by Liz Kessler
“HELP!” I yelled instead. “I’M BEING HELD PRISONER! SAVE ME!”
The two mermen were by my side in seconds. “I wouldn’t waste your time,” Orta said.
“It’s just some sort of big fish,” Kai added. “A shark or something. Out here in the middle of the ocean, we get all sorts.”
That made me feel so much better.
“No it isn’t, you stupid seaworm!” Orta snapped, reaching for his key. “It’s the others. Get out of my way.”
A moment later, he’d opened the door, and a couple more mermen came in holding a package between them. A wriggling package trussed up in a net. For a second, I wondered what they’d brought us. And then the package spoke.
“Gtmtofhrrrrrr!” it said.
Wait! It was . . . It was . . .
Aaron!
“Get him out of that thing!” I yelled, angrier than ever. “Let him out now!”
“Hold your halibut, we’re getting him out!” Orta snapped. He pulled a long knife from a belt at the top of his tail, and with a couple of swift movements, the net was open.
Kai pulled off Aaron’s blindfold and gag. Aaron blinked and gasped as he adjusted to his surroundings. As soon as he saw me, he swam over and hugged me.
“I didn’t know what had happened to you,” he said. “I was right behind you, and the next thing I knew, they . . .”— he lowered his voice as he looked at the mermen who had brought him in —“these pieces of sea vermin grabbed me.”
“Are you OK?” I asked.
He nodded. “What about you? Did they hurt you?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “At least, I am now,” I added, with as much of a smile as I could manage, given the circumstances.
Aaron smiled back, and he pulled me closer. As long as I was with him, things didn’t seem quite so bad.
“Delightful and touching as this little love scene is,” Orta said, breaking into my thoughts, “we’ve got a job to do.” He looked at the mermen who had brought Aaron in. “You can leave them both with us,” he said. “We can manage.”
“You sure?”
“Sure as sharks.” He swam back to the door behind the two mermen. As he pulled the key from around his neck again, Aaron glanced at me and raised an eyebrow.
I knew what he was thinking. I was thinking the same. This could be our chance to escape! Without saying a word, we edged closer to the door while the mermen talked.
Orta put his key in the padlock. Turned it. Opened the door.
“Now!” Aaron hissed in my ear, and I made a dash for the door.
“I don’t think so!” Kai grabbed hold of my tail, gripping so hard I thought he’d break my scales off. Half a minute later, I was back inside the room, the door shut fast behind me.
Orta clicked the padlock into place and put the key back around his neck. He nudged a thumb at Kai. “Just because he looks stupid doesn’t mean he actually is stupid,” he said.
“Yeah,” Kai agreed. Then he scratched his head and looked at Orta. “Hey!” he added, realizing what Orta had said.
Orta brushed him off with a dismissive wave. “You just need to be patient,” he said to us. “I’m sure you won’t be here much longer — one way or another.” He emphasized the “one way or another” with a menacing laugh.
I swam back over to Aaron. He was examining the lights and crystals in the walls.
“Look at these,” he said. “They’re amazing.”
“Almost like jewels,” I said, shuffling closer.
Aaron shuffled closer to me, too. “We’ll be OK, you know,” he said. “We’ll think of something.”
The strange thing was, when he smiled at me like he was doing, I couldn’t help believing him.
“You’re right,” I said. “I think everything’s going to be —”
Except I didn’t get to finish my sentence. It was washed away by a wave that swooshed through the cave so suddenly and so fiercely that it swept all four of us up to the ceiling and then hurled us against the opposite wall.
Orta was first to recover. He pulled himself up, brushed a hand down his tail, and gave Kai a thump in the chest. “Look sharp,” he said. “Boss is coming.”
I shuddered to think what their boss was going to be like. These two were bad enough. How much worse would he be?
I didn’t have long to wonder.
Three heavy bangs on the door, and Orta practically flew across the cave to open it. He unlocked the padlock, swung the bolt across, and swam backward, his head bowed low as he held the door open.
And then, pulled by a dozen dolphins, and riding a golden chariot that shone so brightly it lit the caves up like a fireworks display, in came their boss.
Neptune!
I gasped. “But —”
With the briefest glance at Aaron and me, Neptune turned to the mermen. “Good work,” he said somberly. “You are relieved.”
Bowing low, Orta and Kai swam out of the cave without a backward glance at either of us. Neptune raised his trident, and a dolphin at the back of the chariot flicked its tail to shut the door behind them.
“Now, then,” he said gravely, turning to face us. “Let’s get down to business.”
Down to business? What did that mean? I was fairly certain I hadn’t signed up to do any business with Neptune. It wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you forgot. And it wasn’t the kind of thing you volunteered for in a hurry, either.
In case you’ve never come across Neptune, he’s the king of all the oceans. He used to rule with an iron rod — or rather, an iron trident. That’s his special staff that he uses to do things like create storms or put curses on people.
But he’d softened recently. I’d thought he was happy and that everything was fine.
I was clearly wrong.
“You’re probably wondering why I have brought you down here,” Neptune said in a low, deep voice that echoed and rumbled throughout the cave.
