Emily Windsnap and the Land of the Midnight Sun by Liz Kessler

preparing — we were finally on our way to the world of Neptune’s nightmares.

I have to confess, I almost forgot about the whole dangerous mission thing once we’d left Neptune’s submarine behind and boarded the cruise ship.
    It was AMAZING! Easily the biggest boat I’d ever seen. It was more like a small town. There were eight levels, with balconies going all the way around on a couple of them, and a roof terrace with two hot tubs and a swimming pool. Inside the ship there was an elevator that took you between decks! The restaurant served the biggest, fanciest, and most delicious meals you could think of. And the cabins — well, they weren’t
huge,
but they were comfortable and clean.
    I was sharing with Millie, and Aaron was sharing with Mr. Beeston. As Millie’s place had been so last minute, she’d actually been assigned a tiny cabin on the floor with all the staff. Millie being Millie, it hadn’t taken her long to fix things so that she got to share my bigger one, with its porthole on the side, instead. I didn’t mind. To be honest, it would have been a bit lonely on my own.
    All in all, it was pretty fantastic. If we actually
had
been here for a vacation, I imagine it would have been the trip of a lifetime.
    “Oooh, look at this one,” Millie said. She was flicking through the brochure of excursions that the company ran throughout the trip. “Sea eagle safari. That sounds good, doesn’t it?”
    I sat down next to her on her bed and looked at the brochure over Millie’s shoulder.
Journey with us into sea eagle territory — and don’t forget your camera!
it read. There was a picture of about twenty people on a small boat, a giant eagle flying toward them with a fish in its talons. The eagle’s eyes were black and hard. They seemed to be staring right off the page at me. I shivered. “Not sure about that one,” I said.
    “ATV safari?” Millie suggested, turning the page.
    “Hmm, maybe.”
    She flicked over another page. “Glacier trip?”
    My heart did a forward somersault into the air as I looked at the picture. The mountains, the lake, the glacier — I’d never seen them before, but I knew them.
    It was the place that Neptune had described.
    I tried to speak, but my throat suddenly had a large block of ice jamming it up. Instead, I just pointed at the picture and nodded.
    Millie looked at me. “You want to go on the glacier trip?”
    “Mmm!” I said, nodding again.
    “Not sure I’m interested in that one, myself,” she said. “Maybe Mr. Beeston can take you.” Then she licked a finger and turned the page, moving on to the rest of the excursions.
    I cleared my throat and found my voice again. “I’m going to see what Aaron’s up to,” I said as casually as I could.
    Millie closed the brochure. “OK, dear,” she said. “I might call Archie while you’re gone.”
    “Call Archie? What do you mean?”
    Millie reached into her bag and fumbled around. Eventually, after pulling out packets of tissues, notebooks, pens, and jars of strange-looking pills and scattering them across the bed, she found what she was looking for. A shell like the ones Neptune had given to Aaron and me — in shimmering green.
    “Where did you get that?” I gasped.
    “Archie gave it to me,” she said, hugging the shell. “Said it would help him to not miss me so much. It’s magical, you see. We can talk to each other with it.”
    “But how —”
    “Oh, I know. He’s a bit naughty, really. They’re only supposed to be used for top-level emergencies. But he said us being apart
is
a top-level emergency. He told me to call him and keep him up-to-date with what we’re all doing. He’s
so
romantic!” Millie sighed. “He did say I should be careful about using it, though. He might get into trouble if we’re caught using them just to whisper love messages to each other.”
    I tried not to make a face. I really didn’t want to think too much about Millie and Archie’s love messages.
    “I suppose I