Oliver and the Sea Monkeys

by Philip Reeve

  Iris was nothing like that at all. She was rather plump, and she could never remember where she’d put her comb and mirror. She couldn’t see the point of sitting on rocks and caterwauling all day. The one time she tried singing to a handsome fisherman in his boat, it had turned out not to be a handsome fisherman or a boat at all, just a passing walrus.

  “Sorry,” she told it. “From a distance you looked just like a little brown boat with a man sitting in it.”

  “Hmmm,” said the walrus. “You need to get your eyes tested, dear.” And it told her about the beach optician at Farsight Cove.

  Oliver had heard about this beach optician too. He remembered his mom and dad talking about the dotty old man who wheeled his barrow of eye charts, instruments, and glasses down the path to the cove each day and sat there on the sand, waiting for mermaids. They had laughed and shaken their heads because they didn’t believe in mermaids. Oliver looked hard at Iris and decided that there was no way he couldn’t believe in her.

  “Farsight Cove is quite close to Deep-water Bay…,” he told her. “But they must both be miles and miles away by now. This island is moving, you see. It’s been moving all night.”

  “Of course it has,” said Iris. “It’s one of the Rambling Isles.”

  “The whats?”

  “The Rambling Isles. They’re not really islands at all. They’re alive, although they’re made of stone. They wander the oceans, and they’re always getting mistaken for ordinary islands, but really they’re more like very big stony giants.”

  “Oh,” said Oliver. “Well, where is it going?”

  “How on earth should I know?” asked Iris. “You really do say the strangest things. I expect it’s just rambling around, collecting stuff. That’s what Rambling Isles do. But I suppose you could always ask it.”

  Oliver looked around, bewildered.

  How could he ask rocks and stones and grass where they were going? Well, he could ask them, but how could he expect them to reply?

  “Oh, I’ll do it,” said Iris wearily. She slapped the nearest rock as hard as she could. “Hello?” she shouted.

  The movement of the island changed. It slowed and turned from side to side. Mr. Culpeper woke up with a squawk and demanded to know what was happening.

  Slowly the island lifted from the sea. There was a rush and gurgle of falling water draining from its edges. It rose cliff-high and the waves rolled past it far below. Oliver went to its raggedy edge and looked over.

  He saw that the island was really just the top of a vast, stony head. The grass was its hair.

  Water ran down its face; limpets stubbled its cheeks; seaweed and old carrier bags were tangled in its bushy eyebrows. Two big eyes peered up at Oliver.

  Oliver was startled (and Oliver was not a boy who startled easily). “It’s got a face!”

  “Of course it’s got a face,” said Iris.

  Oliver waved at the Rambling Isle. “Um…,” he said.

  “Hello,” Iris told it. “He wants to know where you’re going.”

  The Rambling Isle watched them thoughtfully. It wasn’t used to being talked to. It was years and years since it had spoken. It hadn’t even realized that there was anybody on its head until these two small upside-down faces appeared.

  “Please,” said Oliver, “I have to find those other islands. My mom and dad were on one. That’s why I need to know where you’re all going.”

  The Rambling Isle opened its cave of a mouth. It cleared its throat with a crumbly rumble like masses of rock shearing and shifting deep in the earth. “They are all going to the Hallowed Shallows,” it said, “for the Night of the Seawigs.”

  Oliver was starting to feel dizzy, hanging upside down like that. He sat upright. “What’s a seawig?” he asked.

  “Haven’t you heard?” said Iris. “Every seven years the Rambling Isles all gather together at the Hallowed Shallows to show off their treasures. They love to collect things, you see; all the bits of flotsam that the sea washes up on their heads. They’re very proud of their collections. On the Night of the Seawigs, each of them wears a wig made of all the treasures it has gathered on its travels. The one with the finest wig is declared the winner. It is a great honor. Everyone makes a huge fuss over them. They become Chief Island for the next seven years, and they get to order the other islands about if they want to and choose all the best bits of wig for themselves.”

