by Liz Kessler
No one said anything. What, exactly, could we say?
“Look, if we work together, we can do it. We just have to find Halfmoon Castle. We found Crystal Bay, so we can find this too,” Sam went on. “We know that the Trident’s Treasure is in there somewhere. Oh, and Dad said he had one more clue for us. He told us that once we get inside, we’re to look for a red door. If we get the wrong room, we fail. Time is against us, so let’s stay focused. The first thing we need to do is try to unravel the clues in the poem.”
He passed the piece of paper around so we could all look at the poem.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Kat said. “It says we need to find the diamonds first — and they’ll lead us to the treasure. But, surely, diamonds are treasure.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Dean agreed. “So we have to find treasure that will lead us to more treasure. Seems a bit stupid to me.”
“Look, let’s put a couple of sails up and start moving,” Sam instructed. “We’ll just edge slowly around the coastline. Keep looking out at all times, and keep studying the poem till we make a breakthrough, one way or the other. Everyone OK with that plan?”
We all agreed, and then we set to work. Luke and Dean went to put up the sails. Kat took the helm. The rest of us studied the words of the poem Jakob had given to his sons.
We sailed slowly around the coast as the light faded more and more rapidly. Soon we were sailing in pitch darkness. Kat switched on the center light on the mast, and we huddled around it as we moved slowly through the water.
We talked about the poem. We studied it. Read it over and over. We brainstormed, we argued, we scratched our heads. Every now and then, someone would come up with a thought that sounded good — until someone else shot it down a minute later.
My head was spinning. “I’m going to take a walk,” I said to Sam. “I need to be alone, give my brain a chance to think.”
“OK, be careful. Hold on to the rails. It’s pitch-black away from the light,” Sam said.
“I’ll be fine,” I said.
And then I stepped away from the group and felt my way along the edge of the ship.
Sam was right. Once I was away from the light in the center of the ship, it was really dark.
Wait. Didn’t the poem say something about the darkest night?
I moved even farther away from the light, making my way up to the very front of the ship. After stepping carefully over lockers and between ropes, I leaned on the railing and looked out.
It was breathtaking. Above me, the sky was huge, pitch-black, and crammed with so many stars it was almost like watching fireworks: the ones with the rockets that shoot straight up into the sky and explode into a thousand bright-white lights.
I couldn’t stop staring. The longer I looked, the more stars I could see.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Sam’s voice startled me.
I jumped and turned to face him.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “Mind if I join you?”
I shuffled over and Sam stood next to me, holding on to the railings and leaning out.
“Where’s the moon?” I asked.
“It’s a half-moon tonight,” he said. “The moon won’t rise until past midnight. That’s why it’s so dark.”
“Half-moon?” I replied. “When we’re looking for Halfmoon Castle. Is that significant?”
Sam shrugged. “My brain is shot right now,” he said. “I have no idea what’s significant and what isn’t.”
I laughed. “I know what you mean. That’s why I had to get away.”
“Me too.”
We looked out together in silence for a moment. Above us, the sky, packed with stars; below us, the sea, just as dark, and . . .
Wait.
“Sam.” I pulled on his arm and pointed down at the water. “What’s that?”
He looked where I was pointing. “What’s what?”
The boat was moving almost silently through the water. The only sound was a humming through the sails and the gentle clatter of the halyards against the mast.
Below us, the bow spread small waves as it dipped through the swell. Each time the hull bounced on a wave, the splash seemed to light up the water behind it. I waited till it happened again.
“That!”
Sam watched for a while. “Oh, that. It’s bioluminescence,” he said.
“What’s bioluminescence?”
“It happens at night. You see it on the water.” He shrugged. “I’ve never been totally sure how it happens. Plankton, I think. Tiny organisms that get lit up by the movement of water. It happens when it’s really dark.”
“Like tonight.”
“Yeah. Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“It’s incredible.” I’d never seen such a sight, at least not to this extent. I’d seen tiny lights in the water from the boat before, but never like this. It was mesmerizing. Thousands of tiny sparkles of bright-white light, flashing on the surface, like . . .
A spark of realization ran through my chest. “Sam!”
“Huh?” He replied without looking up. He was as mesmerized by the bioluminescence as I was.
“Sam, they look like jewels,” I whispered. “They look like diamonds.”
“Yeah, they do,” he replied dreamily. He hadn’t caught on to what I was thinking. I’d have to spell it out.
“Sam. Follow the diamonds. That’s what the poem said. Could it possibly mean . . . these?”
I was grasping at straws. I knew I was, even as I said it.
Sam turned toward me. I could see him thinking for a moment. Then he shook his head. “Surely not,” he said. “I mean — any pirate knows about bioluminescence.”
“And knows about diamonds too,” I added.
“Exactly. No pirate would think this was anything special. They’ve probably seen it every night of their lives. Plus, look.” He pointed at the lights. “They come from movement. They flash up behind the wave. The poem said the diamonds will lead us. These are following us.”
“You’re right,” I agreed.
“Unfortunately,” Sam said. He let go of the railings. “I’m going to head back to the others. See if anyone’s come up with anything,” he said. “Be careful out here, OK?”
