Emily Windsnap and the Castle in the Mist (16 page)

“Mm,” I said, not following a word.

After a few more deep breaths, her eyes snapped open and she sat up straight. “OK then,” she said, smiling at us both. “We just need a Scrabble set and a coat hanger and we’re set.” And with that, she got up and went inside.

Shona and I took one look at each other and
burst out laughing. “You’ll get used to her,” I said. “Just look as though you know what she’s talking about and you’ll be fine.”

“But she’s got a point,” Shona said.

“What? About the dowsing?”

She shook her head. “The stuff she said about harnessing nature’s energy. That’s what we need to do.”

“‘Harnessing nature’s energy’?” I said. “You’re getting as bad as Millie!”

“Emily, we need to use anything we can think of if we’re going to find this ring,” Shona said irritably.

Millie had joined us back out on the deck before I had a chance to reply.

“It’s the perfect time to do this,” Millie said, scattering the Scrabble letters on the deck and bending the wire around into a new shape. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier.”

“Perfect time?” I asked. “What’s perfect about it?” What could she possibly see as being perfect about
anything
right now?

“Magical time,” she said with a wink. “Spring equinox sometime around now.”

“The spring equinox?” I asked, remembering what Aaron had said. The tide was at its lowest point of the year. A brief spark of hope flickered — but went out almost as fast as it came when I
remembered what he’d said next. That there would only be one year when the tide was low enough; and that time had probably already passed. I hardly dared hope for the remote possibility that it could be this year.

“In fact . . .” Millie was saying as she reached into the little bag she always carried on her shoulder. She pulled out a small book. It was bound in black felt, with pink and blue feathers around the edges and
Orphalese Oracle
spelled out in fancy letters along the spine. “If I remember right, this year is even
more
special.”

“Even more special?” Shona asked, her voice tight and high. “Why is it even more special?”

“Let me check.” Millie looked through her book, licking her thumb and flicking through the pages. “Aha! Yes, that’s it.” She smiled. “It
is
extra special! This year the full moon and spring equinox are at exactly the same time. The same day. And, my word! Fancy that! The full moon is at the same time as the moon’s peak.” She glanced at me and, probably noticing my blank face, went on. “When the moon has risen to its highest point in the sky, it will also be at its fullest. Very rare. And — well, I
never
!”

“What?” I asked, my nerves about to crash and splinter.

“The full moon occurs at midnight!”

I swallowed hard. “At
midnight
?” I asked, my voice quivering like a freshly caught fish. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely!” Millie snapped. She tapped the cover of her book. “Emily, you’d be wise not to doubt the word of the
Orphalese Oracle.
Never been wrong yet, in my experience.” She tutted loudly and went back to flicking through the book, squinting and mumbling. “Full moon at midnight on the spring equinox,” she muttered. “I bet that doesn’t happen often.”

Happen
often
? How about once every five hundred years! Aaron was wrong — the year hadn’t come and gone at all! This was
it
! This year — the one chance to find the ring!

“Millie, can I see?”

She passed me the book. My hands shook so much that the words started to blur. But I saw all I needed to see. She was right! The full moon was at midnight on the spring equinox! My hands shook so much when I read the next part that I nearly dropped the book. The date!

It was tonight.

I handed the
Orphalese Oracle
back to Millie in silence. I couldn’t make any words come out of my throat.

“
Very
interesting,” Millie said, oblivious to the change in mood as she smiled at us both. Then she put the book back in her bag and picked up the coat hanger. “Now, let’s see about this dowsing.”

“That’s odd,” Millie said, frowning with concentration as she waved her coat hanger over the Scrabble letters.

“What? Has it told you where we are?” I asked, edging closer to watch over her shoulder.

Millie shook her head. “It keeps moving over to you.” She glanced at me. “To your hands. As though it wants to tell us something about the ring. Watch. It’s telling me there’s a strong connection between the ring and . . . hold on. It’s spelling something out.”

I watched her waggle the coat hanger over the letters. It didn’t look as if it was doing anything except twitching and wiggling in her hands.

“Something about a star,” Millie mumbled as the coat hanger moved across the letters.

Shona hitched herself higher on the side of the deck. “Stars? Maybe it’s telling us to use the stars to find our way back.”

“No, it definitely has to do with the ring. A strong link with the ring and — hold on. It’s not finished,” Millie said, following the coat hanger’s progress and reading aloud. “Star l-i —”

“Starlight?” I suggested.

“Could be. Wait.” We all watched the coat
hanger intensely as it moved to the letter
n,
then
g,
then
s.
After that, it stopped twitching and lay still in Millie’s hands.

“Starlings!”
Millie said eventually, pulling a hankie out from her bag and wiping her forehead as she put the coat hanger down.

“Starlings?”
I repeated blankly. “What have starlings got to do with anything?”

