The World Between Blinks

by Ryan Graudin

Bubblers. That’s what the wild-haired shopkeeper had called those shiny scales. If only they’d taken that three-for-one deal!

  “I’ll run back and get them,” Marisol volunteered. “I remember the way.”

  Wind blasted across the dock. Jake shivered, his insides feeling as wild as whitecapped waves at the thought of separating from his cousin. But she shot him a significant look, flicking her gaze sideways at the captain. Oh, Jake realized. She wants me to stay here to make sure he doesn’t sail off without us.

  Pushing his worries down again, he nodded. “Go with her, Oz.”

  With a quick yip, Oz took off after Marisol as she tore back toward the Frost Fair. It made Jake think of how they’d left that market. Why had she had her hands out in front of her, like she was feeling her way in the dark? He’d have to ask her later. For now, he had a more pressing concern: stalling the captain so the boat didn’t leave before Marisol returned.

  “I’m Jake Beruna,” he said, offering his hand to shake, like his mother always did.

  The captain’s hand was sun-warmed and hard with calluses, engulfing Jake’s as they shook. “I’m . . .” He frowned. “I’m sorry, I had it a minute ago. . . .”

  After a moment it was clear the man wasn’t going to speak again, so Jake ventured a question.

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but what’s it like? Not remembering things?”

  “Peaceful.” The sailor’s voice drifted along. “Memories can be as heavy as an anchor. That’s why I cast most of mine off soon after I arrived here. The only sand I have to worry about is the shoreline! My life’s made of salt and sea and sunshine!”

  “That sounds nice,” said Jake. “But—what do you mean cast off?”

  “There’s some that cling to their memories, like a starfish to a rock! Keep ’em a long while too, but sooner or later the sand always falls.” The captain nodded at Jake’s hourglass. “I wanted to get the forgetting over with! So I forgot.”

  “Oh. . . .” Jake went silent.

  It was zero fun leaving everything behind, as he’d done over and over. Would it be easier if you never had to think about it again? Of course, then you never could think about it again, even if you wanted to. But perhaps it’d be worth it.

  “Don’t worry!” said the sailor, interrupting his thoughts. “I still know how to captain this beauty!” He pointed to a big black-hulled boat with flags strung from the front funnel to the bow. “She’s the Baychimo. Got stuck in ice in the Arctic, and her crew had to leave her behind. Floated around for thirty-eight years, if you can believe it, appearing and disappearing, popping into the World Between Blinks and then back again, never quite lost enough to get stuck. Eventually she lodged here, though. We had this historian on board the other day, a chap who spent so long with his books that he got lost in them, and strewth, was he excited to see her. Now, are you nippers about ready to go? We’ve got a delivery to make to the underwater cities, then on to Carthage, and I can’t be late.”

  Jake’s mind scrambled, searching for a joke or a story or anything to distract the captain a few minutes more. The best he could come up with? A retelling of his encounter with a shark while snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef. So he threw himself into the performance as best he could.

  “It was ten feet long!” Much longer than Jake’s arms when he stretched them.

  “Only ten feet?” The captain guffawed. “Wait until you see the critters in this ocean! You haven’t truly lived until you’ve met a megalodon.”

  A megalodon? Jake wasn’t sure he wanted to ask. Thankfully, he didn’t have to: Marisol and Oz had reappeared.

  The pair galloped down the rickety dock, both panting. “I got the three-for-one deal she offered us,” she said, handing Jake a shiny scale to thread onto his necklace. Oz already had one dangling from a loop on his collar.

  “You didn’t happen to snag any of that T-rex repellent?” Jake wondered. Maybe it worked on sea monsters too.

  “No.” Marisol frowned. “Should I have?”

  “All aboard!” The captain accepted the maneti note and led them onto the ship. Brine and engine oil tickled Jake’s nose. Marisol snuggled deeper into Amelia’s coat when they reached the wind-whipped deck.

  “Over to the side there,” instructed the captain. “Out of the way, until we’ve left dock.”

  The cousins and Oz pressed themselves against the rail as sailors scurried from port to starboard. Just like the market merchants, none of them seemed to be from the same time or place. They wore a dozen different outfits, from a lady in trousers and a coat with a woolen collar to a man in perfectly modern storm gear.

