Summer of the Sea Serpent: A Merlin Mission

the small cove below.
    “Come on!” Annie shouted. She was bobbing up and down on the gentle waves.
    Jack took off his glasses. He pinched his nose and closed his eyes. Then he jumped off the ledge.

J ack splashed into the blue sunlit sea. He sank to the bottom and then bobbed back up. He coughed and pushed his hair out of his eyes.
    Annie was treading water nearby. “Hey!” she called.
    “Hey!” Jack sputtered.
    “I was wrong! You were right!” Annie said. She sounded thrilled. “The Spider Queen just wanted to help us!”
    “Yeah,” said Jack. He shook the seawater off his glasses and put them back on.
    “She must be really lonely!” said Annie. “She probably feels like she has to hide in that cave because she’s so scary-looking!”
    “Maybe,” said Jack. He looked around the second cove. Purple shadows stretched over a rocky seashore beneath the cliffs. The sun had moved farther across the sky.
    “We’d better hurry!” said Jack. “What do we do now?”
    “Read the rhyme!” said Annie.
    Jack pulled the shell out of his pocket. Treading water, he read the next line in Merlin’s poem:
    And swim with a selkie clothed in green.
    “What’s a selkie?” said Annie.
    “Who knows?” said Jack.
    He looked at the cliffs and the shore.
Is a selkie a fish? A person? What?
he wondered. Then Jack saw two dark shapes speeding like fat torpedoes below the surface of the water. They were coming straight toward him and Annie.
    “Watch out!” Jack shouted.
    “Yikes!” Annie yelled.
    Jack and Annie swam out of the way as the creatures moved swiftly past them. Suddenly two sleek gray heads popped above the surface. They had wide snouts and long white whiskers. They had tiny, wrinkly ears and big, dark eyes.
    “Seals!” cried Annie.
    The two seals turned their heads like periscopes. When they saw Jack and Annie, they opened their mouths, showing their small, pointed teeth. They seemed to be smiling.
    “Hi, guys!” said Annie.
    Barrh! Barrh!
the seals barked. Then they rolled through the water and bumped Jack and Annie with their noses. They barked again joyfully, then darted toward the shore.
    “Come on!” cried Annie. “Let’s play with them!”
    “We don’t have
time
to play!” said Jack.
    But Annie had already started after theseals, swimming toward the rocky beach.

    “Annie! Stop!” called Jack. “We have to hurry and find the selkie! And the Sword of Light! Before nightfall! Or King Arthur will meet his doom ….” Jack’s voice trailed off.
    Annie didn’t hear him. She and the two seals had reached the shore and were getting out of the water. The seals clumsily hauled their chubby bodies onto a big rock and flopped down. Annie climbed onto the rock, too.
    “Annie, come on!” shouted Jack.
It could be as late as four o’clock now,
he thought. And there was still a
lot
they had to do before nightfall.
    “Let’s rest for a minute!” Annie called. Shesat near the seals and patted their shiny heads as if they were big dogs. The seals barked.
    Actually, Jack wanted to rest, too. He felt really tired.
Maybe we could rest for a minute on the rock with the seals,
he thought,
then search for the selkie.
    “Well, okay,” he shouted. “But just for a
quick
minute!”
    Jack headed for shore. By the time he dragged himself out of the water, the seals were lying on their backs with their eyes closed. Their white whiskers twitched as they slept in the warm sunlight.
    “Shhh, they’re napping,” said Annie. She lay down beside the seals and closed her eyes, too. “The sun feels really good, Jack. Come on. Lie down with us for a second.”
    “Oh, brother,” Jack muttered. But the afternoon sunlight
did
feel good. He climbed onto the warm rock and lay down next to Annie and the seals.
    “Okay, just for a
quick
second,” he said.
    Jack closed his eyes. The sunshine felt good on his tired arms and legs. The gentle sea breeze felt especially clean and fresh after the Cave of the Spider Queen. The next thing he knew, he had faded into a deep, peaceful sleep ….

“W ake up, lazybones! You can’t sleep all afternoon!” said a friendly voice.
    Jack’s eyes shot open.
Oh, no!
he thought.
What time is it?
He sat up and looked around.
    The seals were gone. Standing over Jack and Annie was a barefoot boy with a happy, freckled face.
    “Teddy!” said Jack. For a moment he forgot all about the time.
    “Teddy! Teddy!” cried Annie. She leaped up and hugged the young