“That’s one,” Lowenna said. “What’s the other?”
“You just said it, yourself. Your situation is making you have to choose between going home to your husband or staying here with your baby. You can’t possibly pick one over the other — you’re stuck between the two.”
“You think that will work?” the captain asked. “It’s enough to get her through this portal?”
“It’s the best chance I can think of,” I said. “But it’s up to Lowenna.”
“I’ll try it,” she said instantly. “I’ll try anything. But what about the rest of you?”
“What about us?” Ruth asked.
“What if I abandon you and the ship can’t make it back? You’ll hit a massive magnetic resistance as you leave, and then again when you’re nearing the point where the earthquake took us through. It could be devastating — and I won’t be there to help guide you through it. What if I return home and the rest of you are stuck here forever? I couldn’t live with that.”
“Everything is in place. You’ve said so yourself. The ship will make it back”— I glanced down at the baby, now sleeping in her mother’s arms, blissfully unaware of the drama being played out around her —“as long as this little piece of Atlantis isn’t on board.”
Lowenna nodded.
“What if they don’t make it back?” Sally asked. “What if you’re wrong about this ‘between’ thing?”
“I’m willing to take that risk,” Lowenna answered. “It’s got to be worth a try — as long as I have my baby with me.”
“This is the best chance of all of us getting home,” I said, catching Alan’s eye. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not prepared to leave anyone behind.”
Alan nodded at me. “We all agree,” he said. “It’s the best option.”
Lowenna came over to my side and put an arm around me. “It’s a risk for all of us, but you’re right, it’s our best chance — possibly our only chance.” She looked around at the group. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get ready to try again.”
Lowenna said emotional good-byes to the others, then she and I went down to her cabin together. As we reached her corridor, we edged into the water. Lowenna’s legs did the same as mine: they melted away, fused together, and turned into a beautiful, silvery tail.
Lowenna held out her baby, half in the water and half above it. A few minutes later, the same thing happened. Her teeny little legs were replaced by a tiny pink tail.
I think she was the cutest thing I’d ever seen.
Lowenna saw me looking and smiled. “Clever little thing, isn’t she?”
“She’s swishy!”
“OK, let’s go,” Lowenna said, and we swam to her cabin.
The ship’s timer had been synchronized with my watch, so we were counting down together: 00:12. Twelve minutes to go. Nearly there.
If everything worked as it should, in twelve minutes the window in Lowenna’s cabin would turn into a portal, and she and her baby girl would swim through it and back to the real world.
The moment they were gone, the ship should start to move. Should. What if it didn’t? What if I was stuck here forever? What if I never saw Shona again, or Aaron or Mandy or Mom and Dad or —?
“Emily.” Lowenna broke into my thoughts.
“Huh? Yeah, what?”
“You’re sure about this?”
“Of course,” I replied without hesitating. I didn’t want to share my fears with her, not at this stage. “Are you?”
Lowenna nodded. “Look. If it doesn’t . . . If I don’t get back . . .”
“You will get back. Don’t talk like that.”
“I know. I’m sure everything will be fine, but just in case . . . If I don’t get back, if it doesn’t work, will you do something for me?”
“Of course I will. Anything.”
“Tell Lyle about our daughter. Tell him she had his eyes. Tell him she already loved him as much as I did. Tell him I’m —”
“It won’t be necessary,” I interrupted. I couldn’t bear to hear her talk like this, as though she and the baby had already failed, as though they were already things of the past.
“Just tell him I’m sorry,” she insisted. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to tell him about her myself. And I’m sorry I messed up. Tell him to be happy. Will you do that for me?”
I nodded. I couldn’t speak.
Lowenna reached out and stroked my cheek. “You’re a brave girl,” she said softly. Something about the way she spoke reminded me of my mom, and I was instantly hit with a lurch of homesickness that felt like a fist in my stomach.
“How much time is left?” she asked.
I showed her the timer on my watch: 00:04.
“Four minutes,” she said. “Are you ready?”
How could I be ready for this? I mean, I’d faced Neptune in a bad mood, a sea monster waking up on the wrong side of the bed, an evil tyrant frozen into a mountain — but somehow none of them had scared me as much as this. It wasn’t only my life at stake here; it was a shipful of people’s lives — including one that had only just begun. “Yeah,” I lied. “I’m ready.”
I gave the baby a kiss on her head and wrapped my arms around Lowenna. “Good luck,” I breathed into her shoulder.
“You too.” She hugged me hard, then pulled away to hold me at arm’s length. “I’ll see you on the other side.”
I hope so, I thought. I really hope so.
00:02. Two minutes to go.
“Look.” I pointed at the porthole. It had started shimmering as it had when I came onto the ship — lighting up with a hundred colors, vibrating, buzzing. Was that only twelve hours ago? It already felt like more like a week.
The porthole hummed. I could feel the electricity from here.
00:01. One minute left.
Lowenna smiled at me, then clutching her baby mergirl in her arms, she turned away, ducked below the water, and swam toward the waiting portal.
