Moonfin Read online

  Pinky Wish Press

  Text copyright © 2015 by L. L. Mintie

  Cover Illustration © 2015 by Hayes Roberts

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For information write to: Pinky Wish Press

  P.O. Box 1838 Monument, Colorado 80132

  ISBN-13: 978-0-692-37956-1

  ISBN-10: 0692379568

  Dedication

  For Makenna, Zachary, and Mark

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Poem

  Chapter 1•CREATURES OF OLD

  Chapter 2•A STRANGE CONVERSATION

  Chapter 3•WAKING GIANTS

  Chapter 4•BONFIRE

  Chapter 5•THE WAVE GROWS FINGERS

  Chapter 6•DISCOVERY BAY

  Chapter 7•BUBBA’S

  Chapter 8•THE DISAPPEARING FACE

  Chapter 9•A MYSTERIOUS GIFT

  Chapter 10•THE WATERPEOPLE

  Chapter 11•WAVEFEST

  Chapter 12•SCALES AND CRAZY LLAMAS

  Chapter 13•THE QUARANTINE ROOM

  Chapter 14•DREAMING PITS

  Chapter 15•GLIMMRUYN OF THE DEEP

  Chapter 16•THE TICKLING BLADE

  Chapter 17•THE CONSTELLULIARY

  Chapter 18•WHERE THE STAR KEYS LEAD

  Chapter 19•A LONELY DRAGON

  Chapter 20•FREEDOM!

  Chapter 21•QRRRRRB

  Map

  Nine Pillars

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  CREATURES OF OLD

  Eight-year-old Lizzy held tightly to her mother’s hand as she strolled with her family down the empty wharf toward the tiny aquarium. The yawning seagulls lined the boardwalk, rippling quiet air between curious glances, like centurions drifting off to sleep between battles. Puffing up their bodies and tucking one leg into their feathery orbs, they perched precariously on weathered pier posts, always keeping one eye open just in case they were called into action.

  Lizzy thought they were quite talented for being able to sleep without tipping over. “That could come in handy while doing multiplication at the chalkboard,” she mumbled to herself as they passed by.

  Mrs. Doyle opened her shop door, and they stopped to watch her fill up large wooden barrels with saltwater taffy, each overflowing with bright hues of gooey delight. For anyone else that would be a pleasant task, but for Fanny Doyle it was just another boring chore in life. She glowered at them, which made her sour face look out of place with the colorful candies that lit up the background of her little shop.

  “Mrs. Doyle doesn’t like us,” said Lizzy matter-of-factly.

  “Mrs. Doyle doesn’t like anyone,” replied Jade, her older sister.

  “Except her fat ol’ tabby, Goober … and all the harbor cats.” Lizzy pressed her face next to the window and peered at all the sweets. “I heard she gets up at the crack of dawn every morning and goes down to feed ’em. They’re like her family.”

  “Glad she cares about something, even if she’s not going to show any kindness to the human population of Blowing Prawn,” said her mother, pulling Lizzy from the store window.

  They continued down the gray, uneven boardwalk. Fog billowed through the streets like twirling phantoms. Most of the storefronts were still dark, never in a hurry to fling open their doors to the world.

  Lizzy paused at the dock and read the bumper sticker on old Mr. Greer’s boat: “NO SEALS ALLOWED!” was posted in black and red letters all over the bulkhead. Not only his boat, but most of the little sailing and fishing vessels tied up in the harbor had the same sticker slapped somewhere on them.

  Lizzy pointed at the blaring signs. “What does that mean?” she said, looking up at her father.

  “Haven’t you heard?” An amused gleam played in his eyes. “Too many seals climbed up on Mr. Greer’s boat and sunk it. Poor guy was fined for disturbing the peace. The seals were fined as well, but no one could figure out how to get any money out of the seals, so they printed up nasty bumper stickers instead and stuck them all over the bulkheads to warn them off.”

  “But that’s crazy. How can a seal read a bumper sticker?”

