THE PLACE WHERE THE LOST GET FOUND

(A Children's Story)

The Place Where the Lost Get Found is copyright © 2002 Ly de Angeles. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording, including Internet usage, without reference to the author and the source (website), except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO OUR PLANET'S RIGHT TO CLEAN OCEANS, TO THE INALIENABLE RIGHT TO RESPECT THAT EVERY CREATURE WITHIN ITS DEPTHS DESERVES AND TO ALL THE PEOPLE WHO STRUGGLE TO UPHOLD THOSE RIGHTS.

Chapter 1

Shelly is a mer-girl and she lives deep down in The Big Green Deep (which is what the under-water tribe of mer-people call the ocean).
Shelly has long, long hair like all the mer-people but hers is the colours of rainbows. Everybody else's was one shade of green or another. Shelly was born with her hair like that so it wasn't that she meant to be different - she just was.

Shelly grew up in a deep underwater city called 'The Drowned Land' (nobody remembered why it was called that in the first place) and The Drowned Land was very beautiful.

Most of the mer-people lived in comfortable coral cottages or places built in very ancient times. They would swim in and out of the windows and doors, along the arched hallways of shell and sea-snail covered temples and down the streets that once upon a time had lined the land far, far above The Big Green Deep. The mer-people happily visited each other all the deep day long.

The royal families lived in castles with high spires and glittering, glistening turrets and towers that tumbled with sea-weed and star-fish and brightly coloured darty fish that made the tumbles look like gardens. There were coral courtyards where sea-horses pranced and danced, their Ladies and Lords bedecked in glorious gowns and glamorous garments all of sea-green greens and sea-blue blues. (Gnork!! would be heard as curly conch shells announced the comings and goings of the sea-horses and their riders.)

Everybody in the city wore gold and silver, gemstones and pearls. They'd been found in sunken treasure ships that lay, forgotten, from ages past, upon the sandy bottom of The Big Green Deep (and that's where they found all the bells, too, that ring in the breezes of the deep sea currents, as they hang from their belfries all across the city!)

Chapter 2

The mer-people are very beautiful with their graceful scaly fish-tails and (as I said before) their long, long hair of many greens.
They haven't any faces, though, and though they know each other they can't see each other - but that's okay because they don't know about faces in The Drowned Land (they'd heard about them in legends, of course - but you hear a lot in legends, like about unicorns and gryphons and faeries and witches and magic mirrors and the like) and I'll tell you about faces, but we haven't got that far yet.

There are rules about how everyone should behave and about what's safe and what's not safe.

The first rule Shelly ever broke was to be born with rainbow hair.

No one meant to be mean to Shelly. Her parents and her brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts and grandmothers and grandfathers and all her cousins loved her but were embarrassed that she was different. The other mer-children's parents secretly feared that Shelly's hair colour might be catching (sort of like humans can catch colds) so they preferred that their children didn't go too close to her.

When Shelly became old enough to sing she was sometimes heard to sing strange songs, somewhat like the songs of whales.
And so the second rule that Shelly broke was to sing these songs because, as her mother and father warned her and warned her, the song of whales had been known (in times past) to call to some of those who heard it and who loved it and so followed it away into the Unknown, somewhere else in The Big Green Deep. None of those who'd followed had ever returned.
... so the songs of whales were against the rules.

The third and only other rule that Shelly broke was to not tell anybody about her small magics (and it isn't time for me to tell you, either) because things like magics could just maybe be unsafe.

Because of all this Shelly seemed like she was very naughty and was always playing tricks on people to get their attention.
But she wasn't naughty. Not really.
Shelly was sad.

"Oh, shilly-shally!" Shelly sighed, as she sat within her secret cave at the very edge of the city limits, high on an
underwater hill quite near a possibly savage section of sea-weed woods ('possibly' because sting-rays and sharks and sea-snakes, and sometimes maybe seals or sea-lions, could hide or not be seen within the sea-weed woods - and they might not be friendly to strangers).