Time was up. 00:00.
I watched from inside the cabin. The porthole disappeared, and in its place was a myriad of colors. It looked as if the glass had splintered into a million pieces and each piece was held up to the sun. Bright colors burned through it so hard I had to close my eyes against the glare.
The cabin shook. It felt as if I were in a rocket about to launch, or in the center of an earthquake. I curled into a ball and felt myself spinning through the water as wave after wave of energy exploded and crackled and burned all around me.
Lowenna and the baby — they were right in the heart of the explosions. How could they survive?
I opened my eyes and squinted into the light. I could still see them: the tips of their tails disappearing into the maelstrom, spinning in circles, caught up in the blazing explosion of the portal.
I forced my eyes to stay open, despite the burning of the lights. I could still see something moving inside the lights. Was that a tail? Were they OK? When would it end?
Come on, come on, get through!
I stared at the retreating dot of Lowenna’s tail for another minute. And then — it stopped.
Just like that.
A loud whoosh! A final burst of light. A fizzing of energy — and the portal closed like an elevator’s door.
I was alone.
Reeling and shaking, I swam across to the porthole. It was completely intact. There was no sign that anything strange had been going on at all. Outside, there was only the darkness of the ocean.
And that wasn’t all. I listened hard and I could just hear it — the dunka, dunka, dunka of the ship’s engines.
We were moving.
We were leaving Atlantis.
I just hoped and prayed with every bit of me that Lowenna and her baby girl were, too.
The trouble started almost immediately.
I had left Lowenna’s cabin and was in the corridor when the ship lurched violently to one side. Water rushed over me, and I soon found myself swimming through what felt like a thundering, rol
ling wave.
Somehow, I made it to the end of the corridor. I gripped the handrail at the bottom of the staircase, holding on with both hands as my body was hurled from side to side. Water sloshed around me. I climbed a couple of steps up, out of the water, and my tail thrashed violently as it stung and tingled and finally turned back into my legs.
Through the windows at the side of the ship, I could see the sky one minute, the sea the next. It felt as if there were giants on either side of us, rocking the boat violently, like a pair of school bullies slamming a seesaw up and down while the kids in the middle clung on for dear life.
Not just that, but the light was constantly shifting. One moment, it was like bright sunlight; the next, the sky filled with black clouds and the sea turned dark. It was as if night and day, sunshine and storms, hope and betrayal, were all mixed in together.
I could see someone farther up the staircase, hanging on to the handrail. It was the white-haired lady, Ruth.
“Emily!” she screamed. “Are you OK?”
“I’m fine!” I yelled back. “What’s happening?”
“I think it’s the resistance that Lowenna mentioned. I’m sure we’ll be through it soon. Just stay calm and hold on tight!”
I tried to do what she said. I held on as tightly as I could, closing my eyes and praying it would soon end. As I prayed, the ship continued to rock and reel and throw us this way and that, like an angry child with a toy it no longer wanted.
“Emily.”
Someone was shaking me. I clutched the rail even more tightly. No! No, don’t . . .
“Emily, look.”
I opened my eyes. Ruth was smiling at me. She pointed to the window.
I moved my head to see where she was pointing. Sea. Water. Just the ocean. No mountainous waves, no storms. I looked back at Ruth. “We made it,” I whispered. “We got away.”
She reached out to help me up. “Thanks to you, we did,” she said. “We’re heading home.”
I clung to Ruth’s arm as we climbed up to the top deck together.
I could see a group of people huddled together inside the cabin in the middle of the deck. We made our way over to them.
Sally came running out. “Emily! Ruth!” She pulled us into the huddle. “Are you OK?” she asked softly.
“She’s fine,” Ruth answered for me.
“Are Lowenna and the baby all right?” another woman asked.
“Hey, hey.” Tony waved his arms in a slow down kind of way. “Give the child a chance to answer.”
I looked around at them all, every eye on me. “I’m OK,” I said. “But I — I don’t know about Lowenna and the baby. They disappeared into the portal. They got off the ship. That’s why we’re moving.”
As if in reply, the ship took a sudden lurch to the left and I fell against Ruth. We’d escaped the storms, but there were still heavy seas out there.
I straightened myself up. “I can’t say for sure what happened after that,” I went on. “I have no idea if they’ll get home or not. That portal is vicious.”
I shuddered as I recalled my own experience of going through it — and thought of Lowenna’s retreating body disappearing into the unknown. “It’s like a black hole that could swallow you up without a trace,” I muttered.
I looked around at the others, suddenly — and yes, perhaps a bit belatedly — realizing that maybe they wanted to hear good news, not my inner fears!
“But, look, I’m sure they’ll be OK,” I added quickly.
Ruth smiled at me. “There’s nothing we can do now. We’re on our way home, and whatever else happens, we will always be grateful to them — and to you — for that.”
“Hear, hear!” her husband said.
The others nodded. A couple of them even clapped. Sally smiled at me. “Well done, Emily. You’re a brave, brave girl.”
