Continental Drift

by Susan Korman

  “Just move back a bit,” Ethan suggested. “That should do it. No . . . that way.”

  Manny finally reached in to pull the two of them apart. Then he got right in Ethan’s face. “You!” he snarled. “Keep away from my daughter.”

  “Dad,” Peaches began. “Trust me. Nothing—”

  “And you!” Manny cut her off with a snarl. “You’re grounded!”

  “But I didn’t do—”

  “Grounded!” Manny repeated.

  The teen mammoths who’d been hanging out with Ethan snickered loudly.

  “Ouch,” said the one named Katie. “That’s her dad.”

  “Seriously, that’s embarrassing!” said Steffie.

  “What a freak!” chimed in their friend Meghan.

  “I hear her mom was raised by possums,” said Steffie.

  Fuming, Peaches stomped away from Manny. She’d never forgive him for this.

  “Peaches!” Manny hurried after her. “Come on! Let’s talk about this!”

  Finally, she whirled around. “How could you embarrass me in front of my friends!” she demanded.

  “You deliberately went where you weren’t supposed to!” Manny yelled back.

  “You can’t control my life!”

  “I’m trying to protect you! That’s what fathers do!”

  “Well, I wish you weren’t my father!” Peaches shouted.

  Manny froze, stung by his daughter’s words.

  Ellie came toward them.

  “She’s just upset, honey,” Ellie told Manny. Then she turned to her daughter. “Peaches, what happened is not the end of the world.”

  Before Peaches could argue back, there was a loud rumble all around them.

  “Ooh!” Sid said, rubbing his stomach. “Excuse me!”

  “I don’t think that was your stomach, Sid,” Diego said, looking about with alarm.

  The ground trembled and then a thin crack snaked its way along the ice, cutting right between Manny and his family.

  “Uh . . .” Ellie stared down at the crack, and then looked back up at Manny. “What’s that?” she asked nervously. An ominous rumble answered her question; this one was louder than the previous sounds.

  “I don’t know,” Manny said. “But stay right there. I’ll come to you.” He stepped toward his family.

  Boom! All at once the crack exploded open, sending everyone flying. Then the deafening sound of rocks shearing apart filled the air.

  “Ellie!” Manny reached forward with his trunk, linking hers to his. But the ice shelf under his feet had broken off from the rest of the continent and was already starting to drift away.

  “Manny!” Ellie screamed as the mammoths’ trunks were rapidly pulled apart. “No!”

  Sid and Diego scrambled up behind Manny. The ice shelf was sliding toward the open glacial bay.

  Manny raced along the iceberg in a panic.

  “Hurry, Dad!” yelled Peaches. “Hurry!”

  Manny looked down. Below was a steep drop to the water. But he had to get to Ellie and Peaches. He tensed, ready to leap across the water toward his family.

  “Manny!” Diego yelled, suddenly slamming into him and knocking him down.

  “Diego?” Manny looked up at his friend, stunned. “Why’d you do that?”

  “You never would have made it!” Diego said breathlessly.

  Manny looked down at the water. Diego was right. By now it was a huge abyss. Chunks of ice as large as trucks were crashing into the water around them.

  All around Ellie and Peaches, the land was crumbling fast. Then a menacing wall of rock rose up behind them.

  Manny stared at it in horror. “Ellie!” he shouted. “Look behind you!” Frantic, he glanced around and spotted a land bridge. “Go to the land bridge!” he shouted at her. “The land there looks stable. You’ll be safe on the other side!”

  But Ellie didn’t want to leave him. “No, Manny, no!” she protested.

  Manny’s eyes were fixed now on the moving tower of rock. “You have to get out of there! Go! Now!” he screamed.

  The two mammoths stared at each other, filled with terror as the distance between them rapidly widened. They both knew that Manny was right—Ellie and Peaches had to go at once. They also knew that their family was about to be separated, maybe even forever.

  By now, a strong current had caught Manny’s iceberg and was carrying it out toward the open sea.

  “Mom!” cried Peaches, stepping toward the edge of land.

  “No, Peaches,” Ellie yelled at her daughter. “Get back!”

