Royal Tea Read online

  Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  TRIDENT CITY MAP

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  1 HOLIDAY

  2 OH NO!

  3 THE QUEEN

  4 WRONG?

  5 A ROYAL ANNOUNCEMENT

  6 EMPEROR

  7 TEATIME

  8 SURPRISE!

  9 QUEEN EDWINA

  10 SOMETHING UNPLEASANT

  11 THE ROYAL CASTLE

  12 POX FREE

  CLASS REPORTS

  THE MERMAID TALES SONG

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  GLOSSARY

  A TAIL OF TWO SISTERS EXCERPT

  ABOUT DEBBIE DADEY

  To my mother, Rebecca Bailey Gibson

  Acknowledgment

  Thanks to the SCBWI. This organization’s guidance has spawned many wonderful children’s stories.

  Holiday?

  SHELLY!” MRS. KARP SAID. “What are you doing here?”

  Shelly Siren looked around her third-grade classroom in surprise. It was first thing in the morning at her school, Trident Academy, and the other merstudents were just settling into their desks.

  “It’s Wednesday,” Shelly told her teacher. “It isn’t a holiday, is it?”

  A merboy named Rocky Ridge swam out of his rock desk toward the classroom doorway. “Holiday? All right! I’m going home!”

  Mrs. Karp slapped her white tail on her marble desk. “Not so fast, young merman. It’s not a holiday.”

  Rocky groaned, but Shelly was relieved. She had been afraid she had come to school on the wrong day. Things had been a little mixed up at her shell lately.

  “I heard your grandfather has penguin pox, Shelly, and I know it’s highly contagious,” Mrs. Karp said with a worried look on her face, “so I wasn’t sure if you’d be at school today.”

  “Penguin pox? Eek!” Several kids in the classroom pushed their desks away from Shelly’s.

  Pearl Swamp put a hand over her nose and squealed, “Mrs. Karp, get her out of here right now before we all die!”

  Mrs. Karp frowned. “Pearl, you can’t die from penguin pox.”

  “Maybe not,” Rocky said. “But you do get itchy black-and-white bumps all over your body.”

  “Don’t worry.” Echo Reef put her arm around Shelly. “She isn’t sick.” Echo was Shelly’s best friend.

  Shelly nodded, causing her red hair to swirl in the water around her. “My grandfather became ill after he visited a museum in far-off waters. He’s locked away with a nurse to take care of him so I don’t catch it. I haven’t even seen him in days.” Shelly’s parents had died when she was very young, so she lived with her grandfather.

  “I’m glad you’re healthy, Shelly. And I hope your grandfather is well soon too,” Mrs. Karp said, turning her attention back to the class. “All right, then. Let’s all take our seats and get to work. Today we are starting a new unit on penguins!”

  Kiki Coral, the smallest mergirl in the class, leaned over and patted Shelly’s hand. “I’m sorry about your grandfather. I hope he gets better soon.”

  Shelly nodded and tried to listen to the science lesson, but she found it hard to concentrate on her favorite subject. Everyone in the merclass, except for Kiki and Echo, kept their desks scooted far away. They even tucked their tails in tightly beneath them so that they wouldn’t accidentally touch Shelly. Pearl held her nose whenever she looked at Shelly. No one wanted to catch the penguin pox!

  Shelly felt awful. Why was everyone acting like she had a horrible disease? She was almost glad when Rocky yelled, “Mrs. Karp, look! I need to go home. I have the dreaded penguin pox!”

  Everyone in the class gasped, but Shelly knew the spots on Rocky’s arms were fake. She’d watched him draw them on with a sea quill and octopus ink.

  Mrs. Karp rushed over to Rocky, took one look at the pretend spots, and pointed to the hallway. “Mr. Ridge, please step outside for a little conference.”

  “Ooh,” several merboys in the room howled as Rocky slowly followed Mrs. Karp out of the classroom.

  “Look at what you’ve done,” Pearl snapped at Shelly. “You’ve gotten poor Rocky into trouble with your icky disease!”

  Poor Rocky? Since when did Pearl care about anyone but herself? Shelly sighed. She had a feeling that this wasn’t the end of her penguin pox problems.

  Oh No!

  WHAT IS SHE DOING HERE?” Grandfather Siren’s nurse boomed.