I tried to smile back. But as the ship creaked and thumped and banged, and as we continued to veer from side to side and lurch up and down, and as our journey still felt long and hard and dangerous, I couldn’t help wondering where on earth she’d gotten the idea that I was anything other than a scared child who wanted to go home.
Things were starting to change. The sea was growing rougher.
Lowenna had warned us this would happen. It was the second wave of resistance. It meant we were nearing the end of our journey; we were approaching the point where the earthquake had swallowed the ship.
Lowenna had given the captain everything he needed to get through, every coordinate, every instruction. But without a Way Maker to guide us home, we needed one more ingredient: luck.
The snippets of brightness were giving way to black clouds. The sea was developing enormous waves, peaking like mountains, white water streaming across their tops like snow.
Up the mountains we climbed, gripping on to one another for dear life. Then we teetered on the cusp of the wave — like that moment at the top of a roller coaster when you’re about to leave your stomach behind — and down we crashed.
Over and over. Clambering dangerously up, crashing fiercely down. Water spilled over the deck from every side; chairs that hadn’t been bolted down slid violently across the wet deck, over the side, and out to sea.
The sky clapped and roared; a raging thunderstorm followed our every move, folded us inside itself as it lifted us up, hurled us down, screaming its violent anger at us.
I had never been so close to a thunderstorm before, and I had never seen one as wild as this — not even on Neptune’s angriest days.
On and on it went, unrelenting in its rage.
One thought kept repeating over and over in my mind: after everything we’d been through, were we going to be hurled from our boat out here — fail at the last hurdle?
It was the last thought in my mind as another wave struck us and I fell to the deck.
Was it the last thought I would ever have?
I must have blacked out. I think we all did, because next thing I knew, we were all opening our eyes, looking around at one another, and picking ourselves up.
Was it over? Had we come through it? Were we alive?
My legs felt wobbly as I stood up. Every limb felt bruised. Every muscle ached.
But I didn’t care about that.
“Look!” One of the men was pointing out to sea. A few of the others had already run to the side of the ship.
As I went over to join them, I realized two things.
Thing one: The ship was completely level. We were sailing on the calmest seas I had ever seen. You’d hardly even know we were moving.
Thing two: Up ahead and a little to the right, I could see land. And not just any land.
Fivebays Island.
My good-byes were swift. After a round of tearful hugs and “good luck’s” and “we’ll never forget you’s,” I dived from the ship. One last wave to the others and I ducked under the water and swam as fast as I could back to the island.
A couple of long, sleek silver fish swam on either side of me, as if they had been sent to escort me home. We raced along the channel together, zooming through the clear, smooth water. I couldn’t help smiling all the way. We’d done it! We’d really done it.
All I could think about was seeing Lyle reunited with his wife and meeting his daughter for the first time.
The light was fading as I approached Fivebays Island. I swam above the water and looked across at Sandy Bay. I could just about make out three figures on the beach. I stopped swimming and waved. One of them waved back, then nudged the others. A moment later, two of the figures had run down to the water’s edge and dived right in. The other waited on the sand. As I got closer, I could see that it was Mandy.
It didn’t take long to find out who the others were.
“Emily!” Aaron was swimming toward me at the speed of a rocket. “Emily! You’re back! You’re back!” He swam at me so hard, I almost did a backward somersault under the water. Once I’d recovered, he grabbed me and held me tightly. I hugged him back just as hard.
It felt as if we’d been apart for months.
Lyle was right behind him. I grinned at him. I couldn’t wait to hear how he’d felt when he’d seen Lowenna, and what he thought about his daughter!
And then he said something that took all the happy out of everything.
“Is Lowenna with you?”
I let go of Aaron. “What?”
“Lowenna? Where is she?”
“Isn’t she back?” I asked stupidly. Of course she wasn’t back. If she were back, he wouldn’t be asking if she was with me. Where was she, then?
I watched the hope drain out of Lyle’s face, leaving it gray and lifeless. Worse, even, than it had been before I’d gone.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “She isn’t with you?”
“She . . . she came separately,” I said carefully. I couldn’t tell him about the baby. That was for Lowenna to do. When she got here. If she got here. “She should be back by now. Are you sure she’s not back?”
Lyle didn’t even answer. He just turned and swam away.
Aaron took my hand, and we followed Lyle back toward the beach.
“Lyle, stop!” I called.
He was already out of the water, his tail turning back into legs. “What for?” he asked, his voice broken and cracked, as if it were full of splinters.
“It . . . it’s not over yet. Please. Wait. Just for a while.”
Lyle sighed. Then he held out his arms in a hopeless shrug. “OK.” He sat on the sand. “I’ll wait. What else is there for me to do?”
Mandy splashed into the waves. “You made it!” she screamed.
I hugged Mandy, told her how glad I was to be back. Then I dived back into the water to join Shona when we saw her arriving a few minutes later. I danced around in a happy circle with her and told her how scary it had been, but how good it felt to be safely back in one piece. I sat at the water’s edge with Lyle, holding his hand, telling him not to give up, telling him Lowenna would be safe.