"Shilly-shally," she said again every now and then (it was her word when she felt upset). Shelly was sewing seed-pearls into her long rainbow hair (that she actually secretly liked) - just sitting and thinking.

Chapter 3

So Shelly had been sitting and thinking, shilly-shallying and sighing and sewing seed-pearls sadly when she heard a sound that sounded like someone singing.

"!" thought Shelly (she'd really meant shilly-shally!).

She swam out from her coral cave disturbing a flock of sleeping starfish and a flight of slowly gliding silvery-shiny sting-rays as she sped towards the sound in great excitement.
The mer-people, you see, are famous singers - all the sailors of the seven seas know about their siren song - but the sound that Shelly heard was different.

She liked that.

The song was also sad, and Shelly understood that, too.

Far ahead of where Shelly sped were the huge shadows of wondrous whales - white, all white - and whistling out a song that was both whispered and wide and that spoke of magic and mystery and the ways of whales that had always wandered these waterways since their time as whales began once upon a time so long ago ... until recently when they'd stopped, or changed their minds about
the ways of wandering (Shelly didn't know why - she only knew that they hadn't been known to pass this way for years and years and years - at least, not the way they used to).

Shelly understood their song; she'd sung it, after all, until she'd been told it was against the rules.
Somewhere deep inside herself Shelly felt she might be doing something naughty, something that wasn't safe, by following the whales who sang so sadly and so sweetly - but she followed anyway.

Chapter 4

Shelly didn't know that the whales that she followed were ghosts, and that the song they sang was the song the ghosts remembered. They sang so that The Big Green Deep would not abandon the ones that perhaps were lost somewhere because the whales that still lived were all that were left and without the ghost-song they might not know the ways to find each other.

Shelly followed ghosts - so that much, much later when she was far, far from home and caught in a current that she didn't know at all and they disappeared ... well!

Shelly was lost.

She turned this way and that. She sang her own whale song hoping that they'd appear again and perhaps show her how to get home. She sang the song that the sirens sing so that any mer-person maybe passing would hear and come to show her what to do.
Shelly was frightened.

She was frightened for two reasons - the first was that she might never find her way home again - but the second was that she might ... and wouldn't she get in trouble!

So Shelly waited.

She sat upon a giant shell that had been abandoned by its owner that she found lying on the floor of The Big Green Deep. She sang her two different songs until she could sing no more. And then she cried.
And then she slept for a while.

Chapter 5

When Shelly awoke she was suddenly aware that she was surrounded! She was circled by a great grey shark! She started to shake, thought about screaming, stared and stared and thought "Oh, shilly, shilly-shallyest of shally's, what do I do now?"

But the shark just smiled with his sharp, sharp teeth and said "I ain't hungry, Peachfuzz! Whatcha doin' out here without yer mama?"

Shelly thought it best not to be rude (under the circumstances) so she told him she was lost.

"Hah! I gotcha! You been following whale-songs, ain'tcha?"

Shelly nodded, ashamed at being so silly, and frightened. Hey! She was still frightened. "How did you know?" she asked the shark softly.

"Call me Sam," he smiled, "Sam Shark, that's what everybody calls me! 'Hey, Sam! Howya doin'?' - that's what m'friends always say."
"Who are your friends?" asked Shelly, warming to the conversation.
"Anyone I don't eat," and he laughed at his own joke.
"Oh," said Shelly, afraid again.
Sam looked at Shelly with a gentle look as he realised she didn't know about the way shark's see things.

"I said, sweety," he repeated, "I ain't hungry, okay?" He circled her once and once more and then came right up to her face and said "So ... whaddya need?"

Shelly still didn't know whether she could trust him but nothing else seemed to be happening that could help her so ..."I'm lost and I have to go home," she whispered.
"Can't help ya there, kiddo - it's outa my area and I gotta stay in my area, ya know what I mean?" (Shelly didn't but it was obvious that he did)

"Tell ya what I can do," and he paused to think, "I know where there's other mer-people! How 'bout I take ya to them - never know, maybe they can give ya a plan - waddya say?"