“I will. I’ll be back soon.”
As he started to walk away, I kept looking down at the water. Even if it didn’t have anything to do with our challenge, I still couldn’t tear my eyes away from the sparkling lights. They were entrancing. Magical.
But as I looked, I saw something else. Something new. The lights were changing shape.
I leaned on the railings and craned my neck to stare more closely.
There! There it was again!
I could hardly believe what I was seeing.
“Sam!”
He’d disappeared into the darkness. “Sam!” I called a bit louder.
“What is it? You OK?” he called back from somewhere farther along the ship. I didn’t dare look away from the water. “Come back!” I shouted.
A moment later, Sam was back by my side. “What is it?” he asked. “What’s the matter?”
I pointed at the water, at the sparkles. I could hardly speak.
“What am I looking at?” Sam asked, scanning the water.
“Wait. You’ll see it,” I whispered.
And then it came again. A shape, moving through the bioluminescence.
“What in the . . . ?” Sam began. He couldn’t finish. We stared together. I knew exactly what we were staring at.
A dolphin, swimming through the bioluminescence. It looked as if it were made out of diamonds.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Sam murmured.
As the dolphin swam through the bioluminescence, the lights took on its shape. A beautiful dolphin, made of magical jewels.
It swam up to the surface, as if it wanted to see if we were watching. Then the dolphin dived back down, spreading a feast of glitter all around it.
“Sam, look �
�� it’s swimming away from us.”
“Well, at least we saw it,” he said. “What a sight. Now, I’d better get on with —”
“Sam!” I stopped him.
He turned to me, met my eyes. “What is it, Emily?” he asked, almost impatiently.
“The dolphin! It made sure we were watching, and now it’s swimming away . . .”
“Em, we need to get on with the challenge. It’s getting late and we’re running out of —”
“Sam! The dolphin is the challenge.”
I waited a beat for him to register what I was saying. Then I quoted the poem I’d read over and over so many times I now knew it by heart.
“So follow the diamonds as they swim away into the darkest night.
They’ll lead you to the Trident’s Treasure. Let them be your guiding light.”
I watched Sam’s eyes turn from clouded confusion to realization. “The dolphin . . .” he began.
“You know what this means, don’t you? The diamonds. The poem. It’s not talking about real diamonds. It’s not real treasure.” I pointed down to the dolphin, still staying within our sight, pulling ahead a tiny bit, its shape magically lit up by a thousand sparkles. “It’s the dolphin,” I finished. “It’s come to help us. It will lead us there.”
“Emily,” Sam breathed. “How did I ever manage without you?”
I was too embarrassed to reply.
“Come on,” he continued. “Quick. Let’s tell the others. We’ll organize a watch. Have someone watching the dolphin and reporting on its position at all times. We’ll sail through the night; we’ll work nonstop.”
“No one will want to sleep now,” I said, adrenaline coursing through me as I followed Sam back to the others.
“No sleep, no rest,” Sam agreed.
“Till we find Halfmoon Castle,” I added. “And win the contest.”
We sailed through the night, each taking turns with all the jobs: at the helm; at the bow, watching the dolphin; on the deck setting the sails; making snacks and drinks to keep us going.
No one mentioned being tired. Even Dean worked like the rest of us and didn’t complain once.
We were a fine-tuned, superefficient team. Led by a magical, beautiful dolphin.
I was on watch at the front with Ana when the dolphin began to slow its pace. I called back to Luke, who was at the helm, and he instructed the others to adjust the rigging.
The dolphin wasn’t just slowing. It was stopping. It swam around in front of the boat, backward and forward, under the bow, diving in the waves still breaking, as the ship slowed. The jewels of bioluminescence still sparkled.
“What are you trying to tell us, beautiful creature?” Ana asked.
I could now see fairly clearly in the moonlight. We were in a tiny bay, much smaller than Crystal Bay. There was no beach here. From where we were, it looked as though the bay was surrounded by sheer cliffs.
Why had the dolphin brought us here?
For the first time, a sliver of doubt wriggled through my mind. Had we gotten it wrong?
I studied the coastline again. And that was when I noticed something different, right in the center of the cliffs.
“Ana, can you see that?” I asked, pointing at the dark line.
She peered into the darkness with me. “Looks like a crack in the cliffs,” she said.
She was right. As I stared harder, I could see that the cliffs were in fact made out of two sections: one on the right, one on the left — divided by a dark chasm in between. It was too small for a ship to get through, and the rocky cliffs looked too dangerous for us to risk sailing much closer.
“Now what?” Ana asked. “It’s a dead end.”
“No, it’s not,” I said. I looked back down at the dolphin. I tried something out. Climbing over the bowsprit, I crossed from one side of the deck to the other.
The dolphin swam under the bow to follow me.
I crossed back.
The dolphin swam back with me.
“Ana, I think the dolphin is telling me something,” I said. “I think I’m supposed to follow it.” I pointed at the crack in the cliffside. “The ship can’t get through there . . . but I can.”
As soon as I’d spoken, the dolphin leaped out of the water, leaping straight up in a pirouette of light. It was telling me I was right.
