maxine says, wiping sweat from her brow. “Darlene would never want to lose her powers.”
“But, if Rumpelstiltskin gets ahold of me, I know he’ll try to bend me to his will.” She frowns. “And if I grant three evil wishes, I’ll be banished from my genie community, and I do not want that to happen. I certainly don’t want to live in a world run by Rumpelstiltskin either, so please, find a way to get my lamp back before any of these things happen.”
“How are we going to do that?” Jocelyn asks. “He’s already gone!”
“Even if we could find him immediately, Stiltskin could still spend his wishes before we get there and give Alva the lamp to make three more,” Jax adds.
I groan. “I didn’t even think of that possibility.”
“I’ll do my best stall,” Darlene tells us. “I’ll try to throw some smoke and mirrors his way and try to keep his wishes in check. Hayley told me about the curse he wants to cast, and wowza, it’s a doozy. We can only hope he’ll believe my lies about not being allowed to cast evil wishes. But if not, at least we know he can’t cast the curse until—”
Darlene’s image vanishes into thin air.