by Liz Kessler
But I was lying as I did all of those things.
Inside, my heart was breaking. I’d failed. The one person I’d gone to collect hadn’t made it back. How could we be happy about any of this?
It was almost pitch-black when Lyle got up and brushed sand off his legs.
“She’s not coming,” he said. “It’s over. I’m going home.”
As he turned to walk up the beach, I got up, too. “Wait!”
Lyle turned back.
I had to tell him. He was right. Lowenna had gone. It was obvious she hadn’t made it, and I’d promised her that if she didn’t come back, I’d pass on her message.
But how could I do that? How could I tell him about a daughter he had lost before he’d even laid eyes on her?
I opened my mouth to speak and was searching around for the worst words in the world when Mandy tugged at my arm. “Emily!”
“Hang on. I need to —”
“Emily!” This time it was Aaron. I turned back to them. They’d both stood up and were looking out to sea.
Mandy was pointing. “Look. Look!”
Lyle and I peered in the direction Mandy was pointing. It was hard to see anything out there on the dark-blue sea against the sky that was nearly black. But Mandy was right: there was something in the water.
Bright above the waves. Moving through the water. Nearly here. A person with red straggly hair, bright-green eyes that shone like a cat’s against the dark sky — and a bundle in her arms.
“Lyle!” Her voice came across to us like a song being played on the wind. “My love!”
Lyle ran to the water so fast he almost fell to his knees. “Lowenna! Lowenna. Oh, my darling! You’re alive! You’re home!”
A second later, Lowenna had reached us. In the shallows of the water, Lyle threw his arms around her so hard it was as if he’d wrapped her in a giant blanket. They stayed like that for a moment, swaying in the water, arms tight around each other.
Then Lyle drew away. He looked down at the bundle in her arms. At first sight, it could have been a bag made of seaweed and filled with findings from the ocean.
“What’s this? Whose is it?” he asked as Lowenna reached down and held the bundle out to him.
“This,” she said with a smile brighter than the moon that had begun to rise, “is our baby girl.”
With a quick smile and a grateful nod in my direction, she passed the baby into his arms. “Daddy, meet your daughter, Atlanta Emily Waters.”
We had about a minute of delirious happiness before we all felt it.
Something was happening. The ground was shaking. The sea was grumbling — waves grew as the swell pushed the tide higher up the beach.
“What’s going on?” Mandy hissed.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “An earthquake?”
“We’ve never had an earthquake here on the island,” Lyle said, folding his baby daughter more tightly into his arms.
Shona was at the water’s edge, bobbing up and down as the waves hurled her around. “Look!” she said, pointing out toward the horizon.
I followed where she was pointing. Squinting into the darkness, I could see some kind of movement. Black shapes diving through the surf. Dolphins! Lots of them. They were pulling something. It looked like . . .
“Neptune!” Aaron exclaimed.
Lowenna swung around to look. “What’s he doing here?” she breathed.
As Neptune’s chariot was pulled closer to the shore and the dolphins came to rest in the breaking waves, his figure was clearly visible against the night sky. He towered in his chariot, holding his trident in the air, the moonlight shining down on him like a spotlight on a stage.
Neptune ordered his dolphins away, then rose higher in his chariot and waved his trident. As he did, the waves died down and the earth stopped rumbling.
I tried to swallow. Tried to breathe normally. This wasn’t good.
Before I could start to calculate exactly how much trouble I was going to be in this time, someone else appeared from the other side of the chariot. As he swam to the water’s edge and pulled the chariot closer to the shore, I could see who it was.
So could someone else.
“Seth!” Shona swam over to him and was about to throw her arms around him when Neptune very ostentatiously cleared his throat. Not that Neptune does anything un-ostentatiously.
“Neptune has something he wants to say,” Seth announced in a formal tone I’d never heard him use before. I guess it was his work voice.
We all fell silent while we waited for Neptune to speak.
Eventually, in a calm, even, very un-Neptune-like voice, he said, “My young adviser here told me what you were attempting, and I wanted to see it for myself.”
Seth told Neptune what we were doing?
He flashed a quick I’m sorry look over to us.
“I forced him to,” Neptune went on. “I could tell he was concerned, worried. I do not need my staff being distracted by worries or concerns. I insisted he tell me. His honesty will be rewarded.”
I couldn’t blame Seth for telling him what was going on. When Neptune insists on something, you don’t have a lot of choice about whether to do it or not. I knew that.
“No one has ever done this before,” Neptune went on. “Not once. Not ever. It has been attempted, but never successfully. I had no reason to believe this occasion would be any different.”
No one spoke. No one moved. We all just listened.
