(Narrated by Kevin Coffey)

Hey there. Hope everyone is having a great and safe holiday season! Please enjoy…

Kevin

Jimmy’s ears popped, and his jaw tightened as he sank deeper and deeper. He was still holding his breath—barely. This was hardly a normal-sized pool. Jimmy tumbled to depths that would spook the Loch Ness Monster. And the deeper he sank, the more pressure squeezed his body.

Undine’s controlling the pressure, Jimmy thought. She’ll squeeze me until I implode!

Inky numbers that marked the depth rose past like cruel elevators: fifty feet deep, sixty feet deep…seventy! Jimmy scrunched his eyes closed until a slight jarring made them open. Right at his threshold before passing out, he had bumped against the pool’s bottom.

He spied a dark shape curled up inside of the bottom circle that made up the zero in eighty. Her smirk was in full blossom.

Lem!

It was way too murky to make out much beyond Lem’s pale face, but there she was, still peacefully dreaming, breathing water as natural as a resting ray.

Under the intense pressure, Jimmy’s eyes bulged, and his hands turned blue. He was about to lose his breath entirely.

With the greatest of effort, Jimmy managed to move his partially paralyzed pressed-together feet like a fin and tumbled the other way, rolling next to Lem.

Fading… I… NO! With his last bit of energy, his adrenalin spiked and he broke free of his numbed-over condition, tilted Lem’s head back, pinched her nose, and covered her mouth as the last of his breath evacuated.

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Lem’s eyes shot open. No longer dreaming—or evidently, part-fish—the pressure from Undine’s crushing grip vanished the instant Lem woke. But they were in real trouble being so far down at the bottom of this deep water.

Confused at first about waking underwater, Lem’s bewidersment turned into action. Like a born fish, Lem’s body instantly started swimming. She snatched up Jimmy in a lifeguard’s grip, with his body in front of hers and her hands clasped under his armpits, and they began the long swim up to the surface.

The water was dark and quiet now—way spookier than even when Undine was toying with Jimmy and scolding him.

Lem’s pale face strained. A woozy Jimmy was impressed at how far and how fast they rose, but still doubted their chances. His big sister really was a freak of nature in the water.

Lem turned her head, snarling at her lack of air, and kicked her legs like a ticked-off jellyfish.

Breathing too much water, Jimmy shook his head in a panic. No breath!

Lem cried out, too, screaming her rage into the water’s depths.

They were toast.

Until… Seeming almost by accident, they broke the surface!

Jimmy breathed in gulps of air that burned, as did Lem. All the while, Lem continued to keep both herself and Jimmy afloat. She was an Olympian among lifeguards.

In a panic, Jimmy flailed at her, making her job ten times harder, but she fought him off.

“Calm down, Jimmy, calm. Deep breaths—there you go,” Lem gasped, suddenly sounding more mature in her preferred element.

They still had a long way to go because the pool was now the entire cavern, and they were floating up toward stalactites waiting to stab at them.

There weren’t any Rindlesprytes in sight, but the sudden surge of salt in the water told Jimmy they still might be around.

Guilt began to well up inside of Jimmy for what he did to his sister. “Lem…” Jimmy sputtered.

“No talking… dummy. Breathe,” Lem panted encouragement, though out of breath herself. Her eyes scanned the water, and she swam in patrolling circles, frantically searching in all directions, then gave a shrill whistle.

The shadowy shape of a rogue boat piloted by a dog and cat slid out of the rolling fog. It was Burks’ leafboat with the animals on board.

“Lem! Jimmy!” Charley said, wagging his tail.

Francis smiled at being reunited with Jimmy, then darted out of sight at the immense amount of rising water around them.

Lem pulled Jimmy into the leafboat with ease, even grace. Way different from his clumsy attempt before. Exhausted, they were at the mercy of the flooding waters, majorly exhausted passengers as the possessed leafboat navigated a maze of giant stalactites with no current.

Francis remained waterlogged at the bottom of the boat and absolutely miserable.

“I think—I think we just met your recurring nightmare, Lem,” Jimmy said.

“What?”

“Yeah, uh, Undine and the Rindlesprytes.”

