Emily Windsnap and the Land of the Midnight Sun (11 page)

Two children on a beach. A little girl of about six or seven with a boy maybe half her age.

“Mommy, Mommy!” the little girl called as she ran up the beach. “I saw a mermaid!”

The boy toddled behind her. “I saw a err daid!” he squealed delightedly.

And then it was gone. The vision was finished.

Aaron and I looked at each other. Neither of us had any words. He pulled me toward another bubble — a larger one this time. We did it again, held hands, placed our free hands on the bubble. The scene began: two women at a table, both maybe in their twenties. One of them was hunched over the table, her head in her arms. “I can’t bear it!” she cried. “Where is he? What have they done with him?”

There was something familiar about the woman’s voice.

She looked up at the other lady, her face turned away from us. “And what will happen to my baby?” she wailed. It was only when she said this that I noticed the cradle beside the table. A tiny baby was fast asleep, wrapped in a white blanket.

The other woman put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Whatever happens, I’m here for you,” she said. “I’ll look after you. That’s what best friends are for.”

Wait!
Her
voice was familiar, too!

The woman got up from the table and put her arms around her friend. “Thanks, Millie,” she said. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Millie?
My hand, still on the bubble, started shaking. The image began to blur.

“Oh, don’t be silly. You’d survive. And listen, we
will
find Jake.”

Jake?
My dad?

The two women pulled away from the hug. The woman who had been crying wiped her eyes and turned in our direction. And then I was left with no doubt whatsoever. This was a twentysomething version of my mom! And the tiny baby sleeping beside her — I guess that was me.

My hands were shaking so much that the image blurred beyond recognition.

“Aaron, I don’t like this,” I said. “I don’t understand. What is this place?”

Aaron swam around to face me. “I don’t know,” he said. “They seem to be scenes from the past.”

“Well, I’d figured that much out!” I snapped.

“Em, please, can we just . . .” He touched my arm. I flinched.

“Can we just what?”

He hesitated. “Can we just put the other stuff to one side for now?” he said. “Can we be friends?”

Friends?
Was that what we were? Was that all he had ever wanted to be? What we’d have been all along if he hadn’t been egged on by a bet?

“I don’t know if I want to be your friend,” I said.

“Can we at least try? For the sake of this mission? Please?”

He was right. This was all going to be hard enough without us being at each other’s throats. And after what I’d just seen, I certainly felt in need of a friend, right now. “OK, we’ll try,” I mumbled.

Aaron’s face broke out into such a big smile that for a moment I wished he’d never told me about that stupid bet. I wished I could just keep on telling myself how happy we were. Maybe ignorance
was
bliss.

“OK, so I’ve got a theory,” he said.

“Go on.”

“I think they’re memories.”

“Of course! Each of the bubbles is a separate memory.”

“Every time someone had a memory taken away”— Aaron waved an arm around him at all the bubbles —“it became a new bubble in this lake!”

“A lake of lost memories,” I said.

“Exactly.”

Then I remembered something. “But Neptune undid the memory drug. People have had their memories returned to them.”

“Not everywhere — only in Brightport.”

“But my mom’s in Brightport.”

Aaron thought for a moment. “Maybe it was so long ago, and so painful, that she never got that memory back.”

It all made sense. As much sense as the idea of a lake full of lost memories could make, anyway. Mom
was
super forgetful. There was every chance that, even though the memory drug had been lifted, some really old memories were still locked away.

Then I had another thought. “The tidemark on the mountains!”

“What about it?”

“That must be because of the memories that have come back.”

“You’re right! As people’s memories are returned, the lake empties out a bit more,” Aaron said.

“So if this lake holds everyone’s forgotten memories, perhaps the ones that were taken from Neptune are in here somewhere.”

“Come on,” Aaron said. “Let’s find them!”

“How?”

“Hmm, that’s a thought. I’ve got no idea.”

After a few more random mermaid memories, we saw a huge bubble — it was almost as big as me.

“This has to be Neptune’s,” I said.

“Of course Neptune’s memories are bigger and grander than all the others,” Aaron said.

Aaron hesitantly put his hand out.

I hesitantly put mine out to meet it. “We’re just friends, remember,” I said tightly.

We stretched our arms out so we could hold hands and get our other hand around it as it bounced and swayed in front of us.

