Emily Windsnap and the Castle in the Mist (13 page)

So I did. I stopped trying. I stopped swimming, stopped pushing myself to get there faster or sooner — and instead I listened to the ring. It felt as though I were tuning a radio: finding the right station and getting it clear and sharp.

I held my hand out in front of me, letting the ring guide me. Immediately the water became
smoother; a gentle current started to glide me along. With the slightest, tiniest flicks of my tail, I zoomed forward. Heading toward the castle.

At last, it was coming closer! Soon the current slowed. The water seemed to grow thicker, and colder, and much darker.

Below me, a shoal of silver fish swirled down like a light beam, flashing briefly through the black sea. In their wake, a group of manta rays slowly flapped their long capes as they slithered by. I kept well out of the way, watching from behind a rock till they’d passed.

Ahead of me, the sea looked even blacker. As I got closer, I could see a big dark hole, a tunnel. Sharp rocks formed a ring around its entrance.

The strangest fish seemed to pace across the tunnel’s entrance, gliding heavily and slowly. Five or six of them. I knew what these were. I’d never seen one in real life, but we’d studied them in Aquatics and Animals: humphead parrot fish. Almost twice as big as me, they looked like big, burly bouncers wearing silly masks and rubber shields. Their bodies were gray, with a purple splotch of paint in a line up their heads like war paint. These fish had jaws you didn’t want to get in the way of. Each time one of them passed the tunnel’s entrance, it opened its enormous mouth and took a bite at the rock, dissolving it into soft sand. A tiny beach lay around the entrance.

My tail shook. The castle lay beyond this tunnel. I knew it.

I waited for ages, counting the seconds in between each sweep of the tunnel’s entrance until I’d worked out the best time to go. One more parrot fish passed the entrance — and then it was open. This was it. They were all facing away, swimming to opposite sides. Any second now, one of them would turn and swim back. It was now or never. And never wasn’t an option.

So I darted into the tunnel.

It was so cold in there, and so dark. And I felt so alone. Every now and then, I passed something. Thin black fish swam in single file along the sides of the tunnel, coming from behind and overtaking me. Thick, chunky silvery-blue fish flopped by in pairs, swimming toward me and sailing over my head. Trails of seaweed hung from the walls, waving with the current and making me jump when they brushed against me.

I swam on.

The tunnel twisted and writhed about like a giant snake.
Around the next corner, around the next corner,
I said to myself again and again. It had to end sometime.

And then it did.

The tunnel led upward, growing lighter and warmer with every stroke until I emerged, panting and breathless, in a round pool. I took a few seconds to catch my breath as I glanced around. Where was I?

I swam all around the edges of the pool. The walls were gray rock and covered in green algae; chunks of bubbly seaweed hung down into the water like bunches of grapes on a vine.

Above the water, the pool was enclosed by walls. Gray, lumpy, dark, and cold, dripping with dampness, it was like a long-forgotten cellar, with a metal door in one corner.

I’d done it. I was in the castle. In a cellar. On my own.

What was I
doing
?

I shivered as I pulled myself out of the water and waited on the side, watching my tail flicker halfheartedly, flapping on the surface of the water as it faded away. My legs slowly emerged, numb and tingling. This time the numbness in my feet didn’t go away. I looked down. Webbed. Even more so, like my hands.

I didn’t have time to think about that, or about any of the fears I could so easily have thought about if I gave myself half a chance. Just one question remained: why was I so sure the castle offered me something? I tried to bat that question
away with the rest of my dark thoughts. Whatever the castle wanted with me, I had to find out and get back to the boat. The others would be up soon.

Edging around to the doorway, I felt for a handle. A brass knob turned slowly, creaking like an ancient floorboard as I twisted it. Despite the creaking, it turned easily enough, and I opened the door.

I inched my way up a spiral staircase, gripping a rope handrail for support. Around and around, the stairs climbed steeply and tightly. I felt as though I were climbing into the clouds, floating upward. By the time I reached the top, I was dizzy and disoriented. Another door. This time I held my breath and turned the knob as slowly and gently as I could.

I was in a corridor, wide and long, with pictures all along the walls. Battle scenes, shipwrecks, storms at sea; the kind of thing you always see in castles like this.

I almost laughed at myself.
Castles like this?
How could I even think for a moment that this was like anywhere I’d ever been?

