Princess Mirror-Belle and the Sea Monster's Cave Read online

  For Gaby

  Contents

  Chapter One

  The Sea Monster’s Cave

  Chapter Two

  The Unusual Pets Club

  Chapter One

  The Sea Monster’s Cave

  “For goodness sake,” said Ellen impatiently to her big brother, who was pushing yet another coin into his favourite seaside slot machine. “I bet Granny and Grandpa wouldn’t want you to waste all their money on that thing.”

  “I’m not wasting it. I’m going to end up with more than I started with.” Luke’s teeth were gritted and his eyes had a determined gleam. “Can’t you see, that whole pile of coins is about to tumble off the edge. Then I’ll win them all! I’ll probably win them next go.” But he didn’t; or the next go or the one after that.

  They had been on holiday for a week, staying in a caravan park with their grandparents. Granny and Grandpa had gone out for a last row in their boat and had given Luke and Ellen ten pounds spending money each.

  “I’m sick of hanging around waiting for you,” Ellen complained. “At this rate I won’t get to the shops at all. Don’t forget, they’re taking us out this afternoon, and tomorrow we’re going home.”

  “Well, why don’t I see you back here in an hour,” suggested Luke, and Ellen agreed, even though she knew he had promised to look after her.

  There were two gift shops by the beach. Ellen wandered round one of them and chose a packet of sparkly pens and a little notepad with a picture of a seal and “Best wishes from Whitesands” on the front. She paid for them and put them in her backpack, along with her sun lotion.

  She still had six pounds left so she went into the second shop, which sold all sorts of ornamental sea creatures – fish, lobsters and sea horses – as well as boxes covered in shiny shells. Most things were too expensive, but Ellen enjoyed looking round. Tucked away in a corner she found a beautiful mirror decorated round the outside with a mermaid and shells. It cost £9.99, and Ellen began to wish she hadn’t bought the things in the first shop. She was just wondering whether she could take them back when a voice from the mermaid mirror said, “So it is you! I nearly didn’t recognize you under all those freckles.” It was Princess Mirror-Belle.

  “Mirror-Belle!” Ellen hadn’t seen her mirror friend all holidays and felt quite pleased to see her now, even though she knew there was bound to be trouble ahead. “You’ve got lots of freckles too,” she said.

  “Don’t be silly – they’re not freckles, they’re beauty spots,” replied Princess Mirror-Belle, and she dived out of the mirror, landing on her hands with her legs in the air.

  The shop assistant must have heard the thud. She left the customer she was serving and hurried over to them, looking cross.

  “Please don’t do handstands in here,” she said to Mirror-Belle. “You might break something.”

  “It wasn’t a handstand. It was a dive,” said Mirror-Belle, on her feet by now. “With all these sea creatures around, I naturally assumed I would land in the sea. It’s extremely confusing; I suggest you remove them and put some land animals on the shelves instead.”

  “Why don’t you go and play on the beach?” said the shop assistant.

  “I didn’t hear you say, ‘Your Royal Highness’,” objected Mirror-Belle, “but it’s quite a good idea, so I’ll excuse you just this once. Come on, Ellen.”

  “Sorry,” Ellen murmured to the assistant, and she followed Mirror-Belle out of the shop and on to the beach.

  Three children were digging in the sand. Mirror-Belle went up to them.

  “I doubt if you’ll find any treasure here,” she said. “The sea monster is much more likely to have hidden it in a cave, and he’s probably guarding it.”

  The children just stared at her.

  “They’re not digging for treasure – they’re building a sandcastle,” Ellen told Mirror-Belle.

  “What a ridiculous idea! You can’t build a castle out of sand. I should know, I live in one.”

  “I thought you lived in a palace,” said Ellen.

  “That’s in the winter. In the summer we go to our castle by the sea. It’s made of pure white marble with ivory towers.” Mirror-Belle turned back to the children. “In any case, you shouldn’t build it on the beach. Don’t you realize it will collapse when the tide comes in?”

