Monster Mission

The great kraken had reached the warmer southern seas. The fishes who joined him were brilliantly coloured, with fan tails and exotic spikes, and from the islands flashing birds with crests of crimson and orange came to welcome him and perch on his back. The water was clear and calm and the corals on the sea bed were of every colour under the sun.

As he swam the great kraken hummed his Healing Hum, and the turtles who had lumbered out of the sea to lay their eggs on the sandbanks were left in peace, and the rich men who had come to slaughter the porpoises pulled in their harpoons as the swell made by the kraken’s passing reached their boats.

Yet the kraken was not happy. The dolphins and seals that swam round him felt this and were puzzled. He was smiling less; his golden eyes sometimes had a clouded look.

But why? He did not know—only that somehow he felt uneasy. He was missing his son of course, but there could have been no safer place to leave him than the Island of Aunts.

‘I must pull myself together,’ thought the kraken. ‘I do not belong to myself; I belong to the sea.’

And he put aside his vague and troubled thoughts and swam on. Two days after Boo-Boo and the Little One came to the Island, Old Ursula disappeared. She had swum out to say goodbye to Herbert’s mother and never came back.

The other mermaids were frantic.

‘I should have been nicer to her,’ wailed Loreen. ‘I shouldn’t have said her tail smelt. It did smell but I shouldn’t have said it.’ And Oona wept because time and again she’d left the old creature flapping in the sink instead of helping her.

As for the aunts, they now knew once and for all how great was the danger they were in. Great-grandmothers do fall in love but they aren’t often silly about it when they do. Old Ursula could not have eloped, she must have been snatched—and that meant that Queenie too had been taken by force. And sure enough, when they searched the bay, they found a net stretched between two rocks.

‘We must have a Council of War,’ said Etta, and made everybody do thirty press-ups so as to make the blood go to their heads and help them to think.

But even with all the blood in their heads, they knew that fighting off Sprott and his men would be almost impossible and that their only hope would be to get the animals to hide.

‘The stoorworm must stay at the bottom of the loch—no coming up for chats,’ said Coral.

‘And Herbert and his mother should come closer to the house,’ said Myrtle. ‘They could have the pond in the vegetable garden.’

Art offered to guard the mermaid shed with the Captain’s blunderbuss—secretly he still hoped he might have a chance to kill someone after all—and they decided that the Sybil must be brought indoors; she was far too loopy to be left on her own.

But it was easier to decide what should be done about the creatures than to get them to do it. The stoorworm pointed out that he was after all a wingless dragon and should be helping to guard the Island, not skulking about in the bottom of lakes, and Herbert wouldn’t bring his mother any closer because she wanted to die beside the sea and not in somebody’s Brussels sprouts.

But of course it was the kraken that they worried about most of all, and it was now that the aunts wished from the bottom of their hearts that they had never kidnapped Fabio and Minette.

They knew exactly where the little beast could be hidden. In a large underwater cave, a kind of grotto on the North Shore with only the smallest opening on to the strand. It was a beautiful place, with a pool of clear, deep water surrounded by gently shelving rock, and at the back of the grotto was an opening to the cliff which gave enough light to see by. The opening came out by Ethelgonda’s burial ground and the naak had promised to keep watch up there.

But to keep the kraken in a cave when he was used to the freedom of the sea would not be easy. He would need people all the time. And people, to the kraken, were Fabio and Minette.

‘There is no question of you staying alone with him through the night,’ said Etta firmly. ‘My sisters and I will take shifts.’

‘Yes there is. We’ll take a blanket and lots of food—but we’re going to do it. It’s our job,’ said Minette.

‘It’s not your job to risk that kind of danger.’

But something odd was happening to Fabio and Minette. Perhaps it was from living on the Island among creatures that did not need to speak very much, but they seemed to know each other’s thoughts.

‘If you didn’t want us to do our work you shouldn’t have kidnapped us,’ said Minette.

And Fabio, between gritted teeth, said, ‘Nothing is going to stop us being with the kraken. Nothing.’

By nightfall, everyone was at their posts: Art guarding the mermaids, Coral crouched by the boobrie’s nest, which they had ringed with barbed wire; the Sybil zooming round the house muttering about wind-chill factors and burning the Captain’s semolina.

And the kraken hidden in his secret place beneath the cliff.