Song of the Deep

by Brian Hastings

  The parts are starting to come together, one by one. I take a look at the progress with a mixture of pride and uncertainty. The gears are rusty, and there are no screws to keep their levers in place. The whole contraption is only barely holding together at all. But I don’t need it to be perfect. I only need it to work for a few minutes.

  I reach up to the ceiling and gently pull the hand lever. I grin as I see the segmented claw arm stretch out. I yank the lever all the way back, and the metal claw slams shut. The bolts on the roof rattle where the claw’s arm is connected, but it seems to be holding tight. Well, tight enough, at least.

  I sail back out of the cavern and look at the circling sentinels above me. I have one chance to make this work.

  Moving up along the side of the wall, I watch the sweeping beams of light on their endless patrols. I wait for just the right moment. When the beams are all pointed away from the wall above me, I sail up and yank a large loose rock from the wall with the claw. I struggle to force the sub upright as the weight of the rock pitches it forward. As the sentinel beams turn back toward me, I pull back on the lever, but nothing happens.

  Three sentinel beams are approaching. They’ll see me at any second! I grip the lever with both hands and yank it with all my might. The arm pitches forward and hurls the rock through the water, slamming into one of the sentinels and sending it spinning around. Five sentinels all turn toward the rock and chase it as it sinks down through the trench. I hear their torpedo shots firing at the rock as they go.

  That worked almost too well, but four more sentinels are patrolling in a figure-eight pattern higher above me. Beyond them it looks like there are at least another four—no, five. But as long as I can keep distracting them faster than the other ones can return, I should be fine.

  I pull another chunk of rock from the wall. It’s about half the size of the first one, so it doesn’t throw me off balance as badly. I follow the pattern of the sentinels above me, again carefully waiting for the right moment. When the nearest sentinel is just starting to pass by, I yank the lever, and the stone sails through the water and slams into the top of the sentinel with a satisfying clank. But rather than bouncing forward, the stone ricochets upward and back toward me.

  I watch, frozen in horror, as all nine sentinels turn their beams and follow the rock straight toward me. There’s nowhere I can go. I’m completely surrounded by them. I remain motionless, hoping that they might turn back around. But they don’t.

  The first torpedo launches. I dive down as it slams into the wall behind me, and the blast sends me spinning around out of control. I pull the claw lever, trying to grab onto anything I can. The claw sinks into the tail of one of the sentinels, jerking me to a stop. I’m about to release it when I have an idea. I pull the lever back even harder, forcing the claw to bite down harder into the sentinel’s tail. Its diving plane, the fin-like part of the tail that lets it go up or down, is jammed upward. The sentinel is forced into an uncontrollable dive, pulling my sub down with it.

  I’m being tugged straight down into the endless maw of the trench. Sentinel beams sweep all around me as they give chase from behind. They’re going to fire at any moment. There’s only one thing I can do.

  I force open the hatch and dive out. The sentinels race past me into the darkness below. I see the torpedoes fire, one after the other. There is a bright flash below me. My submarine is blown into a million tiny fragments.

  I feel a painful knot in my stomach. I take a short gasping breath through the zephyr whelk. My body is shaking. There’s no time to think right now—I just have to move. I swim upward. I block everything else out. All that matters is swimming upward as fast as I can go. The water above me is dark. The sentinels are all below me. I have a few seconds at most. Keep going . . . keep going . . .

  The light of a sentinel beam sweeps up past me, through the water on my right, illuminating a ceiling of gold above me. The metal struts widen as they stretch up to the ceiling, as if they are holding it up. At the center of the ceiling is a circular opening of water. I swim straight up toward it, just as the sentinel’s beam sweeps over me.

  I maneuver into the opening and up through a wide cylindrical tube. I hear a clanking of metal and look down to see that the bottom of the tube has closed behind me. I’m safe from the sentinels for now, but where am I? Is this the entrance to the Forbidden City?

