Emily Windsnap and the Land of the Midnight Sun (3 page)

“Get him out of that thing!” I yelled, angrier than ever. “Let him out now!”

“Hold your halibut, we’re
getting
him out!” Orta snapped. He pulled a long knife from a belt at the top of his tail, and with a couple of swift movements, the net was open.

Kai pulled off Aaron’s blindfold and gag. Aaron blinked and gasped as he adjusted to his surroundings. As soon as he saw me, he swam over and hugged me.

“I didn’t know what had happened to you,” he said. “I was right behind you, and the next thing I knew, they . . .”— he lowered his voice as he looked at the mermen who had brought him in —“these pieces of sea vermin grabbed me.”

“Are you OK?” I asked.

He nodded. “What about you? Did they hurt you?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “At least, I am now,” I added, with as much of a smile as I could manage, given the circumstances.

Aaron smiled back, and he pulled me closer. As long as I was with him, things didn’t seem quite so bad.

“Delightful and touching as this little love scene is,” Orta said, breaking into my thoughts, “we’ve got a job to do.” He looked at the mermen who had brought Aaron in. “You can leave them both with us,” he said. “We can manage.”

“You sure?”

“Sure as sharks.” He swam back to the door behind the two mermen. As he pulled the key from around his neck again, Aaron glanced at me and raised an eyebrow.

I knew what he was thinking. I was thinking the same.
This could be our chance to escape!
Without saying a word, we edged closer to the door while the mermen talked.

Orta put his key in the padlock. Turned it. Opened the door.

“Now!”
Aaron hissed in my ear, and I made a dash for the door.

“I don’t think so!” Kai grabbed hold of my tail, gripping so hard I thought he’d break my scales off. Half a minute later, I was back inside the room, the door shut fast behind me.

Orta clicked the padlock into place and put the key back around his neck. He nudged a thumb at Kai. “Just because he
looks
stupid doesn’t mean he actually
is
stupid,” he said.

“Yeah,” Kai agreed. Then he scratched his head and looked at Orta. “Hey!” he added, realizing what Orta had said.

Orta brushed him off with a dismissive wave. “You just need to be patient,” he said to us. “I’m sure you won’t be here much longer — one way or another.” He emphasized the “one way or another” with a menacing laugh.

I swam back over to Aaron. He was examining the lights and crystals in the walls.

“Look at these,” he said. “They’re amazing.”

“Almost like jewels,” I said, shuffling closer.

Aaron shuffled closer to me, too. “We’ll be OK, you know,” he said. “We’ll think of something.”

The strange thing was, when he smiled at me like he was doing, I couldn’t help believing him.

“You’re right,” I said. “I think everything’s going to be —”

Except I didn’t get to finish my sentence. It was washed away by a wave that swooshed through the cave so suddenly and so fiercely that it swept all four of us up to the ceiling and then hurled us against the opposite wall.

Orta was first to recover. He pulled himself up, brushed a hand down his tail, and gave Kai a thump in the chest. “Look sharp,” he said. “Boss is coming.”

I shuddered to think what their boss was going to be like. These two were bad enough. How much worse would
he
be?

I didn’t have long to wonder.

Three heavy bangs on the door, and Orta practically flew across the cave to open it. He unlocked the padlock, swung the bolt across, and swam backward, his head bowed low as he held the door open.

And then, pulled by a dozen dolphins, and riding a golden chariot that shone so brightly it lit the caves up like a fireworks display, in came their boss.

Neptune!

I gasped. “But —”

With the briefest glance at Aaron and me, Neptune turned to the mermen. “Good work,” he said somberly. “You are relieved.”

Bowing low, Orta and Kai swam out of the cave without a backward glance at either of us. Neptune raised his trident, and a dolphin at the back of the chariot flicked its tail to shut the door behind them.

“Now, then,” he said gravely, turning to face us. “Let’s get down to business.”

D
own to business?
What did
that
mean? I was fairly certain I hadn’t signed up to do any business with Neptune. It wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you forgot. And it wasn’t the kind of thing you volunteered for in a hurry, either.

In case you’ve never come across Neptune, he’s the king of all the oceans. He used to rule with an iron rod — or rather, an iron trident. That’s his special staff that he uses to do things like create storms or put curses on people.

But he’d softened recently. I’d thought he was happy and that everything was fine.

I was clearly wrong.

“You’re probably wondering why I have brought you down here,” Neptune said in a low, deep voice that echoed and rumbled throughout the cave.

Er . . . yes!

“I shall tell you.” And then he fell silent.

He looked mad. And even though I’d seen Neptune look mad more times than I cared to remember, there was something different about this time. He didn’t look mad with us. He looked cross with
himself.

He suddenly lifted his trident in the air and turned to his dolphins. With a flick of the trident, he bellowed, “Leave us! Return when I call you!”

The dolphins flipped and turned in a swift, instant movement. One of them flicked open the door and they dived through it, flipped it closed behind them, and left the three of us alone in the cave. Neptune beckoned us to come closer.

Aaron and I shuffled awkwardly toward him.

“I have a job for you,” he said. “A . . . well, a kind of mission.”

“A mission?” Aaron asked. “What sort of mission?”

“I can’t tell you too much at this stage,” Neptune replied gravely. “But I can tell you this — it is extremely important, extremely secret . . . and extremely dangerous.”

Great. This was sounding better by the second.

“Why us?” Aaron asked.

