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  Lagoona –

  A journey through the Reef

  A. W. Emersleben

  While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

  LAGOONA: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE REEF

  First edition. June 8, 2022.

  Copyright © 2022 A. W. Emersleben.

  Written by A. W. Emersleben.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  1

  2

  3

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  About the Author

  1

  Deep under the sea surface, in a wide reef, in a dwelling made of corals, sponges, and anemones, lived a coralkitten. The coralkitten were not actual cats. They had the paws and the head of a cat, but a long fin with glittering scales. The name of this coralkitten was Lagoona. Lagoona was an ambassador, at least she would be one if someone would hire her to deliver messages for them. At least she might be hired, if she would pass the exams. You had to be incredibly fast and agile to swim about the reef, and you had to know all the currents and tides by heart, lest you’d be carried somewhere else, or flushed out of the reef and to the verge of the reef, where the corals came to an end at the Abyss, the most perilous place in the Sea. Lagoona had never actually seen the Abyss, but she had heard tales about it. Tales of reef-dwellers who came too close to the precipice and were pulled down by the violent currents. Or tales of ships from the islands, which were torn apart, and its crew dragged down into the Deep Sea. Or tales of foul creatures with long, glowing anglers, who crawled up the steep rocks of the Abyss during the night, when everyone in the reef was asleep, to grasp reef-dwellers that were about and pull them with them into the endless, black void.

  But Lagoona did not want to think of such spinechillers. She was headed to the west of the reef, away from the Deep Sea, to take her exams in school. She pulled open the shades made of seagrass, bathed in a large clam that sat close to her dwelling, and then prepared breakfast composed of a large sea cucumber with seaweed. Then, she took the bag made of seagrass and hopped out of her dwelling and into the reef.

  She hopped past other dwellings like hers, built out of corals, each of them with a large, winding sea-anemone on top.

  On her way she met Mackerel, a coralkitten with sand-coloured fur and a bronze fin, another coralkitten that was attending the training together with Lagoona.

  ‘Mackerel!’ she said. ‘Are you on your way to training?’

  ‘No!’ piped the coralkitten. ‘I have realized that being an ambassador and travelling through the reef, delivering messages, is not what I want to be. I shall become a poet.’

  ‘A poet?’ said Lagoona, puzzled. ‘But you were the poorest in Aquarian classes.’

  ‘Not anymore!’ piped the coralkitten briskly. ‘Do you see these mussels? They give you the ability to write rhymes!’ He pointed with his paw at a bulge of dark mussels growing on a rock nearby.

  ‘Aren’t these mussels poisonous?’ said Lagoona doubtfully.

  ‘What?’ said Mackerel.

  That was another thing about coralkitten that let some people in the reef doubt their abilities. They were the most forgetful creatures in the Sea.

  ‘I think the mussels are—’ said Lagoona, but Mackerel had already forced the mussel into his snout.

  He gnawed on it for a while noisily, and then gulped it down, while Lagoona was waiting beside him awkwardly.

  Then, his eyes became huge, and he started murmuring. ‘The shore...the shore—’

  ‘Sorry?’ said Lagoona.

  ‘THE SHORE!’ he barked, and Lagoona winced. Then he hopped onto a coral.

  ‘Ah, the shore, it is

  Yeah, that is the gist

  So far for me, in the reef,

  If I could conquer it,

  That would be, such a gift!’

  But he would not go on. Mackerel turned green in his face and slapped a paw to his mouth. He turned and hurried away.

  ‘I think the mussel is working,’ sighed Lagoona.

  She made for the school again, which sat behind a light grove of seaweed. Before the school sat a silvery coralkitten with tabby fur and golden gleaming eyes.

  Silvercoat was a coralkitten that Lagoona was secretly jealous of but would tell everyone who wanted to know that she did not think much of her. She had already been made an ambassador, had already been on errands in the reef, and had been given an award for being one of the best new ambassadors in the reef.

  Lagoona had not received any awards, was not among the best in her classes, and had never been sent onto any errand. And that despite her becoming an ambassador had been looking promising when she had been accepted at school. Her sister, Mermaidea, who was the only coralkitten in the reef who never forgot anything, had already become an ambassador, and carried messages through the reef for the druids, and even for the sea-nymphs. First, her parents had thought that she, Lagoona, might have inherited the same ability, but Lagoona had been training to become an ambassador for a year now, and still could not remember most of the messages she was supposed to deliver.

  Lagoona made sure to avoid the coralkitten and went on. But when she arrived at the school, there was a crowd gathered before the building made of corals, and one of the druids was stooped over a coralkitten that was lying on the ground, wincing and trembling.

  Lagoona hopped over to the druid to see what was going on and recognized Mackerel lying on the ground.

  ‘What happened?’ she piped.

  ‘Mackerel!’ said the druid. ‘The mussel he ate was poisonous. I had been certain that I had taught you often enough which mussels are poisonous, and which aren’t, for grouper’s sake.’

  The coralkitten said nothing.

  ‘Lagoona,’ he said. ‘You have to help him.’

  ‘I?’ said Lagoona.