  “Precisely the point! The Committee Against Gross Excitement stated it was a reminder for the owners to discourage such unseemly behavior in the seals,” chortled her father.

  Lizzy frowned. “It spells C.A.G.E.”

  “What does?” Her mother looked confused. “Oh my! Yes, the acronym. How funny is that?” She chuckled at herself for not noticing it before.

  The little band of five Grapes, for that was the name of their happy family, continued down the wharf, passing a smorgasbord of touristy shacks, which sold trinkets and shells and monogrammed thimbles and tee shirts galore—anything that hinted of the beach life. Among them was a mom-and-pop miniatures shop with an old aquarium attached to the back. They entered through the door beneath a laughing mermaid with a blue tail and coral shell necklace. Her glossy, golden hair hung down over the opening and tickled their heads as they passed by.

  Lizzy was not pleased to be there, having left a very good book lying on her special green reading chair back home. “Don’t we usually come here when relatives come to visit?” she sulked. “And what do miniatures have to do with fish, anyway?”

  While the children usually scoffed at the strange combination, the grown-ups didn’t find it strange at all. Lots of places in Blowing Prawn were like that: a store and circus side-show combo. It was perfectly natural to walk into a trinket shop, pick out a souvenir, and see an exhibit of Blowing Prawn oddities. Today was no different, except the seals in the aquarium were unusually boisterous as they squawked for fish, and Lizzy became frightened by their whelping and twisting about.

  “They’re so loud, make them stop.” She pressed her nest of brown curls into her mother’s side.

  “Elizabeth Lou, what has gotten into you?” her mother scolded lightly.

  Lizzy’s eyes grew wide.

  “Rhyming right now won’t help,” she said, clutching her arm tightly.

  “Don’t be silly—”

  “But why are they screeching like that? I can’t stand it! It hurts. Can we pleeeease go to the tank room and see the big grouper?”

  Linda Grape leaned down and in a firm voice whispered, “You’ve been here a hundred times. Look, Daddy went to get the sardines. Now stop, you’re pulling me over!”

  Brandon was annoyed with Lizzy’s drama.

  “Chill out, Lizard, they always bark like that when they’re about to get fed.”

  “Lizard! You haven’t called me that since I was five … and yeah, I know I am acting like a baby, but I don’t like that name, Mr. Know-It-All,” she said huffily.

  After feeding the seals, they passed briskly into the musty old tank room. It was more like a mausoleum to Lizzy’s thinking, as it smelled like a dead pharaoh’s crypt, and the walls slid upward for zillions of feet into the dark shadows above them. It was icy cold and dead quiet. Tanks full of exotic fish covered a puddly brown floor, and Lizzy always had to fight the urge to go running through them and splash wet muck around.

  She began a staring match with a plump, old grouper the size of a football, watching as it hovered near the glass in a trance, staring straight ahead; sure it was made of rubber and being controlled remotely from a hidden room nearby.

  “I think they’re a thousand years old.”

  Mr. Grape looked quizzically at the floating blob. “You might be right; these may be the very same fish I visited when I was a boy.”

  Lizzy giggled. “You aren’t a thou
sand years old … yet.” She placed her palm flat against the cold glass. “One day I will set them all free, and they will swim back to their oceans and be real fish again,” she declared grandly.

  “Just like Pinocchio!” Jade teased, waving a pretend wand above Lizzy’s head.

  “That’s if they even know how to swim at all. They’ve been here for so long.” Her brow wrinkled up at this problem. She didn’t want to set them free only to sink to the bottom of the ocean like heavy stones.

  “Hmm, they certainly are different …” Mr. Grape adjusted his glasses and knelt down to take a closer look. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen this species outside of the aquarium. I wonder what ocean they’re from.”

  She knew he was testing her, but she wasn’t taking the bait. “Umm—more like what planet they’re from … probably Pluto, fresh from a nitrogen geyser. I hear the fish there are very different from our planet,” answered Lizzy.