“Look, stay here. I’ll go and investigate. Keep an eye on me,” I urged, already pulling off my shoes and stepping over the railings.
“Emily, don’t. It’s dangerous. You might . . .” Ana began as I slipped into the water.
“I might what?” I asked, treading water as I waited for my tail to form. “Drown? I can’t. I’m a mermaid.”
Ana put her hand to her mouth. “Just . . . please, be careful,” she said.
“I will. Follow us as far as you can. When it gets too shallow, tell Sam to drop anchor and then wait for my instructions.”
“OK, will do,” Ana replied.
I turned to give Ana a thumbs-up. Then I dived down into the water, through the bioluminescence. I could feel it light me up, inside and out. I felt as though I were swimming through magical sparkles.
My tail formed and I caught up with the dolphin and prepared myself for whatever was going to happen next.
I realized pretty quickly why the dolphin had stopped in the bay earlier. There was no way the ship could have sailed through to where we were now. Sam and his crew had followed us as far as they were able. Then he’d done as I’d suggested and dropped anchor.
I’d swum on with the dolphin, snaking along thin channels between rocks, navigating through chasms so sharp and narrow that I caught my arms and tail on them a couple of times. Their sides were dark and steep, stretching way up above the surface of the sea and way down to the murky depths of the seabed below.
And then, without warning, the dolphin halted.
“What?” I asked. “Why have you stopped?”
The dolphin nodded at the surface and I followed it up. As we broke through the water, I could see why it had stopped.
In front of us, the cliffside stretched up in an almost vertical wall. At the bottom, a couple of rocky steps led out of the water. Just above them, a dark hole led into the cliff itself.
“In that cave?” I asked.
The dolphin continued to swim around me. I guessed it was my only option.
So I swam up to the cliff edge and pulled myself out of the water. I sat on the steps while I waited for my tail to disappear and my legs to return. While I did, I looked around.
Rocks. Water. Cave. Dolphin. And a bunch of debris that had washed up, presumably from years of neglect. There was a tangled piece of fishing rope, some frayed lengths of driftwood, a few plastic bottles.
I had an idea.
As soon as my legs had come back, I got up and carefully made my way across the rocks to the tangled rope. Working at the tangles and knots, I managed to free most of it. I collected as much of the debris as I could gather. I tied the rope around bottles and logs and pieces of driftwood.
And then I stepped back into the water.
The dolphin was by my side in an instant. Together, we swam carefully along the route I’d taken from the ship. At every point where there were jagged rocks or other dangers, I wrapped the fishing rope around the obstacle, swam back up to the surface, and made sure that one of the pieces of floating debris was above it.
Rock by rock, danger by danger, I’d soon marked out a safe channel for the others to swim ashore from the ship.
“Thank you,” I whispered to the dolphin.
And then, with a nod and a snort of water, the dolphin turned, dived down into the water, and was gone.
“Take it slowly,” Sam instructed his crew as they dived from the ship and carefully swam across the channel from the ship to the cliffs.
Before they got there, I pulled myself up on a rock that was hidden by darkness. I didn’t know why — and I hated that I felt that way — but I was too embarrassed to have them see me t
ransform. I didn’t want to risk seeing a look of disgust on anyone’s face.
Once my legs had come back, I climbed back over the rocks to join the others. They were standing in front of the cave, looking in. Sam was at the front. “You all ready for this?” he asked.
“More than ready,” Luke replied for us all. “This is what we’ve come for.”
“Let’s do it,” Sam said. I could just about detect a note of nervousness in his voice. But a different kind of nerves from the ones he’d had when I joined his ship. Those had been about him not feeling he had any authority — and, in truth, he hadn’t. This time, it sounded more like the kind of wobble anyone would feel when they were about to lead their trusting crew into a pitch-black hole in the side of a cliff.
The biggest difference was that this time his crew was with him in every way.
“I’ll go first,” he said. “Emily, I want you to go next in case we get waterlogged and need your help. The rest of you, stay close. Any questions?”
No one replied.
“OK, let’s go. We can do this!”
And with that, Sam led the way into the darkness.
I don’t know how long we’d been walking. It felt like an hour, but the dark, the narrow winding cave, and the incessant plip, plip of water dripping on us all the way messed with our senses, and it could just as easily have been half a day, or five minutes. Every now and then, cracks in the wall allowed the light through. For a few steps we could see clearly; then it would go dark again.
And then we reached the end.
And when I say end, I mean an actual, total dead end.
No!
No!
It couldn’t be!
Sam turned to face me. His expression was horror, disbelief, and dejection, all rolled into one.
“It’s over,” he said flatly.
The others were still a little way behind us. “Swap places with me,” I urged. He squeezed past to let me through, and I went ahead. I felt all around the wall, searching for some kind of gap. Had there been an earthquake? Had something closed it up? Or had we gotten the whole thing wrong?
As I turned to swap places with Sam again, I realized I hadn’t felt a plip drop down from the ceiling since we’d reached the end of the tunnel. I looked up to see if anything was different here. And that was when I saw it.
