The Rescue Princesses #2: Wishing Pearl (3 page)

The princesses hurried up to Clarabel’s bedroom. A huge four-poster bed filled one corner of the room and wispy curtains flapped in the breeze from the arched windows.

Clarabel rummaged in her suitcase and pulled out light-blue binoculars decorated with the royal crest of Winteria, which featured an Arctic fox.

“Should we check Samuel’s room right now?” suggested Emily, glancing through the window. “I can see him down in the courtyard, so his room must be empty.”

“Wait!” Clarabel said. “I have something amazing to tell you.”

She showed them the pearl, gleaming white with the tiny hint of a rainbow. It was just as beautiful now as when the dolphin had found it for her.

Emily, Lulu, and Jaminta crowded around for a closer look.

“Wow! You don’t get many pearls as perfect as that,” said Jaminta.

“It all happened when I was looking for seashells.” Clarabel’s blue eyes shone. “I heard a sound calling me and I followed it. There’s a lagoon behind the sand dunes. I swam with a dolphin there and he found this pearl for me.”

“You mean that gem came from the bottom of a lagoon?” said Lulu.

“Yes, the dolphin showed me where it was,” replied Clarabel.

There was a knock on the door and Emily’s maid, Ally, came in. “I brought you something to eat, Your Majesties.”

She set a tray down on the table with a jug of pink lemonade and a plate of brownies. Then she began tidying up Clarabel’s clothes.

“Thank you, Ally,” said the princesses.

Jaminta picked up the gem to have a closer look. “It’s such a great pearl,” she said, pulling a little jewelry cloth out of her pocket and giving it a polish.

“But there’s a sad part.” Clarabel’s face fell. “The dolphin had a deep cut on his side and he seemed very weak. I promised him I would take him some fish to help him build up his strength.”

“You make it sound like he talked to you,” said Lulu.

“I think he really understood me,” explained Clarabel. “Just from the way he looked and the noises he made.”

“I’ve always wanted to meet a dolphin,” said Emily, pushing back her red curls. “I’ve read that they’re really smart creatures. I wonder how he got hurt, though. Did you say the cut was on his side?”

Clarabel nodded. “I’m worried that it won’t heal very quickly.”

Ally put down Clarabel’s clothes and cleared her throat. “It could be that the dolphin was struck by a boat, maybe by a speedboat that was going too fast. That’s why the empress doesn’t like having speedboats near the island.”

“The poor thing!” cried Clarabel.

“At least the dolphin’s safe in the wildlife zone now,” said Jaminta.

“Let’s search Samuel’s room first and then take some fish over to the dolphin,” said Emily, helping herself to a brownie.

“Be careful,” warned Ally, not looking at all surprised that the girls were planning to search a prince’s room. “Queen Trudy is in an extremely bad mood today. If she catches you in her son’s room, she’ll go straight to the empress and all the kings and queens. Maybe one of you should act as a lookout in case someone comes.”

The princesses looked thoughtful. They trusted Ally’s advice. Her previous job had been as an undercover agent and she had never forgotten her training.

“I’ll be the lookout,” said Emily. “Then if anyone comes along I’ll keep them talking.”

“What other ninja advice can you give us, Ally?” asked Clarabel.

“Well, you should always have an escape route planned, in case you have to leave in a hurry,” said Ally.

“Okay then, we’ll use Emily as our lookout and have an escape route planned,” said Lulu, hopping up and down. “Come on! Let’s go!”

Clarabel bit her lip. She wanted to spend a few more minutes planning what to do, but she felt like she was always slowing the others down.

She stashed the dolphin’s pearl carefully away in her jewelry box. She was glad that they were going to find out what Samuel was up to, especially if that meant protecting the wildlife zone.

The princesses met at the end of the hallway after they had changed out of their dresses into white T-shirts and leggings that would blend in with the palace walls.

There was a list of all the guests’ room numbers in the entrance hall, and with great excitement Clarabel had sneaked downstairs and looked up Samuel’s. A pair of blue binoculars hung around her neck, just in case they needed it.

