Lagoona Read online

  Lagoona glanced at them. If she could manage to grasp the carriage, the merelves might help her leave this place.

  She climbed out of her hideout, and slowly crept towards the carriage.

  ‘One more, then we’ll return to Pearlville,’ said one of the merelves.

  He flung the last pile of crystals unceremoniously into the carriage, and then leapt onto it.

  Lagoona grabbed the back of the carriage, when the silverfishes soared up towards the sea surface. Then she could see something glitter before her. The water had suddenly started to glow. It was a large shoal of silverfishes, probably on their way to the city of the sea-king.

  ‘Oy, be careful!’ barked one of the merelves, who was trying to avoid them.

  ‘Watch out!’ snapped the silverfishes back. ‘You are in our way.’

  The carriage tumbled through the water as the silverfishes soared over the reef.

  Lagoona gave a high-pitched yell, as she was flung off the carriage. If the merelves heard it, they later wondered what the noise might have been, but they never found out.

  The poor coralkitten was flung through the water and plunged towards the sea ground. For a while, all she could perceive was water. Then, she landed on the sea ground. She looked about.

  She had ended up in what appeared to be a barren plain. Sand was covering the ground, and the water was too deep to be able to see how far the plain was going. It was silent except for the far-flung wails of the whales, far off in the Abyss. She had actually ended up in a region called the Barren Waters, the plains in the west of the Sea, near the shore, where all coral reefs had disappeared and where nothing was left but sand and ruins, but Lagoona did not know that. Lagoona started to shiver. She hopped a few feet into the plain, but there was something so vile about the plain that she stopped. She sat into the sand, and glanced fearfully at the surface. She knew that there were sea-dragons, anglers, and other hostile creatures in the deeper regions of the Sea, and she did not want to meet any of them.

  ‘This must be the west,’ she told herself. ‘There aren’t any corals, only sand, and if I go any further, I might see the red seaweed.’

  For a while, Lagoona kept hopping a few feet into the plain, and when she went a bit further, she could see the ruins of villages and old buildings.

  The glow of the moon was visible on the sea surface and it was utterly quiet.

  She must have fallen asleep, because when she opened her eyes again, the sky was bright, and she was floating in the middle of the water beside a clam-overgrown rock that was looming out of the water. She swam towards the rock, and climbed up the small sandbank that had built around it. There, she sat down and burst into tears. She could not see any islands, she was alone in this forsaken region of the ocean, and she would never find her way into the coral reef again. With a loud wail, she flung herself into the sand.

  ‘Now I am stranded on an island, and I don’t know where I am, and I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to return to the reef, and I just want to go home to the reef!’

  She was sitting there for a moment, crying loudly, and winced when someone actually answered.

  ‘Now, now! It’s a far too fine day to be so sad. I am certain the currents brought you here for a reason.’

  Lagoona glanced around the edge of the rock, and there, on a rock, sat the most beautiful creature she had ever seen in the Sea.

  It was a woman, with long, dark hair that was floating in the water, and a silvery gown that appeared to be made of fish scales.

  Lagoona stared at her. It must be one of the sea-nymphs, these legendary creatures that dwelt at the shores of the western islands, and where they went, coral reefs and underwater forests grew.

  ‘Do you want to tell me why you are so sad?’ she asked.

  Lagoona gulped. ‘My name is Lagoona. I set out from my home in Anemonadise to find a shell that would help healing a coralkitten from my village that has been poisoned by a mussel he ate.’

  ‘A shell?’ said the nymph. ‘What sort of shell?’

  ‘I do not know!’ said Lagoona. ‘The druid said that it had the power to heal any illness. But I don’t know where to find it, and there aren’t any more corals in the west of the reef, and I don’t know where I am!’

  The sea-nymph laughed. ‘Did they perhaps talk of an Abalone?’

  Lagoona’s eyes became large. ‘An abalone!’ she cried. ‘It was an abalone! Where do they grow?’

  ‘I’d daresay, along every beach around the islands!’ said the nymph, laughing. ‘But I am afraid you might have misheard it. It is Abalone. Not an abalone. They told you to find the Princess Abalone of the sea-nymphs. We live in the Velvet Bay, where the enchanted waters are flinging down from the rocks, which possess the power to heal any wound.’

  Lagoona stared at her. ‘So, all this time I shouldn’t have looked for an abalone but for the sea-nymphs?’

