Emily Windsnap and the Land of the Midnight Sun (15 page)

I stared at Mr. Beeston. I still couldn’t get used to the idea that the man who had spent the first twelve years of my life spying on me was now our greatest ally. “Thank you,” I said simply.

He fiddled with a button on his jacket. “Get to bed,” he said softly.

We parted company and I headed back to my cabin. I gently opened the door. Mr. Beeston had been right. Millie was lying flat on her back, arms spread out, mouth wide open, snoring like a horse.

At any other time, the sound might have bothered me. But after everything we’d just been through,
nothing
was going to keep me awake.

Five minutes later, I was in my bed, fast asleep, and for all I knew, snoring just as loudly as Millie.

I dreamed I was swimming in the roughest sea I’d ever known. Up, down, thrown all around. Wave after wave kept washing over me, pulling me down into the belly of the ocean and then spitting me out again.

A sudden lurch to the side woke me with a start.

I opened my eyes and looked around.
Just a dream.

Millie was already up. She was sitting on the end of her bed, peering into the mirror as she put her eye makeup on. “Morning,” she said with a smile. “A little early for you, isn’t it?”

I looked at the clock. Six thirty! I was about to say something when the boat dipped and Millie fell sideways.

“Bit rough out there this morning,” she said, putting her lipstick away.

Lying down wasn’t feeling very pleasant anymore. I dragged myself out of bed and rubbed my eyes. The boat dipped again, this time taking my stomach with it.

“Millie,” I said. “I need to go outside.”

We got dressed and went up to the roof deck. There were a few people already out there. They obviously weren’t enjoying this morning’s swells, either.

I looked around. “Hey, look!” I pointed to the back of the boat. Aaron and Mr. Beeston were standing separate from the others, gripping the handrail and talking close together. We made our way over to join them.

Things took a turn for the worse as we crossed the deck. The ship suddenly seemed to rise almost vertically on a massive wave. Then it careered down the other side, as if we were on a roller-coaster ride.

We made it to the back just in time to grip on to the railings.

Aaron and Mr. Beeston stumbled over to join us. Looking out at the horizon, it seemed the ocean had erupted. The sea was like a mountain range, rising and falling with enormous peaks and troughs. White froth foamed angrily over the top of every peak.

I turned to Mr. Beeston. “What’s going on?”

“I have no idea,” he said somberly. “Usually, a storm like this means only one thing.”

He didn’t even have to say the word. I knew what he meant. This had to have something to do with Neptune.

“But why?” Aaron asked, following on from my thoughts as though I’d spoken them out loud.

I thought back over the events of the night. What did any of it mean? Had we gotten the whole thing wrong? Was Neptune angry?

Ding dong ding!
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are experiencing some heavy weather,” a voice crackled over the loudspeaker. “We advise all passengers to return to their cabins until further notice. We shall be turning the ship around and returning to our last port, so that we can find a safe harbor until this weather passes. I repeat, please return to your cabins immediately and remain there until we dock, in approximately one hour. Thank you and we apologize for any inconvenience.”

We inched our way to the door and waited behind the other passengers to go in. Millie went first, then Mr. Beeston, then Aaron. I was about to follow them when something caught my eye. Something in the sea.

Millie was holding the door open for me.

“I just got something in my shoe. Need to get it out. I’m right behind you.”

“I’ll wait,” Millie said, swaying as she held the door.

“No, you go,” I said. “I’ll only be a second.”

“OK, but be quick,” she said. “I don’t want you out here while it’s like this.”

As Millie let the door close, I looked around to make sure no one was watching, then I carefully made my way to the side of the boat. I stared so hard at the peaks and troughs of the swells that my eyes began to water. Had I imagined it?

I was about to leave when I saw it again. A tail! Flashing up in the water before disappearing again. What was it? A shark? A whale?

Come on, come on,
I whispered, desperate to find out what it was before one of the ship’s officials came out and ordered me back to my cabin.

And then I saw it again. It was closer this time. And it was familiar. And even though I had no idea how in the world I could possibly be right, I knew
exactly
who that tail belonged to.

Shona!

Suddenly, she poked her head above the water and waved an arm at me. Then she pointed to the harbor we were heading for.

“See you there?” I called.

Shona nodded, and with a flick of her tail dived back under the water.

I went inside to join the others, my mind spinning with confusion — and with excitement. My best friend was here!

The excitement was tempered only by one fearful question.

Why?

T
he moment the ship docked in the port, I was in the water. I didn’t even wait for the doors to open. I hung around at the back of the ship on level three, the lowest one with an outside deck. I looked around, making sure there was no one near. And then, as gracefully and silently as I could, I dived into the choppy water.

She was there in moments.

“Shona!”

“Emily!”

We fell into each other’s arms. “You are real, aren’t you?” I gasped. “It’s not a dream?”

