Emily Windsnap and the Land of the Midnight Sun (9 page)

Around us, people mingled and shuffled about, pushing past one another to take photos of the view. We sat, squashed tightly together, fingers entwined just as tightly, saying nothing.

At the top, everyone piled out of the carriage and dashed over to the viewing platform. We held back before making our way over to the other side of the summit.

Once we got there, the sight made me gasp. A stretch of water — another fjord — separated us from the range of mountains a short way away. The mountains looked as if they were set in a ring. The far one was covered in a glacier that looked like a giant’s tongue reaching all the way down the mountain, as though stretching out to take a lick from something — presumably a lake — down below. We couldn’t see the lake itself from here, but we could see enough to know that this was the place Neptune had told us to find, and that the lake would be exactly where Neptune had said: in the center of the mountains.

If I’d had any doubts about whether his dreams really were memories, they disappeared now, as I looked across at the glacier. I turned to Aaron. “How are we going to get there?”

“We’ll have to take one of the paths down this mountain first, then swim across the fjord. Maybe we’ll find a break in the ring of mountains somewhere and get to the lake.”

“And if we don’t?”

“If we don’t, I guess we’ll have to try to climb over the top of one of the mountains. But we can worry about that when we get there.”

I nodded. We weren’t exactly overwhelmed with options.

I looked around to see if anyone was watching us. Thankfully, they were all far too busy standing at the edge of the viewing platform taking photos of one another to notice us.

“Let’s go,” Aaron said.

We edged away from the groups still squealing and pointing, and made our way to the edge of the summit. The path down looked straightforward enough — apart from the bottom part. From here, it looked as though the path ended a long way off the water. We’d probably have to jump the last bit.

As we picked our way down the rocky path, I prayed that Neptune’s potion would work once we got into the sea. If it didn’t, we’d both be dead from hypothermia in a matter of minutes.

“This is it, then.” Aaron’s voice wobbled as we looked down at the clear blue water. It was the first time I’d seen him look nervous about getting into the sea. Normally, he couldn’t wait! But then, normally, he wasn’t relying on a tiny glass vial filled with a magic potion to save him from fairly certain death.

“Come on,” I said. For once, I was first to the edge. I took out my bottle and jumped into the water. The shock of that first touch almost made my heart stop. But I forced myself to duck down. Teeth chattering so hard that I thought my jaw was going to lock, I pulled the cork out of the bottle and tipped the fluid into my hands. As my tail formed, I spread the potion all over it.
Please work. Please work.

For a second, nothing happened.

Neptune gave us the wrong thing! We’re going to die!
I thought.

But then I felt something change. I stopped panicking. It was working. My teeth had stopped chattering. My body warmed up. My tail flicked in the water. It had worked!

Moments later, Aaron was by my side. “Phew!” he said. “Glad that part’s over.”

We swam together to the other side of the fjord. The water was completely different from anywhere else I’d ever been. It was so clear it felt as if we were swimming through liquid glass, and the sea life was like nothing I’d seen before.

Strange jellyfish shaped like angels, with orange heads and fluorescent bodies, flickered up and down with tiny wings; red starfish lay on the sand below us, grouped together in bundles like a collection of wishes; weird see-through blobs that looked like lightbulbs bounced toward us, bright-yellow skeletons lighting up inside their bubbly bodies. Huge flat rays with long tails skimmed the seabed, flicking their capes as they whizzed past us.

And it was so quiet. Everything moved silently. The only sound was the swishing of our tails as we made our way to the mountains.

Finally, we reached the other side. We pulled ourselves out of the water and sat on a small rocky beach while we waited for our legs to come back. My Arctic-ready snow pants returned with my legs, and I pulled my coat closer against the cold.

Aaron stood up first. “Come on. Let’s see if we can find a way through this mountain,” he said.

We trekked the length of the shore, looking for some kind of opening into the mountain. There were crevices all along the coastline, but we couldn’t see anything that seemed to go all the way through. All the caves were shallow. All the water trails ended in a wall. It was beginning to look as though we’d have to climb over the icy mountain after all, and I wasn’t sure I was up for that.

“Can we rest?” I asked. I sat down on a large flat rock in front of one of the sea-filled crevices.

“You’re right. It’s going to take all our energy to get up there,” Aaron said, sitting down beside me. “We should recharge our batteries first.”

For some reason, talking about recharging batteries made me think about our shell phones. And the fact that I still hadn’t told him about giving mine to Shona. Maybe this was a good moment.

“Aaron, I need to tell you something,” I said.

“Really? Me too!” he replied. He looked oddly relieved. “You first.”

“OK, so . . . um, you know how we were told not to tell anyone about this mission?”

Aaron nodded.

“Well, I haven’t told anyone
all
the details, but I gave Shona my shell phone.” I didn’t look at him in case he was angry. Instead, I went on quickly. “I’ve hardly seen her lately because we’ve been hanging out. And I miss her, and I didn’t want her to be mad at me, so I wanted to give her something. I —”

“Emily.” Aaron put a hand on my arm. “It’s OK. I understand.”

“It is? You do?”

Aaron smiled. “Of course I do. We’ve got my phone, anyway. Neptune never needs to know.”

I let out a breath. “Thank you. You’re so great!” I burst out before I could stop myself. Mainly to cover up my embarrassment at being so gushy, I added, “So, what about you? What’s the thing you have to tell me?”

Aaron shuffled awkwardly on the rock. His cheeks had reddened and he wouldn’t look at me.

“Aaron?”