  ‘I need an antidote for your friend here. You will have to find it for me.’

  ‘Why? What happened to him?’

  ‘He ate a mussel that was poisonous.’

  ‘Can you help him?’

  ‘Yes, but I will need an antidote.’

  ‘Why? What happened to him?’

  ‘He ate a mussel that was poisonous.’

  ‘Oh no! Will you be able to help him?’

  The druid was a kind man, and even though he was known to be impatient and sometimes lose his temper with his students, he certainly meant well, but coralkitten are incredibly forgetful, and he should have known that, but this is what Lagoona could remember after she departed:

  ‘Go and find an abalone, which possesses the power to heal any illness! You will have to leave the coral reef, and find another coral reef, where you can find the abalone! Hurry, or I will not be able to save Mackerel!’

  2

  Lagoona departed and left the school and her village behind. Soon, she came to the Moon-ruins, a region south of Anemonadise, where the reef was dotted with ruins. The druids said that the Moon-people had built the ruins, and that one day they had disappeared suddenly, and without any clues as to where they might have gone, and left behind only the peculiar ruins on the sea ground. Nobody knew now whether the Moon-people had been a people from ashore, whose island had been destroyed, or whether they had always lived in the water and just left their home, but none had ever been able to find out anything more about them. The plain in which the ruins sat bordered the Abyss in the east, and Lagoona made certain not to get too close to the crevice, where strong currents would tear everything down with it into the Deep Sea. She hopped along the plain, sometimes stopping to glance at the ruins, and wondered if it would be difficult to
find another reef. In the west, the Mangrove Forest was brooding, and the water was not as clear as in the reef anymore, and Lagoona felt slightly dispirited.

  Then, she stopped, as she could see something glinting in the stones near the crevice.

  Could it be the shell that she was looking for?

  Lagoona crept slowly towards the edge, where the reef came to an end, and grasped the larger rocks around her for support. She could feel the current tearing at her fur, and she shivered. But her paws barely were able to cling to the ground. She reached towards the glitter on the ground before her, but then her paw slipped, and she was lifted off the ground.

  It was as if she had fallen into a drain. The current grasped her, and she was flung off the reef, and into the vast darkness that loomed there. Lagoona wailed, as she was torn down into the Deep Sea, but then she suddenly stopped falling. She must have fallen into a different current, because now she was flung up towards the sea surface again, and was veered around so that she barely knew where she was being taken anymore.

  Lagoona did not know how long she had been floating in the water when she could see something dark and stringy in the water before her.

  First, she thought it was seaweed growing before an island, and swam towards it. Then, she could see that the seaweed was floating in mid-water, its winding arms billowing eerily in the current. Lagoona swam quickly towards it to survey the seaweed.

  Then, the seaweed threw itself over her, and Lagoona was swallowed in a tangle of grasping and winding arms.

  It was not seaweed at all. It was thin, stringy ropes that flung themselves around Lagoona and cut into her skin. She yelled, and tore at the ropes, but they only cut deeper into her fur. Then, to her horror, the seaweed began to float upwards and towards the sea surface, and she tore at the ropes, trying to free herself.

  Lagoona was lifted out of the water, and spat and struggled, barely able to see anything, what with the water in her eyes, but someone was holding the seaweed in which she had been caught.

  It was a boy, she could perceive, from the island-folk that lived on the many isles of Shallow Dale in the east of the reef. He was trying to pull the net towards the boat, which was proving rather difficult with Lagoona struggling and tearing at the ropes, and he nearly fell into the water.

  ‘Help!’ piped Lagoona.

  ‘Oi!’ barked the boy.

  Then, Lagoona was dragged out of the water, and landed painfully onto something hard.

  ‘Ouch!’ yelled Lagoona.

  She moved and tried to escape the stringy, painful ropes that held her prison, and when she had managed to crawl out of the net, the boy was staring at her. He was definitely of the island-folk, and in his hand was a spear that Lagoona did not like at all.

  ‘Help!’ she cried again, trying to free herself from the rest of the slinging ropes.

  ‘What are you?’ he said. ‘You are a strange mermaid!’

  ‘I’m not a mermaid,’ said Lagoona. ‘I’m a coralkitten. My name is Lagoona.’

  ‘A coralkitten?’ said the boy.

  ‘We live in the east of Anemonadise,’ said Lagoona. ‘In the large coral reef, north of the Islands. Why did you capture me?’

  ‘You landed in my fishing net,’ said the boy defensively. ‘I was hunting fish so that we could eat. I don’t think we can eat you. What were you doing here, when your home is in the coral reef?’

  ‘I was looking for a certain shell, but the current near the Abyss took me and flung me off the reef, and I don’t know where I am.’

  ‘You were looking for a shell?’ The boy frowned. ‘Why were you looking for shells outside of the reef?’

  ‘But there have to be other reefs, somewhere,’ said Lagoona. ‘I wanted to see if there are reefs in other parts of the Sea, and if the tales about the large reefs in the west are true.’

  ‘They say that in the west, the corals have all disappeared,’ said the boy. ‘My father has sailed there sometimes. They say that the corals festered, and where they used to be, only foul, red seaweed grows, and turns the Sea red.’