"Thankyou," was all Shelly could say.
"Cheer up!" said Sam, "Yer with the big guy now! And I promise I won't eatcha, okay? Hey! Plenny a'fish in the sea ya know!?"

Chapter 6

And so Shelly went with Sam.

Further and further away from what had been her home.

She was sad because she couldn't go back but, then, she'd been sad for as long as she could remember anyway and Sam was so much fun!

He'd sing his own shark-song for Shelly: "Doo-di-doo-di-doo-di-doo-di-dooooo, the big dude swimmin' wit' yoooo! Eatin' all the day! Eatin' eatin' eatin' EVERYTHING along the way! Doo-di-doo-di-doo-di-doo-di-doo, the big dude's swimmin' wit' YOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
First of all Shelly smiled, then she laughed, then she laughed and laughed and laughed.

For hours and hours they sped through The Big Green Deep until suddenly Sam stopped, holding his fin in front of Shelly to stop her from swimming ahead.

"Hold it, kiddo," Sam whispered, "we're gettin' into daaaangerous waters for a while!"
"Shilly-shally Sam!" said Shelly, suddenly scared again, "Are there sea-snakes and things?"
"No way, Hosé!" and if sharks could tip-toe then Sam would be doing it! "This is the place of The Possible Bad Things!"
"Huh?" said Shelly in a small, soft voice.
"Yeah!" said Sam, "The Place of Possible Bad Things is where lots of things hide! Where lots of things're maybe gunna go wrong! Phew! This place is scary! The Place of Possible Bad Things is where things pretend to be what they're not - it's a real mean place, pal!"
Shelly was shaking by now and that made Sam really upset as all he wanted to do was be a hero for once.

So Sam became fearless!

He asked Shelly to grab his dorsal and hold on (which she did). He kept his mouth wide, wide open so that anything that could possibly be bad knew he meant business and he swam! As hard and as fast as his fins could carry his beautiful big strong body - he swam! Past all the hidden things that were very, very frightening, he swam! No one would ever know how fast Sam swam unless they'd seen it for themselves! It was wonderful!

And he got Shelly through it to the other side.
Shelly hugged him tight.

"Hey, Peachfuzz! Everybody's gotta have a friend!" But he felt very special just the same as they swam onwards towards the place where the lost get found.

Chapter 7

Sam took Shelly all the way to the other edge of his territory where a mound of rock juts out of The Big Green Deep that the people of the Land call Julian Rock but that the mer-people who live there call The Place Where The Lost Get Found. There are secret caves at the base of the rock, beneath the frolicking waves above, where many, many mer-people live.

The mer-folk here don't mind Sam at all and aren't the least bit afraid of him. This is Sam's favourite place, you see, and
he always gets his dinner. The Land-folk don't hurt him or his kind here (not like in other places, I can tell you!) even though they are scared of him. The clever Land-folk around here know that The Big Green Deep is Sam's Place and that he belongs.

Chapter 8

As Sam and Shelly swam towards the rock they saw the mer-people, from a distance, come cavorting out from the lacy volcanic-stone caves that are carved into wondrous shapes by the might of the moods of The Big Green Deep.
Out they came - mer after mer after mer!

And Shelly clapped her hands in wonder because even from a distance she could tell - all of them were different!
And none of them seemed sad about it!

Shelly and Sam swam towards the sea-spray depths where bubbles frothed and flicked beneath the foam (that happened when The Big Green Deep reached the rock and roared 'Hello!')
Still some distance away Shelly could see the mer-people riding on turtles and stingray and snapper. They were gay, graceful, gallivanting and otherwise dancing in different ways.

Shelly's heart was smiling.

All of them had different coloured hair - red and gold and green and pink and blue and violet and white and black and brown and orange! And many of them had different coloured skin, too - black and brown and red and yellow and green and blue but ...
As Shelly and Sam closed the distance Shelly was shocked (and a little bit scared) - all the mer had faces!!

