Lilu's Book Page 3

  When I just stared at her, Mom said, “In some African languages, akuko means ‘youngest twin.’ ”

  My jaw dropped. “We have ancestors who were twins?”

  “Of course,” Mom said. “You know twin genes run in certain families. If you’re a twin, there’s a good chance you have ancestors who were twins.”

  “What did Mama Akuko do for the moon?”

  “Mama Akuko was an expert weaver. So expert that she found a way to tug the moonbeams and guide the tides back on course.”

  “But how?” I asked.

  “Well, my love, that is a secret that stays with Mama Akuko and the moon goddess, a secret you must earn,” she said.

  Something in her posture was so … real. The angle of her body, the tilt of her head, the way her shoulders pulled back.

  “How … how will I do that? Earn the secret, I mean. And what if I can’t do what it takes?” My voice faltered on that last part.

  Then, before Mom could answer my questions, I hit her with another: “Why me and not Tandy?”

  “This is about you, the youngest twin.”

  More questions rushed at me, but Mom held up a finger. “Shhh,” she said. “I know you have questions, and I know you have much to learn. Keep the shell with you tonight; keep it near you while you sleep. Don’t worry about finding Aventurine. Aventurine will find you!”

  With that, she stood and took my hand.

  We walked without speaking, down the craggy rock face, across the moonlit sand, toward our candy-pink beach house. With the ocean’s music rushing at our backs and the moon elongating our shadows—and lighting our path.

  3

  Underwater Dreaming

  I was awake in bed when Tandy returned from babysitting. As usual, she turned on the overhead light and practically baked my corneas.

  “Hey!” I cried. “I’m trying to sleep over here.”

  She yawned. “Sorry, sis. I’m so tired. I think maybe you’re right. Maybe your cousin is a problem child. That kid practically killed me tonight.”

  My arm was flung over my face. I slid it aside and peeked out. “Told you.”

  Tandy had a regular bedtime routine. No matter how tired she was. No matter how late it was. No matter how long I’d been asleep or trying to fall asleep, Tandy’s nighttime ritual was the same:

  Five minutes of yoga on the rug next to her bed.

  Two minutes of singing the musical scales.

  Kiss her fingertips and gently tap the glass of the aquarium as she says good-night to our fish.

  Brush her teeth for three minutes.

  Smile into the mirror.

  Floss.

  Then wash her face and apply night cream.

  And since she was afraid of the dark, she turned on as many lights as possible for this ordeal.

  By the time she got to the night-cream-on-her-face part I had covered my face with the pillow. “Please, Tan. My eyes! Shut off the light. I’m tired, too.”

  Finally, she clicked off the lights in the bedroom and bathroom. She’d flung her clothes into a heap on the floor and had pulled a nightgown out of another pile. By now, every movement annoyed me. Her bed creaked. Her sheets rustled.

  “Tandy Joella Hart, if you don’t—”

  “Okay, okay … geez. You know I have to squirm around to get comfortable. Chill!”

  At that, we both let out great, long sighs. Right away I felt bad for griping but didn’t say anything. Not at first, anyway.

  But after half an hour or so, I raised my arm off my face and squinted at her in the dark. “Tan?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You having trouble falling asleep, too?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  We were both silent for a while longer; then I had another one of my moments where what I was thinking just popped right out. “Hey, Tan?”

  I heard her head turn on her pillow. In the semidarkness, with the aquarium light throwing wiggly shadows, her face faded in and out. She waited in silence, so I plunged ahead. “You don’t miss diving at all?”

  I felt her staring at me from across the room. “What are you really trying to get at?”

  “Um—”

  She didn’t let me answer. “I miss hanging out with you, but, you know what? Acting is my thing. I love it so much, Lilu. When I’m onstage, singing or whatever, it’s like I’m alive for the very first time.”

  I made a noise like the air had been socked out of me.

  “What?” she said.

  “That’s how I used to feel when we did stuff together. That’s how I used to feel when we were on the same swim team and dive team. When we both tried to outdo each other with ways to save the oceans.”

  “Face it, Lilu, the ocean-saving stuff has always been more your thing than our thing.”

  “No way! You were totally into it,” I shot back.

  “Because at the time, it was all I knew. We had a lot of cool adventures with Mom and Dad doing all that stuff—learning about the sea and rushing out to the beach every time Dad heard about a beached whale or whatever. Then I got a part in the school play … Well, it was like I had found me.”

  My talk with Mom about Aventurine came to mind. Being onstage helped Tandy discover her uniqueness. “Is it that important for you to be so different? From me, I mean?” I asked.

  Her mattress springs creaked. She had turned onto her side and propped herself up with her elbow. We faced each other in the glowy darkness, shadows floating across the grayness between us.

  “You’re stronger than you think,” she said.

  “That doesn’t answer my question. Does it really mean that much to you to be so different, so unique from me?”

  She let out a long breath. “Lilu, you’re so good at so many things and you have such a strong personality, sometimes I feel like if I’m not careful, I won’t be a whole person. I’ll just be, like, some miniversion of you.”

  “Tan, you’re the strong one. You’re the one—”

  “Lilu, one day you’re going to see what I see. Trust me, you don’t need me as much as you think you do. You really don’t!”

