“Whatever happens now,” Lucas said, “you guys are my family.”
A few minutes later, Penelope and Miles felt themselves carried by an unstoppable current through the water. The rest of the crew—minus Pooley, who stayed in the Bubble for communication purposes—was swimming in front of them. Each had on a headlamp, lighting the way just enough to see the piles of dead fish and mollusks lining the ocean floor.
“Hey,” a voice boomed in Penelope’s helmet. Though it sounded distorted, she recognized it as Pooley’s. “You read me?”
“Loud and clear,” Penelope said.
“Everybody else? Can you hear me?”
A chorus of yeahs and sures and too louds crackled into Penelope’s earpiece.
“I guess I thought your crazy cookies would lead us right to the source, but, uh…well, I suppose we’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.” Penelope heard Pooley spit into his cup. “Head twelve hundred meters south, then roughly four hundred forty meters toward the surface.”
Penelope and Miles swam their fastest but struggled to keep up as they darted in between the jagged boulders.
Soon they were face to face with a fearsome rock. Flashes of fiery light from above lit up the volcano long enough for them to see everything: steam plumes, thick lava pouring down, vents bubbling with poisonous gas, giant sea spiders tiptoeing around.
“Any ideas?” Omar asked.
Miles watched in horror as a sea snake, long and striped, materialized from the darkness and slithered toward his sister. “Penelope! Look out!”
But it had wrapped itself around her leg.
“Get it off!” she shouted. “Get it off!”
“Just stay still,” said Sparks. “Its fangs aren’t long enough to get through your suit.”
“You stay still! I’ve got a snake on me!” Penelope swatted at it with her glove.
“Take it easy. Let your body go limp.”
Penelope closed her eyes as the snake coiled and uncoiled, its ropy body throbbing around her. Finally, it lost interest and swam off into the deep.
Pooley’s voice buzzed in Penelope’s helmet. “What’s the holdup, bubbleheads?”
“Eh, Penelope stopped to play with a snake,” Sparks said.
—
Nearly a mile above them, Beardbottom’s troops had made their way to the peak of the volcano. They launched themselves out of the water onto the rocky surface jutting from the ocean. It was a brilliantly sunny day in the middle of nowhere.
Beardbottom put a wing to his beak for silence, and the penguins fanned out across the surface, in search of an enemy, an opening, a chamber—anything. All they found was more mountain.
Half the penguins launched themselves back into the water to comb the sides of the volcano. Through the gurgling lava and clouds of steam, they scoured the giant rock’s walls on all sides. Nothing.
Beardbottom was helping a group of privates overturn a large boulder at the northern end of the volcano’s surface when a lieutenant lumbered up to him.
“Sir. There’s no one here.”
Did they have the wrong rock? Every sailor had assumed Brimstone Peak would be heavily guarded from top to bottom. But this…was it just another desolate volcano amid hundreds of desolate volcanoes? It didn’t make any—
BOOM!
An explosion rocked the surface two hundred yards behind Beardbottom, sending penguins soaring into the ocean on impact and others sprawling for cover. An orange-black ball of fire rose to the sky. Beardbottom heard the screaming and he knew. Land mines.
“Send over a medic,” he told the lieutenant. “Tell your troops to keep their eyes peeled. This whole mountain is booby-trapped.”
—
Penelope’s team heard the noise, but from underwater it sounded like the harmless pop of a firecracker. They swam upward along the mountain. Pooley announced that they had reached the coordinates Coral reported and asked Penelope if she saw anything unusual.
“No,” she said. “Not yet.”
“Miles, how about you?”
“Just a bunch of penguins with little harpoons.”
“You’ve been underwater for twenty-five minutes now,” Pooley said. “Anyone who’s not a human being needs to surface and catch their breath.”
“Ah, we’re fine,” Omar said. “I could go another half hour.”
“I could live down here,” Lucas said.
“Negative,” Pooley said. “I need you to surface. Can’t risk it. We’ll get you back down shortly.”
