The Girl in the Woods

Chapter 6

"It's okay." I said nervously.

Jed suddenly picked up my hand and kissed it. "My name is Jed Ofaiaa Medropolitis. And yours?"

"Lilah Winters." I forgot his full name the second it was out of his mouth.

"Lovely!" Jed exclaimed. He turned back to Apollo. "Not that I'm mad to see an old friend, but what in ocean are you doing here, floating by a cliff in China? This isn't where I usually swim into you, Apollo. And with such poor ocean clothes! Your delicate skin won't be protected for a second in that blasted cloak."

"It's a long story." Apollo replied, smiling wryly. "But you have no idea how glad I am to see you, Jed. What are you doing so far from your merhren?"

Jed shrugged, his face suddenly conspiratory. "If you must know, I'm disobeying my king by being here. We're not supposed to leave the merhren's boundaries, but I got bored, as usual. Good thing I did! I'm here to rescue you yet again."

Apollo laughed and shook his head. "Nothing's changed since I last saw you, it seems. Is it possible for you to get us out of here?"

Jed stared at him, mystified. "Why don't you just climb back onto your precious land, earth walker?"

"There's a troll waiting for us back on land," Apollo explained, his long arms moving back and forth almost lazily in the water, "that's why we're in the water."

Jed chuckled. "Well, in that case, I can lead you to one of the tunnels close by, it'll probably lead you to a shore close by India - "

"Actually, on second thought, "Apollo stared at the merman with sudden interest, "can we come visit your merhren? Your uncle has been begging me for a visit for the last century."

"Why, of course!" Jed laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. "It's best not to ignore the king for too long, Apollo - he might send a tsunami or a typhoon your way!"

After asking us sceptically how deep we could dive, Jed dived away for a moment before returning with some weird kind of blue algae I'd never seen before.

"Don't swallow it," Jed explained to me happily, obviously excited at the prospect of bring Apollo and me home, "just let it sit on your tongue. It has unlimited stores of oxygen in it, so you can breathe from it. When we get back to the merhren, a water witch can fix you up so you won't need it under water."

I looked over at Apollo worriedly, but he was already calmly putting the stuff in his mouth. "What is it?"

Jed winked at me again. "Can't tell you; it's a mer secret. We don't get a lot of humans down there, no matter how much we like them. If they found out, the ocean would be flooded with humans all the time, and they'd bring their annoying tendency to destroy things with them."

I ignored his casual jib and hesitantly brought the algae to my lips. It was squishy and cool, and to my surprise, tasted kind of minty. To my surprise, when I tried breathing through my nose, I found it mysteriously blocked. Instead, my cheeks automatically hollowed out and became full again as my breathing naturally diverted to the blue stuff in my mouth.

Jed laughed at my expression. "Alright, let's go!"

He dived down with a little splash, and with an encouraging smile from Apollo, we dived down and followed him. Swimming had somehow become easier with the blue algae; not only was breathing now allowed, my limbs seemed almost to glide through the water like a knife through butter. I marvelled at the bright blue and green wonderland we were swimming through. It was absolutely amazing!

In front of us, Jed's tail undulated and flexed as he powered down to the ocean floor. I looked around curiously for what he was heading toward. There were clumps of sea rock, covered in algae and coral and various sea creatures, and the rest was colourful sea weed and pale sand. There wasn't anything that looked like a tunnel.