  It was after school. Echo and Shelly were enjoying a snack in the kitchen of Shelly’s apartment, which was right above Trident City’s People Museum.

  Shelly wondered if all nurses were as loud as Grandfather’s. “Hi, Nurse Bloomquest. This is my best friend, Echo Reef. We’re just having some hagfish jelly and lichen crackers,” Shelly explained. “Would you like some?”

  “HUMPH. NO THANKS,” Nurse Bloomquest bellowed. “JUST MAKE SURE YOU STAY AWAY FROM YOUR GRANDFATHER’S BEDROOM. IT IS IN QUARANTINE. THAT MEANS NOBODY IN AND NOBODY OUT!”

  “Is Grandfather getting any better?” Shelly asked. She knew her grandfather was old for a merman, and she was worried about him.

  “HE SHOULD BE AS PERKY AS A SUNFISH SOON ENOUGH,” Nurse Bloomquest roared as she left the kitchen.

  “That’s good news,” Echo said as she swallowed the last of her crackers.

  Shelly nodded. “I’ve been trying to keep things clean while he’s sick, but I haven’t been doing a very good job, as you can probably tell. Nurse Bloomquest makes sure I eat something every day, but she doesn’t do any cleaning.”

  Echo looked at the dirty shells and fish bones scattered around the messy kitchen. She put her right hand on her right hip and grinned. “Maybe you ought to try harder.”

  “Do you want to help me straighten up?” Shelly asked. After all, cleaning was always less boring when you shared the work.

  Echo nodded. “Sure, but do you mind if we take a quick swim around the People Museum first? I want to see if your grandfather added anything new before he got sick.” Shelly’s grandfather ran the People Museum, and Echo always liked to browse when she visited Shelly.

  Shelly didn’t understand her best friend’s fascination with everything human, but she sighed and agreed. “Sure, let’s go check it out.”

  The mergirls floated downstairs and into the enormous cavity of the ship that held the museum. Every inch was filled with human objects. A pile of tall, thin pieces of wood that Shelly knew were called oars filled one corner. She thought it must be a pain to have to use oars and a boat to go very far in the ocean.

  Shelly scrunched her nose at a pile of stinky, round rubber things with holes in the middle of them. She had no idea what they were used for, but she hated them. For some reason people kept throwing them into the ocean. She’d found more than one dolphin with a black rubber circle stuck around its body!

  Echo floated along, looking at the same displays they’d both seen many times before. Some items had little seaweed plaques beside them to describe what they were.

  Echo stopped beside a large blue vase sitting on a shelf. “I’ve always loved this,” she said. “Where did your grandfather get it?”

  Shelly shrugged. “I’m not sure, but I know he loves it too. He’s had it for as long as I can remember. Let me see if there is a description.”

  But Echo was already examining another human thing. “Is this new?” she asked, picking up a shiny silver object.

  As Shelly turned to look, her tail accidentally hit the blue vase. She tried to catch it, but she wasn’t fast enough. The vase hit another shelf and broke into ten pieces.

  “Oh no!” Shelly squealed.

  The Queen

  THE NEXT MORNING IN CLASS, Pearl scooted her desk closer to Shelly’s before tapping Shelly’s arm with her gold tail. “Isn’t it e
xciting?” Pearl whispered.

  “What?” Shelly asked. She had been so busy worrying about how she could fix her grandfather’s vase that she hadn’t been paying attention to Mrs. Karp.

  And had Pearl actually touched her? Wasn’t she still afraid of catching penguin pox?

  “Didn’t you hear Headmaster Hermit’s announcement?” Pearl hissed.

  Shelly shook her head and Pearl told her, “Queen Edwina is coming to Trident City tomorrow!”

  Shelly was shocked. As far as she knew, Queen Edwina had never been to Trident City before. Plus, Shelly had recently learned that her mother had been a princess, which made Shelly a princess too! In fact, Queen Edwina, the queen of the Western Oceans, was her great-aunt. Shelly’s entire class at Trident Academy had also found out that Shelly was a princess, though she wished it was still a secret. All the extra attention made her feel embarrassed.

