The Narwhal Problem Read online

  For my Tennessee critique group—Rick Starkey, Ann Starkey, Rinda Beach, and Donna L. Martin—thanks for all your support!

  And to Huria, Ruby, Penny, and Abbie, thanks for being mermaid fans.

  A Special Visitor

  WHAT’S SPLASHING?” Kiki Coral asked her merfriends. It was five minutes before school started, and they were floating in the large front hallway of Trident Academy. All around them merkids talked and laughed. One group practiced walking on their hands. An angel shark glided near the carved ceiling, part of the new school security program.

  Echo’s dark eyes sparkled as she leaned in and whispered to Kiki and Shelly Siren, “My mom is in charge of some special visitors to our city.” Echo’s mother was Dr. Eleanor Reef, who ran the Conservatory for the Preservation of Sea Horses and Swordfish. Merpeople from all over the ocean came to visit it.

  Kiki pushed her long black hair away from her face. “Who are they?”

  Echo tugged her merfriends across the marble floor to a quiet corner.

  “Have you ever heard of the Calypso family?” Echo asked.

  Kiki couldn’t believe her ears. “You mean the most famous scientists in the ocean are in Trident City?”

  Shelly gasped. “Shelltacular! Aren’t they narwhals? I’ve never seen one in real life.”

  Kiki nodded. She’d always been fascinated by pictures of narwhals and their long horns, but since they lived in cold waters, she’d never met any. Of course, Dr. Roscoe and Dr. Ethel Calypso weren’t ordinary narwhals: They had written practically every book in the science section of their library! Kiki had already read at least half of them. She even owned one herself.

  “Most narwhals are shy and rarely seen by merfolk,” Echo told them. “But my mother went to the Arctic University. Ethel Calypso was her roommate!”

  “Do you think your mother will let us meet her old roommate?” Shelly asked.

  “I can ask, but I know they are very busy,” Echo said.

  Kiki’s heart pounded. Echo’s mother was very nice. Surely she’d introduce them to her old friend. Wouldn’t it be fun to meet a famous scientist?

  Unicorns

  MRS. KARP PEERED OVER her half-glasses at her third-grade class. “This will be a fun week. Tomorrow we’ll start learning about codes, and a whale will visit our class in a couple days.”

  “We already saw a whole bunch of humpback whales on our ocean trip,” Rocky Ridge called out.

  “How in the ocean will a whale fit in our classroom?” Wanda Slug shrieked. “We’ll be squished to pieces!”

  “I am talking about a young narwhal,” Mrs. Karp told her merstudents. “Narwhals are about as tall as me when they are young. The narwhal’s parents are very busy working at the conservatory and we won’t be able to meet them.”

  “Is that the Calypso family?” Echo asked.

  Mrs. Karp nodded as Shelly raised her hand. “But Mrs. Karp, I thought narwhals were porpoises.”

  Mrs. Karp smiled. “Actually, we’re both right. Porpoises are a kind of whale.”

  “Don’t narwhals have those adorable horns?” Pearl Swamp asked.

  “Well, it looks like a horn or tusk, but it’s really a very long tooth,” Mrs. Karp explained.

  “A tooth!” Pearl squealed. “That’s kind of icky.”

  Mrs. Karp shook her head. “Nature is not icky. Everything has a purpose, even if we don’t understand it. Does anyone know the narwhal’s nickname?”

  “Pinocchio the Pointy Porpoise!” Rocky yelled out.

  Mrs. Karp gave Rocky a stern look. “Narwhals are sometimes called the unicorns of the sea. A unicorn is a magical horselike creature with a single horn. They are often talked about in human legends.”

  “So does that mean that narwhals are magical?” Echo asked.

  “Of course not,” Mrs. Karp said, “but many years ago they were hunted by humans for their horns. People thought they might have special powers.”

  Several merkids gasped. Rocky raised his hand. “What is the prettiest side of a narwhal?”

  “Rocky,” Mrs. Karp warned.

  “The outside!” Rocky laughed, and a few merkids giggled. Mrs. Karp smiled.

  Pearl raised her hand. “Mrs. Karp, can I be the visitor’s buddy?”

  “What a lovely idea,” Mrs. Karp said. “Narwhals are often shy, so a buddy would be helpful.”

  “Why Pearl?” Rocky asked. “She always gets picked to do stuff.” Several other merstudents nodded in agreement.

  Pearl frowned and twisted her pearl necklace in her right hand. “It was my idea!”

  Mrs. Karp tapped her white tail to her chin. “I know how we can combine our lessons and select who will be our visitor’s buddy. We will have a code contest!”

  Kiki raised her hand. “What’s a code?”

  “It is a secret way of writing. Almost like a puzzle,” Mrs. Karp explained. “The first student to break the code can be the narwhal’s buddy.”

  “I’m going to do it!” Rocky bragged.

  Pearl shook her head. “Nope, you don’t stand a chance against me. I’m great at puzzles.”

  “Dr. Bottom has volunteered to help us learn about codes tomorrow. He is quite the expert,” Mrs. Karp said.

  When her teacher began a spelling lesson, Kiki kept thinking about the contest. How she wished she could win and be the narwhal’s buddy!

