A torrent of bubbles shot out from his fingertips, but even when Barclay tried with all his might, the wind wasn’t strong enough to push them backward against the flow of the river. They continued speeding forward. Around them, the blue Firenekkies were growing sparser, making the world horribly dark.

Then, up ahead, the river looked like it stopped.

“Does it end?” Barclay asked.

“I… I think it falls,” Cecily breathed.

Terror seizing him, Barclay summoned more wind, but it was little use. They plunged off the river into a drop. And not just any drop, but a trench, so deep and so black, it seemed to dip into the very center of the earth. Barclay and Cecily screamed as their Sunboards careened out of the waterfall’s current. When they finally stilled, they floated in the midst of darkness.

“Let go! Swim up!” Cecily said, though Barclay was so dizzy that he could hardly tell which way was up. But Cecily tugged him, and he followed, letting go of his Sunboard so Cecily could swallow it up again with her shadow Lore. Barclay kicked his legs and flapped his arms as hard as he could. He’d learned to swim in the creek that snaked around Dullshire, but that hadn’t prepared him for swimming at the bottom of the ocean.

They swam and swam and swam, the only light a sliver of blue up above. The water around them was extremely cold, and in the darkness, Barclay worried any number of Beasts could be stalking them. They were easy prey.

His wind Lore propelled them up until they reached the top of the trench, which was—thankfully—warmer. Barclay squinted to make out their surroundings. The waterfall had hurtled them so deep that they’d emerged far down the trench. If the river was still close by, he couldn’t see it.

“We’re lost,” he said, stricken.

“Don’t panic,” Cecily said, but it was too late. Barclay was already panicking. Then she reached into her pocket and drew out another black shadow marble. She clapped her hands together, squashing it with a pop! In its place was a glass jar of the shimmering Firenekkies. It glowed dimly, but it was better than nothing.

“Did you steal that from Ansley too?” he accused.

“We all have our talents.”

“It’s not a talent! Stealing is wrong. And Ansley doesn’t deserve it.”

“I’ll return it when we get back. If we get back.”

Barclay shivered. Then he spotted something in the light—a swirl carved into the rocky seafloor by the trench’s mouth. It was as big as Barclay’s head, with each of its lines so thin and precise that it had to have been carved by a person. But who would bother to etch anything into the bottom of the Sea?

“What should we do?” he asked, focusing on the problem at hand. “We could swim to the surface.”