  He chuckled and a tousle of mocha hair fell into his eyes. Lizzy liked the way her dad looked—very smart with his round spectacles and messy hair. She had the same wavy, brown locks and freckled cheeks, and people were always saying how much she took after him. She was proud of that fact. Although she wasn’t proud of her nose, which she thought took a slightly crooked route down her face and not like her father’s one bit. Jade, on the other hand, took after their mother with her jewel-green eyes and straight blond hair. She looked like the usual beach girls that inhabited Blowing Prawn. Lizzy was more of the oddball variety in her school—the only exception being with the science club, and the little kindergarten boy she read to, Randy, who thought she was the coolest, but that didn’t really count.

  “Where do you get these ideas, Lizzy? Animals can’t live on Pluto,” Brandon smirked.

  “I dunno. Maybe you can’t see them, but they’re there.”

  “Nerd,” escaped Jade’s lips.

  Lizzy wandered up to a giant decrepit catfish floating motionless behind yellowed glass. Pale whiskers sprouted from a bloated face—like a sumo wrestler with a mouth full of marbles. It looked blankly at her at first, but in a split second moved to the side, focusing a dilated pupil right on her. Wondering if it would flinch, she swiped her hand across the glass, close to the wide, black eye.

  Then it happened in a sudden rush: an odd tingling washed over her. For a brief moment, she heard a distant sound in her mind. It was a pulse or a heartbeat, followed by a very strong feeling—like that of weeping.

  The scary sensation overwhelmed her at once, and she blurted out, “They are very sad!”

  “I wasn’t aware fish had feelings.” Her mother wrinkled her nose at the thought.

  Jade burst out laughing.

  “Honestly, Liz, no wonder everyone at school calls you a space-cadet!”

  Lizzy didn’t know how she knew. She just did.

  “Well, maybe it’s like how dogs and other pets have feelings. It’s not so very odd, after all.” She moved on through the room, a little confused at these new whisperings in her heart, pondering the thin piece of glass that separated their water-world from her own.

  The last room of the aquarium held the tide-pools, sculpted out of cement and filled with sea anemones and crabs. It was a favorite with all the little kids. There was this one little old lady volunteer who stood by and always warned, “Never stick your tongue into a sea anemone!” But of course some kid always did, and their tongue would swell up to the size of a grapefruit. “Tourists—serves them right!” the lady would cackle.

  After finishing the exhibit, they stepped outside to the observation deck that skirted the great blue-green ocean. A loud roar arose from the cliff below. Lizzy climbed up the metal rail and tipped her head into the salty breeze. She loved the ocean for all its color and beauty and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else; it was so much a part of her family’s lifeblood. Her favorite memories were of the carefree days out on her dad’s fishing boat, helping with a catch, or digging up clams from the sand during low tide. She could spend all day exploring its mysteries.

  “Dad, I wanna take the Sundancer out for a few days,” Brandon announced unexpectedly.

  “Where to?” Mr. Grape eyed his son warily. “Last time it ended up with a cracked hull.”

  “Okay, I know, but that was the only time I came that close to shore,” he smiled sheepishly. “One of the trawlers came in late last night and Captain Malloy called … said they found something out near Otter Island. I want to go check it out. Besides, I have all summer before next college term starts, and the guys and I want to make some cash.”

  “Brandon, can I go, huh? There isn’t much going on at my school,” pleaded Lizzy, jumping up and down. “It’s almost finished, anyway.”

  “You always try to get out of school any chance you get,” snorted Jade.

  “Good try,” he said, smiling at her, and then his expression changed. “Sorry, but not this time.” Lizzy thought she sensed some strain in his voice and something else. Was it concern?

  “Just a bunch of ol’ sea otters out there … what could possibly be worth looking at?” she grumbled at him for being left out.

  “It’s probably nothing—just something the Coast Guard reported on the radio last night,” he said distractedly. “Standard recon. Also heard there’s a pod of fat lobsters out there, and Bubba is paying top dollar for ’em.”

  Lizzy had a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach that something wasn’t right. The cold gray mist roiled off the ocean and engulfed her mind in puddles of dread.

  The next morning at daybreak, Brandon Grape and a small crew set sail from Blowing Prawn harbor.

