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caught in a whirlpool.” Except that whirlpools dragged you down into a wet spiral and she was being tossed higher on cold air currents in an ever-widening circle. Her arms and legs were whipping and smashing into the sides of her body. She caromed off something hard: another person, the top of the mast pole, a really big bird—she didn’t know. She knew nothing except that now she had a shooting pain in her right arm, just below her elbow, and that these were probably her last moments alive.
    All at once, she was flying through the air, arcing out a hundred meters above the sea. Flashes of sunlight and deep blue water and light blue sky were all that met her eyes when she dared to open them. Then . . .
    Smack!
    She hit the water . . . and blacked out.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Rescue
    12:09 p.m.
     
    Pandy awoke underwater.
    Light was filtering down through the waves from overhead, but it was getting dimmer, which could only mean that she was sinking. And there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. There was no moving her arms or legs, no swimming back to the surface; she was just too, too tired. Plus, there was a strange ache in one of her arms. She turned her head in the fading light and saw that her right arm was swaying in the current at an odd angle.
    “Oh well,” she thought. “This isn’t exactly how I imagined it would all end, but there are worse ways to go.”
    Then she hit the bottom of the ocean.
    She looked up and could still see the blue of the sky. But when she realized she was completely out of air, Pandy started to panic.
    She didn’t want to go! Not this way, not at all! Her life, suddenly and without warning, became very, very precious to her.
    She struggled to move her left arm but it was caught in her robes and pouches. She tried kicking her legs, but the pressure of the water and her exhaustion made it too difficult.
    She felt the last of the air leave her lungs.
    The pain was incredible. Her throat seemed on fire. Just as she realized that not only would she never see her family or friends again, not only had she failed miserably in her quest, not only had she sentenced her family to eternal punishment, and on top of everything she didn’t have any gold coins left to pay Charon to ferry her across the river Styx and into the underworld . . .
    . . . the sunlight overhead got brighter.
    And brighter.
    And brighter.
    She felt the pressure of the water around her lessen as something carried her toward the surface. Her head was thrown back and it bumped up against something sticking straight up behind her. Something flat and thick and curved.
    A fin.
    “Great,” she thought, breaking the surface, her lungs now flat as two dried prunes. She hadn’t landed on the sea floor after all; whatever it was was very much alive, and now she was going to be eaten.
    She spit up whole mouthfuls of salt water, then gasped for air in tremendous, heaving gulps. Worn out from almost drowning and now about to be devoured, she rolled feebly to one side, trying to escape being a mid-meal.
    But the thing with the fin rolled right along with her, keeping her afloat.
    Pandy looked down. Gray, rubbery skin. Two flippers, one on either side. A huge dorsal fin (with her leather carrying pouch wrapped around it), coal black eyes, and a long pointed nose.
    She was sitting on top of a dolphin.
    “Hello-sorry-about-the-late-arrival-hope-you’re-not-too-waterlogged-I-didn’t-let-you-sink-too-far-so-you-shouldn’t-be-feeling-any-ill-effects-I-see-you’re-still-wearing-your-water-skin-but-your-leather-pouch-with-the-important-things-in-it-wink-wink-well-that-was-on-its-way-to-the-bottom-of-the-ocean-so-I-had-to-stop-and-pick-it-up-and-as-you-can-see-it’s-quite-safe-around-my-fin-and-that’s-actually-what-made-me-a-little-late-but-now-all-is-well-how-are-you?” it said, bobbing up and down in the water. The words came out so fast it was the same as hearing quick notes blown on a panpipe.
    Pandy looked around her to make