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

matter,” he said. “I don’t need to know. All
you
need to know is that I am covering your backs while you are gone. You have shell phones?”
    Aaron pulled his out of his pocket. “Yup,” he said.
    I looked down and didn’t say anything. I still hadn’t told Aaron I’d given mine to Shona. But as long as we had his, we’d be OK.
    “I have one also,” Mr. Beeston said. “A blue one. Call me if you need me. I will do whatever I can to help.”
    I could hardly believe I was thinking it, but for the first time in my life, I was glad to have Mr. Beeston around. “Thank you,” I said.
    He smiled his wonky smile at me, and then he went on. “The small boat will take you along the fjord.”
    “What’s a ford?” I asked.
    “Fjord, not ford,” Mr. Beeston corrected me. “Say it as if it’s spelled ‘fyord.’”
    “Fjord, then,” I said. “What’s one of those?”
    “It’s a narrow stretch of water, like a thin river. They are all over the place here, weaving in between the mountains and linking the lakes to the sea. After the boat drops you off at the end of the fjord, you’ll catch the funicular train to the top of the mountains. You’ll get the best views of the glacier from there, and hopefully you’ll see where you need to go next.”
    “Thank you,” Aaron said.
    “You know that the water here will be unbelievably cold. I presume Neptune has prepared you for this?”
    I felt inside my pocket and closed my hand around the bottle Neptune had given us. “We’re prepared,” I said.
    “And have you got any provisions?”
    “I’ve got a couple of rolls and some fruit from the lunch buffet,” Aaron said.
    “And I’ve brought a bottle of water,” I added.
    “Right, then,” Mr. Beeston said, standing to attention so suddenly that I almost thought he was going to salute us. Instead, he reached out a hand. For a moment, he looked as if he were going to shake our hands. Perhaps suddenly remembering that we were kids and not an elite and highly trained team of secret agents, he changed his mind and patted us both awkwardly on our arms.
    “Neptune knows what he’s doing,” he said. “You’ll be fine.”
    I wasn’t sure if I believed him on either of those statements, but as a large door opened on the side of the cruise ship and a smaller boat pulled alongside, I decided I would make his statements my mantra:
Neptune knows what he’s doing. We’ll be fine.
    If I repeated it over and over in my mind often enough, I might even end up believing it myself.

    The small boat glided elegantly along the icy waters of the fjord: a river so tiny and so twisting it felt as if we were sailing through a hairline crack in the world. On either side, enormous mountains rose up into a perfect blue sky. Each of them was covered with a smattering of snow at the top and alternating rocky drops and deep-green forests down their sides.
    Here and there, a waterfall ran through a crack between the mountains, gushing down and forking out at the bottom to spill into the water below. Next to these majestic mountains, even our huge ship looked tiny. I’d never seen anything like it, and for a moment I forgot what we were here for and let myself enjoy the view.
    “Ready?” Aaron nudged me and pointed to a jetty ahead of us. Behind it, a steep pair of tracks and a wire above them led all the way up one of the mountains. “Looks like this is our stop.”
    The boat pulled up alongside the jetty and we all piled off and into the carriage that was waiting to take us up the mountain. Aaron and I sat near the front, gradually watching the world below us grow smaller and farther away. We could see our boat in the distance; it looked like a toy. As the view of the fjords opened up, they looked like a giant’s fingers stretching out across the land, reaching into crevices and cracks and tiny, winding hiding places.
    Around us, people mingled and shuffled about, pushing past one another to take photos of the view. We sat,