“It’s not a dream,” Shona said seriously. “But when I’ve told you why I’m here, you might wish it were.”

Despite Neptune’s potion on my body, I turned cold inside. “What is it? Why
are
you here? How did you get here? How did you know where we were?”

Shona held up a hand. “Whoa! One thing at a time.”

I took a breath. “OK. How did you get here?”

“It wasn’t the easiest thing in the world,” she admitted. “I swam some of it — and caught a few lifts.”

“Lifts?” I gasped. “Who with?”

“A couple of dolphins to begin with. They were great. Then I had to swim a bit more. That bit was quite tough, as the currents weren’t going my way. Luckily a lovely blue whale spotted me and helped me out. Then finally, a pod of orcas brought me the last couple of hundred miles.”

I stared at Shona. I literally didn’t know what to say. She had done all this — for me? She’d either missed me
really
badly, or something was very, very wrong.

“Do your parents know you’re here?” I asked.

Shona blushed. “They don’t know about your trip or anything, so I told them I was going to stay with you on
Fortuna
for a few days. I hate lying to them, but it was important.”

“How did you know where we were?” I asked.

Even if I’d had a hundred guesses as to what her answer might be, I would still never have gotten it right.

“Neptune told me,” she said.

Before I could do anything more than let my jaw drop open, she went on. “Well, he didn’t actually tell
me.
At least, he didn’t
mean
to tell me.”

“Shona, my head is spinning enough without riddles. What’s going on? What are you talking about?”

“I kept the phone on me the whole time. Even when I went to bed, I had it beside me on my pillow. And then something woke me up just after I’d gone to bed last night. It sounded like waves crashing over a pebbly beach — and it looked like stars glinting and shining. But it was the shell phone calling.”

“Neptune — trying to get in touch with us.”

Shona nodded. “I picked up the shell, and straightaway I heard him speaking. I couldn’t make sense of it at first — it was like he was just shouting random words down the phone.”

That sounded familiar. I still had many of Neptune’s early morning ramblings bouncing around in my head. “What kinds of things did he say?”

“I can’t remember it all. Most of it didn’t make sense. But there were a couple of things he kept repeating over and over.”

“What were they?”

“He said he’d remembered something really important. More important than anything else he’d remembered up to now.”

“Go on,” I said, half desperate to know what it was and half hoping she was going to spin around in a double backflip, splash me with her tail, and tell me the entire thing was a big joke and she’d come to take me home.

What she actually said made my
insides
do a double backflip.

“He said he’d remembered he had a brother. A twin, in fact.”

“A
what
?” Neptune had a twin brother? And he’d
forgotten
? Had Shona heard correctly? Surely she must have made a mistake.

“He said all he knew was that he had a long-forgotten twin, and that with the return of this memory came a new feeling of dread. Something terrible had happened. Something so terrible that it was still locked behind the doors of his deepest memory.”

Before I could answer, a splashing sound behind me made me spin around.

“Emily!” It was Aaron.

“Where did you come from?” I asked.

“I was looking for you when we docked. I saw you on the deck, and then I saw a couple walking toward you. I could tell you were thinking about jumping into the sea. And they were about to see you do it. I got the feeling that a couple of people setting off a “girl overboard” alarm might not have been part of your plans, so I quickly pointed out a mountain on the other side of the ship and stood chatting with them till I was pretty sure you’d had long enough to do whatever it was you were doing.”

“And then you came down to find me and see what I was up to,” I said.

“I came down to check you were all right,” Aaron corrected me.

“Aww, you two,” Shona said. “Just as mushy as ever, eh?”

“Hmm,” I said awkwardly.

Aaron’s cheeks flushed. He turned to Shona. “Anyway — what are you doing here? What’s happened?”

Shona caught Aaron up on everything she’d told me.

“So then what?” Aaron asked. “What else did Neptune tell you?”

“Not a lot,” Shona said. “He spent about five minutes barking down the phone before I had a chance to say anything. Then he suddenly stopped. I wondered if the connection had broken or something, but I couldn’t say anything . . .”

“Because then he’d realize that it wasn’t either of us on the end of the shell phone,” I put in.

“Exactly. He kept saying your names, asking if you could hear him. I was tempted to answer and pretend I was you, but I didn’t dare. I couldn’t risk getting you into trouble. But he was getting more and more worked up. I’ve never heard him like that. He kept repeating the thing about his twin brother, and how upset he was, and how bad it was for you. And something about the ice, and a glacier slowly melting, but I couldn’t tell what he was saying by then — it was all too garbled.”

“What did you do?” Aaron asked.

“I just held my breath and kept listening. Eventually, when no one was replying, he gave up and went. He said he’d keep trying to remember, and that you had to keep your shell phone nearby and wait for another update.”