Drowned Wednesday

by Garth Nix

  ‘Yes, on both counts.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Arthur, turning back to Captain Catapillow, ‘I am prepared to offer you, and the crew of the Moth, all of my share of the reward in return for some help. I want to get a message to Dame Primus . . .’

  Captain Catapillow nodded his agreement.

  ‘I need to find out what’s happened to my friend Leaf, who I think is aboard a ship with glowing green sails . . .’

  Once again Catapillow nodded, this time with a smile.

  Arthur paused, thinking about what he might need.

  ‘And I might . . . I might want passage as quickly as possible to wherever I can meet Drowned Wednesday.’

  ‘What!’ shrieked Catapillow. ‘Are you totally mad?’

  Ten

  ‘TAKE YOU TO DROWNED WEDNESDAY!’ repeated Catapillow. ‘Do you think us fools?’

  ‘Uh, no,’ said Arthur. ‘I only said I might want to go and see her. I’m not sure where I should go next. But I have been invited to have lunch with Lady Wednesday —’

  ‘You mean to be lunch!’ scoffed Concort. He paled and added, ‘Excuse me! I didn’t mean to say that!’

  ‘I’m sure we can work something out with regard to the treasure,’ said Catapillow. ‘Doctor Scamandros will help you find your friend, send messages, and so forth. We will even carry you to Port Wednesday. But I’m sure you will be as grateful as we will be to not encounter our most esteemed but sadly submerged ultimate mistress.’

  ‘Why?’ Arthur asked, wondering why Catapillow and the others seemed unreasonably terrified at the idea. But they were in her service, or at least they operated in her demesne of the House. Presumably she gave them orders or sent them instructions from time to time. But perhaps she was slothful, like Mister Monday, and the administration of the Border Sea was all fouled up like it had been in the Lower House.

  ‘By the way,’ Arthur continued, ‘do you have any orders about Lord Arthur? I mean, if you happened to pick him up, what would you do with him?’

  ‘Pick up Lord Arthur? Well, naturally, we should do whatever he wanted us to do,’ replied Catapillow. ‘He’s lord of two domains within the House!’

  ‘We wouldn’t want to cross that half-frog thing,’ said Concort. ‘Or the killer girl either.’

  ‘So you haven’t been instructed by Lady Wednesday or her officers to do anything to Arthur if he does show up?’

  Sunscorch snorted. Catapillow and Concort looked at each other. Eventually Concort muttered, ‘Very busy these days, Drowned Wednesday, what with eating . . . with various things . . . unfortunately Noon and Dusk went missing some years ago, the confusion arising out of the flooding . . .’

  ‘What Mister Concort means,’ cut in Doctor Scamandros, ‘is that the Moth has been largely forgotten these six or seven thousand years. I don’t believe we have had any instructions in that time. We simply cruise the Border Sea, take our salvage from it, and sell it and replenish our stores at Port Wednesday or, if we are pressed, at less salubrious anchorages both in the Border Sea and out in the Secondary Realms. Now tell me, have you really been invited to luncheon with Lady Wednesday?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Arthur. He reached into his pocket and drew out the soggy invitation. Doctor Scamandros took it, raised his eyebrows at the almost complete absence of readable type upon it, and set it on the table. He took an oval-shaped felt blotter out of his coat and rolled it across the card several times. With each pass, the card dried and the ink returned to its former density and blackness. Catapillow and Concort craned over the table to look, and even Sunscorch tilted his head to get a proper view.

  Arthur watched the two officers’ faces change as they read the invitation, going from curiosity through puzzlement to shock. Sunscorch, though he moved his lips to read, did not seem unduly affected.

  LADY WEDNESDAY

  TRUSTEE OF THE ARCHITECT

  AND DUCHESS OF THE BORDER SEA

  HAS GREAT PLEASURE IN INVITING

  ARTHUR PENHALIGON

  TO A PARTICULAR LUNCHEON

  OF SEVENTEEN REMOVES

  TRANSPORT HAS BEEN ARRANGED

  RSVP NOT REQUIRED

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Catapillow. ‘Then you must be —’

  ‘But you can’t be,’ said Concort. ‘You’re just a boy!’

  ‘He is,’ said Scamandros. ‘Who else might have A Compleat Atlas of the House in his top pocket and the mark of the Mariner’s favour on a string around his neck? Not to mention this very curious invitation.’

