Emily Windsnap and the Castle in the Mist

by Liz Kessler

  Millie was the first to shake herself out of the trance we all seemed to be in.

  “All right, girls,” she said, dusting herself off and shaking out her gown. “I’m going to find out where we are.” As soon as she spoke, the feeling about getting to the castle left me as rapidly as it had come.

  Shona looked blankly up at her from the sea, as though Millie had spoken in a foreign language.

  “How?” I asked.

  Millie gave me a big false smile. Just like the ones Mom gives me when she doesn’t have a clue how to work something out either. “I’ll find a way. We’ll have you back with your mom and dad in no time. Just you wait,” she said, doing nothing to soothe my worries. If anything, she’d made them even bigger. Who said Mom and Dad wanted me back? Maybe they’d both realize they were better off without me messing things up all the time. Millie looked down at Shona and gave her one of the not-real smiles too. “You too, dear. I’ll work something out. Don’t worry.”

  She stepped carefully across the deck and patted the big, long sail that lay rolled up along the side. “Come on, let’s see if we can get this up,” she said. “We could sail back, no problem.”

  I stared at her in disbelief, briefly shaken from my somber thoughts. Surely she didn’t really believe we could sail Fortuna?

  But then I thought again. Why not? Perhaps we could! If only we could figure out where we were, maybe we could get it started and sail back to Allpoints Island. I mean, sure, it was an ancient pirate ship that had been wrecked on the reef two hundred years ago and hadn’t been sailed ever since. But we weren’t exactly overwhelmed with other options. What harm could it do to try?

  Together we pulled and tugged at the ropes and poles, Millie heaving the boom high enough for me to dodge underneath, the sail in my hands. Around and around I went, unwrapping the maroon fabric until it lay across the whole deck. I tried hard to ignore the rubbery feeling in my toes, pushing it away like all the other horrible things I was trying not to think about.

  “Oh,” Millie said, looking down at the torn, fraying, useless sail at our feet.

  I looked down at it with her. “Maybe we could sew it?” I said eventually.

  Millie sighed and smiled tightly. “We’ll give it a try, dear,” she said, patting my arm. Neither of us mentioned the fact that the boat was stuck on a sandbank and that the lower half of it was submerged in water. Or the fact that we didn’t happen to have the tiniest idea of where we were. We needed something to cling to, even if it was a complete illusion.

  “We’ll work something out,” Millie said as she turned to go back inside the boat. “Now I’ll just have a cup of Earl Grey, and then what do you say we get started on the cleaning up?”

  We managed to put everything back where it belonged. Everything that wasn’t completely smashed to smithereens, that is.

  The worst part was when I came across a glass that Dad had given Mom only a couple of weeks ago. He’d painted a heart with their initials on the side. It was broken right across the middle of the heart, their initials on separate shards of glass at opposite ends of the boat. It wasn’t significant, I told myself again and again. It didn’t mean anything. I wasn’t superstitious.

  But I couldn’t convince myself. It was all I could do to hold back the tears lining up behind my eyes, desperately trying to squeeze out.

  It wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t seen Millie suck in her breath between her teeth and shake her head when she saw it. As soon as she spotted me, she did the smiling thing again. “It’s only a glass,” she said. “We’ll get your mom a new one, soon as we get back, eh?”

  Then she ruffled my hair and sent me off to the kitchen area with a brush and dustpan.

  It was pitch-black outside by the time we’d finished. I went downstairs to see Shona while Millie made us all a snack. She’d figured out that if we rationed ourselves tightly enough, we could survive for a week on the food and water we had on the boat. “Not that we’ll be here anything like that long,” she’d said brightly. “But just so’s we know.”

  Shona and I talked about what had happened, going over it again and again, trying to make sense of it.

  “So, he tried to get the ring from you, but he couldn’t even touch it?” she asked for the fifth time. “But Neptune can do anything! Why couldn’t he get it back if he wanted it so much?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, as I’d said each time we came around to this point. “He said something about his own law stopping him.”