  Above me, a hole forms at the center of the ceiling. The hole widens as I approach, and brilliant yellow light shines down on my face, forcing me to shield my eyes. I feel like I’ve walked out of a dark cave and am looking straight into the midday sun.

  I swim up toward the light, and my head emerges into air. I climb out of the tube and turn around in astonishment.

  I’m standing in the middle of an entire city made of gold. Pointed spires of buildings tower high above me like a golden forest. Walkways paved with gold zigzag and branch between the gleaming golden walls. Archways and buttresses stretch between the buildings. An immense dome of glass arches over the building tops. Beyond that is the great empty darkness of the sea.

  At the edges of the city, the glass dome walls are lined with forty-foot-tall golden gears, each in slow and steady motion. Four tall cylindrical glass tubes, filled with water, run through the center of the city from floor to ceiling. Pumps inside the tubes keep the water in constant motion. Are these gears and tubes used to filter air out of the water?

  As I walk through the city, I am stunned at the beauty and wealth all around me. There is more gold in this city than I thought could have existed in all the world. Tall piles of gold coins are pushed up against walls, as if they ran out of places to put them. But where are the Fomori? What could have happened to them to make them abandon such riches?

  I think back to what Cara said about the Rimorosa . . . a great ancient beast more powerful than any leviathan. If the Fomori had captured it and even controlled it, could it have turned on them? Maybe they didn’t abandon the city after all. Maybe, after so many years of pillaging the sea, the most deadly of all its creatures fought back and destroyed them. Still, it’s strange that the city seems to have been abandoned without any kind of struggle.

  And where is my father? There is no sign of him anywhere. My submarine is destroyed, and I have no idea where to go next or what to do.

  I kick a pile of coins in frustration, watching them scatter and roll across the gleaming golden walkway. I would trade all this gold just for the tiniest hint of where to look for my father.

  I follow the winding walkways through the tall buildings until I reach an open garden at what seems to be the center of the dome. There are canals built into the floor, little rivers that travel through the city. They intersect in a shallow pool within the garden, where arching fountains of water take turns shooting up into the air and sending sparkling jewel-drops of water raining back down. Inside the canals, golden clockwork seahorses swim along, busily attending to some invisible task.

  Looking closer, there is something different about these seahorses. Cara’s seahorse was lit from within by a pulsing white glow that these seahorses don’t have. Their movements are more stiff and precise, and they don’t seem to be alive and aware of me the way Cara’s seahorse was. Now I wish I had asked her how she became friends with it. There must be a bigger story that she didn’t tell me.

  I follow one of the seahorses through a canal, away from the garden. It seems to move with a purpose, as if it has a job to do. Do the seahorses keep the whole city running? Something must be making the repairs to the machines and keeping the pumps active. And if so, there must be some location in the city that controls all the machinery. Maybe my father came to the same conclusion and has already found it.

  The seahorse leads me through golden city streets, along winding canals merging with larger canals and then splitting off again. Finally, it takes me into a low-ceilinged tunnel at the edge of the city. At the end of the tunnel, the canal empties into a deep circular pool. The walls of the pool are cover
ed in little golden switches. The seahorse moves from spot to spot along the wall, flicking the tiny switches with its nose. This must be some kind of control center for the whole city. Maybe there’s even a way to disable the sentinels from here.

  I dive into the pool and look around the walls, searching for some pattern to the switches. If my father has been here, he must have done the same thing I am doing now. Did he flip one of the switches? And if so, where did he go? I look down at the golden floor. I would guess that it leads back into the open trench beneath the city.

  The switches are arranged in long densely packed columns with no symbols or any other indication of their purpose. The seahorse stops flipping the switches and turns to me.

  “I don’t suppose you could show me what these do?” I ask with a smile, gesturing to the switches. The seahorse just turns away from me and moves to another column, switching them all down one by one. I hear a grating of metal and look up to see the golden iris ceiling closing. A moment later the floor slides up below me, revealing the endless trench. I look at the seahorse with a feeling of betrayal. “Did you do that?” There is no sign of the sentinels, at least. Maybe they are patrolling deeper in the trench.

