Emily Windsnap and the Land of the Midnight Sun (10 page)

We crept through the tunnel. Aaron led the way. The farther we went, the darker it got. If it hadn’t been for what had just happened, I would have held his hand but as it was, I kept my distance, zipped my mouth as tight as my coat, and plodded on through the damp, cold blackness.

Just as I was beginning to wonder if we should give up and turn around, Aaron’s voice echoed back to me.

“Look!”

I peered into the murky darkness. What was I supposed to be looking at?

“Ahead!” Aaron called. “Light.”

He was right. I could just about see a tiny pinprick of light. Hope spurred us on and we sped up, trudging through the watery, echoey tunnel.

Gradually, the pinprick of light turned into a small circle. Then it grew to the size of a basketball. Eventually, it opened up so much that we could see out. We’d done it! We’d gotten through the mountain!

Once we were nearly out in the open again, Aaron turned to me. “We did it!” he said, coming toward me with his arms wide open.

“What are you doing?” I said, folding my arms.

He dropped his arms. “I thought we —”

“Well, you thought wrong!” I snapped. “You think I’m just going to forget everything you’ve told me and go running into your arms as though it never happened? As though I’d
ever
trust you again?”

Aaron just stood looking at me, his cheeks red as though I’d slapped him. I had to remind myself that
he
was the one in the wrong here, not me.

“Let’s just get on with what we’re here to do,” I said more gently. “And forget the rest of it for now. OK?”

Aaron nodded glumly. “OK.”

We picked our way across the last bit of rocky ground at the tunnel’s entrance, to come out into the daylight. I rubbed my eyes and looked around.

The view was utterly breathtaking. All around us, mountains stood majestically in the bright light of the afternoon. Their tops were sprinkled with snow, as though someone had carelessly tipped sugar all over them.

A low cloud cut the top off one of the mountains, sitting above it like a hat. Another had waterfalls tumbling from about halfway up, where the snow ended, all the way down, splitting into five different channels so sharp and white they looked like forked lightning.

And in the center of the ring of peaks — a lake.

Around the base of all the mountains, the color of the rock was different. The whole bottom section was a deep reddish-brown. It looked like a tidemark, like the lake used to be much higher than it was now.

We took a few steps toward the lake. I’d never seen such still water in my life. If someone had told me that it was actually a round mirror and not a lake at all, I would have believed them. Not a thing moved. The water lay silent; the mountains stood hushed and protective around it.

High up, an eagle flew from a tree and came swooping toward us, as if checking on intruders. It came so close I saw its beady black eyes — and then it whooshed away again and the silence returned.

I took a few more steps toward the edge of the lake and looked down. The mountains looked back up at me; the clouds floated perfectly still around them, like white fluffy islands in the sky.

Aaron was beside me. “I thought the reflection was supposed to be different,” he said. “Neptune said it wouldn’t be the same as the reality.”

I turned in a circle, examining the mountains, then looked back down. That was when I spotted it.

“It isn’t!” I breathed. “Look.” I pointed at the reflection in the water. “See the two mountains there with all the snow — and then that huge tall one in between them?”

Aaron followed where I was looking. “I see it,” he said.

I turned and pointed up toward the mountains. “Now look,” I told him.

Aaron gasped as he gazed where I was pointing. The two mountains were there, snowcapped exactly the same as their reflections in the lake. But there was no third mountain between them.

“But that’s —”

“Impossible?”

“Exactly.”

The third mountain — the one we could see clearly reflected in the lake — it didn’t exist.

Which was when I knew without a doubt that we were in the right place.

I
stood at the water’s edge, looking down and trying to figure out how the reflection of the third mountain could be possible. The fact was — it
wasn’t
possible. And yet, it was here in front of our eyes. Not only that, but it had been predicted, too. Neptune had told us we would see this.

So now what?

Aaron was beckoning me over. “Em, you have to look at this.”

I went to see what he was staring at. He pointed into the water right in front of us. “Look at my reflection,” he said.

I followed his finger. His reflection was pointing right back at him.

“What about it?” I asked.

“Watch my eyes.”

I looked at his eyes in the water. They were darting here, there, everywhere, looking around at the mountains, staring up from the lake into the blue sky above us, glancing this way and that.

“Stop looking around so much,” I said.

“But that’s just it. I’m not.”

I turned to face him, and I watched him as he looked down into the lake. He was staring straight down at his reflection. I looked back at the Aaron in the lake; the eyes were still darting around everywhere.

“But I don’t understand,” I murmured.

“You try it,” Aaron said. “Try to look into your own eyes.”

I looked straight down at myself — but I couldn’t meet my own gaze. My reflection’s eyes were darting all over the place, just like Aaron’s.

“Remember what Neptune said about the lake?” Aaron asked. “He said you have to meet your own eyes.”

“But we can’t,” I said.

Aaron hesitated. Then he mumbled, “What if we hold hands?”

