Song of the Deep

by Brian Hastings

  “Afraid of what?”

  “Afraid of losing it all. Afraid of everything.”

  “That’s why they made the sentinels?” I ask.

  “The sentinels are built to plunder the sea. They are unmanned automatons that tirelessly patrol every inch of the underwater world. They sink ships to steal their treasure. They crack open the seafloor to mine the gold below. They take whatever is valuable and destroy the rest.”

  “Including you?” I say, my voice shaking with sorrow and shame.

  “Not all the Fomori were bad. Some were kind to us. A few of them left their cities and lived among us. They learned our songs. They helped us fight against the sentinels that attacked our homes.”

  I think of my father’s songs. Could they have come from the merrows?

  “Are you . . . you’re not the last merrow, are you?” I ask. She looks past me for a moment, as if she is thinking of something far away. When she looks back, I can see her mind is on something else.

  “Wait here,” she says. “I have something that will help you.” She swims to one of the beams of light coming from the ceiling. She reaches up to it, and the light seems to disappear. When she returns, she holds in her hand a bright yellow starfish. Light shines out of a white-hot circular patch at the center of the starfish’s body. “It’s a sunstar,” she says, as she presses it gently onto the front of my submarine. “It will help you in your search for your father.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” I tell her, still amazed by the sight of the sunstar.

  Before I can say another word, I see the white beam of the sentinel’s searchlight sweep over us.

  “Go!” The merrow’s voice resounds in my head. I turn to see the Fomori sentinel facing us, less than twenty feet away. Its long claw arm snaps down at the merrow, narrowly missing her tail as she dodges out of the way. Three circular green emeralds form a triangle along the front face of the sentinel. Are those what it uses to see? The faceted emeralds look just like the eyes of the clockwork seahorse. Did the Fomori create it as well?

  As these thoughts race through my mind, the sentinel turns to face me. I can see two dark hollow tubes mounted on its lower hull. I manage to dodge to my right just as a spray of bubbles appears in one of the tubes and a torpedo whizzes by me on my left.

  There is a terrible cracking sound from behind me, followed by a powerful wave that sends me tumbling sideways and banging against a stone wall. Pieces of rock shower down all around me, debris from the crater left by the torpedo.

  Turning back toward the source of the shot, I see the sentinel sailing over the broken walls of the village ruins. It’s not looking for me. It’s trying to kill the merrow.

  I crank the pedals as fast as they will go and aim my sub toward the sentinel. I sail straight for it, gaining momentum as I go. At the last moment, I turn sharply, slamming into its rear propeller with the side of my sub. There is a loud clanging sound. For a moment I think I may have ruptured the wall of my own sub. I can only hope I managed to do some damage to the sentinel, too.

  The sentinel turns back toward me. At least I’ve distracted it for a moment! I turn around, trying to lead it farther away from the merrow. Across the cavern I can see the faint outline of the tunnel where I came in. I know there’s no way to make it there in time, but I’m going to try anyway.

  I charge full speed toward the roof, trying to get some separation from the sentinel. When I hear the burst of bubbles behind me, I dive the sub down. The torpedo slams into the ceiling above me, sending chunks of rock showering down on the roof of my sub. I keep diving down toward the floor, hoping it can’t hit a moving target.

  I hear another torpedo launch, closer behind me this time. I yank the controls back and the sub lurches upward as the torpedo sails underneath me and slams into the cavern wall right below the tunnel exit. I sail into the cloud of debris, unable to see where I’m going. I brace myself for the shattering of glass and the cold rush of water, but I pass through the cloud and safely into the tunnel.

  I navigate up through the tunnel, pedaling so fast that my legs are burning. I see the blue water at the end of the passage up ahead as I hear another torpedo launch behind me.

  8

  SWISH

  I race up out of the tunnel and lean into a roll, spinning the sub upside down and out of the way as the torpedo flies past me toward the distant surface of the water. Now I just need to find a place to hide before the sentinel emerges from the tunnel.

