The Mermaids Madness

treasure?”
    “That is Lirea’s concern, not ours. Come, let me bring you to Nilliar.”
    Snow frowned and rubbed her thumb over her choker.
    “No, thank you. I think we’ll find our own way.” Another flash of magic, and the merman was swimming away.
    “He doesn’t even question why they’ve turned against their friends,” Danielle said.
    Snow turned to face the ruins. “Humans obey poor leaders all the time. It’s even harder for an undine to question their royalty. There’s a reason the blood of a royal mermaid can be used to make potions of mind control. Though he seemed more . . . fanatical than I would have expected.”
    “Come on,” said Talia. “Let’s get Lirea before someone else comes along and tries to help.”
    “How close do you have to be to work your magic on Lirea?” Danielle asked.
    Snow pursed her lips. “I’ll have a better chance if I can see her. I should be able to make her trust us long enough to lure her back to the Phillipa . But there’s a problem.”
    “Isn’t there always?” Talia asked.
    “He said she was inaccessible.” Snow grabbed the doll and closed her eyes. “Lirea is inside that palace.”
    Which meant getting past the kelpies, through the wall, and sneaking into the palace. Danielle watched the kelpies patrolling the water. They stayed out from the wall, avoiding the shallows where the rocks might cut their bodies. This wouldn’t be easy.
    Another undine passed beneath her. Danielle blushed when she realized it wasn’t one undine but two, their bodies pressed together so tightly she couldn’t tell where the man’s fins ended and the woman’s began. They were singing a low harmony which grew faster with the undulation of their tails. Danielle didn’t need to understand the melody to feel the urgency in their duet.
    “They won’t all be that preoccupied,” Talia said.
    “They will be when I’m finished.” Snow adjusted her choker.
    “You’re going to enchant every merman and mermaid in the tribe?” Talia asked.
    “Let me try to distract the kelpies instead,” Danielle said, hoping they couldn’t see her cheeks burning. “We can swim through in the confusion.”
    “How?” asked Snow.
    Danielle turned toward the closest of the kelpies. Large as they were, kelpies were still animals. Sharks are following us, she said. Many, in the deeper water. Please help!
    The closest kelpie surged through the water, earning a startled cry from one of his riders. His speed made the undine look like clumsy humans still learning to swim. Before Danielle could react, the kelpie was racing past her. The water buffeted her as the kelpie went off in search of sharks.
    A second followed close behind. The third . . . Danielle smiled. The third kelpie was swimming away as fast as he could. This one kept close to the surface. His riders shouted and pounded his scales, but he ignored their protests.
    “You big coward,” she said.
    Some of the undine had already surfaced to see what was happening. Others crowded together for safety. Few paid any attention to three mermaids swimming along the bottom.
    Most of the undine stayed close to shore. Some had retreated into oversized nests of stones and silt. Danielle slowed to get a better look at the undine’s homes. Curtains of woven vines surrounded some of the nests. The vines clung to the rocks, making it easy to move the curtain. The nests were small, but Danielle saw three, four, even five undine crowded together in each one, sleeping or . . . not sleeping.
    A few undine approached, but the magic of Snow’s mirrors turned them back until the three were through the center archway of the great wall.
    Beneath them lay the remains of what might once have been a road. Here and there, broken paving stones poked through rippled black rock. Seaweed grew from the cracks. A black crab crawled along the rusted, half-buried remains of a gate.
    Beyond the archway the water grew deeper again, as though a moat of some sort had once surrounded the palace. Talia pulled them to one side, where the wall would block them from view of the undine outside.
    “Where is she?” Talia asked as she surfaced.
    Four towers surrounded the central structure. Danielle could just make out the remains of secondary buildings around the former palace. Only the occasional broken pillar or crumbled wall marked a castle that in its day would have rivaled the one back home.
    Snow pointed to the closest tower, which sat partially submerged at the