  “We don’t mind,” said one of them. “We’ll have gone home by then.”

  “What? You’re building a castle and you’re not even going to live in it?” Mirror-Belle shook her head pityingly. “There’s no hope for them, Ellen. We’d better move on,” she said.

  “Shall we look for shells?” suggested Ellen as they walked along between the sea and the row of beach umbrellas.

  Instead of answering her, Mirror-Belle gazed at the sky and then marched up to the nearest umbrella. A man and a woman were dozing underneath it.

  “Allow me,” said Mirror-Belle, and she stepped over them and closed the umbrella.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” said the woman, sitting up.

  “What does it look like?” answered Mirror-Belle. “There’s not a trace of rain, so you really don’t need an umbrella.”

  The man was on his feet by this time. “Buzz off,” he said as he opened the umbrella up again.

  “I’m a princess, not a bee,” replied Mirror-Belle.

  Ellen tugged at her arm and Mirror-Belle allowed herself to be pulled away, but not without saying in a loud voice, “I’m beginning to wonder if this is a special beach for idiots.”

  “They’re not idiots,” Ellen told her off when they were out of earshot. “They just don’t want to get sunburned. That reminds me, I ought to put some lotion on.” She took the bottle out of her backpack. “It’s to protect me against the sun,” she explained, and then realized that Mirror-Belle had an identical bag on her back. “Haven’t you got some too?”

  “Not exactly,” said Mirror-Belle, opening her own bag. Ellen looked inside and saw some sparkly pens and a notepad just like the ones she had just bought. Mirror-Belle took out a bottle and unscrewed the cap. “This is to protect me against sea monsters,” she said as she smeared some of it over her neck and arms.

  Ellen laughed. “I don’t think you get sea monsters in Whitesands,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” replied Mirror-Belle darkly. She screwed up her eyes and looked out to sea. “I can’t see any,” she admitted, “though I can see some rather ugly mermaids on that rock. Their tails look all right, but why haven’t they got long golden hair?”

  Ellen looked too and laughed again. “Those aren’t mermaids – they’re seals,” she said.

  “Well, give me mermaids any day,” replied Mirror-Belle. “The rocks near our castle are covered in them.”

  “Do you play with them?” asked Ellen, though she wasn’t really sure if she believed in these mermaids.

  “Sometimes. It’s not much fun though, because they spend so much time combing their hair.” Mirror-Belle paused for a moment and then added, “One of them gave me a magic comb for my birthday.”

  “What was magic about it?” asked Ellen.

  “It could change your hair into any style you wished for. The colour too. I once had purple ringlets down to my toes.”

  “Have you still got the comb?”

  “Really, Ellen, I wish you wouldn’t always ask so many questions. If you must know, it was stolen by a sea monster.”

  “Are sea monsters hairy then?”

  “Of course. I thought even you would know that.”

  They reached the rocky end of the beach, where there were fewer people. They picked seaweed off the rocks and made necklac
es with it and a crown for Mirror-Belle, who said, “It’s a shame you can’t have one too, Ellen, but the only way you could become a princess would be to marry a prince.”

  They wandered along the curved shore further than Ellen had ever been before. There were cliffs behind them now and they had to clamber over boulders. They reached the tip of the bay and carried on into the next one.

  “Look!” said Mirror-Belle, pointing to an opening at the foot of a cliff. “That’s the entrance to a cave. I wonder if it belongs to the sea monster. Would you like some of my protective lotion, Ellen?”

  “All right,” said Ellen, just to keep Mirror-Belle happy. She was pretty sure that sea monsters didn’t exist; at least, they might do in Mirror-Belle’s world, but not here in Whitesands.

  The cave, when they reached it, was disappointing. It was quite small and empty, except for a couple of cans and a lemonade bottle. “No sign of any sea monster,” said Ellen.

  “On the contrary.” Mirror-Belle had picked up the empty lemonade bottle and was looking excited. “Didn’t you know, they love lemonade? If they don’t drink lots of it, they lose their slime.”

