He pushed himself upward and broke the surface, taking in deep breaths of the cool night air. He looked around to see where the lights of Artimé lay and found himself a good bit offshore. Had he missed Spike somewhere? Perhaps he should double back. He saw Simber, backlit by the mansion lights, licking a paw and then yawning at the edge of the water, and waved to him. Simber nodded in return. Alex was secretly proud that the cat hadn’t come out over the water to see what Alex was up to. That meant Simber trusted Alex not to drown. It was a positive step, Alex thought.
Once he had his wind back again, Alex dove down and resumed his search, this time swimming laps parallel to the shore, drawing closer and closer to shore until he could nearly touch the bottom. Since the whale was quite a bit taller than he, she would stick out above the waves, so she couldn’t be here. Alex had to keep searching.
After about an hour, he caught sight of the whale a good thousand feet on the other side of the mansion, where no one liked to swim because of the big rocks and sharp edges of the reef. The very tip of Spike’s tail stuck out of the water just slightly, as she was lodged on the reef, head pointed down at the ocean floor.
“Finally,” Alex grumbled. “That transport spell needs a bit of work, if you ask me.” But no one was there to ask him, so all Alex could do was continue on. Once he had his breath, he stood cautiously on the reef and reached down under the water to touch the whale’s side. His sopping-wet robe stuck to his shivering body, but once again that night Alex concentrated and began to utter a very important spell. One that he knew he should never forget.
“Imagine,” he whispered, imagining the whale alive again. “Believe.” Oh boy, did he believe it. He’d seen it happen before, and he didn’t need anybody to convince him that this spell would work. “Whisper,” he said, knowing he’d be whispering all along, his magic and his energy giving life to the whale.
Without hesitation this time, Alex uttered the next word. “Breathe.” However you do it best, Spike, you must do it now. And with that, he ended it. “Commence.” He repeated the words two more times, and then he waited.
When he felt something electric pulsing through his fingers, Alex opened his eyes. The whale’s tail was moving the slightest bit. “Spike!” he shouted. “Spike Furious, you’re alive!”
The water was charged with the great creature’s presence. Alex could feel the life around him—the rebirth of this creature, the return to her natural habitat. And then he felt the slap—the really extremely hard slap—of her tail on the side of his face, and he felt his body being lifted out of the water and thrown ten feet aside.
When Alex resurfaced, sputtering, and came to his senses, Spike was gone.
Overwhelmed
Aaron Stowe, covered in leaves and dirt, got up from the bottom of the jungle tube. He brushed himself off and watched as the panther jumped from tree to tree, the little dog following along, yipping from the ground below and then hopping up to grab a branch with his teeth and swinging from branch to branch by the grip of his mouth. Aaron didn’t know what to think. All he knew was that he needed to get out of here before something else went wrong.
He wiped the dirt off his clothing and looked at the rock. “Okay, well, good-bye then.” He hesitated. Now that the danger was over, he felt strangely drawn to this place.
The rock moved closer. “We shall see you again soon, I hope,” it rumbled.
“Ahh . . . right. Of course. I shall come by again soon to make sure everything is working as it should.” He looked over his shoulder at the tube’s button, as if that would help him leave more quickly. “By the way,” he said, “how many creatures are out here?”
“A dozen or so. Some of them I haven’t seen in . . . well, in years, I suppose. I think about them, though. They know how to find me if . . . if they need me.”
Aaron frowned. The rock’s voice had turned wistful, and Aaron didn’t know how to process that. And frankly, he didn’t want to know. Not today. He’d had enough for today. He nodded and said another awkward good-bye. And then he pressed the button.
Spending less than a second in the tube in his brother’s mansion, Aaron pushed the first button, which would take him to Haluki’s. When he arrived there, he felt a cool draft, colder than any temperature he’d ever felt in Quill before. His heart pounded. Had he hit the wrong button by mistake? He pushed his hand out of the tube and found the familiar closet doors. Cautiously he opened it and stepped into Haluki’s office. His shoes squished on the wet floor.
What in Quill? Aaron wondered, stepping gingerly across the room. It was almost chilly in there. The walls were wet. The ceiling dripped with water. And the floor was soaked. It was more water than he’d seen in one place before, if you didn’t count Artimé. And he didn’t.
He dipped a finger into a small pool of water and tasted it. He’d never felt something so cold on his tongue before. And it tasted good. He cupped his hands and drank some more, glad for it but feeling like he was in a strange dream. Why was it here?
Puzzled, he wandered through the house, still in a daze from the jungle experience. It was the same everywhere—water dripping from the tables and chairs, standing in the sink, soaking into the wooden floorboards. And in the center of the dining table was a small white puck of something strange. Aaron reached out and touched it. “Ouch!” he cried. It had felt good at first, but then it made his fingers burn. He dropped the puck, watched it skate across the floor, and pressed his fingertips to his cheek. They were cold.