Emily Windsnap and the Castle in the Mist (17 page)

“Brought me to the castle?”

“The rings were meant to be together. When one is worn by a semi-mer, it wants to find the other one. While buried, the rings have no power. But when they are free, they want to be together. They’re meant to be together. Its own heart brought you here.”

We fell silent, lost in our own thoughts, and maybe in our own hopes. “Now we just have to find the pearl ring,” he said after a while.

“Not just find it. We have to find it and bring the two rings together under the full moon. It’ll be too late after that. As soon as the full moon’s passed, I won’t be a semi-mer. I’ll lose the ring again.”

“And if we fail . . .” Aaron looked away as his voice failed.

“I lose a parent,” I said.

“So do I, Emily,” he said, his voice hardening.

“Huh?”

Aaron took a breath. “Some years ago, life wasn’t too bad here at the castle. Generations before me, it was a busy place. Years of ships wrecked on the rocks meant that occasionally the survivors found their way here. And as I told you, Neptune has always installed sirens and some mermen to keep the castle isolated. So I’ve always at least had
some
company. Much to Neptune’s disgust, there has always been love here too. There has always been marriage, always been a determination to cross the forbidden boundaries.”

“Between land and sea?”

Aaron nodded and went on. “But with every generation, it was the same. Just as I told you this morning, each one held the same fate. Each died young. The curse lived on from generation to generation. And still does, all these generations later.”

I didn’t know what to say. I reached out to touch Aaron’s arm.

He looked at my hand on his arm, then looked
up at me. “Father was the son of a ship’s captain. He swore he would stop the curse before it affected my mother. No one ever knows exactly which year it will happen — only that it’s always on the day of Aurora’s birthday.” He paused.

“Go on,” I prompted.

“There’s not much to say. He tried to find the ring, and he failed. He searched and searched out there, but those rocks aren’t kind, Emily.”

“What happened?”

“He drowned.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said quietly.

“It was three months ago,” he added, and I suddenly thought that must be why he dressed so strangely, all in black. He was in mourning.

He turned back to face me, his eyes shining. “That’s why we’ve got to stop this, Emily. Even if the chances of succeeding are tiny, we have to try. We
have
to. This will be the only chance of our lives, and the only way to stop us both from losing another parent.”

“Another parent? But —”

“My mother, Emily,” he interrupted. “She’s dying. It’s Aurora’s birthday next week. This is it.”

That was when I really understood that this wasn’t just about me. It was about life and death. Literally. If we didn’t find the ring, Aaron’s mom was going to
die
next week, on Aurora’s birthday, exactly as her ancestors had. And Aaron would die young
too! The thought made something clutch at my chest. “We’ll find the ring,” I said firmly. “I promise.”

Aaron tried to smile, but even though he twitched his mouth up at the corners, his eyes were still the saddest I’d ever seen in my life. “Come on,” he said, lowering himself into the water. “I need to show you something I’ve just discovered. After you left, I went to see Mother, but meeting you got me thinking. I went back to the chapel and dug around a little more. Emily, I found something I’d never noticed before. Come and see it.”

I followed him back to the chapel.

“Through here.” Aaron guided me to the back of the chapel. At the end of the last row of seats, a few steps led down to a tiny gap just big enough for us both to stand in.

Aaron felt around along the wall. He pushed it firmly and the wall creaked — and moved! A hidden door!

I followed him into a dark box of a room.

I looked around, blinking as my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. Sunlight seeped in from the smallest gaps in the walls, just enough to see around the room: a small rectangle with a long
wooden bench all the way up one side, an arched door opposite.

“I never knew it was here,” Aaron said, motioning for me to follow him. “Look, I’ll show you something strange.”

I stumbled across the dark room, my legs trembling with fatigue but anxiety spurring me on. I kept remembering Millie dowsing on the boat. What if she started to look for me? We had to be quick! I shivered as I followed Aaron to the far end of the room. Cobwebs filled every corner.

A row of paintings lined the wall, just as they lined the corridors all around the castle. “More pictures,” I said.

Except that these were different. These weren’t portraits, or pictures of battle scenes, and they weren’t in frames either. They were murals, painted on the walls.

“It’s all I’ve got. Pictures, books, and maps from all around the world. That’s my life. That’s my school, my history, everything. But none like these.” He pointed to the first picture.

Now that my eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, I studied the painting. A deep blue sky, a churning sea, and a bright white moon shining down on the castle.

“Who painted them?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I bet it was my great-grandfather, though,” said Aaron.

