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Chapter One
If you had never met Thora, Halla, and Mr. Walters, and you saw them from the penthouse suite of the Saltworks Luxury Apartments as they sailed up to Chelsea Wharf on a sunny day in late May, you might mistake them for a typically eccentric English family out for a cruise on the Thames. But if you were Pamela P. Poutine, petty thief, smuggler of precious sea creatures, and former B-grade movie star, you'd instantly know otherwise.
Here's what Pamela took in through a pair of sparkly pink opera glasses. First, the peacock. Bright Bass Strait blue. Perched on the roof of the little houseboat cabin like a weather vane. No commercial value.
Next, the old geezer steering the boat. Very tall, thin as a string, and dressed head to toe in cricket whites.
Everything about him—face, nose, shoulders, legs—seemed long and narrow and white, as if he had been bleached and vertically stretched. His bamboo walking stick and hat gave him the air of a viceroy. Yet he looked as if he'd blow over in a breeze. The grandfather?
A girl was passing him a box of tissues to blow his nose. She was ten or eleven years old and dressed in a black one-piece bodysuit like the ones worn by surfers on the Cornish coast. Wet suit? She presented a very odd figure—brown hair spraying like a fountain from where it was tied at the top of her head, a naughty smiling face, wide-spaced gimlet eyes. And what was that gleaming ring on a chain around her neck? It might be gold, but it was hard to tell. The girl was in constant motion, running, dancing around, and chattering to the blonde who was swimming alongside the boat.
Yes, the blonde. Pamela adjusted her glasses. There was something fishy about the blonde. People just didn't swim in the Thames on a May morning. It was cold even by Pamela's standards, and her own tail was rather well insulated. The blonde looked extremely at home in the icy water—suspiciously so, as if it were her home.
Either she was an unusually good swimmer, or . . .
Pamela peered hard.
Could it be?
The flash of purple iridescence confirmed it. The blonde was a mermaid—the first Pamela had seen since her departure from the seafloor all those years ago. The glimpse of the mermaid's tail filled Pamela with a sudden nostalgia, that sad, damp feeling that you get when you listen to a favorite old song.
Then she noticed something in the mermaid's hand. Something small and green. Very, very green. With trembling hands, Pamela adjusted the opera glasses. Her tail broke out in a shimmer, bright and (she noted) beautiful to behold. A smile tickled the edges of Pamela's mouth.
Yes, she was owed a little good luck.
She reached for the phone and dialed Mr. Oto's direct line in Tokyo. She would not mention the mermaid. Mr. Oto had long ago finished with mermaids. But a sea-unicorn was another matter entirely.
Excerpted from Thora and the Green Sea-Unicorn: Another Half-Mermaid Tale by Gillian Johnson All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
