The Golden Circlet Read online

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Mermaid

  Curse

  The Golden Circlet

  Born in Hertfordshire, England, on 29 May 1952, Louise Cooper describes herself as ‘a typical scatterbrained Gemini’. She spent most of her school years writing stories when she should have been concentrating on lessons, and her first fantasy novel, The Book of Paradox, was published in 1973, when she was just twenty years old. Since then she has published more than eighty books for adults and children.

  Louise now lives in Cornwall with her husband, Cas Sandall. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys singing (and playing various instruments), cooking, gardening, ‘messing about on the beach’ and – just to make sure she keeps busy – is also treasurer of her local Royal National Lifeboat Institution branch.

  Visit Louise at her own website at louisecooper.com

  Books by Louise Cooper

  Sea Horses series in reading order

  Sea Horses

  The Talisman

  Gathering Storm

  The Last Secret

  Mermaid Curse series in reading order

  The Silver Dolphin

  The Black Pearl

  The Rainbow Pool

  The Golden Circlet

  Mermaid

  Curse

  The Golden Circlet

  LOUISE COOPER

  PUFFIN

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank,

  Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  puffinbooks.com

  First published 2008

  1

  Text copyright © Louise Cooper, 2008

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  978-0-14-190013-1

  For Marina and Clemency Scott,

  who first dived into my mystical adventures

  at Pendennis Castle

  Prologue

  Rose stared at her younger sister, Lizzy. ‘I shouldn’t believe a word of what you’ve told me,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘It’s totally nuts, totally insane, and I shouldn’t believe it. But I saw it with my own eyes. The mermaid with hair just like yours. And Kes – only he wasn’t an ordinary boy any more; he had a fish’s tail. And you were swimming in the sea with them, just as if you were a mermaid too.’ She blinked, and shook her head vigorously as if to clear it. ‘That is… I suppose you are a mermaid, aren’t you?’

  Lizzy hesitated for a moment, then slowly nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I didn’t believe it at first, either. I felt just the same as you. But it’s true, Rose. The mermaid you saw – Morvyr – is my real mother.’

  ‘And Kes is—’

  ‘My twin brother. But he grew up under the sea, so he learned a lot of things that I don’t know. Like how to change his shape between human and merboy.’

  ‘Can you do that too?’ Rose asked wonderingly.

  Lizzy gave an odd little laugh. ‘I can breathe underwater – the dolphins taught me that when I first found out the truth. And Kes says I can change my shape. But I’ve tried and tried, and I can’t make it work.’

  Rose was silent as she tried to come to terms with what she had learned. She and Lizzy had been told years ago that they were both adopted, but though Rose knew about her own parents, Lizzy had been found abandoned when she was a baby and her past had always been a mystery. The knowledge that her sister was only half human was the strangest thing that had ever happened to Rose. She had stopped believing in mermaids long ago. Now, though …

  Lizzy, too, said nothing. She knew how Rose must be feeling, for she had felt the same herself when this adventure began. It was a story beyond her wildest imagination. And it had all happened in just a few short weeks, since the girls and their adoptive parents had moved to Cornwall, and Lizzy met a boy called Kes on the beach. Kes had recognized her as his long-lost twin sister. And he had told her the astounding truth about her real family.

  Years ago, a shipwrecked fisherman named Jack Carrick had been rescued by the mermaid Morvyr, and they fell in love. Kara, the mermaid Queen, cast a spell that enabled Jack to live under the sea; he and Morvyr were married, and twin babies – Lizzy and Kes – were born to them. But the family’s happiness was short-lived, for soon afterwards Queen Kara had been attacked and killed by the evil Taran. Taran usurped the throne and stole the golden crown with its nine magical pearls that were the source of the Queen’s power. But before she died Kara had taken two of the pearls – one black and one silver – and given them to Morvyr, begging her to keep them safe.

  Taran wanted those pearls at any cost, for without them her power was incomplete. She had tried to force Morvyr to tell her where they were and, when she failed, she kidnapped Lizzy in revenge and abandoned her on the shore just a few miles from Morvyr’s undersea home.

  Tricked into thinking she had been taken far away, Lizzy’s human father, Jack, travelled the world for eleven years, searching for her. For eleven years, too, Taran hunted vainly for the black and silver pearls. But now Jack had come home. Morvyr had given him the black pearl for safe-keeping. And the silver pearl was in a secret compartment in the locket that Lizzy had been wearing when she was abandoned.

  Or it had been – until Taran found out the truth and had forced the twins to give her the silver pearl. Now only the black pearl stood between her and the power she craved.

  And only Lizzy and her new-found family could stop her from getting it.

  Lizzy spoke at last. ‘It’s got to be our secret, Rose. Ours and my – my other family’s. You mustn’t tell a living soul about it.’

  Rose gave her a long look, then smiled. ‘Course I won’t,’ she said. ‘Anyway, who would ever believe me? People don’t think that mermaids and magic and things like that are real.’

  ‘But they are,’ said Lizzy softly. ‘We both know they are.’