  “I bet Thrumcap wins this time,” said the island. “Or Dimsey. They always have the best seawigs. Of course, they have crinkly, complicated coastlines. All sorts of interesting things get stuck on them. Most of what washes up on my shores washes straight off again. Look at me! All I have to show for my wanderings are a few bits of old rope and a stupid bird’s nest.”

  Oliver tried to think of something encouraging he could say that would cheer up the poor island, but it was true: its wig was a mess. Its summit was mostly bald rock, with those tussocks of grassy hair sprouting here and there, and rather a lot of albatross poo, now that Oliver came to look critically at it.

  “Who are you talking to?” asked Mr. Culpeper, stalking importantly down the beach. “And whose nest is he calling stupid?”

  “I don’t even know whether I can be bothered making the journey,” the island went on in its deep and mournful voice. “You can’t imagine the wonderful seawigs that will be on display at the Hallowed Shallows. And there I’ll be, with my bit of rope and my bird’s nest. The others will all laugh at me. Perhaps I’ll just give it a miss this time.”

  “No!” said Oliver. He hung over the beach edge again. “You must go! Or at least tell me how to get there, so I can find Mom and Dad!”

  “Oh, it’s not a place you could get to,” said Iris airily. “Not on your own.” She hung upside down beside him with her wet hair dangling. “The Hallowed Shallows aren’t that sort of place at all. They are the place where all the old things of the sea went to live once people in your world stopped believing in them. Actually they are where I live too, only I came out to find that optician, and I couldn’t, and now I can’t find my way home either.” She blinked nearsightedly. Oliver thought he saw tears beginning to gather in her eyes.

  He fetched the oily length of nylon rope he’d noticed on the tide line yesterday. He tied one end firmly around a rock, then lowered himself down in front of the island’s face.

  “Did you hear that?” he said. “We both need to go to the Hallowed Shallows. Please say you’ll take us there.”

  “Oh, I don’t know…,” said the island glumly.

  Oliver frowned, swaying in front of those huge eyes like a hypnotist’s watch. “Look, do you have a name?” he asked.

  “Me?” said the island dolefully. “A name? No. Some of the bigger Rambling Isles have been mistaken for real islands by sailors and explorers, who gave them the most splendid names, but no one ever noticed me.”

  “Not at all?” said Iris.

  “Well, someone put a sign up on me once, when I went to sleep for a few years near the mouth of a river.

  “But it fell off. Anyway, I can’t go around calling myself ‘Danger: Submerged Rocks,’ can I?”

  “Well, you need a name,” said Oliver, looking up at those craggy features, at the clinging barnacles and clumps of weed. “I’m going to call you…Cliff.”

  “Cliff…,” said the island, trying it out. He sounded pleased. “Cliff…”

  “Now listen, Cliff,” said Oliver. “How long is it till this Seawigs contest?”

  “We gather at the Shallows tomorrow night,” said Cliff.

  Iris nodded. “That’s right. All my mermaid friends are going. They’re going to perch on rocks and sing; it’s completely lame.”

  “Well then, Cliff,” said Oliver, “you’ve got all of today and tomorrow to gather some really brilliant things to decorate your seawig. We’ll help!”

  “Will you?” sniffed the poor island, looking hopefully at him.

  “Will we?” asked Iris.

  “Course we will
,” said Oliver. “Let’s think. What would be the best things you could possibly have on your wig? You’ve already got me, and Iris, and the inflatable dinghy….”

  “He’s got an albatross too,” said Iris. “It can stand on the top and spread its wings or something.”

  “Excuse me,” said Mr. Culpeper, coming to peer over the edge beside her. “I am Diomedea exulans, I am, and a particularly fine specimen too. I am not some funfair attraction! ‘Spread its wings,’ indeed.” He sniffed loudly. “It seems to me that this island has gone to the dogs. It used to be such a nice, quiet place. Now I can hardly move for boys and mermaids. I don’t like the sound of this Seawigs affair at all. It sounds like a lot of noise and bother to me.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Oliver told the island. “Just think! What are the most wonderful things that an island could wear?”

  “Well, there’s always shipwrecks,” said Cliff. “Shipwrecks are very stylish.”