  Best Merfriends Ever

  I WANT TO WIN,” SHELLY told Kiki and Echo. They were sitting at their favorite table in the corner of the school cafeteria.

  “We all want to win,” Echo said, glancing around the lunchroom. Pearl swished past them without even a glance in their direction. Rocky was having a warty-frogfish-eating contest at his table of merboys.

  “It would be totally wavy,” Kiki agreed. In fact, she couldn’t think of anything she’d like better.

  “Grandfather Siren taught me a human code once,” Shelly told them. “It was full of funny symbols. He said that people often put things in a secret language to keep information from their enemies.”

  “Do humans have a lot of enemies?” Kiki asked.

  Shelly shrugged before slurping down a candy-stripe flatworm. “I guess so. I’ve heard they have trouble getting along sometimes. They even have wars where they fight one another!”

  Kiki shivered. That sounded terrible.

  “I know about codes too,” Echo told them. “Last month’s MerStyle magazine had a whole page about human spies, top secret plans, and ciphers.”

  “What in the ocean is a cipher?” Shelly scrunched her nose.

  “It’s just another word for a code,” Echo explained.

  Kiki stared at her shell full of ribbon worms. Suddenly she wasn’t hungry at all. Everyone else already understood more about ciphers than she did. Kiki had never even seen one. What chance did she have of winning?

  “I wish I knew about codes,” Kiki told her merfriends. She had learned many languages from her parents, but why hadn’t they or one of her seventeen brothers taught her about secret codes?

  Shelly smiled. “I know what we can do. Let’s finish our lunch and go the library. I bet we’ll learn everything we need there!”

  “Splashing good!” Echo agreed. Kiki nodded and quickly finished her ribbon worms. She was lucky to have such good merfriends. Together they would figure out how to win the contest!

  Secret

  I’M SORRY,” MISS SCYLLA TOLD them. “We have one book on codes, but it’s already checked out. It should be back next week.”

  “Thank you,” Echo said. “But we need it today.”

  Kiki sighed. They had hit a dead end. What could they do now?

  “You might check the public library,” Miss Scylla suggest
ed. “They have a lot more books.”

  “Thanks!” Shelly said. “We’ll go after school.”

  After the last conch sounded, the three mergirls swam through MerPark toward the public library. They stopped to watch a pod of bottlenose dolphins dancing in the park. The merfriends were quiet as they passed the marble pillars into the oldest library in the ocean.

  Kiki had been to the Trident City Library before, but she was still amazed by the pink marble walls and the sparkling diamonds in the ceiling. Thousands of rock and seaweed books filled the shelves. “Surely there’s something about codes here,” Kiki said.

  “Shhh!” Lillian, the librarian, hissed from behind a massive granite counter.

  “Sorry,” Kiki whispered. “We are looking for books on codes.”

  “And ciphers,” Echo added.

  “And secret languages,” Shelly said.

  Lillian frowned. “I know what codes are, but you’re too late. Your pal beat you to them.”

  They turned to see a stack of books moving toward them. Only a gold tail could be seen below the pile. “Pearl?” Shelly asked. “Did you check out all the books on codes?”

  “That’s not fair!” Echo put her hands on her pink hips.

  Pearl peeked around her books. “I was here first. Besides, there’s a few heavy ones left on a table.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Echo grumbled.

  “Come on,” Kiki said, pulling her merfriends toward a long library table. Luckily, three fat books waited for them.

  “Mine is called Fun with Codes,” Echo said. “It doesn’t look very fun to me.”

  “The study of codes is called cryptology. This book says that you can even have numbers stand for letters!” Shelly continued thumbing through Cryptology for Beginners.

  Kiki looked up from Ciphers in the Sea. “This says sometimes you need a key to be able to figure out a cipher. How can we possibly know the key?”

  Shelly pulled a clean piece of kelp from her school bag. “Why don’t we just try some?”

  “Sure,” Kiki said without much hope.

  “Here’s an easy one. The bottom is the code. The top is what it stands for.” Shelly wrote the ABCs. Below each letter she put another letter, only she started with the letter B.

  A

  B

  C

  D

  E

  F

  G

  H

  I

  B

  C

  D

  E

  F

  G

  H

  I

  J

  J

  K

  L

  M

  N

  O

  P

  Q

  R

  K

  L

  M

  N

  O

  P

  Q

  R

  S

  S

  T

  U

  V

  W

  X

  Y

  Z

  T

  U

  V

  W

  X

  Y

  Z

  A

  “So if there is a B, it’s actually an A?” Echo asked, rubbing her forehead. “This is very confusing.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out together,” Kiki said.

  “Whoa,” Rocky said, suddenly floating by their table. “Did you get the last of the code books?”

  Echo’s face turned red. “Sorry, you can borrow this one tomorrow if you want.”

  “That’s all right. I already have a book from school. Wait, are you studying together?” he asked.

  “Of course,” Shelly told him.

  “You guys are crazy.” Rocky shook his head. “This is a contest. You should work alone.”

  Kiki looked at her merfriends. They did everything together. Shouldn’t they help one another now?

