Chapter 2

Chapter 2

A flash of light. Rosalynd sat up, dazed. She wasn't in a basement at all, and not a single Jenga brick was in sight.

She was in a rectangle room full of doors, and a walkie-talkie was on the ground next to her. She picked it up. "Aden? Aden!" She called, but there was no answer. She got up and tried again, but the respond was same as the first time. Why, I must be crazy, she thought to herself, I probably broke my neck when I fell down, and one of these doors are leading to Heaven. Or I might have fainted, and this is all a vision. But her voice just now was loud and clear-not like in a vision at all. Well, the best way to find out was to go back up the ladder and ask another person if they could see her, or if she was dreaming or anything like that. She turned up and down and around, but there was no ladder- or trapdoor, either.

And it was only until now that the horror sank in; the hopelessness, the despair. It was as if some ghostly creature had taken place in her heart, and was now swirling inside her. There was no way out, and god knows where Aden is now. She might be anywhere in the world. Oh, what oh what should she do? Rosalynd flung herself onto the hard, rocky ground and wept. She wept until she had no more tears and her head ached. Finally, she pulled herself together and started thinking. If I'm not dead-or having a vision- or dreaming, and if Aden's here, I'd better start looking for him. He's not in the corridor, so he should be behind one of those doors, if he's here at all, she thought, and he likes blue-green colors. So he must be behind one of the blue-green doors. Somewhere along the fourth door, she came to the door she was looking for; it was a lovely turquoise, and the colors seemed to swirl around her as she looked at it. Rosalynd took a deep breath, braced herself for the worst, and opened the door.
***
Rosalynd couldn't breathe. Fire was flowing through her viens, and lightning burned her skin. An icy wind was blowing in her head; her lungs had turned to stone. Needles pierced her legs, her heart was beating rapidly-and then all of sudden, everything stopped. There was no more fire, no more lightning, no more wind, no more needles. She could breathe normally again, but her heart was still thumping away madly. I must be in hell, Rosalynd thought, I must have just passed through the door of the dead, and darkness, darkness is surrounding me, with the
hounds of the dead and the spirits and ghost.

At last, she gathered up every bit of her courage and opened her eyes, expecting the worst-but the most astonishing sight she had ever seen lay before her eyes. Everywhere around her was crystal clear water, and patches of bright, multi-colored coral were stationed all around her on the seabed. The seabed was made of the finest, silkiest sand one can possibly imagine, and the sand stretched around for miles as far as the eye could see. Dolphins glided gracefully around, and shoals of rainbow colored fish swam by. There were also tiny sea turtles the size of pennies, and seahorses as big as a horse. But the thing that attracted Rosalynd most was the palace. The palace was some twenty meters away from the place Rosalynd was standing on, and the entire palace was made of blue, pink and white pearls. Brightly colored strands of seaweed were wound around the palace to hold the pearls together.

The sight of it was so astonishing Rosalynd’s heart skipped a beat. She wanted to run towards it, but her legs seemed leaden, glued to the spot, and won’t budge a bit. She looked down and let out a silent scream. Her legs were gone, and in their place was a shiny, blue-green tail!
But this was her luck, and she had to accept it. So she decided to try out her tail. When she flicked her tail backwards she shot forward so fast she crashed into a sea turtle, but gradually she got the knack of it, and at last she could go at absolutely any speed or direction she wanted.

Just as she was turning a somersault in the water, a horn sounded. It sounded like the horns that people blew when the king was coming, and sure enough, Rosalynd could see a little dot coming from the distance, getting closer and closer to her every minute. At last, when it got so close it was going to bump into her, she turned to swim away-but a strong hand held her hands behind her back, and no matter how hard she struggled, she couldn’t get away. She couldn’t look around to see who was holding her either, because her head wouldn’t go that far. But she did hear the screech of a carriage being stopped, and then a deep, booming voice said, “Who dares get in the way of the king!”

Rosalynd found herself being forced to turn around-and nearly screamed out loud. In front of her was a huge, ugly lobster, as big as herself. It had bumps, like warts or pimples, growing all over it. It wore a scarlet robe, and on its head was a gold crown set with the finest pearls of the ocean. Rosalynd couldn’t bear the sight of it. “Who are you?” boomed the lobster, and at once Rosalynd recognized the voice. It was of the 'person' who spoke just now; a deep, raspy, ugly voice. “I-I-I’m R-Rosalynd, your m-majesty,” stammered Rosalynd. She had, of course, learned that this lobster before her was a king of some sort. “Well, young mermaid,” said the lobster king, “seeing that you are so fair, you shall be my queen!” “Hurrah!” cheered some few dozen voices. And as Rosalynd looked around her for the first time, she saw something that made her gasp. All around her, there were mermaids and merman, all of different colored tails: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet… and a lot of other colors which she could not name. The mermen wore nothing, but the mermaids wore a special item of clothing over their important body part.

Then she was hoisted onto the carriage next to the king, and the carriage thundered off towards the castle at once. It was a rather comfortable seat, for it was made especially for mermaids, but Rosalynd couldn’t get comfortable at all.

How could she, when she was whisked off suddenly to some unknown underwater mermaid world, and now even being forced to marry some ugly, cruel, huge, lobster king of a sort?

Her head was spinning…spinning…, and then she knew no more.