Chapter 9

"Oh, shilly,shilly,shilly, shilly, shilly..." stressed Shelly.
Sam interrupted her "What's the problem, kiddo?"
"Faces!" cried Shelly, "They have faces on, just like in the story books!"

The first of the mer-people, a brown-skinned mer-boy with deep purple hair, swam to a stop in front of Shelly and Sam.
"How're ya doin' dude!" said Sam.
"Hi Sam - how're ya doin' big guy?" said Corby (that was his name), "Who's your friend?"
"Corby," smiled Sam, "this is Shelly - she was lost."
"Duh!" replied Corby knowingly, "Hi, Shelly!" and he grinned.
"Faces!" said Shelly again, still in shock.
"The magic gift of The Place Where The Lost Get Found," said Corby.
"Magic!" said Shelly aware that it might not be safe - it had almost been a rule back in The Drowned Land but no one had been quite sure whether it was real or not so they'd only said 'maybe'. "Okay, so why?" asked Shelly.
"!" expressed Corby by moving his eyebrows.
"Why, eyes for seeing beauty and for crying when we're sad! Eyebrows to lift in surprise or to bring together when thinking or when we're in doubt! Mouths to laugh and kiss with! Noses to smell whatever needs smelling!" and he laughed (and, Shelly had to admit, faces made laughing lovely!) "And so that when we look at each other we can appreciate the differences."
By now there were swarms of mer-folk all around them, just listening (with ears) to what the newcomer had to say.
"Oh." Was all Shelly said.
"What's wrong, Peachfuzz?" asked Sam, aware that she was sad again.
"Now I don't even belong here shilly-shally ..." sighed Shelly.
"Why?" asked Corby, obviously surprised that she was sad.
"Because I don't have a face, so I'm still different!" Corby and Sam and lots of other mer-people laughed and laughed. Shelly almost turned to swim away.
Corby took both her hands in his: "Sorry, Shelly," he said with much concern, "We're not laughing at you! None of us had faces when we first came here!"
He had Shelly's full attention now. "Then how?" she asked.
"We go and visit Bohemia," he replied, deciding that Shelly was so lovely she would be his new best friend.
"Who's Bohemia?" asked Shelly, barely masking
her excitement, hardly daring to believe in magic but - seeing is believing!

Chapter 10

Bohemia is a Toadfish Witch (she's not a real toadfish - she's a very pleasant, magical mer-woman unless somebody was to step on her, so to speak, which is where the title comes from - funny how bad moods can be remembered!) and she's the Sea-Seeress for The Place Where The Lost Get Found and she wields special magics.

She does have a magic mirror (that she keeps nice and clean somewhere deep within her cauldron) that lets the person without a face look within and therefore know themselves. They learn about their own faces that way.

Bohemia's magic, however, was the ability to also see the face within the mirror and be able to conjure it onto the faceless mer-person who had come to seek a face.

Sam and Corby guided Shelly to Bohemia's house.

Along the way Sam said "Hey, kiddo! Don't be scared, no matter how scary she might look on the outside, a'right?" he grinned his special 'trust me' grin and continued: " 'Cause she's thu Toadfish Witchy-poo of The Big Green Deep; the see-all, know-all babe of all-things-magic and wise. Hey! She's the Voodoo Queen of mer-dom, a doo-di-doo-di-doo-di-doo-di-doo type Mambo-Mama, don'tcha know!" He paused to take a breath, "And she's cool, Peachfuzz! Very cool!" He laughed (and so did Corby), "And ain'tcha sure by now that the big guy'll keep ya safe?"
"You're my hero, big guy," said Shelly, "sure as shilly-shally!"

Chapter 11

They swam to the front door of the Toadfish Witch's house only to find it guarded by an enormous turtle.

"It's okay," whispered Sam to the others, "Leave this to me!"
He cleared his throat (as though to make an announcement) and said loudly: "We respectfully request a visit with Her Witchiness who's hopefully hangin' out at home today!"

"I'm ....... not .......deaf .....!" said the turtle, seemingly offended.

"My apologies, turtle-guy!" said Sam - and he smiled his most charming of smiles.

