It took a while to get used to the jiggling nature of the water steps, and my stomach never quite agreed with the whole experience. But as we made our way down the tower, turning every thirty steps or so at the switchbacks, the indescribable awe of what we saw through the walls of air captured our every thought.

The aquarium analogy had been far more apt than I'd first reckoned.

We saw thousands of creatures in a full spectrum of colors. There were jellyfish, sharks, sea horses, eels, floating plant vegetation that I never knew existed—it was almost too good to be true. Marine life had always fascinated me, and there I was, witnessing it in a way that had never been done before.

At one point, what looked like a submarine approached, and a quick shot of fear filled me, but it was soon replaced by sheer wonder. It was a whale. We had traveled pretty deep by then, but we still caught a quick flash of the massive sea mammal, and I would never forget it.

But as awesome as it all was, it couldn't last forever. Soon, there was not enough light to see much at all, and we had to settle for dark blue walls of water that approached blackness. Joseph slid his backpack off his shoulder and grabbed the flashlights, handing one to me. We flipped them on.

I tried shining it out into the water, but it didn't penetrate the murkiness very well. We continued our journey, step by step, mostly in silence.

Neither of us bothered to count the steps or switchbacks, but it was a long and tiresome task. I was already dreading the trip back up, wondering if we would even have the legs for it. Once or twice I was tempted to just grab Joseph and jump over the edge, relying on the Shield to protect us when we hit bottom. But somehow, that just didn't seem right, so I ignored the thought and kept going, one wiggly step after another.

Every now and then a spurt of water would shoot out of the wall beside us, like a sprung leak in a submarine. More often than not it would be below or above us, but one time it hit Joseph right in the head.

“Yeoooow! That's cold!” he said.

“Why is it doing that?” I asked.

“I'm not sure, but it doesn't seem good. The Givers told me that the Tower was failing, but I didn't know what they meant.” He placed his hand in the spray of water still coming from the “leak” that had gotten him wet. “I hope it doesn't mean this whole thing is going to come collapsing down on top of us.”

He looked at his watch.

“How long have we been at it?” I asked.

“About an hour, now.” He paused and looked up. “If Rayna meant what she said about two hours, she'll be coming after us far before we're through. But hopefully by then we'll at least be on our way back up there.”

I paused to take a look up to where we had come from. A small square of bright blue marked the top of the tower, and it surprised me how far we'd come. I could make out several streams of ocean water that were bursting through the walls of air, again reminding me of the submarine analogy. My stomach turned a bit, as a reverse fear of heights swamped my innards. I quickly looked back down and tried to will it away.

“You know,” I said to Joseph, “I just thought about this, but do you think the walls of air keep going up forever after they break out of the water?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I just mean I wonder how tall the Tower of Air is—how far up it actually goes. Maybe it reaches all the way to the sky, and clouds part and go around it. Maybe planes feel a slight bump when they fly through it. I don't know, just a thought.”

“Yeah,” was all Joseph could say, breathing quite heavily. He was even more exhausted than I was.

We resumed our silence for another few minutes, and then almost stumbled when we suddenly ran out of steps and found ourselves on a bed of sand and rock.

We were at the bottom.

The water stairs ended in a corner of the square tower, so we had just been expecting another switchback. But it was a relief to have arrived somewhere, and know we didn't have to go any further. The bottom of the Tower of Air was indeed the bottom of the ocean itself, a soft floor of dry sand, littered with wet spots caused by falling spray from the leaks above. There was no vegetation of any kind, and no living things at all that we could tell. It was just a very large, square area of earth, with the towering walls of water looming above it like four ancient oracles.

“This is it?” I asked to no one in particular.

“What did you expect, a welcoming committee?” Joseph said. “The Givers would not have built such a thing for no reason, so let's not give up so easily. Come on, let's have a look-see.”

We decided to walk along each wall and then cross the floor of the tower in crisscross patterns until we found something. Both of us had flashlights in hand, switched on. As we started down the first wall of water, I ran my free hand along the wet surface, feeling the cold water collect on my fingers and palm, like rubbing morning dew off of a car's hood. About halfway down the length of the wall, a thin line of spray shot out right in front of me—another leak. I walked around it and continued examining the wall of air for any sign of something different. The whole place was cold and creepy.

We came to the next corner with no incident except for a couple of more leaks, which appeared to be occurring more often. A heavy weight of panic began to surge up, but I repressed it. If the whole thing came crashing down, I would have the Shield to protect me. Joseph might take an unwanted bath if he were very far from me, however, and would never survive without my Shield to protect him.

The second wall showed nothing of interest, just wet darkness.

We saw the hole in the third wall before we even started walking along it.

It had been easy to miss in the darkness.

It was a second tunnel of air, this time horizontal, entering the depths of the dark world of water.

The entrance to the tunnel was perfectly round, like the doors in a village of Hobbits. I shone my flashlight down its length, and could see no end to it. The curved walls were exactly the same as the flat planes of the square Tower, repelled into its shape by the magic air. The tunnel was tall enough to walk through at full height.

“You were right, Joseph, we found something.”

“Good golly, I don't know if I can go in there,” he said.

“Why?”

“Well, it's all fine and dandy in the Tower—at least I know there's a patch of the world up there somewhere. Once we go in there, I think I'm gonna go nuts with claustrophobia.”

“Joseph, you were the one who insisted on coming down—Rayna would have loved to take your place.” I smacked him on the back. “Now get a hold of yourself, old boy. If a little squirt like me can do it, surely you can.”

“Easy for you to say, Mister nothing-can-hurt-me-because-of-my-big-bad-Shield.”

But we both knew he would go in with me. It was almost a relief to see him scared a bit; it made my uneasiness a little more bearable. This was not some dumb movie, after all, and we were not fearless superheros. We were just normal people thrown into something that would scare the pants off the bravest man.

With our flashlights beaming like two swords of light, we entered the tunnel.

There was no sound except for the occasional hiss of a sprung leak as we walked down the sandy path. The leaks were much harsher on our nerves while traveling the tunnel, knowing that trillions of gallons of water hung right above our heads. I could tell that Joseph was a mess, his bald head glistening with sweat.

“Joseph,” I said, “you need a towel or something? You've got more water on your pasty head than I've got hair on mine.”

“Jimmy, when did you turn into such a smart alec? Once this is all over, I'm gonna teach you a lesson or two.”

“Probably has something to do with being around Tanaka all the time,” I said. “That guy is a hoot.”

“Speaking of that strange bird, remember when he got all freaky that one night after mentioning those monkey things?”

“Yeah, I hadn't thought about that in a while.” He really had been weird that night, and no one had said a word about it since. “I wonder if it has something to do with …”

“What?” Joseph asked when I trailed off.

“I'll tell you later. Look.”

We had come to the end of the tunnel, and the air opened up into a huge cavern, probably fifty feet tall and a hundred feet in diameter, although it was impossible to tell because our flashlights were not quite strong enough to reach the opposite side. It reminded me of the cavern under the Pointing Finger, although its shape was the only similarity. There were no lava pools, and there was no stone. But there was something in the very middle of the watery cave.

It looked like a wooden door.