by Liz Kessler
Neptune’s words were ringing in my ears. You must meet your eyes and jump.
“You know what we have to do, don’t you?” Aaron asked.
I nodded. “Ready?”
“Don’t let go of my hand,” Aaron said.
“I won’t,” I replied reluctantly.
Aaron took a breath. “OK, one, two, three . . . go!”
Still holding hands, and with no idea what we were getting ourselves into, we took a breath — and jumped.
For the first few seconds, the water was so cold I wondered if Neptune’s potion had worn off, but as my tail formed, my body warmed.
In the shock of the cold, I’d dropped Aaron’s hand. But now that we were actually in the lake it didn’t seem to matter. Maybe once we’d jumped in, we’d broken the spell.
The water was so clear I could see the mountains through the surface of the lake.
Aaron was looking around. “Now what?”
I shook my head. “No idea. Should we look around?”
We swam through the lake, looking for anything that might give us a clue to our next move. But apart from an occasional fish, long see-through tubes of seaweed, and tiny bits of ice dotted around like tiny crystals, there was nothing.
“Look at this,” Aaron said. In front of us, the water looked as if it were swirling around in a whirlpool. But as I got closer, I could see it wasn’t a whirlpool at all; it was hundreds of bubbles.
That’s when I realized — they were everywhere. Tiny little bubbles the size of raindrops; bigger ones that looked like those Mom and I used to make by squeezing the soap bottle while we were doing the dishes; bigger ones still, the size of soccer balls, beach balls, even the big balls they have in gyms.
“Do you think we can touch them?” I asked.
In reply, Aaron swam toward a medium-size bubble and held his hand against it. “Yuk! It feels like slime. Gooey, sticky slime.”
I swam over and joined him. “Here,” I said, holding out my hand. “Take it.”
Aaron smiled broadly and grabbed hold of my hand.
“And before you get any ideas, no, I haven’t forgiven you,” I said.
His smile dropped, but he held firmly on to my hand.
Together, we swam toward one of the bubbles. Still holding hands, we each placed our other hand on the bubble. Aaron was right about it feeling weird. It felt a bit like putting my hand on cold pudding. But I didn’t get to spend very long thinking about how it felt. The bubble shimmered and glistened for a second, and then something started to form inside it: pictures, people.
Aaron and I stared into the bubble. A middle-aged couple was standing in a room together, a sofa along one side, a television in the corner. The television was on, but they weren’t watching it. It looked as though they were arguing.
“They’re speaking,” Aaron said. “Listen.”
Still pressing my hand against the bubble, I moved closer and tried to tune in to the sounds.
“I’m telling you, I saw it with my own eyes! Ask Mr. Barrett if you don’t believe me,” the man was saying. His face was bright red, his voice raised and high-pitched.
His wife stood shaking her head, her arms folded across her chest. “And exactly how long did you and Mr. Barrett spend in the Ship Inn before your fishing trip?” she asked through tightly pursed lips.
The man sighed. “I’ve told you. We had half a pint, that’s all. It was nothing to do with that. It was real. We both saw it — a mermaid.”
I jumped away. I felt as if the words had leaped out of the bubble and touched me, snapping electric shocks into my skin. A mermaid? They were talking about mermaids! What was this?
“Let’s try another one,” I said.
We held hands again and swam toward another bubble, a smaller one this time. Again, we put our hands on the bubble. Instantly it exploded into a vision — a mini drama playing out in front of our eyes.
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 r
eally 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.”
We 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.
I don’t know if you’ve ever tried climbing up a glacier without ice picks, ropes, or the tiniest bit of instruction on how to do it, but let me tell you — it isn’t easy. In fact, it was impossible.
“We’re never going to make it,” Aaron complained after slipping and falling on his backside for the fifth time.
In any other circumstances, I would have laughed. He did look quite comical. But two things stopped me: a glance at his angry red face and the fact that I had also fallen, in an equally ungraceful manner, at least as many times.
I suppose the knowledge that we were on a highly dangerous, risky mission possibly took a bit of humor out of the situation, too.
“OK, let’s try something different,” I said after slipping and landing awkwardly yet again.
“What do you suggest?”
I looked around. “Perhaps we need to find a way around the glacier, instead of trying to climb up it.”
“I wonder how deep the ice is,” Aaron said. “Does it go all the way inside, or is the mountain still there underneath?”
“Of course! That’s it!”
“That’s what?”
“We’ve been thinking we have to search the outside of it,” I said. “But if there’s a hole in the top, maybe it goes all the way down. It could join up with a tunnel inside the mountain.”
“Like the one we came through to get here?”
“Exactly! If we can find a tunnel like that that goes through the mountain with the glacier, we might find the hole from inside it.”
Aaron didn’t look convinced.
I frowned. “Have you got any better ideas?”
<
br /> “No,” he said quickly. “I think it’s a great idea. Let’s go.”
An hour later, we hadn’t found anything. I flopped down on a rock at the foot of the mountain. The lake came right up to the edge at this point, lapping against the smooth, round boulders. “OK, maybe that wasn’t such a clever idea.”
“It was worth a try, though,” Aaron said, coming to sit with me on the rocks.
I looked down at the water. It was so clear I could almost see the bottom. The edge of the lake tapered into a scraggly v-shape in the rocks, which disappeared into darkness.
Wait!
“Aaron, I have an idea,” I said, jumping down from the rock. “We need to get back in the lake.”
Aaron looked at me doubtfully.
“Look at that dent in the rocks.” I pointed back to where we’d been sitting. “It gets wider just under the surface.”
Aaron’s eyes brightened as he caught on to what I was saying. “Of course! The tunnel through the mountain might be underwater!” Aaron smiled. “What are we waiting for?” He jumped back into the water.
As soon as our tails had formed and we’d shaken off the icy cold, we explored the rocks all around the edge of the lake. Eventually, we found something: a crack that would have been barely visible above the waterline, but that opened up into a narrow tunnel just below it.
We swam into the tunnel.
We were soon swimming in pitch darkness. The tunnel snaked through the rock, twisting this way and that, narrowing in places before widening out again.
We swam close to the surface, but after a while I could feel the sandy ground below me. The water was getting shallower with every swish of my tail. And we still hadn’t found a hole in the top of the mountain.
We swam on, my tail brushing against sand and rocks, until it was too shallow to swim. In pitch blackness, we waited, beached on the sand until our tails faded away and our legs came back.