  Shelly had never met any of her royal family, and she was scared to meet the queen. After all, Shelly wasn’t exactly a perfect princess. She’d rather play Shell Wars—a fun game where you used whale bones to whack shells—with Rocky than read a MerStyle magazine with Pearl. And Shelly loved exploring underwater caves, which often made her dirty with sand and mud. What would the queen think of a dirty princess?

  “Mergirls,” Mrs. Karp said, giving Shelly and Pearl a disapproving glance. “Let’s pay attention. Queen Edwina loves penguins, so it’s wonderful that we’re studying them.”

  Pearl waved her hand in the water. “But, Mrs. Karp, Headmaster Hermit said we should make sure our classrooms are tidy just in case the queen visits our school. Shouldn’t we be cleaning up?” Pearl scrunched her nose as she peered around the room.

  Mrs. Karp sighed. “I hate to waste valuable learning time, but I suppose we must learn to take care of things too. Let’s begin by cleaning our desks.”

  All around the room merkids began pulling old seaweed homework, sea quills, leftover sea grape snacks, small containers of octopus ink, and rock books out of their desks and putting them into neat piles or into the recycling bin. Rocky’s desk was so stuffed with seaweed that when he pulled out one piece, hundreds of little bits exploded all over the classroom. One small scrap fell into Pearl’s hair.

  “What is wrong with you?” Pearl snapped at Rocky, picking the seaweed out of her hair. “Keep your trash away from me!” Shelly hid a smile. Unlike yesterday, Pearl didn’t seem to care about “poor” Rocky now.

  “Oh no!” Mrs. Karp said, running her fingers nervously through her green hair. “Let’s get this mess cleaned up!” Echo helped Rocky stuff the jumble into a pot beside his desk.

  “Here,” Pearl said, giving Shelly a handful of white sand. “Rub your desk with this to make it shine.”

  Shelly looked at Pearl in surprise. Pearl hardly ever talked to her. She hadn’t even invited Shelly to her birthday party this year. But ever since the announcement about Queen Edwina’s visit, Pearl was being unusually nice and friendly to Shelly.

  “I bet I know why the queen is coming to Trident City,” Pearl told Shelly.

  “Why?” Shelly asked. She was really curious to know the answer.

  “I think she’s coming to take you to her castle,” Pearl replied matter-of-factly.

  “What?” Shelly said, dropping a blob of white sand on her blue tail.

  Pearl nodded. “She heard your grandfather is sick, so she’s going to take you away to live with her. You are so lucky! It’s a royal rescue!”

  Shelly shook her head. “But I don’t need rescuing.”

  “Of course you do,” Pearl said. “Your grandfather has penguin pox, for shark’s sake! And a princess can’t get penguin pox. It just wouldn’t be proper.”

  Shelly could barely listen to Pearl go on and on about Neptune’s Castle, where the queen lived. Shelly couldn’t believe it! Was the queen really going to take her away?

  Wrong?

  I’M NOT GOING TO THE Castle,” Shelly told Kiki and Echo at lunch later that day. “I don’t need to be rescued.” The mergirls sat at their usual corner table in the cafeteria with shell bowls full of the day’s special, longhorn cowfish.

  Kiki took a sip of seaweed juice before shaking her head. “You don’t know that the queen is coming to take you away.”

  “But Pearl said—”

  “Since when is Pearl ever right about anything?” Echo interrupted.

  Shelly considered this for a minute. Pearl had been wrong when she thought Kiki had stolen her pearl necklace. And she had been wrong when she’d thought that vampire squid were evil. And she had been wrong when she’d thought an old, abandoned ship had pirate treasure on it. Shelly giggled. “You have a point. Pearl isn’t an expert at being right.”

  “But she is an expert at causing trouble . . . and here she comes,” Echo warned.

  Pearl rushed up to their table and gave each mergirl a pickled sea cucumber. “Here, girls, have a little snack.”

  Shelly wanted to ignore the gift. Who knew what Pearl really wanted from her? But Shelly loved sea cucumbers, especially when they were pickled. “Thanks!” she said, quickly popping hers into her mouth before Pearl could change her mind and take it back.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Pearl began.

  “Oh no,” Echo said under her breath.

  “I should think the queen will want to stay with you during her visit to Trident City, since you’re family and all,” Pearl said to Shelly. “But I know your apartment probably isn’t fit for royalty.”