Penelope and Miles looked at each other.
“We’ll be back,” Sparks said. “Keep us informed.”
And with that, the penguins darted upward, leaving a stream of bubbles and two scared children in their wake. Penelope and Miles were alone at the bottom of the ocean.
Pooley knew they were scared. To keep things loose, he told them a joke about a petrel. But just as he got to the punch line, his voice stopped.
All Penelope and Miles could hear in their headsets was static. They communicated with hand signals as they probed the mountain, though there wasn’t much to say. Both also felt an ominous flutter in their breathing and a dull headache. Was it possible that the cookies only worked for so long underwater and their breath would run out?
Penelope closed her eyes.
Come on, Buzzardstock, she thought. Give me something.
Immediately, the image of a giant fiery ball spreading over the clear blue sky filled her brain, an apocalyptic roar that drowned out screams fading in the wind. She saw a penguin’s unconcerned black-gray feet treading on a rocky surface.
When Penelope opened her eyes, she saw Miles reaching for a flat metal object poking out from the mountain.
“Miles! Don’t touch it!” she screamed. “It’s a mine! No!”
He couldn’t hear her, of course, and reached for the object.
Penelope darted forward as fast as she could.
Miles’s gloved hand was inches away when she grabbed his leg and yanked him away from the mountain.
Miles frowned at Penelope: What’s your deal?
Penelope pointed to the metal and mimicked an explosion.
They got a good look at the mine, a silver nubbin the size of a hockey puck. It was enough to blow them both to the bottom of the ocean forever.
Penelope tried to ignore the sudden pressure in her ribs and head. She noticed Miles’s chest heaving faster, his breaths short and clipped, and now she knew: their oxygen was fading, and fast.
As Miles studied the mine, his elbow grazed the mountain ever so slightly, triggering a giant snap! and sending him flailing about in the water.
He was stuck in an iron booby trap that had been chained to the mountain. Its sharp teeth had ripped through his wet suit and torn a jagged slash in the skin near his shoulder. A thick stream of blood poured out as he struggled to get loose.
Penelope tried to help but couldn’t budge him. The pressure had begun to sting the inside of her nose. She figured they had one minute, maybe two, until their breath ran out.
They were in deep trouble.
Miles’s body began convulsing. Penelope assumed he was going into shock. Then it occurred to her: her brother was attempting to dislocate his shoulder.
But this was no straitjacket. The harder Miles flailed, the deeper the iron teeth clamped down on his skin. Then, all at once, a calm overtook him, and his mouth curved upward into a feeble smile. Through gritted teeth, he twisted his torso inward to the most gruesome angle.
With a sudden jerk and an audible crack, he did it. He was free.
Miles pulled himself from the trap, the hole in his shoulder raw and exposed. Once he was safely away from the mountain, he jammed the shoulder back into place.
Penelope couldn’t watch, and by this point she didn’t have time to. Nearly blinded with the pressure in her head, she felt her arms and legs going numb as she studied the mountain for something—anything—that could lead them inside.
When Miles sa
w the colony of flapping orange tube worms along the mountain, he felt a strong déjà vu. Something about the cluster, no larger than the entrance to the Grotto, felt familiar. Howling in silent pain, he used his one good arm to push aside the tube worms and peeked inside. With what little strength remained, he motioned to Penelope.
—
Pooley floored it. He’d never had any reason to go faster than 10 knots in the Trouble Bubble. But now he was doing 15, 20, 25, churning up water behind him and zooming in and out of the tight peaks and valleys with lightning-fast reflexes. No way he was going to let these kids die.
Two minutes later, he checked his coordinates: 62.226996°S, 162.509766°W. Yes, this was it. The spot that the Wanamaker girl had reported. But all he found was a bunch of tube worms waving in the surf.
The inside of the volcano was deafening. A throb of hisses issued from all directions, one on top of the other. Below Penelope and Miles lurked a giant amber crater filled with lava, which charged the air with a thick orange glow. Struggling to regain her breath, Penelope peeled off her dry suit before it melted into her body. Beside her, Miles had managed to do the same. His shoulder did not look good.