  ‘Why is it curious?’ asked Arthur. For the first time since the wave picked him up he had time to ask some questions instead of just trying to stay alive, or recover from the effort of staying alive. ‘Why is everyone scared of her? Why do you call her Drowned Wednesday? And what was the Deluge and all that?’

  Catapillow and Concort still looked stunned. Sunscorch looked at Scamandros.

  ‘Best if the Doctor explains all that to you,’ said Sunscorch after a moment. ‘The Captain and Mister Concort have duties to attend to, as do I.’

  ‘I trust you’ll join us for supper, Lord Arthur?’ murmured Captain Catapillow, without meeting Arthur’s eye. ‘Without any, ah, hard feelings as to our regrettable lack of, er —’ ‘Sure,’ said Arthur. ‘I understand. It’s just that the book makes me seem more like a big hero. Who wrote it anyway?’

  Concort opened the book again and showed Arthur the title page. Catapillow looked embarrassed and walked off, muttering something to Doctor Scamandros as he went past.

  ‘It is, um, written by someone called Japeth, “Official Biographer, Chronicler, Annalist, and Recorder of Lord Arthur,”’ said the First Mate. ‘Published by the Dayroom Press of the Lower House.’

  ‘I see,’ said Arthur with a frown. Japeth was his friend, the Thesaurus he’d met in the Pit. He had asked Dame Primus to give him a job, but he hadn’t expected it would be writing something that was basically propaganda. He wondered what the point of it was. Why make him out to be such a big hero?

  ‘If you would care to walk with me, I shall attempt to answer your questions about Lady Wednesday and the Deluge,’ said Doctor Scamandros. He lifted his hand and a candle appeared there, lighting up as he blew softly on the wick. ‘We shall wade in the shallows, so that the sea shall cloak our conversation. There are some matters it is best not to excite the crew with.’

  Arthur hesitated. While he thought about whether it would be smart to go off with the Doctor alone, he looked at Sunscorch and tapped the Mariner’s medallion. The Second Mate gave a slight nod.

  ‘All right,’ said Arthur. ‘Lead on.’

  He followed the Denizen out of the bright pool of lantern-light, down the beach, and past a line of very neatly organised piles of spare clothing. Each pile was individually labelled.

  Scamandros saw him looking at the tidy arrangement and guessed what he was thinking.

  ‘The crew was originally the staff of a counting house,’ he said. ‘A warehouse where goods were sorted and valued. They were made for that purpose and, being Denizens of a low order, they change and learn very slowly. Hence they are not very good sailors, but excel at the movement and ordering of cargo. Here we are. I shall just take off my shoes and roll up my breeches.’

  Doctor Scamandros thrust the candle in the sand and sat to remove his shoes. Arthur sat down too, and took off his Immaterial Boots.

  ‘We must be careful,’ Scamandros said as he took up the candle again and waded into the froth. ‘The beach shelves very steeply. We shall stay near the tidemark.’

  They started walking along, Doctor Scamandros on the lower slope, nearer the sea, so he was almost the same height as Arthur. He was very short for a Denizen, Arthur thought. Shorter even than the miserable Coal-Collaters in the deep cellars of the Lower House.

  ‘Where shall we begin?’ asked Scamandros.

  ‘What’s the story with Wednesday?’ asked Arthur. ‘Why is everyone afraid of even going near her?’

  ‘I can
answer more easily than most, because I am a volunteer on the Moth and not in fact in her service,’ said Scamandros. ‘I also have made something of a study of both the Border Sea and its ruler. I am sure you are familiar with the Will of the Architect, the breaking of it by the Trustees, and so forth?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Arthur. ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Around that time, Lady Wednesday began to be afflicted by an enormous hunger, something no Denizen usually has to any degree. We merely eat for amusement. She ate and ate and ate, and would normally have grown larger and larger. However, by using the power of the Third Key, she was able to keep this growth in abeyance. This continued for some two thousand years, even though by that time she was eating tons and tons of food every day.

  ‘I am not sure exactly what happened then. Either the power of the Key failed, or she misdirected it. In any case, she was transformed into a shape and size appropriate to the amount of food she was eating. She became a Leviathan.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A Behemoth.’