“The one who made the rings in the cabinet?”

He nodded. “He was obsessed with the curse, with trying to end it. The men in my family always are. These pictures seem like a clue of some sort.”

“They are,” I said, not even knowing why. The ring burned on my finger. It was the ring that knew the truth. “They are a clue,” I repeated. “I’m sure of it.”

“A secret clue, hidden from sight.”

“But why would someone want to pass on a message in secret?” I asked. “If he was obsessed, why not tell everyone?”

“The only reason I can think of is so Neptune would never know.”

“But why not act on it, do something about it?”

“He probably didn’t know what it meant any more than we do. But he knew it meant
something.
Look.” Aaron pointed at words scrawled all over the walls, painted around the pictures as though revealing the inner workings of the artist’s mind.
Why? What is the significance? How many years?
the words said.

“Someone’s been asking all the same questions as we have,” I said.

“And clearly had about as many answers as us,” Aaron replied flatly, “or else we wouldn’t be in this position now.”

I stepped forward to study the first painting more closely. It was only then that I noticed the
shadows in the sky. The swirling patterns looked familiar. A dark, spinning cone in the sky.

Aaron moved to the next picture and motioned for me to follow. It was similar to the first. The same boiling sea, the sky even darker this time, the moon shining a reflection on the wet rocks like a beam from a flashlight. The swirling shapes were there in the sky again. One looked like a spinning beehive, another like a dark trail from a plane that had been looping the loop.

“There’s one more,” Aaron said, pointing to the third picture. It showed gray rocks and the base of the castle. The swirling patterns were now just one thick black swarm: a whirlwind, its base at the tips of the rocks, in the center of a shining white circle of light.

“I’ve seen these shapes!” I blurted out, suddenly realizing that the image had stayed in the back of my mind ever since we’d seen it. “The first night we were here! What are they?”

“I’ve seen them too. Usually at this time of year. It’s birds. They come in the millions.”

“At this time of year? The spring equinox? But, Aaron, that’s proof! They
must
have something to do with the rings! And your great-grandfather knew it too.”

“I think you’re right,” Aaron said. “But the thing none of us knows is, what are they telling us?”

I wasn’t aware of whether he said anything else.
I was too busy staring at the words I’d just noticed among the rest, in capitals and underlined, like a title for the paintings.

My eyes glazed over, cold shivers running like electricity up and down the length of my body as I read the words:
THE STARLINGS.

I don’t know how I got through the rest of the day. Shona and I scurried away every chance we got, to talk about what I had to do and how it was going to work out.

We swam around the lower half of the boat.

“OK, so you have to get to the castle, find the other ring, and bring the two of them together,” Shona said, going over the plans for what felt like the twentieth time.

No matter how many times we repeated what I had to do, it wasn’t sounding any easier.

“All in the minute that the moon is completely full,” I said. “Or it’ll be too late. Neptune made his message clear enough. When the moon is full, the curse on me will be complete. I won’t be a semi-mer any longer. And that means I won’t even be able to touch the ring. I’ll lose it forever.”
Along with everything else I care about,
I added silently.

Shona looked at me, holding my eyes with hers. “Let’s not think like that,” she said.

“I’ll lose a parent,” I went on, ignoring her.

“Emily, please don’t.”

“And Aaron will be an orphan.”

“Emily!” Shona took me by the shoulders. “Concentrate. We can do this, OK?”

“OK,” I said lamely. I didn’t believe for a minute that we could. The odds were just stacked so high against us.

The sun had set and the moon was up. This was it. A few more hours and it would be fully risen.

Millie wouldn’t leave us alone. She stood on the front deck, pointing out the constellations as the stars appeared, one by one, across the vast sky.

“There’s Canis Minor,” Millie said, pointing at a clutch of stars that looked pretty much exactly the same as all the others. “And, oh, I think that might
be the Corona Borealis.” She consulted her book, then looked back up at the sky. “Yes, I think it is,” she went on, oblivious to whether anyone was actually listening. “Well, you don’t often get the chance to see that,” she said.

I smiled politely at her when she called me over, making all the right noises so she’d think I had some idea of what she was going on about. All I actually cared about was how I was going to get away from the boat before the moon was at its peak. We
couldn’t
risk telling Millie. She might try to stop us, and there was just too much at stake. I glanced at my watch. Nearly ten o’clock. Two hours. I couldn’t even jump over the side and sneak away, as she didn’t seem to want to leave me alone, let alone go inside.