Chapter 4
Warm water touched by the sun above entirely embraced Maggie as she waded through the lazy waves.
The sea was not rowdy against the cove’s shore, much to Maggie’s relief.
The coral lay far beneath the surface, though some of its tallest branches managed to just slightly poke through the surface.
She squinted as she tried to follow the long stem’s trail, but the murky color made it impossible for her to see past a certain point. Fear grasped at her chest.
When was the last time Maggie swam deep in the ocean?
Perhaps she once visited the beaches in the human lands, but the dark depths of the sea was enough to keep her from venturing too deep within it.
The moon coral, however, was nowhere near the water’s surface.
To get even a glimpse of it, Maggie would need to be almost near the ocean floor, it seemed.
The idea of it sent a chill down her spine, despite the water’s enveloping warmth.
“How far deep do you think it is?” Maggie asked in a small voice.
Peter’s clothes ballooned around him as he looked down at the water. “I couldn’t tell you,” he murmured, his thick brow furrowed tightly together. “We’d need to get down there.”
Maggie gulped, almost seconds away from revealing how afraid she was.
The water rippled to their left and a rosy colored head poked through the surface. Selina’s hands stretched toward the sun as she swam through the water, stopping directly beside the both of them. She smiled sweetly, but Maggie couldn’t tell if she meant her smile.
“Silly me,” Selina cooed. “I forgot to mention how far below the surface the coral is. It’s how it lights up the cove, you see!” Lifting her hands from out of the water, Selina revealed a pair of translucent pink bubbles. A delicate blush passed over the mermaid’s cheeks. “I made them myself.”
Maggie blinked. “W-What are they?”
“They’re Breathables!” Selina explained, obviously displeased that her bubbles weren't well-known. But her smile was quick to return. “Who am I to be offended? Why should a human know about them?”
“Breathables,” Maggie repeated, ignoring the other comment.
“You put them over your head,” she explained. “And when you go under the waves, you’ll breathe just as normal as above them!”
Maggie pressed her lips together hesitantly as Selina placed the bubble in her hands.
It was slimy to the touch, though there wasn’t any residue sticking on Maggie’s skin.
The pink mermaid was already swimming away, clearly satisfied with her contribution.
Beside her, Peter eyed the Breathable nonchalantly, already lifting it to push it down over his head.
As if he could sense her indignation, Peter lowered the bubble.
“What’s the matter, Magpie?”
“I’m…” she breathed in deep, quieting the unsteady rhythm of her heart. “I’ll be honest with you, Peter.”
His expression softened, a genuine smile tugging at his lip. “Maggie,” he murmured, the emotion in his voice taking her by surprise, “That’s all I want.”
Stunned by him for a moment, Maggie only stared, her mouth opening and closing rapidly like the fish that swam around her feet. Her fingers pressed into the bubble and she remembered where she was, what she had been saying in the first place.
“I am afraid,” she said. “T-This all seems a bit…a bit…you know.”
Peter chuckled lightly. “That’s the thing about magic, Maggie. Sometimes, the real key to it is simply believing. Taking a chance. A leap of faith. No one’s saying it isn’t scary, because the unknown always is, but why should you wallow in it? Why can’t the unknown be just as exciting?”
Maggie looked down at the water. She couldn’t even imagine what lay beneath the surface. There were so many creatures just out of her reach, knowledge she’d never even think about unlocking, experiences that were never meant to be her own. Fear could hold her back, but only if she let it.
She raised her head to meet his eyes once more. “Let’s go.”
Peter grinned wildly before lowering the bubble over his head.
Maggie followed suit, feeling the Breathable squish around her hair and mold its shape around her face before it flexed, and it felt as though there was nothing there at all.
Peter reached for her and intertwined their fingers, tugging her gently further away from the cove’s shores.
The moment Maggie allowed Peter to pull her through the water, the warmth dissipated.