  ‘Um, I don’t —’

  ‘A monstrous white whale. A stupendous whale! One hundred and twenty-six miles from tail to head, and thirty-two miles in width, with a mouth when open that is two miles high and ten miles wide.’

  Arthur stopped walking to think about this. A whale one hundred and twenty-six miles long! Doctor Scamandros kept walking and talking so he had to scurry to catch up and missed a few words.

  ‘. . . transformation and immersion in the Border Sea displaced a vast quantity of water. Fortunately the transformation took place over a week or more, allowing time to prepare the docks and foreshore buildings, most of which were turned into ships like the Moth. A new port was partly prepared on the ridge of Wednesday’s Lookout, now Port Wednesday.

  ‘But the greatest destruction to actual Denizens was not wrought by the Deluge, but by Lady Wednesday herself. In the shape of a Leviathan she was hungrier than ever, and in her early years, she ate not only the usual plankton, krill, and other small creatures by the ton, but also many of her own servants, including her Noon and Dusk. No one has dared approach her for millennia, save her surviving Dawn, who it is believed she communicates with by moving the pupils of her massive eye in some code, so Dawn need not get too close.

  ‘That is why it is strange that you should be invited to lunch with her. How can you have lunch with a Leviathan? Particularly one that eats everything that comes anywhere near her?’

  ‘Why is she called Drowned Wednesday?’ asked Arthur. ‘I mean, she’s obviously not drowned.’

  ‘I believe that when she first began to transform she flung herself into the Border Sea and was presumed drowned,’ said Scamandros. ‘A nasty fate for a Denizen, since some consciousness would remain until the fishes completely nibbled you away. I also suspect that the term ‘Whale Wednesday’ is shied away from by her still-loyal Denizens.’

  Arthur nodded and hopped forward to completely catch up. They were quite a long way along the beach now, the lights of the camp a hundred yards or more behind. Arthur glanced at Doctor Scamandros’s face. Most of it lay in shadow, only the lower part of his visage illuminated by the candle. His tattoos were moving and shifting, but it was too dark for Arthur to make out what they were showing, save for one of a ship that was cruising across the Denizen’s cheek with all sails set.

  ‘Perhaps we should turn around,’ said Arthur nervously. Scamandros halted and looked at Arthur.

  ‘We have come far enough to try a little sorcery that may find an answer to your questions,’ he said, walking up the beach to set his candle down. Arthur followed, the blue sand sticking to his wet feet.

  ‘What was it you wanted first?’ asked Doctor Scamandros. ‘A message to Dame Primus or news of your friend?’

  ‘I want to see what’s happened to Leaf,’ said Arthur. Even though she hadn’t listened when he’d told her to get out of the hospital room, he still felt responsible . . . and guilty. He hoped she was all right.

  ‘Your friend was picked up by another ship?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Arthur. ‘A bit like the Moth, but thinner and longer, with three masts. It had sails that glowed green. I think it was meant to pick me up, like it said in the invitation. ‘Transport has been arranged.’ Only they got Leaf instead.’

  ‘The ship sounds like the Flying Mantis. One of the ships of Wednesday’s original merchant marine. Which would make sense. Now, do you have anything that belongs to your friend? A lock of hair, perhaps?’

  ‘No!’ said Arthur. ‘I mean, she’s just a friend. Like a fairly new friend too.’

  ‘Mmm, that makes it more difficult, even though knowing the ship will narrow things down,’ mused Scamandros. ‘Did you shake hands with her? Or have anything she may have touched, like a cup or bottle?’

  Arthur shook his head. He tried to think back to the hospital room. Leaf had sat on the bed . . .

  ‘She did read Wednesday’s invitation. Will that do?’

  ‘That will do,’ said Doctor Scamandros with satisfaction. ‘May I have the invitation, please?’

  Arthur handed it over. Scamandros took out a tortoiseshell-inlaid penknife and cut a small, curling sliver off the surface of the card, which he deposited in a tiny tin pillbox. Reaching once more into his greatcoat, he removed a cardboard chessboard — or something divided into coloured squares like a chessboard — which he unfolded. On this board he laid down with some exactitude a small round shaving mirror and a conch shell the size of Arthur’s fist. He then placed the tin pillbox down as well, arranging it so mirror, shell, and pillbox formed a triangle against the red-and-black-chequered background.

