Emily Windsnap and the Tides of Time

by Liz Kessler

  I stepped toward him, peering at the scrap of paper in his hand. As he waved it, I realized what it was. A crumpled, torn, soggy brochure for the Midas meeting — only most of it had been ripped away. All Neptune had was the top half of it, with the headline that read, Does your business need the MIDAS touch? We turn everything we touch to GOLD.

  “Your Majesty, sir,” I began, “it’s a company, not a person, and they’re not actually turning things in to gold.”

  “They’re not?” Neptune asked. As he spoke, the swell dropped a little.

  “No. It’s a — what do you call it?”

  “It’s a metaphor.”

  I turned to see who’d spoken. It was a woman I vaguely recognized. She stepped out from the crowd of people who were mostly staring in wonder at Neptune.

  “Rachel Bayfield, editor of the Brightport Times,” she said as she held her hand out toward Neptune. “I wonder if I might interview you for our newspaper?”

  Neptune narrowed his eyes at her.

  “It’ll be on the front page,” Mrs. Bayfield said. “With a photo and everything.”

  Neptune patted his white hair. “Well,” he said. “I don’t see why not. I will instruct my dolphins to clean up my chariot first.”

  That was when I noticed them: the dolphins were underwater, all around Neptune’s chariot. Hidden in the darkness.

  Something was prickling at the edge of my thoughts. What was it? Something to do with the dolphins.

  Neptune was holding his trident out, leaning over to call to them when —

  Yes! That was it!

  “Wait!” I said.

  Neptune turned to me, his eyebrows raised so high they made his hairline extra bushy. “WAIT?” he asked, in a voice that made me feel about the size of a sardine.

  I gulped hard. “There’s something you have to do for us.”

  “HAVE to do? For YOU?” he questioned.

  “I mean, please, sir. Your Majesty.”

  I glanced around. Aiden’s dad was looking at his watch. People were starting to slip away.

  “We have to change the world,” I said to Neptune. “We have to change the future.”

  Neptune returned my stare. I fully expected him to order me to stop talking nonsense. But he didn’t. As he held my eyes, something changed. His face softened. It was as though he could see inside me, see what I’d been through, what had happened, what was to come. It was as if he read it all in my eyes.

  For a split second, I wondered if he had been through it too. Had he somehow seen the future himself and knew as clearly as I did that we couldn’t leave it to chance? I’d probably never know. It didn’t matter anyway because a moment later Neptune nodded.

  And then in a soft voice he said, “Very well. What do you need me to do?”

  So I told him my idea. And after the briefest of pauses, he nodded again and agreed to my request.

  All that was left now was to wait, and hope more than I’d ever hoped for anything else that it would work.

  The dolphins put on an awe-inspiring display.

  They leaped in giant arcs over our plastic net artwork. They twirled in perfect formation around the edges of it. They zigzagged between mermaids, they jumped high in the air, their tails sprinkling multicolored arcs of water below them. The fishermen lit up their every move.

  My class gasped throughout the whole thing. So did every other person on the beach.

  Among them, Aiden’s dad — who had never before seen a dolphin — stood on the beach, tears streaming down his face, watching every moment and clapping at every trick.

  And the best thing?

  Mandy was standing beside me. I linked her arm with mine as we watched. Behind us, hardly anything was happening on the boardwalk. Everyone was still on the beach. Which was how I noticed the vehicle driving past the lonely boardwalk.

  “Look,” I said to Mandy.

  She turned to see Mr. Whittaker in the Midas Enterprises van. I watched him, too, driving out of town after a meeting that not a single person showed up to.

  The next morning, I swam over to Shiprock to catch up with Shona. I still hadn’t stopped smiling.

  As I moved through the cool water, I thought about the other times I’d taken this journey in the last few days — and how they’d all worked out.

  A tiny thought was nagging at the edges of my mind: the stone. I still had that final wish.

  I flicked my tail to tread water. After a moment of thinking about it, I took the stone from my pocket and studied it. I could feel its heat in my palm. It was growing warmer as I held it.

  I swam on, the stone in my hand as I thought. I could do it — make one last wish.

  The stone grew warmer. I felt it urging me on.

  Do it. Do it.

  A few words and I could be there. I could ask the stone to show me the future. I could see how things turned out, confirm that we really had fixed things.

  The stone was taking me there. I could already feel the current begin to pull me toward the river in the sea.

  I’d made up my mind.

  I stopped swimming. I flicked my tail hard to hold my position against the force that was growing stronger and stronger with every second. I opened my palm and looked at the wishing stone.

  It was buzzing so brightly that it danced in my hand. Its heat was filling my whole body with warmth. Its strength was starting to drag me into the tide. Any second now I wouldn’t have a choice in the matter.

  This was it.

  I gripped the stone and spoke loudly and quickly.

  “I wish that the chasm in the seabed will close up and never let anyone slip through it again!”

  And then I threw the wishing stone toward the chasm as hard as I could.

  I watched as it flew away from me. As I gazed after it, the tide took hold of it and spun it around and around.

  Then the current exploded as if it had been set on fire. In the middle of it, the wishing stone was bright white, spinning and dancing and throwing a rainbow of colors all around as it swirled away from me.

