by Liz Kessler
I stood up, reaching around me to get a sense of where we were. I’d gotten used to the darkness enough to be able to see the edges of the damp, rocky tunnel. I could just about see Aaron in front of me. He had to stoop slightly so he didn’t bump his head on the tunnel’s rocky ceiling.
“Now what?” he asked.
“Let’s keep going,” I said. “It’s got to lead somewhere.”
So we trudged on, through the dark, cold, echoey belly of the mountain — and tried to hold on to a belief that this was going to lead us to any sort of answer.
It felt as though we’d been walking for hours when something began to change. I didn’t even realize what it was at first. All I knew was that I’d suddenly become aware of different shades in the stony walls. Long, squiggly green lines trailed the length of the rock, like veins running along someone’s arm. Odd shapes hung down from the ceiling — stalactites shaped like ice-cream cones and daggers and fans.
“Aaron!” I burst out. “Look!”
He turned around. I could see his face clearly: a graze above his left eye where he must have hit a rock; black dusty muck all over his cheeks.
“What?” he asked. Then his eyes widened. “I can see you!” he said.
“Exactly! There’s light coming in from somewhere.”
We kept going with renewed energy and purpose. Light could only mean one thing. Well, two things. Either we were coming out on the other side of the mountain, or there was a hole letting the light in.
Sure enough, a few minutes, and a lot more light later . . .
“Wow!” Aaron said. The tunnel had opened up, widening into a circle the size of a small room. Right in the center, a thick shaft of dusty sunlight beamed down from above, like a spotlight on a stage.
We’d found the hole in the top of the mountain.
Except it wasn’t a complete hole. It went all the way up through the mountain, right from where we were — which I guessed was the very center — up as high as the mountain itself had looked from outside. But we couldn’t see the sky. Over the top of the hole was a layer of ice — the underside of the glacier.
“Now what?” I asked, looking into the shaft of light.
“I think we just need to wait.”
“Wait? What for?”
Aaron checked his watch. “For about three hours to pass,” he said.
“Huh?”
He twisted his arm around to show me his watch. “It’s just after nine o’clock,” he said. “Remember what Neptune said in that bubble?”
“Under the midnight sun, the ice will melt.”
“So we just need to wait till midnight, catch the water in our hands, and then . . .” Aaron’s voice faded. “And then . . . um . . .”
“And then we have no idea,” I said.
Aaron grimaced. “Yeah, pretty much.”
“Maybe once we’ve got the water, we’ll have some idea of what to do with it.”
“At least we’ve got three hours to think about it,” he said.
I perched on a big, rocky stalagmite and tried not to feel too despondent. If Aaron hadn’t told me about his bet, I might have been able to enjoy three hours on my own with him, but as it was, I sat as far away from him as I could, and hoped the hours would pass quickly.
We sat and listened to the sounds of the cave. A tiny drip, drip, drip echoed from deep in the tunnel. The rocks themselves seemed to hum — a low, damp, living noise. Every now and then, there was a shuffling, scurrying sound of something running around in the darkness. I didn’t even want to think what that something might be.
“Em,” Aaron said after a little while. “You know that stuff with Archie . . .”
“Aaron, I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. “Not when we’ve got all this to deal with.” I couldn’t bear the thought of him going over it again. Just thinking about his bet with Archie felt like a knife going through me. I didn’t want to be stabbed with the same thing over and over again.
“But, Emily!” Aaron burst out. “It was only a stupid kiss!”
“A stupid kiss?” The knife stabbed at me again.
“I mean, a stupid bet,” Aaron said grumpily. “What’s the difference? Either way, it’s all ruined now. And you’re probably right.”
“Right about what?”
“About us just being friends.” He looked at me and his voice softened a tiny bit. “I mean, if that’s what you want, too?”
I tried for a bright smile. “Yes, it is,” I lied, determined to do it convincingly. “I mean, look at us now. We’re getting along OK. We’re doing the job really well. I like it like this.” I forced an even bigger, brighter smile onto my face. I hoped it didn’t look too much as though someone were trying to stretch my mouth so wide that it could hang off my ears. That was certainly how it felt. But there was no way I was going to let him see that I wanted anything more. Not now that he’d made it perfectly clear he didn’t.
“You’re sure?” Aaron asked.
“Mm-hm,” I said.
He looked relieved. “OK, then,” he said. “That’s what we’ll do.”
I got up and turned away. I couldn’t bear for him to see any hint of my real feelings behind my big, false smile: the hurt at not being his girlfriend, and the anger that he was clearly fine with the idea.
“Good. I’m glad that’s settled,” I said sharply. I brushed my legs down. They were dusty from the rocks. “I’m just going to have a little look around. I’ll be back in a bit.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
I shook my head. “No, you stay here. I won’t be long.”
I turned my back and set off to explore the cave a bit farther — and tried to banish the tears that were threatening to spill from my eyes at any moment.
Eventually, after what felt like days of waiting, it was nearly midnight. We’d eaten all our provisions and almost drunk all the water. My stomach was grumbling and my legs were aching from sitting around on cold rocks for hours.
