Nicoletta's Secret

• Jessica Kelly, Grade 4
• Short Story
• 2014

The water was calm. All of a sudden she was grabbed... It was a dream she had many times. She didn’t know what it meant.

On Nicoletta’s birthday, Nicoletta asked her mother why she wasn’t allowed to go to swimming carnivals or the local swimming pool. Her mum didn’t reply even though she knew the answer.

So she left to walk and visit her mother’s massive and stunning garden because she loved flora. She found a breathtaking waterfall.

She saw a journal with a seaweed cover. She decided to pick it up. The book had her name embossed on it. It all came back to her, coming out of a clam shell in a white dress with blue outlined bubbles. She was swimming. She was breathing underwater. She was of the sea. Nicoletta raced straight to her mother and instantly asked about it. She knew what the dream meant now. It had been real. She had been kidnapped as a child. Her mother took her journal. She told her she could go and live in the sea and return once a month.

So she ran to the waterfall dived in and swam away.

While she was gone her mother married. The day after the wedding ceremony Nicoletta arrived for her visit. From that second on her new stepfather really disliked her because of the secret Nicoletta’s mother told him the evening before she arrived.

Then they all went for a walk together, on the way Nicoletta showed them the waterfall and her stepfather pushed her under water. She swam off and hid. Very soon after her mother and stepfather split up. For Nicoletta’s safety she was told never to return to land.

Nicoletta’s stepfather took the army to invade their home to find and trap Nicoletta. The army could only find her mother. So they trapped her and put up wanted posters of Nicoletta. No human could find Nicoletta because she was hiding in the sea. They knocked her house down.

Nicoletta’s stepfather found her on the beach. She woke up suddenly and ran towards the sea. She tripped and fell into the water. She instantly started to swim and escaped. In his anger and focussed on Nicoletta he also tripped, fell into the water and drowned.

The army gave up on trying to capture Nicoletta. Her mother was set free from where she was captured. Nicoletta the water ceature was in all the fishermen’s tales, stories and legends.