They were going to have to climb two staircases and cross three hallways unseen to reach Samuel’s room. They had reached the top of the first staircase when they heard voices close by.

Hiding behind a tall fig plant, they waited until the king and queen of Finia had walked past.

They crept up the next staircase, keeping to the inside of every step. That way they wouldn’t be seen by people looking up from the hallway below.

Tiptoeing along the hallways, they stopped at every corner to make sure that no one was walking toward them. Lulu even performed a series of forward rolls, one after the other, to keep low past a balcony.

Clarabel hurried along, trying her best to keep up with the other princesses. She crept low but didn’t dare attempt any acrobatics.

“It’s better if we’re never even seen up here,” whispered Emily. “We don’t want Samuel to realize we’re checking up on him.”

“Number 527. This is Samuel’s room,” said Jaminta.

Clarabel put her ear against the door. “There’s no sound inside. Are we ready?”

The others nodded.

With a shaky hand, Clarabel pushed down the handle. The door opened with a loud creak, making the princesses frown.

Holding her breath, Clarabel made herself step through the doorway and only breathed out again when she found the place empty.

She scanned the room, noticing a sofa, two chests of drawers, a desk, and a large cupboard set into the wall.

“Check everything,” she said quietly, “because we have no idea what we’re really looking for.”

She pulled open a drawer and quickly shut it again, finding it was only full of orange pants.

Jaminta began checking the other drawers. Lulu set to work on the desk, throwing stuff over her shoulders wildly.

“Lulu, stop!” cried Clarabel.

Lulu looked up in surprise from where she was surrounded by a snowdrift of paper. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

“It’s so neat and tidy in here,” said Clarabel. “If we don’t leave everything in exactly the same place, he’s sure to notice and suspect someone’s been in here.”

“Don’t worry, I can clean it up,” said Lulu, cramming paper back into the desk at high speed.

Clarabel shook back her blond hair and pulled open the next drawer.
This is all T-shirts
, she thought.
We’re getting nowhere.
Then something caught her eye.

It was an edge of yellowy paper, half hidden by a box of tissues. Gently, she pulled the paper out. It curled up into a tube shape and she had to unroll it on the floor to see the writing.

“Lulu! Jaminta! Come and look at this,” she said.

They all leaned over the old sheet of paper, looking at its strange inky markings.

Suddenly, footsteps sounded nearby and the princesses froze. Someone coughed, and it sounded as if they were right inside the closet.

The girls stared at one another in panic. Emily, as the lookout, hadn’t warned them of anything. So what was going on?

Another cough came from the closet, and with a sudden shock Clarabel realized the truth. The closet wasn’t a closet at all. It was the doorway through to the bedroom next door.

And someone was in there right now.

The door handle to the next-door room began to bend slowly down.

At lightning speed, the princesses shoved as much as they could back in place. Then they looked for somewhere to hide.

“Here!” hissed Clarabel, diving under the bed.

Lulu and Jaminta dived after her.

The door swung open and a pair of brown high-heeled shoes strutted past the bed, inches from the princesses’ noses.

Clarabel tried to keep as still as she possibly could, although with Lulu’s feet pressed hard against her ear, it wasn’t easy. Focusing on her ninja training, she remembered something Ally had once told them: When you’re hiding, imagine you’re a part of your hiding place.

Just then, a large black beetle crawled across her hand. Clarabel clamped her mouth shut to stifle a gasp. She didn’t like beetles very much, but she didn’t dare move.

The insect was so close she could see all its legs and feelers. She kept very still, and luckily the beetle scuttled away.

The brown high-heeled shoes paused next to the chest of drawers and there was a scraping sound of drawers opening.

“So untidy!” muttered a voice. “Samuel must come and clean up his room.”

That’s Queen Trudy
, thought Clarabel, recognizing the voice.

Lulu, who, as the tallest, was the most squashed, shifted her leg and banged it against the underside of the bed. The bedsprings made a loud twanging sound.

The shoes stopped, then walked slowly toward the girls.

Clarabel held her breath and hoped that Lulu and Jaminta were doing the same. The large black beetle had crawled across the floor to the tip of the queen’s shoe.