  The sea was a glassy calm.

  The blazing yellow sun rose.

  The cool orange sun set.

  Another day melted into the sea, and the Sundancer was never heard from again.

  Chapter 2

  A STRANGE CONVERSATION

  Lizzy leaned on the cold glass shelf and stared absently at a large side of ham. She always knew the day, even when it wasn’t marked on the calendar. She could feel it in her bones: Exactly four summers had passed since the day Brandon disappeared.

  “Stop daydreaming and get going already, you’ll be late for school again,” said Sugar in a hurry.

  “Butwherefdagrapelly?” garbled Lizzy.

  Sugar dumped a handful of leafy sprigs into a blender and pushed the purée button. “Try your last science experiment,” she hollered over the grinding hum of sloshing plants. “Food always ends up there, ya know!”

  “Oh yeah—I forgot about that!” Lizzy yelled back.

  She wedged her head between the eggs and cheese and sighed dolefully. Everyone tried to move on, to be happy, but she never could. She just felt “stuck” in a way, like the town of Blowing Prawn, which hadn’t changed a stitch these last four years. The same old shops and people lined the wharf. And while the world moved on to cell phones, laptops, and digital mania, Blowing Prawn stayed in the Dark Ages. Mrs. Whipple still had a rotary phone in her shop. The library kept a card catalogue and books on cassette tape. Yep, the town and Lizzy’s brain were stuck in a time warp together.

  She exited the icy refrigerator, the grape jelly nowhere to be found, and pulled two slices of Sugar’s homemade oatmeal bread from the cupboard. She slathered them with creamy peanut butter, licking the spoon for added delight.

  “It will just have to be peanut butter again today,” she mumbled while stuffing chips and juice into her backpack. “Better to have a great chemistry explosion all purple and glorious than a plain ol’ sandwich, anyway.”

  Sugar turned off the blender and poured a frothy green liquid into a tall glass. She leaned in to give it a strong whiff; wisps of magenta-dyed hair fell down around her shoulders and glistened in the morning sun.

  “You’ll have to start calling them ‘PBs’ from now on or make do without your jelly bombs—certainly be cleaner around here, for sure.” She arched her well-lined brows at Lizzy in pretend rebuke.

  “No,
I don’t think so,” said Lizzy, arching her brows back for dramatic effect. “We all know how that goes. Once I give in to being clean and tidy, it will always be expected of me. Where’s the fun in that? Mad scientists and cleanliness just don’t go together, and that is that.”

  Sugar slid the gleaming glass of green stuff over to Lizzy, who pinched her nose at it.

  “Drink.”

  “Does it have ice cream in it?”

  “No, alfalfa and seaweed.”

  “Then no, thanks.”

  “Mhmhm—you sassy girl! You’re gonna run me ragged! Now listen, your momma has a meeting at work and will be back early this evening, and your sister is staying late for volleyball club tonight.”

  “What about my dad?”

  “Traveling.”

  “Sheesh—again? Where’s he this time?” Lizzy hated it when her dad was gone so much for his job. Being a marine biologist who worked for the government, he reported on weather and ocean health and stuff like that.

  “The Bering Sea for a few weeks—National Fisheries Service needs him to ride out with the fleets to check on the crab populations, so be home for dinner at a decent time for once.” Sugar wagged her head: it was pointless to remind Lizzy to be on time for anything. Even if she owned a watch, she’d just ignore it.

  “Awww, Sugar,” Lizzy pouted, “but it’s field trip day.”

  Her eyebrows shot up again. They were getting a good workout today, thought Lizzy.

  “Oh, no—here we go. Don’t you and Kai go climbing into any exhibits pretending to be arctic Mongols this time around!”

  “Those were good times,” said Lizzy dreamily. “We only got caught because Kai sneezed and Krista saw us, the snitch. We paid her back, though, and hid a crawdad in her desk later that day. Boy, the look on her face when she pulled out her geography book … best moment ever.”

  “You two are just awful!” Sugar tried not to smile.