  “Did you lodge the route paperwork with the Curators?” the lady called to the captain.

  “Yes,” he grumbled. “In triplicate. Not that it matters with all the phantom islands popping up out of nowhere. The official course we plot almost always ends up being a dead end.”

  The boat eased away from the dock, and at the very last moment, a white-clad Curator appeared where the final line had been cast off. Jake felt like he was going to have his seventeenth heart attack of the day. Had they taken too long to find Christopher? Had the Curators changed their mind?

  The Curator drew a deep breath and called out to the retreating ship. “Thank-you-for-interacting-today-with-members-of-our-Curator-staff. We-appreciate-your-time.” He gulped for air, then continued. “Please-rate-your-customer-satisfaction-on-a-scale-of-one-to-ten.”

  “Seven-point-six-two-three-seven,” the captain replied cheerfully, shooting the children a grin. “Working that out’ll keep them busy,” he muttered. “Then they won’t waste my time micromanaging shipping lanes and trying to tame the seas!”

  The sailors ran this way and that across the deck, seeming always on the verge of colliding. Eventually, Jake realized he was watching an intricate and complex dance, to which everyone knew the steps. Soon the boat was underway, chugging across choppy waters, leaving the hodgepodge city in its wake. It was time for the cousins to leave the rail and explore the ship a little!

  They found the woman in the woolen-collared coat up near the bow. She must have been aboard awhile—her fair skin was covered in freckles from the sun, and a little salt too. There was a big smile on her face, framed by a sweep of straight brown hair down one side.

  “Hey there, passengers,” she said. “And I see you’ve met Oz.”

  “You know him?” Marisol asked.

  “Oh yes! He’s quite the social butterfly,” the lady replied. “Oz here is one of just a few Tasmanian tigers who made it through to the World. Kaparunina, they called these animals, where he’s from. That was their oldest name, the first name they were given. And you two, you look like foundlings. Bessie Hyde’s my name.”

  “How did you get here?” Jake was still trying to wrap his brain around the Unknown. If he could learn why this magic had reached out for Bessie, maybe he’d understand why it had reached out for them. He had the stomach-squeezing feeling that all this was his fault, his, and it’d be nice to learn otherwise.

  “Well, I seem to remember I was rafting with my husband, Glen,” Bessie said. “That’s him down in the stern with the captain. We were in the Grand Canyon to run some rapids, but I recall there was a smooth patch of water, and we got to gazing into each other’s eyes—we were newlyweds, you know, very much in love—and we sort of got . . . lost in each other, I suppose. We reckon we must’ve pulled in enough Unknown that it swept us off here, though we don’t rightly know. That’s why it’s called the Unknown, after all!”

  Marisol pressed her hand to her heart. “¡Qué romántico!”

  Jake glanced at his language charm. It must allow him to hear the Spanish his primo spoke, phrases he already knew. The scroll had let him learn a new word for Tasmanian tiger too. Clever magic!

  None of the sand had slipped in the adjoining hourglass, and his stomach still felt tight. It would be so nice not to worry . . . to simply think only about the salt spray on his lips and the sun rays on his
cheeks, like the captain.

  “I suppose it is romantic.” Bessie grinned. “Most people wouldn’t opt for that sort of honeymoon, but—”

  “Watch out!” A loud voice interrupted from the back of the boat. “It’s the Lyubov Orlova!”

  Bessie’s smile vanished faster than Christopher Creaturo had. “Oh dear.”

  “What is it?” said Jake.

  “Well . . .” Bessie hesitated. “It’s a ship.”

  That much was obvious. He could see it nearing them—a neat blue-and-white vessel that looked straight out of a cruise commercial. Why was it making the Baychimo’s sailors so anxious?

  “Go oooon,” said Marisol, suspicious.

  Something on the Lyubov Orlova was moving. . . . Something big and brown and wriggly. No, Jake realized, when tiny pelts started splashing off the side. It was lots of somethings. . . .

  “Oh dear!” Bessie’s hand clamped over her mouth. “Ohdearohdearohdear.”

  Jake pointed at the dots in the water. “Those are rats!”

  Oz hissed, his forepaws scratching the railing for a better view.