There was a new sort of cold taking over her, one that was just as tight, just as sure as the sunlight’s heat.
It was a delicate embrace, one that only grew stronger the further they dove through the ocean.
The first few feet were exactly what she expected: expanding out for lengths she could never imagine, an empty blue just staring back at her.
It wasn’t until Peter straightened toward the ocean floor, diving deeper, that they passed through the facade, and entered into the true Kingdom of the Sea.
Life lingered in every available spot. Fish that were as small as Maggie’s pinky and as large as a pirate’s ship cruised by in small schools.
Mammals that Maggie had no names for passed her by casually, as though they didn’t even notice her.
Mermaids, who had lives Maggie couldn’t even imagine, swam alongside the sea creatures as they mingled and chattered.
Some carried satchels at their hips, others wore thin fabrics sewn with delicate strands of seaweed over their sun-kissed chests.
Colors of all shades lit up the ocean floor, not at all like the dull emptiness Maggie expected to find.
Coral, much more than only the moon coral, stretched along the ocean floor.
Most were colored shades of pink, orange, and red, the different tones lighting up like autumn-touched tree-tops.
Maggie hardly noticed that she no longer held onto Peter’s hand as she coursed closer to the series of coral, her hands unable to stop themselves from touching the rugged branches.
Each texture, each touch, each sense lit up Maggie’s curiosity.
She wanted to know everything that there was to know about Neverland’s ocean, to study it from one side to the other, to take pieces of the botany back to press into her journals.
Knowledge untouched, knowledge unexplored, knowledge just waiting to be understood.
Maggie whipped around to face Peter, the water pulling her clothes around like she was weightless.
“Look at you,” Peter said, his voice only slightly muffled by the Breathable. “I’ve never seen a more beautiful smile.”
And, for once, Maggie could hardly linger in her embarrassment. She simply laughed, simply looked around another time, simply explored some more. She swam in front of the row of coral, lazily trailing behind a school of shimmering fish, before she came across the brilliantly silver moon coral.
It mingled with the other pieces of coral along the stretch of it, but there was one spot in particular where most of it grew.
Tall branches stretched high above their heads, and poked out to the surface, where they were only moments ago.
Unlike the rest of the coral, the moon coral was not full of unmistakable color.
It was, instead, entirely silver, as though it had been plucked from the depths of a mountain, not the bottom of the ocean.
The stray fragments of light that managed to reach the sea floor lit up the moon coral ominously, giving Maggie the impression that there was an immense natural power living within the organism.
Maggie swam around the coral a few times, her eyes looking at something new each time she went around.
Everything looked as it should be, or at least what Maggie believed it should be.
She was beginning to flounder, to grow concerned at her own lack of knowledge, when something dark and ashy caught her eye.
Near the bottom of the moon coral, where the roots dove deep into the sea floor, a darkness was beginning to grow along some of the stems of the coral.
Maggie couldn’t recall seeing it anywhere else on the vegetation, and swam nearer.
Following her gut instinct, Maggie reached for one of the stems, using her fingers to gently pry off a small piece of it.
Storing the specimen securely in her pocket, Maggie dove her arms through the water and swam back up to Peter.
“Found something?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Maybe. My gut says so.”
“So you’re finished?”
Maggie raised a brow. “I wouldn’t call it finished at all, but maybe I’d say I have a definite lead. There is more coral to investigate, but there’s something dark growing along the roots of the coral. It’s a little –”
“Though I quite like it when you ramble,” Peter cooed in the middle of her sentence, stealing her breath away when he took his hand gently within her own, “I think you’d benefit from some exploring.”
“Exploring?” Maggie shook her head, even though he was already pulling her along. “There’s more to do, isn’t there?”
“Down here?” he asked.
She paused. There wasn’t anything else out-of-the-ordinary with the coral. “Maybe not, but–”
“Well, if we need to come back, we can. Can’t we? But right now, I want to show you… well, everything.”