  Boom! A huge mountain behind them shuddered and then tumbled down. Rocks cascaded everywhere.

  “Daddy!” Peaches cried.

  “Stay alive!” Manny called back helplessly. His family was in terrible danger, but there was nothing he could do to help them.

  At last, Peaches and Ellie turned around and began running away.

  “I’ll find you!” Manny yelled after them. “No matter how long it takes, I will find you!”

  Chapter 5

  As Manny’s iceberg disappeared from view, Peaches clutched Ellie and sobbed. “This is all my fault!” she wailed. “If only I had listened to Dad and stayed away from the Falls!”

  “Peaches!” Ellie said sharply. “This is not your fault. Okay?”

  “But . . .” Peaches sobbed. “What if I never see him again? The last thing we did was fight!”

  “Your father is the toughest, most stubborn mammoth I’ve ever met,” Ellie told her firmly. “He’ll come back for us. That’s a promise.”

  Peaches nodded, finally calming down a little. As Ellie hugged her daughter, she was glad that Peaches couldn’t see the worry deep in Ellie’s eyes.

  Out on the open sea Manny looked around their iceberg—there was a cluster of trees and some rocks, but not much else. Desperate to turn the iceberg around, he found a log and started using it like an oar. “Come on!” he yelled to Sid and Diego. “Help me turn this thing around!”

  Diego and Sid knew it was hopeless, but they started paddling, too.

  “They need me,” Manny went on. “We’ve got to get back!”

  “Buddy,” Diego told him gently. “This iceberg is too big to turn. And the current is pulling us out pretty quickly.”

  Manny just kept paddling.

  “You know,” Sid said to Manny a few minutes later, “my mother once told me that bad news is just good news in disguise.”

  “Was this before she abandoned you?” Diego wanted to know.

  “Yes, it was,” admitted Sid. “But the point is, even though things look bad, there’s a rainbow around every corner.” By now, the wind was blowing harder, and a huge swell had lifted the iceberg. But Sid didn’t notice a thing as he kept paddling. “And there’s nothing but smooth sailing ahead!” he went on brightly.

  “Smooth sailing ahead, huh, Sid?” Manny echoed, looking up at the dark storm clouds overhead and the ocean water churning around them.

  Thundering noises filled the valley as the land continued shifting. “Settle down, everyone,” Ellie called to the animals who were lined up, ready to evacuate. “Stay calm. Don’t panic.”

  But Peaches, like everyone else, was already panicking. “Wait, Mom!” she cried. “Where’s Louis? We have to find him.”

  Ellie hesitated, anxiously eyeing the wall of rock again that was pushing toward them. They were running out of time—it was coming closer every second. “Okay,” she said finally. “You can look for him. But you have to make it fast, Peaches.”

  “Got it!” Peaches assured her mother. Then she started shouting, “Louis! Where are you? Come on, we have to go!”

  Ellie joined the search, along with Crash and Eddie.

  “Louis!” they all yelled again and again.

  At last, Peaches heard a scrambling sound. “Louis!” she cried, spotting him running along the ridge that overlooked the Falls. Suddenly, the land under his feet began to give way.

  “Peaches!” Louis cried. “Help!”
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  “You have to jump!” she yelled at him.

  “Go!” he called back. “Save yourself!”

  “We’re not leaving without you,” Peaches cried.

  “Thank goodness,” Louis said in relief.

  Peaches raced along below him. “Jump!” she yelled again.

  Louis leaped off the ridge as the land all around him—the entire cliff along with the frozen waterfall—collapsed. He landed on Peaches’s back and then scrambled down her shoulders. He hung from her trunk, his eyes closed in exhaustion.

  “Thanks for coming back for me,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” Peaches replied. “You don’t leave a friend behind.”

  “Let’s go,” Ellie told them urgently. “The wall is going to continue moving toward the coast, and we have to make it to the land bridge before it’s too late.”

  She started moving, and so did the other animals. But Peaches and Louis hung back for one more second, gazing at the landscape. They couldn’t believe it. The Falls, where they had just been hanging out earlier that day, was completely destroyed.