We stood on the edge of the shaft of dusty light, waiting to see what would happen. The seconds ticked slowly by until it was a minute to midnight. My heart was thumping fast.
“You OK?” Aaron asked.
“Fine,” I said. “You?”
He nodded. “I just hope this is going to work.”
“Yeah, me too.”
And then we waited in silence for one more minute, until, finally, midnight arrived.
The first thing I noticed was the creaking, squeaking sound from way, way above our heads.
“Look!” Aaron was pointing upward. “It’s happening. The midnight sun — it’s melting the ice!”
“Now all we have to do is catch it as it falls.” I had the feeling that might not be as easy as it sounded.
A moment later, the first drip came. Plopping down right in the center of the dusty shaft of light, it bounced with a loud PLINK! on the floor — and rebounded to scatter a tiny rainbow around the cave. A second later, the rainbow had gone, and the chamber was silent again.
“Wow!” Aaron said. “That was a bit —”
PLINK!
Another drip, just like the first, landing on the ground and trickling away as quickly as it had come.
“Hey, I think we should —”
PLINK!
Aaron gritted his teeth. “Come on, we need to catch one of these,” he said. Kind of stating the obvious.
I tried reaching out to catch the drips, but kept missing them. They didn’t drop in the exact same spot each time, so it was hard to judge where the next one was going to fall.
Aaron stepped into the center of the light and held out both hands.
I held my breath and waited. The next drip landed right in his outstretched palms!
“Yes!” he yelled. And then a split second later, he leaped out of the light, clutching his hand, doubled over. “Argghh! It’s burning me!” He was jumping around, waving his hand about. “It’s burning! It’s burning!”
“Quick, over here.” I
dragged him to a narrow part of the cave that I’d discovered earlier where there was a small rock pool in the middle of a few boulders. Aaron shoved his hand in the water and instantly calmed down.
After a few moments, he took his hand out. It was red and raw, skin peeling off his palm, blisters already forming.
“What happened?” I asked.
Aaron shook his head. “It’s not just ordinary water. It’s got some kind of magic in it. Remember that memory we saw in the lake? That servant telling Neptune he’d tried to catch the water and burned himself?”
I pulled the water bottle out of my pocket. “Let’s try catching it in this,” I suggested.
“Neptune told the servant he had to catch it in his hands.”
“But we can’t,” I insisted. “So this has got to be worth a try.”
“OK. But let me do it.” Before I could argue, Aaron took the bottle and stood in the center of the shaft of light again. Within seconds, a drip came. He caught it in the bottle on his first attempt.
“Did it!” he said, smiling as he held the bottle out to show me.
His smile faded as we both looked at the bottle. The water had burned all the way through the plastic, scorching a hole in it.
Aaron’s face looked as ragged as his fingers. I wanted to take his hand in mine. I wanted to make it better. I quickly moved away, before I was too tempted.
And then it hit me. The thing about taking Aaron’s hand in mine — and about the magic. Of course! How could we have been so stupid?
“Aaron! We have to do it together!”
“No way!” Aaron said straightaway. “I’m not letting you go through this. It’s awful!” Maybe he did care about me, after all. Just a bit.
I brushed the thought away. “We have to do it while holding hands,” I said. “It’s magic, isn’t it? Neptune’s magic. If we hold hands, maybe we can catch the water safely.”
Aaron thought for a moment. “I don’t know. This is really, really painful. If anything like this happened to you, I’d —”
“Aaron, we haven’t got any choice,” I said. “You haven’t got any choice. I’m doing it. Come on.”
He followed me back to the light. The drips had slowed. “We’ll have to be quick,” I said. “We don’t know how long it’s going to keep going.”
I gently held his burned hand. “Hold the other one out,” I said. “Come on, we can do it together. You know we can.”
Eventually, he nodded reluctantly. “OK,” he said.
We both took a breath, then we stepped into the light, held out our hands, and waited.
I looked up through the mountain’s vertical tunnel. Above me, the sky was a dusty blue, the sun’s light dancing around the edges of the hole, burning through the ice, making the hole bigger and bigger. I still couldn’t get my head around the fact that it was midnight and the sun was shining.
And then, almost in slow motion, I saw it — the drop of water falling toward us. I tightened my grip on Aaron’s hand. “It’s coming,” I said. He looked up and tightened his grip, too. Between us, our outstretched hands made one big cup.
The drip fell directly into our palms.
I took a sharp breath, waiting for the searing pain. But it didn’t come. Instead, the drip of water rolled around in our hands, hardening, turning back into ice, then crystallizing into something more beautiful. It finally came to rest on my palm.
“Wow, it looks like a diamond or something,” Aaron said.
I stared at the crystal, entranced by its beauty.
“Look — another one!”
I glanced up just in time to see the second drip land in our palms. This time it rolled into Aaron’s hand, crystallizing and sparkling just as mine had done.
It happened once more, until we ended up holding three small crystals. We waited another few minutes, but no more drips came.
“I guess that must be it,” Aaron said. “It’s past midnight now.”
“Should we try letting go?” I asked.
Aaron nervously bit his lip. “I suppose we’ll have to at some point,” he said.