Penelope tied her dry suit around Miles’s shoulder to stop the bleeding. “You okay?” she hollered over the roar.
“Yeah,” Miles said in a dry-throated rasp. “Little warm, maybe.”
“At least we’re breathing. And not burning up. Must be the cookies.”
They stood over the pit and watched the lava crashing and pulsating like waves at high tide.
“What now?” Miles croaked.
“I don’t know.”
Penelope closed her eyes. A million memories whooshed into her brain. Then, as if someone had taken an eraser to a chalkboard, everything was gone. Blank. Silent. And she heard, very faint, Ore9n Buzzardstock’s voice.
“If you want to succeed, you have to be willing to walk through fire. And you have to believe. If you can do that, the answer is in your hands.”
A peace came over Penelope, and she knew, as clearly as she knew her own name. It was the only way.
“Miles,” she said. “Stay here and watch for the others.”
“Where are you going?”
She pulled her brother’s frail body into hers. “I love you.”
“Tell me what you’re doing!”
“I’m going to walk through fire.”
Miles looked down at the blistering cauldron of lava. “You’ve got to be kidding! In ten seconds, you’ll be nothing but a pile of ashes!”
She tried to pull away, but his one good arm wouldn’t let go.
“Miles.” Penelope smiled. “Do you trust me?”
“I trust you! I don’t trust volcanoes!”
“This is one of those things I’m going to do no matter what you say or do. Now let go.”
When Miles released her from his grip, he had a strange look on his face. “I’ll go,” he said. “I don’t understand, but if it’ll keep you alive, I’ll go.”
“No. It’s got to be me. And we both know it.” She put her hand on his cheek and scaled down the steep rocks toward the hissing pit. “Keep pressure on that shoulder. If I’m not back in one hour, get out of here. And tell them to blow this whole thing up.”
Penelope’s feet reached the edge of the cliff and she looked down. A stone rolled off into the abyss and incinerated immediately.
Believe.
“Hey, Pen.”
She turned around.
Miles smiled. “I love you too.”
And then Penelope jumped.
Her body did not burst into flames. In fact, when Penelope sank into the lava, she didn’t feel much of anything beyond a thick, stinging sensation, as though her insides had become lava. She might as well have been jumping through a cloud that had been painted orange by the sunset.
As she fell farther and farther, faster and faster, everything around her became a blur—not orange, not black, not anything but an intense whirl of colors. She felt her fingertips tingling.
When the colors stopped, Penelope found herself in a long white hallway. White walls, white floor, white ceiling dangling with white lights. It reminded her of a hospital, clean and silent and empty. At the end of the hallway was a white door.
At the sight of the door, Penelope’s courage shriveled into nothing. A dread, pure and black, slammed into her with such force that it almost tore a hole in her. She couldn’t move. Whatever lurked beyond that door, she knew she had to face it.
Penelope willed her rubbery legs forward. The only sound echoing in the empty corridor was her cautious footsteps.
With a trembling hand, she pushed the door open.
It was a large white room, as sparkling and sterile as the hallway. At first, Penelope thought it was empty. Then she saw a woman sitting in a white rocking chair in the corner.
Though her dark, wavy hair and sad brown eyes looked familiar, Penelope did not recognize her delicate face until the woman’s look of alarm turned to realization, then dissolved into a crooked grin that made the wrinkles on her forehead dance mischievously. And Penelope knew.
It was her mother.
“Penelope?” The woman jumped up from the rocking chair. “Is that you?”
The sound of her mother’s voice poked at some forgotten corner of Penelope’s memories. “Mama?”
“Shhh!” Penelope’s mother whispered. “She can hear you.”
Penelope looked around the empty room. “Who?”
“Her. She. It!”
“Do you mean—”
Her mother put a finger to her lips. “Come.”
Penelope started across the room—
“Quietly!” her mother whispered.