"Well ....... then ....... I'll ....... go ....... and ....... ask
....... if ....... she ....... wants ....... to ....... see ....... you ....... today ....... Sam."
The turtle slowly turned to Shelly and Corby. "Who ....... shall ....... I ....... say ....... is ....... in ....... your ....... company .......?"

(It's never good manners to interrupt a turtle - no matter how slow they are at anything - they're mostly very ancient, you understand, and are only slow because they're old enough to have figured out that they've got plenty of time.)

"What's your name?" asked Shelly before Sam could stop her. Sam shrugged and rolled his eyes and wondered why she'd been so silly as to ask - this could take all day and he really didn't want to get hungry around his friends (his nature being what it was).

"Some ....... of ....... us ....... like ....... to ....... keep ....... some ....... things ....... secret ......." said the turtle, even more slowly than before.
'Shilly-shally, Shelly!' thought Shelly to herself - she hadn't meant to pry.

The turtle, however, wasn't offended, "Wait ....... here ......." and he turned and waded behind the thick kelp curtain that covered the entrance to the Toadfish Witch's house.

Chapter 12

The turtle returned and held the curtain aside with his beak so that the visitors could enter and Shelly followed Corby and Sam inside the house.

Inside was huge! (It hadn't looked that big from the outside but, it must be remembered, it is a house where magic is made!)

There were shelves and tables and armchairs large and small. There were chests and trunks and boxes of every shape and size. There were desks and cupboards and chairs and carpets and a big four-posted bed draped in cloths of every imaginable colour and there were jars and bottles and lotions and potions and unguents and oils and lineaments and odd, weird things that Shelly couldn't recognise at all (and neither would she like to guess!) There were herbs and talismans and amulets and long-shriveled other things hanging from the roof. And there was a kitchen.

And it was there, in the kitchen, that Shelly first saw Bohemia!

She was cooking chips (don't ask me how! How am I supposed to explain her magic? I'm just here to tell you about it!)

Chapter 13

Shelly really was surprised!
"Oh, shilly, shilly shally!" she whispered to Sam.
"Shh, kiddo!" Sam whispered back.

Bohemia bopped around the kitchen singing "Buffalo soldier ... hm-hm-hm-hm-hmhmhmhm ...".

She was a whip-thin mer-woman with bangles all up her arms and lots and lots of beads and bits of string and shells and inscrutable juju talismans around her neck hanging down to her waist. She had an elemental raven sitting, cawing, on her shoulder and a large, emerald-green elemental lizard kept darting out from behind her neck to stare at the visitors with ruby-red eyes. Around her head, like a wound-about scarf was a calico cat, sound asleep, his paw draping gracefully onto her forehead. Sprouting from her head (seemingly from within the nest that the cat made) were rainbow-coloured dreadlocks that floated like octopus legs in the water of the kitchen (you'd have thought they'd get in the way, they were so long, but her magic kept them out of mischief). She wore a pair of round spectacles perched on the end of her nose.

Bohemia ignored them until Sam introduced the other to her by announcing: "May I present!! Th' Voodoo Queen of th' Big Deep Green!!!!!!!!!" whereby Bohemia looked at them over the top of her glasses while Corby and Shelly both felt moved to bow.
"Ahhhhh!" exclaimed Bohemia when she noticed Shelly. It was the hair, you see? Even Bohemia had never met anyone else with rainbow-coloured hair.

Shelly was a little startled at how quickly Bohemia could move and before she knew it the Witch had her clutched in a big warm hug. Shelly hugged her back. She sighed, from deep, deep down, with the happiest sigh she had ever sighed.

Bohemia held her at arms distance and looked her up and down. "Hmmm," she said, "You'll do very nicely!"
"?" thought Shelly.
"Lots of darty, darty magics flitting inside you, girl, ain't there?" (it wasn't a question that required an answer, though.)
"I going to eat mah chips fuhst, then I going to fix you up wid a nice, good face, huh?" and she chuckled.
"Go and get you sitting down in mah parlour. I be there in a moment!"