Neptune looked down and examined his hands. “Why not?” he mumbled.

“Why
not
?” I asked. I could think of
lots
of reasons why not!

Neptune shrugged and waved his trident in an overly nonchalant manner. “Because you are semi-mers,” he said flippantly. “I thought you would do.”

He wasn’t convincing me. He was trying too hard to sound casual. He didn’t go to the kind of lengths he’d gone to with us because we “would do.”

“If you just need semi-mers, why not send someone like Mr. Beeston?” Aaron asked.

Mr. Beeston was half human, half merman, and he already worked for Neptune. In fact, he’d spent most of my life spying on Mom and me and reporting back to Neptune on his findings. When I’d found out, I was furious. But lately, he’d changed. He’d apologized, too, and things were different now — so I’d forgiven him. It didn’t mean I’d ever trust him again, though.

“Mr. Beeston seems an obvious candidate for your sneaky secret missions,” I pointed out.

Neptune shook his head. “Beeston is not to know about this mission,” he said. Then he scratched his beard and screwed up his eyes. “Actually, now that I think about it, perhaps it’s not such a bad idea. Beeston
could
come in handy.”

“Great,” I said. “Does that mean we can go now?”

“Go?”

“You just said — Mr. Beeston can do it.”

Neptune’s face darkened. “Mr. Beeston can
not
do this,” he said firmly. “He cannot
know
about it, cannot know the full truth, anyway. What he can perhaps do is chaperone the pair of you. With limited knowledge of the full task.”

“Your Majesty, forgive me, but can I just check that I’ve got this right?” I said, summoning up all my courage to stare into his face till he met my eyes. “This mission is something so secret that even Mr. Beeston, one of your closest advisers, isn’t to know the full truth of it, and yet you’re telling us that we’ve been chosen simply because we’re semi-mers?”

“All right,” Neptune said. “I admit it. It’s not just because you are semi-mers.”

He paused for so long that my tail started to itch and twitch with impatience. A black-and-gold spotted fish that looked like a leopard weaved between us. Neptune watched the fish swim away, then turned back to us. “It’s because I’m sending you to a place filled with secrets and magic,” he said. Which didn’t sound so bad, actually, till he added, “And fear.”

Secrets, magic,
and fear
didn’t sound quite so enticing.

“It’s a dangerous combination,” Neptune went on, in case we hadn’t figured that out for ourselves.

“So why us?” Aaron asked again.

“Because you will need all of my powers for this mission,” Neptune replied.

“All of your powers? But we haven’t got them anymore,” I said.

Aaron and I had found a pair of magical wedding rings that Neptune and his wife, Aurora, had given to each other. We’d discovered that when we held hands while wearing the rings, we gained Neptune’s magical powers. Very cool once we’d figured out what was going on — except Neptune didn’t find it quite as much fun as we did, and he made us give our power back to him. That had been weeks ago.

Neptune fixed his eyes on me so hard I had to turn away. “Yes, you have,” he said.

I opened my mouth to argue, but he went on. “A short while after you gave your power back to me, I noticed something. When I was near you, I could feel it. A vibration. A sense that you still had some of my power in your hands. I was baffled. How was it that you had it again? So I watched you.”

I bit back a response. So we were back to the old ways? Neptune sending people to spy on us?

“And?” Aaron asked.

“And I soon had my answer.” Neptune looked from Aaron to me, and back again. “You kissed, didn’t you?”

“What?”
Aaron exploded. “How do you . . . When. . . What . . . ?” he blustered. His face had turned bright red.

“Well, then,” Neptune said. “That explains everything.”

“What do you mean?
What
does it explain?” I asked.

“I was on a visit to Shiprock last week and I noticed you two in the distance.”

I remembered that day. We’d swum to Rainbow Rocks and played in the water around the rocks, holding hands and talking and laughing all afternoon.

“When I saw you, I felt the feeling between you — the happiness, the joy. And I did something that I am now ashamed of.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

Neptune wouldn’t meet our eyes. “I sent a spike of anger to you,” he said to the floor, brushing something off the end of his tail.

“A spike of anger?” I said. “What’s that?”

“I was jealous.”

“Jealous? Of us?” Aaron stared at Neptune.

“You had something that I had lost,” Neptune said, finally meeting our eyes. “And it upset me — just for a moment. So I made a tiny whirlpool and sent it spinning your way. It wouldn’t have done you any harm. I just wanted to knock you off your happy little perch for a moment.”

I tried to remember the whirlpool — but I couldn’t. I couldn’t recall anything other than the happy feelings I’d had all afternoon.

“There was no whirlpool,” Aaron said.

“Exactly. It didn’t
reach
you. You were so wrapped up in your happy little bubble that you didn’t even notice it, spinning close to the rocks, but unable to get any nearer to you.”

“Unable?” I asked.

“Because you were holding hands,” Neptune explained. “Somehow or other, you had regained the power to overcome my magic.”

“But how?”

Neptune cut me off with a wave of his hand. “That’s what I asked myself. At one point I thought you had tricked me. You can’t imagine how angry I was when I thought that.”

Er, we probably could, actually. Neptune being angry was
very
easy to imagine.

“I thought about it and thought about it, and, finally, I realized how it must have happened.”

“When we kissed?” Aaron said. “That’s how we got our powers back?”

“Exactly!”

“But why?” I asked.

“When Aurora and I were married, we infused our wedding rings with magical powers. The ones you gained when you brought the rings back together.”