“Atlantis is one of the best-kept secrets in my kingdom, and those who work for it are among my most treasured staff,” Neptune continued. “Which is why I decided to come here. My intention was to come to you to offer my condolences.” He looked across at Lyle and Lowenna, his gaze falling on the baby. “I can see,” he said, “that there was no need.”
Then he did this weird thing with his face. I’m fairly sure I’d never seen him do it before, so it took a moment to realize exactly what it was. He was smiling! “Instead,” he said, “we shall join you in a celebration. Tonight, take to your beds, your homes, settle back into your lives. Tomorrow, as a celebration and a reward for the bravery and expertise shown by all of you . . .”
At which point he half turned so he was looking directly at me. I gulped and tried to remember he was praising me, not punishing me. Then I did a weird kind of smile-thing back at him.
“I shall spend the day here with you. You have two days remaining of your trip, I believe?”
“That’s right, Your Majesty,” Shona said. “Thursday and Friday. We all leave Saturday morning.”
“Then I shall spend the night preparing some treats for you. Tomorrow there shall be dolphin rides for all the Brightport children, voyages of discovery to the most secret caves in the area for the Shiprock class. And we will end the day with a banquet that I will instruct my personal staff to create and send over. We will make it the best day any geography trip has ever seen! How does that sound?”
How did it sound? It sounded amazing!
Lowenna edged into the water toward the chariot. “It sounds swishy, Your Majesty,” she said. “Thank you!”
Neptune shuffled in his chariot. “Very well,” he said. “You’re welcome.” He looked down at Seth. “Now, get me to my nearest palace and then you can come back and spend some time with your”— he glanced at Shona —“with your friends,” he finished, emphasizing the word enough so that I could see Seth’s cheeks burn even in the darkness.
As Neptune sat back down in his chariot, Seth grinned at Shona. “See you soon,” he said.
She smiled back so brightly that the moon had a competitor for a moment.
“Come on, now,” Neptune ordered in the loud booming voice that was much more like him. “I don’t have all evening, you know.”
With that, Seth swam back around, turning the chariot away from us. Neptune banged his trident against the front of the chariot and the dolphins reappeared.
A moment later, they were all gone.
I hugged Sho
na good-bye.
“See you tomorrow,” she said. “I can’t wait!”
“Me neither,” I agreed. I could hardly believe what had just happened. Any of it, in fact. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t sleep much tonight.
“’Night, ’night, sweetheart,” Shona said softly, looking at Atlanta. Atlanta Emily. The rest of us turned and headed up the beach.
“I thought she didn’t have a name,” I said shyly to Lowenna as Aaron and I walked back to Lyle and Lowenna’s house with them, Lowenna and Lyle hand in hand, Lyle carrying his baby daughter in his other arm so lovingly it was as if he had waited all his life to hold her.
“She didn’t,” Lowenna replied with a soft smile. “But somewhere in the middle of that crazy portal, I knew what her name had to be. She was named for two things: first, the place she was born.” She paused and touched my arm. “And second, for an incredibly strong, brave, and wonderful young person. If she grows up to be half as remarkable as you, she’ll be able to achieve anything she wants.”
“Her name is perfect,” Lyle murmured as we walked.
I couldn’t speak. I didn’t even try.
We got back to our cabin and said our good-byes. Lyle, Lowenna, and Atlanta had a lot of catching up to do.
“We’ll see you tomorrow,” Lowenna said. Then she held me close and whispered in my ear, “Thank you for giving me my life back.”
I held her tight. “You’re welcome,” I croaked.
“You coming in?” Mandy asked at the cabin door.
“Actually, I need to talk to Emily,” Aaron said sharply before I had the chance to answer. “We’ll be there in a bit.”
“Cool.” Mandy nudged my hip on her way in. “It’s good to have you back, fish girl,” she said. “Had me worried for a bit there.”
I nudged her back. “It’s good to be here,” I said with a smile.
Aaron led the way. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go for a walk. There’s something I have to tell you.”
We walked along the road that led to Deep Blue Bay. My stomach was in jitters — not just because of Neptune’s visit but also because of Aaron wanting to talk. After all those moments when he’d brushed me off in one way or another — and what Lyle had told me about Aaron not feeling the same as me — I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk. What if he was planning to break up with me? I didn’t think I could handle it if a day like this ended like that.
When we got there, Aaron jumped up onto one of the big, smooth boulders and reached down to help me up.
I sat next to him. It was the same spot where we’d sat before trekking off along the path that had led us to the chair — the start of this whole crazy, scary, amazing adventure.
“So,” I said nervously, “why are we here? What did you want to tell me?”