  “Not just any rats, nippers!” the captain called from the stern. “Those are cannibal rats!”

  “What?!” both the children shouted in unison.

  “Captain’s right, I’m afraid,” Bessie said. “The Lyubov Orlova broke free when it was being towed to a scrap yard in the old world. When the ship started drifting, there was nothing for the wharf rats on board to eat . . . except each other. They aren’t picky diners, though. The Curators couldn’t even get close enough to catalog the thing.”

  The captain put it more succinctly: “Full steam ahead if you want to keep all of your fingers and toes!”

  Bessie ran to join the rest of the crew.

  Jake shuddered and tucked his hands beneath his armpits. Marisol’s toes curled at the edge of her sandals. Oz’s hiss had become a deep, throaty growl. The rats—the cannibal rats—swam fast. Scores bobbed toward the ship, almost close enough to count their whiskers. Close enough to see their ragged teeth.

  His voice trembled when he turned to his cousin. “Now might be a good time to use that walkie-talkie—”

  WHOOOOOOOOOOOSH!

  More teeth appeared in a surge of choppy white water—but these teeth were much, much sharper and much, much larger—each the size of Jake’s hand. The shark they belonged to was bigger than a school bus! Its massive jaws gathered the teeming rats in a single bite.

  Everyone on board the Baychimo froze, except for Oz, who scurried between the cousins’ legs—ears flat. Jake couldn’t breathe until long after the dorsal fin vanished in a frenzy of foam.

  “Ha-ha!” the captain crowed. “There you have it, foundlings! Your first megalodon sighting!”

  Jake could have lived his whole life without seeing that. Marisol probably could have too: Amelia’s walkie-talkie shook in her fist. He’d never seen her knuckles so tight.

  “Are you all right, Mari?” His cousin didn’t answer. Her stare was fixed on the waves, so Jake reminded her, “Eyes ahead, don’t look back.”

  Even if there’s a prehistoric fifty-nine-foot shark behind you. . . .

  “Just be calm on the route,” she agreed. “You’re right. We have to find Christopher. We have to get home, no matter what stands in our way.”

  Oz chimed in with an enthusiastic bark.

  The Lyubov Orlova became a speck on the horizon, and a while after it vanished, Bessie came to find them.

  “Looks like it’s been a long day,” she said sympathetically. “Why don’t you both bunk down for a little, and I’ll wake you when we arrive. We’ll be underway all night.”

  She led them downstairs and scrounged up something to eat in the galley—chowder made according to someone’s lost family recipe, Ansault pears, and steamed Old Cornish cauliflower, followed by a handful each of light brown M&M’s for dessert.

  “I’ve never seen M&M’s like this before,” Marisol said as the two of them snuggled down together in a bunk, pulling a thick quilt up to cover them. The scents of old cotton and salt tickled Jake’s nose.

  “I don’t think they make that color anymore,” he said, popping one into his mouth. “That’s why they’re here, I guess.”

  He wrapped his arms around Marisol, and despite everything that had happened since they’d left home that morning—their parents’ discussion about selling Nana’s house seemed a lifetime ago now—he drifted off to sleep.

  The next morning Bessie woke them for breakfast, and they were up on deck by the time the Baychimo reached a large collection of buoys bobbing on the face of the ocean.

  There must have been hundreds of them, maybe a thousand. They were orange and yellow and white, salt-stained and encrusted with sludgy seaweed. They jostled for space like seagulls at a picnic, seeming almost like a tiny island.

  The captain walked over to check that their bubbler charms were threaded onto their necklaces. “You’re good to go,” he said. “Jump on in, and you’ll find there are ropes running from the buoys all the way down to the bottom of the sea. Just grab hold and pull yourself down. You’ll be able to breathe just fine, like regular air. Those are good, strong charms you’ve got, plenty of the Unknown magic in those.”

  “Jump in?” Jake gurgled. “Is it . . . is it safe?”

  “Safe as anything in life!” The captain chuckled. “Don’t worry. The rats are long gone, and Curators don’t allow scary critters anywhere other people live. It’d create too much incidental paperwork.”

  “We’ll get so wet,” said Marisol fingering the leather of Amelia’s jacket.