  Then I paused. I hadn’t mentioned the curse yet. I didn’t know how to. So far, the worst effects had been while I was human. What would happen as my merself got worse? Or what if that was the half of me I was to lose forever? If I wasn’t going to be a mermaid any longer, that would mean I’d lose Shona as well as everything else that was going to happen. I’d never be able to go out swimming in the sea with her again. I might have one of Neptune’s memory drugs forced on me and never even remember her! My best friend, the best friend I’d ever had.

  And there was the other thing too. The thing that was so awful, I kept trying to stop myself from even thinking the words. But they were there, in the center of everything. My parents. Was I ever going to see them again? If I lost half of what I was, did that mean I would lose one of them as well? Even if they wanted to be together, maybe it wouldn’t be possible. The thought was like a kick to my stomach.

  “Shona, there’s another thing,” I said nervously. “A really bad thing.”

  So I told her about the curse, about how it would take a few days to work, and I wouldn’t know which way it would go, but whichever way it did, that was where I would stick. I stopped short of telling her it had already started, about how my feet hadn’t completely formed when I was on the deck. And how even now, swimming down here as a mermaid, I could feel something was different. Just here and there a scale missing. Bits of flesh showing through my tail. She didn’t need to see that yet, the proof that the curse had already started.

  “Fighting fins!” Shona exclaimed when I’d finished. “That’s awful! What are we going to do?”

  “That’s what I thought you’d help me work out.”

  Shona grabbed my hands. “I will, Emily,” she promised. “We’ll stop this from happening, OK? As sure as sharks have teeth, I’m not going to lose you. Whatever happens. And you’re not going to lose your parents either.”

  I winced at her words as though she’d lashed me with a piece of wire. Just the thought of it!

  “We’re going to solve this, all right? You and me, we can do anything, can’t we?” Shona looked at me desperately, her eyes begging me to say yes.

  I looked at her and squeezed her hands. “Of course we’ll solve it,” I said, lying as much as she was lying to me with her words, and as much as Millie had lied with her smile. “Of course we will.”

  I stood on the front deck with Millie. Shona was in the water next to the boat. I rubbed my stomach, trying to ignore the fact that it was rumbling from my rationed dinner of a third of a can of beans and a piece of toast. A feeling of warmth spread into me from the ring, against my body. Everything was going to be OK. I could feel it. The ring was telling me so.

  “That’s the Plow, and that’s Orion’s Belt,” Millie said, pointing up at the stars, clustered together in tight clumps. I craned my neck to follow the outline she was pointing out. I don’t know how she could tell what was what. The longer I stared, the more it just looked like a completely black sky filled with a million billion tiny white dots.

  “What’s that?” I asked, pointing to a dark shape like a shadow in the distance. It was coming closer, changing as it slid across the sky. Another cyclone? Please, no!

  It looked like a giant snake, gathering and bunching up into an arc, then stretching out to form a long black line cutting through the stars. It was heading for the castle. The shape disappeared into the mist, reemerging above it to swirl around the top of the castle, circling it, spinning into a spiral, around and arou
nd, tighter and tighter, faster and faster, until it faded into nothing. It was one of the strangest things I’d ever seen. And one of the most magical too.

  We stared into the black night. The shape didn’t come back.

  “I have no idea,” Millie said eventually. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. And I’m not one for superstition, as you know, but I’ll bet it’s portentous. Let me think.”

  “What about the stars, though?” Shona asked. “There are constellations that can help us work out where we are, I’m sure of it. I just can’t remember what they’re called. Or what they look like.”

  Which was a big help.

  “I’ve got it!” Millie said, her eyes brightening. “I have a great idea.” She headed back inside the boat and beckoned me to follow.

  For a moment, for one silly, ridiculous, heart-stopping moment, I actually thought she’d come up with a plan to get us out of this. I let myself hope. Until she said, “I’ll do our tarot cards.”

  I followed Millie into the kitchen. “You clear a spot for us, and I’ll lay out the cards,” she said.