  ‘We eat corals,’ said Lagoona. ‘I can’t imagine a land where no corals are growing at all.’

  ‘We do not eat corals, so I don’t care that much,’ said the boy. ‘But we eat fish, and the fish have grown fewer since the corals have started to fade. And our islands are being flooded more recently now that the corals have become sparse.’

  ‘Why?’ said Lagoona.

  ‘There used to grow many corals around our islands that would stop the waves from reaching the inside of the isle,’ said the boy. ‘But now they are all gone, and we can see the red seaweed grow where they used to be.’

  ‘I have never seen the red seaweed,’ said Lagoona, sorrowful.

  ‘The men in my village say that the red seaweed will soon reach the entire reef,’ said the boy. ‘Then, we will have to abandon the isles and seek shelter somewhere else. And the men from the land will not help.’

  ‘Why?’ said Lagoona.

  ‘When my father was still a child, they came with their large ships, and settled in the land in the west. Their ships destroy the corals and the seagrass when they travel through the reef, and they do not care about the island-folk. The men ashore have swords, and robes made of metal, and they build castles, and they attack us when we get too close to the shore.’

  ‘I hope they don’t come too close to the reef!’ said Lagoona anxiously.

  ‘They might. What does that mussel that you are trying to find look like?’ said the boy.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Lagoona. ‘They said that it would be able to cure any illness.’

  ‘In the south lies the Crystal Reef. There aren’t any corals there! Do you see that isle, in the south? Its beaches are made of crystals. The corals are made of crystal. You aren’t going to find normal corals there. And there are the vents! You must not go there!’

  ‘The vents?’ said Lagoona.

  ‘The people from my island say that the water becomes hot there, and burns all the fish that swim there, and that the water is filled with their smoke. And where the vents are, the Deep Sea begins. You must not go there. It is too perilous.’

  ‘So, I can’t go into the south, because there lies the Deep Sea and the Vents. I also can’t go towards the east, because that is where the Abyss lies. And you say that in the west, the corals are gone. Then where can I find the shell?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ said the boy. ‘Perhaps if you swim into the north and look for it along the beaches of the islands; most shells grow near the beaches. It’s where my family look for shells, too.’

  ‘I will try to find the islands,’ said Lagoona.

  ‘Wait,’ said the boy. He helped her out of the net, and carried her to the rim of his boat, where he placed her so that she could leap into the water. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘And don’t swim into our fishing nets, again!’

  ‘Thank you!’ piped Lagoona. Then she leapt and landed in the familiar warm water again.

  3

  She swam for a while towards the islands as the boy had told her. However, after a while, she forgot that she was supposed to swim into the north to find the islands and thought that it was dull swimming through the open water. She plunged into the water and could see something glittering on the sea ground, and thought it would be more interesting to follow the glow instead. The water became shallow again, and soon she could see large dots of the glittering below her. She dived deeper to see what it could be that would make the sea ground shimmer like that, and the deeper she went, the more colourful the sea ground became. She could see corals covering the sea ground, in all colours that she could have imagined, but something was wrong. There were barely any fish, or other living creatures, and the only animals she could see were starfish covering the sand, and oddly gleaming jellyfish floating through the water. She hopped over to a large, violet, odd-shaped coral and wanted to put her teeth into it, when she realised that it was not a coral after all. It was a crystal. Lagoona loo
ked around and it dawned on her that every coral in this peculiar, glowing reef was actually made of crystal. Some of them were so large that they loomed out of the sea surface; transparent pillars reaching towards the surface, sharp as spears. Others were small and round, like globes. There were corals the colour of amethyst, that grew in small depressions in the sea ground, and delicate, rose-coloured corals covering the rocks like anemones.

  Lagoona stared at the reef for a while, before she realized that the boy from the islands had told her not to come here.

  There came harsh voices from behind a large crystal, and she halted.

  Lagoona hopped behind a particularly large, bluish stone.

  It was two merelves, or so she guessed, because they did not come to the reef very often. They were scaly, and both were carrying long spears, and one of them was pulling a carriage loaded with crystals.

  ‘Always dragging these crystals through the reef,’ moaned one of them as they walked past where Lagoona was hiding. ‘As if the old sea-king hadn’t already been given enough gems. He will only be pleased when there aren’t any more crystals in Methardruîn.’

  ‘Pearlville doesn’t even try to stop it,’ said the other. ‘Meanwhile they drag treasures from all Seas through this reef, to ship them to the sea-king. Every sunken ship, every lair in the Deep Sea, every mine in Anemonadise, everything is being raided for treasures, and all of it is being shipped to the city of the mermaids. And what do we get from all of that dragging and lifting and mining? Nothing!’

  Lagoona was harkening her ears in her hideout. She had heard of the sea-king in the south, who commanded to have all treasures brought to him, and being apparently so close to him, and the city of the mermaids from which he ruled, made her feel flustered.

  ‘I tell you, one day, there will not even be corals left in the reef,’ said one of the merelves.

  They threw what looked like a particularly heavy crystal into a carriage a few feet away, which was pulled by silverfishes.