Free Emily Windsnap and the Monster From the Deep by Liz Kessler Page B

there. Maybe we can straighten this mess out, somehow. Seal it back up so it’s safe again or something.”
    “Dad, it was really frightening. It was the most terrifying thing ever!”
    “Worse than going back to face Neptune? You stood up to him in his own court, remember.”
    I dropped my head. “I know. That was pretty frightening, too.”
    “Exactly. And you did that, so you can handle this as well.”
    “I suppose.”
    “Come on.” He held out his hand. “Let’s see what we can do.”
    Letting out a breath it felt as if I’d been holding in for a week, I took his hand and we swam on.

    “It’s that way,” I said as we came to the lagoon. It looked different. The water was murky and muddier than I remembered. Sand-colored flatfish skimmed over the seabed, moving beneath us like shifting ground.
    My throat closed up. We’d reached the carving on the wall. The trident. How on earth could we have missed it last time? Maybe if we’d seen it, none of this would have happened.
    It was pointless thinking like that.
    We came to the pinwheel, except this time when I looked at it, I realized I knew exactly what it was. The long shoots spiraling out from the round body in the center . . .
    “That’s it,” I said, my voice rippling like a breaking wave. “I don’t want to go any farther.”
    He stopped swimming. “We need to do this, little ’un — I mean, Emily.”
    “Dad, you know, it’s okay if you want to call me —”
    “No.” He put a finger over my lips. In charge. Strong. “You’re not a baby. You’re a scale off the old tail, and I couldn’t be more proud of you. And we’re going to get to the bottom of this, find out what we can, right?”
    “But it’s out of bounds. This was how the whole trouble started.”
    “And this is how it’ll end, too,” he said. “You don’t think we found ourselves at this place by the pair of us doing what we were told, do you?”
    I didn’t say anything.
    He reached out for my hand. “Come on. I’ll go ahead, but you need to tell me where I’m going. I’ll look after you.”
    Eventually, I took his hand and we swam in silence.
    Everything looked familiar, until we came to an enormous gash in the rock. Maybe the size of a house.
    “In there.” I held out a shaky arm. “Except it was a tiny hole last time!”
    Dad swallowed. “Okay, then. You ready?”
    “I’ll never be ready to go back in there.” A solitary fish flashed past me: soft green on one side, bright blue on the other, its see-through fins stretched back as it swam away from the cave. Sensible fish.
    “Come on. You’ll be okay. I’m right beside you.” He squeezed my hand and we edged inside, slipping back through the rock.
    But it was completely different. So different that I started to wonder if we were in the wrong place. There were no thin winding channels, just huge gaping chasms all the way. We swam through them all.
    And then we came to the gold. We were in the right place. Jewels and crystals lay scattered across the seabed. As we swam lower, the surroundings felt less familiar. Colder. And there was something else. Something very different. The deeper we got, the more we saw of them.
    Bones.
    Just a few at first, that could perhaps have passed for driftwood. Then more: clumps of them, piled up like the remains of a huge banquet. Long thin bones, twisty fat ones — and then a skull, lying on the sea floor. A dark fish slipped through an eye socket. I clapped a hand across my mouth.
    “Dad!” I gripped his hand so hard I felt his knuckles crack.
    “Don’t look at them,” he said, his voice wobbling. “Just stay close to me.”
    We swam into every bit of the cave. Every inch.
    “What do you see?” Dad asked as we paused in the center of the biggest chasm.
    I looked around. “Nothing.”
    “Exactly.” He turned to face me, suddenly not in charge anymore. Not strong. Just scared. “It’s gone, Emily. The kraken — it’s on the loose.”

How long have we been