Stories from the Undersea World of Mermaid Princess Amelia, Vol. 2

Fate Swirls in the Colorful Ghost Month (Huang Yan’s Story)

July 1996

The Sea Pirates’ Camp in the Sulu Sea was quite a unique place, one where the merchildren of famous rulers and diplomats from the zone could meet, play, and explore the wonders of the undersea world together.

During their stay at the camp, they could take part in various entertaining activities such as swimming with dolphins, feeding marine creatures, and diving to the great depths in search of long forgotten treasures. But they would also race each other in the sea caves and compete to see who could make the most beautiful sandcastle; there was no shortage of fun at this camp.

Going there for holidays had always been a dream of fourteen-year-old Huang Yan and his twelve-year-old brother Huang Ling. And now, it was finally about to come true! The two boys were very excited about the upcoming adventure and started screaming with joy when they first saw the brilliantly colored coral reefs surrounding the camp.

Some sea kids were there already, swimming joyously through the tropical waters, the colorful scales of their tails shimmering with countless colors in the underwater sunlight. And behind them was the camp’s building adorned with nets that were abundantly decorated with shells and dried starfish.

*

On the first day of the camp, the caregivers made all the little participants play a game that would help them get to know each other. Huang Yan was so busy keeping an eye on his little brother (who was distracted by everything), that he missed half of his camp colleagues' presentations. Not that he’d learn a lot about them from those presentations anyway—the only languages he could speak were Cantonese and Mandarin. The few basic sentences that he could utter in the Ocean language definitely weren’t enough to help him communicate effectively.

In any case, it was during that presentation game that he first paid attention to Wan, the new princess from the Thai Pearl Empire, who was eight years old, and her lady-in-waiting, Davika, who was six. Despite being so young, Davika quickly came to be a leader of the girls, as she had an outgoing, cheerful personality. Wan observed her with a light smile from the corner where she sat.

Wan was graceful like a sea fairy, and so pretty that she could easily be labelled the most beautiful mermaid in the camp. Because of this, lots of boys tried to impress her in silly ways, which caused her to either laugh from embarrassment (if they were nice) or cry (if they were nasty). Huang Yan looked at them with real envy, upset that they approached her so effortlessly. He was angry at himself, too, for being too shy and too poor at a foreign language to even carry on a conversation with her.

To that, he and his younger brother were quickly labelled “freaks.” At first, he mistakenly thought that it was because of their short black hair, which was stubbornly spiky, looking like a brush for polishing shells. But he discovered very soon that the real reason were their tails. Since they were both from the royal family in the South China Sea, they had cornified, dragon-like scales, very similar to the ones of the yellow dragon. Such scales were unusual, and lots of the camp participants gossiped about them when the two of them swam by. Still, nobody dared to bully them openly, as they were children of the great emperor of the South China Sea, Huang Suoyu.

Well… nobody but Guo Guiying.

She was their fourth cousin and the daughter of the emperor of East China Sea. Her green tail was related to the green dragon and just as cornified.

Guiying was eight years old, like Wan. She often wore black kung-fu shirts and kept her hair in two buns, which gave her a slightly mischievous look. She was extremely playful and a real nuisance to the two brothers. She often swam after the two of them, calling them sea slugs.

Huang Ling would get upset and scream at Guiying at the top of his lungs, but Huang Yan was old enough to know that she didn’t do it out of malice; she just sought their attention because she was bored and lonely.

Her Ocean language skills were nearly non-existent, as she spoke Shanghainese and a bit of Mandarin. So eventually, the two boys chose to make peace with her and let her team up with them, even though Huang Yan still kept throwing wistful looks at the beautiful Wan, wishing she’d join them instead.

After the first three days, once everyone got used to the life of the camp, the caregivers came up with a surprise. They claimed that they had found a secret message from an ancestor of Hai Hun, the famous pirate from the South China Sea, whose name meant “sea ghost” in Chinese.

The news caused much commotion among the youthful campers. Even though Huang Yan and Guiying were old enough to know that it was probably yet another game, they were both very excited about this particular task.

“Yan, we have to find this treasure!” Huang Ling pleaded, hope shining in his almond-shaped brown eyes.

“I know! We will surely do our best, don’t worry!” his brother promised him.

“Yeah! The three sea slugs will surely find the treasure!” Guiying exclaimed, throwing her fist up.

Upon hearing the words the three sea slugs, Huang Yan glanced at her, surprised. “Oh, so now you’re now a sea slug too?”

“Did I ever say I wasn’t one?” Guiying asked slyly. “We must hurry. We need to start looking for clues now if we want to get ahead of others!”

And she swam away with one energetic wave of her forked green caudal fin.

*

The trio spent the next three hours swimming around the campsite yard, looking for clues. There was much joyous screaming and laughter, especially from the younger camp participants. Some actually gave up on searching for the treasure to play tag instead, as it gave them more joy.

Huang Ling looked at them with interest, but his brother didn’t let him leave their team. He really wanted to find the treasure. With the eye of his imagination, he saw himself discovering it and earning praise from the camp caregivers. Everyone would look at him then, including the bewitchingly beautiful Wan...