One hand resting gently on the narwhal’s head, Neptune looked around at us all. His face had changed. He looked as if a hundred years of stress had been taken away from him.
“I remember,” he said.
“You remember what?” Archie asked nervously.
Neptune smiled. And then, in a quiet, calm voice, he said, “Everything.”
“Many, many hundreds of years ago, the oceans were ruled very differently,” Neptune began. “Those early days of my childhood were the days when I learned everything. My parents ruled the seas back then. Our parents.”
He paused and looked to the sky, as if he might find a vision of his early family life there. “But those days came to an abrupt end when our mother and father died,” he went on. “My brother, Njord, and I wept together over our aged parents as they lay, side by side, dying. But my father did not want to see his sons crying, and he would not allow our tears to fall into the oceans and sadden the kingdom. In his dying moments, he created an island like no other. An island formed of mountains: giant, jagged peaks that reached higher into the sky than anything anyone had seen before.”
We listened, enthralled, as Neptune went on.
“He sent our tears away to the tops of these mountains, and then he turned them to ice. He told us we must be strong rulers for our subjects and he made us promise we would honor this final, dying wish.”
“Which, of course, you did,” said Mr. Beeston. “We have all only ever known Neptune as the great king he is today.”
Neptune frowned and carried on. “Of course we made this promise,” he said tersely. “But our tears, which lay within the thickest layers of ice at the top of the highest mountain, were shed by brothers mourning their parents, and they contained powerful family magic. No one could touch the water of our tears except for our family — now just Njord and me. And this water would be able to help us, should harm ever come to either of us.”
“I get it,” I said. “The water that melted when the midnight sun shone on it — that was your tears. That’s why we could catch it — because Aaron and I had your power from the rings.”
“And why it burned anyone else who tried to touch it,” Aaron added.
Neptune gave us a quick nod before continuing. “After my parents passed away, the years of uneasy rule began. My brother and I never saw things in the same way. Neither of us was ever happy with his share, and we both fought for more. But while on my part the fighting was limited to raging arguments, Njord took things a step further.”
“What did he do?” Aaron asked.
“It wasn’t what he did, it was what he tried to do — and, luckily, I had enough spies in his camp to stop him before he managed to put his plan into action.”
“What was the plan?” I asked.
“He wanted to create a tsunami. The biggest wave the world had ever seen — bigger than all of the mountains in the range our father had created.” Neptune shook his head, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was saying. “The wave was to be set in motion, perfectly positioned and perfectly timed, so that, eventually, it would flood all of the land.”
“All of the land? What do you mean, all of the land?” I asked.
Neptune met my eyes. “I mean exactly what you think I mean. His greed was unimaginable. His reasoning was beyond comprehension. He thought that if we were not satisfied with the amount of sea each of us had to rule, the only solution was to create more. He wanted to wipe out the land completely — turn everything to sea.”
I let out a breath. Njord had wanted to virtually destroy the planet! Turn it all into one big ocean and leave no trace of land at all! How could anyone think like that?
“My spies told me of his plan the night before it was due to take effect. I tried to reason with Njord. I fought, argued — I even begged him. He merely laughed in my face and told me to go away. It was then that I realized I had lost my brother. This was not someone I could call family; this was not someone I could do anything with. He had to be stopped — that was all that mattered.”
“So you turned him to ice,” Aaron said.
“I’m not proud of what I did, but I had so little time to act. When I decided to turn my brother and his kingdom to ice, a part of me turned to ice with him. I told no one what I had to do, and the pain of it was unbearable; I had lost my parents, and now I had lost my brother. More than that, I had lost my faith. I could never again trust anyone or anything. I could never be happy, knowing what I had done to him. And how could I face my people and my oceans and have them accept me as a strong ruler, when I could not accept myself?”
I suddenly realized I knew who had taken Neptune’s memories.
“You wiped your own memory,” I said.
Neptune lowered his head. “What else could I do? Njord could not be allowed to put his plan into action — but I could not rule with the knowledge of what I had done.”
“How did you do it?” Aaron asked.
Neptune indicated for the narwhal to come nearer. He swam in closer to Neptune’s side.
“The narwhal,” he said simply.
“But how?” I asked.
“I asked him to pierce my mind with his tusk and take my memories away.”
Aaron let out a low whistle. “He can do that?”
Neptune smiled. “This narwhal is a most magical and special creature. He can do many things.”
“What did he do with your memories?” I asked.
“I told him to take them away to a place where they would never again be found and gather my loyal servants — the spies in Njord’s camp — and bring them back to me. That was my terrible mistake. When he went to fetch my loyal followers, deep inside the very mountain, he, too, was turned to ice — along with my brother and his people. In carrying out my wishes I had also lost my precious narwhal and my most loyal spies.”
We all fell silent, and for a moment, it felt as if everything might turn out all right after all. Neptune had his memory back, and he seemed kind of OK with it; his beloved narwhal had been returned; Archie was here by Neptune’s side and clearly not out to cause trouble — and there was no sign of Njord, so the eagle obviously hadn’t taken the crystal to him after all. It must have just flown off with it, leaving Njord still frozen inside the mountain.
