Krakens and Lies (14 page)

Zoe put her rebreather back in and wagged a sharp finger at the water horse. Logan imagined her saying
Stay here and stop bothering us unless you want nothing but kelp burgers for the next year
.

The kelpie snorted, but kept its distance as Logan tugged Zoe toward Matthew.

They swam into the castle along a spiraling hallway. The walls were completely smooth and shimmered like an opal or the inside of an oyster. Every ten feet there was an enormous mollusk shell overflowing with plants and sea life—pops of red, yellow, purple, and orange anemones nestled among bright green fronds swaying in the current. Logan spotted tiny blue seahorses bobbing between the strands of sea grass. Then he rounded a bend and swept into a cavernous space alongside Zoe and Matthew.

Racks of seaweed hung to their right, next to plants growing in shell pots along the wall. Several circular stone pits took up the left side of the room with spears of fish balanced over them. Logan could see blasts of bubbling, boiling water shooting up from the pits to cook the fish. A barrel-chested merman was tending them, fiddling with some levers that directed the streams of hot water from below. He looked up in surprise.

“Sooooowwwerrppp?” he asked.

The water felt pleasantly warm as they got closer to the pits. Matthew pulled out what looked like a whiteboard and wrote on it with a charcoal pencil.

We're here for the kelpie's and zaratan's meals.
He eyed the merman for a moment, then added,
Please
, and held it up.

The merman's eyebrows drew together and he crossed his arms. If this was the guy they needed to go through, things did not look good.

As Matthew launched into a negotiation with the merman, Logan followed Zoe to the far wall. She unhooked a long white cylinder with a strap and handed it to Logan. It was heavier than it looked and made a clunking sound as it pulled him down to the floor.

“Nnneeeeeeevvvaaaaahh!” A young mermaid, maybe eight years old, with curly brown hair in pigtails came zooming out of nowhere and tried to wrestle the cylinder away from Logan.

He held on tightly as the momentum from the girl spun them. Something rattled inside as they played tug-of-war with it. Out of the corner of his eye, Logan spotted an older mermaid with the same hair stop near them. Suddenly the cylinder slipped out of the mergirl's hands and she went flying, end over end.

“Mmmaaaaaaammmmaaaaaa!!!” she wailed and fled to the mermaid's side. Her mother hugged her, looking unperturbed, even as Logan crinkled his face in apology.

“Bbbaaadraallaam ppeeettum!” The merman who'd been arguing with Matthew came over and huffed at the mermaid.
Even without speaking their language, Logan could tell he was basically saying: “Can you believe these landwalkers, invading our castle?” The merman gestured toward the cylinder and the long slender sticks Zoe was unhooking from the wall. “Fffeeenna rratha mmeeer.”

Instead of getting riled up like the other merfolk, the curly-haired mermaid shrugged with a smug expression. She cocked her head at Zoe and waved a hand toward several large lidded pails lined up along the walls.
Be my guest
.

“Gggoooolaa?” the merman asked her, incredulous.

The mermaid made a face at him that looked like,
If they want to get bitten by a zaratan, I'm not going to stop them
.

The merman paused, considering. A smirk spread across his face. He picked up two of the pails and shoved them into Matthew's arms.

That was too easy
, Logan thought. As he and Zoe claimed the remaining pails, he studied the superior and highly amused looks on the merfolk's faces.
They don't think we can do this. Or they're counting on us running into some very entertaining trouble
.

Sure enough, the three merfolk followed them out of the castle, burbling gleefully to each other. Outside, a crowd of merfolk was waiting for them, some of them armed with tridents.

The curly-haired mermaid from the kitchen called out something, which made an amused murmur run through the crowd.

Matthew pointed the whiteboard at Zoe and Logan.
Just ignore them
, he wrote.

Easier said than done, as the entire mob trailed after them into the murky dimness outside the mermaid village.

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIGGGGHHHH!”

They had only swum a few feet when a very agitated kelpie thundered up and started nosing the pails, shouldering into Logan and Matthew. Matthew shoved her head away and she snapped at his flippers. Zoe tried to poke her off with one of the sticks, but the kelpie grabbed it in her teeth and yanked hard, tugging Zoe into an off-balance somersault.

