A/N: Thank you for the reviews! I'm so glad you're on board. I have this world planned out pretty thoroughly in my head so I'll be curious to see what you think of this.

Enjoy!

Chapter 9

'What do mermen have to do with this?' Ondina asked impatiently. 'You're saying that the pod is doing something completely mad. What do you know?!'

Rita did not say anything for a little while, as the crowd gathered around her leaned in closer. When she spoke, it was with sorrow in her voice.

'I left the pod and I never learned much more than I've told you,' she said. 'But what I do know is that the merman chamber was created to destroy the magic of the moon pool. And the moon pool was created to create mermaids. It wasn't always there - somebody made it. They let that much slip the night I confronted the mermaid council.'

'But what about what Erik told us about mermen?' Ondina said plaintively. 'Why would he lie like that?'

'I don't think he did lie,' Rita replied. 'Or at least, if he did, it was because someone had told him a lie and he was just telling us what he believed to be true. It terrified me more than I can say when I first heard of Erik - a merman not created by the moon pool? It meant that it wasn't just the moon pool. That the Mako pod has been left to do as it pleased for years despite the fact that somebody could have interjected.'

'But, what about the other pods? Northern mermaids, Eastern mermaids…' Ondina interjected. 'We know there are others, we've seen them, we've met them!'

'And they all have a tie to the moon pool, or some other place that has magical properties. The grotto off the coast of Ireland, for instance,' Rita responded instantly.

'So how do mermen come into it?' Zac asked. 'And how come I'm still able to change?'

'I don't know,' Rita said.

'Wait,' Cam cut in. 'What about what that man in the trident chamber said? He said he was your father. Maybe that's why.'

'What man?' Rita asked.

Zac looked down at the floor.

'I haven't got the whole picture,' Cam answered, 'But I'll tell you what I've managed to figure out.'

He told Rita of the events in the cave as he had witnessed him, while Evie twitched her tail impatiently in the water and Sirena and Ondina added their views where they knew more. By the end, Rita seemed winded.

'Zac, we have to find him,' Rita said finally.

'No!' Ondina exclaimed. 'He's a monster! He did something horrible to Mimmi and Erik. He destroyed the moon pool!'

'But he'll have the answers we need, if we can get him to understand that we aren't a threat,' Rita rationalised. 'Who else can we turn to? We need to find a way to get Mimmi and Erik back, and to change all of us back.'

'We'll figure it out ourselves,' Ondina said angrily. 'I don't want to ever see him again. You have no idea, you weren't there.'

'It's true,' Evie finally said. 'He had Zac doing whatever he wanted, like mind control. It was like Zac wasn't even there.'

Rita looked at the teenagers around her and her shoulders slumped. She could see she wasn't going to win this one, and she needed at least Zac to agree to try to find him.

'So what do we do?' Evie finally asked, after silence had settled in the room. 'I'm stuck like this! You need to find a way to help me!'

Rita frowned.

'Maybe we can reach out to some of the mermaids from other pods,' she mused. 'Evie, we'd have to send you on your own—'

'I'd go with her!' Zac exclaimed. 'There's no chance I'd let Evie just go off on her own.'

Rita put a stop to that line of thinking quickly.

'Zac, we'll have enough of a job coming up with an excuse to Evie's family for why she is missing. We don't need to add a missing persons report from your family to the problem.'

It was the first time anybody had expressed the impact of Evie's current state out loud and suddenly, Evie began to cry.

'What - if I never - go - back? What if I'm t-trapped like this?' she said between quiet sobs.

'We won't let that happen,' Rita tried to console her, leaning down and taking her hand. 'Whatever it takes, we'll find a way to fix this.'

'What about us?' Ondina said behind her, indignant. 'We're stuck, too! What do we do about us? We're mermaids stuck on land, you know!'

Rita didn't turn around and said, a little angrily, 'I told you already, you're human-born. If anything, you've been cursed and that's been lifted.'

'That's not how it feels!' Ondina spat. 'I'm a mermaid, I've always been a mermaid, I don't care what you say—'

Sirena finally spoke, cutting short Ondina's increasingly hysterical voice.

'This isn't about us,' she said gently. 'We'll find a way to go back to the sea, but Evie has a family here who doesn't know that she's a mermaid. We can't just leave her this way. We have a priority.'

Ondina gaped at Sirena and looked like she was about to start shouting again, but instead she stayed quiet.

'Evie, listen to me,' Rita said, turning to her instead. 'I have friends in the Eastern pod - Cuifan and Weilan. They live on land but they are very powerful mermaids. I can get in touch with them on the phone and find out whether they know of a way to help. As for you, you'll need to go find the northern pod.'

'You mean Mimmi's pod?' she asked. 'Aren't they on the other side of the world? How long would it take me to swim there? I've never swum for more than three hours, and I wouldn't know how to navigate!'

Rita stared at her. She realised that Evie was right - how could she possibly expect this girl, raised completely human and thrust into this world a few short months ago, to swim to the other side of the world with no moon ring, not even ordinary magic to aid her way.

'You're right,' Rita said sadly. 'We'll… I'll speak to Cuifan. Maybe Weilan could come here and… let me find out.'

'What about right now? Who'll tell my father?' Evie said sadly. She had stopped crying but was now staring glassily into nothing.

'I'll speak to him,' Rita said. 'We can tell him that you've been called away abroad on a project for a scholarship. Maybe that you wanted to surprise him? We'll put you on the phone with him… we'll make sure it will be ok. I promise, Evie.'

Evie nodded, but her stare continued. It alarmed Rita more than the crying or the panicked questions.

'Dear, you'll have to sleep here tonight. Do you know how to sleep… in the water?'

Evie looked up at Rita, and her eyes were startled. It was as if something had cut through and the emptiness had been filled with utter panic.

'What if I drown?' she asked anxiously. 'I won't know how to…!'

'You'll be fine,' Sirena said before she could go further. 'I'll show you how, ok? I'll stay with you all night and make sure you're ok.'

Evie nodded, and Rita excused herself to head up and make the phone call to the Eastern mermaids. Cam excused himself and said to call him if he was needed.

Ondina followed Rita upstairs, which left Zac awkwardly standing in the room with Sirena and Evie, not knowing what to do or say.

'Rita's right,' he said quietly. 'I need to find that man. My… my father.'

Evie looked up at Zac with an inscrutable look. Sirena, who had not actually seen the man himself, did not quite understand why Ondina had been so adamantly opposed to finding him. But Evie had been there, and had seen the cruel look in his eyes as he stood over her.

'Zac, if you do this, you have to understand that it could make things worse,' she said, not trying to persuade, but just trying to explain. 'If that happens, you need to know… well, I forgive you. I know you didn't try to cause any of this. I know it was my choice to be in that chamber with you and with him. I forgive you.'

'Thank you,' Zac said quietly. With that, he dove into the water beside Evie and, without surfacing, swam away, only his fin breaking the surface briefly and lightly splashing a weary Evie and Sirena.

A/N: Thank you for reading. Next chapter will hopefully be up soon and will reveal… pretty much all!