“Sounds like a lame band name.” Lem shrugged. “I never remember my dreams. In fact, how did we get here?”

“You mean… you don’t?” There’s no way Jimmy dodged her wrath. Is there? Or was this a half-truth? This had to be one of her tricks. Any moment now, she’d throttle him. But she didn’t.

“I just remember hiding from that wind demon thing, and that’s about it.”

Jimmy searched his sister’s expression for any facial tics different from her normal ones.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Man, he lucked out! “You were breathing water.”

“Really?” She raised her eyebrows as if legitimately surprised in a good way. “Wow. That would really help me out big time at regionals this year.”

“No doubt,” Jimmy laughed.

They shared a smile. A fleeting thing these days.

The waves rose and rose; he might not be getting throttled by his sister, but they’d soon be squashed against the cavern’s unforgiving ceiling.

Jimmy peered into the gurgling depths of the turbulent waters. The shining blue domes of the love dreams returned in a wiggling pack, surrounding them.

“What are those jellyfish thingies?” Lem gaped at the love dreams. “They’re… nice.”

“Love dreams,” Jimmy answered, amused at his sister having the same reaction they did. “Hey there, guys!” Jimmy yelled to the dreams like they were old friends. “Good timing! Now get us out of here? Please?”

And, at his request, a miracle happened: The water began flowing in the opposite direction!

“Wow…” Charley shook his coat and nodded with his nose to the glowing orbs. “Looks like that did the trick. They’re taking us with them!”

The River Meird hoisted Burks’ leafboat body, and the Love Dreams carefully took them around the maze of massive stalactites and out of Lem’s terrible nightmare pool.

But they were still rising and running out of room.

Like the Pleasant Dreams in the Odd Woods, the swimming Love Dreams behaved almost free of their captivity as they sped up to complete their escape.

As the Love Dreams moved Jimmy and his group further along the River Meird, they joined the spot where the tribe must have gotten waxed when Lem awakened because loads of foam and salt, really rough white water that sparkled blue, seized their boat and began shaking the life out of them.

“Hang on!” Jimmy yelled over the determined river. “We’re in for a wild ride!”

Like a crazed waterpark ride, Burks’ leafboat bounced, dipped, and rose through tight bends in the tunnel. They coasted halfway up the walls at times, or they flipped upside down for the briefest of moments.

The glowing Love Dreams cradled the bottom and sides of the leafboat all the while, making sure they didn’t capsize or fall out. Safe for the most part, Jimmy admitted it was pretty darn stellar and even fun.

The River Meird took the last bend, dove down a throat-in-stomach slope, and hit the ramp leading to the tunnel’s opening at full tilt, exploding into the air.

To his horror and delight, the river didn’t drop but kept on soaring away from the caves, as if all rivers were born to fly.

Jimmy had never been on a magic carpet ride, but this had to be close.

Jimmy started laughing until he couldn’t stop giggling. How long had it been since he laughed like this? Jimmy’s laugh became infectious, and Lem caught it. Now they were laughing so hard together, they made each other laugh even harder.

Soon even the animals and Burks the leafboat were howling with laughter as they flew through the air in sheer joy.

Charley stuck his head out over the leaf’s side with his ears blowing back and jowls flapping like he often did when joyriding in the family car.

Only Francis remained genuinely horrified per usual; he kept in a shuddering ball at the bottom of the hull.

“Uh.” Lem traded laughing for gulps, tilting her head upwards. “Pretty sure we’re hosed!”

Jimmy and the others followed her wide-eyed gaze.

Fun moment over.

They drew ever closer to the rolling shadow of skocean above them.

“It’s going home!” Burks yelled.

“What?” Jimmy shouted back.

“The river. It’s actually Castle Meird’s moat. Undine said the castle’s up there, inside the skocean. I just put it together. That’s where we’re headed!”

“But we’ll drown or fall out and be squashed!” Lem said, gritting her teeth while sticking her head over the side.

The nearer they got to the giant bodies of converging water, the scent of salt and mud became so strong that it made them choke.

“Oh dear me,” Francis said, raising up from the floor of the boat.

The furious froth of a colossal upside-down breaker swiped the top of their heads. Salty foam splattered against everyone.