He fiddled with his hands in his lap. “Look, I’m telling you because I don’t want to keep anything from you, OK?”

“OK,” I said nervously.

“I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but just . . . well, some things have happened that have made me wonder, and now I don’t know what to think.”

“Aaron, what is it?” I was getting really worried now. “Whatever it is, it’ll be fine.”

“Promise?”

Could I really promise? “Please, trust me. You’re scaring me.”

“Look, it might be nothing . . .”

“Aaron, just tell me!”

“OK. Well, you remember the night of the concert?”

Did I remember the night of the concert? The night we brought the human and mer worlds together? The night Aaron kissed me? It was only the best night of my life! I wasn’t going to forget that in a hurry!

“Yes,” I said with a shy smile. “I remember.”

“Well, just before the concert, I had a weird conversation.”

“Who with?”

“With Archie.”

“Archie?”

“I didn’t think of it as weird at the time,” Aaron went on quickly. “But . . . well, have you noticed he’s been acting a bit odd lately?”

“Totally! What’s up with him?”

“I don’t know. But it made me think again about that conversation. Especially with what Neptune told us — about our powers and everything.”

“Aaron, you’re talking in riddles,” I said. “What are you trying to tell me?”

Aaron kept fumbling with his hands and wouldn’t look at me as he replied. “He said I should kiss you.”

“He
what
?”

“He’d been teasing me about you for days, asking if you were my girlfriend and stuff.” Aaron’s cheeks had flushed so deeply they were almost purple. “I said I didn’t really know. He said there was only one way to find out — that if I tried to kiss you, I’d know for sure if you felt the same way.”

“Go on,” I somehow managed to say through my tightly gritted teeth.

“He kept going on about it, joking and ribbing me, asking if I’d kissed you yet. Then, on the night of the concert, he said that it was the perfect time to do it. He even bet me that I wouldn’t — said he’d give me ten bucks if I did.”

I pulled myself up off the rock and moved away. I didn’t want to listen to this.

Aaron got up and followed me. “Emily, wait!”

I turned to face him. “You kissed me
for a bet
! There was me thinking what an amazing night it was — how romantic, how perfect — and all the time, you only did it to win ten dollars!”

“It wasn’t really like that,” Aaron said.

Wasn’t
really
like that? I wanted him to tell me it wasn’t
at all
like that. But he didn’t.

“You didn’t do it because you
wanted
to,” I said. “You did it because Archie pushed you into it. Well, I hope he paid up.” I turned on him and started to walk away. I slipped on a stone as I turned and Aaron laughed.

I stopped in my tracks. “And you think it’s
funny
?”

“No. It was just. Well, actually, it is
quite
funny, if you think about it,” Aaron said. “I mean, I hadn’t gotten around to — you know — doing it till then, and I suppose Archie did make me think about it.”

I stared at Aaron. “So you hadn’t even
thought
about kissing me till you were offered ten bucks to do it?”

I thought back to how
I’d
felt, how I’d been wanting to kiss him for weeks. If it was possible to die of shame and embarrassment, I would have dropped dead on the spot. I did the next best thing. I glared at Aaron and turned my shame into anger. “The next time you’re offered cash to make a fool of someone,” I snapped, “it
won’t
be me.”

“Oh, come on, Emily! It’s not the end of the —”

“I’m not listening.” I stomped off to the end of the scraggly beach and climbed some jagged rocks. How could he do that to me? How
could
he? And how could I have been such a fool? I’d thought we had something so special, and all the time he’d been laughing at me behind my back, kissing me for a
bet
!

I clambered over the rocks, desperate to get as far away from him as I could. I didn’t want him to see my face — or the tears streaming down my cheeks. Angry tears. Not upset. Just angry.

On the other side of the rocks, there was another inlet. The tide had gone out farther now and I clambered down from the rocks and paced across the pebbles.

It was halfway across them that I noticed the cave: taller than me and about three times my width, carved into the rock by years of tides crashing against it, and only exposed now that the tide had gone out.

I stepped inside it and peered into darkness. A few paces in, I was enveloped in the blackness — but the cave went on. Maybe it went all the way through the mountain. Maybe this was exactly what we’d been looking for!

The last thing in the
world
I wanted to do right then was go back and talk to Aaron — but we still had to complete the mission. And the quicker we got it over and done with, the sooner we’d be back home and I wouldn’t have to have anything to do with him ever again.

I climbed back over the rocks. Aaron was standing on the other side of them, throwing stones into the water.

He turned and saw me. “Emily — please, let’s stop this. It’s stupid.”

Great. Now he was calling me stupid on top of everything else. I swallowed down a furious response and tried to gather as much dignity as I could. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said calmly. “I’m just glad that you’ve told me the truth, so I know where we stand.”

He opened his mouth to reply, but I carried on before he got the chance to speak. “In fact, I don’t want to talk to you about anything except the mission. Let’s just get on with the job we’re here to do — and forget about everything else. OK?”

Aaron just stared at me. I wondered what he was thinking. If he argued with me now, if he begged me to listen, told me it was all a big mistake, I would forgive him on the spot. If he didn’t — well, that would just confirm I was doing the right thing.

Aaron sighed heavily. “OK,” he said.

I hid my desperate disappointment. It was settled, then. I hadn’t gotten it wrong. Aaron
had
kissed me for a bet and it
had
meant nothing to him. Well, it was a good thing I knew. It was time to put it behind me and get on with our mission.

“Good,” I said, clipping any emotion from my voice. “Now, follow me. I think I’ve found a way through the mountain.”