  “You won’t notice,” the captain assured her. “And the things in your pockets will be fine, thanks to your bubbler charm. It’ll anchor your necklace in place too, so there’s no need to fret about the magic floating off.”

  There was nothing for it except to go. The cousins climbed up onto the edge of the railing, and the captain and Bessie helpfully lifted Oz so the three of them could jump together. They landed with a splash, and a momentary shock of cold salt water shot straight up Jake’s nose and sent him spluttering.

  He took a breath as best he could, even if he wasn’t going to need it, and ducked below the water. Sure enough, a forest of ropes stretched down toward the seabed, which was only barely visible below, a patchwork of buildings and sand interwoven with brightly colored coral and seaweed.

  Before he could pull himself down any farther, he felt something tugging him back up. He surfaced once more, his hair plastered flat against his eyes.

  “Oz can’t dive,” said Marisol. “He’s trying, but he keeps floating back up. He doesn’t have any hands to hold on to a rope.”

  In the end, Jake managed to anchor Oz under one of his arms and pull them both beneath the surface. Then gravity seemed to help, and after a minute he was half pulling them down, half falling. He held his breath at first, but when he finally let it out, he just exhaled bubbles, and found that somehow—impossibly—he could breathe just fine.

  “Everything good?” he asked Marisol, who was descending the rope next to his.

  “Sí,” she said, giving her feet a little kick. “This must be what fish feel like!”

  He could hear her voice perfectly.

  They made their way down slowly and landed together in a large stone-paved square, with arches exiting in every direction. As Jake’s feet hit the ground, he found he could stand normally, and walk normally, with just a little resistance from the water. These bubbler charms were really something!

  The light was dim, dappled and filtered through the waves above, but he could see perfectly well. The square was cluttered with ropes’ anchor points—with people and smaller fishes threading through them. A large signpost directed traffic from the center, its destination arrows pointing in every possible direction. He started to read them.

  WANAKU

  Thonis Heracleion

  BAIAE

  Neapolis

  Kitezh

 
; Port Royal

  And wait, did that faded, starfish-splashed sign at the bottom actually say . . .

  ATLANTIS

  It couldn’t, could it?

  “Oof,” said Marisol beside him, reaching down to pet Oz. “This place is huge, Jake! Where do we even start? Christopher could have gone to any of these cities!”

  Jake read the signs again, his heart slowly sinking. If they picked the wrong starting point, Christopher would get even farther away while they searched for him. But where to begin? He had absolutely no idea.

  9

  Marisol

  MARISOL HAD NEVER TESTED HER GIFT UNDERWATER BEFORE.

  She’d never been this deep—period. Sometimes, during Folly Beach summers or trips to Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, she would put on her wetsuit and goggles and dive down to explore the sandy floor, but she could only go so far. The bubbler charm meant that everything around her was blue, a blue so deep that her lungs wanted to burn just because.

  Breathe! Marisol reminded herself as she studied the sign. She needed oxygen to concentrate, and she needed to concentrate to flex her magnet fingers.

  Jake tapped his chin in thought. She could tell he was worried but trying to push it aside—he stood up a little straighter, pushed his shoulders back. “We don’t have a lead, so maybe we should shut our eyes and pick one? The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll find him.”

  Marisol gazed out into the deep blue, and the memory of the megalodon came gliding back into her mind, teeth glinting. Her hand shook a little when she held it out. Nana had never seemed frightened by anything. . . .

  These thoughts cluttered her brain, made it impossible to focus.

  There were too many cities. Too many directions.

  Christopher Creaturo could have gone anywhere, and it was her fault they were stuck.

  “Lo siento, Jake.” Her arm dropped back to her side.

  “Sorry?” Jake blinked. “For what?”

  “Because I’m the reason we’re trapped here! I wanted to find Nana’s treasure so badly that I followed my magnet fingers and—”

  “Your what?”

  “My magnet fingers.” Marisol sniffed. She couldn’t tell if she was actually crying or not, since her entire face felt wet. “I—I’ve never told anyone about them before. Not even my parents. They just think I’m good at finding things, but it’s more complicated than that. It’s . . . it’s like lostness pulls me. There’s this buzz in my fingertips that leads me to missing items. People too, sometimes.”