  “Maybe Rocky is right,” Echo said. “It is a competition.”

  “Of course I’m right,” Rocky bragged as he floated away. “We should each do whatever it takes to win.”

  Shelly shrugged. “I think I’ll go home and make up a code book of my own to study.”

  “Me too,” Echo said. “We should keep what we find out a secret.”

  “But what about helping one another?” Kiki asked. After all, she’d helped Echo with her spelling and an art project. And she’d helped Shelly make food for a royal tea. Wouldn’t they help her today?

  Echo shook her head. “Nope, I really want to be the narwhal’s buddy.”

  “Me too!” Shelly said. “I guess this is a code war!”

  Kiki frowned as Shelly and Echo swam toward the checkout desk.

  Kiki would have to learn about codes without any help. She never thought she’d be in a war with her best merfriends!

  Trouble

  IS SOMETHING WRONG?” MRS. KARP asked the next morning. Her entire class was hunched over notebooks and pieces of kelp. “I’ve never seen you so quiet before the conch sounds.”

  Kiki raised her hand. “Everyone is studying their codes.”

  Pearl splashed up from her desk. “Rocky was peeking at my cryptology notes!”

  “I did no such thing!” Rocky snapped. “I don’t know what crypto-whatever is, but I didn’t do it.”

  “This is a code catastrophe,” Pearl complained. “Why does the contest have to be so hard?”

  “That is quite enough!” Mrs. Karp shook her head. “This was supposed to be a fun activity. And don’t worry, this afternoon Dr. Bottom and I will tell you everything you need to know about codes for the contest.”

  “But everyone wants to win and be the narwhal’s buddy,” Echo added.

  Mrs. Karp glanced around. “I hope you students know there are more important things than winning. Now, I don’t want to see another code until our lesson this afternoon, unless you don’t wish to take part in the competition.”

  Merstudents throughout the room groaned.

  “Now, let’s begin our spelling lesson.” Mrs. Karp folded her arms and perched on the edge of her desk.

  Kiki sighed. She’d been so busy learning different types of ciphers, she had forgotten to study her spelling. She hoped Echo hadn’t forgotten.

  “Who remembers how to spell ‘octopus’?” Mrs. Karp asked.

  Rocky’s hand shot into the air. He spelled it correctly, then said, “I also know how to make an octopus laugh. With ten-tickles!”

  Adam and a few other merkids laughed. “Get it?” Rocky asked. “They have arms called tentacles and you can tickle them!”

  Mrs. Karp raised her green eyebrows. “All right, that’s enough, Rocky.”

  Kiki didn’t hear the next spelling word because a folded slip of kelp appeared on her desk. Where had it come from? She looked around and Shelly smiled at her.

  Kiki opened up the note and found a row of numbers.

  19-15-18-18-25

  At the very bottom was a key that said A=1. Her heart pounded. It was a secret message! But could she solve it? She pulled a new piece of kelp from her notebook and drew a chart, just like the one Shelly had made the day before. Only this time, Kiki used numbers to stand for letters.

  A

  B

  C

  D

  E

  F

  G

  H

  I

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  J

  K

  L

  M

  N

  O

  P

  Q

  R

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  S

  T
>
  U

  V

  W

  X

  Y

  Z

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  Kiki was so excited about the cipher, she forgot about everything but solving it. She quickly figured out that 19 meant S, 15 was O, 18 stood for R, and 25 was supposed to be Y. She turned to look at Shelly. Both Echo and Shelly grinned at her! They were sorry for starting a code war!

  “Kiki, I’m surprised at you,” Mrs. Karp called out. “Are you looking at a cipher when I asked you not to?”

  Oh no! Kiki was in big trouble now!

  Fair?

  YOU SHOULDN’T BE HERE,” Pearl told Kiki that afternoon. “You can’t win the contest.”

  Kiki’s eyes watered. All day long she’d felt like crying. Mrs. Karp would never let her enter the contest now. Why hadn’t she put Shelly’s note away? Why had she tried to solve it during spelling? Kiki threw back her shoulders and tried to be brave. “I still want to learn.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m going to win anyway.” Pearl sniffed the water and drifted to the front of the classroom, where Dr. Bottom floated beside Mrs. Karp. Dr. Bottom usually taught fourth grade, but he had once lectured their class about symbiotic relationships.

  Shelly drifted beside Kiki. “Mrs. Karp, I’m the one who sent Kiki the coded message. If anyone should be punished, it should be me. I’m very sorry.”

  Echo patted Shelly’s right shoulder. “I helped as well. We both apologize.”

  Now Kiki really felt like crying. She put her hand on Shelly’s other shoulder and admitted, “But I shouldn’t have solved it during spelling. It was my fault and I’m sorry.”

  Mrs. Karp looked at Dr. Bottom, who smiled under his fluffy mustache. “IT APPEARS THESE YOUNG MERLADIES HAVE LEARNED SOMETHING!” he shouted. Kiki had forgotten how loud Dr. Bottom could be, but she was very grateful for his words.

  “I agree,” Mrs. Karp said. “In light of your apologies, you may all participate in the contest tomorrow. As long as you don’t pass any more notes during class!”