  Sailing up out of the fissure, I turn toward the west and follow the seafloor, looking for a cluster of rocks, or a coral shelf, or anything at all that might conceal me. I speed across the flat sandy ground, listening for the sound of a torpedo launching behind me. The sentinel can surely outrun me in open water. My only advantage is the small head start I got when I exited the fissure.

  Suddenly the seafloor disappears below me and I find myself sailing over a black bottomless trench. The darkness seems to reach up all around me, trying to swallow me whole.

  I have only seconds to choose between the certain death that lies behind me and the possible death that lies beneath me.

  I dive down into the depths.

  Gliding deeper into the murky void, I can no longer see the mouth of the trench above me. My sunstar’s light shines into the blackness of the trench, revealing nothing but empty water in all directions. But as long as I can’t see the top of the trench, the sentinel shouldn’t be able to see me.

  I sail back and forth in a tiny pattern, just keeping the air flowing while I wait. I wonder how long I should stay down here. For all I know, the sentinel is just waiting for me up there.

  Then I see something rising up from below me, a deeper darkness within the darkness. It’s so big that I can’t see where it starts and where it stops. The water swells up, knocking me back in the wake of the massive moving shadow.

  I catch a glimpse of what look like giant green scales before I am knocked back again by another swell of water. The immense shadow disappears back into the trench, leaving me all alone, staring wide-eyed into the darkness.

  Whatever that was, I don’t want to wait for it to come back. I sail back up to the top of the trench. There is no sign of the sentinel in any direction. Checking my compass, I turn back to the west in search of Skeleton Reef.

  I sail through the endless open sea, the sunstar casting a cone of light in front of me.

  The seabed is sandy and featureless, and I feel as if I have been pedaling for hours. I check my compass to make sure I am still traveling west and not merely going in circles.

  Up ahead a faint twinkling light appears in the darkness. As I sail closer, more and more tiny lights come into view. Soon there are hundreds of them, spread across the darkness like stars in the night sky.

  The lights are lavender-colored, bobbing gently up and down. I can see long flowing tendrils waving beneath them. Lantern jellies! My father told me about them once. They are the most beautiful creatures in the sea—but they are deadly to the touch.

  The bloom of jellies heads toward me. It’s too late to turn around, so I hold perfectly still and let them glide by. The flickering lights cast patterns on the inner walls of the sub as they pass. Their glowing bodies are so densely packed together, I can no longer see the water at all; but they part in front of me, avoiding the light of the sunstar. I hold my breath as the long tentacles of an especially large jelly sweep over the glass in front of my face.

  The jellies are becoming sparser now. The last of the glowing lights passes by me. The lavender glow recedes and I am once again sailing into the empty midnight blue.

  I’m checking my compass again when I hear a sudden whoosh of bubbles from behind me. My mind races. The sentinel is back! There’s nowhere to hide . . . I have to outmaneuver it.

  I pull back hard on the handlebars, turning sharply to the right as I accelerate to spin into a corkscrew loop. I’m about to turn into the next loop when I feel a bump from behind me and I go spinning aroun
d again in the darkness, losing my grip on the handlebars. As I struggle to regain my balance, I see two giant yellow eyes staring at me through the window.

  It’s not the sentinel. It’s a serpent—a baby leviathan.

  Its long green snake-like body flows gracefully as it watches me. My father’s stories of leviathans used to give me nightmares, but this one doesn’t look too terrifying. I wonder . . . could that giant shadowy creature I saw in the trench have been a full-grown leviathan?

  “Hi there,” I say. He just stares at me, his long body undulating behind him. “Are you lost? Your mother is probably worried about you. Maybe you should go find her.” He touches his nose against the window. He’s actually kind of cute, in a weird sort of way.

  “Really, I mean it. If she sees you here, she’s going to be mad at me.” I turn and try to sail around him, but he just swims alongside me and gets in front of me again. This time he swishes his tail back and forth as if he wants to play.