  “Keep your eye on the horizon!” Manny shouted to Diego and Sid. As the violent storm surged, huge waves crashed over their iceberg.

  “I can’t find the horizon!” Diego yelled back. Below them, the sea rolled violently. The three animals clung tightly to the iceberg, desperately trying to hang on.

  Sid’s eyes suddenly filled with terror. A massive tidal wave loomed in front of them! The three friends screamed as they sailed up the enormous wall of water and then plummeted back down into the ocean.

  “Ha-ha!” Sid laughed in glee. “We made it. Come on, ocean! Is that the best you can do?”

  A giant waterspout shot up, as if it were answering his question. The swirling spout pulled in their iceberg and lifted them skyward again, this time high above the dark clouds.

  “Hey!” Sid cried. In the distance he could see clear skies—and a rainbow. “I told you, Manny! My mother was right. There is a rainbow around every corner!”

  Before Manny could answer, they slammed back down in the water, landing with a loud splash!

  “Peaches!” Louis shouted in warning. “Watch out!”

  Peaches was so lost in her thoughts, she didn’t see the enormous landslide that was thundering toward them like a high-speed train. It came right at her, carrying rocks, trees, and other debris with it.

  Louis pushed her out of the way in the nick of time.

  “Are you okay?” Louis asked her. “You didn’t even hear that landslide approaching!”

  Peaches nodded, miserable. “I’m just so worried about my dad.”

  “We’re going to get to him,” Louis reassured her. “At this pace we’ll stay ahead of the rock wall, and we’ll make it to the land bridge before you know it. We’re all going to survive this,” he went on.

  Just then, Crash and Eddie fell into a huge trench that had been carved out by the landslide.

  “Well,” added Louis, looking at the possums. “Maybe those two won’t survive this. But everyone else will be totally fine.”

  Peaches nodded, desperately wanting to believe her friend’s words.

  Chapter 6

  Manny shook himself off, spraying water everywhere. He was soaking wet—and stranded in the middle of an endless ocean.

  “Our iceberg is still heading away from home,” he told his friends grimly.

  “Yeah,” Sid agreed. “But we survived,” he pointed out. “And we still have each other. Things could be worse, right?”

  “For once he’s actually right, Manny,” Diego said. “We made it through storms and tidal waves. What more can they hit us with?”

  Just then something clobbered him on the head with a stick.

  “Ow!” cried Diego, startled.

  He whipped around to see a long stick protruding from a hollow tree stump on the iceberg. He peered inside the tree stump and heard someone muttering, “Don’t make me get up if I don’t want to get up. If I want to get up, I’ll get up! Right now, I don’t want to.”

  “Hello?” called Diego. This time the stick, which was actually someone’s cane, jabbed him sharply in the eye.

  “Ouch!” Diego cried.

  “I’m trying to sleep,” a familiar voice snapped.

  “Granny?” Sid cried. “You’re alive!”

  “And can we say how thrilled we are to see you,” muttered Diego sarcastically.

  “Hey, Fats,” Granny called to Manny. “Want to get me out of here?”

  Manny tried to use his trunk to yank the old sloth out of the stump, but she was wedged in too tightly.

  “Come on!” Granny said, irritated. “Why don’t you pretend I’m dessert? That should motivate you!”

  Manny pulled again. At last, the old sloth flew out of the tree stump with a loud pop!

  Manny stared at her. “I can’t believe you were in that tree stump the whole time. You slept through that storm?” he asked.

  “I slept through the comet that killed the unicorns,” Granny informed him.

  She straightened her back, which had stiffened up, and walked past them—right into the ocean!

  “Thanks for drawing my bath, Sidney,” she said.

  Sid rushed over to pull her out of the water. “Granny, grab my paw,” he urged her.

  But Granny was floating on her back with a blissful expression. “No way!” she told Sid. “This is my first bath in decades!”

  “Quick!” Sid looked helplessly at his friends. “Somebody do something!”

  Manny did something. He threw Sid into the water to save her.

  Sid snatched Granny and started to haul her in like a lifeguard. “I got you, Granny. Don’t worry,” he told her.