“Ugh! A bug!” cried the queen, twitching her foot out of the way. But the beetle followed her, heading toward the other shoe.

Queen Trudy let out an ear-piercing shriek. Lifting her skirts, she fled out of the room and slammed the door behind her.

The princesses crawled out from under the bed and collapsed into giggles.

“A bug! A bug!” cried Lulu in a high-pitched voice.

“We’d better hurry,” said Clarabel, taking a deep breath to stop her laughter. “She might make Samuel come up here right away.”

She fished the yellowy paper back out of the drawer and they all bent over it.

“It’s really old.” Lulu held down the curling edge of the paper. “And the ink’s faded. But it’s definitely a map.”

“It says ‘
Rising Gull
.’ I wonder what that is,” said Clarabel.

“We need to remember all of this,” said Jaminta. She grabbed a piece of paper from the desk drawer and started copying the map and all the writing.

Clarabel peered out of the window and across the balcony. “Samuel’s not in the courtyard anymore. We have to get out of here.”

The girls replaced the map back under the tissue box and crept out into the hallway.

Emily, who had been keeping watch outside the door, put a finger to her lips. Voices drifted down the hallway, getting louder and louder.

“It’s Samuel and Queen Trudy,” hissed Emily.

Clarabel looked around, her heart thumping. The hallway was a dead end. “There’s nowhere to go!” she said.

“We forgot to plan an escape route, like Ally told us to,” whispered Jaminta. “We rushed up here too fast.”

The voices grew louder. The girls crept back into Samuel’s room again and looked doubtfully at the bed.

“Not under there again! It’s so squashed.” Lulu groaned.

Clarabel climbed out onto the balcony. “If we use a chair we can probably reach the roof. Then we can climb down the outside stairs into the garden. I think it’s our best hope.”

Her stomach felt hollow. She couldn’t believe she was actually suggesting climbing up so high.

“Let’s do it!” said Lulu, pulling herself up immediately.

Emily and Jaminta followed and Clarabel climbed up last, just as she heard the door handle click.

The roof of the palace was completely flat, surrounded by many square, white turrets. The princesses crept across it and down the spiral steps at one end.

Clarabel held on to the handrail and tried very hard not to look at the ground. She caught Emily staring at her and her heart sank. She had to try and seem braver than she felt.

When they finally reached the safety of Clarabel’s room, the princesses studied the map again.

“The
Rising Gull
. I recognize that name,” said Emily. “It was a story that Ally used to tell me when I was little. It was about a treasure ship that sank near an island, and the treasure was supposed to be buried on the island somewhere. The ship’s name was the
Rising Gull
. I always thought it was just a story.”

“This is a map of Ampali,” said Clarabel. “Look — here’s the harbor, and here’s the lagoon. Maybe this is the island where the ship sank long ago.”

“I bet Samuel thinks so. I wonder how he got ahold of the map,” said Jaminta. “He must not have told Queen Trudy if he’s hiding it in a drawer.”

“So he’s digging and he’s got an old map …” started Lulu.

“He’s looking for the treasure,” said Jaminta. “I bet he wants it all for himself.”

“And he doesn’t care what creatures he harms trying to get it,” added Clarabel. “Look — there’re two Xs on the map. That one must be the beach, right where he was digging today.”

“Where’s the other one?” asked Emily.

Clarabel stared at the second mark and her heart sank. “That’s the lagoon,” she said. “That’s where I met my dolphin.”

“Well, he can’t dig underwater,” pointed out Jaminta. “So maybe he won’t try that one. Maybe the treasure will stay Ampali’s secret.”

“It would be cool if we could find it!” said Lulu.

“I hope Samuel doesn’t start messing around in the lagoon,” said Clarabel. “My dolphin’s resting there.”

Emily patted her shoulder. “Let’s go and ask Cook for that fish. It’s time we paid your dolphin a visit.”

As the girls bounded down the stairs to the kitchen, Clarabel couldn’t help worrying. What if Samuel did want to search for treasure in the lagoon? What would he try to do?

Did he have enough heart to be kind to a hurt dolphin?