  “Listen, I wish I could play, but I’m in a hurry.” He just swishes his tail again.

  He taps my front window with a fin and then turns and swims off ahead of me, stopping to turn his head back to see if I’m following. Is he trying to play tag?

  Well, he’s going in the same direction I am . . . I guess it doesn’t hurt to have a fierce-looking traveling companion.

  When he sees that I’m following him, he swishes his tail even faster and darts forward into the darkness. I guess we’re playing tag after all. I don’t know why, but I suddenly feel happier. For the first time since I started out, I feel like I’m not alone on my journey.

  The little leviathan does a looping corkscrew turn in front of me. Is he imitating what I was trying to do earlier? I can’t help laughing. He’s such a little show-off. He turns back toward me as if he wants my approval. He swishes his tail playfully, waiting for me to catch up.

  Swish. I’m going to call him Swish.

  ******

  With Swish swimming along at my side, I sail past the steep rocky edge of the trench. It feels good to see sand below me again. Swish suddenly races off, chasing something. He disappears into the darkness for a moment, then races back toward me. Only then do I realize what he’s chasing. It’s a fifteen-foot-long thresher shark.

  I turn to get out of their path and the long-tailed shark speeds past me. Swish stops chasing him and returns to swimming alongside me. Until now I hadn’t realized just how big Swish is. The shark was barely half his size.

  “I’m glad you’re on my side,” I say to Swish. The thresher shark probably wouldn’t have tried to attack the sub, but it feels good knowing that Swish is trying to protect me.

  Swish swims down along the seafloor, wriggling his long body back and forth in the sand and making a snaking pattern behind him. He turns around and looks at his creation, then at me. I think he wants me to do the same thing.

  I glide downward, letting the sub graze against the sand, and zigzag back and forth, trying to make a trail. Swish slides along beside me as I go. I turn back around to look at the patterns. My trail looks like a creek alongside a huge riverbed, but Swish wags his tail excitedly as he races around in circles above our art display.

  “Come on, now,” I tell him, laughing at his antics. “We have important responsibilities.” We turn back to the west and he swims alongside me again. I think he understands that we’re going somewhere.

  Swish alternates between swimming by my side and scouting ahead of me, looking for dangers to protect me from. In front of me, he stops suddenly, staring straight ahead.

  “What is it this time, a deadly puffer fish?” I joke.

  Then I see what he’s looking at. There are thirteen tall rectangular stones sticking up out of the sand, forming the shape of a circle. Each stone must be at least twelve feet high. This couldn’t have been a natural formation. I get a strange eerie feeling as I look at the circle of stones. I wonder if this is an old merrow graveyard.

  Swish is staring into the center of the circle. He slowly backs away from the stones as if he is scared of something.

  “They’re just rocks,” I say to him, as I sail between two stones and into the center of the circle. He makes a yelping noise and thrashes his tail. “It’s okay; I’m fine!” I say to him as he swims around the outside of the circle anxiously.

  And then I hear it. There is music all around me.

  It sounds like the voices of men and women singing together. There are no words, just a low and sad melody. I look around to see where the sound is coming from, but it seems to be all around me. Without thinking, I hum along to the tune. It feels strangely familiar. Was this one of my father’s lullabies?

  Swish is getting more and more anxious, but I can’t leave the circle. I can feel that there’s something here. This is where I need to be.

  The music moves through me. It becomes a part of me. The song feels so familiar, but I can’t place it. I don’t think it’s one of my father’s lullabies. Wait . . . I remember now . . .

  This was the same song my mother sang to me on the day she died.

  The world seems to fall away beneath me.

  I’m in a rowboat with my mother. I see our house in the distance, across the water. My father is on the beach waving to us. My mother is wearing a green dress and a necklace of wild orchids. She is humming a beautiful sweet melody.

  “What’s that song?” I ask.

  “It’s something my mother used to sing to me,” she answers.

  “Why are there no words in that one?”

  “Good question. Maybe its meaning is different for every person.”

