Emily Windsnap and the Land of the Midnight Sun (2 page)

Shona’s mom hovered in the door of their home in Shiprock Caves and smiled apologetically. “Sorry, Emily, Shona went out earlier with some of her school friends.”

“No worries,” I said. “We’ll find her.”

She went inside and Aaron and I swam back down the tunnel and out to the open sea. A line of silver fish followed us, swimming just below me and tickling my tummy as I swam.

“Now what?” Aaron asked.

I had a tiny pang of jealousy at the thought of Shona hanging out with other friends — till I remembered I had no right to feel jealous.
I
was the one who kept abandoning
her
to be with Aaron. I could hardly complain if she chose to hang out with some of her friends from Shiprock. Real friends who didn’t drop her when they got a boyfriend.

Then I had an idea. “I know where she might be.”

The water grew colder as we made our way out to sea. Fish glanced furtively at us as we passed.

“Look,” Aaron said, laughing, as two fish swam toward us. One was fat and yellow with a purple blotch all over its face. It looked like a grand lady who’d smudged her lipstick. The other one had black-and-white stripes the length of its long body. It swam elegantly beside her, like an obedient butler.

We swam through a couple of arches in the rocks, going lower and lower till we came to a huge rug of brown seaweed flapping lazily in the tide.

“What’s this place?” Aaron asked as we swam across the seaweed to a sandy patch covered in fishing nets, old bicycles, and oil drums.

“It’s our playground,” I said, swimming through a large tube and indicating for him to follow me.

We swam to the end of the tube and looked around; Shona wasn’t there. Half of me was disappointed — but the other half felt relieved. At least she hadn’t shared our special playground with all her other friends. Plus it meant I was still alone with Aaron.

“Hey, look at this,” he called, swimming across to a black sheet at the far end of the playground. I hadn’t seen it before.

I swam over to join him. “What is it?”

“Looks like a sail to me.”

“A black sail?”

Aaron grinned. “Must be from a pirate ship! Let’s check it out.”

The sand scattered below me as I swam down, and the sail wafted upward, swishing with the tide. I swam onward, only stopping when I heard Aaron call out.

I turned back. He wasn’t there.

“Aaron?”

No reply.

“Aaron?” I called louder. “You OK?”

Still nothing.

I started swimming back to the edge of the sail, but my tail snagged on something. A piece of seaweed? I twisted around to see what it was. As I turned, the seaweed pinched harder. My tail was completely stuck. A moment later, something grabbed me around my middle.

And then the world went black.

“A
aron, get off me,” I said, laughing. It was typical of him to play a joke like this. Pretend he wasn’t following me, then sneak in and cover my eyes with his hands. Any second now, he’d say “Guess who?” and it would be an easy guess.

But he wasn’t saying anything.

“Come on, Aaron, I know it’s you,” I said. I was still laughing. I reached up to his hands so I could pull them off my face.

And that was pretty much the moment I stopped laughing.

They weren’t Aaron’s hands.

The hands over my eyes were big, cold, and clammy. “Who — who is this?” I stammered.

Whoever it was spread one of their hands across both my eyes and clamped the other one across my mouth.

I couldn’t speak. I could hardly breathe. My heart was beating so fast it felt like a motorboat’s engine in overdrive. What was going on? How long would it take Aaron to realize that something wasn’t right and come back for me?

I tried to bite the hand over my mouth but I couldn’t even pry my lips wide enough apart to open my teeth. I tried to get my tail out of the seaweed and realized that it wasn’t seaweed — it was a net.

Then I heard a voice. Gruff. Muffled. Urgent.

“Tie her tail up,” the voice said. “Slippery as an eel, this one.”

My tail felt as if it were being bent double as they bound it up. I felt hands wrap a thick band of reeds over my eyes and my mouth — and it was done. I was blind, dumb, and trapped inside a net.

“Right, let’s get out of here,” the gruff voice said. “Now!”

I had no idea where I was being taken. All I knew was that the journey seemed to go on forever, and that the sea felt as cold as the hands that gripped and carried and bustled me all the way there.

“Now what?” a voice said, sometime later. It wasn’t the gruff voice. It was a different one. Higher pitched. Smoother. Kinder? No, that was just wishful thinking.

“We do exactly what we’ve been told,” Gruff Voice answered. “Keep her here and stay with her until we’re given further instructions. The others should be here any minute.”

Others?

“Right.”

“You hold her — I’ll sort out the locks.”

“Got it.”

As one set of hands released me, the others clutched tighter, squeezing me so hard I thought they’d crush me into sand.

Moments later, Gruff Voice was back. “Right, we’re locked in. Let’s get her out of there.”