  There was silence again for some moments. Then Rose reached out and took hold of Lizzy’s hand. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We do, don’t we?’

  Chapter One

  ‘Well, I must say it makes a nice change to be going out as a family,’ said Mr Baxter as he locked the car door and followed the others towards the car park entrance. ‘We ought to do it more often.’

  ‘I can’t wait to see the prize exhibit,’ said Mrs Baxter. ‘I’d love to have been at the harbour when it was brought in!’ She looked at her two daughters. ‘You girls certainly caused a stir there, didn’t you?’


  Lizzy and Rose exchanged a glance, and Lizzy said, ‘It wasn’t really anything to do with us, Mum. Mr Treleaven and Ja— I mean, Mr Carrick did it all. We were just lucky, being there when it happened.’

  Rose raised eyebrows at her and silently mouthed something that Lizzy thought was, Oh, yeah, and the rest! Lizzy ignored it, though she could feel her cheeks turning pink.

  They crossed the road and followed the signs to the Sealife Centre. The town was crowded with August holidaymakers, and Rose wanted to stop and look in all the shops selling surf wear and jewellery and accessories, but the others hurried her on. The Centre was a long building overlooking one of the town’s beaches and reached by a flight of steps. There was a queue to get in, but it wasn’t a long one; in this glorious weather most people wanted to be on the sand rather than indoors. As they waited their turn, Lizzy looked across the beach to the sea in the distance. White surf was creaming and pounding at the low tideline, and the sound of it was a ceaseless background roar. This north coast of Cornwall was very different, she thought, from the south side where they lived. Instead of harbours and quiet inlets, there were endless stretches of smooth, golden sand, with cliffs rising like huge buttresses behind them, dark against the blue sky. The beach was dotted with the bright colours of towels and rugs and windbreaks as more and more holidaymakers arrived to spread themselves out on the sand, and in the distance Lizzy could see the lifeguards in their familiar 4red-and-yellow clothing patrolling near the sea’s edge.

  The Baxters reached the head of the queue, paid their entrance fee and went into the aquarium. As they moved from brightness to the dimly lit interior, Lizzy’s heart gave a nervous little skip. The ‘prize exhibit’ that Mum was so eager to look at had been caught at sea by the fishing trawler Regard, owned by Mr Treleaven, the father of Rose’s boyfriend, Paul. Lizzy and Rose had been on board the boat, and they knew that there was far, far more to the story than Mum and Dad could ever imagine. For on that eventful trip Rose had learned Lizzy’s incredible secret – and had witnessed the latest attempt by Taran, the evil mermaid Queen, to get her hands on the precious black pearl.

  It had been a terrifying experience for both the girls. But Taran’s bid had failed when her servant, a monstrous conger eel, tried to attack the Regard and was caught in the trawl net. The eel now had a new home. And that was why Lizzy and Rose were here.

  The dark-walled corridor wound through the aquarium, with lit tanks on both sides. The tanks held a wonderful array of sea creatures: brightly coloured fish, scurrying crabs, beautiful corals and anemones, and one big, cylindrical tank where sea horses hovered and drifted among a forest of slender, living seaweeds. Mr and Mrs Baxter kept pausing to look at the displays, but Rose and Lizzy found it hard to concentrate. They were both impatient to see just one creature.

  ‘Mum and Dad are miles behind,’ Rose said after a while, looking back. ‘We’d better wait for them to catch up.’

  They stopped beside a tank where a single incredibly ugly fish peered out at them from between two rocks. Rose stared at it, but she was thinking of something else. ‘What did you say that eel was called?’ she whispered.

  ‘Tullor,’ Lizzy whispered back, and suppressed a shiver. Just Tullor’s name was enough to bring back unpleasant memories.

  ‘I can’t believe he’s really as big as he looked out at sea.’

  ‘Oh, he is,’ said Lizzy with feeling. ‘But don’t forget that he’s – he was – Queen Taran’s top henchman. He was probably an ordinary eel to start with, but she could have used her magical powers to change him.’

  ‘You mean, she made him bigger, and more intelligent… things like that?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Then Rose smiled. ‘She must be absolutely livid about losing him.’

  This time Lizzy couldn’t stop the shiver from showing. ‘Oh, shut up! I don’t want to even think about Taran! Facing Tullor’s going to be bad enough.’

  Rose was surprised. ‘If that’s how you feel, why did you want to come and see him?’

  ‘I don’t know, really. I suppose …’ Lizzy hesitated, then shrugged. ‘I suppose I wanted to make sure that he really is here and can’t cause any more trouble. I still have bad dreams about him—’ She broke off. ‘Shh, here come Mum and Dad.’

  They all moved on together. Mrs Baxter was enchanted by the sea horses, and was still talking about them as they rounded the next bend in the corridor. Then suddenly Lizzy stopped, staring.

  Ahead of them, a small crowd of people was gathered in front of a wall of solid glass; a tank far bigger than anything they had yet seen. The light inside it was dim, and there was an artificial rock face at the back, stretching from floor to ceiling. Nothing else was visible in the gloom, but Lizzy’s heart started to thump. Something was in there. She could feel its presence. And she knew what it was.

