Straight On Till Morning (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,52
obviously her mind touched a bit on her rapidly approaching and inevitable death.
But there was also a surprising amount of disappointment. She and Tinker Bell had finally been starting to make a connection, even if it was just over a common goal. The fairy had even given her pixie dust to fly! And then the little thing had revealed herself to be no better than any of the other heartless members of Never Land—pirates, crystal monsters, murderous mermaids. She was utterly selfish, only concerned with her own problems and adventures.
Wendy couldn’t hold her breath any longer. She opened her mouth and…
The water was suddenly clear of mermaids and the weight holding her down was gone.
She popped to the surface like a child’s toy in the bath, free of all hands, tails, mouths, and other impedimenta.
Coughing and spluttering—as quietly as she could—she sucked down great, painful gulps of air.
No one attacked her.
She kicked to the side of the lagoon, muscles screaming. Whatever had happened, she had to get out of the water before the mermaids returned.
She was almost too weak to pull herself up onto the ledge and scraped the sides of her legs raw while scrambling for a good foothold. Once finally up, her muscles and lungs desperately wanted her to lie there and recover. But Wendy forced herself to roll until she was a good arm’s length away from the water and clear of any sneaky vines.
She took many amazing breaths while looking up at the sky. It was an intense deep blue and the palm fronds were black against the sun. It was bliss just to be alive. Even the little clouds of gnats hovering around her face didn’t bother her. Anyway, they were sort of cute, with what looked like giant red and yellow feathers trailing from their heads and behinds.
Eventually she recovered enough to sit up. Salt water poured indelicately out of her nose and down the back of her throat, burning it even more. Water sloshed in her ears dizzyingly. If she hadn’t known better, with the way her head was aching, she would have thought there was salt water up in her brains, too.
The mermaids were all still there, roiling in the water, lashing their tails and whipping up foam, fighting.
Each other.
“It’s mine!” the purple one cried. She was no longer so queenly or stately upon her boulder throne. She was in the water with the rest of them, wide mouth even wider with toothy glee, holding up what looked like a piece of fruit. Something orangish but elongated like a banana.
“No, it’s mine!”
The red-haired one leapt out of the water like a dolphin and snatched it out of her hands.
Two more mermaids dove after her, and so the roiling rebegan.
Tinker Bell hovered out of harm’s way above the water, shaking her head disgustedly. She had another piece of fruit in her hands, a small reddish thing rather like an oversized cherry.
Now Wendy understood.
Legends told of how mermaids craved fruit because there was nothing like it in the sea. They would trade pearls and gems and long-lost treasures for a single apple, according to old sea chanteys the boys used to sing.
Tinker Bell had managed to distract the mermaids and make them turn on each other just by pelting them with bananas—like a mean child at the zoo.
“Oh, well done,” Wendy tried to say aloud. It came out a rasping whisper. She coughed and more water came out—along with a thin trickle of blood. Nothing serious, she decided, being a practical girl not prone to flights of panic or hypochondria. It wasn’t tuberculosis or cancer; it was just the result of her throat being scraped raw. But the taste and feel of it combined with the salt water threatened her already turbulent stomach.
Despite the whisper, Tinker Bell, with her fairy ears, had heard what she had said, or at least caught the tone of it. Her eyes widened in surprise.
“That was very clever. Very, very clever,” Wendy said, her voice slowly gaining volume. “Good show.”
Tinker Bell—blushed?—and gave a timid smile.
The purple-haired mermaid below took the distraction as an opportunity: she leapt high in the air to snatch at the cherry thing the fairy held.
Tinker Bell buzzed straight up out of reach, dropping the fruit as ballast as she went.
The mermaid caught it and laughed with glee.
Wendy glared daggers at the sea creatures as she wrung out her dripping, tangled, sodden hair.
These were the majestic beings she had imagined brushing it?