The merfolk began nudging each other and guffawing.

Matthew kicked to the surface, and Logan followed. Zoe's head popped up a second after his. Matthew was already taking out his rebreather.

“This is impossible,” he muttered. “Silverina is being so annoying.”

Right on cue, something pulled him downward and he sputtered as he kicked back up.

“The kelpie's name is Silverina?” Logan asked.

“Ruby named her,” Zoe explained. “To be fair, she was nine at the time. But you'll notice Mom and Dad never let her name anybody else.”

“Seriously,” Matthew said. “We'd have ended up with a dragon named Sparklepuff. KELPIE, GET OFF OR I
WILL
STAB YOU.”

“Can't we just feed . . . Silverina first?” Logan asked.

Matthew shook his head. “The zaratan would get offended. We should stick to the routine as best we can. Logan, you're going to need to signal the zaratan to come to us with the shaker.” He nodded toward the cylinder slung over Logan's shoulder.

“No problem.”

“Oof!” Zoe cried as she was knocked sideways by the kelpie's head.

Matthew reached over and bopped the kelpie on the nose. “Zoe, you and Logan feed the zaratan. I'll try to keep Silverina in line. Ready?”

“Ready,” Logan said.

“Stupid mermaids,” Zoe grumbled. “Stupid Blue and his stupid royal status.”

They all put in their rebreathers and descended. Matthew pointed ahead to a flat, clear stretch along the bottom of the lake. It was shallower here, so some light filtered down. A ring of merfolk had set up around the patch and seemed to be munching on calamari and toasting each other with conch shells. It reminded Logan of the sidelines of a Bulls game. Or, he guessed, what Roman spectators at an arena would have looked like.

Waiting for someone to get eaten by lions—or in this case, by a cranky water horse
.

Logan set his pails down on the sand and pulled the shaker over his head.
Shhkkkashhkkkashhkkka
, rattled whatever was inside it.

A gray head suddenly snaked around his legs and snatched one of his pails. The lid came off as the kelpie dragged it away and tiny squid-like creatures floated out.

Zoe abandoned her own pails and swam over to wrestle the bucket away and slam the lid back on, but the kelpie was rapidly gobbling most of what had escaped.

“Aaaahh!” Zoe yelped as the kelpie's teeth narrowly missed her fingers.

Matthew grabbed one of the sticks and smacked the kelpie on the nose with it. She danced away, arching her neck to snap at another squid.

Tremendously helpful laughter and applause erupted from the watching merfolk.

Darkness spread over the sand below them. Logan looked up to see an enormous shape roughly the size of their school's gymnasium blocking the light.

The zaratan pivoted and began to dive toward them.

Zoe quickly grabbed one of the sticks and reached into a pail. She speared several large fish onto the end. Logan followed suit as the zaratan's head came level with them. A round, black eye studied him curiously.

Logan's hand shook a little as he held out his stick in front
of the zaratan's beak, which was as wide as a cafeteria table was long. The zaratan cocked its head and then its mouth opened and shut so quickly Logan would have missed it if he hadn't felt the force of it swiping the fish off the stick.

Yikes! That thing is fast
. Logan hastily re-threaded his stick as Zoe offered hers to the zaratan. They emptied two of their pails as Matthew poured out the rest of the squid for the kelpie. Logan's last pail held seaweed.

Logan and Zoe tried to spear the seaweed onto their sticks, but it was too fragile and kept breaking.

The zaratan's beak nosed forward impatiently. Logan slapped his stick together with Zoe's like chopsticks and together they lifted a ribbon of seaweed out of a pail and held it out to the zaratan, who grabbed it and began munching. Logan could have sworn a smile spread across its face.

“Boooo!” the merfolk cried. Logan glanced over his shoulder and saw them slumping in disappointment.

Guess they were hoping we'd lose a few fingers
. Well, too bad. He and Zoe could do this. He gave Zoe a thumbs-up as they worked together to scoop out more of the seaweed for the zaratan.

Matthew was having a harder time with the kelpie.

“AAARRRGGGH!” Logan thought he heard Matthew shout, although it was distorted by the rebreather.