All in all, it seemed as though we’d done a pretty good job, and perhaps we could all go home. I was about to say so, when something stopped me.
A rumbling sound. It seemed to be coming from all around us — making the ocean froth like a milk shake in a blender. Even the seafloor was vibrating beneath us.
I grabbed Aaron’s arm. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know.”
The swell was starting to throw all of us around, even Neptune and his chariot were being rocked from side to side.
“Hold my hand,” Aaron said. “Perhaps we can fight it.”
I took Aaron’s hand and gripped it tightly. Nothing changed. If anything, a bigger surge swept through the water. A black ray flapped by, its fins hitting me in the face. A jellyfish splattered against my tail. Rocks and stones and plants were being uprooted from the seabed itself.
Then the ocean turned into a giant whirlpool; a vortex, picking us all up, spinning us around, and propelling us to the surface of the bubbling ocean.
Wiping our faces, pulling hair out of our eyes, gasping for breath, we looked around to see what was happening.
For a moment, the sea continued to attack us, huge balls of water rising up from below us into the air, only to come crashing down all around us. It was as if a furious giant were hurling rocks made of seawater across the ocean.
And then it stopped. Just like that. No movement, no fury, no nothing. Just a still, calm sea, surrounded by mountains on one side and a frozen glacier on the other, with a blue sparkling fjord just beyond. It was as though the mayhem had never happened.
I looked around at the others. Everyone looked bedraggled and confused, but they were all still here.
??
?Now what?” I asked.
The answer came from a long way away — from the fjord on the other side of the glacier.
“Now, we FIGHT!”
Njord! He had risen out of the sea in front of us.
Neptune raised his head and looked over at his brother. I had no idea what thoughts were going through his head, but if the expression on his face was anything to go by, brotherly makeup hugs were not likely to be first on the agenda.
“It is time to end our quarrel for good,” Njord boomed. “And the only way to do it is with a fight to the death!”
Neptune continued to stare at his brother. “If that is your choice, so be it,” he said eventually.
“I shall give you today to prepare,” Njord said. “We meet back here at midnight — and fight for our future.”
“Very well,” said Neptune. “The winner shall rule all of the oceans himself. And the loser . . .”
“The loser shall DIE!” Njord bellowed.
Everything fell silent. It was as if the sea stopped moving, the sky froze, the wind fell.
And then Neptune replied.
“Agreed!” he growled.
Njord let out a horrible, cackling laugh, before disappearing back to wherever he’d come from.
Neptune turned to us. “All of you, leave me,” he said. “I have had a long journey. If I am to battle against my brother tonight, I need some rest.”
“Can we do anything at all?” Aaron asked.
Neptune shook his head. “This is between my brother and me,” he said.
But something was bothering me: a horrible feeling creeping up inside. A feeling that this was all our fault. “Wait!” I said.
Neptune turned to face me.
“I mean — wait, please, Your Majesty.”
“What is it?” Neptune asked.
“I just need to know something.”
“Very well. Ask.”
I hesitated. I didn’t want him to confirm that Aaron and I had completely messed everything up, but I needed to know.
“If we had never come here, Njord would have stayed frozen, and you would never have known about it,” I said. “Things would have carried on perfectly peacefully. Was this whole journey a waste of time? Or is it even worse than that? Have we caused all of this by coming here?”
Neptune looked softly at me. “You couldn’t be further from the truth,” he said. “The midnight sun falling on the mountains each year was beginning to melt Njord. It was happening very slowly — but it was happening. Njord would have become free at some point.”
“When?” asked Aaron.
“Who knows?” Neptune replied. “It could have been next year; it could have been fifty years from now. All I know is that it would have happened — and there would have been no one here to stop him. Because of you, we are all here — and we stand at least a chance of fighting his evil plans.” He smiled at Aaron and me. “You have fought a brave battle,” he said kindly. “Now I have to ensure we win the war.” With that, he beckoned Archie to join him in the chariot. “Come, Archie, let’s go.”
As the dolphins began to pull the chariot away, Neptune turned back to us. “Stay safe,” he said. “I’ll see you at midnight.”
The rest of the day passed in a blur. At some point, we went back to the ship. Shona stayed with the narwhal and we went inside to bring Millie up-to-date with events. It didn’t go too well. When Millie heard that Archie was around but hadn’t been able to come to see her, she was devastated.
Well, she was in good company. There weren’t many smiles going around any of us for the rest of the day. We had an early dinner and decided we should all get some rest before meeting up with Neptune later.
Millie and I went back to our cabin and set an alarm for half past eleven in case we fell asleep. Millie was asleep in minutes and lay on her back, mouth open, snoring heavily as usual. I stared at the ceiling, my mind too busy and too full of questions to even allow my eyes to close.