“Get her out?”

“She can’t go anywhere, and we were told not to be too rough with her. We can’t have the boss turn up and find her blindfolded and trussed up in a fishing net, can we, now?”

“You’re right. You sure the door is secure?”

“It’s locked as tight as a shark’s jaw. Come on, let’s get her out of that net.”

I squirmed and struggled and fought as they undid the net and removed the reeds around my mouth and eyes. The second my mouth was free, I found my voice.

“AAARRRRRGGHGGGGGHHHHHLETMEGOYOUMONSTERRRRRRS!” I yelled

One of them clamped a hand over my mouth. I bit into his finger.

“Lumbering lobsters!” he yelped, leaping away from me. As he did, I looked him up and down. The gruff voice belonged to an even gruffer looking merman. He was huge — at least seven foot from his head to the end of his long, sharp dusty-gray tail. He had greasy black hair tied back in a ponytail, gray eyes staring into mine, and what looked like an elaborate collection of Iron Age tools dangling from his ears, eyelids, chin, and upper lip.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to get on the wrong side of him.

“You can scream all you like,” he snarled, “but no one will hear you. We’re a long way down, and there’s no one else around for miles.”

I listened for any response to my scream. There wasn’t one — unless you counted the gentle sway of multicolored sea bushes, or the shoal of a hundred tiny silver fish that darted toward me and then flicked away again, flashing like a knife in sunlight.

“Where are we?”

He didn’t reply.

I cast a quick glance at the other merman: skinnier, younger, only about half the amount of piercings, and maybe a foot shorter, but looking at me with the same expression. I wasn’t exactly sure what the expression was. Hatred? Menace? Anger?

No. It wasn’t any of those. Or if it was, it was mixed with something else. If they hadn’t just grabbed me in a park and locked me in an underwater cell in the middle of the ocean, I’d have said they looked nervous — as though they weren’t quite sure how to handle me. No, it couldn’t be that. But what was it?

“What do you want with me?” I asked.

Gruff Voice ignored me as he rubbed his finger where I’d bitten it.

“I’m sorry about that,” I said.

Wait! These guys kidnap me in a net, blindfold me, gag me, and drag me to a hidden cave, and I apologize to
them
? “What do you want with me?” I repeated, more firmly. “Why am I here? Who are you?”

Skinny Merman opened his mouth to answer me, but Gruff Voice held up a hand. The one I hadn’t bitten. “No answers,” he said.

“But, Orta —” the other merman began.

Gruff Voice — Orta — shook his head. “But nothing, Kai. We have our instructions. No conversation, no explanation, no nothing. Got it?”

Kai nodded. “Got it,” he mumbled.

They both fell silent after that. For the first time, I looked around the cave and realized how big it was — and how grand. The roof seemed to glow with a hazy fluorescent light in between stones carved into intricate shapes all along the rocky ceiling.

I swam around the walls, feeling and examining them as I moved. They were filled with crystals. Natural sea crystals or some kind of exotic jewels, I couldn’t tell. All I knew was that I hadn’t been locked away in a prison cell. I’d seen an underwater prison cell when I’d rescued my dad — and it was nothing like this!

An occasional lone fish swam past, black and sleek, skittering quickly from one side to the other like a businessman on his way to a meeting. A long silver eel slithered by, slicing in front of me like a sword.

I swam toward the entrance: an enormous solid oak door with metal bars across it. It was bolted and fastened with the biggest padlock I’d ever seen.

That was when I heard something on the other side. Scuffling and shuffling outside the cave! What was it? A huge shoal of fish? The tide hitting against the door? Or was there a chance it was someone who could help me get out of here?

I banged on the door as hard as I could. Which wasn’t actually very hard. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried it, but it turns out that bashing your fists against a solid oak door half a mile down in the ocean is fairly pointless. All I managed to do was bruise my hands and make a soft thudding sound.

“HELP!” I yelled instead. “I’M BEING HELD PRISONER! SAVE ME!”

The two mermen were by my side in seconds. “I wouldn’t waste your time,” Orta said.

“It’s just some sort of big fish,” Kai added. “A shark or something. Out here in the middle of the ocean, we get all sorts.”

That made me feel
so
much better.

“No it isn’t, you stupid seaworm!” Orta snapped, reaching for his key. “It’s the others. Get out of my way.”

A moment later, he’d opened the door, and a couple more mermen came in holding a package between them. A wriggling package trussed up in a net. For a second, I wondered what they’d brought us. And then the package spoke.

“Gtmtofhrrrrrr!” it said.

Wait! It was . . . It was . . .

Aaron!