I mean, yes, from the inside it looked a little like
the kind of place you might see in a book or on a documentary or something. But there was something different about it too. Aside from the fact that it seemed to float on a mist in the middle of the ocean, something about it felt unreal — like a film set or a cartoon. I couldn’t put my finger on it, exactly, but it was just a tiny step removed from reality. As I moved along the corridor, I felt a little like an actor in a film where everything else is computer-generated animation. Unreal.

I kept glancing at the pictures to see if anything had changed while I wasn’t looking — whether the boats had moved or the storms had raged. They hadn’t. Of course they hadn’t. I was imagining it. I must be.

I crept on down the corridor. Ahead of me, another door lay open. I went in.

It was a smallish, box-shaped room, jam-packed from floor to ceiling with dusty books in fancy bindings, all bronze and gold. The titles were full of words I could hardly read. Most were foreign; a few were English. All looked hundreds of years old. Not exactly your light bedtime reading.

Then I noticed the window. A large rectangle that covered half of one side of the room, it was set into a recess with a small bench. I sat on the bench and looked out. The sea stretched for miles and miles, all the way to the horizon, just as it did from
Fortuna.
But down below, waves lapped on rocks
that were gradually surfacing like bared teeth as the tide edged out. It was as though the castle stood on a podium above the rest of the world, separate from the world, floating above it as though in a dream.
What was this place?

Another door took me out of the library into a smaller room. One side of the room was filled with weapons. Opposite, the wall was covered in silk banners painted with flags from all over the world. I recognized some of the shapes and colors from geography lessons back in Brightport. Others were completely unfamiliar. There was even a skull and crossbones on one flag.

I moved on quickly. The room led out to another corridor. More paintings on the walls, this time portraits. Men in naval uniforms, beautiful women smiling up at them, young men standing proud on the decks of warships, girls perched on rocks. I moved closer to examine the pictures in more detail.
Hold on.
Were they girls, or were they —

What was that?

A bell clanged loudly, echoing down the corridor.

I glanced furtively around. Was it me? Had I tripped an alarm? Was someone going to come out and catch me?
No! Please don’t let me be captured again!
Memories of being caught and imprisoned in an underwater cell after I’d awoken the kraken
rushed through me with a horrible shudder. I couldn’t get caught here!

There was a recess behind me, a heavy wooden door at the back of it. I jammed myself into it, my heart almost bursting out of my mouth. Pinning my body to the door, I held my breath, shut my eyes tight, and prayed for the alarm to stop.

And then it did. Stopped dead. Silence all along the long corridor. Nothing moved.

My body sagged in relief as I leaned against the door, letting out a long breath and trying to decide what to do next.

The relief didn’t last long. A moment later, I heard footsteps. They were coming from behind the door, getting closer! There was no time to hide. My body froze as I stood in the recess.

And then the door opened.

I was looking into a pair of very green and very surprised eyes.

“Who are you?” asked the boy, staring back at me. He was tall, taller than me anyway, and skinny like me too. He was probably about the same age, maybe a little older, and dressed in black flared trousers and a black T-shirt. He had long jet-black hair parted perfectly in the middle and the most piercing green eyes I’d ever seen, which he continued to fix on me.

For a brief second, I remembered Millie’s prediction about a tall, skinny stranger. Was this him? What had she said about him? I couldn’t remember. I tended not to listen carefully to Millie’s fortune-telling. For once, I wished I had.

“I — I —” was all I managed to say.

The boy glanced quickly down the corridor before beckoning me into the room. “You’d better come in,” he said, recovering more quickly than me. His voice was silky and smooth, like his hair, and serious, like his face.

As I followed him into the room, I forced myself to speak. “I’m Emily,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I looked awkwardly around me. Three of the walls were covered with maps and scrolls. There wasn’t a blank inch. Every country and every ocean in the world must have been on these walls. The fourth wall had a long rectangular window that looked out to sea. Beneath it, a thick wooden bookcase held rows and rows of books, brown and bound in gold like the ones in the library. The room felt almost unreal, as though the books and maps were part of a stage set and underneath them lay a thousand years of history and mystery.

The boy noticed me looking. “They’re from my ancestors,” he explained.

“Your ancestors?”

“Pirates, captains, travelers of all kinds,” he said.
“Many ships have been wrecked on the rocks of Half Light Castle.”

I nodded as though I understood.

“Look, sit down,” he said, gesturing to a huge armchair. With its thick, dark wooden arms and green velvet seat, it reminded me of the furniture in the stately homes I’d seen in some of Mom’s books. Mom. Just the thought of her made me ache. Where was she now? Was she trying to find me? Would I ever see her again? Each question was like a knife twisting around and around in my chest.