  “I thought you said they were hairy,” Ellen objected, but Mirror-Belle didn’t seem to have heard her. She was examining some writing on the wall of the cave. Ellen looked too and saw that a lot of people had carved their names into the rock. “Look at this!” said Mirror-Belle, pointing to some rather wiggly letters which said: “T. Box 1.8.01.”

  “What about it?” asked Ellen.

  “Can’t you see? It’s a clue. The ‘T’ must stand for treasure.”

  “It probably stands for Tom or Tessa or something,” said Ellen. “And Box is their surname.”

  “The poor creature has written it back to front,” Mirror-Belle carried on, ignoring Ellen, “but then sea monsters aren’t very intelligent. Never mind – look at those numbers, Ellen: they’re the important thing. They show us where the treasure box is buried.”

  “I think they’re just the date,” said Ellen. “‘1.8.01’ means the first of August, 2001. That’s when this Box person carved their name.”

  “Nothing of the sort,” scoffed Mirror- Belle. “It means that we have to take one step in one direction, eight steps in another direction and then dig one foot underground.”

  Ellen frowned doubtfully. This wasn’t the first time Mirror-Belle had been so excited about treasure. Ellen remembered when she had claimed that her dog, Prince Precious Paws, could sniff out gold and jewels, but he hadn’t succeeded.

  Don’t look so gloomy, Ellen,” Mirror-Belle reproached her. “You should be even happier than I am! After all, I’m incredibly rich already, but think what a difference all this wealth will make to you.”

  This reminded Ellen of Luke and all the coins in the slot machine.

  “Help!” she said. “I must go. Luke will be getting worried – and I expect Granny and Grandpa will be back by now. Are you coming?”

  “Of course not. Can’t you see, this is the perfect opportunity to dig up the treasure, when the sea monster isn’t guarding it.”

  “Do be careful, Mirror-Belle,” said Ellen and then had to remind herself that sea monsters didn’t really exist.

  “Oh, I’ll be fine. I’ve got my protective lotion, remember. But I’m surprised that you’re leaving me to do all the digging by myself. Just think – there might even be a magic comb buried with all the gold and jewels. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  But Ellen couldn’t be persuaded. She hurried back over the rocks and along the beach. She found Luke pacing about outside the arcade of slot machines.

  “Thank goodness you’re back,” he said. “They’d go mad if I’d lost you.”

  “Sorry,” said Ellen. “I’ve been with Mirror-Belle.”

  “Oh, do shut up blaming everything on someone who doesn’t even exist,” Luke snapped at her. Ellen decided that now wasn’t the best moment to ask him if he’d won any money, but from the expression on his face she doubted it.

  That afternoon Granny and Grandpa took them out to a bird sanctuary, and they all had supper in a cafe on the way home.

  “You’re very quiet, Ellen, pet,” said Granny.

  “She’s tired,” said Grandpa, but it wasn’t that. Ellen couldn’t help thinking about Mirror-Belle and hoping she was all right. Was she still in the cave or had she returned to her own world? Ellen half expected to find her waiting for them when they got back to the camper van, but she wasn’t.

  “Early to bed and early to rise,” said Granny after the game of cards they always played in the evening. “We’ve got a long journey tomorrow.”

  But Ellen couldn’t sleep. She lay awake in the camper van listening to her grandparents’ gentle snores and worrying about Mirror-Belle. If only there was someone she could talk to! She wondered if Luke was still awake. He didn’t sleep in the camper van but in a tent just outside.

  Ellen put her anorak on over her pyjamas and slipped on her flip-flops. Quietly she opened the door of the camper van and stepped outside. It was a clear night and the moon was nearly full.

  “Luke!” she whispered. She unzipped his tent a few inches and whispered again. There was no reply. Ellen knew he would only be cross if she woke him. She really should go back to bed, but instead she found herself walking down to the little beach where Granny and Grandpa moored their rowing boat.