Why?
Why had I gone and done it again? Believed that Millie’s so-called psychic intuition might bear any resemblance to anything that made any sense? Why?

“I don’t know, dear.” Millie said flatly. “It sometimes takes a few attempts to work properly. Needs warming up, you know. Why don’t you run along for now, and we’ll try it again later?”

Shona and I slunk away and left her to it.

“So much for dowsing!” I said, dropping into the water beside Shona. My tail flickered halfheartedly to life, as weak and limp as the few shreds of hope I still had. The full moon was tonight. If we didn’t find the ring, the curse would be fulfilled. By tomorrow I would no longer be a semi-mer, and I would have lost a parent.

“Come on, Em. The tide’s going to be at its lowest point in five hundred years tonight!”

“But what if it’s still not low enough?” I said. “Or what if we’ve got it all wrong somehow? The curse will be complete tonight. Neptune will take
the ring. It’s all over.” I couldn’t bear it — couldn’t even think through to the end of the thought. My future was a black hole, and at midnight I would slip into it.

“You have to believe we can do this,” Shona said. Her voice was so full of hope, I couldn’t help letting her enthusiasm filter across to me. My heart filled like a tight balloon.

“You’re right,” I said with new determination. “It’s the only chance we’re going to get, and we can’t afford to miss it. We’ve got to find that ring — tonight!”

“Be careful,” Shona whispered as she waved me off from the porthole. “And good luck.”

“You too,” I said with a hopeful smile. “See you soon.”

“You’re sure you don’t want me to come with you?”

“I’m sure,” I said. We’d agreed I had to go straight back to the castle and tell Aaron the news about tonight. There was no time to lose. Shona was going to stay behind and fend Millie off if she came looking for us. Thankfully, she’d become so
absorbed in her dowsing that she wouldn’t notice anything for a while. I wouldn’t have long, though. The last thing I wanted was for her to worry about me, on top of everything else. Or to keep a closer eye on me and stop me from going out tonight. That was unthinkable! I’d just have to be careful — and quick.

I swam off in the same direction, listened to the ring in the same way, sneaked into the tunnel, and finally came up in the pool in the castle’s cellar. I pulled myself out of the water and sat on the side to get my breath back. Panting and exhausted, I wondered how many more times I’d be able to swim here. My body was getting weaker by the hour. My tail was getting more patchy, my breathing more scratchy.
Just one more day. Please let me hold out for one more day.

A noise creaked behind me. I leaped to my feet.

“Emily!” It was Aaron! He was still dressed all in black, and his hair was tied back in a sleek ponytail; his face shone pale and clear in the semidarkness of the cellar. His smile was the brightest thing on him. “I’ve been hanging around here since you left,” he said, softly closing the door behind him. “I was hoping you’d come back.”

“I said I would.” I smiled back, almost surprised at how pleased I was to see him.

Aaron took a step nearer the pool, and that’s when I noticed something. His feet — they were
webbed. Of course they were. He was descended from Aurora, which meant the curse affected him too. Like me, he was stuck between the two worlds, neither fully one thing nor another. More like me at the moment than ever, as he wasn’t quite a semi-mer either. The brief silence that fell between us wasn’t awkward. It was the silence between two people who know they understand each other without even using words. It was almost like the way I felt with Shona.

He noticed me looking and shyly held out a hand. “Come on, let me help you out of the pool,” he said. This time he didn’t snatch his hand away. He held it out palm up, fingers outstretched. Showing me. His hands were webbed too, his fingers joined at the knuckle by the thinnest waferlike stretches of skin. As I reached up to grab his hand, it was as though we were shaking on a deal. We were the same. Whatever happened from here onward, we would succeed or fail together.

We sat on the side of the pool. Aaron stared as my tail melted away and my legs re-formed.

“I can’t even do that properly,” he said. “My legs stick together and my toes flap about a bit, but that’s all.” He looked at me wistfully. “Just as it’s been for the rest of my family, every generation.”

“Aaron, we can change it,” I said. “That’s what I’ve come to tell you. Tonight’s the spring equinox. And the full moon — it’s at midnight!”

Aaron’s eyes widened. “Tonight? This is the year? How do you know? The secrecy, the magic!”

I told him about Millie and the
Orphalese Oracle.
I didn’t mention the fact that Millie didn’t always get it exactly right. She had to be right this time. She
had
to be.

“I don’t believe it,” Aaron said again and again. “I don’t believe it. Every spring equinox since I’ve known about it, I’ve hoped and wished. I’ve even searched for the ring myself and prayed the other one would somehow turn up.”

“I can’t believe I ended up here,” I said, looking at the ring on my finger and smiling. I could feel its warmth smile back at me. “I know I’ve had a few lucky breaks in my life, among all the crazy stuff! But surely that’s about as much of a coincidence as you can get.”

Aaron shook his head. “It’s not a coincidence at all,” he said. “The ring brought you here.”