  ‘A trigon on my work-square,’ he said, taking out a quill pen and a small bronze bottle labelled ACTIVATED INK. BEWARE! ‘Arthur, please place your hand flat above the trigon, not quite touching.’

  He indicated the three objects. Arthur complied, holding his hand level just above the mirror, conch and pillbox.

  ‘Now I shall have to write on your hand. It may sting,’ said Doctor Scamandros, in the tone doctors and dentists use when something is going to hurt. He set the bronze bottle down, carefully unscrewed the lid, and dipped his feathery pen.

  ‘This is going to help me find out what happened to Leaf?’ asked Arthur. He had a strong urge to pull back his hand and run down the beach, back to the camp.

  Sunscorch did nod okay, thought Arthur. So Scamandros must be mostly trustworthy …

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Scamandros. ‘Hold still.’

  Arthur held still. Scamandros poised the pen above the back of the boy’s hand. A tiny drop of ink fell from the pen and splashed on Arthur’s skin like molten metal, sending up a small plume of Nothing-laced smoke.

  ‘Aahhhhh!’ screamed Arthur as intense pain shot through him.

  Eleven

  DOCTOR SCAMANDROS didn’t pause. With incredible speed, he wrote a word on Arthur’s hand even as the boy snatched it away, the ink leaving a trail of fire across his skin.

  ‘It will only hurt for a moment,’ Scamandros promised, as Arthur rushed to the sea and thrust his hand in. ‘If I’d warned you, you wouldn’t have kept still.’

  Arthur couldn’t speak. The pain occupied his entire mind — but only for a few more seconds. Before Doctor Scamandros had finished speaking, the pain ebbed and was gone, as if it had been washed out with the last wave.

  Arthur walked the few yards back up the beach. Scamandros had already packed away the board and the pillbox, leaving only the shell and the mirror. He held these out to Arthur, who didn’t notice, as he was holding the back of his hand to the candlelight. As far as the boy could tell, there weren’t any scars or ink stains. He couldn’t see any writing either.

  ‘What did you write?’ asked Arthur.

  ‘My signature,’ said Doctor Scamandros. ‘Most House Sorcery is done with prepared apparatus that will only work for the authorised sorcerer.’

  ‘Was there Nothing in that ink?’

  ‘Yes. A ver
y small, refined amount. Not made by me, I hasten to add. I do not work directly with raw Nothing. Though it is true most House Sorcery depends upon apparatus or consumables originally created from or with Nothing.’

  ‘Right,’ said Arthur. He took the mirror and the shell suspiciously. ‘What do these do, then?’

  ‘I have, I hope, attuned the mirror to show the current situation of your friend Leaf,’ said Scamandros. ‘And the conch so you may listen as well. It should work for some days, before the spell degrades and begins to show other persons or places. I should not use it once that occurs, as it may well show you to those who look for such open passages into the mind.’

  ‘How do I make it work?’

  ‘Merely hold the shell to your ear and gaze into the mirror. It will work best somewhere quiet, with a little but not too much light shining into the mirror. Here, with the candle, would be ideal. It is generally best to have someone watching over you, as you will not be aware of what is happening around your corporeal form.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Arthur. ‘I think I’ll try this a bit later. Closer to the camp.’

  ‘As you wish. Now, as to messages, I’m afraid that neither telephone nor telegraph will work for us. Though we are not in the Border Sea, we are of it, and any connection would thus normally go through there and the exchange has been long flooded. However, I can send a message by slower means. Have you paper, pen, and ink?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Here you are, then.’ Scamandros handed Arthur a cracked leather case tied closed with a blue ribbon. ‘Write a letter while I prepare the messenger.’

  Arthur opened the case. It was like a pop-up book, with an inkwell, a pile of paper, and several pens rising up as he opened it. Arthur selected a pen, dipped it in the ink, which he noticed was turquoise blue, and wrote.

  Dame Primus

  Monday’s Dayroom or Tuesday’s Pyramid

  Dear Dame Primus,

  Lady Wednesday invited me to luncheon and sent a ship for me, but due to an accident I am now in another Secondary Realm with a different, wrecked ship, called the Moth. A House Sorcerer called Dr. Skamandross is sending this letter for me. I think I might try to find the Third Part of the Will, since I’m here. If you can send help or advice that would be good. Also my friend Leaf got picked up by accident and I think is on a ship called the Flying Mantis. If you can help her get back home that would also be good.