I placed my hand on the bubble. Instantly, the scene opened up: a tall, bearded merman with a frown on his face and piercing, angry eyes. He looked ragged and tired.

“Neptune!” I whispered.

“Found it!” Aaron whispered back.

Neptune’s angry eyes creased up, as though he were in pain. “Help me! HELP ME! Please — it’s unbearable! Hurry — please, hurry! It will be too late soon.” He stretched out his arms, as though begging someone. Whoever he was talking to was too far away to see, though. Neptune was the only one in the picture.

“Stop this. You have to stop it!” His voice was so anguished that I could hardly bear to listen. “Don’t let him have it,” Neptune growled. “DO NOT let him have it. The narwhal — bring it to me. He can’t have it or it will be too late for us all. No one will ever mend this. Please! HURRY!”

The image faded away. We let go of each other’s hands and swam away.

“What on earth was that about?” Aaron asked.

“Search me.” I glanced around. “Look, there’s another big bubble over there. Shall we try it?”

We swam across the lake, and a flicker of nerves swam through my stomach, just like the shoal of bright-yellow fish that danced along beside me. What would we see this time?

Once again, we held hands, touched the bubble, and watched as the scene emerged in front of our eyes.

It was Neptune again. This time, he looked even worse. Deep black rings surrounded his eyes; his hair was lank and lifeless. He was thin, barely moving. His face was as white as the snow at the top of the mountains surrounding the lake.

Again, he was talking to someone out of the picture.

“Go to the mountain with the hole in the top, and wait,” he was saying. “Under the midnight sun, the ice will melt. Catch that water in your hands.” His face hardened into the frown we had seen so many times in real life. “It is my birthright!” he snarled. “Bring it to me!”

The image faded and the bubble went dark. A moment later, a new picture opened up. Neptune again, with another merman in front of him. The merman was talking. “I couldn’t catch it. I tried, but I couldn’t hold it. The water burned my hands.” He held out his hands as he spoke. They were red and raw and blistered all the way up to his wrists. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

Again the image faded to black. We waited again. Gradually, the blackness lifted to a dull gray. Among the gray, I could just see Neptune, but this time it was only his outline, as though he were fading away. “It’s over,” he said, his voice echoing and bouncing around the edges of the bubble. He sounded like he was talking to himself. Had he gone mad? “They have all either forgotten or frozen. No one is left to save me. I’m doomed . . . There is nothing . . . No one . . .”

The image faded to blackness, and this time no new scene replaced it.

I let go of Aaron’s hand and looked around. We were still surrounded by bubbles, but I couldn’t see any more of the larger ones. To be honest, I was quite relieved. I wasn’t sure how many more of these distressing scenes I could take.

Something terrible had clearly happened to Neptune. No wonder his memories had made him so scared, but what were we supposed to do about it? How would we ever make sense of all this?

“OK, let’s look at what we’ve got,” Aaron said. “What were the main things we saw here? What were the main things we heard?”

“Neptune in a state,” I said. “In fact, in about three different states, and each one worse than the one before.”

“What else?”

“Something about water.”

“Yes,” Aaron said. “Something to do with catching water in your hands — and the midnight sun.”

“And something about a hole in the top of a mountain.”

“What was that thing Neptune said to bring him?”

“A wall or something,” I said.

“Yeah, a nar wall, I think it was. What’s one of those?”

I shook my head. “I have no idea.”

“OK, so how about if we start by looking for the mountain with the hole in the top?” Aaron suggested.

To be honest, looking for a mountain with a hole in the top didn’t sound like the easiest thing in the world to do, but, as I didn’t have any better suggestions, it was as good a place to start as any.

I turned and started swimming. “OK, let’s give it a try. What have we got to lose?”

As we made our way to the edge of the lake, I didn’t really want to think too hard about that question — just in case the answer was “everything.”

W
e swam to the edge of the lake and pulled ourselves out. Sitting on a cold, rocky beach, we watched our tails flick and twitch, and we finally felt our legs return.

“The glacier is that way,” I said, pointing to the far end of the lake where the icy giant’s tongue spilled all the way down the mountain, almost to the water. “I guess that’s where we need to start.”

“How did you figure that out?” Aaron asked.

“If we have to find water in a mountain, it makes sense that it’s going to come from the glacier.”

Aaron stood up. “Good thinking,” he said, and we made our way toward the glacier.