Free Lost Children of the Far Islands by Emily Raabe

Leo said.
    “Has no one told you anything?” the man said impatiently. They all shook their heads. “Yes,” he said, “I am afraid that your father—”
    And with that, the door burst open and their father came in, his hair in wild disarray, his face tight with fear.
    “What is it?” he said sharply. Then, as he took in the three of them sitting up on the beds, his shoulders sagged and he heaved a sigh of relief. “What are you guys doing up?” he said in a quieter voice.
    Barely daring to breathe, Gus peeked over toward the Bedell. The floor was bare, save for a small puddle of water where the man had been standing. Gus could smell a faint odor of wet dog and seaweed coming from under her bed. Pushing Ila off her lap, she swung her feet over the edge of the bed.
    “Um, Dad—” Leo began, but Gus cut him off.
    “Sorry, Dad,” she said. “We’re just worried, you know, about stuff.”
    Her father’s face softened. “I know, Gussy,” he said. “But you need your sleep, OK?”
    He came over to the bed and scooped up Ila. While he tucked her into her cot, Gus swung her feet energetically. They hit something soft and furry and, still thinking about her mother, she kicked backward as hard as she could. There was a muffled squeak from under the bed.
    Their father sat on Gus’s bed, and then gathered her up in his large embrace. His sweater smelled like cold night air and the piney aftershave that their mother gave him every Christmas. Gus buried her head in her father’s shoulder and breathed in the smell of him. Finally, he let her go and stood up.
    “We are going to be fine,” he said. “Gus? Leo? We are going to be fine.” He bent down and kissed the top of Leo’s head.
    Gus noticed that he didn’t say that their mother was going to be fine. In a flash, she knew that everything the small man had told them was true. They were in terrible danger, and their mother was dying. Staying was only going to make things worse, possibly much worse.
    “OK,” she told her father, and while it wasn’t quite a lie, it felt like one.
    Their father paused in the doorway. The light from the hallway lit him from behind, so that she couldn’t see his face.
I need to see it one more time
, she thought wildly to herself, but her father just said, “Love you, fish,” and eased the door closed.
    After a minute, the strange creature—the sea mink—crawled out from under Gus’s bed. He dug in his claws and stretched his body out to an impossible length, and then, with a ripple that ran from his nose to the tip of his long tail, he changed into the Bedell, standing in the middle of the room in his heavy overcoat.
    “Not a very sweet girly, are you?” he said bitterly to Gus, fingering a fresh bruise under one eye.
    “You were nasty,” Gus told him. “There’s no reason to be mean.”
    “Why didn’t you let me tell Dad?” Leo asked Gus.
    “Because Dad won’t tell us what’s going on. Don’t you want to know?”
    “I guess,” Leo said doubtfully. “I mean, yes. I do.”
    Gus fixed the small man with her fiercest look. “So tell us. What’s going on?”
    “You must come with me now,” the man said softly. “There is terrible evil rising in the sea. Your mother knows, and your father knows as well, although I do not know if he truly believes it. Surely you have noticed something amiss.”
    “The missing boats,” Gus said. “And the high tides?”
    “But I thought the tides were from global warming,” Leo said. “That’s what Dad said. The sea level is rising from the melting at the polar ice caps.”
    The man shook his head. “That is happening, yes. But the things that are happening here, the tides and the missing boats, are not human problems, I’m afraid. The Móraí will tell you more. But there is very little time. Morning is too late. We must go now.”
    “Yes,” Ila said.
    “OK, Gus?” Leo said.
    Gus was remembering her father’s warning about their mother’s family. But what choice