Straight On Till Morning (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,51
ran down her green shield, but then she noticed the sopping wet human girl. She giggled, pointing.
“All right, all right,” Wendy said gamely, trying to keep her smile. Her shadow straightened herself out and set herself back in place behind Wendy—but very behind Wendy, keeping her as a sort of bulwark against more splashes of shadow water. “Very funny. But really, I’m here for a rather serious quest. You see, Peter Pan has…”
“Peter Pan!” the red-haired one sighed, flipping herself onto her back and swimming dreamily across the lagoon.
“That Peter Pan…” A green-haired one whistled.
“What do you know of Peter Pan?” the purple-haired one still on the rock asked, eyes narrowing.
The pink-haired one swam up close to Wendy, near the bottom of her ledge, listening intently.
“Well, he and I have some things to…sort out,” Wendy stammered. She didn’t want to admit that she was responsible for his shadow now being in the hands of pirates—whom the mermaids obviously feared and hated. And they didn’t seem to have a great attention span. It would be difficult to make it all the way to the end, when she explained how she was trying to make reparations for what she had done.
The pink-haired one grinned strangely up at her.
“Yes?” Wendy asked politely.
But the mermaid just fixed her with giant caramel eyes and held up a vine draped over her hands.
“I don’t understand,” Wendy said. “What—”
Suddenly, the mermaid yanked. The vine snapped taut; the other end clung to a tree that was behind Wendy. She was thrown headfirst into the water.
Not the best swimmer even in calm situations, Wendy panicked, throwing her arms over her face as if expecting another splash. She hit the lagoon in the worst sort of tangled position, mouth open as she tried to cry out.
Salt water immediately ran down her throat and up her nose. She coughed and choked and sneezed, flailing her arms around and trying desperately to right herself. Her dress swirled and caught around her legs and waist, tangling her limbs utterly and weighing her down.
Her toes touched the bottom.
This shocked her into thinking again, and she kicked off it toward the surface.
“HELP!” Wendy called out as soon as her mouth was out of the water—instead of breathing, which might have been a better call.
A mermaid took this opportunity to grab her hair and yank her head back.
Wendy’s lower half flipped up as her torso bent backward underwater, forcing a river’s worth of water up her nose.
She coughed and floundered. Opening her eyes underwater didn’t cause any extreme discomfort, although what she saw did: the sinuous forms of mermaids cutting back and forth through the current, quick as knives.
She tried to paddle to the surface, old lessons finally kicking in. She pushed her legs hard, hoping to connect with one of the glittering, slick bodies.
Her left foot did, and it was just enough to propel her to the surface.
She didn’t waste her chance this time; she sucked in a deep breath of air.
The mermaids leapt and porpoised around her, their grins hard and white. Their mouths seemed a little wider than they should have been, their teeth even sharper.
One of John’s random facts popped into her consciousness: how some sharks had four rows of teeth, one inside the other, to more quickly disembowel their prey.
“Tinker Bell!” she cried. “Help!”
The fairy hovered in the air, watching the commotion thoughtfully.
Or…could it have been…disinterestedly?
Slimy, strong hands grabbed Wendy’s waist and tugged. Down.
But the mermaid didn’t manage to pull her entirely underwater. She had expected the human girl to be as light and lithe as one of them.
So the next mermaid leapt out of the water and landed with her hands on Wendy’s shoulders, trying to push her down from above.
Once again, this mermaid wasn’t strong or heavy enough to do much besides dunk Wendy for a moment. But they were learning. Hands and mouths grabbed at her body and dress, pulling and pushing and trying to drown her with their combined efforts.
“Tinker Bell!” Wendy spluttered.
The fairy, hanging above the lagoon, shook her head slowly.
That was the second to last thing Wendy saw.
The last thing was the fairy flying off, away into the jungle.
Tinker Bell had given up on the human girl and her hopeless situation.
Wendy went under.
Wendy’s thoughts as the water closed above her head were a strange mix of things.
Primarily it was panic and survival, her body thrashing and arms circling, mouth shut tight, trying to keep from breathing in the water that was now all around her.