  “The dinghy is a sort of wreck,” Oliver pointed out.

  “It’s just stranded,” said Cliff sadly. “That’s not the same thing at all.”

  “He’s right,” said Iris dreamily, draping her tail in a rock pool. “What he needs is a really spectacular wreck. What about the Water Mole?”

  Oliver frowned. “I’ve heard of that. It was the world’s first submarine. The king of Spain built it to ferry treasure from his gold mines without English pirates noticing, but it didn’t work too well. It sank, and nobody knows where.” Iris coughed and pointed modestly to herself.

  “You mean, you know where we could find it?” Oliver asked.

  “I ran into it while I was swimming around,” Iris said, rubbing thoughtfully at a fading bruise upon her elbow. “It’s on an undersea mountain not far from here.”

  “Ooh, a submarine?” said Cliff, sounding hopeful for the first time. “I don’t think any of the other islands has a submarine!”

  “Well, let’s go and find the Water Mole,” said Oliver, “and then hurry to the Hallowed Shallows and see what those other isles think of it! I bet they’ll declare you the winner in an instant!”

  Cliff nodded happily, almost tumbling his two passengers off into the sea. He’d never really thought of himself as a winner of anything before, but Oliver spoke with such certainty that he could almost hear the voices of his fellow Rambling Isles as they cheered his wonderful wig. He sank back down into the waves until the top of his stony head became an island once again, and with Iris shouting directions, he set off, surging through the water with a steady, confident motion.

  Oliver lay on the edge of the beach and looked down through the water. He could dimly see Cliff’s huge, rocky limbs moving far beneath him in the depths. How strange to think there were such things as Rambling Isles in the world, and he had never even heard of them!

  After Cliff had been striding along for an hour or two, Oliver saw a shape on the sea ahead. Then another. They looked like small, stony islands, but he couldn’t be certain of that anymore. He pointed the islands out to Iris. “Are they more Rambling Isles?”

  The mermaid peered in the direction he was pointing. “I think they were once,” she said. “But they’ve settled down.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means just what it sounds like. Some of them lose the urge to keep wandering. They give up collecting bits and pieces for their seawigs. And once they stop moving, they sort of take root; silt and sand pile up around their feet, and weed grows on them, and coral, and there they stay.”

  One of the settled islands was quite close now. Looking down through the waves, Oliver thought he could see its stony face, blurred by weed and masked with barnacles.

  “Are they dead?” he asked. “Or just asleep?”

  “They’re settled,” said Iris. “They are just islands now.”

  “I hope Cliff never settles,” said Oliver. “I like him rambling about. I wouldn’t want him to be just an island.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Iris said, and swished her tail in the rock pool, cleaning the sand from between her scales. “Once he has the Water Mole on top of him, he’ll win for sure. It’s completely brilliant.”

  Oliver nodded, hoping she was right. Then a bad thought struck him. “Iris? How can you find your way back to this submarine wreck if you can’t even find your own way home?”

  “I can smell it, silly,” said Iris. “It’s in a very smelly patch of sea. Can’t you smell it yet?”

  Oliver sniffed. Sure enough there was a scent on the air of green things growing and rotting.

  Hour after hour the scent grew stronger, and that afternoon they saw a darkness that lay like a green shadow on the sea ahead. Soon it stretched from horizon to horizon. As they entered its outer fringes, Oliver realized that the whole face of the ocean was clogged with drifting weed.

  “We must be in the Sargasso Sea!” he said excitedly. “Sailors fear it because their ships get becalmed here, and the weed tangles around them and traps them.”

  “No, this is a completely different place,” said Iris. “It’s called the Sarcastic Sea, and sailors fear it because the weed keeps making horrid, hurtful comments about them.”

  Sure enough, as Cliff carried them deeper into the weed, they began to hear its little mocking voices calling out to them.

