Chapter 8

'We need to get Rita,' Zac said shakily. He was staring at Evie, who was clearly trying to conceal her panic. He didn't know what had happened, but he understood from the looks being cast his way that he had done something wrong.

'Zac's right,' Sirena agreed. 'Come on, Evie. Sirena and I will get you back to the grotto and we'll get Rita. She'll know what's happening.'

Evie nodded weakly. The sun was hot and it was making her itch horribly to be completely dry. She realised that her skin was not suited to be completely dry when she was like this, and it was a horrible realisation. She stared dumbly down at her tail and realised for the first time the awful meaning of what it was to be a mermaid. Not just a girl who sometimes became a mermaid, but to be permanently a mermaid. It would be as terrible for her as it would be for Ondina or Sirena to be stuck on land forever with no prospect of returning to the sea.

Zac carried Evie out into the surf and placed her gently in the water. He also had a tail by this time and was floating next to her, watching her carefully. He remembered that they had been arguing. He had come to see her at her house and Evie had said she wanted to tell her father about… everything. And he had scolded her, told her she couldn't do it. He couldn't remember much after that, just coming to himself in the cave.

'Zac, he said the chamber had fulfilled it's purpose,' Evie said, a quaver in her voice. 'I think it means the magic that worked to change me from human to mermaid is gone. I think that's what he meant.'

'That's ridiculous,' Cam said, though he didn't sound entirely calm himself. 'You're a mermaid now. If the magic was gone, it would just mean you'd go back to being an ordinary girl, and these two,' he gestured towards Ondina and Sirena on the beach, still watching slightly apprehensively from the sand, 'Would be flopping around on the ground.'

'I don't know what else it could be!' Evie exclaimed. 'Look at me! It's not working!'

Zac frowned but quickly put on a determined expression.

'We'll get you back to Rita and work it out then, ok?' he said with some urgency.

He gestured to the two mermaids on the beach and they both dove into the surf, surfacing next to him and Evie. What was surprising, though was that both remained human, their clothes waterlogged, but the typical few seconds had passed and they still had not changed.

'Zac?!' Ondina said, her panic rising and looking around herself. 'What's going on? What did you do?!'

Zac shook his head, slightly dumbfounded and looked to Cam for some kind of answer.

'It was the merman chamber,' Sirena said, tears now falling down her face. She was clearly frightened and it was doing nothing to calm Evie down, who also looked panicked by this point. 'What happened in there, Zac? What happened? Was it Erik?'

Cam, by now, had also waded into the surf and was standing among them all.

'It wasn't Erik,' he said. 'Erik tried to stop him. The man, or whatever he was. He was controlling Zac somehow.'

They all looked at each other, bewildered and terrified. Zac found he could not meet anybody's eyes. It was a terrible thought that he was responsible somehow for hurting Evie. Now Erik and Mimmi were gone, Evie was stuck, and so were Ondina and Sirena. It was a nightmare.

'It's no use trying to get back into the merman chamber now,' Zac said. 'But when we get back to Rita, we'll work it out. And when we do, I'm going back in there, I'm getting Erik and Mimmi from wherever they have gone to, and I'm going to get all of you back to normal. Got it?'

There was no response to what he said, so he turned instead to Cam and, pointing to Sirena and Ondina, said simply, 'Get them back to Rita's, please. Meet us there.'

Cam nodded and put a hand on each of the mermaids' shoulders. They didn't move at first, still stunned, but gradually began to take awkward steps back to the shore.

'As for you and me, we're going to Rita's and she's going to find a way to explain everything that's happened and how we can fix this.'

Evie looked at Zac and he found that he could not read her expression. She merely nodded and together they dove down and swam away from the island, moving towards the grotto where they hoped they might be able to find answers to their many questions.

When they got there, Zac jumped out and dried himself off, then ran upstairs calling for Rita. Evie stayed in the water, keeping one hand on the ledge and looking enviously at Zac's legs as he ran. It wasn't long before he was back in the grotto, Rita alongside him.

Seeing Rita's face and its grim expression, Evie burst into proper tears, loud sobs threatening to choke her.

'Oh, no, dear, please, don't cry!' Rita exclaimed, stepping into the water and moving to hug Evie close towards herself. 'It'll be fine, we'll find a way to solve this.'

Zac stared. Rita was in the water, hugging Evie, but she wasn't changing. What was more surprising to him was that she herself wasn't surprised by this.

'When did you find out?' Zac asked Rita. She merely shook her head.

'I felt it,' she answered. 'Like a block from something I had been connected to all my life. Like someone had pulled the plug. It's… it's not entirely unexpected, what's happened. That is, the magic being gone, the merman chamber… I don't know where to begin.'

Zac and Evie were staring at her now. Evie had pulled away from her embrace and was regarding her with wide, shocked eyes.

'What do you know?' she demanded. 'If you know something that can help, then you have to tell us!'

'I only know why it happened,' Rita said softly. 'I don't know how to reverse it.'

She paused, then looked around herself. 'We should wait for Sirena and Ondina. They're coming with Cam, you said?'

Zac nodded and she looked down again.

'I've kept it a secret for years, I kept it from the girls when they first came here. I thought I was doing the right thing.'

