The Tail of Emily Windsnap - Liz Kessler [45]
“It’s a weak point,” she said. “This stuff’s millions of years old. I’m sure they have people who check the perimeter and maintain it and stuff, but there’s always going to be a bit of it that they miss.”
I pushed my own hand into the hole and scrabbled at it with my fingertips as though I were digging a hole into sand. It felt different from the rest of the wall. Softer. I pushed farther.
Scrabbling and scraping, we’d soon scooped all the way up to our shoulders, white dust clouds billowing around us.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Make it wider. Big enough to swim into.”
We worked silently at the hole. The coral didn’t glint and glisten with colors once we got inside it. We scraped and scratched in darkness.
Eventually, as my arms were going numb and my whole body was aching and itching from the dust particles swirling all around us, Shona grabbed my arm. I looked up and saw it. The tiniest flicker of light ahead of us.
“We’re through,” I gasped.
“Nearly. Come on.”
Filled with hope, I punched my fist deep into the hole, scratching my hand as I pulled at the wall. The hole grew bigger and rounder, eventually large enough to get through. I turned to Shona.
“Go on. You first,” she urged. “You’re smaller than me.”
I scrunched my arms tightly against my body and flicked my tail gently. Then, scratching my arms and tail on the sides, I slid through the hole.
Once on the other side, I turned and carried on scraping so Shona could get through as well. But nothing came away in my hands. No dust. I cut my fingers against jagged rock.
“I can’t make it bigger,” I called through the hole.
“Me, neither,” Shona replied, her voice echoing inside the dark cavern I’d left behind.
“Try to squeeze through.”
Shona’s head came close to the hole. “It’s my shoulders. I’m too big,” she said. “I’ll never manage it.”
“Should I pull you?”
“I just can’t do it.” Shona backed away from the gap. “I’ll get stuck — and then you won’t be able to get back through.”
“I can’t do it without you.” My voice shook as it rippled through the water to her.
“I’ll wait here!”
“Promise?”
“Promise. I’ll wait at the end of the tunnel.”
I took a deep breath. “This is it, then,” I said, poking my head into the opening.
“Good luck.”
“Yeah.” I backed away from the hole again. “And thanks,” I added. “For everything. You’re the bestest best friend anyone could want.”
Shona’s eyes shone brighter in the darkness. “You are, you mean.”
There was no way I’d been as good a friend as she had. I didn’t tell her that, though — I didn’t want her to change her mind!
Then I turned away from the hole. Leaving the Great Mermer Reef behind me, I swam toward a dark maze of caves covered in sharp, jagged pieces of coral.
“I’m going to see my dad,” I whispered, trying out the unfamiliar thought, and desperately hoping it could be true.
I swam cautiously away from the reef, glancing nervously around me as I moved ever closer to the prison. A solitary manta ray slid along the ground, flapping its fins like a cape. Small packs of moody-looking fish with open jaws threaded slowly through the silent darkness, glancing at me as they passed. Ahead of me, a barrel of thick blackness rotated slowly. Then suddenly, it parted! Thousands of tiny fish scattered and reformed into two spinning balls. Beyond them, a dark gray shadow, bigger than me and shaped like a submarine, moved silently between them.
I held my breath as the shark passed by.
As I drew nearer to the prison, the water grew darker. Dodging between rocks and weeds, I finally reached the prison door. It looked like the wide-open mouth of a gigantic whale, with sharp white teeth filling the gap. In front of the door, two creatures silently glided from side to side, slow and mean, with a beady eye on each side of their mallet-shaped heads. Hammerhead sharks.
I’d never get past them. Maybe there was another entrance.
I remembered the note in Dad’s file. “East Wing,” it had