Shelly, Sam and Corby went wandering amongst the weird and wonderful things in Bohemia's living room, being careful not to touch anything (just in case it wasn't safe).

Bohemia came into the room struggling with a big, old, bronze cauldron which she set to bubbling over a magic sea-foam fire. She swam around dropping in this and that from bottles or jars and from things that hung from the ceiling, singing and humming and 'oooing' and 'ahhhing' until the recipe was finished.

She thrust her hand, then her arm (right up to the shoulder!) down deep into the cauldron, fished around for a moment - her
face deep in concentration - and pulled out a medium-sized round mirror with a curly, silver handle.

"Ahh! Gotcha!" she exclaimed proudly as though the mirror had been a fish that she had been chasing for her lunch.
She wiped off all the goop from the recipe and rubbed the face with a special oil and handed the mirror to Shelly.

While Shelly was peering into the glass the raven was bouncing up and down on Bohemia's shoulder in excitement, the calico cat opened one bright blue eye but couldn't be bothered to open the other one so went back to sleep instead and the lizard sped back and forth from one side of Bohemia's neck to the other, looking for the best view of the face-making magic.

Chapter 14

Shelly looked into the mirror. And someone looked back!
The mer-girl looking back at Shelly had light green eyes with flecks of grey and gold. She had lips. She had a nose. She had cheeks and eyebrows and a chin and ears, and she had hair that was the colours of rainbows.

Shelly smiled and the face smiled back.

Chapter 15

Bohemia simply let Shelly watch for a while - just to get used to the idea.

Then: " Okay, child! It's time fo' the magic part of everything!!!"

Shelly was ready.

Bohemia rubbed her hands together for what seemed like a very long time.

When she stopped, and slowly opened them, there was a thin, sheeny skin-like thing between them which she placed over the glass of the mirror whispering "#,**!gnn,sp#!oo, ah*!!#, wshhhh#!*!!"

'Shiiilee' thought Shelly.

Bohemia lifted the skin-like thing from the mirror and placed it on Shelly EXACTLY where a face should be ... and hey! presto! the image from the mirror was Shelly!
Shelly smiled.
Sam and Corby and Bohemia (and possibly the crow but you wouldn't know for certain) smiled back at her and I think Corby fell in love.

Then Shelly cried - not because she was sad but because she was happy. And she knew the pleasure of tears for the first time in her life.

Chapter 16

"Now I going to ask you something..." said Bohemia to Shelly.

Shelly beamed her newest smile at Bohemia.

"You see," continued Bohemia, "I think we are relatives or some kinda thing what wit' you rainbow hair and you little magics dartin' all about and I have never, in mah long, long life, met another mer wit' the hair and the magics! And I would like to take a holiday and swim to the Caribbean to dance wit' the music over there and play wit' the cute Jamaica boys fo' a while so I want to teach you to do the magic." Bohemia tipped her head from one side to the other, sending her dreadlocks into wild motion, waiting for Shelly to reply, "You want the job?" she concluded.

"Why, yes!" replied Shelly, using her mouth to talk with for the first time and feeling what it felt like to have her eyes smile.
"Cool!" said Corby.
"Okay, okay," said Sam, "I'd love ta stay 'n chat wit' you guys but I gotta go eat!!"

They all laughed as Sam, attempting to keep his mouth clamped shut until he was outside and away from his friends, did a couple of circles of the room and sped for the door calling "Later!" as he left.

Chapter 17

So Shelly moved into Bohemia's house, found out the title of Toadfish Witch was just Bohemia's way of keeping the secret that she was very, very nice and heaps and heaps of fun, and learned the ways of magic.

The ways of magic came easily to Shelly.

She made loads of friends among the mer-folk who lived in The Place Where The Lost Get Found. She went to parties and lots of picnics, learned about delivering mer-babies and healing the occasional argument, and she remained best, best friends with both Sam and Corby.

And she loved being 'Shelly the Second Sea-Seeress'.

And she loved having a face so that people could know what she was feeling.

And she loved being as different as everybody else!

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