the siren of the north

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This was my entry for a short story, which I entered with my English class, but I feel that it was done justice so I'm putting it on here!

𖧷︎Elisa's pov𖧷︎

Elisa ran from the classroom as the second the bell rang. She outran all of the older boys even with her large bible and many textbooks in her bag. She didn't stop till she was round about the harbour.  Elisa walked down onto the beach. She put her bag down and kicked off her shoes, feeling the soft sand under her feet. She ran down to the sea, narrowly avoiding a jellyfish washed up on the sand, to put her blistered feet in the salty sea. It stung a bit but Elisa knew that it would be better tomorrow morning.

 After a while she stood up and went to look for shells. She found a perfect whelk, a beautiful sea foam colour, with sand in its grooves making it seem almost rusty and it twisted like the horn of a sea unicorn. It seemed to glow. Putting it up to her ear, she could hear the whisper of the sea flowing into her ear. Once she finished admiring the shell she put it in her leather pouch with the other shells and tiny polished pebbles. She ran back to her bag to get her hammer and small chisel so she could crack some rocks open to find a fossil to study. She walked round to some rocks and set to work on a promising looking one. 

Just as Elisa was about to get the rock open, she felt something hit her forehead. It dropped into her hand. It was a pebble. She stood up. Looking up at the road above, to see a boy throw another pebble. He was then joined by another boy and another. Elisa hit the rock once more and it cracked in half. She picked it up with her other tools and ran towards her bag. Pebbles flew past her, as she grabbed her bag from the gritty sand.  She flung everything into her bag as she ran. Running all the way past the Royal Hotel, the bakery, down Church Street, past the Inn and into Hugh Miller’s cottage. 

The Millers were a young couple with a sickly baby daughter called Elizabeth. Mr Miller was a brilliant man. He worked as a writer of  articles for the Inverness Courier and other journals and he also worked as a monumental mason. He also was an excellent poet. Elisa had read some of his poetry before and she thought it was amazing. Mrs Miller was a children’s author.

When Elisa knocked on the Miller’s home, with bright red cheeks, Mrs Miller was holding a bowl of bread dough and was covered head to toe  in flour, giving a ghostly appearance.

“Hello dear, aren’t you usually at the beach at this time of the day?” 

“Some boys threw stones as I was looking for fossils,” Elisa sighed, feeling annoyed.

“Ah, I’ve seen some boys chasing people down the street before, just ignore them and they'll stop,” said Mrs Miller.

“Okay Mrs Miller.”

“Do you want to come in and show me what you got off the beach then?”

“Yes please.”

Elisa followed the ghostly figure into the cottage and put her bag on the table. She pulled out the rock that she had split back on the beach. It had a small ammonite in it, a delicate but beautiful design.

“Wow!” Elisa gasped.

“It’s a great find,” said Mr Miller, as he walked through the door. 

“Thank you Mr Miller.”

“Did you find anything else?”

“Yes, I found a beautiful whelk.”

Elisa pulled it out of the bag so Mr and Mrs Miller could see it. The shell had a thin crack running down its side, from the pebbles, a small imperfection to  its beautiful shape. 

“It’s lovely dear, but will your mother not want you home soon?”

“Yes, I should be heading home soon,” said Elisa, gently putting the fossil and the whelk back in her bag.

“Good-bye Mrs Miller, good-bye Mr Miller and good-bye little Elizabeth,” said Elisa as she left.

Elisa walked back to her house, down the road. She was late for dinner but her mother didn’t mind too much.

That night Elisa dreamt about the boys throwing stones. Instead of running to her bag like she did in real life, she stepped back into the waves. She went up to her ankles, then her knees, then her waist. She felt her feet dissolve into the water. She looked down. Her legs had disappeared. Her legs were non-existent. Her waist merged into water. She tried to move her legs. The water moved forward. She moved back towards the boys on the beach. The water moved with her. The boys looked shocked. Elisa didn’t stop until the entire beach was covered in water.

Elisa woke early on Saturday. She got dressed in her bathing costume and put a tatty dress over the top. Deciding to make the whelk into a necklace, she carefully punched a hole in the shell and put a thread through it. Elisa left a note on the table for her mother if she woke up early as well. Running down to the beach, Elisa pulled off her dress and she ran into the sea.
It was refreshingly cold. She waded up to her waist. Her toes started to tingle. She shivered. Then she looked down. Her legs had gone. In its place was a tail.