Free Emily Windsnap and the Siren's Secret by Liz Kessler Page B

you as a baby, didn’t he?” I asked as gently as I could. I know it was only Mr. Beeston, but even so, it wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you threw in someone’s face without a care.
    He nodded. “Off without a backward glance,” he said bitterly.
    “So your mother brought you up?”
    “Ha! That’s one way of putting it!”
    “What do you mean?”
    “My mother — well, she was beautiful. She was a good siren. But more remote than the farthest horizon. Or, to put it kindly, let’s say that when Mother Nature was handing out the mothering skills, mine was at the back of the line, if you get my drift. I was left to fend for myself from a very young age. Leaving home was almost an irrelevance — to both of us. In our hearts, we’d left each other many years earlier.”
    I thought of my own childhood up until last year. Growing up without my dad hadn’t been easy. But I’d never for a second doubted Mom’s love for me. I couldn’t imagine what it would have been like without that. For the first time ever, I really, truly felt sorry for Mr. Beeston.
    “Why do you want to see her now, then?” I asked.
    Mr. Beeston shook himself. He cleared his throat and seemed to drag himself back into the present. “I take my work seriously. You know that.”
    I probably knew it better than anyone on the planet!
    “We have been charged with the mission of making peace. Just like your mother, if I cannot make amends with my own kin, how can I be expected to succeed in the wider world? The answer is that I can’t, and I wouldn’t expect anyone to take me seriously if I tried. A job like this begins with family. I’ve decided. I’m going to see my mother — and I’m going to do it today!”
    I was starting to feel an inkling of forgiveness for him, but something was still bothering me. “Hold on,” I said. “The thing about my grandparents — it still doesn’t add up.”
    “What doesn’t?”
    “Well, you said they were memory drugged.”
    “As indeed they were.”
    “In that case, how come they remembered, earlier?”
    “They what? What on earth are you talking about, child?”
    I explained about Millie bringing my grandparents to Brightport and everything that had happened.
    “The silly woman,” he snarled, back to his old self. “She shouldn’t go messing around in things she doesn’t understand.”
    “She was trying to help my mom! You know, the one who you’ve just sworn undying loyalty to.”
    “Hmph,” he said, sniffing and straightening his jacket.
    “So how come they remembered and then forgot again?” I asked. “Did you have anything to do with it?”
    He shook his head. “I can’t undo the memory drug now. Only Neptune can do that.”
    Neptune? I didn’t fancy trying to get him to help. Most of my dealings with Neptune had involved catastrophe of one sort or another. “Well, someone else must be able to do it because it’s just happened! Look, two minutes ago, you told me you’d do anything to help us, and now I’m asking you. How do we undo it?”
    Mr. Beeston’s face turned pink at the edges. “I’m telling you, child, it’s impossible. Haven’t you ever heard Neptune’s saying on the matter?”
    I shook my head.
    “‘Only the hand that is mightier than my own / May undo the magic from my throne,’” he quoted. “And as we all know, there is no one mightier than Neptune.”
    “So it can’t be done?”
    “Afraid not.”
    “But what about when they remembered for a bit — or seemed to?”
    He shook his head. “It must have been a temporary blip. It happens sometimes, especially as they had only just returned to a place with mermaids nearby.” Mr. Beeston shuffled uncomfortably. “Now if you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I do have some rather important work to do.”
    I left him to his important work and wandered away from the lighthouse in a daze, my head still full of questions. In particular, how were we ever going to fix this? Not just the situation with my