  Shona swam up to the trapdoor as I pushed a couple of chairs to the side. She poked her head through, and I sat on the floor by the trapdoor to join her. Then Millie came in with the cards and we watched intently as she shuffled, spread the cards in a six-pointed star, and slowly turned them over one by one. She didn’t speak, didn’t explain anything. When they were all faceup, she sat looking at them for ages, nodding slowly.

  “What do they say?” Shona asked.

  “Do they say anything about my mom and dad?” I asked.

  “Or mine?” Shona added quietly. That was the first time I had really thought about her parents. She’d been taken away from them too. They wouldn’t have a clue what had happened to her. They hadn’t seen her since she went to school that morning. I’d been so selfishly wrapped up in my own problems, I hadn’t thought about Shona’s.

  Would anyone tell them anything back at Allpoints Island? What would happen when Mom and Dad came home — assuming they ever did — and found that Fortuna wasn’t even there? Would they come after us? Would they know where to look? They’d find out, wouldn’t they? But what if they didn’t? Suppose they didn’t come home at all! Suppose they’d had such a big fight, they’d split up and both forgotten all about me!

  No! I couldn’t let myself think like that. I couldn’t! Surely they’d do something. They’d get together with Shona’s parents and send out a search party or something.

  They’ll find us. They’ll find us. They’ll find us. I repeated the phrase over and over and over like a mantra. Please let me believe it, I added.

  The cards didn’t tell us anything. Anything beyond what they normally said when Millie read anyone’s tarot cards. We had a long journey ahead and the outcome was uncertain. A tall, skinny stranger with jet-black hair would help guide us, the truth would elude us, and all would be well in the end. Blah, blah. Why I ever put faith in Millie’s card reading, I don’t know. It was about as useful as trying to tell the time from examining your freckles.

  “Look, let’s all try and get some sleep,” she said, shuffling the cards away when it was clear they hadn’t impressed either of us or helped us find an answer to any of the questions we weren’t saying out loud. “Things are bound to look better in the morning, once we’ve had a few hours’ nap — and perhaps a cup or two of Earl Grey.”

  I stifled a laugh. Admittedly, a slightly hysterical one. It was really pretty hard to see how things were going to look better. But she had a point about the sleep thing. I was exhausted.

  “Shona, you take Jake’s room,” Millie said. “You’ll be all right down there, won’t you?”

  Shona bit her lip and nodded.

  “I’ll join you if you like,” I said softly.

  “No, it’s OK. I’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll be just above you. Knock if you need me.”

  Shona smiled, although her eyes stayed misty and sad.

  “It’ll look better in the morning,” I said, repeating Millie’s lie. It kind of helped to keep saying these things out loud. If we did it often enough, perhaps they’d come true.

  “Night-night, you two,” Millie said. “I’m going to get some shut-eye myself now. Although goddess only knows how I’ll sleep without my agnus castus tablets.”

  We each withdrew to our own rooms, our own thoughts, and our own fears.

  The moon rose as I lay on my bed. I watched it climb past the porthole. A fat, wonky shape like a slightly deflated ball, it shone down on me, right at me, as though it were personal. Just me and the moon, staring each other down. It was getting fuller every day, every single moment. Racing me to my fate.

  The black sky, endless behind it, filled slowly with clouds: some huge and unmoving, like snow-clad hills, others gray and broken-up, like crazy paving. Lighter, wispy clouds sailed slowly in front of them all. And the moon stood firm, almost whole, like a circle drawn freehand by a child. Not quite perfect but not far off.

  “Please let this be a dream,” I whispered, twisting the ring around and around on my finger, talking to it as though it could hear my thoughts and turn them into reality. Was it a friend or enemy? What was its hold over Neptune — and over me? I couldn’t tell. All I had was the knowledge that it was caught up in this whole nightmare with us — and the tiny feeling that it might help us find our way out of it too.

  Please let me be back at Allpoints Island in the morning, I prayed. Please let me hear Mom and Dad arguing in the kitchen as soon as I wake up. Please.