  The seahorse is just floating there, watching me. It makes me a little uncomfortable, but I’ll just have to ignore him and stay focused. I scan the columns of switches and swim over to one. I could start by flipping all the switches in the column just to see what happens. But as I’m reaching for the first one, I feel a swell of water pushing up from below.

  I look down to see a huge red tentacle reaching up. Before I can move, it wraps around me and pulls me down into the darkness!

  I’m sinking so fast I can barely see. My ribs feel like they are going to crack from the pressure of the tentacle’s grip. The beams of sentinels and glints of golden struts fly past me and disappear.

  This must be the Rimorosa. This is the creature that sank my father’s ship. I struggle to free myself from its merciless grip, but the undulating tentacles just propel me farther into the depths.

  14

  THE RIMOROSA

  I’m enveloped in blackness now, except for the glimmer of yellow-orange glowkelp bulbs along the walls of the trench, their lights streaking by me like shooting stars. I feel the tentacle loosen its grip for a moment and I am able to take a quick breath through the zephyr whelk. For a moment I see a glimpse of the Rimorosa’s face. Its head is like that of an octopus but is covered with eyes. I notice a gold band around its skull, like a helmet. Maybe that was how the Fomori controlled it. And is that what allows the Rimorosa to control the sentinels now?

  The glowkelp bulbs fly past as the ancient beast pulls me farther down into the depths. I wriggle back and forth, pushing as hard as I can against the constricting arm. I make it only a few inches before the tentacle squeezes even tighter.

  But those few inches are enough to allow me to reach the handle of my coral knife. As I pull it out, a second tentacle wraps around my head and neck. I can feel its suction cups against my face. Now I can’t see, and I have no way to breathe. My fingernails dig into the suction cups along the tentacle at my waist, trying to pry them free, but it’s no use.

  Gripping the knife with both hands, I blindly stab it into the tentacle at my waist. I hear a piercing screech as the coral blade sinks into one of the suction cups. Both the tentacles loosen, and I kick my way free. I swim upward as fast as I can go. One of the tentacles brushes my leg, but I slip out of its grasp before it can get hold of me.

  I swim toward the wall, sliding through a web of tangled vines and into a long narrow crack, just big enough for me squeeze into sideways. I hold my breath as the tentacle arms tear through the vines and try to pry me out. I can feel the suction cups tickling my shins, so I wedge myself in deeper. The tentacles try again and again to grasp hold of me, but they aren’t able to get a solid grip.

  At last, the tentacles retreat and the Rimorosa disappears down into the depths.

  I listen for any movement from below, but all is silent. I swim out of the crack, feeling the tendrils of the vines reaching toward me. As I shake them off and push away from the wall, I see what they are. The walls are covered in thick layers of strangleclaw kelp. Its bulbs may look pretty, but if it gets its barbed, claw-like hooks in me it will pull me all the way to the bottom of the trench.

  That’s why the Rimorosa left. It wasn’t giving up; it was merely waiting for the kelp to grab me and bring me down to it. How much time do I have before it comes back to check on me? I swim up through the trench, the glowing kelp bulbs forming a cylinder of tiny lights leading upward along the walls of the trench.

  As I swim farther up, I see a long dark swath in the lights, running vertically down the wall. It looks like a column of darkness in a starry sky. Remembering what my father once said about using the kelp bubbles to breathe, I swim toward the bottom, where the patch of darkness ends. There, tangled and still amid the vines, is the body of a man. It’s my father.

  I race toward him. His eyes are closed—he looks like he’s sleeping. A deflated kelp bulb is clenched in his fingers. Was he breathing through the kelp bulbs as the strangleclaw pulled him farther down into the trench? How long has he been down here? There must have been more than a hundred kelp bulbs in the dark swath above him; he could have survived for quite a while on them.

  I grab his arm and shake him, but he doesn’t move. I take off the zephyr whelk necklace and hang it around his neck, putting the shell up to his lips. He still doesn’t move.