  She slapped him. “Get off me!”

  Sid finally managed to pull her back onto the iceberg, where Granny glared at Manny and Diego. “What are you two looking at? A lady can’t take a bath in peace?” With that, she marched off.

  Diego let out a big sigh. “What’s the life expectancy for a female sloth?” he wanted to know.

  “She’ll outlive us all,” Manny told him. “You know that, right? It’s the spiteful ones who live the longest.”

  A short while later, Manny stared out at the vast ocean as the hot sun beat down on them. All he could see was water and some distant fog. “How big is this ocean?” He moaned in frustration.

  They were all exhausted and hungry by now. And Sid was muttering to himself, “Water, water everywhere. Nor any drop to drink. Except for . . .” He raced across the iceberg and dipped his head into the ocean. His face puckered up as he lapped up some seawater.

  “That’s a little salty,” mumbled Sid.

  Abruptly, Granny got up. “Precious?” she said, looking around for her pet again. “Mommy is calling you. Precious? Come here, sweetie!” She almost stepped off the iceberg into the water again, but Manny yanked her back with his trunk.

  “Hey, lady,” she said to Diego. “Have you seen Precious?”

  The saber-toothed tiger scowled. “If you mean the imaginary, or perhaps deceased, pet that you keep searching for, then no. I haven’t seen Precious.”

  Squawk! Squawk!

  A sound caught Manny’s attention. “Look, guys!” he exclaimed. “A bird! And where there are birds, there’s land, right?”

  Diego leaped up in excitement. “Hey, buddy,” he called to the bird. It was a seabird with a cap of red feathers. “Come here!”

  The bird eyed them . . . and then quickly flapped away.

  “No!” shouted Manny. “Wait! Come back!”

  But the bird kept going, disappearing into the foggy mist that lay ahead.

  “It’s a huge bounty, Captain Gutt,” the bird, Silas, reported a few minutes later. He had landed on the shoulder of a mean-looking orangutan with a long beard. The orangutan stood at the bow of a pirate ship. “Four passengers—ripe for the taking,” Silas went on.

  “In my ocean?” the pirate captain snarled. “What a terrib
le turn of events.” He paused and let out a sinister laugh. “I love a terrible turn of events!”

  Chapter 7

  Diego blinked as he caught sight of something emerging from the fog ahead. “Am I hallucinating, or is that ice coming straight at us?” he asked.

  Manny felt his spirits lifting. “Yeah, it’s coming! And it sounds like there are some animals on it.”

  “Yippee!” Sid cheered. Then he started chanting. “We’re being rescued! We’re being rescued! We’re being . . .”

  “I hear . . .” Diego was still watching the iceberg uneasily. “Laughter.”

  “Oh!” Sid exclaimed happily. “It must be a party cruise.”

  Just then, two grappling hooks shot out from the approaching ship and grabbed hold of their iceberg, pulling it in.

  “Yikes!” Sid said as their iceberg slammed into the other ship. Then he swallowed hard. Staring back at them was a fierce-looking crew—of pirates!

  “Get ready to slice and dice, boys,” a rabbit pirate said in a low voice.

  “Knock it off, Squint,” a white saber-toothed tiger named Shira snapped at him. “Wait for Captain’s orders.”

  Just then, a voice rang out from above. “Ahoy, down there, mates!”

  Manny and the others looked up. Another pirate—a massive orangutan—was grinning down at them from the ship’s rigging.

  “How lucky are you?” the orangutan said with a chilling smile. He swung down onto the deck, landing near Manny with a loud thud. “You know, these waters aren’t safe—they’re infested with pirates. I’m glad we found you before they did. I’m Captain Gutt,” the orangutan went on. “Here to help.”

  “That’s a nice monkey,” Granny piped up.

  Manny gulped as the pirates gazed at them hungrily. “Look,” he said, trying to reason with the pirate captain. “We don’t want any trouble. We just need to get back to the continent.”

  “The continent?” Captain Gutt echoed. “That pile of rubble?” His crew members all laughed heartily.

  Manny didn’t understand what was so funny. “My family is there,” he went on. “So if you could just—”