  Next time I looked, the clouds had all moved on. The stars were no longer visible either. Just the moon remained, bright and proud. See? it seemed to snicker at me. I win.

  There was a split second as I woke up when everything felt normal. Any second now, Mom would call me to get up and I’d have to drag myself out of bed. She hadn’t called yet, though. Still half asleep, I stretched and turned over in my warm bed. I was about to go back to my dreams — and then I remembered.

  I sat bolt upright, then jumped out of bed and ran to the porthole. Let me see Allpoints Island. Let us be back there.

  I was greeted by the sight of mauve sea stretching out forever, everywhere I looked. Baby-blue sky. And the white line of mist hovering in the middle, dividing the two worlds.

  “Emily, are you up?” Shona’s voice called quietly from below.

  I ran to the trapdoor and dropped myself down to join her. As soon as my legs touched the water, I felt them change. Please work properly this time, I said to myself, and I held my breath as I felt my tail form. Closing my eyes, I focused for a moment on the feeling, willing it to work completely. But it didn’t. In fact, it was worse than before. Patches of scales were missing; the shine of my sparkling tail seemed duller; my tail moved more stiffly.

  I swallowed my feelings and hoped Shona wouldn’t notice. I still didn’t want to admit it out loud: I wasn’t a mermaid half the time anymore. Now I wasn’t even close to being a real mermaid.

  “Look.” Shona pulled me over to the large porthole door. We swam out through it, around the huge sandbank under the boat, and up to the surface, where we rested, treading water by the side of the boat. Directly ahead of us, hovering on the line of mist as though it were floating, the castle stood bold and gleaming in the sunlight. “I think we should go to it,” Shona said, echoing my thoughts from yesterday.

  “On the boat? How? You saw the sails.”

  Shona was shaking her head. “No, I meant just you and me. We could swim there. It doesn’t look far.”

  It was still early. I could tell by how low the sun was in the sky. In fact, now that I looked, I could still see the moon, hanging on like the last guest at a party, reluctant to leave but fading and tired. Could I edge ahead in the battle that was silently taking place between us? Millie would still be in bed. She always slept late. We could get there. As soon as the thought came into my mind, my hand grew hot. The ring — it was telling me somet
hing, I was sure of it!

  It was telling us to go.

  “Come on,” I said, feeling hopeful for the first time since we’d landed here. “Let’s do it.”

  “How long have we been swimming?” I asked, panting to catch up with Shona. Surely she was swimming faster than usual! I could hardly keep up with her.

  “Not sure. Maybe twenty minutes, half an hour, tops.”

  I stopped where we were and flicked my tail around in fast circles to tread water. “Look,” I said, pointing to the castle. It seemed to be looking back at me, willing me to approach it. Pulling me along. But there was a problem. A big problem.

  Shona looked across at the castle. “What?”

  “It’s no closer. It looks just as far away as it did from the boat.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Shona said with a laugh. “It’s just . . .” Then she glanced back to see where we’d come from. Fortuna was a dot in the distance. She turned back toward the castle. “But that’s . . . but it’s not possible.”

  “It’s like a rainbow,” I said. “The nearer you get to it, the farther away it seems.”

  “But how?” Shona’s voice broke into a whine. Her eyes moistened as her bottom lip began to tremble. I almost expected her to howl, “I want my mommy!” And why shouldn’t she? That was certainly what I wanted to do. I felt like a burst balloon.

  “Come on,” I said flatly. “Let’s go back to the boat. Maybe Millie will have some idea what’s going on. You know she thinks more clearly in the morning once she’s had a cup of tea.”

  “Or ten,” Shona added with a hint of a smile.

  I smiled back. “We’ll figure it out,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

  As we swam back, I didn’t tell her how stiff my tail was getting, how it was starting to feel as if I were dragging a lead weight behind me. Or how that was part of the reason I felt defeated. I pretended I wanted to go more slowly to take in the view: the sea, calm and smooth as we cut through it, the mist lying low and still on its surface.