Er . . . yes!
“I shall tell you.” And then he fell silent.
He looked mad. And even though I’d seen Neptune look mad more times than I cared to remember, there was something different about this time. He didn’t look mad with us. He looked cross with himself.
He suddenly lifted his trident in the air and turned to his dolphins. With a flick of the trident, he bellowed, “Leave us! Return when I call you!”
The dolphins flipped and turned in a swift, instant movement. One of them flicked open the door and they dived through it, flipped it closed behind them, and left the three of us alone in the cave. Neptune beckoned us to come closer.
Aaron and I shuffled awkwardly toward him.
“I have a job for you,” he said. “A . . . well, a kind of mission.”
“A mission?” Aaron asked. “What sort of mission?”
“I can’t tell you too much at this stage,” Neptune replied gravely. “But I can tell you this — it is extremely important, extremely secret . . . and extremely dangerous.”
Great. This was sounding better by the second.
“Why us?” Aaron asked.
Neptune looked down and examined his hands. “Why not?” he mumbled.
“Why not?” I asked. I could think of lots of reasons why not!
Neptune shrugged and waved his trident in an overly nonchalant manner. “Because you are semi-mers,” he said flippantly. “I thought you would do.”
He wasn’t convincing me. He was trying too hard to sound casual. He didn’t go to the kind of lengths he’d gone to with us because we “would do.”
“If you just need semi-mers, why not send someone like Mr. Beeston?” Aaron asked.
Mr. Beeston was half human, half merman, and he already worked for Neptune. In fact, he’d spent most of my life spying on Mom and me and reporting back to Neptune on his findings. When I’d found out, I was furious. But lately, he’d changed. He’d apologized, too, and things were different now — so I’d forgiven him. It didn’t mean I’d ever trust him again, though.
“Mr.
Beeston seems an obvious candidate for your sneaky secret missions,” I pointed out.
Neptune shook his head. “Beeston is not to know about this mission,” he said. Then he scratched his beard and screwed up his eyes. “Actually, now that I think about it, perhaps it’s not such a bad idea. Beeston could come in handy.”
“Great,” I said. “Does that mean we can go now?”
“Go?”
“You just said — Mr. Beeston can do it.”
Neptune’s face darkened. “Mr. Beeston can not do this,” he said firmly. “He cannot know about it, cannot know the full truth, anyway. What he can perhaps do is chaperone the pair of you. With limited knowledge of the full task.”
“Your Majesty, forgive me, but can I just check that I’ve got this right?” I said, summoning up all my courage to stare into his face till he met my eyes. “This mission is something so secret that even Mr. Beeston, one of your closest advisers, isn’t to know the full truth of it, and yet you’re telling us that we’ve been chosen simply because we’re semi-mers?”
“All right,” Neptune said. “I admit it. It’s not just because you are semi-mers.”
He paused for so long that my tail started to itch and twitch with impatience. A black-and-gold spotted fish that looked like a leopard weaved between us. Neptune watched the fish swim away, then turned back to us. “It’s because I’m sending you to a place filled with secrets and magic,” he said. Which didn’t sound so bad, actually, till he added, “And fear.”
Secrets, magic, and fear didn’t sound quite so enticing.
“It’s a dangerous combination,” Neptune went on, in case we hadn’t figured that out for ourselves.
“So why us?” Aaron asked again.
“Because you will need all of my powers for this mission,” Neptune replied.
“All of your powers? But we haven’t got them anymore,” I said.
Aaron and I had found a pair of magical wedding rings that Neptune and his wife, Aurora, had given to each other. We’d discovered that when we held hands while wearing the rings, we gained Neptune’s magical powers. Very cool once we’d figured out what was going on — except Neptune didn’t find it quite as much fun as we did, and he made us give our power back to him. That had been weeks ago.
Neptune fixed his eyes on me so hard I had to turn away. “Yes, you have,” he said.
I opened my mouth to argue, but he went on. “A short while after you gave your power back to me, I noticed something. When I was near you, I could feel it. A vibration. A sense that you still had some of my power in your hands. I was baffled. How was it that you had it again? So I watched you.”
I bit back a response. So we were back to the old ways? Neptune sending people to spy on us?
“And?” Aaron asked.
“And I soon had my answer.” Neptune looked from Aaron to me, and back again. “You kissed, didn’t you?”
“What?” Aaron exploded. “How do you . . . When. . . What . . . ?” he blustered. His face had turned bright red.
“Well, then,” Neptune said. “That explains everything.”
“What do you mean? What does it explain?” I asked.
“I was on a visit to Shiprock last week and I noticed you two in the distance.”
I remembered that day. We’d swum to Rainbow Rocks and played in the water around the rocks, holding hands and talking and laughing all afternoon.
“When I saw you, I felt the feeling between you — the happiness, the joy. And I did something that I am now ashamed of.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
Neptune wouldn’t meet our eyes. “I sent a spike of anger to you,” he said to the floor, brushing something off the end of his tail.
“A spike of anger?” I said. “What’s that?”
“I was jealous.”
“Jealous? Of us?” Aaron stared at Neptune.