  The sea-nymph laughed again. ‘What you seek always already lies before you, as the druids say. But Princess Abalone is not the only nymph who is skilled in healing, and fortunate tides brought you here today, because I have some of the enchanted water here with me.’

  And she plunged a hand into her silver gown and peeled a small shell out of it. It glittered in the sunlight as she handed it to Lagoona.

  ‘This shell contains some of the enchanted waters,’ she told her. ‘Take it to the coral reef and give it to the ill coralkitten, and it will be healed within minutes.’

  Lagoona stared at her. ‘I—thank you!’ she stammered. ‘How can I thank you?’

  ‘Go back to the reef, and look after the corals again,’ said the nymph. ‘You coralkitten are incredibly important to the reef, and without you, the corals would be disappearing. They already are fading! So, go home to the reef. Take this with you if you are stopped anywhere.’ And she handed Lagoona a mussel band, which she fastened around her neck.

  ‘But...how am I going to get back to the reef, now?’ she said.

  The nymph smiled. ‘I am sure someone will help you get back to the reef!’ she said.

  Lagoona glanced at her, but then gave a yell when a large shade emerged out of the deep waters below. The whale floated up towards them until it halted a few feet away from them.

  ‘It appears that your ride is already here!’ said the nymph, beaming.

  Lagoona stared at her. ‘I am supposed to ride on—?’

  ‘Yes!’ said the nymph. ‘It will be the quickest journey back to the reef!’

  The coralkitten carefully approached the large animal and then climbed. She grasped a bulge of barnacles with her paws.

  ‘Farewell!’ cried the nymph.

  The whale took off and Lagoona grasped the barnacles more tightly. They were now soaring through the open water and were leaving the plains of the Barren Waters behind them.

  Lagoona did not know if they had been swimming for days or for weeks when she woke up. The water below them was dark, and she crawled towards the fin of the whale to see where she was. She was actually hovering above the Abyss, but the current did not harm her, here, safely perched on the back of the whale.

  Then, she could see something that made her heart leap.

  The coral reef.

  She could see the Coral Mountain on her left, and groves with anemones where her village began.

  The coralkitten took a deep gulp of water and leapt.

  She was soaring through the water, and towards the Coral Mountain. But then she became slower, and the current was starting to grasp her.

  She had leapt off too early, and now she would sink into the Abyss, and never reach the reef again.

  But then, something stringy was flung into her direction and she could just grasp the seaweed-rope that was floating in the current. At the rim of the reef, she could see a group of coralkitten.

  ‘Lagoona!’ cried one of the coralkitten.

  It was her sister, Mermaidea. Beside her were the druid, and a flustered looking Silvercoat, who had fluffed up her fur in anxiety.

  Lagoona was pulled up towards the reef, and dragged onto the corals.

  ‘Do you have the treatment?’ said Mermaidea.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lagoona. ‘I have been to the Islands, and to the Crystal Reef, and almost saw the city of the sea-king, and I’ve been in the Barren Waters, and then I met a nymph who gave me the enchanted waters!’

  The druid, who was not the most patient person, and who could not make sense of the coralkitten’s words, said, ‘Can you give me the treatment the nymph gave you?’

  Lagoona peeled the shell from her fur, while the coralkitten were watching, and handed it to the druid.

  He took the mussel and surveyed it. ‘This should do,’ he said. ‘Well done, Lagoona.’

  The coralkitten that were gathered around them cheered.

  ‘Druid,’ said Lagoona. ‘On my journey through the reef I was in a region where there weren’t any corals anymore. And a boy I met from the Islands told me that the corals are dying, and that red seaweed grows where they used to be.’

  The druid nodded, his face sullen. ‘Yes, the red seaweed will soon arrive here. This is what I have been warning the other druids about for years. Its spread through the Sea can now no longer be halted. We will need to find a way to stop it.’

  ‘Will the seaweed infest our reef as well?’ piped Lagoona.

  ‘Not if we manage to stop it. But that will be a task for someone else and another time.’

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  About the Author

  Ámaris Wen Emersleben (* in Stans, Switzerland) is a London-based recording artist, actor, and writer.

  Ámaris is very vocal on the protection of the oceans and coral reefs, and her short story ‘Lagoona: a Journey through the Reef’ raises awareness for the disappearing of coral reefs and ocean pollution.

  Ámaris has family from the Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, and England.

  Photograph by Kirill Kozlov.

  Read more at A. W. Emersleben’s site.

 

 

  A. W. Emersleben, Lagoona

 

 

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