Monster Mission

But he sighed deeply as he said it for Queenie was much prettier than Mrs Sprott with her purple hair and her claw-like fingernails and her greedy eyes. Mrs Sprott was a kind of dung beetle, only instead of collecting balls of nice soft manure she collected clothes and shoes and jewels and furs and dumped them in his house before going out for more.

‘They’ll laugh at me at school if I have a mermaid for a stepmother and I don’t like fish. Even half a fish I don’t like … even a fish that isn’t really there,’ moaned Lambert.

‘Oh be quiet, Lambert,’ said Mr Sprott. ‘No one’s going to marry her. We’re going to show her off in a tank and make a fortune out of her. But first she’ll have to tell us where the other creepy-crawlies are to be found. I’m going to catch the lot of them and then—’

But he didn’t finish what he was going to say. Lambert couldn’t be trusted not to blab. Not till the weird beasts were on board and tied up and on their way across the Atlantic would he say anything. He had decided to set up his funfair on an island off the coast of Florida which belonged to a friend. Or rather to a business partner. A man like Stanley Sprott did not have friends.

But first he had to cross-examine Queenie and see how much of his son’s babble was true. He found Des ogling the mermaid through the bathroom window, while Casimir and Boris grumbled that it was their turn.

‘I found her,’ Des was saying. ‘So I get the longest turn. She’s mine really and the old man ought to—’

He turned to see Mr Sprott standing behind him. ‘If any of you lay a finger on this mermaid you’ll go straight overboard,’ he said, and told Des to board up the window. Then he opened the door and drew up a stool beside the bath.

‘Now, dear,’ he said, ‘I’ve got a few questions to ask you. It’s about your family. You’re not alone, are you? You’ve got a mummy and a daddy?’

‘I haven’t got a daddy,’ said Queenie, pulling Aunt Myrtle’s bodice tighter round her top.

‘But a mummy … and little brothers and sisters?’

‘Only one of each and my great-grandmother.’

Queenie was too frightened to realize that she was being trapped.

‘And of course there are the other … unusual creatures on the Island. Lambert told me about a worm. White, isn’t he?’

Queenie nodded. ‘He’s very clever,’ she said.

‘And what else is there on the Island?’

Now at last the mermaid saw where this was leading. ‘Nothing,’ she faltered. ‘Just the aunts.’

‘Oh, I think there are,’ said Mr Sprott. ‘Perhaps if I take the plug out of the bath it will help you to think.’

‘No! Oh please, no!’

To take water from a mermaid is the most terrible thing you can do. But Mr Sprott had already pulled it out; the water was draining away. Now he picked up the electric hairdryer.

‘No!’ she cried again, trying to protect her tail from the terrifying heat.

Mr Sprott turned it off.

‘You’ve remembered something else?’

‘There’s a big bird … a boobrie.’ Surely he wouldn’t want the boobrie? What use would she be to him?

‘And where is it to be found? Is there a nest?’

‘No … I don’t know … It’s up on the hill. Oh please put the water back.’

But Mr Sprott did not put the water back—and now he put on the dryer again and let the ghastly heat play over her tail till the freshness of the silver became dull and dead… Queenie’s tail had been her pride and joy and now it looked as though it had been on a fishmonger’s slab for a week.

She held out as long as she could. Then she said pitifully: ‘There are some selkies. They’re just seals really. There’s nothing to them.’

But Mr Sprott wasn’t to be fobbed off so easily.

‘What sort of seals?’ He had dropped the hairdryer. Instead he had taken a pair of scissors and was holding a hank of her golden hair, ready to chop it off. ‘Go on—answer. Don’t keep me waiting. I don’t like to be kept waiting.’

‘I don’t know,’ whispered poor Queenie. ‘It’s just stories. People say they can turn into humans if someone drops seven tears into the water or if they’re touched with cold steel.’

Mr Sprott’s eyes glittered. He saw the circus ring … a seal on a tub … then a sharp pronged fork in its backside and lo, a woman jumps down. A transformation scene, better than a pantomime.

‘Go on—what else is there? What else?’

But though he threatened her again with the hairdryer Queenie kept silent about the little kraken. For she knew that the end of the kraken meant the end of the sea as she knew it—and thus the end of her world—and Mr Sprott did not dare to hurt her any more or she wouldn’t be worth putting on show.

‘I’ll speak to you again tomorrow,’ he said, turning the water on again. ‘Don’t think I’ve finished with you, because I haven’t.’

But as he gave his orders—the hold to be cleared, reinforced nets and lifting gear to be got ready, and harpoon guns to stun the beasts before they were hauled aboard—he did not realize that the greatest prize on the Island was still unknown to him. Neither Queenie nor Lambert had mentioned the kraken’s son.

Chapter Eighteen