  With that, we both flopped back onto our pillows. My eyes began to burn with sleepiness. I was so tired, my mind couldn’t quite process what Tandy had said. She thought I was the strong personality? Even as I felt sleep dragging me down its undertow, I couldn’t help wondering, If I’m so strong, why do I feel so … lost?

  I had that feeling in my ears: the feeling of being underwater, down at the bottom of the deepest part of the pool—the area right under the diving boards. I opened my eyes, and I was underwater! But not in a pool, no; this was definitely a deep freshwater lake. I was resting at the bottom, much deeper than I would normally ever dare to go. It was eerie. But sort of cool, too, you know?

  I’ve had dreams that left me feeling anxious or weird or sad or whatever. Not this time. I felt like I could sit there forever watching the animal and plant life. Even though it was dark and cold this far down, there was at least some light streaming through the lacy seaweed.

  Wait, how was I not freaking out? Shouldn’t I be drowning right about now?

  I kicked off frantically with all the power I could muster, and then something really strange happened—I automatically took a deep breath.

  Air!

  I blew out a stream of dancing bubbles and took one more quick breath as a test. It still worked! I could actually breathe underwater. This had to be the coolest dream ever.

  Now that I wasn’t desperately trying to reach the surface, I could look around. I was wearing a bright purple wet suit and water shoes. The kind of outfit I liked to wear when I went snorkeling in shallow water. Only this wet suit wasn’t made out of normal material; it was glowing a little, but it definitely hadn’t been glowing when I was further down in the dark. Weird.

  Mom did this educational TV show once on something called bioluminescence—which is when living organisms glow. It’s really cool, and there are lots of theories and myths about why
it happens. Maybe my wet suit was bioluminescent or something.

  I was right in the thick of the lush seaweed, which kept tickling me—almost like it was doing it on purpose—so I swam up higher and noticed that my wet suit glowed a little bit more. I turned to my left and started swimming to check out more of my surroundings.

  As always, being in any kind of water made me feel relaxed and happy. This lake was teeming with life, and I wanted to investigate some strange-looking fish up ahead. They seemed to disappear and reappear in different places. I’d never seen camouflage that good.

  As I neared the school of fish, they winked off. But I had gotten close enough to see that they looked a lot like swordfish, with sharp, rapier-like noses that I was going to have to watch out for. They were much more brightly colored than swordfish, though, with deep red and bright yellow stripes. If they really were swordfish, they would have been a plain gray or bluish color, and they wouldn’t be traveling in a school in freshwater; they’d have been out on their own in the ocean.

  Suddenly they winked back on—completely surrounding me! How did they do that without me noticing? They must be just as curious about this big purpley glowing fish in their neighborhood as I was about them. But I wasn’t glowing anymore. Why did my wet suit decide to turn off?

  The winkfish—that’s what I decided to call them—swam around me in a circle and then seemed to have had enough of investigating me. They disappeared just as quickly as they had appeared. And I had no idea how they went from being right in front of my face to completely gone. It was like magic.

  I felt a sting on my hand, then my neck. I swatted at my skin like I was trying to crush a pesky mosquito but completely missed whatever was biting me.

  Bright sparks of gold started shooting by my face. I turned to see where they were coming from, and a tsunami of little fish hit out of nowhere. Each fish sent a jolt of electricity into me as it brushed by. Luckily my wet suit covered most of my body; only my hands, neck, face, and ankles were unprotected. But, man, did they hurt!

  Swimming against them would’ve been a really bad idea, so I started swimming as fast as I could with the golden current, using just my feet and legs. With my hands pinned against my body, I avoided hitting more of the painful little guys, but they were still nipping at my ankles and stinging my face. I was barely managing to keep up but was suddenly grateful for all of the laps that Coach made us do.

  The sparkfish—another name I just came up with—were taking me closer to shore. I thought this might be the right way to go, because my wet suit began to glow brighter and brighter as we neared the shallows.

  When we reached an area where I could almost touch the ground, the school swerved to the right and continued on. It dawned on me that a school of fish wouldn’t be moving that fast unless a predator was in the area, so I looked back over my shoulder.

  Out of the deep I could see a shape getting larger.

  It was flat and moved almost like a manta ray or a bird through the water, flapping its “wings” up and down to propel itself forward. But the head did not have a beak; no, it had a wide, gaping mouth filled with rows of sharp teeth. The monster was gobbling up any straggler sparkfish as if it was completely oblivious to their jolts.

  And then its emotionless black eyes noticed me.

  It screeched like a hawk and shot forward.

  I shook myself out of my trance and turned back toward land. I was going to have to swim faster than I had ever swum before. I could never have outrun it in the middle of the lake, but here I was so close to the shore and it was so big, I just needed to get a little bit further to be safe.… I hoped.

  Desire. Dedication. Determination. I chanted these three words in my head over and over to keep from completely freaking out. I could do this.

  But I couldn’t waste time looking back. I could feel that it was right behind me.

  It let out another screech—sounding much closer this time—and my blood ran cold. At any moment I expected its jaws to clamp around my leg.

