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The vision reappeared in the glass.
Shelly ran her hand over the image of her family back together. She touched her friends’ jubilant faces and the gold medal hanging around her neck. The scene began to fade away again.
“No, wait! Bring it back!” She hit the glass, trying desperately to make the beautiful scene return. But it kept dissolving, like a sandcastle washing away in water on the shore.
“Well, my dear, there’s only one way to make it work,” Ursula said as the image faded.
“I want it! Please help me!” Shelly begged.
“Don’t fret, my child,” Ursula said. “Of course I can help—provided you pay a price.”
“Please. I’ll do anything!” cried Shelly.
“Anything, you say? Well, I like the sound of that. I have something in mind.”
Suddenly, a rolled-up piece of parchment materialized before Shelly inside the crystal ball. Hovering in the air in front of her, it glowed with the same eerie golden light as the nautilus had, and as it unrolled, a fountain pen with a bony fish tail materialized. Her eyes scanned the length of parchment as she read the ornate script.
“A . . . co
ntract?” Shelly asked. She reread the words scrawled on the page:
I HEREBY GRANT UNTO URSULA, THE WITCH OF THE SEA, ONE FAVOR TO BE NAMED AT A LATER DATE, IN EXCHANGE FOR BECOMING THE FASTEST SWIMMER, FOR ALL ETERNITY.
“Go ahead and sign,” Ursula said. “I don’t have all day, you know.”
Shelly swallowed hard and put the pen to the page, which rippled with golden light.
“Good girl!” Ursula egged her on.
Shelly hesitated, biting her lip. “What favor, exactly? What do you want from me?”
“Oh, my dearie, all will be revealed in time,” Ursula said, sounding perturbed. She swam around, shifting in the shadows like a murky cloud of billowing smoke. Her eyes glinted hungrily for a second. “Great power was stolen from me by someone close to you. I cannot be a protector of the sea without it. All I want is for it to be returned to me . . . but all in good time.”
“Great power? But what is it?” asked Shelly.
“Tsk, tsk. You’re wasting our precious time!” Ursula’s black tentacle emerged from the darkness and tapped on the crystal ball, pointing at the contract. “Do you want to be the fastest swimmer, or not? Many poor unfortunate souls would kill to be in your position right now.”
Shelly studied the contract and considered her situation. Returning something that was stolen didn’t sound so bad. Stealing was wrong, of course. If anything, it would be good to right an old injustice. But still something worried Shelly. Her mother always said not to act hastily.
“Can I think about it?” she inquired.
“Think about it?” growled Ursula, no longer kind. “What’s there to think about, my child? Either you want your wish or I’ve got better things to do with my time and I can set you free to swim back through my cave with the hope you get out before something comes after you. It’s what a child like you deserves, for thinking it acceptable to throw your toxic trash into my domain.”
“I’m sorry. Please, I just need a day,” said Shelly, peering again at the contract. It flashed with an intense light, then vanished. Nearly complete darkness flooded back into the cavern.
“My dear, as you wish. You have twenty-four hours to return to my lair and sign the contract, or our deal shall be rendered null and void. No takebacks. No second chances.”
Six black tentacles suctioned around the glass, cracking the crystal ball.
Seawater rushed back in, silencing Shelly’s scream.
Shelly woke, gasping for breath and clawing at her throat.
Gradually, the nightmare released its dark hold on her as she sat up. Her eyes adjusted to the dawn light streaming through her bedroom curtains. Her pillow was damp, and her pajamas were soaked. For a second, she feared that her dream had been real, that her bed was wet from being underwater. But then she realized that she was just feverish and very sweaty.
“Only a dream,” she panted. “Only a nightmare . . . not real.”
The piercing alarm on her phone erupted, making her jump. It was intended to make sure she wasn’t late for school, but mostly it just gave her a scare every single morning it went off. She jabbed at the phone in annoyance, silencing it, then lay back and tried to recall her dream before the details faded away. She remembered following a strange, pulsing light into Dawson’s room. . . .