  She looked out to sea. She could see the cliffs at the end of the bay, but now the tide was high, covering the boulders where she and Mirror-Belle had clambered that morning.

  The next bay, the one with the cave, must be cut off by the tide. If Mirror-Belle was still there, she would be trapped. Usually she escaped into her own world through a mirror, but there wasn’t one in the cave.

  A breeze blew in from the sea and Ellen shivered. She thought of Mirror-Belle with no anorak to keep her warm. She wouldn’t have had anything to eat either. And if she really did believe in sea monsters, she might be feeling scared as well as cold and hungry.

  Then Ellen noticed something bobbing in the water. It was a plastic lemonade bottle. It looked as if there was something inside it: a scrap of paper.

  Ellen rolled up her pyjama trousers, took a couple of steps into the cold water and reached out for the bottle. She unscrewed the top. Sure enough, there was a rolled-up piece of paper inside it. When Ellen unrolled it and saw the glittery backwards writing she knew at once who the message was from. This is what it said:

  Ellen was very good at reading backwards writing after all her adventures with Mirror-Belle, so she read it as:

  An hour later, Ellen and Luke were in their grandparents’ boat. Luke was rowing. “This had better not be a trick,” he said.

  It had been easier than Ellen had imagined to wake her brother and talk him into this night-time rescue operation. Luke had always liked adventures, and although he had never before believed in Mirror-Belle, the back-to-front note in the bottle had seemed to convince him.

  “There’s the cave!” Ellen pointed at the dark hole in the cliff face. She was relieved to see that there was a strip of sand in front of the cave; at least it wasn’t flooded.

  “Look!” She stood up and pointed again in great excitement.

  “Sit down – you’re rocking the boat,” said Luke. He was rowing with his back to the cliffs and couldn’t see what Ellen could see – a pale figure standing in the mouth of the cave.

  “Mirror-Belle!” she called out.

  A few minutes later Mirror-Belle was climbing into the boat.

  “Hello, Ellen,” she said, and then, “My prince! My hero!” she greeted Luke.

  “He’s not a prince. He’s just my brother,” said Ellen.

  “Never mind. He will be a prince once he marries me, won’t you, my brave rescuer?” She flung her arms round Luke, who wriggled awkwardly out of her grasp. One of her seaweed necklaces had come off and stuck to him and he threw it into the sea.

  “Settle down, you girls,” he said, and picked up the
oars.

  “It’s a pity you didn’t get the chance to slay the sea monster,” said Mirror-Belle. “I can’t think where he can have got to.”

  Ellen was surprised that Mirror-Belle was in such a perky mood after being trapped in the cave for so long. “Did you find any treasure?” she asked.

  But Mirror-Belle only seemed to want to talk to Luke. “Which half of my father’s kingdom would you like?” she asked him as the boat bobbed along. “One half is covered in mountains and the other half is full of deep lakes.”

  Luke didn’t reply but Mirror-Belle was not put out. She picked up the lemonade bottle with the note in it from the floor of the boat. “My father might ask a few questions about you at first, but I’m sure I can make him see reason if I show him this,” she said.

  Ellen was beginning to feel annoyed. “It was me who found that, you know, not Luke. I’ve been worrying and worrying about you.”

  But Mirror-Belle’s mind was still full of the marriage arrangements. “I suppose we’ll have to wait about ten years,” she said to Luke. “You could be learning a few princely things in the meantime, like hunting dragons and cutting off trolls’ heads. Would you rather do that here or would you like to come back with me and have some lessons in the palace?”

  “I’m trying to concentrate on the rowing,” said Luke. Ellen could tell from his voice that he felt embarrassed.

  “Luke doesn’t want to get married,” she told Mirror-Belle. “All he cares about is his band.”

  “That’s not a problem,” said Mirror-Belle. “He could be in a band of princes. They could be called the Dragon Slayers or the Royal Rescuers . . . or the Handsome Heroes.” She turned back to Luke. “How would you like to play a golden guitar?”