Logan glanced over to see Silverina making off with one of their last pails, which was intended for the kraken. Matthew
chased after her and managed to get it back, but not before the kelpie gulped down half of the food and then danced off with a swish of her tail.

They'd have to hope the kraken wasn't too hungry.

Once the seaweed pail was empty, the zaratan pivoted to swim away, its wake knocking them over. The merfolk threw their conch shells down on the sand and dispersed, grumbling.

Logan, Zoe, and Matthew collected their gear and the pail and a half that was left for the kraken. Matthew tugged out his notepad and wrote: “Two down, one to go.”

It took a monumental effort to launch off the lake bottom; the sand sucked at Logan's flippers and the pails thumped against his thighs. The buckets were lighter, but swimming felt harder and harder as they crossed the lake and exhaustion seeped into Logan's muscles.

Just how big was this lake? And why did the kraken live in the most remote corner of it?

Then again, if he had to share a lake with those mermaids, he'd choose to live as far away from them as possible, too.

The lake bed beneath him became rockier, with boulders and crags sticking up. Then the northeast shore came into view. Logan spotted an irregular opening with a hinged gate in the cliff side. But the kraken was nowhere in sight.

Zoe and Matthew poked their heads into the hole and conferred using the whiteboard while Logan took the opportunity to rest on a flat rock.

He felt the water stirring behind him and turned. The kraken's bulbous head was hovering next to him. She blinked slowly and ran one of her tentacles over his head. Then her whole body shuddered, almost in excitement, like a puppy not believing the good fortune of finding a roast beef sandwich on the floor.

“Ummm . . .” Logan mumbled into his mask. “Guys?”

Zoe and Matthew turned just as the kraken wrapped one of her tentacles around Logan's waist and jetted off. Logan saw them hurrying after him, but they seemed very small and very far away very quickly. Water whooshed around him and he clutched the rebreather to his face to make sure he didn't lose it. He wondered whether to panic. How often did people get kidnapped by the kraken around here? Was there a protocol for hostage negotiation with a giant sea creature?

The kraken slowed and finally set Logan down in a curved half bowl along the shoreline, pitted with nooks and tunnels. Logan gazed around in wonder.

He could see what looked like a giant rock slide sloping down from the land above and a series of different-sized holes were carved into another stone slab. A number of balls were tied to weights along the floor, floating at different heights, and one stretch of smooth black rock seemed to have a shelf with small limestone sticks next to it, like an underwater chalkboard. Someone—or something—had drawn some wavy lines on it that reminded Logan of Chinese characters.

This couldn't be for the kelpie or the zaratan. Maybe this was the enclosure intended for the Chinese dragon? The one his mom was transporting here when she disappeared?

The kraken waved her tentacles at Logan, pointing at the enclosure and then back beyond him.

Logan held up his hands helplessly in the universal
I'm sorry, I have no idea what you're talking about
gesture.

The kraken sank a little, then perked up, waving more frenetically this time. She held two of her arms out in front of her like a pouch and shook them up and down. Logan stared at her blankly. She wove two of her legs into a seated lotus position, then raised two more in a Zen-like pose.

Am I supposed to meditate?

Logan felt the water swirl around him as Zoe and Matthew swam up. He held up his hands in an
I'm okay
sign and Zoe mimed wiping sweat off her brow in relief.

Matthew pointed at a mound of orange seaweed that had been woven into a banner bordering the enclosure and wrote on his board:
Did the mermaids do that?

Zoe shrugged.

The kraken poked their legs insistently. She went through the whole pantomime Logan had already seen. But the Kahn siblings looked equally flummoxed.

The kraken let out a series of noises, staring at them soulfully.

Bubble. Squerk. Wheek. Fwelk. Bubble
.

What do you think she wants?
Zoe wrote on Matthew's board.

No idea,
Matthew wrote back.

He took the pail and a half of seaweed they had left and set about spearing them for the kraken. She slapped the water with her tentacles like she was sulking for a minute, before giving up and tackling the food.

Within a few minutes, the buckets were empty. The kraken's tentacles wrapped around the pails and she turned them over and shook them, then looked at Logan and Zoe reproachfully, as if to say
That's all?