Suddenly I was angry. “Have you done this?” I asked.

“Done what?”

I pointed at the lake. “This. It’s some kind of trick. Probably one that Archie taught you. I don’t know how you’ve done it, but if you think you can make a fool of me again, you can forget it!” I snapped.

“Emily! Listen to yourself. You’re being ridiculous. Of
course
this isn’t a trick.” And before I could stop him, Aaron had reached out and grabbed my hand. I tried to pull away, but he held on too tightly.

“Look,” he said. With his other hand he was pointing at the lake.

Our reflections were shimmering, as though the water had been disturbed, ripples blurring the edges of our bodies. Nothing else in the lake moved.

“Meet your eyes,” Aaron said.

I looked down at myself. My image looked right back into my eyes. I stopped struggling against Aaron’s hand and turned to him. “Now what?” I asked.

Aaron shrugged. “I don’t know. Why don’t we try doing it together? We each look into our own eyes at the same time?”

“OK.”

I met my eyes, staring down at myself, knowing Aaron was doing the same, and trying to ignore the feeling of a thousand butterflies fluttering in my chest. Within seconds, the eyes staring back at me turned black.

“Aaron!”

“Keep holding on,” he said firmly. “And keep looking.”

I stared into the black holes where I should have been seeing eyes. The blackness grew, sending the water spinning as it did so. Soon it had taken over my whole face, then my body, then it joined with the blackness coming from Aaron’s reflection, too. Within a couple of minutes, we were staring into a spinning, fizzing black whirlpool that had stolen both our reflections.

Neptune’s words were ringing in my ears.
You must meet your eyes and jump.

“You know what we have to do, don’t you?” Aaron asked.

I nodded. “Ready?”

“Don’t let go of my hand,” Aaron said.

“I won’t,” I replied reluctantly.

Aaron took a breath. “OK, one, two, three . . . go!”

Still holding hands, and with no idea what we were getting ourselves into, we took a breath — and jumped.

For the first few seconds, the water was so cold I wondered if Neptune’s potion had worn off, but as my tail formed, my body warmed.

In the shock of the cold, I’d dropped Aaron’s hand. But now that we were actually in the lake it didn’t seem to matter. Maybe once we’d jumped in, we’d broken the spell.

The water was so clear I could see the mountains through the surface of the lake.

Aaron was looking around. “Now what?”

I shook my head. “No idea. Should we look around?”

We swam through the lake, looking for anything that might give us a clue to our next move. But apart from an occasional fish, long see-through tubes of seaweed, and tiny bits of ice dotted around like tiny crystals, there was nothing.

“Look at this,” Aaron said. In front of us, the water looked as if it were swirling around in a whirlpool. But as I got closer, I could see it wasn’t a whirlpool at all; it was hundreds of bubbles.

That’s when I realized — they were everywhere. Tiny little bubbles the size of raindrops; bigger ones that looked like those Mom and I used to make by squeezing the soap bottle while we were doing the dishes; bigger ones still, the size of soccer balls, beach balls, even the big balls they have in gyms.

“Do you think we can touch them?” I asked.

In reply, Aaron swam toward a medium-size bubble and held his hand against it. “Yuk! It feels like slime. Gooey, sticky slime.”

I swam over and joined him. “Here,” I said, holding out my hand. “Take it.”

Aaron smiled broadly and grabbed hold of my hand.

“And before you get any ideas, no, I haven’t forgiven you,” I said.

His smile dropped, but he held firmly on to my hand.

Together, we swam toward one of the bubbles. Still holding hands, we each placed our other hand on the bubble. Aaron was right about it feeling weird. It felt a bit like putting my hand on cold pudding. But I didn’t get to spend very long thinking about how it felt. The bubble shimmered and glistened for a second, and then something started to form inside it: pictures, people.

Aaron and I stared into the bubble. A middle-aged couple was standing in a room together, a sofa along one side, a television in the corner. The television was on, but they weren’t watching it. It looked as though they were arguing.

“They’re speaking,” Aaron said. “Listen.”

Still pressing my hand against the bubble, I moved closer and tried to tune in to the sounds.

“I’m telling you, I saw it with my own eyes! Ask Mr. Barrett if you don’t believe me,” the man was saying. His face was bright red, his voice raised and high-pitched.

His wife stood shaking her head, her arms folded across her chest. “And exactly how long did you and Mr. Barrett spend in the Ship Inn before your fishing trip?” she asked through tightly pursed lips.

The man sighed. “I’ve told you. We had half a pint, that’s all. It was nothing to do with that. It was real. We both saw it — a mermaid.”

I jumped away. I felt as if the words had leaped out of the bubble and touched me, snapping electric shocks into my skin. A mermaid? They were talking about mermaids! What
was
this?

“Let’s try another one,” I said.

We held hands again and swam toward another bubble, a smaller one this time. Again, we put our hands on the bubble. Instantly it exploded into a vision — a mini drama playing out in front of our eyes.