  “What does it mean to you?”

  “To me, it means to always cherish and remember those who you love.”

  I look down at my own wild orchid necklace, then back up at my mother’s dark brown hair shining in the sun. Her beautiful green eyes twinkle as she smiles at me.

  “Do you think we’ll see a whale today?” I ask.

  “I’m sure we will. They love the scent of wild orchids. They come up to the surface just to smell them.”

  “Whoa . . .” I say, peering over the side, looking for a whale. “Do you think I can ride one?”

  “Of course,” she says with a laugh. “It’s Sunday, so they shouldn’t be too busy.”

  “I think I see one!” I shout, leaning farther over the edge. There’s a dark shadow moving deep beneath the surface.

  “Careful,” she says, as she reaches for my hand. But it’s too late.

  As I lean out to touch the water, I tumble down into the sea. My arms and legs are flailing as I sink below the surface. I kick at the water, helplessly trying to reach for the boat edge. The shadow of the boat shrinks against the sunlit water. Strands of kelp reach up around me as my feet are pulled down to the ground.

  There is a splash above me. My mother comes toward me, her arm reaching out.

  I feel the kelp tighten around my legs. She swims down and pulls my arm, trying to free me from the grip of the kelp. I can’t keep my mouth closed anymore.

  I see that my mother’s eyes are filled with fear. She frantically pulls the kelp away from my legs and lifts me up. She pushes me up toward the sunlight above us.

  I flail my arms.

  I kick as hard as I can.

  My mother’s hand lets go of me. She reaches out, trying to push me toward the surface. But now the kelp has grabbed hold of her.

  I can’t hold my breath any longer. My mouth opens up and the water flows in. The water is in my lungs. I’m sinking again. I close my eyes. Everything feels cold.

  Then something grabs me and pulls me up. I’m coughing. I can’t stop coughing. I’m on the boat. I’m breathing again. My father is staring at me, anxiously.

  There’s a splash again, and he’s back in the water. He’s gone a long time. When he comes back, he has my mother in his arms. She’s in the boat. He’s trying to make her breathe.

  I reach for her hand. Her eyes are open, but she’s not looking at me.
Her orchid necklace has come off. I want to tell her I’ll make her a new one. I want to tell her I’m sorry. My father keeps trying to make her breathe. But she’s not breathing. I squeeze her hand as tight as I can. And the world falls away from me again.

  I’m back in the middle of the circle of stones. The sad melody is all around me. It was my fault.

  She died trying to save me. That’s why I had forgotten that day. That’s why my father never talks about it. Does he blame me for it too? Does he feel guilty that he saved me and couldn’t save her? I shudder as I think of how my father would feel if he ever learned that I died while trying to save him.

  I sit and listen to the sweet peaceful sound of the notes. My eyelids start to feel heavy.

  The air is hard to breathe, but I don’t have the energy to move anymore. I see Swish, still swimming around outside the circle. He’ll be okay. He can go back to his mother. I just want to stay here. All I want is to listen to the sad lullaby of the stones, just a little while longer . . .

  I feel my whole body getting heavy. I’m just going to lie down for a little while. I curl up on the cold metal floor of my sub and listen to the song all around me as everything starts to go dark.

  A sudden jolt startles me, as the sub is yanked backward. I look up out the window to see a cloud of sand, then the stones retreating in the distance.

  The music is gone. I feel as if I’m waking up. Instinctively, I start to pedal. Swish’s face pops up in front of me, his eyes wide with worry. He must have pulled me out of the circle. He saved my life.

  The air is coming back again. I look out at Swish swimming beside me.

  “I wish I could hug you,” I say.

  Somehow I think he understands.

  9

  SKELETON REEF

  Swish and I continue to sail west. He seems to be enjoying the adventure, but part of me fears that he may turn around and leave at any moment. After all, he doesn’t know where we are going or why. To him this probably just feels like some sort of game. Or is it possible that he can sense the truth? Maybe he wants to help me get safely to my destination.