“You had something that I had lost,” Neptune said, finally meeting our eyes. “And it upset me — just for a moment. So I made a tiny whirlpool and sent it spinning your way. It wouldn’t have done you any harm. I just wanted to knock you off your happy little perch for a moment.”
I tried to remember the whirlpool — but I couldn’t. I couldn’t recall anything other than the happy feelings I’d had all afternoon.
“There was no whirlpool,” Aaron said.
“Exactly. It didn’t reach you. You were so wrapped up in your happy little bubble that you didn’t even notice it, spinning close to the rocks, but unable to get any nearer to you.”
“Unable?” I asked.
“Because you were holding hands,” Neptune explained. “Somehow or other, you had regained the power to overcome my magic.”
“But how?”
Neptune cut me off with a wave of his hand. “That’s what I asked myself. At one point I thought you had tricked me. You can’t imagine how angry I was when I thought that.”
Er, we probably could, actually. Neptune being angry was very easy to imagine.
“I thought about it and thought about it, and, finally, I realized how it must have happened.”
“When we kissed?” Aaron said. “That’s how we got our powers back?”
“Exactly!”
“But why?” I asked.
“When Aurora and I were married, we infused our wedding rings with magical powers. The ones you gained when you brought the rings back together.”
“But we gave the rings and the magic back to you,” I insisted.
“Hear me out!” Neptune barked, reminding us who he was, and why it wasn’t generally wise to argue with him. “At our wedding ceremony, we sealed the magic with a kiss. That kiss bound the magic firmly into the rings. The kiss was part of the magic. Powerful enough on its own, even without the rings.”
Aaron frowned. “So when we kissed, it brought back our powers?”
“Precisely. I didn’t know it would happen. But then I didn’t know any of it would happen. The vows we made that day were for us and only us. They were never designed to be used by anyone else.”
“We didn’t exactly do it on purpose,” I mumbled.
“No. You didn’t — which is why you are not being punished.”
I looked around the cave, remembering the way I had arrived here. “Really?” I asked.
“Yes, really!” Neptune snapped. “In fact, it is quite the opposite. I realize that my method of bringing you here was perhaps not the best way of inspiring your loyalty and your trust.”
You think?
“But it guaranteed the one thing that I need above all else. Secrecy. No one is to know where you have gone, or why you have been brought here.”
I swallowed. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear any more. Not that I had a choice in the matter.
“I need you to do something for me,” he went on. “It involves traveling a long distance. It involves risk, danger, and many unknown factors. The only thing about it that I can guarantee for sure is that if you do not do it . . .”
He stopped and shook his head.
“If we don’t do it, what?” Aaron asked.
Neptune met Aaron’s eyes. “There is a threat ahead of us. It is coming closer,” he said. “If you do not remove this threat, I don’t think any of us will survive.”
“None of us?” Aaron asked in a shaky voice. “Even you?”
“Especially me.”
“I . . . I don’t understand,” I said.
Neptune leaned back against his chariot and curled his tail up beneath him. “I can’t tell you much, but I shall tell you what I know. You must understand something, though. You are the first and only ones I have told this to, and it must stay that way. Understand?”
Neptune was trusting us with a secret that no one else knew. Were we up to it? I flicked my tail and held myself straighter in the water. I glanced at Aaron and he nodded back at me.
“We understand,” we said together.
“Every morning for the last two weeks, I have woken drenched in sweat and wri
thing in the agony of terrors I can barely describe,” Neptune began. “I cannot see the exact nature of the terrors — I can merely feel them.”
“You feel them?” I asked. “You mean like someone’s hurting you?”
“No one is there. No one is near. There is only myself,” Neptune replied. “And my mind.”
“Your mind? You mean you’re imagining the terrors?” Aaron asked.
Neptune’s eyes darkened. For a moment he looked more like his usual self. “Imagining?” he said angrily. “You think the king of all the oceans IMAGINES terrors?”
Aaron gulped. “N-no, Your Majesty,” Aaron stammered. “I’m sorry. I thought you said —”
Neptune ignored him and carried on. “Every night in my sleep, I have been plagued by terrors, by images, feelings,” he said, almost to himself. “It happens just before the dawn breaks, and it appears as the most terrifying series of images — scenes that have aroused such emotion in me I’ve been unable to hide it. You must have noticed.”
“Noticed? We haven’t seen you,” Aaron said.
“What happens when I’m angry or upset?” Neptune asked impatiently.
And then I got it! The weather. It was Neptune! His moods could create violent storms. The small, devastating storms we’d been having in the mornings were all because of Neptune’s nightmares!
“You made the storms!”
He nodded. “I can’t help it. And they will get worse if this isn’t stopped.”
“And that’s why it’s such a threat?” I asked.
“No. That is bad enough, for sure. But the threat is what I’m seeing in the dreams. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something out there, something that . . .” His voice trailed off.
“Something that scares you,” I said. He turned away and nodded.
“I don’t understand,” Aaron said. “You’re Neptune! How can you be so scared of dreams?”
Neptune turned his cold, hard eyes on him. “Because they aren’t just dreams,” he said.