As the lights cleared, I had one glimpse of a cloudy sky above me, and the next moment I plunged downward into cold water.

Chapter 3

I had expected many things from my magic wish. None of them involved falling into a giant body of water. Tiny bubbles whooshed around me, licking my skin. I couldn’t see the bottom or sides of a pool. I was in something bigger—a lake or an ocean. I held my breath and swam upward toward the light wavering on the water above me. I swam fast, filled with the adrenaline of surprise. I broke through the surface, sputtering. “What in the—” My voice didn’t sound any different, which was another surprise. I thought it would.

Steel blue waves lapped around me, stretching out as far as I could see. An ocean. Several clouds roamed through the sky, but the air felt warm. As I became used to it, the water did too. I pushed strands of wet hair away from my eyes. Why had Chrissy put me here?

I turned around and I noticed a ship a few hundred feet in the distance behind me. Several white sails billowed from its towering masts. The ship was midsized, made from weathered wood, with a silhouette of a woman carved into the prow. Some sort of odd decorations rimmed the side. Over all, the ship looked like something out of a pirate movie. I hadn’t realized anyone still made boats like that.

A tour ship? A yacht owned by an eccentric history buff? Whatever it was, it was the only boat within sight, and I needed help.

“Hey!” I yelled and stroked toward it. Chrissy had probably meant to put me on the ship and she’d missed. That was the downside, I supposed, of having a fairy godmother still in training. “Hey!” I yelled again. “Woman overboard! Help!” The boat wasn’t moving fast. I could catch up to it, but I wasn’t sure which end to swim to. I didn’t see any sort of ladder. Hopefully someone had a long rope they could throw down.

A man appeared at the ship’s rail. He was round-faced with a scraggly blond beard and a bandanna tied around his head. He saw me, did a double take, and called to someone behind him. A tall man joined him at the rail. He had a bushy brown beard and wore a wide-brimmed hat over his tangled hair. Both men stared at me in puzzlement.

“What’s a wench doing out ‘ere in the ocean?” the man in the bandanna asked.

I couldn’t tell them my fairy-godmother-in-training had bad aim and missed the boat. “I fell in the water,” I called back. The honesty clause in my contract stopped me from providing more details. “Can you help me get onboard?”

The man in the hat leaned further over the rail, eyeing me suspiciously. “She couldn’t ‘ave fallen overboard. We ain’t got no women on the ship.”

The man in the bandanna cocked his head. “Unless the prince brought one along that we know nothing about. Royalty does what they likes. I’ll go tell the captain.” To me he yelled, “You hang on, m’lady, and we’ll drop the longboat for you.”

Prince? M’lady? I took a better look at the men. The grayish long sleeve shirts they wore seemed old-fashioned. Just like the ship. Now that I was closer, I could see the decorations rimming the side weren’t decorations at all. They were the ends of cannons.

Little bursts of alarm pumped through me. This couldn’t be right. Had Chrissy sent me back in time?

No, she wouldn’t have. There weren’t any rock stars hundreds of years ago.

The man in the hat squinted at me. “Blimey. She ain’t got no clothes on.”

Oh no! Had Chrissy messed up my wish so badly she’d dropped me naked into an ocean?

I crossed my arms over my chest and looked down. I wasn’t naked. My wet hair covered most of it, but I wore an odd plastic bikini top made out of large pale shells. I guess I should have expected someone with pink hair to come up with this sort of outfit. I sunk lower in the ocean so less of me was visible. “I’m not naked,” I yelled back to the man. “I’ve got a bathing suit on.”

Three more scraggly men arrived at the ship’s rail. “A naked wench?” the first asked.

“Where?” the second added.

“Let me see.”

The first man cocked his head. “What’s she doing out ‘ere in the ocean?”

One of the men pulled out a spyglass and pointed it in my direction.

I sunk lower into the water and gritted my teeth. “If you don’t mind, I could use some help.”

The sailor with the spyglass lowered it. “She’s got on naught but her unmentionables.”

Another leaned over the rail, gawking at me. “She must have taken off her dress. Them skirts women wear—they could drown a whale, they could.” He cupped his hand to the side of his mouth. “Keep swimming. I’ll ready the longboat.”

“Nay, don’t.” A man with stringy black hair crossed himself once, then twice, as though the first time might not have worked. “The wench is a mermaid. Mark my words, seeing one is always a portent of trouble.”

The man with the hat put his hands on the rail and smiled an oily smile. His teeth were yellow and crooked. “Seems more like a piece of luck to see such a pretty thing out here.” He motioned to me. “Swim closer, dearie, and tell us your name.”

Eww. Creepy. The guy was old enough to be my father. Were all the men on the ship like this? I looked to the left and to the right, out at the waves that sloshed in every direction. “Um, are there any other boats nearby?”

The wind caught the men’s shirts and rippled them like a row of dirty gray flags. The sailor with stringy black hair shook a scolding finger in my direction. “Don’t listen to anything she says. Mermaids lure men to their destruction.”

I glared back at him. “I’m not a mermaid. See, I’ll prove it. I’ve got legs.” I leaned back in the water and lifted up my feet.

Only, they weren’t feet anymore. Where my legs should have been, glistening teal scales spread upward, each as intricate and interconnected as feathers on a bird’s wing. They tapered into a tailfin that spread out at the top like a lace fan.

I let out a startled scream, which was nearly as loud as the men’s startled screams. In disbelief, in horror, I moved my tailfin up and down. It felt so natural, so much a part of me, that I hadn’t even noticed I didn’t have legs. What had Chrissy done to me? I was half fish.

“I told you she was a mermaid!” the man with the stringy black hair yelled. He stumbled back away from the rail. “We’ll have bad luck now!”

“You think you’ll have bad luck?” I coughed out. “I’m the one without legs. That’s bad luck.” I submerged my tailfin in the water again. I didn’t want to see it anymore. Shallow, panicked breaths pumped through my chest. A scream of indignation was fighting to come out.

Chrissy had to fix this. She had to. I gazed upward, as though I might see her lounging about in the air. “Chrissy!” I shouted. “I need to speak to you!”

She didn’t show up. Only clouds and sky lolled about above me. “Chrissy!”

The man with the stringy black hair followed my upward gaze, checking to see what I was looking at. “Now she’s yelling something unholy!”

By that point I was yelling quite a few things, many of which were definitely unholy.

The man crossed himself again and returned his attention to the water. “Soon we’ll be surrounded by an entire school of fish folk. Surrounded, and us still not in sight of shore.”

As soon as he’d given this pronouncement of doom, two dark shadows rippled underneath the water below me. I didn’t know what they were and didn’t want to put my face underwater to find out. Please, I thought, not sharks. Let them be seals, or dolphins, or friendly passing turtles.

I headed sideways, darting out of their way. I was fast in the water, slicing through the waves effortlessly. The shadows followed, then sped up and circled around me. Whatever they were, they weren’t just randomly passing by. They were after me.

My heart pounded in a frantic rhythm. I swam toward the ship, tail pumping so urgently I didn’t need to use my arms to propel myself. The ship was the only shark-free place around and I was ready to climb the side using my fingernails. Before I could enact this plan, the shadows cut around in front of me. They were coming up to the surface.