Charley flapped off the foam and barked, pointing with his nose. “Look at dat,” the dog said with admiration.

A Love Dream, ever high-spirited and full of mischief, leapt into the shrinking space between the two waters.

“Love Dreams….” Jimmy stuck his head over the side and shouted to the pods cushioning their sides. “Hey, help us get out of here!”

The Love Dreams swarmed around the leafboat’s stern and pushed the craft as if from shore. They peeled off clean just before the raging waters merged.

The flying leafboat leveled, lifted by a pocket of air, and was once again airborne, separated from the River Meird.

“That’s your brilliant idea?” Lem shouted. “Now we’re a freaking kamikaze paper airplane!”

Behind them, the Love Dreams jumped and splashed, celebrating their escape. Then the last of the river absorbed up inside the belly of the flying sea.

A sudden air current punched them upward, flattening everyone against the boat’s belly. They dropped in altitude in a casual, lazy drifting-leaf fashion.

Jimmy leaned back and put his arms behind his head. “This is kind of nice!”

Boy he ate those words as a gust hit them with ferocity, and they swayed and jerked from side to side with all of the gentleness of a crazed dragonfly. They leveled again and were taken wherever the air pockets and Jetstream cared to blow them. Jimmy gripped the sides of the leafplane with white knuckles to be sure he didn’t catapult out.

“Ack!” Lem turned green with every sudden change in direction.

Jimmy tried to make sense of the landscape. Not far below, a monstrous tree stump the size of a mountain towered up to meet them. And flowing into the tree stump from a thousand different angles was a complex network of roots.

“That’s it!” Jimmy said. “Just like the map on the gym floor. All of the roots lead to that tree. Wow, it’s a big sucker.”

Even Francis dared to let his curiosity get the best of him and leaned over the side, far enough to view the incredible stump like the others. “Dead stump, unequivocally enormous. But quite dead by its rotten appearance.”

Francis was right. The stump appeared twisted to Jimmy in a weird shape, like it had ambitions to become a pretzel and gave up. Its bark was dark. Strips of dilapidated bark fell off at random, creating mini-mushroom clouds on the ground. Everything about the stump was immense. Despite the rotten, moss-covered bark crumbling off the sides of the stump, a vibrant, thick jungle covered its top like an overgrown mane.

“Well, for my money, that stump is the perfect place for an emergency landing,” Jimmy said, pointing.

“Uh, if that’s what I think it might be, not a great place to land—not at all,” Burks said.

“Why?”

“Because I think that’s what’s left of the Dreaming Tree.”

“That’s your former leader?” Jimmy asked.

“Yeah.”

“Uh… sorry to interrupt. But if that’s where we’re going to land, we need to somehow steer this thing over to, uh… it,” Lem said. “Maybe we should all spread out and sit like we’re on a small plane!”

Jimmy nodded to his sister, and his eyes teared up from the velocity of the wind.

Lem moved to one side of the leaf, and Jimmy adjusted himself on the other. Charley sat behind them in the rear. Francis slipped into the depths of the pouch on Jimmy’s sweatshirt.

Jimmy stared down the stem at the opposite end of the boat.

“Wait a minute,” he said to himself. “I’ve got it backward. Charley, switch places with me. Quick!” Jimmy kept low, brushed by the dog, and placed his hand on the waxy red stem. “Just maybe….”

Jimmy pushed, and they swung stupid hard in the opposite direction, nearly flipping Lem and Charley out of the boat.

“Hey!”

“Sorry,” Jimmy said, keeping a steadier hand.

Francis poked his head out of the pouch, sniffed his disgust at Jimmy’s navigation skills, then ducked out of sight.

Lem grabbed Jimmy’s wrist. “Let me help you steady it.”

Jimmy nodded.

Once Lem helped him, the fluttering frond shifted in the direction of the stump just like they intended.

“Good teamwork!” Jimmy said to Lem.

She smiled.

Jimmy shrieked as the stump’s overgrown canopy rose up to meet them way too quickly.

“We’re coming in too fast—everybody drop—heads down!” Jimmy yelled just as nothing but green from the canopy exploded into their faces.

The airborne leaf flipped over and rolled into a disastrous crash landing.

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