Emily Windsnap and the Land of the Midnight Sun Read Free Page B

seen Neptune look mad more times than I cared to remember, there was something different about this time. He didn’t look mad with us. He looked cross with
himself.
    He suddenly lifted his trident in the air and turned to his dolphins. With a flick of the trident, he bellowed, “Leave us! Return when I call you!”
    The dolphins flipped and turned in a swift, instant movement. One of them flicked open the door and they dived through it, flipped it closed behind them, and left the three of us alone in the cave. Neptune beckoned us to come closer.
    Aaron and I shuffled awkwardly toward him.
    “I have a job for you,” he said. “A . . . well, a kind of mission.”
    “A mission?” Aaron asked. “What sort of mission?”
    “I can’t tell you too much at this stage,” Neptune replied gravely. “But I can tell you this — it is extremely important, extremely secret . . . and extremely dangerous.”
    Great. This was sounding better by the second.
    “Why us?” Aaron asked.
    Neptune looked down and examined his hands. “Why not?” he mumbled.
    “Why
not
?” I asked. I could think of
lots
of reasons why not!
    Neptune shrugged and waved his trident in an overly nonchalant manner. “Because you are semi-mers,” he said flippantly. “I thought you would do.”
    He wasn’t convincing me. He was trying too hard to sound casual. He didn’t go to the kind of lengths he’d gone to with us because we “would do.”
    “If you just need semi-mers, why not send someone like Mr. Beeston?” Aaron asked.
    Mr. Beeston was half human, half merman, and he already worked for Neptune. In fact, he’d spent most of my life spying on Mom and me and reporting back to Neptune on his findings. When I’d found out, I was furious. But lately, he’d changed. He’d apologized, too, and things were different now — so I’d forgiven him. It didn’t mean I’d ever trust him again, though.
    “Mr. Beeston seems an obvious candidate for your sneaky secret missions,” I pointed out.
    Neptune shook his head. “Beeston is not to know about this mission,” he said. Then he scratched his beard and screwed up his eyes. “Actually, now that I think about it, perhaps it’s not such a bad idea. Beeston
could
come in handy.”
    “Great,” I said. “Does that mean we can go now?”
    “Go?”
    “You just said — Mr. Beeston can do it.”
    Neptune’s face darkened. “Mr. Beeston can
not
do this,” he said firmly. “He cannot
know
about it, cannot know the full truth, anyway. What he can perhaps do is chaperone the pair of you. With limited knowledge of the full task.”
    “Your Majesty, forgive me, but can I just check that I’ve got this right?” I said, summoning up all my courage to stare into his face till he met my eyes. “This mission is something so secret that even Mr. Beeston, one of your closest advisers, isn’t to know the full truth of it, and yet you’re telling us that we’ve been chosen simply because we’re semi-mers?”
    “All right,” Neptune said. “I admit it. It’s not just because you are semi-mers.”
    He paused for so long that my tail started to itch and twitch with impatience. A black-and-gold spotted fish that looked like a leopard weaved between us. Neptune watched the fish swim away, then turned back to us. “It’s because I’m sending you to a place filled with secrets and magic,” he said. Which didn’t sound so bad, actually, till he added, “And fear.”
    Secrets, magic,
and fear
didn’t sound quite so enticing.
    “It’s a dangerous combination,” Neptune went on, in case we hadn’t figured that out for ourselves.
    “So why us?” Aaron asked again.
    “Because you will need all of my powers for this mission,” Neptune replied.
    “All of your powers? But we haven’t got them anymore,” I said.
    Aaron and I had found a pair of magical wedding rings that Neptune and his wife, Aurora, had given to each other. We’d discovered that when we held hands while wearing the rings, we