  Farther and farther. The stone grew smaller and smaller, the ball of light faded, and the chasm receded. A tiny speck of light remained — and then, with a final pop, it closed up and disappeared.

  The current had gone: nothing was pulling at me.

  The light had gone: nothing was dazzling me.

  The stone had gone: nothing was urging me to give in to temptation to see how the future would turn out.

  It was over.

  The sea felt calm and gentle as I continued to Shiprock. My thoughts felt just as peaceful. There was only one way I would find out what was going to happen in the future, and that was by living my life, day by day. I didn’t need wishes. I didn’t need answers. Things would unfold in their own way and in their own time. We had done everything we could to make things work out — but all I could really know about was today.

  Beyond that, the future was anyone’s guess.

  And I’d get there. Eventually. One day at a time.

  I sat on a bench on the pier, looking out at the sea and thinking over everything that had happened.

  Shona had been as happy as we were. It turned out that Shiprock was going to receive an award from Neptune for what the merfolk had done. He said anything that protected his oceans would always get his backing, and that he had pledged to help anyone who was working to make a better world for us all.

  As I sat there, thinking about how everything had turned out, I pulled the elephant out of my pocket. I smiled and whispered, “Thank you.”

  “Hi there, Emily.”

  I looked up to see Millie coming toward me with a couple of bags in her hands.

  “Well, that was quite something last night, wasn’t it?” she said as she put her bags on the ground and sat down next to me on the bench.

  I laughed. “It certainly was.”

  Millie nudged me and pointed at the elephant in my hand. “That’s nice,” she said.

  I looked at th
e elephant, then at Millie. Something wriggled and fizzed inside my stomach. “Millie,” I said, my voice coming out of me almost as if it belonged to someone else.

  “Yes, love,” she replied.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the two friendship pebbles. “Can I give you something?” I asked.

  Millie laughed. “Of course you can.”

  The wriggling and fizzing in my stomach exploded as I held the pebbles out to her. In that moment, I didn’t know if we would be here again, or if we’d been here before, or if the future came first, or the present could change the past. I didn’t have any answers, and the questions themselves made my head spin. But I knew one thing: I knew what I had to do.

  “Here,” I said, handing her the pebbles. “Keep them.”

  “Really?” Millie asked as she took the pebbles from me. “What do you want me to do with these?”

  I swallowed hard so I could get the words past the rock jamming my throat up. “Promise me you’ll never sell them or get rid of them, and you’ll keep them till the day you give them back to me. You’ll know when the time is right.”

  Millie laughed. “You’re talking in riddles, young lady.”

  “I know I’m not making any sense to you now — and when you give them back to me, I won’t think you’re making any sense either,” I went on. “I — I can’t explain, but there’s too much at stake not to do this. Make me take them back even if I say I’ve never seen them before. Promise me you’ll do it.”

  Millie put the stones into her bag. “For you, missy, I will do anything, however strange it might sound.”

  “Thank you!” I reached out to hug her. As I did, the elephant slipped from my lap.

  Millie caught it and held it out to me.

  Smiling at Millie, I closed her hand over the elephant. “Keep the elephant with the pebbles,” I said. “They belong together.”

  “Really? You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely positive,” I replied.

  Millie pulled a handkerchief out of her coat pocket, wrapped the elephant in it, and then put it into her bag with the pebbles. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll add it to my collection. You never know when it might come in handy.”

  I laughed as she kissed me and stood up.

  “You’re right,” I whispered as Millie walked up the pier, and I closed my eyes in the fading light of a warm winter’s day. “You never know.”

  The Brightport Times — February 22 KIDS’ WORLD-CHANGING ART KICKS OFF NATIONWIDE CAMPAIGN

  The Shiprock Chronicle and the Brightport Times announced today the start of a nationwide campaign to clean up our towns, our beaches, and our seas.

  The campaign follows the extraordinary work of two very talented school groups who worked together on a piece of “Living Art” that caught the imagination of their respective towns.

  Their project was awarded first prize last week in a national competition that challenged students to make a piece of art to change the world.

  Brightport Junior High School’s art teacher, Ms. Macmillan, told the Brightport Times: “I couldn’t be prouder of my class. They are not only creative, intelligent, and hardworking, but, together with Shiprock School, they have shown the rest of us what can be achieved when people collaborate and communicate.”

  Shiprock teacher Mr. Finsplash agreed: “This is the start of something very special. Watch out, world. Our kids are taking you by storm!”

  The Chronicle and Times are proud to share their message with the world. The campaign launches next week, with the aim of halving the amount of waste that goes into our oceans — and into our landfills — over the next ten years.

  One of the young organizers, Emily Windsnap, told us: “We learned in one of our lessons that everything is linked, and if we fix only one side of a problem, we haven’t fixed it at all. We hope everyone will join our campaign, and we are so proud to have started it. Thank you to everyone who has helped up to now. We’re excited to see what the future brings.”

  We at the Chronicle and Times have only one thing to add to that: if this is what our young generation has to offer, we think the future is looking very bright indeed.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Liz Kessler

  Cover illustrations copyright © 2020 by Sarah Gibb

  Illustrations copyright © 2020 by Erin Farley

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  First U.S. electronic edition 2020

  First published by Orion Children’s Books,

  a division of the Orion Publishing Group (Great Britain) 2020

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number pending

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