Feeling silly, Penelope tiptoed the rest of the way. But when she sank into her mother’s arms, every worry and fear and pain melted away until nothing was left but a little girl, safe and sobbing on her mother’s shoulder. She wanted to stay there forever. “I’ve missed you so much,” she murmured.
Her mother let out a strangled cry. “I’ve missed you more than you can possibly know.”
Penelope didn’t bother to wipe her eyes. The tears kept coming. “But I…I don’t understand—”
“I know. I’ll explain everything. First, let’s get out of here.” She clutched her daughter’s hand. “I can’t be in this room a minute longer, and she’ll be back any second.”
“Who?”
Penelope’s mother looked over her shoulder, though nothing was there but a plain white wall. “Nyx,” she whispered. Then she suddenly dropped Penelope’s hand. “Wait.”
“What’s wrong?”
“You.” Her mother backed away, a shadow of panic falling over her brown eyes. “You’re not my— No, wait a minute— Oh, how can you be so cruel?” She crumpled to the ground. “Haven’t you tormented me long enough? Just leave me alone, you horrible beast!”
Penelope stepped forward. “I’m Penelope Grace March. I’m twelve years old. I live at 1220 Broken Branch Lane in Glacier Cove. My father is Russell March, and my mother is Angela March. You. I’m your daughter. And I’ve been waiting my whole life to say that.”
“Penelope.” Her mother looked so sad and helpless. “Is it really you?”
“It’s really me.”
“She’s kept me away from you and played with my mind for eleven years. I don’t know who to trust anymore.”
“Trust me.” Penelope grabbed her mother’s shaky hand and led her to the door. As she tried the doorknob, Penelope noticed the tingling in her fingers had crept down to her palms. Locked. From the outside. “Do you have the key?” she asked her mother.
“No.”
The two of them tried to bust the door down. Once, twice, three times. The thick metal would not budge.
Out of breath, Penelope looked up at the ceiling, which was covered with white tiles. “Hey. Give me a boost.”
Angela clasped her fingers together, Penelope stepped into her hands, and together they st
ruggled until she had hoisted Penelope inches from the ceiling.
Penelope pushed a tile and it slid loose. “Just a little higher.”
“I…I can’t hold you much longer.”
Penelope glanced down at her mother struggling to keep her aloft. The woman’s arms and legs shook. She made one last push, and Penelope shimmied her way into the dark tunnel of an air duct.
Penelope looked down. “Give me your hand!”
Angela reached up. She tiptoed. She jumped. But her daughter’s outstretched fingers remained out of reach.
A rumble emanated from somewhere nearby.
“I think she’s coming!” Angela said.
“The chair,” Penelope said. “Pull over the rocking chair and stand on it!”
As Angela was stepping onto the chair and thrusting her hand upward, Penelope’s eyes settled on the necklace swinging back and forth around her mother’s neck. It was an ornate silver chain dangling with a small crystal rod.
The Shard.
Penelope pulled her hand away.
“Darling,” her mother said. “Give me your hand! She’s coming.”
Penelope’s brain raced. “What’s your son’s name?”
“What?”
“What is your son’s name?”
“Honey, we don’t have time! Hurry!”
Penelope searched the eyes of the woman below for a sign. Any sign.
“Niles,” the woman said. “Niles March.”
Penelope felt like she’d been hit in the head with a cinder block. She could barely muster the strength to say the words.
“You’re not my mother.”
The woman glared at Penelope with hurt in her eyes. All at once the hurt transformed into a smile so revolting, so foul and acidic, that it was painful to look at.
Then the woman leapt into the air duct and everything went black.
“Oh, what a shame!” Gloomy, low laughter echoed up and down the air duct. “This has been such fun. Miles, Niles. I was so close!”
Penelope couldn’t see a thing. She couldn’t tell how far the tunnel went in either direction, or if it went anywhere. She only knew that she was on her hands and knees, she was terrified, and that Makara Nyx was somewhere in there with her.
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