by Liz Kessler
In their place, my tail had formed. Purple and green, sparkling and bright, it glinted as I flicked it, scattering rainbow droplets of water around me.
We swished along together, through water that was so clear you could see everything. Golden sand lined the seabed. It puffed up into dusty bubbles as we swam over it. Every now and then, we passed a small cluster of rocks with thin strands of seaweed reaching upward like a bouquet of flowers, or a single fish darting past as if in a hurry to get to an appointment. Shoals of fish sailed by, in formations as perfect as gymnastic teams.
I could have stayed there all day.
Except, obviously, we couldn’t — not unless we wanted to get into huge trouble with Miss Platt. The thing about her was, she was one of the nicest teachers at Brightport — always friendly and smiley — but firm enough that we generally did what she said. You always wanted one of her smiles, not one of her stern looks.
Which meant we should get back to the treasure hunt. I didn’t want us to be the pair who got the stare for arriving back two hours after everyone else.
I tapped Aaron on the arm. “I think we should head back.”
He nodded and pointed upward. “Let’s check where we are.”
We swam up to the surface and looked around. We’d come a long way out in the short time we’d been swimming. That was the thing with being in the water — you lost track of your bearings; a tail was much quicker than legs.
I could still see Sandy Bay, but we’d swum around the coast as well as out to sea, and as I looked back to land, I noticed we’d almost reached the next bay. Ducking back under the water, I could see a ledge ahead of us, where the seabed dropped right down and the water was even more blue and clear.
Aaron pointed ahead. “This must be Deep Blue Bay! Wasn’t the next question taking us here?”
“We have to find out the depth of the deepest bay,” I replied.
“So, what do you think? I’d say the deepest bay is probably the one with ‘Deep’ in its name, wouldn’t you?”
“I guess so. Should we take a look?”
“Why not? Maybe we can get in another answer before we go back. We’ll be miles ahead, then!”
We swam into the bay together. As we crossed the sea shelf, the water grew suddenly colder. I shivered and looked down. Below me, the seabed had practically disappeared. I swam lower and lower, but it didn’t seem to be getting closer.
Aaron was beside me. “Wow. Bit weird, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “Beautiful, too, though. Look.” I pointed at a group of about ten fish ahead of us. They were dark blue with a pale, thin yellow stripe running down each side. They seemed to shine and glint as they moved. Silvery balls that looked like fluffy diamonds, but were probably some kind of rare jellyfish, bounced and danced around us.
We swam lower still. Eventually, we came to the bottom. Huge rocks lined the seabed. In between them, fish of all shapes and sizes moved about lazily, as if there were no need to hurry down here. A lobster reached out a claw in a gentle yoga stretch, then drew it back in. Plants softly opened and closed, like large mouths gently yawning. Long, solitary fish zigzagged between the stones like expert skiers gracefully swooping along a slalom course.
From the seabed, we could barely see the surface. “How are we going to figure out the depth from here?” I asked. “Maybe we should just go back.”
“I agree.” Aaron started swimming upward, and I followed him.
As we rose, the water grew gradually clearer again. I realized we were heading in toward the island, not back out to sea. Ahead of us, a rocky cliff rose almost vertically out of the water. It looked like a wall.
I turned to Aaron. “Shall we?”
He nodded and we went to take a closer look.
“Hey!” Aaron pointed at something metallic on the wall as we approached from under the water. “A ladder!”
We followed it as we swam upward.
“Look.” I pointed at some markings beside the ladder, spaced at regular intervals. The first one I could see said 450 ft. Swimming higher, I saw that the next said 500 ft. A little higher, 550 ft.
“They’re measurements!” Aaron exclaimed. “Swim up to the next one.”
We swam higher — 600 ft.
“You’re right,” I said. “These must mark the height from the bottom of the bay.”
“So we just need to get the reading at the waterline and we’ve answered the third question!” Aaron grinned. “We’re still ahead of the pack!”
We swam up to the surface and looked for the closest number. A little way above it, a marking read 750 ft.
“Seven hundred fifty feet. Bingo!” Aaron grinned.
“Hmm, that reading is a few feet above the surface,” I said. “Let’s call it seven hundred and forty-two.”
“Perfect.”
We looked around. The ladder led up to a flat rock just above the surface of the water. The lower part of the rock was orangey red. A little way up, there was a line where the orangey red gave way to gray. I guessed that marked the highest waterline.
“Shall we get out and get dry?” I suggested. “Then we can check the next question and figure out whether to go back to Sandy Bay or just continue on from here.”
“Barefoot,” Aaron added.
“Oh, yeah. We should have thought about that!”
We pulled ourselves out of the water and sat on the flat rock. As soon as we did, I felt my tail flicker and twitch. Within moments, it had melted back into my legs. My pants were wet, as was my top.
We shook ourselves like damp dogs and squeezed out the edges of our clothes. Luckily for us, it was a warm day; we’d be dry soon.
I took the bag from my pocket and grabbed the pencil and treasure-hunt sheet. I noted down our answer, along with the time. “Want to know the next question?” I asked.
