“Too bad we can’t light a fire,” Gieaun complained, shivering slightly.
“Don’t worry,” Scede added. “When we’re done scaring the pants off the twins and their friends, we can return to the horses and light a fire there.”
The hours between the time of sunset and the time the full moon reached the crest of the sky crawled by very slowly. Gieaun, Scede and Jahrra listened attentively to the sounds of ghost stories being recited around a great campfire somewhere beyond the shore. Every now and then, the group would let out a scream or a gasp that was loud enough to carry to the minuscule island.
“Too bad we can’t be over there,” Jahrra grumbled.
“Too bad they wouldn’t let us be over there,” Gieaun corrected.
Another hour passed, and when the moon finally reached the center of the sky, the three friends heard a large group approaching the shore.
“So it begins,” Jahrra said darkly, throwing down her blanket and creeping closer to the edge of the island to get a better look.
A group of about twenty of their classmates had clambered around a small rowboat. Even though the moonlight made the lake almost as bright as day, a few of them held torches that flickered off the black, rippling water, looking like several angry, yellow eyes.
“All you have to do is paddle out to the middle and then back,” someone said with a wavering voice, “then we can tell that Nesnan that her lake monster is as imaginary as the hag of the Black Swamp.”
The comment, made by Eydeth’s friend Criyd, caused a healthy amount of amusement that made its way around the crowd in the form of light laughter. Jahrra glowered as the great, hulking boy helped his friend into the boat. She was certain he had been the goblin who’d taunted her at the Fall Festival in Lensterans.
“I think if I just stay on shore that would be fine,” Eydeth said rather nervously, casting his hand over the murky water as if he were sprinkling seeds over a field. “We can see from here if the thing surfaces.”
“You aren’t afraid, are you Eydeth!” someone commented. “Ha! What if Jahrra found out? You would be a laughing stock!”
A light titter passed over the crowd and Jahrra imagined Eydeth giving his sister a rather knowing glare.
“Alright, fine!” he growled. “I’ll paddle out to the middle, it just seems like a waste of time is all.”
Eydeth dragged the small oar through the black lake surface, the splashing of the water the only sound on this bright night.
“Scede, go get the horn,” Jahrra breathed nervously. “Gieaun, you and I will pull the rope.”
Jahrra and Gieaun jumped up and quietly crawled over to where the rope was tied down, grabbing it firmly. Scede went and pulled the horn out of his bag and then walked over next to the girls, crouching down once he reached them.
“When he is aligned with that lone willow there,” Jahrra pointed off to a single tree on the distant shore, bathed in silver moonlight, “when he gets there, Gieaun and I will pull the rope, and then you’ll blow the horn three times. Is everyone ready?”
Gieaun and Scede nodded vigorously, and Jahrra could feel her hands shaking from the suspense. It seemed to take Eydeth ages to get to the middle of the lake, but just before he reached the willow tree, he stopped paddling.
“What! He’s stopping?!” Jahrra gritted her teeth in frustration, her knuckles turning white from her harsh grip on the rope.
“Is this good enough for you all?!” Eydeth shouted from his boat to the shore, shattering the silence that surrounded them all. “If there was such a thing as a lake monster, it should’ve eaten me by now, right?”
While Eydeth waited for a reply, his boat slowly floated towards the middle of the lake and right in line with the willow tree.
“NOW!” Jahrra rasped to Gieaun, her hands barely able to grasp the rope.
With a heaving tug, the two girls lifted the great, soggy head slowly out of the water. Eydeth sat with his arms crossed, waiting for his friends to wave him in. He was oblivious to the huge, sinister reptilian beast that was rising up out of the water just behind him.
Just as Eydeth turned to see what was causing the strange slurping and dripping noise, Jahrra gave Scede the signal to blow on the horn. All three of them had a perfect view of the scene, and they couldn’t have planned it better. There was Eydeth, half turned around, the giant looming neck of their very convincing monster towering just behind him, complete with sunken eyes and a gaping mouth full of long, pointed teeth.
Scede’s timing with the horn was flawless, and as the monster’s bellows blended with the screams of the children from the shore, Eydeth himself let out a very high-pitched, blood-curdling screech that overshadowed them all. He forgot he was in a boat in the middle of a lake, so when he stood up to flee, he lost his balance and fell.
The pompous boy plunged screaming into the lake, and Jahrra and Gieaun had to work extra hard not to burst out laughing. They loosened their grip on the rope and the monster crashed down onto the now empty boat. Scede let out one more blast of the horn as their lake serpent descended, causing Eydeth to swallow a mouthful of foul water as he swam with all of his might towards the shore.
Both Gieaun and Jahrra let go of the rope and fell to the ground with Scede, all three paralyzed in fits of laughter. They could still hear the frantic screams of all the onlookers and a terrified burst every now and then from the petrified, splashing Eydeth. Once he finally reached the shore a few minutes later, the hysterical voices of their classmates became even more frenzied.
“Eydeth! Eydeth!” Ellysian screeched, sounding close to tears. “Are you alright?!”
“What was that thing!?” It was Eydeth’s voice that answered, but several decibels higher than normal.
“THE LAKE MONSTER!!!” several people wheezed in horror.
“Let’s get out of here!” Criyd insisted. “Let’s move the camp much further down the road! Did you see the size of that thing?! What if it comes after us?”
Jahrra, Gieaun and Scede wiped away the tears from their eyes as they listened to the terrified crowd scuffling off into the dark. After several minutes, the silence over the lake returned, and the three friends collected their breath.
“I can’t believe we pulled that off!” Scede said, smiling more broadly than ever.
“The horn was perfect, Scede! And did you see the look on Eydeth’s face? It went so pale that I’d swear it was actually transparent. I’m so glad it’s a full moon!” Jahrra couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying.
“Our monster looked wonderful!” Gieaun added, grinning broadly.
The three triumphant friends waited for several more minutes to make sure the coast was clear before heading to the willow grove where their horses awaited.
“I can’t wait until we go back to school!” Jahrra shouted over the pounding waves as they walked between the dunes and the ocean. “But it will be hard to act surprised when we hear about what happened to Eydeth.”
Scede shot Jahrra a rakish look and she just flung her head back and laughed, her heart as light as the sand drifting off the dunes.
It was an odd sight, seeing this stretch of beach in the moonlight, but Jahrra enjoyed it. The sound of the roiling ocean made it seem like it was not nighttime at all, and the eerie, silvery light of the full moon on the churning water and rolling dunes made it feel like a strange dream. Finally, the three of them reached the small stand of trees by the tiny creek. Phrym, Bhun and Aimhe all looked up, suddenly roused from their sleep at the sound of their masters, and all three horses let out a whinny of recognition.