Don't Tell Him I'm a Mermaid. Laura Steven

trouble staying up late, even when there was something exciting to look forward to. Something exciting like a secret mermaid mission and catching her very first glimpse of her homeland (homesea?).

      As it happened, Molly’s eyes remained open, staring at the hands of the broken cuckoo clock pinned wonkily to the wall. The waves crashed against the rocks surrounding the lighthouse. The minutes inched forward as though they were moving through gloopy treacle. Molly’s limbs grew more and more restless. She twitched with anticipation, and also with the fierce desire to transform.

      Quarter to midnight eventually crawled around. Molly slipped quietly out of bed and into her fluffy slipper socks, which were great for muffling your footsteps. She crept down to the kitchen, where Myla was already waiting, finishing the dregs of a milky tea. Since she was nearly eighteen, Myla could stay up until whenever she wanted, and it didn’t look like she’d even attempted to go to bed. She was still in the woolly green jumper and black jeans she’d been wearing several hours earlier.

      Once they’d moved the broken dishwasher and descended through the trapdoor, it took Molly’s eyes a few moments to adjust to the dimness in the perfectly round secret room. Slowly, the glorious sight of hundreds of dusty books materialised around her. In the brief minute before the floorboards were wound back and the sea was revealed, the only scent was that of well-loved old pages.

      As they transformed – a strange, tingly feeling – Myla plucked a particularly worn tome from the shelves and laid it to one side. The gold-foiled title read: The Extremely Unauthorised But Highly Interesting Complete History of Meire.

      ‘You’ll like that one,’ Myla said with a coy smile, wiggling her emerald-green tail in the spray from the gushing ripples of sea beneath them. Her long-sleeved top, which matched the colour of her tail perfectly, had also materialised, and glistened in the dim light.

      The jumping in was the best part. Those short seconds of weightlessness as Molly dived through the air, the plunging sensation of fully immersing her body in the cool swell. The instant relief, the hit of fresh air – well, water. It never got old.

      They weren’t supposed to be here at all, of course. Mum was strict about when and where the Seabrook sisters were allowed to transform. They had a midnight trip down to a hidden cove once a month, where they could splash around and get it out of their system, but other than that they were supposed to avoid transforming wherever possible. It was too dangerous, she said – too dangerous on land, because they might be seen, and too dangerous in the water, because . . . actually, Molly didn’t know exactly why it was so bad down here. All she knew is that Mum would flay her alive if she knew about the secret trips.

      They swam in a different direction to Coley Cavern, where Molly went to watch Margot play Clamdunk, or to spy on Myla as she met her secret girlfriend. Instead they swam further out to sea, where the water was cooler and darker; the fish fatter and less welcoming.

      On the way out, Molly was surprised to pass a few other mermaids. None of them were supposed to be this deep in the water any more. It was too dangerous, too polluted. But they passed a group of three older mermen all carrying matching spears with octopi carved on the stems, and also a haggard old mermaid with a haunted look in her eyes.

      Just as Molly was beginning to worry Myla was taking her all the way to Denmark, they stopped by a slightly raised shelf of rocky seabed. Myla perched on a jutting ledge and smiled triumphantly, pointing out into the middle of the North Sea.

      Molly followed her gaze, and she saw . . . nothing. Just more water, more fish, more patches of light and shade. Plus thousands and thousands of pieces of plastic shrapnel, from Tesco carrier bags to bottles of Coke and everything in between. The sight made her sad. Humans were awful and they ruined everything. There was no way she’d be able to see her homeland through all that debris.

      ‘I think you’re cracking up, babe,’ she said kindly to Myla.

      ‘Firstly, I don’t think our relationship can survive you calling me babe. Secondly, be patient. Once you’ve seen it, you’ll never unsee it.’

      Molly scooted over to Myla and settled down beside her. There was strangely little sensation in a mermaid tail, so sitting on rugged rocks wasn’t as uncomfortable as it should have been. Molly sometimes thought she could take a bullet to the bit where her kneecaps were supposed to be and not immediately notice.

      Myla reached into an extremely large clamshell, which had been turned into some sort of cross-body clutch bag. Molly hadn’t even noticed she’d been carrying it. Inside was a dainty bronze instrument studded with pearls: the special underwater telescope she’d talked about. The word Marefluma was carved on the stem in ornate swirly letters.

      With eyes like fireflies in the deep blue water, Myla delicately swivelled various sections of the telescope into place. Removing her glasses, she held it up to her face and stared down its length.

      ‘Our maternal grandmother, Murielle, passed this telescope on to Mum when Mum left Meire for the human world. Mum gave it to me when I was around your age. I was just as curious as you about Meire and its secrets. If anything, seeing this tiny glimpse has made me even more so.’

      She handed the telescope to Molly so carefully, you’d have thought it was a priceless diamond necklace.

      ‘I don’t think you’re ready for this,’ Myla murmured mysteriously.

      Hands trembling ever so slightly, Molly held the peculiar instrument up to her face. As soon as her eyes adjusted, she gasped.

      She could see it. In blurred strokes of light and colour, like the impressionist paintings Mrs Makvandi, her art teacher, was always banging on about.

      There were swathes of copper and pearl, and what she could’ve sworn were ancient shipwrecks. There were towering buildings in deep blue and dark green and shimmering clear glass. There were a million twinkling, moving lights swirling through the city like bees in a hive.

      ‘Balaena,’ Myla announced grandly.

      ‘What are all those lights?’ whispered Molly, who had been expecting a murky ghost town. ‘I thought nobody lived there any more?’

      Myla sat up straighter, eager to don her supergenius cap. ‘Once upon a time, the merministers in government paid electroreceptive fish to power the city. When the pollution got too bad for the mermaids and most of them fled to the land, the fish had nowhere to go, so they stayed in the larger towns.’

      ‘And the human government were happy to have us?’ Molly asked, struggling to picture a negotiation between the two species.

      ‘Not at first,’ Myla said. ‘In fact, the human prime minister was completely unwilling to help us. But legend goes that we had a great leader representing us, and they eventually managed to make a deal. Nobody knows what we offered in return for safe refuge. But for now, we’re allowed to live on land, providing we conceal our true identities. The second we slip up, we’re back in the sea.’

      Molly mulled this over. The light through the telescope continued to shift and swirl, like the city was a living, breathing thing. ‘Hang on . . . you say most of the mermaids fled, including us. But you also mentioned our grandmother. Murielle? Where is she now? We’ve never met her, have we?’

      ‘No, we’ve never met her.’ Myla didn’t meet Molly’s eye, and Molly wondered whether that was the whole truth. She reached for her merpower, trying to read Myla’s emotions, but no answer came. ‘Stubborn old crone, Murielle. Refused to abandon the place she’d lived her whole life, no matter how ugly things got down there. There are still a bunch of human-hating traditionalists who refuse to move to the shore.’

      ‘So it isn’t too dangerous,’ Molly pushed. ‘To live there, I mean. Or at least visit.’

      ‘I don’t know about that. Rumour has it that the streets of Balaena flow with human sewage, and the mermaids that remain are forever being injured and maimed by vicious tangles of plastic. Maybe it’s not as dangerous as Mum makes out, but it’s still not the kind of place you want to go on your jollies.’

      Molly’s