Aaron squeezed closer to look at the sheet with me. “‘Bring back a stone from Pebble Bay. And we’ll know if you cheated, by the way,’” he read aloud.
“There must be something special about the stones at Pebble Bay,” I mused. I turned over the map to see where it was. On the other side of Deep Blue Bay from where we were, the drawing showed a long, winding path that snaked back up to the main road, and from there down to Pebble Bay. I guessed that would be the route everyone else would take. It was the only one shown on the map.
The problem was, the cliff in between this side and that one was a sharp, sheer face. The only way we could reach that path was to go back in the water and swim across the bay. We’d only just started to get dry. For once, I didn’t feel like going back in the water. Plus, when I studied the map a bit more closely, I noticed something else.
It wasn’t marked as a path in the same way as the others, but there was a very thin dotted line that led from somewhere a little higher than the rocks we were sitting on, around the coast and directly across to Pebble Bay. It looked about half as long as the “proper” way of getting there.
The other option would be to swim around, but between the two bays, the rocks jutted out a long way. The wiggly line definitely looked like the quickest route.
As I studied the map, Aaron stood up and eyed the rocks behind us.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked, standing up to join him.
“I hope so. Look.” He pointed up to the right. “See where there’s a gap in the trees and bushes over there?”
I craned my neck to follow where he was pointing. “Uh-huh.”
“The gap seems to extend across in a line. Maybe it’s some kind of disused path. I bet that path is a shortcut to Pebble Bay! Feel like checking it out?”
I was already shoving the sheet and bag back in my pocket and looking for the first foothold. “You bet,” I said, grinning at him. “Let’s do it.”
We clambered over the rocks, helping each other on the steep, slippery sides and not thinking about the cuts and bruises our legs would be covered in the next morning. From where we’d been looking earlier, we’d slig
htly misjudged exactly how many boulders we were going to have to scramble over.
As I was climbing over the ninth or tenth rock, I remembered something else we were ignoring, too.
“Aaron,” I said. He was ahead of me, stretching across a jagged boulder.
“What?” he called back.
“Do you remember what Lyle said about the paths?”
“What about them?”
“About them being dangerous? About how we were to stick to the clearly labeled ones?”
Aaron stopped and turned around. “Oh. Yeah. Do you want to turn back and swim?”
I glanced back to where we’d come from. The sea seemed miles away. Ahead, the thin, scraggly path was only about four more boulders from us.
I shook my head. “Come on. Let’s just get there. We’ve come this far already. How much more difficult can it be once we reach the path?”
Which was quite a good question.
Finding the path wasn’t the problem. Following it wasn’t too difficult, either. I mean, yes, it was a bit overgrown in places, and we had to keep dodging sticky-out branches and avoiding nettles by ducking down or veering sideways or climbing carefully over them one leg at a time. I was beginning to feel like an expert burglar avoiding an elaborate maze of infrared beams. A barefoot burglar, I might add. My feet were going to be raw by the end of the day.
But none of that was the difficult part.
The difficult part was when the path suddenly narrowed to the width of my foot, and one side of it became a sheer drop down the side of a cliff.
My heart thumped hard in my chest — so hard it felt as though it might unbalance me. I stopped walking and gripped a tree branch to steady myself.
“You OK?” Aaron called back.
I didn’t dare reply. Even talking felt as if it might knock me off balance. Even breathing.
So I held my breath, carefully studied every footstep, and kept going.
“Em, I said, are you OK?” Aaron twisted around. As he did, I looked up and nodded. Unfortunately, I chose a bad moment to look away from the path, as my next step went right onto something sharp and prickly.
“Youch!” I hopped onto the other foot and slipped on a leaf. A second later, I’d lost my footing altogether. My leg brushed the edge of the path as I fell.
“Aarggghhh!”
Aaron reached back to grab my hand — but he was too late. “Emily!” he yelled.
“Aaron!” I called back as I watched him lose his balance, too.
“Nooooo!”
We bumped and bounced and slid and fell down and down, through thorns, rocks, bushes. My clothes ripped, my skin burned, and my brain filled with questions.
Why hadn’t we listened to Lyle? Why didn’t I ever listen? Why could I never resist an adventure?
And what were our odds of surviving a fall from the top of a steep, craggy, dangerous cliff edge?
“Emily?”
I lifted my head to see Aaron a little ahead of me. He was scrambling to his feet and coming over.
I pulled a few twigs out of my hair and carefully got to my feet. “Ouch!”
“Are you OK?” Aaron was beside me. He had a line of mud down one side of his face and a scratch down the other that was turning redder by the second.
I rubbed my leg. “Just twisted my ankle a bit, I think,” I said. “It’ll be fine. How about you?” I reached out to touch his cheek. “That looks sore.”
“It’s nothing,” Aaron said. “As long as you’re OK, I’m fine.”
I looked around. We’d landed in some kind of ditch. We were still a long way from the bottom of the cliff.
“Looks like this ditch broke our fall,” Aaron said, looking both ways along it. In one direction, a big tree lay right across the ditch.
I nodded in the opposite direction. “Let’s head this way and see if it leads to some kind of path,” I suggested.