  “Oh, a mermaid! That’s just what we need!” and “Nice seawig, mate!” and “I love the inflatable dinghy. Orange is such a tasteful color.” And you could tell that it didn’t mean any of the things it said—in fact it meant exactly the opposite, and all its comments were followed by scornful snickers, or whispery conversations that ended in laughter. The weed of the Sarcastic Sea was very sarcastic weed indeed.

  As Cliff plowed onwards, great clumps of the stuff began piling up on the beach, and Oliver noticed that as well as the little bladders that helped to keep ordinary types of seaweed afloat, its strands were dotted with beady eyes, which all looked witheringly at him. He took out his notebook and made a sketch, knowing that his mom and dad would be interested when he found them.

  Oliver felt sorry for the weed, and he and Iris began making their way around Cliff’s shores, shoveling it back into the waves and getting precious little thanks.

  The floating weed soon learned to keep out of the way of the oncoming island. It drew back to make a path for Cliff, and by the time Iris told him to stop, there was a broad patch of clear water all around him.

  “This is the place,” the mermaid said.

  “Are you sure?” asked Oliver. This bit of the Sarcastic Sea looked just the same as all the rest to him.

  “Two currents meet here,” replied Iris primly. “The sea smells different. The Water Mole is right beneath us. Come and see for yourself, if you don’t believe me.”

  So Oliver fetched his swimming things and goggles, took a deep breath, and plunged after Iris into the waves, where a few small, left-behind strands of seaweed still floated, sneering, “Those swim trunks really suit you (I don’t think)….”

  With a flick of her tail Iris went racing down into the green shadows. She was a clumsy thing on dry land, but in the water she was lithe and nimble.

  Oliver struggled after her, down past Cliff’s huge, watchful face, until, far below, he started to make out the summits of drowned mountains rising dimly from the ocean deeps.

  By the time he saw them, the breath that Oliver had taken before he dived had almost run out. His eyes bulged and his heart hammered. Bubbles seeped from the corners of his mouth and swam towards the surface like silver jellyfish. Then, in the last instant before he had to follow them, he glimpsed the wreck. The Water Mole lay on the rocky top of one of those mountains. Weed and coral had transformed its hull into a strange underwater cathedral. Fish darted in and out of the shattered windows at the stern, and an eel as stripy as a witch’s tights had tied itself like a bow around the figurehead.

  Iris bumped into the cabin, groped her way up a ladder, and perched on the top, beaming up at Oliver as if to say, “I to
ld you so!” But Oliver could stay no longer in her underwater world. He kicked his legs and shot back to the surface in a rush of bubbles, bursting out into the sunshine and taking deep gulps of fresh, delicious air.

  Cliff rose out of the sea beside him, with falls of white water cascading off his brow.

  “It’s there!” said Oliver, treading water in front of the island’s nose. “It’s lovely! It will make an awesome wig!”

  But how were they to lift it? Raising wrecks was difficult, Oliver knew that. He’d seen Cliff’s clumsy, stony hands. He was afraid they’d crush the Water Mole to splinters if Cliff simply tried to pick it up.

  “You must go down to it,” he said.

  “Go under the sea?” said Cliff, eyes widening. “But what about my sands? My shells? My bits of rope? They’ll all wash off if I go under!”

  “And more to the point, what about my nest?” demanded Mr. Culpeper, circling above Oliver’s head.

  “I know!” said Oliver. He scrambled back up onto Cliff’s beach and quickly gathered anything that looked as if it might float away, including the albatross’s nest. He dumped it all into the dinghy and then climbed in with it.

  Then, while Iris swam about below directing things (she wasn’t much help because her eyesight was even worse underwater than it was above, but she liked to feel important), Cliff knelt down on his gigantic underwater knees and let the waves of the Sarcastic Sea swirl over his head. Oliver put on his goggles again and hung over the edge of his dinghy with his face in the sea as the waters lifted it. Down in the green gloom far below, he saw Cliff carefully edge his way towards the wreck, and glimpsed the flash of Iris’s rainbow tail as she circled, gesturing at Cliff to move left a bit, right a bit, stop, come forwards….(She didn’t realize that she had her back to Cliff. She was actually gesturing at a confused-looking whale that just happened to be passing.)