Aaron shifted so he was facing me. A nearly full moon was still climbing high into the sky, its white light reaching across the sea like a searchlight, just bright enough for me to see his face.
He took both of my hands in his. “Look, there’s something I need to say,” he began.
No! He was going to break up with me. I could tell by the way he was holding my hands like he felt sorry for me, like he wanted to make it easier on me.
“I’ve been wanting to tell you for a while now,” he went on.
I tried to resign myself to what was coming.
“I guess the moment hasn’t been right,” he continued. “But now it is, and I can’t stop myself any longer.” Aaron took a breath, then looked me straight in the eyes.
Here it comes, I thought. The big breakup speech.
And then he said, “Emily Windsnap, I love you.”
What?
“What did you say?” I asked, like an idiot.
Aaron laughed. “I said I love you,” he repeated.
He loved me! That was why he wasn’t between states. Not because he didn’t even like me — but because he loved me! And Lyle knew it before I did!
His words were like a switch. I know it sounds cheesy, but it felt as if they lit up something inside me — clicked something into place. Made everything right.
And it was safe for me now, too. I didn’t have to be between states. I could let myself feel the feelings I’d been holding back for the last few days.
I smiled at him. “I’m so glad,” I said. “Because I love you, too.”
The moon had risen higher in the sky. It shone a spotlight onto a round patch of sea in the bay below us. Beyond that patch, the ocean was in darkness. There are so many mysteries out there, I thought as I rested my head on Aaron’s shoulder and snuggled in closer to him. So much was unknown; there was so much darkness, fear, danger.
As I looked up, the first star came out. Mom always said that if you make a wish on the first star you see at night, you can get anything you want.
I smiled to myself as more and more stars began to emerge and Aaron held me close.
I had no need for wishes. They had already come true.
The janitor was locking up at the Prosper Vacations headquarters when a radio crackled into life in the main office.
Probably nothing, he thought. Then he spotted the radar and saw a red dot flashing. He didn’t know much about radar, but there’d been a lot of talk in the office that week about a missing ship: Prosperous II.
The ship had disappeared the previous Friday. The company had managed to keep the incident out of the public eye, as there’d been no reports of an accident. One day it had been on the radar; the next, it had gone. What if this was that ship?
Maybe he should take the call.
The janitor crept into the office and switched on the light.
“Prosper Vacations HQ, Prosper Vacations HQ, this is Prosperous II. Prosperous II. Do you read me? Over.”
The janitor picked up a radio from its cradle on the desk. He knew how they worked. He’d seen others use them. “I read you,” he said carefully. “Um. Over.”
The voice that came through was joyful. “Prosper Vacations HQ, am I glad to hear you! This is the captain of Prosperous II. I would like to apologize for going off the map while we took a brief detour. Over.”
The janitor could hardly believe his ears. “I . . . er . . . that’s great news,” he replied eventually. “Are you all safe and well? Over.”
“Affirmative. All passengers are on board, safe, healthy, and looking forward to going home. I repeat, we are on our way home. Please tell our families we will see them soon! This is Prosperous II out.”
The janitor had to hold the radio away from his ear. As the captain had spoken, the cheers and whoops in the background had almost deafened him. “Well, Captain, I’m very pleased to hear that,” he said after rubbing his ear. “We wish you a safe homeward journey, and we’re very glad to have you back. We will of course inform your families. Um, this is HQ out.”
As he put the radio back in its cradle, the janitor looked around for a piece of paper so he could leave a note for his boss. Then he changed his mind. News like this couldn’t wait till morning.
He searched the files for the family lists — and then he started to make the calls himself. His wife would understand his being home late when he told her what he’d been doing.
The first call was answered on the third ring. “Hello?” It was a woman’s voice.
The janitor cleared his throat. “Is this Olivia Mason?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s me,” the voice replied. “Who’s this?”
The janitor sat a little straighter in his chair and spoke as clearly and as formally as he could. “Mrs. Mason, I’ve got some wonderful news . . .”
And while the janitor sat in a small office making happy phone calls, and a boy and a girl huddled together on a headland, and a group of passengers partied as they made their way home — inside a small house, a man sat in front of a warm, crackling fire, his wife in his arms beside him, their baby snuggled on his lap.
As they watched her miraculous little face, she wriggled and gurgled. Then she opened he
r eyes, and, for the first time in her tiny little life, looked up at her parents, and smiled.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2015 by Liz Kessler
Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Sarah Gibb
Cover illustration copyright © 2015 by Sarah Gibb
Text break illustrations copyright © 2012 by Natacha Ledwidge
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Orion Children’s Books, a division of the Orion Publishing Group
First U.S. electronic edition 2015
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2015936355
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