“Let’s put the crystals away somewhere first,” I said. “At least, that way if the magic dissolves as soon as we let go, they won’t burn our hands. I’ll take them.” Aaron gave me his crystal and I zipped the three of them into my coat pocket. I turned to him. “Ready?”
“Ready,” Aaron said.
I held my breath as we dropped each other’s hands.
Nothing happened. I patted my pocket to see if the crystals were still there, and they were. They were safe and, more to the point, so were we.
“Right, let’s get out of here,” Aaron said.
“Good idea.” I looked around. Looked left, looked right, straight ahead, behind us. It all looked the same. There were tunnels everywhere. Identical routes — each one leading in a different direction.
“Which way?” I asked, trying not to panic.
Aaron pointed down a tunnel. “That way,” he said confidently. Then he added, a bit less certainly, “I think.”
I set off in the direction he’d suggested. “We might as well try it,” I said. “If it’s wrong, we can always come back and try one of the others.”
Aaron followed me. Soon we were back in total darkness. How we were ever going to know if this was the right direction was anyone’s guess.
But then something weird happened. There was a faint glow coming from somewhere nearby. Was there another hole above us?
I looked up. Nothing.
Then, looking down, I saw it. It was my pocket — it was glowing with light. The crystals!
I pulled one of them out, and it was as though I’d lit a candle. It gave us enough light to see a little ways ahead. We carefully made our way through the tunnel as I held the crystal in front of me like an old-fashioned lamp.
We’d been walking for quite a while when Aaron stopped. “I don’t think this is right,” he said. “We had more twists and turns than this on the way in.”
“Are you sure?”
“No, not sure.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I suppose it’s a bit of a waste to have come all this way and then turn back — especially if we’re not sure it’s the wrong path,” Aaron agreed. “Let’s try going a bit farther.”
We walked on in silence for a while. But the more we walked, the more I began to think that Aaron was right. This felt wrong. It wasn’t just that it didn’t feel like the same route we’d taken coming in, there was more to it than that: a sense that we were moving deeper into the mountain instead of finding our way out of it. I didn’t like it.
Another thing I didn’t like — it was getting cold. Really cold. It was only when I tried to call to Aaron and my teeth were chattering so much I could hardly move my mouth that I realized quite how cold it was.
Finally, I called out to him. “A-Aaron!”
He stopped and turned. Behind the glowing light of my crystal, his face was as white as ice. “What?” he asked. His lips looked blue.
“It’s f-f-freezing!” I said.
“I know. I think we definitely need to turn back.”
“I agree.” I held my crystal up and we turned back the way we’d come. Just ahead of us, I noticed something I hadn’t seen on the way here. A fork in the tunnel. I didn’t know which one we had come from. A prickle of fear that felt like an icy spear ran through my chest.
“It’s that way,” Aaron said, pointing down the opposite fork from the one I would have chosen.
“I think it’s that way,” I said, pointing down the other one.
The icy spear grew branches and spread out along my arms and legs, filling me with dread. We were lost. Trapped in a cold, damp, dark place inside a mountain covered in a glacier — and no one had the slightest idea we were even here.
Aaron was fumbling in a pocket.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m calling Neptune,” he said. “He told us to get in touch if we had anything
to tell him.”
“He told us to get in touch with information, not to call him if we completely messed up the whole mission and got ourselves lost in the process.”
Aaron stopped rummaging for a moment. Then he brightened, and he began groping around in his pocket again. “Mr. Beeston, then,” he said. “He definitely told us to call if we got into trouble. He’ll help us.”
I didn’t want to dampen Aaron’s enthusiasm by telling him that I could probably count the number of times Mr. Beeston had been helpful on the fingers of one hand. And, to be fair, I didn’t have any better ideas.
“Where is it?” Aaron mumbled. “I had it. I’m sure I brought it with me. I must have.”
“You’ve lost your shell phone?”
“It looks like it,” he said hopelessly. “I must have dropped it somewhere.”
The tiny moment of optimism fell away, just like the drops of water earlier — out of reach and dispersing into nothingness. “Great!”
Aaron glared at me. “Well, at least I didn’t give it away before we even got here!” he snapped.
A moment later, he took a step toward me. “Emily, I’m sorry,” he said.
“No, you’re right. It was a stupid thing to do.”
“Look, it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing we can do about it. We’ll just have to keep trying different routes till we find our way out of here — which we will do. OK?”
“Mmm,” I mumbled.
Aaron lifted my chin. “OK?” he repeated more firmly.
“OK,” I agreed.
“Which one?” he said. “You pick.”
I pointed halfheartedly down the tunnel I’d thought we’d taken to get here. “Let’s try this one first.”
“OK, here’s what we’re going to do,” Aaron said, taking charge and making me wish he was still my boyfriend again for about the twentieth time since we’d agreed how great it was to be friends. “We give it a hundred paces, and if nothing looks familiar by then, we turn back and try the other one.”
It was about as good a plan as we were likely to make, so I agreed, and we set off into the darkness once again.
Eighty-four, eighty-five, eighty-six . . . I counted to myself as we walked, almost positive we were going in the wrong direction and about to say so, when we turned a corner and saw something just ahead. It looked like a sculpture. A house made of ice.