dancing like thin green ghost in the dark. She plucked a fruit snack and popped it in her mouth, chewing loudly.
“How deep do you s’pose it goes?” She asked to no one in particular.
“Not that deep.” Ameesha said flatly, “Maybe five, six meters.” She took a bite of her loofah.
“Nah, I think it’s way deeper than that.” Nargis retorted.
Shammi futzed about, having polished off all his fruit snacks without touching his loofah, and smacking his lips, he took the empty plastic wrapper and tossed it over the side of the paddle boat.
“Shammi!” Ameesha shouted, “Don’t do that! You pick that out of the water right now!”
Sheepish, Shammi leaned over the boat, stretching his arm out, his fingers just brushing the wrapper, trying to reach it. Unable, he adjusted himself in the boat, gripping the side, and with Ameesha watching him with a studious eye he extended his arm and torso and stretched out, mere inches above the water, Grandpa Om’s necklace dipping into the glassy hue.
“I...almost… Got it!” Shammi declared, snatching the wrapper from the waves, and with a click the necklace fell from Shammi’s neck and plopped into the water, the gold turtle glinting before disappearing into the forested dark. “Oh no!” Shammi cried.
“What? What is it?!”
“Chuck!” Shammi yelled into the ripples.
“Chuck what?” Nargis said, leaning over to look.
“Chuck! Grandpa’s turtle! I promised I’d watch him!”
Ameesha instructed Nargis to the other side of the boat, to balance the weight, as she sidled up next to Shammi and peered down to where his Chuck had fallen.
“Well, he’s gone now.” She said definitively.
“No!” Shammi said, traumatized, “I said I’d watch him! Grandpa said he was special I promised!”
“It was an accident, Shammi. Grandpa will understand.” Nargis said softly.
“NO!” Shammi cried louder, his big brown eyes welling up with stressful tears.
Ameesha continued to gaze deep into the water, watching the tips of the long weeds sway in the hidden currents of the lake. She couldn’t see anything, and she knew it was lost, but she hated to have such a surprisingly good day ruined. A flash of gold met her eye.
“I think I see it!” She called. Eager, Shammi stretched himself over the side of the boat to see. The gold shined and blinked, glowing, and as Ameesha squinted, looking closer, it went out like a light. Silent, she stared intently into the murky water.
And then through the dark an enormous jade eye rolled into her gaze.
“Woah!” She shouted, throwing herself backward, the boat rocking.
But it kept rocking. The boat bobbed left and right like a seesaw, as huge bubbles from the lake boiled beneath them, causing the hull of the paddle boat to thrum. The three looked to each other, their agape eyes tossing confusion and fear, and as the boat began to surge and turn and roll in the sudden waves rising about them, Nargis gripped her brother to her chest and shouted above the mad burbling and roaring, “What’s happening?!”
“I - !” Ameesha began, “I think I saw - !”
Something beneath the roiling water broke, and before them a goliath flipper, green as ivy, rose from the lake as a wall. Great swaths and rivers of water showered down from its slick precipice, great falls crashing. The emerald fin, stretched so high, Ameesha’s neck craned and craned as she watched it, rising and rising until it blotted out the sun. All around them the waters raged. Clutching the boat they were tossed about on what now seemed to be an ocean. Waves towered as tsunamis, lashing them from one end of the world to another. The land was swallowed. The vastness of the blue all consuming. The great fin descended, a mighty sweep that crashed the water, tumbling them off in a mad spiral. Far they were tossed, so beyond logic and physical reality they were tossed, and as a wave carried them off to sea, in awe they watched, as the colossal creature, emerged fully from the deep.
Trees and craggy peaks grew off its shell; mountainous barnacles and corals birthed along its belly; from its four flippers dangled twists of seaweed and showered buckets of pearls that splashed as boulders back into the waves, the whipping weeds twirling as long as redwoods behind the beast. It was a turtle. The largest thing any had ever seen. That had ever been. From the ocean it rose and rose, cascades of running water tumbling from its grooves and eaves, and so it ascended, like a mighty albatross, into the sky, and as the children drifted further and further, so rumbled a deep, throaty moan; a bellow like that of a whale, guttural and bassoon, rang out through the air, and it pushed them into the Beyond.
Ameesha clutched the empty cooler, hands shaking, and paled water out of the boat. Shammi laid limp, drooped over the side, flabbergasted and looking as though he had vomited, and Nargis yelled wildly into the wilderness around them, her hands stretched out to the air.