We walked in silence for a bit, probably both too shell-shocked to know what to say. What if there was no way out of here? The ditch was too far from the edge to jump into the sea. And too high. What if there was no path out of it? We’d all left our phones at the house, as there was barely any reception on the island, so we couldn’t get in touch with anyone to tell them where we were — not that we’d be able to tell them that anyway, as we had no idea where we were.
Why? Why hadn’t we just stuck to the paths as we’d been told? Just when things were going so well, why couldn’t I for once —?
“Emily!” Aaron broke into my thoughts. I caught up to him. We’d reached the end of the ditch. On our left, the cliff rose sharply. To our right, it plunged down almost as sharply. But ahead of us, the ditch narrowed down into a thin squiggle and led to something that looked like a path.
Aaron squeezed through the narrow ditch and jumped down onto the path.
I followed him down and looked around. Now that we were out of the ditch, I could see the sea beneath us, dark-blue water turning into frothy white swirls as it hit the rocks below.
We set off along the path and rounded a bend. The path continued, but down to the side, almost hidden by plants that were growing around it, was what looked like a concrete step. “Aaron, look!”
We went over and pulled the plants to the side. It wasn’t just a concrete step. It was a whole staircase leading down — but to what?
Aaron looked at me. “Shall we . . . ?”
Maybe they led all the way down to the sea. If so, perhaps we could swim around to the next bay quicker than we’d get there on foot. It was worth a look, at least. Plus, there was something about the steps that made me want to follow them. They felt like an invitation. A hidden staircase on the forbidden side of an island. I mean, who could resist that?
I nodded. “Let’s at least check them out,” I said, kicking myself even as I said it. Two minutes earlier, I’d asked myself why I could never resist anything unknown and mysterious — and here I was seeking out that very thing! Fact was, I couldn’t resist — and I didn’t want to. The possibility of an adventure would always be more appealing than the urge to stay safe. It’s just how I was made, I guess.
“OK. If there’s nothing down there, we can always come back up and see if this path leads us back to the road,” Aaron said.
I grinned. “I hoped you’d say that.”
He pulled the plants to the side and led the way.
The concrete stairs twisted down and down, dotted throughout with branches, bushes, plants, and twigs.
Part of me was thinking we had an awfully steep climb back up if the steps didn’t lead anywhere. The other part just wanted to know where on earth these steps were taking us, and who on earth had built them.
We had nearly reached the bottom of the cliff. A turn to the left. Three steps down. A turn to the right. Five more steps. Turn left. Then . . .
“Whoa!” Aaron stopped in his tracks. I stopped right behind him.
“Wow,” I said. “What the . . . ?”
We glanced at each other, then looked back down. Below us, a low wall marked the end of the steps. To the left of the wall, there was a very short, very steep path leading directly down to some kind of plinth. It looked like a concrete stage. It was semicircular and jutted from the cliff, looking straight out to sea.
Below the plinth, the sides dropped off vertically down to the beach. The fifth bay! The one that wasn’t labeled on the map!
Even from the very edge, it was still too far to jump into the sea. Maybe if the tide was in, we could have done it, but there was no way we could survive a drop like that. It was at least the height of a house, and who knew what rocks might lurk beneath the surface?
But it was what was on the stage that took my breath away.
A chair. A big, chunky wooden chair, facing out across the ocean to the far horizon.
I looked at Aaron. He looked at me. Then, without saying another word, we scurried down the last bit of the path, jumped onto the concrete plinth, and went to examine the chair.
&nb
sp; It was solid and heavy and seemed to be rooted to the concrete — almost as if it were part of it. It was made of thick dark wood, damp and slightly rotting at the base of each leg. Tiny bits of moss were growing up the back, and every slat was nailed together firm and tight.
“What is it?” I asked as we walked around it. “I mean, I know what it is, obviously. It’s a chair. But what is it for?”
“And who is it for?” Aaron mused. “Look.” He pointed at the seat. “It’s more worn than the rest of it.” He was right. The seat was scuffed and pale.
“Like someone sits in it regularly!”
“Exactly. But who? And it’s odd that someone comes here regularly when it’s so hard to reach.”
“And supposedly out-of-bounds,” I added.
Aaron walked around to the front and sat in the chair. “Beautiful, though, isn’t it? Makes me feel like a king.” He sat on the seat, upright and arms folded. “Like Neptune, or King Canute, or something.” He patted the seat and shuffled to the side. “Join me.”
I squeezed in next to him. “King Aaron and Queen Emily,” I murmured. “What do you think? Figure we could do a better job than Neptune, if we were in charge of the oceans?”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to take them back. I mean, that was more or less like asking him if he wanted to marry me, wasn’t it?
Aaron laughed. “I don’t know. He does pretty well — when he’s not in such a bad mood that he destroys islands or creates violent thunderstorms out at sea.”
In other words, “No, thank you” to that idea! And in case I hadn’t gotten the message clearly enough, he turned to stare at me with a really weird look on his face.
“What?” I asked, wondering whether I should try to explain that I hadn’t actually just proposed to him or if that would make it even worse.
Aaron shook his head. “Nah, nothing,” he replied lightly. Then he shifted away from me and stared hard out to sea.