  Shelly’s friends gasped. Shelly knew that wasn’t a very nice thing for Pearl to say!

  But Pearl just kept talking. “Let me know if you need anything. We have lots of fancy stuff at our house you could borrow.”

  Shelly was so surprised that she nearly choked on her sea cucumber as Pearl floated away. Kiki patted Shelly on the back until she stopped coughing.

  “Do you really think the queen will want to stay with us?” Shelly asked.

  Echo shrugged. “The queen is your aunt. When my uncle Leopold came to visit, he stayed with us.”

  Shelly groaned. “But our little apartment isn’t ready for the queen! It’s not fancy enough.” She felt bad even saying those words, but she knew they were true. “Besides, Grandfather has only been sick for three days and I’ve already made a mess of our whole place!”

  Echo nodded. “It is pretty messy. I’m sorry I forgot to help you clean yesterday.”

  “That’s okay,” Shelly said, shaking her head. “After I broke that vase, I didn’t feel like cleaning. But now that the queen is coming, I don’t know what I’m going to do! When she sees how untidy and plain things are, she’ll definitely want to take me away to live with her.”

  Echo tossed her sea pickle up in the water. “Don’t worry. This is what friends are for. I’ll come over after school and help you make your shell sparkle.” Echo caught the pickled sea cucumber in her mouth and crunched it.

  “You will?” Shelly asked.

  Echo nodded. “Of course!”

  “I’ll help too,” Kiki offered. “Everything looks better when it’s clean.”

  When the last conch shell sounded to end the school day, the three mergirls swam to Shelly’s apartment. They arrived to find a huge surprise. An enormous shell carriage pulled by two perfectly matched blue dolphins was parked right in front.

  “Oh no!” Shelly cried. “We’re too late. The queen is already here!”

  A Royal Announcement

  A TALL, THIN MERMAN WITH a large, puffy hat was floating near Shelly’s apartment door. He bowed low as the girls swam toward him. “Greetings, Princess Shelly and subjects.”

  Shelly felt her face turn bright red. She still wasn’t used to being called a princess.

  “Hello,” she said timidly. “Is my aunt, Queen Edwina, here?”

  “Of course not. If she were here, there would be many more servants. I am simply here to bring you an announcement,” the tall merman said.

  Shelly let out a sigh of relief, but
Echo asked, “What is the announcement?”

  The merman pulled out a large scroll of seaweed. He unrolled it and read in a loud voice, “Queen Edwina requests the pleasure of tea with her niece Princess Shelly on the morrow. Her Royal Highness, Queen of the Western Oceans, will arrive at the Siren apartment shortly after the last Trident Academy conch shell sounds. Her majesty’s schedule allows her exactly one hour to visit.”

  “Here?” Shelly asked with a squeak.

  “Here.” The merman nodded, rolling up the scroll. He bowed once and then quickly floated into the waiting carriage. The large dolphins pulled the carriage away quicker than a John Dory fish can swallow its dinner.

  Shelly was glad that the queen wouldn’t be staying at her apartment, but now she had something new to worry about. “What am I going to do?” she wailed. “Grandfather is still sick, and I don’t even know how to make tea!”

  “Don’t worry,” Kiki reassured her. “I can make a wonderful comb jelly tea using a recipe from my family in the Eastern Oceans. It’s not fancy, but it’s very tasty.”

  “And we’ll help you make food, too,” Echo added.

  Shelly hugged them both. “You are the best merfriends in the entire merkingdom.”

  “First things first. Let’s get to cleaning,” Echo said. “Kiki and I will scrub the kitchen. You start on the rest of the apartment.”

  Echo swept fish scales off the floor of Shelly’s kitchen, and Kiki used cleaner wrasse to get rid of the crumbs on the rock counter. Shelly swished around a feather-star duster to make the furniture sparkle. Everything was put in its right place, and the apartment looked shiny and clean. Shelly smiled. Maybe the queen’s visit would go smoothly after all.

  But then she remembered the broken vase in the museum. She swam downstairs with her friends to show them the shattered pieces.

  “Grandfather is going to be so upset that I broke his favorite vase, he might just want me to move in with Queen Edwina!” Shelly moaned.