The Mermaids Madness

cormorants a song bent the meaning of the word to the breaking point, but as their squawks grew, the mermaid’s spell lost its hold. Barely audible, a furious voice from the trees shouted, “What are you doing to my birds?”
    “That’s her.” Lannadae stared up at the trees. “What is she doing up there?”
    “Let’s find out!” Snow said brightly. Either the mermaid’s song hadn’t affected her, or else she had thrown off the effects far easier than anyone else. Before Danielle could stop her, Snow jumped overboard and began swimming toward the rocks.
    “Cooperative of her to walk into whatever trap Morveren might have waiting, don’t you think?” Talia shook her head and jumped in after Snow.
    Danielle cupped her hands to her mouth. “My name is Danielle Whiteshore, princess of Lorindar. I’ve come with your granddaughter Lannadae to ask for your help.”
    “Liar! Lannadae’s dead. Lirea murdered her sisters, just as she murdered my son!”
    Danielle turned to Lannadae. “How would she know that?”
    “I don’t know.” Lannadae raised her voice. “Grandmother, it’s me!”
    There was no answer. Danielle stripped off her jacket. “Lannadae, please swim around to the other side and make sure Morveren doesn’t try to escape.”
    Lannadae slipped out of the boat. Danielle removed her shoes, but she hesitated to follow. She had never learned to swim as a child. She wouldn’t have learned as an adult either, if not for Beatrice’s insistence. She still remembered her first lesson. The queen’s exact words had been, “Either jump in or I’ll get Talia to throw you in.”
    Holding her breath, Danielle jumped into the water. It was colder than she expected, weighing down her clothes and dragging her under before she bobbed to the surface. Coughing and spitting seawater, she paddled after the others.
    Snow was already climbing up the side of the rocks. Talia leaned down to haul Danielle from the water. Danielle grabbed a handful of grass with one hand while her feet searched for cracks and outcroppings in the rock.
    The first few handholds were tricky, being slick with moss and water. By the time Danielle reached the top, Talia and Snow were already there, crouched in a small clearing among the ferns and trees.
    Discarded fish bones covered the ground next to a sunken hollow filled with mud. The trees were no thicker than her arm, but there were dozens of them, their roots climbing over one another for purchase. Water puddled among the roots and in depressions in the rock.
    The treetops bent together overhead, where branches and driftwood had been interwoven to create a thick canopy against the sun. Broken bits of twine littered the earth. Snow picked up one of the pieces. “Seaweed fibers.”
    Four paces brought Danielle to the opposite side of the rock. The water below wasn’t deep enough to dive into, at least not for a human. An undine might be able to make it without breaking her neck. But she could see Lannadae swimming past, and surely Lannadae would have noticed if Morveren tried to flee.
    “Nobody said anything about invisible mermaids,” Talia said.
    Snow was investigating a clay bowl which had been shoved beneath a fern. She made a sour face. “Yummy. Drowned worms.”
    Danielle stepped into the middle of the clearing. “Morveren, we need your help. Lirea attacked my queen with the knife you made.”
    “Then your queen is dead.” The branches overhead quivered. Morveren peered over the edge of a kind of hammock woven between the trees. Thick as the branches were, Danielle hadn’t even noticed her.
    “A mermaid in a tree.” Talia pulled out her whip. “That’s one I haven’t heard before.”
    “Morveren, your granddaughter is alive,” said Danielle. “She’s here. You can see her swimming through the water below.”
    Morveren grabbed the edge of the hammock and tumbled out, dangling in midair. She clutched a braided rope in her hands, which she used to lower herself to the ground. She groaned as she moved, and her upper body was hunched as though her bones struggled to support her weight.
    “What happened to you?” Danielle whispered.
    Like her granddaughters, Morveren had two tails. But where Lannadae’s and Lirea’s tails ended in wide fins, Morveren’s were nothing but stumps. The scales at the end of her tails grew in an irregular pattern, poking through lumps of pale scar tissue.
    That would explain why she stayed out of the water. The fins running down