  ‘Aha!’ Dad’s voice broke the spell that had gripped her. ‘This looks promising.’ He squeezed in between two goggling people and read the notice on the wall beside the tank. ‘Yes, he’s in here. “The biggest conger eel ever recorded in Cornwall”!’

  Mum joined him and they stood among the spectators and peered into the tank’s depths, trying to get a glimpse of its occupant. Rose went to look too, but Lizzy hung back. She wanted – needed – to know that Tullor was safely imprisoned in the tank. But she dreaded actually seeing him. Worse still, she dreaded the thought of him seeing her.

  ‘There he is!’ said Dad eagerly, pointing. ‘See his head, poking out from that crevice in the rock?’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ cried Mum. ‘Wow, he really is a giant, isn’t he?’ She looked over her shoulder. ‘Come on, Lizzy, come and have a look.’

  Lizzy had a sudden attack of nerves. She wanted to say that she didn’t want to push in, but to her dismay people moved aside to make room for her. Heart pounding harder than ever, she approached the tank. At first she could see only the rock wall. But then something moved slightly, and with a shock she realized that she was gazing straight into the cold, cruel and alien eyes of a huge conger eel. For a few moments she and Tullor stared at each other. Then, very slowly, the eel opened his mouth, revealing rows of incurved, razor-sharp teeth. It was as if he was silently snarling… and the snarl was for her alone. He had recognized her, and she felt the sheer power of his hatred radiating towards her like the heat of a fire.

  The other people moved on, exclaiming to each other about Tullor’s size, and Dad let his breath out in a whistle. ‘Whoo, what a brute! I’m amazed he didn’t sink the boat when you caught him!’

  ‘Mr Treleaven’s a brilliant fisherman,’ said Rose. She, too, was staring at Tullor, and there was a slight frown on her face.

  ‘He’d have to be, to land a creature like that!’ Dad’s voice was full of admiration. ‘Well, all I can say is, well done all of you!’

  Mum was studying the details on the printed notice. ‘I wonder what they feed him on?’ she mused. ‘It doesn’t say.’

  ‘He looks as if he’d eat just about anything,’ said Dad. ‘Including sharks, whales and a few swimmers, if they don’t watch out!’

  ‘That’s it.’ Mum grinned. ‘He’s the British Jaws!’

  They both laughed. But Lizzy didn’t join in. Tullor was still glaring at her, and though her first rush of fear had worn off, that cold, unwavering stare made her feel very uncomfortable. With an effort she dragged her gaze away and said, ‘Well, we’ve seen him now, and he doesn’t look as if he’s going to come out. Shall we move on?’

  Mum and Dad agreed. The three of them started to walk away and were about to turn the corner of the passage when Lizzy realized that Rose had not followed them. She looked back, and saw her sister still standing in front of the tank. Rose was frowning, as though trying to work something out. And Tullor was staring at her.

  ‘Come on, Rose.’ Lizzy tried to sound casual, but she felt uneasy.

  Rose didn’t answer. In fact, she didn’t s
eem to have heard. For a few more seconds she looked back at Tullor, not moving, not even blinking. Then, slowly, Tullor’s gaping mouth closed, and his head withdrew into the crevice until he was out of sight.

  Rose shook her head like someone coming out of a daydream. Then suddenly she swayed violently.

  ‘Rose!’ Lizzy cried in alarm. ‘What’s up?’

  Mum heard and turned round, in time to see Rose cover her face with both hands as she staggered backwards and collided with Lizzy.

  ‘Rose, whatever’s the matter?’ Mum and Dad both hurried to her, and Mum caught hold of her as it seemed she was about to collapse to the floor.

  ‘Ohh… I feel so dizzy …’ Rose mumbled.

  ‘Come on, love, it’s all right,’ Mum soothed. ‘Do you want to sit down somewhere?’

  ‘N-no, it… it’s going away now.’ Rose swallowed and shook her head again. ‘I’m OK, honestly.’

  ‘It’s probably the peculiar light in here,’ said Dad. ‘And it’s very warm too. Best get her into the open. There’s a cafe upstairs, with an outside balcony. Something to drink will help her feel better.’

  Rose was unsteady as Mr and Mrs Baxter led her towards the nearest exit. Lizzy followed, worried. Was it just the heat and the strange lighting that had made Rose giddy? It seemed like a reasonable explanation, but Lizzy had her doubts. She couldn’t imagine how, but she had a sneaking feeling that Tullor might have had something to do with it.

  In the cafe Rose quickly recovered, helped by a flapjack and a banana milkshake. She told Mum to stop fussing, and within minutes was back to her usual cheerful and slightly bossy self. No, she said, she didn’t want to go into the aquarium again; on a day like this it would be more fun to go on the beach and watch the surfers. If Mum and Dad wanted to see the rest of the exhibits, fine; she’d meet them somewhere later.

  ‘Well, I suppose you could,’ said Mum dubiously. ‘And I would like to finish going through; there are lots of things we haven’t seen yet. But I don’t like the thought of you going off on your own, in case you feel ill again.’