  Then I felt it.

  Not sharp teeth tearing into my flesh, but solid ground underfoot. I stood, ran through the shallows, and threw myself onto the beach.

  Looking back, I could only see the shadow of the creature’s body in the shallows and the slight ripple on the surface as it banked and turned to swim back to the deep.

  I heaved a dramatic sigh of relief that would have made Tandy proud. In a land where fish could appear and disappear, who knew if that terrifying thing could live out of the water? I thanked my lucky stars that it didn’t.

  My hand dug into the sandy beach, and something poked my palm. Hoping it wasn’t another creature with teeth, I slowly pulled my hand from the sand so as not to startle whatever I was holding.

  Light spilled through my fingers, and my palm felt strangely warm. When I opened my hand, I saw the crescent moon shell in my palm.

  How did it end up here on the beach, right where I happened to come ashore?

  The talk with Mom started replaying in my head. The stuff about Aventurine.

  Was this it?

  Had I discovered Aventurine in my dreams?

  For some reason, I felt totally goofy for a minute, like I was on some kind of reality television show and expected to find camera crews following me, ready to jump out and capture the surprised look on my face when I finally laid eyes on the mystical place my mother had told us stories about all our lives.

  Instead, what I saw was a vast lake stretching out toward the horizon and, when I turned around, a thick forest behind me. It was strangely quiet, like a storm was about to break. Except that the sky was shockingly blue and sunny.

  Then another thought occurred to me: Tandy!

  My last memory, before dropping off to sleep, was Tan and me talking in our bedroom. If I was here, where was she?

  “Tan!” I called, standing up and walking along the shore.

  What do you want, Little LeeLee? Can’t you see I’m trying to sleep?

  It was Tan’s voice. It sounded like it was coming from the trees, so I raced over and peered behind the trunks, trying to find her amongst all the shrubs and leaves. “Tan? Tan, where are you? Can you see me?”

  No, doof! My eyes are closed, and it’s dark and I’m trying to sleep.

  Now that I was standing a little way into the forest, I realized that her voice didn’t sound any closer or any further away. It wasn’t coming from the forest at all. It almost sounded like … like it was coming from … the shell? I held the shell closer to my ear, and Tandy’s voice came in loud and clear: Stop bugging me … unless you really need me. Call me if you really need me, and I’ll be there.

  4

  Following the Threads

  Whoa.

  When we were really little, Tandy and I used to play telephone with empty cans and strings and pretend we could hear voices coming from seashells, but actually hearing her voice through a shell like it was a telephone was so cool!

  Still, I would rather have had her here with me. It didn’t feel right to be in the land that Mom had always told both of us about without her.

  Plus, Tandy would know where to go now. She would have some kind of intuition and head off down one of the paths winding through the trees.

  That’s when I noticed it.

  Something in the trees. I stepped into the forest and took a slow turn beneath the arching branches. The deeper I walked into the trees, the better I could see. These were no ordinary leaves. What was that hanging, draped from the branches?

  Threads.

  Gorgeous, luxurious strands of emerald-, silver-, gold-, amethyst-, and opal-colored threads stretched from tree to tree. It didn’t matter if the tree was oak or birch or pine. The bright strands stretched off into the distance.

  My fingers itched to touch them, but they were too high up in the branches for me to reach. I just knew they’d be the silkiest things I’d ever felt. Scarlet, turquoise, jade … so many colors. If Tandy and I ever made bracelets out of the
se strands, we’d have the most beautiful jewelry around. Way better than anything we’d ever made before. We’d make a killing selling it online.

  The amazing thing was—well, besides that there were colorful threads laced through the trees—none of the threads were tangled or knotted. They were all perfectly draped in a line along both sides of a path leading deeper into the woods.

  If Tandy were here, she would say this was a sign. Clearly this was the way toward civilization. I gripped the crescent moon shell in my fist and started off down the dirt path.

  It was hard to remember to keep an eye out for trouble. All I wanted to do was gaze up at the threads in the trees. They made me feel like I was following a rainbow to find a pot of gold.

  A little way down the path, I noticed that butterflies and birds were perching and flying next to the threads. It took me a second to realize what they were doing, and then I just had to stop and stare with my mouth hanging wide open.

  They were fanning the threads with their wings like everything was as normal as sweet potato pie.

  Bright yellow butterflies and small sapphire-colored birds flitted around and sat on tangled branches while drying the threads with gusts of air from their wings.

  Mom was right; Aventurine was a totally magical place. Suddenly I couldn’t wait to see who or what was waiting for me at the end of the path.

  I sped up to an easy jog, following the path as it wound deeper and deeper into the forest. Any time I came to a fork in the road, I always followed the threads, trusting my gut that they were leading me the right way.

  I came around a bend, and the path widened into a sun-drenched clearing filled with weeping willows and wildflowers. I stopped to take in my surroundings.

  Fairies—I could tell by their wings—were grouped around a large loom. These weren’t fairy-tale fairies that could be trapped in a bottle like fireflies. No, these fairies were even taller than me and dressed in the most brilliantly colored dresses I’d ever seen. No two fairies wore the same color, and they all had sprays of flowers woven into their hair.