“That was AMAAZING!” She cried, both with terrific thrill, wonder, and terror. “Did you see that?! DID YOU SEE THAT? My heart is beating, so hard! Feel this! Feel this!” She said to no one in particular, her hands pressed over her heart. “I can’t believe that just happened! HAHA! Wow!” Ameesha dropped back down into the paddle boat, depositing the cooler by her feet, exhausted, her heart indeed pounding.
Through a forested marshlike land, they floated along, some secret current of the
waters having stolen them. Mammoth trees, with trunks the size of houses, towered as pillars from the still, algae dusted waters. Roots thicker than elephant trunks, tangled as a web beneath them under the green sheen. The forest canopy was so far above them; a sky alighted with dragonflies and beetles. A moist bed of air rested over them, and the dense, enormous leaves of the giants, rustled in winds, and the high branches of the trees far overhead, creaked. It was a magical, overwhelming world. Rays of sun, escaped down to the slowly churning waters, beaming as spotlights into the murky, life-filled world. Calls and chirps of animals, both large and small, echoed all around them. The land brimmed with ancient feelings, primeval sensations; the kids drifted, seemingly endlessly, without sight of home, or the familiar.
“…Where are we?” Ameesha breathed.
Nargis huffed a breath. “Well, I’ll tell you this, we aren’t in Kansas anymore…”
Ameesha gave her sister an eye, but her annoyance didn’t last. She kept finding herself drawn back into the magic all around her. Her heart pumped; she could still hear it, beating in her ears. But her hands had stopped shaking, and her breath had at last steadied. She couldn’t help but be filled with amazement, and wonder, overwhelmed and mystified, like her sister… Shouldn’t she be more concerned about their safety? Getting home? What was wrong with her? She should be terrified! But, this place, it was…It was…
“Hey! What’s that!” Shammi called. Quick as birds Ameesha and Nargis scurried and turned to see where Shammi’s small finger pointed. From up behind, something seemed to be making way towards them. It appeared, it seemed, as a little person, standing upon a large oak leaf, and using the leaf as a raft and a finely shaped twig as a paddle, slowly as though directing a canoe, the little being at last sidled up beside them, and from under a large straw hat, it looked up, and smiled.
It wasn’t a person at all, but a newt.
“Gud eve’nin, maytes! Noice day fer a paddle, ain’t it?”
The three gazed in awe at the little creature, as he made his way with great finesse and the ease of an experienced navigator. His shiny black eyes were kindly, as he peered at them from under his hat, and his tail he dipped into the water, using it as a rudder on occasion, as he kept in perfect time with their aimless paddle boat.
“Foine floatah ya got theyah. Not seen one of those fer a good toime.” The newt marveled. “Yous look loike younglins, am I roight?”
“Oh, um - ” Ameesha began, breaking from her trance. “No, we’re people. I’m sorry but, what are yo- ?”
“Peeps!” The newt pronounced in what sounded to be both surprise and excitement. “Well that’s jus’ g
reat! Not had peeps in these parts fer a long spell. Welcome in! Now Imma newt, is whot I am. Jus’ a newt.” He shrugged, as though sheepish. “But yous peeps seem all a-frazzled! Turmbled in, did ya? Yeh, I know that look. Yous jus’ keep sailing straight, and yous’ll turmble on out again. Jus’ a click. Well, I best get goin’. ‘Ave a good’un, peeps!”
His tail he flicked, and like an insect, turned on a dime and began gliding out into the emerald land. His hat he waved, shouting, “Jus’ a click!” And graceful into the mist the newt paddled and vanished. Ameesha turned to Nargis, baffled. “What do you suppose he means?” She asked, “Does he know the way out?”
“Out of what!” Nargis declared, “I don’t even know what we’re in!”
The mist, rolled in, and as the three floated onward, they marveled at the world around them. Waves of butterflies, massive and glimmering, would peddle through the air in great sweeps above them, and disappear into a channel of wisp. Massive rolling backs of fish would rise and fall around their boat, and then move on, graceful in the rhythm of their existence. Dove-white birds, of long necks and legs, would dive and snag insects, with wings that hummed and glowed. A familiar bellow met their ears, but not as deep, and above them they looked, and saw a great manta ray, sailing overhead, as sublime and serene in the air as it had ever been in the sea. Everything in this world, moved,