  “Breathe!” I yell. I feel the strangleclaw wrapping around me and tightening. My father’s eyes stay closed. The kelp pulls me lower, tugging me away from him. I reach toward him and grab onto his boot as I am pulled away again.

  He’s too far away for me to reach now. His body is still. The zephyr whelk hangs at his neck.

  I am too late.

  There is a rush of moving water from below. I turn to see the Rimorosa swimming up through the trench, straight toward me. Before I can even move, it yanks me out of vines and grips me in one of its giant red arms.

  With another arm, it grasps my father’s body and it pulls us both back down into the depths. My father’s arms flail gently in the water beside me. I reach for his hand and hold it tightly in mine, knowing I won’t be able to hold my breath much longer.

  And then he opens his eyes.

  His eyes widen in disbelief when he sees me and then quickly fill with horror. I gesture to the zephyr whelk around his neck, then put my hands to my mouth to show what to do. He holds it up and takes a deep breath. He looks at me incredulously. There are a million things he wants to say and no time to say them. He takes off the necklace and stretches it out to me. I take a deep breath.

  We pass the zephyr whelk back and forth as the Rimorosa pulls us deeper into the trench. My father starts to say something, but I shake my head and hold my finger to my lips. We’re going to have to conserve our breaths. Maybe when the Rimorosa comes to a stop, we’ll have a chance to escape.

  From high above us, a terrible roar echoes down through the trench. An immense shadow engulfs the lights as it descends toward us. There is another great roar, and I see an enormous gaping mouth, filled with a thousand saber-size teeth. It’s a queen leviathan, the most feared creature in all the sea.

  Her great mouth lunges toward us. I grip my father’s hand and close my eyes as the giant teeth gnash down. I feel the Rimorosa’s tentacles loosen their grip, and I open my eyes.

  The leviathan has bitten into the other creature. My father pulls me away from the tentacles, and we swim up alongside the thrashing serpentine body of the leviathan. The Rimorosa has wrapped its tentacles around the head and neck of the leviathan as the leviathan struggles to attack again. The two are locked in a desperate struggle—and neither seems to have an advantage.

  My father tugs me away from the battling beasts. Two yellow eyes are coming toward us. Protectively, my father plants himself in front of me, but I recognize the eyes
instantly. It’s Swish. I look back down at the queen leviathan, still battling the Rimorosa.

  “Swish, is that . . . is that your mother?” I ask him. My father looks from me to Swish and back again. “I’ll explain it all later,” I tell him, taking a breath from the zephyr whelk. I give Swish a big hug. He swims above us and wiggles his tail, as if asking us to grab on. “It’s okay,” I say to my father, and we both grab hold of Swish’s tail.

  Swish pulls us up out of the trench and into the cavern where I came in. From down below I hear another roar, and the giant leviathan flies up through the trench, with the Rimorosa chasing close behind it. Swish makes a whimpering sound as he looks toward the trench. I squeeze his fin, trying to console him.

  Loud crashes of metal and rock echo through the trench, and I look at my father, suddenly realizing what is happening. The leviathan is destroying the metal struts that support the Forbidden City.

  The sound builds to a thunder. The leviathan swoops down into the cavern as the weight of an entire city comes crashing down behind her. I see a glimpse of the red tentacles of the Rimorosa, but a moment later it is buried beneath an avalanche of gold. All the riches of the Forbidden City disappear out of sight into the infinite abyss of the trench.

  I turn to the queen leviathan. Swish’s mother. She looks like she came away unhurt. I think of the giant skeletons of leviathans that I passed in the cavern. She must have known she was taking a great risk to come here. Swish rubs his cheek against his mother’s face.

  “Thank you,” I say. “We can never repay you for that.”

  She rolls her back toward us, revealing the spines along the back of her head.

  My father looks at me in disbelief. Is she offering us a ride?

  We grab onto the spines, and the leviathan carries us out of the trench, up into the open sea where the Forbidden City once was. She takes us higher and higher, until we can see the distant streaks of the sun’s rays above us.