down with Kestrel. Boone snatched at the surface, one arm shredded.
Then the octopi rose out of the channel, dozens, their tentacles folded back like. The beasts snatched souls from the chests of sailors, fighting among themselves for the choicest morsels. One flung itself at the armor’s head. A second found the rent in the armor’s elbow. It thrust a groping tentacle inside, suckers like a score of mouths tasting Arthur’s tattooed skin. Yanking his arm back, Arthur squeezed his eyes shut. “Please, Davy, please. I didn’t want any of this. Please.”
Nothing happened.
Arthur looked again. The octopus’s tentacles flowed across the glass but couldn’t break it. The vile, boneless monsters couldn’t reach him. As long as he was in the armor, they couldn’t drag his soul down to Davy Jones. His sobs sank to panting as he realized he was safe. Then his panting rose to mad laughter. “Go on! Go! You can’t have Arthur Kerry, you bastards. Take them that wanted this damn war.”
Just then, Arthur saw another octopus pluck the soul from Boone’s chest. Watching the empty shell fall among the seaweed, Arthur felt no pity. “Damn your patriot’s heart, Ben Boone. May you pull an oar in Davy Jone’s navy.”
Another octopus found the girlish second mate. It pulled his soul free, but suddenly, a seagull broke the the surface on a sail of bubbles. With one swift flick, it snatched the soul from the octopus’s beak, then soared for the sky to ferry the soul to heaven.
Madness broke out as gulls and octopi raced for souls. There was no order or justice to it that Arthur could see. An octopus dragged down Dr. Philips’ soul, while a gull saved the captain’s. A sharp clak-clk sound made Arthur look over. A gull pecked at the porthole, peering in at him.
It couldn’t get through the armor either. Before Arthur could think of what to do, the octopus lunged for the gull. The bird dashed upwards, but it was in the octopus’ domain. Wrapping the gull in its liquid-like tentacles, the octopus swam for the channel, trailing a wake of white feathers.
The animals started fighting each other, with the birds getting the worst of it. When Kestrel finally struck the bottom, raising a brown fog of sediment, both armies scattered. The bay grew still. Rebels had fished out the Kestrel’s survivors, and the dead lay scattered amid the seaweed. Arthur was alone.
He pulled on the haul chain, but it was still secured to the hulk of Kestrel. He had to free himself and escape somehow before the suit filled with water. He could barely see through the brown fog and noticed the lantern had gone out. Trying to relight it, Arthur struck three matches without success. Then it occurred to him that the suit was already flooded.
Arthur stared at the water drifting past his face. His lungs weren’t burning for air, though, so he decided he must be mistaken. Giving up on the lantern, he walked toward the shipwreck. Get free of Kestrel, then free of this whole mad war. As he walked, Arthur found Holloway’s second mate half-buried in the slime. Scavengers had eaten him down to the bone in places.
He was thinking how strange and slender the pretty boy looked when Arthur noticed green algae had started covering the armor’s portholes. Tiny fish had slipped through the tear in the armor’s rubber elbow and nibbled the skin from his cheek and back. Sea worms burrowed into his calf. He felt them squirming in his meat, but couldn’t reach to dig them out.
There had been other sailors, howling for help, strange and slender themselves in peaked conquistador helmets. Arthur was dead but not. He was dead but held fast inside the sub-marine armor. It kept him safe from Hell, but it also anchored him far below Heaven. By the time that thought had finished, a fish had laid eggs in Arthur’s eye socket. He could feel them pulsing in there.
Still, Arthur hoped he could survive somehow, in some form, if he could just free the chain from Kestrel. Except the depths played tricks on the senses. He’d accidentally walked past the ship, forgetting what he was supposed to do. Turning around, he had the vague notion that he’d walked past it before, realized that he was dead before, then forgotten again.
He started back the way he’d come. After a long time of walking, he came upon a metal carriage with wide, rectangular portholes. It lay on its crumpled side and raised script across its snout-like front read Ford. It must have been used to ford the shallows of the bay, even though he couldn’t imagine how. He turned to walk on and realized he’d passed the ship once more.
He would have cried if he had lungs. How did he keep getting lost? He had to remember—get free of Kestrel, free of this whole mad war. He had to hold fast to that thought, and all would be all right.
Swaying through the muck, skull lolled against glass portholes. The man inside the armor felt his name slip away from him and didn’t try to keep it. It didn’t matter. Get free of the ship, get free of war. Hold fast to that, hold fast. Rust and barnacles covered the armor’s iron skin. The second mate had shrunk to yellowed bones. Fronds of seaweed trembled between his ribs like they were taking breaths.
Get free of the ship, get free of war, get free of war. He couldn’t remember what the chanting thought meant, only that he had to go somewhere. It was very important that he go somewhere. In the starless twilight below the waves, Kestrel’s torn sails rippled like blank flags.
The Drowned Forest, a young adult novel by Kristopher Reisz, arrives 2/8/13.
Click here to read the first chapter or go to www.kristopherreisz.com.
Holly and Jane have jumped off the bluff over their Alabama river hundreds of times. But one day, Holly's jump goes wrong. Her body never comes up, but something else does—a sad creature of mud, full of confusion and sorrow. Jane knows it's Holly, somehow, trapped and mixed up with the river. But Holly doesn't know she’s dead, and that anything she touches will die, too . . . even those she loves the most.
The Blank Flag of Arthur Kerry Page 5