Rita sighed and stepped out of the pool. She sat on one of the bench-like protrusions in the grotto wall and hugged herself. She looked completely miserable.

Zac turned to Evie and asked gently, 'Do you want me to come in there with you?'

'No,' Evie replied. Her face had gone blank and Zac could see the anger there again.

'I didn't mean for any of this to happen,' Zac insisted and Evie just shook her head.

'It doesn't matter. It happened, all right? Please, just leave me alone. Until the others get here, at least.'

Zac sighed but complied and went to sit by Rita. Evie stayed by the ledge, one hand holding on, trying to contain her anger and her fear. Meanwhile, the more practical side of her mind was thinking through all of the things she would have to do now to cover for the fact that she couldn't go on land. Somebody would have to make an excuse for her father. Then, there was school. Her clubs - what would the others think if she wasn't in the meeting tomorrow for the school newspaper? The content would have to be finalised before publication, and she wouldn't be there to sign off.

It was another half hour before Cam and the girls appeared in the grotto. Both of them had clearly been crying and Cam was clearly wishing himself anywhere but where he was, his hands dug deeply into his pockets.

'Rita!' Ondina and Sirena exclaimed as one, running down to her. 'Did Zac tell you?'

Rita looked at them with pity and just shook her head.

'I know,' she said. 'He didn't have to tell me. I'm not… I'm not changing either.'

They stared at her, dumbfounded. Clearly, they thought only those in proximity to the merman chamber had been affected.

'But,' Sirena said, 'That means that all mermaids might be—'

Rita cut her off.

'I know what this is. I don't know the exact manner in which it happened, but I know what has happened.'

'What's that, exactly?'

'The magic is gone. The moon pool. It's… dead.'

'What?!' Ondina exclaimed. 'That's not even possible!'

'It is,' Rita insisted. 'It was a place that magic had been channeled into, and what's happened is the magic has been channeled out of it again.'

Evie tried to raise herself up on her elbows to better make herself heard.

'How come I'm stuck like this, then?' she exclaimed.

'Because I think… I think the way it works is that the magic was not in what you are necessarily, but in whether or not you had access to the magic that allowed you to change. As long as the moon pool still had magic, you had the ability to go between human and mermaid. We all did. As soon as the moon pool's magic was gone, so was our ability to shift. You must have been in mermaid form when the magic disappeared.'

'How do you know all of this?' Ondina asked icily.

'Because I found it all out years ago,' Rita answered honestly. 'It's why I left the pod. I found out the truth about all of us.'

'What truth?' Zac asked, leaning in eagerly.

'That we none of us were born mermaids,' Rita answered with a sigh. 'It's… rather complicated. Let me explain.'

The grotto was entirely silent, only the sound of the water lapping rhythmically against the sides of the pool could be heard.

'I was always inquisitive when I was younger. I didn't just want to know how things were done, I wanted to know why. I was always trying to find out more about everything I could. Not long after I got my moonring, I got pretty curious about where we mermaids came from. Where did the hatchlings come from, what kind of magic brought us to life.'

'Well, that's obvious,' Ondina interjected. 'We all know the moon's magic. The moon pool!'

Rita looked at her somewhat scornfully. 'Yes, in broad terms, that's true. But you probably never dug deeper.'

'The mermaid council keeps it a secret,' Sirena said hesitantly. 'It's not for younger mermaids to know.'

'It's not for anyone to know unless they've been fully inducted into the mermaid council and any kind of rebelliousness has been carefully extracted,' Rita said with the first hint of anger. 'So when I stumbled on the truth, and they hadn't had a chance to prepare me… needless to say it didn't go well. You see, I followed one of the mermaid council members that day, saw her go ashore, human legs and all, watched her come back carrying a human child, a toddler, into the water and swim with it carefully back to the moon pool, where the ceremony took place that night, the night of the full moon. And there it was - where the hatchlings came from. Haven't you ever wondered why they are already a year or two old when we first see them?'

Rita had a rapt audience and nobody made a sound.

'I confronted the mermaid council the next day, told them that I'd seen everything and I knew that they had stolen the child from humans. They didn't even try to deny it! They told me that it was the simply the way of things. That I was destined for the mermaid council myself, so I may as well know the truth. We had no way of reproducing, so if we wanted the pod to keep growing, they would steal human children - not that they saw it as kidnapping - and change them into mermaids using the magic of the moon pool.'

'It's a lie,' Ondina said, her voice shaking. 'Why are you lying?'

'I wish it was a lie,' Rita said sadly. 'No, it was the truth. I was furious. I asked if I had been born human and they admitted I had, though they insisted that this was right - that I should consider myself lucky that they had welcomed me into the pod instead of growing up with my family on land. I left the next day and never looked back.'

'And the moon pool was at the heart of it all?' Evie asked after a long pause. 'Behind all of the transformations?'

'Yes,' Rita said. 'Which is why with its magic gone, the pod… they won't have magic anymore. They'll still be mermaids, I suppose, like you, but without powers. Without anything like that. I never found out why the moon pool was as it was, or what had started the whole cycle of kidnapping human girls and making them mermaids but I suspected it had to do with mermen and how we consider them our enemies. I suppose now we might find out.'

A/N: Well, I've gone properly off the rails in terms of where the story is going! Hope you're enjoying it. Do let me know what you think in the review section.