I must have drifted off without realizing it, though, as a soft tapping sound woke me with a start sometime later. I jumped out of bed and crept to the door. I looked down the corridor. No one was there. I must have imagined it.
I was about to get back into bed when I heard it again. This time I realized it was coming from the porthole. I leaned across to look out of the big round window. Someone was out there. I craned my neck to see who it was.
Archie! What did he want?
He jabbed a finger toward the back of the boat and mouthed something at me. He was telling me to meet him. “Bring Aaron,” he mouthed, then held up his hand to indicate five minutes.
I silently let myself out of the cabin and went to find Aaron.
We leaned over the railings on the lowest deck and listened to what Archie had to say.
“I haven’t got long,” he began. “I don’t want Neptune to know I’m here.”
“I bet you don’t,” I said before I could stop myself.
He looked at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I bit my lip.
“She means we don’t trust you,” Aaron said. “We’ve been talking about some of the things that you’ve done — and they don’t add up.”
“What things?”
“That time I saw you at Millie’s behaving oddly, and the way you reacted when you heard about us going on this trip,” I told him.
“And when you told me to kiss Emily,” Aaron said, blushing furiously. “We don’t know exactly what your game is, but we think you’re up to something.”
For a moment, Archie didn’t say anything. Then he held up both hands. “OK, you’ve got me,” he said. “I’m going to tell you the truth.”
Whatever I might have been expecting him to say, that hadn’t been it. I thought he’d at least try to deny it. And if I’m honest, I’d hoped we’d been wrong. I wanted there to be a perfectly reasonable explanation for his odd behavior, but it seemed we’d been right all along: Archie wasn’t to be trusted, and he was about to confess all.
“I knew about Neptune’s story before he did,” Archie began.
“How come?” I asked.
“There is a line of merfolk: a very secret, very select group. I come from this line.”
“Who are they? What makes them so special?” Aaron asked.
“We are the ones who know the full truth. We are the ones who keep the peace.”
“You’re a peacekeeper?” I asked. “What if we find that hard to believe?”
Archie raised his shoulders in a slow shrug. “Then I wouldn’t blame you. All I ask is that you hear me out.”
Aaron and I exchanged a look. Aaron nodded. “Go on, then,” I said.
“I first saw you when you stood up to Neptune in his own court. You impressed us all. My superiors told me we had to watch you.”
“Watch me?” I burst out. “As in, spy on me, like Mr. Beeston did for almost all my life?”
“Not spy on you, no,” Archie said quickly. “We just wanted to keep someone near you, see how things progressed. We had the feeling you might be special. It turned out we were right.”
“You mean, when you came into our lives, it wasn’t a coincidence?”
“No, not exactly.”
“And when you started going out with Millie, that was . . .”
Archie at least had the decency to look embarrassed. “I care very much about Millie,” he said. “But —”
“But the whole thing was a big, fat pack of lies!” The voice came from behind me. I spun around.
“Millie!” Archie probably should have tried a bit harder to hide the horror on his face. As it was the first time he’d seen his so-called girlfriend in days, his usual look of sappy adoration would probably have gone down better.
“I heard Emily leave — I assumed to meet up with someone,” Millie said, her voice lifeless and dull. “It crossed my mind that it might be you, since I had heard you were in the area. I still couldn’t believe you would come all this way and make no attempt to see
me — your beloved!”
“Millie, I —”
Millie went on, ignoring him. “So, I followed her, and this is what I found — that my whole relationship has been nothing but make-believe.”
I couldn’t help glancing at Aaron. I knew how she felt! He turned away and wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Millie, I might have met you in somewhat unusual circumstances, but that doesn’t make our relationship any less real,” Archie said.
“Our relationship no longer exists!” Millie spat. She turned to me. “Emily, I’m sorry. I should have believed you.”
“Millie, please!” Archie begged.
Millie swung around to face him again. “That’s a thought,” she said. “What exactly were you doing in my home that day? The truth, this time.”
“All right, then,” Archie said. “I’ll tell you. I was looking at your diaries.”
Millie gasped. “You were what?”
“You know how sometimes we would tell each other about our dreams?”
Millie folded her arms and pursed her lips together in reply.
“Sometimes you said things that were familiar to me,” Archie went on. “You described scenes I had heard of, scenes my family had told me about in stories passed from generation to generation. We treasured those stories more than our lives. You described places that to us were sacred. Places you had never even been to.”
“This still doesn’t explain why you were sneaking around in my home,” Millie said firmly.
“You told me you always wrote your dreams down in a book. I needed that book. We knew that time was running out. Neptune was troubled, and I suspected what was happening.”
“I suppose you’d been spying on him, too,” Millie said sharply.
Archie ignored her and continued. “I need you to understand where I’m coming from. I am not the enemy. I’m possibly the only one who can save Neptune from certain death. And you have to help me.”
“Are you saying you think Neptune is going to lose the fight with his brother?” Aaron asked.
Archie shook his head. “I’m saying I know Neptune will lose the fight. If we don’t stop this from happening, Neptune will die at midnight tonight.”